Little correspondents the wide world round have sent the missives which greet our young readers this week. Some of the letters have been a long while in reaching their destination, and others are from friends not far away. We are sure that every letter will be eagerly read, not excepting the doleful one from a new contributor, which bright eyes will discover tucked snugly in among epistles from more fortunate writers.
Rocklands, Rockhampton, Queensland.
I live in Central Queensland, and have never seen a letter in Harper's Young People from this colony. Our home is in the bush; the trees about here are gum, box, and ironbark. They give hardly any shade, as the leaves hang straight down. There is a lagoon in front of our house. My brother and I want to make a canoe, but we can not procure back numbers of Young People here? If any young reader would send us a copy of No. 26, Vol. I., we would in return send some native seeds or colonial stamps.
It is very hot here, and we hardly ever see frost. Our orange-trees are now loaded with blossoms. We have several hundred pine-apples. I have a little garden of my own, and raise pumpkins, cabbages, rock-melons, beans, and lettuces. My brother is ten, and I am eight and a half years old. We recite lessons to mamma.
We often go riding, and we call our ponies Pip and King Pippin. We have been building a suspension-bridge over a little dam, of saplings and fencing wire. It gave us hard work for several weeks, and papa says it developed our muscles finely.
Bertie Wilkinson.
Alexandria County, Virginia.