Page:Letters of Life.djvu/385

Rh An album from a clerk in a store, given him by another clerk in another store, to be written in for a young lady, of whose name he was not quite certain, and the "most he knew about her was, that she was a very rich girl."

A new periodical desires a "touching tale, a bit of poetry, and an address to its readers," to be sent in the course of the week, and the printing will be stayed for the contributions.

The owner of a canary-bird, which had accidentally been starved to death, wishes some elegiac verses.

A stranger, whose son died at the age of nine months, "weighing just thirteen pounds, would be glad of some poetry to be framed, glazed, and hung over the chimney-piece, to keep the other children from forgetting him."

Solicitation from the far West, that I would "write out lengthy" a sketch of the loves of two personages, of whom no suggestive circumstances were related, one of whom was a journeyman tailor, and the name of the other, "Sister Babcock," as far as the chirography could be translated.

A poem proposed on the feather of a blue-bird picked up by the road-side.

A father requests elegiac lines on a young child, supplying, as the only suggestion for the tuneful Muse, the fact that he was unfortunately "drowned in a barrel of swine's food."