Yelm, Thurston County, Washington Territory.
I am a little boy not quite seven years old. I can read Young People, and have been a subscriber to it since the nineteenth number. I am delighted with it, and, as I told my papa to-day, wish it were a daily paper. I too like "Toby Tyler" and "Phil's Fairies" best of all the stories, though I am interested in everything in it, especially the Post-office Box. Although I can read Young People quite well, I can not write, so I have got my papa to write this for me.
My home is on the Yelm, the Indian name for a beautiful prairie in Washington Territory. From our house we have a splendid view of the Cascade Range; and of its grand snow peak, Mount Rainier. It is forty miles distant "as the crow flies," yet so clear and pure is the atmosphere (except in our "rainy season") it seems scarcely a third of that distance from the observer looking at it, for the first time. Rainier was no doubt once an active volcano. Several years ago two adventurous travellers climbed to the summit, and spent a night there, having been unable to ascend and return to the base of the mountain in one day. They found an ancient crater, and warmed their benumbed limbs by the small jets of hot vapor they found rising from one side of the crater. Smoke and steam are sometimes seen rising from the summit, and this has occurred quite frequently during the present season. After rising some distance above the summit, the vapor condenses partially sometimes, and forms a great cloud that for a time conceals the summit; at other times the vapor hangs above the mountain-top like an immense inverted bowl or Chinese hat; and again it is blown rapidly away by strong winds. My papa calls Rainier a great, natural barometer, as when it emits vapor that condenses in clouds about its summit it almost surely indicates "falling weather" within two or three days. The Indian name for Rainier is Tach-hōma, the meaning of which I do not know. Some of the Indians are very superstitious about Rainier—will not hunt the mountain sheep far up the snow-line, and think its summit is the abode of an evil spirit.
I would like to inform the little boy in Ohio who boasted of his early chickens, hatched March 28, and Fred D. M., of New York, whose ten chickens were hatched on the 11th of March, that I have a hen that hatched twelve chickens on the 21st of January. I raised them all, and the pullets (Cochins) are now—June 2—almost as large as common hens. The little chicks sometimes scampered over the snow-crust in February when wandering from their home in the wood-shed.
I do not know whether Mr. Editor will think my letter worthy a place in the Post-office Box, but I have derived so much pleasure from what I have each week read there that I felt like attempting something for its columns.
Harry S. V. T.
Colchester, Vermont.
I go to school, and we have an exercise of spelling the school down. We also speak pieces. I have been at school four terms, and have not missed a day. I like Young People very much. I think "Toby Tyler," "Mildred's Bargain," and "Susie Kingman's Decision" all just splendid. I live on a farm a little way from Lake Champlain, and it is very pleasant here. We went boating a few weeks ago. My little cousin, two years old, was up from Burlington, and she thought it a treat to play in the sand and water. I have a little sister who is seven years old, and I am nine.
C. S. F.