Biddy had not understood the meaning of these things; she had only wearily noticed that the little girl was pretty, and not at all like her, and that the flowers and greens were "jolly." That day, when she fled with her doll, she thought of the hospital; and though she did not understand any better than before why there should be such great difference in the lives of little children, she for the first time felt that the lady and her little girl had been kind, had been sorry for her. So you see that even after so long a time as a whole year, a little seed of kindness may sprout in the heart; and don't you think, dear children of New York, you who have every day the good luck of health, happy homes, and pleasant things, that it would be delightful to bring just one taste of such luck to the little ones in the New York hospitals? Would you not like to blessedly surprise them on next Christmas morning? You know the best hospital in the world can not be like home with father and mother in it. But if you want to make the hospitals seem almost like home to the little children for a whole happy day, you can not begin too soon to look over all your little treasures, and choose all you can part with. You all have cast-off toys, story-books that have been read through, and boxes full of odds and ends, and it takes very little to brighten the face of a poor sick child lying alone in a hospital cot. A single pretty picture-card will do it. Then, too, you can save your pennies and dimes, so that before Christmas comes you can go into the stores and buy some of the books and playthings that children like best; and all of you who can must tie on your warm hoods and scamper away into the woods after the lovely prince's-pine and scarlet berries. All the pretty things you can gather to make bright the place where these other children stay will make your own Christmas one of the merriest you ever knew, for when you are pulling out the "goodies" from your plump bunchy stockings at home, you will like to think of so many other little eyes and hands and hearts brimful of the Christmas happiness which you have made.
Our young correspondents ask us for so many things that it would be impossible to gratify them all at once. Their requests are carefully filed, however, and will not be forgotten.
Hattie V., Cincinnati, writes:
I have a little brother eight years old, who has a great wish to learn to play the violin. The other night he said to papa, "I wish I was a king." "Why?" asked papa. "Because a king has so much money, I would choose a man who had plenty of sense to rule, while I played the fiddle." Papa gets Harper's Young People for him, and is going to have it bound.
Minnie B., of Wisconsin, says: