Jacop Washington J.
Did you mean to be as funny as you could, young gentleman? We fancy it took not a little trouble to get up that bad spelling, and to put instead of capital I's those modest little i's. After all, it does not look so nicely as the letter you are going to write us next week, with every word spelled correctly, and all the capitals and stops in the right places, as prim as young ladies at a party. When you send that letter, please remember to write your address plainly in the upper right-hand corner.
Meadville, Pennsylvania.
I have been a sick boy. But as I am now much better, I hope to be well again soon.
I have asked my mamma to write for me. Mamma reads a great deal to us, and we have Harper's Young People and St. Nicholas.
We have them bound at the end of the year, and we think the two volumes of Harper's Young People the very nicest books we have. I have two sisters and one brother, and we have several pets—a white pony, a canary-bird, a black cat, and some mice.
Mamma read to us about having mice for pets in one of Harper's Young People, and I thought I would try to have some. I made a cage out of a starch box; on one side I fastened a large baking-powder can, and I put some cotton in that. I put wire netting over the front, and then I tried to catch the mice.
When I caught one, I put it in the cage, and after a few days he looked lonely, and seemed to have grown thin, so I caught another and put him in, and now they are fat, and seem very happy.
They keep pretty still all day in the dark, but at night come out in the box, and eat and nibble just enough to keep their teeth sharp, I guess.
They are cunning little creatures, and I think very nice for pets, and perhaps if you should publish this letter some other little folks would like to try the same plan.
We always enjoy the stories in Young People, but we liked "Toby Tyler" best of all.
Louis de V. M.
Omaha, Nebraska.
My little sister and I take Harper's Young People. She is nine, and I am twelve. My brother has a cat nine years old. He is gray, and striped with black. My aunt has a Maltese cat twenty-seven years old. I go to the Central School, and I am in the sixth class. There is a parlor game called capping rhymes. One person gives two or three lines of some piece of poetry, and some other person takes two or three lines of another piece, the first word beginning with the first letter of the last word of the preceding person's verse.
Blanche A.