the date may be fixed by reference to the time "when Mrs.
Ball took Maria to Dr. Cox's, and placed her in the school in Leroy,"
and the pamphleteer, turning to a bill rendered by the principal of the
Leroy school, "fixes the date called for by the writers in February,
1857," at which time, according to the pamphleteer himself, _Mr. Ball
was on his way to California in an ocean steamer_! The postscript
mentioned among the letters is said to be dated at Brooklyn in 1858, and
merely asks Mr. Ball to "send by the doctor"--not a dozen more bottles
of his invaluable Sarsaparilla, but--the poem entitled "Rock me to
Sleep," and this postscript has no signature, and is therefore
worthless.

It appears, then, that these letters do not establish a great deal; the
legal gent fixes the time when he heard the poem by the date of a paper
which he thinks was drawn up at a certain period; H. D. E. is sorry that
he or she cannot remember, and then distinctly remembers; the postscript
is without signature; two other friends declare that they heard Mr.
Ball, in his own study, read "Rock me to Sleep, Mother;" at the moment
when the poet was probably very sea-sick on a California steamer. Mr.
Grover alone remains to persuade us, and we respectfully suggest to that
enthusiast whether it was not "Rock-a-by Baby" that he heard Mr. Ball
read? We do not think that he or the other writers of these letters
intend deceit; but we know the rapture with which people listen to poets
who read their own verses aloud, and we suspect that these listeners to
Mr. Ball were carried too far away by their feelings ever to get back to
their facts. They are good folks, but not critical, we judge, and might
easily mistake Mr. Ball's persistent assertion for an actual
recollection of their own. We think them one and all in error, and we do
not believe that any living soul heard Mr. Ball read the disputed poem
before 1860, for two reasons: Mrs. Akers did not write it before that
time, and Mr. Ball could never have written it after any number of
trials.

Let us take one of Mr. Ball's "Christmas Carols,"--probably the poem
which his friends now recall as "Rock me to Sleep, Mother,"--for all
proof and comment upon this last fact:--

"CHRISTMAS, 1856.

"And as time rolls us backward, we feel inclined to weep,
As the spirit of our mother comes, to rock our souls to sleep.
It raised my thoughts to heaven, and in converse with them there
I felt a j