"Mother Goose."

"Mother Goose" was a real character, and not an imaginary personage as has been supposed.

Her maiden name was Elizabeth Foster, and she was born in 1665.

She married Isaac Goose in 1693, and a few years after became a member of the Old South Church, Boston, and died in 1757, aged ninety-two years.

The first edition of her songs, which were originally sung to her grandchildren, was published in Boston in 1716 by her son-in-law, Thomas Fleet.

The house in which a great part of her life was spent, was a low, one-story building, with dormer windows, and a red-tiled roof, looking something like an old English country cottage.