William M. Low,
No. 129 Wooster Street, New Haven, Connecticut.
Albert S. Barrett.—It is impossible for us to help you. Try some of our exchanges. You might arrange to send them minerals, or some other natural curiosity, in exchange for what you wish.
Yesterday morning auntie, uncle, and I went out for a long walk over the mountains. When we reached the ridge, about a mile and a half above us, we could look off and see one of the great peaks of the Sierra, at the base of which is one of the best paying quartz mines in California. It was a splendid sight—the great mountains towering up to the sky, while on the top of one higher than any of those immediately surrounding was the great black rock of the Sierra Buttes. The lower part of the rock was covered with snow, and behind it was the pale, misty, dull, blue sky. Off to the eastward the ridge was covered with snow, and we had a walk on a snow-bank several hundred feet long, and from four to six feet deep. When we reached home we had some ripe cherries for dinner.
I keep every number of Young People, and auntie sews them together for me with twine. Her Harper's Bazars, Magazines, and Weeklies are all fixed the same way. I think Young People, is the best paper for children that was ever published. I have told my mamma, who lives in San Francisco, where I was born, a great deal about it.
I am pressing some flowers for Genevieve Harvey, for although I live in the same State, uncle says we do not have the same kind of flowers here in the mountains as they have in the valley. We have some very beautiful and curious flowers up here, and I should be glad to exchange pressed mountain flowers for Eastern flowers with any little girl.
Mary Augusta Reid,
Downieville, Sierra County, California.
Charlie W.—Iris was the daughter of Thaumas, a sea deity who represented the majesty of the sea, and Electra. Originally she personified the rainbow, but came afterward to be the swift messenger of the gods. Homer alludes to her as darting "like hail or snow that falls from the clouds," from one end of the world to the other, and diving into all the hidden depths of the universe to execute the commands of the gods. In ancient art Iris is represented with wings and a herald's staff.