d giving a public entertainment, in consideration of a quarter of an
hour's delay. He takes large liberties with the text of his poems, but
his rhetorical variations are of a nature that shows it is no vain
repetition, but that he enters into the spirit of the poem. In one of
his songs a person

"Asked a sweet robin, one morning in May,
That sung in the apple-tree over the way,"

what it was he was singing.

"Don't you know? he replied, you cannot guess wrong;
Don't you know I am singing my cold-water song?"

This Jamie intensifies thus:--

"Do' know my sing my co'-wotta song, hm?"

When he reaches the place where

"Jack fell down
Boke cown,"

he invariably leaves Gill to take care of herself, and closes with the
pathetic moral reflection, "'At _too_ bad!" Little Jack Horner, having
put in his thumb and picked out a plum, is made to declare definitely
and redundantly,--

"My _ga-ate_ big boy, jus' so big!"

He persists in praying,--

"'F I should die 'fore I wake up."

Borne off to bed a last, in spite of every pretext for delay, tired
Nature droops in his curling lashes, and gapes protractedly through his
wide-dividing lips.

"I seepy," he cries, fighting of sleep with the bravery of a
Major-General,--observing phenomena, _in articulo somni_, with the
accuracy and enthusiasm of a naturalist, and reasoning from them with
the skill of a born logician.

A second prolonged and hearty gape, and

"I two seepies," he cries, adding mathematics to his other
accomplishments.

And that is the last of Jamie, till the early morning brings him
trudging up stairs, all curled and shining, to "hear Baddy say 'Boo!'"

Total depravity, in Jamie's presence, is a doctrine hard to be
understood. Honestly speaking, he does not appear to have any more
depravity than is good for him,--just enough to make him piquant, to
give him a relish. He is healthy and hearty all day long. He eats no
luncheon and takes no nap, is desperately hungry thrice a day and sleeps
all night, going to bed at dark after a solitary stale supper of bread
and butter, more especially bread; and he is good and happy. Laying
aside the revelations of the Bible and of Doctors of Divinity, I should
say that his nature is honest, simple, healthful, pure, and good. He
shows no love for wrong, no inclination towards evil rather than good.
He is affectionate, just, generous, and truthful. He just lives on his
sincere, l