For a purpose, I wish the reader to take careful note of these statistics: “I am going to tell you of a melancholy story. A young turkie of 2 or 3 months old, would you believe it, the father broke its leg, & he killed another! I think he ought to be transported or hanged.” Marjorie wrote some verses about this tragedy--I think. I cannot be quite certain it is this one, for in the verses there are three deaths, whereas these statistics do not furnish so many. Also in the statistics the father of the deceased is indifferent about the loss he has sustained, whereas in the verses he is not. Also in the third verse, the _mother_, too, exhibits feeling, whereas in the two closing verses of the poem she--at least it seems to be she--is indifferent. At least it looks like indifference to me, and I believe it _is_ indifference: “Three turkeys fair their last have breathed, And now this world forever leaved; Their father, and their mother too, They sighed and weep as well as you; Indeed, the rats their bones have cranched. Into eternity theire launched. A direful death indeed they had, As wad put any parent mad; But she was more than usual calm, She did not give a single dam.” The naughty little scamp! I mean, for not leaving out the _l_ in the word “Calm,” so as to perfect the rhyme. It seems a pity to damage with a lame rhyme a couplet that is otherwise without a blemish. Marjorie wrote four journals. She began the first one in January, 1809, when she was just six years old, and finished it five months later, in June. She began the second in the following month, and finished it six months afterward (January, 1810), when she was just seven. She began the third one in April, 1810, and finished it in the autumn. She wrote the fourth in the winter of 1810-11, and the last entry in it bears date July 19, 1811, and she died exactly five months later, December 19th, aged eight years and eleven months. It contains her rhymed Scottish histories. Let me quote from Dr. John Brown: “The day before her death, Sunday, she sat up in bed, worn and thin, her eye gleaming as with the light of a coming world, and with a tremulous, old voice repeated a long poem by Burns--heavy with the shadow of death, and lit with the fantasy of the judgment seat--the publican’s prayer in paraphrase, beginning: “‘Why am I loth to leave this earthly scene? Have I so found it full of pleasing charms? Some drops of joy, with draughts of ill between, Some gleams of sunshine ’mid renewing storms.’