THE ABSURD A.B.C.

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PREFACE

MOTHER HUBBARD, as we all know, had a cupboard which she found bare on one occasion.

Well, this is Mother Hubbard’s Picture Book, and it’s rather bearish, too, for there are no less than THREE BEARS therein.

But you must not suppose that the book is altogether bear, because there are other things in it.

There’s Apple pie, for instance to my certain knowledge, and “victuals and drink” of sorts, as well—but I must not let the cat out of the bag (or the cupboard) all at once—besides Mother Hubbard’s clever dog is still feeding it, for his day (in spite of muzzles) is not over yet, and he is up to all his old tricks.

When you are tired of him, and if you [Pg 7] [Pg 8] can manage to get past the Three Bears, you will find the rest as ABSURDly easy as A.B.C. and probably meet many old friends on the way.

Walter Crane

[Contents]

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE

MOTHER HUBBARD.

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[Contents]

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE:

The following may be had in this series: This Little Pig The Fairy Ship King Luckieboy Mother Hubbard The Three Bears The Absurd A.B.C.

John Lane The Bodley Head London & New York

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE

THE THREE BEARS

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THE THREE BEARS.

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[Contents]

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE:

The following may be had in this series: This Little Pig The Fairy Ship King Luckieboy Mother Hubbard The Three Bears The Absurd A.B.C.

John Lane The Bodley Head London & New York

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE

THE ABSURD A.B.C.

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[Contents]

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WALTER CRANE’S PICTURE BOOKS RE-ISSUE:

The following may be had in this series: This Little Pig The Fairy Ship King Luckieboy Mother Hubbard The Three Bears The Absurd A.B.C.

John Lane The Bodley Head London & New York

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[Contents]

Transcriber’s notes:

Table of Contents added to aid navigation.

In the original, the text was interlaced with the illustrations. In this etext it has been placed below the associated illustration.

Punctuation and spacing “A.B.C.” has been used for all occurrences.

Full stops or commas have been added where omitted at the ends of lines.

In The Absurd A.B.C., the positions of the apostrophes have been corrected in “Full many a long day’s rabbit skin hunting” and “went up to sweep ’em”

The illustration immediately following The Absurd A.B.C. (page 64), a poster of the letters A to M, was omitted from the original images on the Internet Archive. It has been obtained from a separately published version of The Absurd A.B.C. at Project Gutenberg.