Julia A. Moore, better known as the Sweet Singer of Michigan, was born some time previous to the opening of this chapter, of poor but honest parents, and although she couldn't have custard pie and frosted cake every day she, was middling chipper, as appears by a little poem in the collection, entitled, "The Author's Early Life," in which she says:= ````My heart was gay and happy: ````This was ever in my mind, ````There is better days a coming, ````And I hope some day to find` ```Myself capable of composing. ````It was my heart's delight` ```To compose on a sentimental subject` ```If it came in my mind just right= This would show that the Muse was getting in its work, as I might say, even while yet Julia was a little nut-brown maid trudging along to school with bare feet that looked like the back of a warty toad. In my visions I see her now standing in front of the teacher's desk, soaking the first three joints of her thumb in her rosebud mouth, and trying to work her off toe into a knot-hole in the floor, while outside, the turtle-dove and the masculine Michigan mule softly coo to their mates. A portrait of the author appears on the cover of the little volume. It is a very striking face. There are lines of care about the mouth--that is, part way around the mouth. They did not reach all the way around because they didn't have time. Lines of care are willing to do anything that is reasonable, but they can't reach around the North Park without getting fatigued. These lines of care and pain look to the student of physiognomy as though the author had lost a good deal of sleep trying to compose obituary poems. The brow is slightly drawn, too, as though her corns might be hurting her. Julia wears her hair plain, like Alfred Tennyson and Sitting Bull. It hangs down her back in perfect abandon and wild profusion, shedding bear's oil ever the collar of her delaine dress, regardless of expense. I can not illustrate or describe the early vision of dimpled loveliness, which Julia presented in her childhood, better than by giving a little gem from "My Infant Days:"= ```When I was a little infant, ````And I lay in mother's arms, ```Then I felt the gentle pressure` ```Of a loving mother's arms.= ```"Go to sleep my little baby, ````Go to sleep," mamma would say; ```"O, will not my little baby ````Go to sleep for ma to-day?"=