No offers to buy or sell curiosities or other articles will be published in the Post-office Box or Exchange Department. Such offers can only be received as regular advertisements.
We would also request our young friends to be considerate, and not send repeated requests for exchange. If the space given to the Post-office Box was elastic, we could make room for them all, but as it is limited, we must give the preference to those whose names and addresses have not already appeared.
A large number of boys, after a few weeks of exchange, find their stock of stamps, minerals, or other curiosities, exhausted, but they continue to receive packages from different localities. Now if any one has nothing to return, and no reasonable expectation of getting anything, he should faithfully send back to the owner everything for which he can give no equivalent. This should be done in every case, whether the articles be stamps, postmarks, minerals, or any other curiosities. In this way, although the correspondent may be disappointed, the exchanger will maintain a character for honesty and fair-dealing, and will be remembered with pleasure.
All exchanges which the editor considers unfair or unwise will be omitted.
The editor regrets that, owing to the great increase in the number of letters received, it will be impossible hereafter to acknowledge those favors which are not printed. We trust our little correspondents whose letters are omitted will not be disappointed at not seeing their names in print, but that they will persevere in writing. Their turn will be almost sure to come in time, and they will be better pleased to see their letter in full than to find their names merely in a long list.
Brooklyn, New York.
Last Saturday afternoon papa took mamma and my little sister Millie and myself to Coney Island. A good many children will think it is a funny time of the year to go to a beach, and we thought so too; but we wanted to see the wreck which had been washed ashore there, so I teased papa until he said he would go.
When we got there it did not seem a bit like winter. The snow was all gone, and the sun was shining as bright as summer, only it looked funny to see only a few people walking up and down in the places where we had seen such crowds.
We walked along on the sand, looking at the blue, quiet sea, and we could hardly believe that only a little while ago the water had been full of struggling, drowning men, and the great waves rushing ashore and tearing everything to pieces. It was an Italian vessel that was wrecked. She came all the way across the ocean, and just as she was within sight of New York she struck on a big sand bar about two miles from Coney Island beach. The night was very dark and stormy, and the big waves tore the ship all to pieces. The captain and all the sailors but one were drowned; that one clung to a piece of the wreck, and the tide carried him toward Coney Island. The people who were watching at the life-saving station there saw him away off in the water, and they got the life-boat into the surf, and rowed out, and brought him safe on shore. I guess the poor man was glad when he found himself on land among kind people.
The piece of wreck to which he clung was washed up on the beach afterward. It is a piece of the deck, with a broken mast sticking in it. I climbed all over it, and put my arms round the mast right where the poor sailor had clung, but mamma said I could not tell anything about how it would seem to be clinging that way all alone on the dark, stormy sea, expecting every minute to be washed off and drowned.
After we had seen the wreck, we walked along to see all the mischief the ocean had done in the winter. The nice plank walks in front of some of the big hotels, where Millie and I used to run races last summer, are nothing but a heap of broken boards and big logs. We saw lots of big barrels mixed up with the broken stuff, and papa said they were a part of the freight of the wrecked ship, which the waves had washed on shore.
It does not look now as if we could have any fun at Coney Island next summer unless we stay right on the sand, but papa says they will build everything up again before warm weather.
Herbert D. N.