Singer of Michigan Salutes the Public,” with a likeness of the author directly beneath.  She is depicted as a strong, masculine woman with heavy, black eyebrows, large, black eyes, and a mass of coarse, black hair tumbling over her shoulders in a way that makes one think that she has washed and sunned it, and has forgotten to put it up again.  She wears a sort of crown or band at the top of her head.  There is nothing in the homely face, with the squat nose and thick lips, that would betray sentimentalism, and yet those honest eyes were probably continually suffused with the tears for which her ultra-sensitive nature was responsible.  Below her picture follows this simple introduction, without reference to any “laudable ambition,” “acquisition of knowledge,” or “cultivation of inherited gifts.”

* * * * *

“Dear Friends:  This little book is composed of truthful pieces.  All those which speak of being killed, died or drowned, are truthful songs; others are ‘more truth than poetry.’  They are all composed by the author.

“I was born in Plainfield, and lived there until I was ten years of age.  Then my parents moved to Algoma, where they have lived until the present day, and I live near them, one mile west of Edgerton.

“JULIA A. MOORE.”

* * * * *

Among those pieces “which speak of being killed, died or drowned,”—­and it was on these melancholy topics that she was at her best—­are four poems which deal with the sad history of the House family.  They seemed to have had the most abominable luck.  When they couldn’t get shot or induce the small-pox to hasten their departure from this world of care, they passed away for no reason at all.  Somehow they just could not keep alive.  Martin House is the first of whom she speaks.  He enlisted with a friend in the federal army at Grand Rapids.  The final stanza of “The Two Brave Soldiers” discloses their fate—­

  “It was down in old Virginia
    Those noble soldiers fell,
  In the battle of Hanover town,
    As many a one can tell. 
  They fought through many a battle
    And obeyed their captain’s call,
  Till, alas, the bullets struck them
    That caused them to fall.”

Hattie House had no reasonable excuse for dying, but she managed to fool her mother: 

  “Hattie had blue eyes and light flaxen hair,
    Her little heart was light and gay,
  And she said to her mother that morning fair,
    ‘Mother, can I go out and play?’

  “Her mother tied her little bonnet on,
    Not thinking it would be the last
  She would ever see her dear little one
    In this world, little Hattie House.

  “She left the house, this merry little girl,
    That bright and pleasant day—­
  She went out to play with two little girls
    That were about her age.

  “She was not gone but a little while
    When they heard her playmates call—­
  Her friends hastened there to save the child,
    But, alas, she was dead and gone.