ir songs of praise and slide off the
logs and paddle along under the water and chew the feet of the young
ducks. Presently Patrick would notice that two or three of those little
creatures were not moving about, but were apparently at anchor, and were
not looking as thankful as they had been looking a short time before. He
early found out what that sign meant--a submerged snapping-turtle was
taking his breakfast, and silently singing his gratitude. Every day or
two Patrick would rescue and fetch up a little duck with incomplete legs
to stand upon--nothing left of their extremities but gnawed and bleeding
stumps. Then the children said pitying things and wept--and at dinner we
finished the tragedy which the turtles had begun. Thus, as will be
seen--out of season, at least--it was really the turtles that gave us
so much ducks. At my expense.

Papa has written a new version of "There is a happy land" it is--

"There is a boarding-house
Far, far away,
Where they have ham and eggs,
Three times a day.
Oh dont those boarders yell
When they hear the dinner-bell,
They give that land-lord rats
Three times a day."

Again Susy has made a small error. It was not I that wrote the song. I
heard Billy Rice sing it in the negro minstrel show, and I brought it
home and sang it--with great spirit--for the elevation of the household.
The children admired it to the limit, and made me sing it with
burdensome frequency. To their minds it was superior to the Battle Hymn
of the Republic.

How many years ago that was! Where now is Billy Rice? He was a joy to
me, and so were the other stars of the nigger-show--Billy Birch, David
Wambold, Backus, and a delightful dozen of their brethren, who made life
a pleasure to me forty years ago, and later. Birch, Wambold, and Backus
are gone years ago; and with them departed to return no more forever, I
suppose, the real nigger-show--the genuine nigger-show, the extravagant
nigger-show,--the show which to me had no peer and whose peer has not
yet arrived, in my experience. We have the grand opera; and I have
witnessed, and greatly enjoyed, the first act of everything which Wagner
created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act
was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone
away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera
the result has been the next thing