Having seen the charming little paper, Harper's Young People, and being in a distant country, I thought that now and again a letter from this place might please some of the dear children.
The little folks here are very dark-skinned, not black. They use a very different language, and call everything by a different name. Not having any snow, the boys go to the top of a steep mountain, and slide down its side on sleds they make for themselves. Some are boards, and some only palm leaves. The mountain is very steep, so that it looks as though the children must be killed in coming down its sides. Fancy yourselves sliding down the side of an old volcano on a palm leaf!
Sometimes the boys go and jump from thirty feet above the water down into it, and go out of sight. After a time they come up a long way off, and run up the rocks, or crawl up, and then jump off again.
One morning the boys started off, and were found sitting in a sugar plantation eating sugar. Though they do not steal as a rule, yet, I am sorry to say, they think it no harm to take fruits. Some day I will write the children some more strange things.
Aunt Alice.
Champaigne, Illinois.
My little nephew and all of us enjoy the Young People very much. It gets a pretty thorough reading, for I take it to school, where the pupils have it for a week, any who recite perfect lessons taking it in turn. Then I send it to my little niece in Indianapolis, who, after reading it, sends it to her cousin. You see this one copy has a considerable circulation, and I trust that many of these readers will take the paper for themselves another year.
Your well-wisher,
M. O. A.
The above letter is very gratifying, and we thank the writer heartily for her kind wishes on behalf of Young People.