"'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,
Where have you been?'
'I've been to London,
To look at the Queen.'
'Pussy-cat, Pussy-cat,
What did you do there?'
'I frightened a little mouse
Under her chair.'"
It was good Queen Anne whom this adventurous kitten had journeyed to see, and the history of her exploit has been told to children ever since. These verses prepare the way for the fairy tales to follow:—"Puss-in-Boots," "The White Cat," and the legend of Dick Whittington. Perhaps in some favoured nurseries—as, long ago, in mine—the charming French story of "Mère Michel et son Chat " has a place of honour on the bookshelves; and little readers follow with breathless suspense the wonderful escapes of Moumouth, whose crowning victory over the wicked Lustucru was one of the joys of my childhood; a joy as fresh at the twentieth reading as at the first,—more satisfactory, perhaps, because then I knew it all along, and so could better bear the trials and dangers that preceded it. Sir Thomas Browne would never have envied "the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity enjoy their constitutions," had he known Mother Michel's cat. Mr. Aldrich translated this story some years ago, so that it is now as accessible
