Note Footnote 2: — FOLK-LULLABIES.

Only in one direction did my efforts to obtain lullabies prove fruitless. America has, it seems, no nursery rhymes but those which are still current in the Old World.2 Mr Bret Harte told me: "Our lullabies are the same as in England, but there are also a few Dutch ones," and he went on to relate how, when he was at a small frontier town on the Rhine, he heard a woman singing a song to her child: it was the old story,—if the child would not sleep it would be punished, its shoes would be taken away; if it would go to sleep at once, Santa Claus would bring it a beautiful gift. Words and air, said Mr Bret Harte, were strangely familiar to him; then, after a moment's reflection, he remembered hearing this identical lullaby sung amongst his own kindred in the Far West of America.