Excerpt
'Twas the night before Christmas, and it was very quiet in Mrs. Muffet's house,—altogether too quiet, thought little Miss Muffet, as she sat trying to eat her curds and whey. For Mrs. Muffet was a very severe mother and had her own ideas about bringing up children,—and so had Mr. Muffet, or rather he had the same ideas, only warmed over. One of these was on the necessity of care in the diet of growing children. "First," said Mrs. Muffet, "we must find out what the children don't like, and then we must make them eat plenty of it; next to breaking their wills, there is nothing so necessary as breaking their appetites." Mrs. Muffet had read this in a book, and so she knew it must be true; and Mr. Muffet had heard Mrs. Muffet say it so many times that he knew it was true.
So every morning little Miss Muffet had three courses: first, curds and whey; second, whey and curds; third, curdled whey. She had the same things for the other meals, but the order was changed about. An experienced housekeeper tells me that the third course is impossible to prepare, as whey cannot be curdled. All I have to say is that this housekeeper had not known Mrs. Muffet. Mrs. Muffet could curdle anything. But the worst days of the year for little Miss Muffet were the holidays, for they were occasions that had to be improved. Now for a little girl to improve an occasion is about the hardest work she can do, especially when she doesn't know how. If she had been left to herself, Miss Muffet wouldn't have improved them at all, but would have left them in their natural state.
"Christmas," said Mrs. Muffet in her most economical tone, "comes but once a year, so we must make it go as far as possible. The best way for a child to do that is to sit and meditate. You've no idea how long a holiday seems till you sit still and think about it. Count sixty, that will be just one minute, and another, and another, and then another—sixty times one, and then sixty times that, and then twenty-four times that makes—well—it makes—the exact number doesn't matter much," said Mrs. Muffet, who wasn't quick at mental arithmetic, "but you'll see that there are quite a considerable number of seconds in Christmas Day—quite enough for any growing child." So at Christmas time Mrs. Muffet would go out to visit the neighbors, leaving the little girl seated on a very uncomfortable tuffet, to meditate on the passage of time.
Perhaps some of you would like to know what a tuffet is. I have thought of that myself, and have taken the trouble to ask several learned persons. They assure me that the most complete and satisfactory definition is,—a tuffet is the kind of thing that Miss Muffet sat on. With this explanation I shall go on with my story. As she sat on her tuffet counting up the seconds of Christmas Eve, and had already reached the sum of two thousand one hundred and seven, a strange thing happened. A visitor came and sat down beside her. You guess who he was? Yes—an elderly, benevolent spider. He was short-sighted and wore green spectacles, and had evidently a little rheumatism in his legs, but as he had eight of them, he managed to get along very well.
The kind of thing that Miss Muffet sat onNow the way you may have heard the story is that when the kind old spider sat down beside her, it frightened Miss Muffet away. That story must be true because I myself have seen it in print, but it happened at another time, when Miss Muffet was very little indeed.
On the Christmas Eve I am telling about, she had become a very sensible little girl, and knew all about spiders, so instead of running away, she made room for him on the tuffet and said, "I am very glad to see you, Mr. Spider." Mr. Spider bowed and looked at her in a kindly way through his spectacles, but said nothing....