Читать книгу Mother Bunch's Closet Newly Broke Open, and the History of Mother Bunch of the West онлайн

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“On a time this old woman, having newly buried her husband, was taking a walk in the fields for the benefit of the air, sometimes thinking of the loss of her husbands, for she had had three, yet had a great desire for the fourth. So it happened as she was walking alone she espied a young maid by a meadow side. Good morrow, maid, said the old woman; how do you do? are not you well? Yes, mother, I am very well, but somewhat troubled in mind.”

The paragraph on page 20 is entirely left out in the later editions, and the following addition is made:

Now Mother Bunch’s store exhaust,

She sits her down to spin;

Then studies how she soon may make

Her Second Part begin.

Which now is finished and sold

Where you have had the First,

’Twill make you wise, also to laugh,

Untill your sides do burst.

These are all the points of difference which it will be necessary to note between the 1685 edition, now reprinted, and those that appeared later in conjunction with the new second part.

The woodcuts in these chap-books are of the rudest description, and they did not appear worth reproducing. Mr. Ashton, in his Chap-books of the Eighteenth Century, pp. 84–87, has given three woodcuts from the second part of the 1780 edition, and the following lines, which, together with the funeral picture, make the finish of the book. These lines are not printed on our last page: