I keep it in a cage, and it is so tame.

Mamma and me wishes you would come and see us and our canary.

Dear Uncle Jim, I love you .-- Your little friend, Milly (aged four years)." Here is the second: "Dear Uncle Jim,--You will want to know about my blackbird.

It sits in a tree and picks up the crumbs on the window, and Thomas wants to shoot it for eating the cherries; but I won't let Thomas shoot it, for it is a nice blackbird, and I have wrote all this myself .-- Your loving little Bobby (aged five years)." In another, Jacky (aged four and a half) described his parrot, and I have also vague recollections of Harry (aged six) on his chaffinch, and Archie (five) on his linnet.

"What does it mean ?" I demanded of Jimmy, who, while I read, had been smoking savagely.