es at her feet.

The Singer heard their shouts the while,
But her serene and haughty face
Was lighted by no flattered smile
Provoked by homage in that place.

The Singer sang that night again
In mother tones, tender and deep,
Not to the public ear, but when
She rocked her little one to sleep.

The song we bless through all the years
As memory's holiest, sweetest thing,
Instinct with pathos and with tears--
The song that mothers always sing.

So tuneful was the lullaby
The mother sang, her little child
Cooed, oh! so sweetly in reply,
Stretched forth its dimpled hands and smiled.

The Singer crooning there above
The cradle where her darling lay
Snatched to her breast her smiling love
And sang his soul to dreams away.

Oh, mother-love, that knows no guile,
That's deaf to flatt'ry, blind to art,
A dimpled hand hath wooed thy smile--
A baby's cooing touched thy heart._

[Illustration: JESSIE BARTLETT DAVIS.]

Lest my readers should conclude from these early specimens of Field's
fondness for lilting lullabies that the gentler sex and "mother love"
blinded him to the manly attractions and true worth of his own sex,
let the following never-to-be-forgotten ode to the waistcoat of the
papa of the hero of the two preceding songs bear witness. Mr. Davis
has been a manager of first-class theatres and theatrical companies
for a score of years, and there are thousands to testify that in the
rhymes that follow Field has done no more than justice to the amazing
"confections" in wearing apparel he affected in the days when we were
boys together:

_Of waistcoats there are divers kinds, from those severely chaste
To those with fiery colors dight or with fair figures traced:
Those that high as liver-pads and chest-protectors serve,
While others proudly sweep away in a substomachic curve,
But the grandest thing in waistcoats in the streets in this great
and wondrous west
Is that which folks are wont to call the Will J. Davis vest!

This paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high
But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie:
Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll,
While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole
And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed
In the contour and the mise en scene of the Will J. Davis vest.

Its texture is of softest silk: Its co