Page:The Chinese Boy and Girl.djvu/22

 of our nursery rhymes, the only thought of which is about something good to eat. Notice the following:

In imagination I can see the reader raise his eyebrows and mutter, "Do the Chinese eat crows?" while at the same time he has been singing all his life about what a "dainty dish" "four and twenty blackbirds" would make for the "king," without ever raising the question as to whether blackbirds are good eating or not.

We note another feature of all nursery rhymes in the additions made by the various persons through whose hands,—or should we say, through whose mouths they pass.

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