great interest in the amateur concerts and private musical
performances that took place in the camp, and the V.C. in "The Story
of a Short Life," with a fine tenor voice, and a "fastidious choice in
the words of the songs he sang," is a shadow of these past days. The
want that many composers felt of good words for setting to music, led
Julie to try to write some, and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs
for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were
written by my sister and two of her brothers, and the Rev. G.J.
Chester. This book became a standing joke amongst them, because one of
the reviewers said it contained "songs by four writers, _one_ of whom
was a poet," and he did not specify the one by name.

[Footnote 26: H. King and Co.]

During 1875 Julie was again aided by her husband in the work that she
did for _Aunt Judy's Magazine_. "Cousin Peregrine's three Wonder
Stories "--1. "The Chinese Jugglers and the Englishman's Hand"; 2.
"The Waves of the Great South Sea"; and 3. "Jack of Pera"[27]--were a
combination of his facts and her wording. She added only one more to
her Old-fashioned Fairy Tales, "Good Luck is Better than Gold," but it
is one of her most finished bits of art, and she placed it first, when
the tales came out in a volume.

[Footnote 27: "Miscellanea," vol. xvii.]

The Preface to this book is well worth the study of those who are
interested in the composition of Fairy literature; and the theories on
which Julie wrote her own tales.[28]

[Footnote 28: Letter, Septuagesima, 1869.]