One further experiment of the same sort I made with the English
Press in another direction and met again with failure. If there is
one paper in the world for which I have respect and--if I may say
it--an affection, it is the London Spectator. I suppose that I am
only one of thousands and thousands of people who feel that way.
Why under the circumstances the Spectator failed to publish my
letter I cannot say. I wanted no money for it: I only wanted the
honour of seeing it inserted beside the letter written from the
Rectory, Hops, Hants, or the Shrubbery, Potts, Shrops,--I mean from
one of those places where the readers of the Spectator live. I
thought too that my letter had just the right touch. However, they
wouldn't take it: something wrong with it somewhere, I suppose.
This is it:

To the Editor,
The Spectator,
London, England.

Dear Sir,

Your correspondence of last week contained such interesting
information in regard to the appearance of the first cowslip
in Kensington Common that I trust that I may, without
fatiguing your readers to the point of saturation, narrate
a somewhat similar and I think, sir, an equally interesting
experience of my own. While passing through Lambeth Gardens
yesterday towards the hour of dusk I observed a crow with
one leg sitting beside the duck-pond and apparently lost in
thought. There was no doubt that the bird was of the