Excerpt
HUMPTY DUMPTY'SLITTLE SON. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.All the King's horses, and all the King's men,Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty together again."
After Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and all the King's horses and all the King's men could not put him together again, Little Dumpty lived with his Mother, who was called Widow Dumpty, and went to school every day. He set off in good time every morning—even if it was pouring with rain. He had a great many friends at school, and the boys liked him because he always had plenty of marbles, and used to carry sticky labels in his pocket; he got them out of his Mother's shop, and gave them as prizes for racing and jumping in play time.
Little Dumpty was a little bit like a nice goblin, it was therefore very interesting to his school fellows to have him for a chum, and the funny part about him was that he never took his hat off. Of course no one said anything about it, but they just remembered that his Father was an egg, and got cracked and broken, and they thought that had something to do with it.
Well, I will tell you how Little Dumpty used to spend his time. In summer he used to get up quite early, because he had to feed his pets before breakfast. He had a lot of pets in the yard at the back of the house. He had guinea-pigs, of course, then he had three rabbits and a pair of dormice and a canary; and he had some pigeons. They were rather a bother to him, because they had a nasty habit of flying down the parlour chimney, where sometimes they stuck for two or three days, and at last flew out all black and sooty into the room. Widow Dumpty used to be rather angry and spoke crossly when this happened, and then Little Dumpty used to get up and go out and feed his rabbits, which is what he generally did when he wasn't very happy. Well, then he had a tame hen and some silkworms. Once he had a baby chicken, but it ate some blue chalk, which Dumpty had dropped on the ground, and died. He did all he could to keep it alive but it was no good. He was very sorry about it, because he had often longed for a little chicken of his own; besides his Mother had told him that when it grew up it would be a swimming chicken. It was a pity too he dropped the chalk, because it got trodden on and spoilt, and it had been his favourite chalk.
Well, as I was saying, first he had to feed his pets and to water his garden before the sun got too hot: and by then it was time for breakfast. He and his Mother were always very happy at breakfast (except when there was a pigeon in the chimney). Generally they talked about the garden, and when the seeds were coming up Widow Dumpty used to send Little Dumpty running out to chivvy off the sparrows and starlings who wanted to eat all the young sprouts. In the spring they talked about tadpoles, and wondered how long it would be before they lost their tails; and in the summer time they wondered when Little Dumpty would get a bath; and in the autumn they talked about the circus which was coming; and in the winter about their "poetry" which they made up, or about the bulbs in the pots at the window, which always looked like blooming for Christmas, and never did bloom till March....