A VISIT FROM ST. NICHOLAS
Nothing is harder to kill than a nursery rhyme. Once let it become part of the patter of childhood and its immortality is assured. Jack Sprat, King Cole, Miss Muffet and Boy Blue are known and loved by thousands upon thousands who have never heard, nor cared to hear, of Endymion or Prometheus or Childe Harold. Mother Goose will probably be the last work of English literature to perish.
It is astonishing how a mere jingle will sometimes win a tremendous vogue. When Julia Fletcher Carney wrote
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land,
as a lesson in ethics for her Boston Sunday school class, she had no idea that she was winning everlasting fame; and when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow tried to soothe his second daughter by chanting
There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
52
