Once more we wish a very Happy New Year to all our young friends. We have done our best to make the past year brighter to them, and they have made it very pleasant for us by their constant and hearty expressions of pleasure and approval.
Christmas is past. How many of the readers of Young People remembered to make some poor child happy on Christmas-day? If some of them were too much occupied with their own sparkling Christmas trees to think of the friendless and homeless little ones all around them, we beg them to stop now and remember that they can not begin the new year better than by bringing a smile to some sad, wan little face. There are poor children everywhere, in the streets, in hospitals, in wretched and desolate homes, over whose young life poverty and misfortune have thrown a heavy cloud. It must always be remembered that their suffering arises from no fault of their own, and those to whom fortune has been more generous should never forget to help from their abundance the little ones toward whom the world has turned a cold and unkind face. Now if every reader of Young People would give some little thing, if it be only a bunch of flowers or evergreen, how many poor little faces might be made brighter on New-Year's morning! A few oranges, or a picture-book, will make a sick, friendless child happy. Those of you who live near together, and have your "Young People Clubs," which you write so prettily about, can have a meeting, and fill baskets with playthings you do not need. Mamma will help you buy some oranges, and perhaps a warm scarf or pair of stockings, and she will advise you, too, of the best way to dispose of them. Every one of you can do something, and in that way you will bring to yourself, as well as to others, a real Happy New Year.
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
I read all of the letters in the Post-office Box, and I like them, and I like all of the stories. Sometimes I miss my paper, and I feel very sorry, and sometimes I bring it home and lay it on the table, and my younger brother takes it and leaves it on the floor; then the baby gets it and tears it. That does not please me. My papa is an editor. I have three brothers and two sisters. I am ten years old.
There are two rivers here, the Assiniboine and the Red. They are very muddy rivers, and it is hard to learn to swim in them. Every spring somebody has been drowned. The banks of the Assiniboine are undermined. It is awfully cold up here in the winter.
Harry L.