ve adored
Will maybe, lay some eggs and rear
A callow, cooing horde.

But father says it's quite absurd
To think that bird can lay,
For though it is a wondrous bird,
It isn't built that way.

Now whether mother tells me true
Or father, bothers me;
There's nothing else for me to do
But just to wait and see.

Whate'er befalls this bird of mine,
I am resolved 'twill please--
Far be it from me to repine
At what the Lord decrees._

Mr. Slason Thompson, compiler of "The Humbler Poets," could decide this
matter for us if he were here now, but unhappily he is out of town just
at present. We have a suspicion that the poem was originally written by
Isaac Watts, but that suspicion is impaired somewhat by another
suspicion that there were no such things as canary birds in Isaac
Watts's time.

Yours truly,

MELISSA MAYFIELD.

We have shown this letter to Evanston's most distinguished citizen, the
Hon. Andrew Shuman, and that sapient poet-critic tells us that as
nearly as he can recollect the poem was written, not by Dr. Watts, but
by an American girl. But whether that girl was Lucretia Davidson or
Miss Ada C. Sweet he cannot recall.

Mr. Francis F. Browne, of The Dial, thinks it is one of Miss Wheeler's
earlier poems, since it is imbued with that sweet innocence, that
childish simplicity, and that meek piety which have ever characterized
the work of the famous Wisconsin lyrist. But as we can learn nothing
positive as to the authorship of the poem, we shall have to call upon
the public at large to help us out.

It is needless to say that the public at large could throw no light on
the composition of this imitation of Dr. Watts with which Field was
not already possessed, since both poem and "Melissa Mayfield" were
creations of Field's fancy.

One of the most characteristic examples of the pains he would take to
palm off a composition of his own upon some innocent and unsuspecting
public man appeared in the Morning News on January 22d, 1887. It was
nothing short of an attempt to father upon the late Judge Thomas M.
Cooley the authorship of half a dozen bits of verse of varying styles
and degrees of excellence. He professed to have received from Jasper
Eastman, a prominent citizen of Adrian, Mich., twenty-eight poems
written by Judge Cooley, "the venerable and learned jurist, recently
appointed receiver of the W