F. B. M.
You have a very pleasant opportunity to study English history, and you must write to the Post-office Box again, and tell us more about the places you visit.
I read the letters in the Post-office Box every week. I study geography, spelling, arithmetic, writing, and Latin. I have gone to school here for almost ten months. I have had a nice black and white rabbit for almost a year. I will try to get some wild ones this spring, and tame them. Some of us boys take our dinners out in the woods on Saturdays, and have a splendid time. In cold weather we build a fire.
I will give a book entitled Tel Tyler at School, 750 mixed foreign stamps, several foreign postal cards, a piece of petrified honey-comb, two shells from St. Augustine, Florida, and a pebble from Amsterdam, New York, for sixty stamps from Alsace-Lorraine, Angola, Antigua, Azores, Bolivia, Bermuda, British Honduras, Ceylon, Chili, Costa Rica, Dominica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Ionian Isles, Labuan, Lagos, Liberia, Malta, Nevis, Nicaragua, Orange States, Paraguay, Persia, Salvador, San Marino, Shanghai, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and Virgin Isles. Stamps must be in good condition.
Charles L. Hollingshead,
Care Rev. R. K. Todd, Woodstock, Ill.
C. Y. P. R. U.
An Indian Elephant.—Some of you have been very much interested in Jumbo and his enormous appetite. A traveller who engaged an elephant to carry him over a part of India during a journey which occupied some weeks, gives this account of the elephant's food, and of the care which he received while on the march: Every day he was fed with cakes composed of flour, ghee (which is clarified butter), and coarse salt. Twenty-five pounds of flour were mixed and baked, and one-half the quantity was given to the elephant in the morning, and the other in the evening. Besides these cakes, he ate freely of the leaves and branches of trees. Each morning he would go with his mahout, or driver, into the jungle, and there he would choose and pick the branches he liked best, loading them on his back, and taking the supply home to the camp. There was a kind of marshy grass which he considered a very choice dessert. When a person engages an elephant, he of course engages the mahout as well. The mahout usually takes his wife and children with him, as it takes several people to keep an elephant comfortable. Every morning and evening he must have his bath, and before beginning the day's march his forehead, ears, paws, and every part of his body likely to be cracked with the sun must be greased. When the party comes to a halt, the elephant's heavy trappings are always taken off, and he is allowed to rest under a spreading tree. When an elephant does not feel well, he makes a pill for himself without saying a word to the doctor. With his trunk he rolls up a ball or two of red earth, and swallows it, just as naturally as pussy, when her head aches, scampers off to the catnip bed, and takes a dose of her favorite herb.
Myrtle.—I think a Shakspeare club such as you and your girl friends have organized must be both pleasant and instructive. Instead of so many stories, dear, let me persuade you to read books of travel which will give you an idea of the world we live in; and when you tire of them, and want a change, try history. The books you mention are too exciting and highly wrought to be good reading for you at present. I think you would find Sir Walter Scott's "Lady of the Lake" and "Marmion" very fascinating, and Miss Strickland's Queens of England would keep you delightfully occupied all summer.