Some of the following rhymes were written many years ago. A few have already appeared in The Story of a Friendship, and a few in periodicals to whose editors and publishers I am indebted for permission to reproduce them. There is no vocation so happy as that of a singing-bird on any one of the branches of the Tree of Life. That such is my vocation I am not so vain as to think. I hope, however, that I may without presumption look for welcome and fellowship among the members of that jubilant choir; well content if, on a lower perch, I can but repeat and prolong any note of their manifold music...