Irene M. N.
We are two dolls. Our mamma is a dear little black-eyed girl almost ten years old, named Jennie. She is a good deal like Bessie Maynard, and loves us as much as Bessie loves her doll Clytie. We used to live in Nevada, but last summer we came to live in Central City, Colorado. We all like Young People, and the Post-office Box in particular.
Minnie and Joe McG.
We have had this dear little paper ever since it was published. Mamma is very glad to have it, for she is very particular about our reading. I always spend the evening after it comes reading it to my little brother Regie, who is eight years old. I am fourteen. My father died when I was seven.
Santa Cruz is a pretty town, and has good schools, both public and private. We have roses all the year, as our winter is only a succession of pleasant rains with warm sunny days between, like spring in the Eastern States.
The town is near the mouth of the broad, beautiful bay of Monterey, so that we can see out into the Pacific Ocean. We have grand times on the beach when the tide is low, searching for shells and the beautiful sea-weeds. The lady principal of a school here teaches us all about shells and algæ, or sea-plants, and we learn to name and classify them. I wish all the young people who write about aquaria could see mine. I have hundreds of them in the rocks by the sea in holes worn by the waves, from the size of a wooden bucket to that of a large deep barrel. They are round, and the walls are covered with limpets of all sizes, star-fish of different colors, bright purple sea-urchins, and lovely pale green and pink sea-anemones, which wave their petals in search of food. Bright-hued crabs, fish, and creatures of which I have not yet learned the name, move in the water. Every part is covered with some form of life capable of motion, and with all kinds of sea-plants.
I would like to exchange shells and pressed sea-plants for other shells, Lake Superior agates, or other small mineral specimens. I would like to have everything clearly marked, and I will in return name and classify the shells.
Harry Bowman,
Santa Cruz, California.
We print the following note in reply to many inquiries in regard to postage-stamp catalogues, etc.:
If any reader of Young People will write to me on matters connected with stamps which can not well be published, inclosing stamp for reply, I shall be happy to answer him.