ge on her pianoforte. We
presume to say that the protests which she has made within the last
two years against the utterances of the press would fill a tome. Now
this Joyce affair is simply preposterous; we do not imagine that
there is in America at the present time an ordinarily intelligent
person who has ever believed for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote
the poem in question--the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel
Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been
marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the
Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no
good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around,
all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her
claim is universally conceded; there is no shadow of doubt that she
wrote the poem in question, and by becoming involved in any further
complication on this subject she will simply make a laughing-stock of
herself; we would be sorry to see her do that.

And yet whenever his stock of subjects for comment or raillery ran low
he would write a letter to himself, asking the address of Colonel John
A. Joyce, the author of "Love and Laughter," and manage in his answer
to open up the whole controversy afresh. I suppose that to this day
there are thousands of good people in the United States whose
innocence has been abused by Field's superserviceable defence of Mrs.
Wilcox's title to "Laugh and the World Laughs with You." It was
delicious fooling to him and to those of us who were on the inside,
but I question if Mrs. Wilcox ever appreciated its humorous aspect.

Speaking of his practice of getting public attention for his own
compositions through a letter of his own "To the Editor," the following
affords a good example of his ingenious method, with his reply:

EVANSTON, ILL., Aug. 15, 1888.

_To the Editor_:

Several of us are very anxious to learn the authorship of the following
poem, which is to be found in so many scrap-books, and which ever and
anon appears as a newspaper waif:

_RESIGNATION

I have a dear canary bird,
That every morning sings
The sweetest songs I ever heard,
And flaps his yellow wings.

I love to sit the whole day long
Beside the window-sill,
And listen to the joyous song
That warbler loves to trill.

My mother says that in a year
The bird that I'