Dora J.
Portland, Connecticut.
My finances are nearly in the same condition as those of Percy L. McDermott. I get a dollar monthly, papa pays all my postage, and mamma gives me ten cents for keeping my stamp box out of the way when I am not using it. Although papa is a great advocate of neatness, he is interested in stamp collecting, and rejoices with me when I get a new specimen. He always asks me to get the box down when he is at home; mamma never hints at such a thing. She is content to leave the box, stamps, and all put aside unless I agitate the subject. I do not go to school. Mamma teaches me at home. I study in the morning by myself, and it is very hard to keep my mind from wandering, especially as the kite season is in its height, and we are having such mild spring weather.
I take orders to manufacture kites, free of charge, from small boys in the neighborhood, who will cut toward their hands. In this way I drive a thriving business, but mamma gets more and more particular with my recitations as the season advances. I study geography, grammar, arithmetic, geology, French, drawing, and music, and mamma holds to the point that a spelling and reading lesson can not be studied too well. All this takes time, and can not be done in a minute.
I sympathize greatly with Percy in his awful fix, as he expresses it, as I too have a great many letters to write, and a geological research on cryolite to make for a professor. (That research is the "last feather on the camel's back.") I am one of Percy's correspondents, but freely forgive him for not answering my letter, and when in future years he is nominated for the Presidency of the United States, I will never mention the stamp exchange to a single soul.
I wish it was in my power to alleviate the sufferings of Jimmy Brown. As it is not, I hope he will continue to write his sad experience to Young People. I am sure he will get sympathy from us all.
I live opposite Middletown, which truly is a "forest city." We have a fine view of the Meriden Mountains, the Great Hills, and the Connecticut Valley, which with its noble river is considered by strangers, as well as ourselves, the most beautiful and fascinating scenery in the world.
In winter the ice-boats of the Wesleyan students, sleighs with spirited horses, and little boys and girls coasting with sleds, make our river even more picturesque than the far-famed Neva of Russia, while in summer tugs, schooners, and yachts pass each other on its surface, the sailing vessels looking like white-winged sea-birds on the water. To-day it is clear and calm, and the water looks like silver. A few days ago the ice was rushing and ploughing its way to the Sound.
Altia R. A.
Washington Court-House, Ohio.
I have a hen with seven young chickens, and it is so cold I have to keep her in a box in the kitchen. My chickens were hatched on March 28. I would like to know if any readers of Young People had any little chickens this spring hatched earlier than mine.
I sympathize with Percy McDermott. I had so many letters, after my offer of exchange was printed, that it kept me awake nights thinking where I could get arrow-heads enough to supply all the boys in the Eastern States.
If Percy McDermott and Jimmy Brown would come along, I will go with them and get Toby Tyler and his monkey, and we will all go to the Rocky Mountains.
Emmer E.