that all this shower of criticism had tanned the fair author’s hide—­we speak metaphorically—­until it was impervious to every unkindly influence.  But so far from being bomb-proof, Mrs. Wilcox is even more sensitive than when she bestrode her Pegasus for the first time and soared into that dreamy realm where the lyric muse abides.  There is not a quip nor a quillet from the slangy pen of the daily newspaper writers that she does not brood over and worry about as heartily as if it were an overdue mortgage 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.