Please be very careful about this in future.
Charlie's letter has been waiting its turn a long time, but his pleasant way of telling about what he saw on the other side of the Atlantic has lost nothing of its freshness, while lying in the Postmistress's drawer:
New York City.
I went up to the top of Mount Vesuvius, and it burned my feet, and almost suffocated me with smoke. We were about three hours going up. First we rode in a carriage for two hours, and then we took a car, something like the car at Mount Washington, except that the engine did not go along with us, but was left at the station from which we started, and we were pulled up by a wire rope. When we got out of the car, mamma and papa were carried in chairs on men's shoulders, but as I am only nine years old, a man took me on his back and carried me up. I had been carried in Switzerland on a man's back before this, when we crossed the Mer de Glace (that is French for sea of ice). The man said I was a heavy boy, but I think I am not so fat now as then.
I brought home a lot of foreign coin and stamps and curiosities. A little girl gave me a bullet at Waterloo that she said she found in the field. I drove over the road that Napoleon built across the Alps, and saw at the house where the monks live the big dogs that go out and find travellers when lost in the snow. I like to read about Napoleon. I went to his tomb when we were in Paris; it is all built of marble, and the church too.
We had awful bad weather coming home, and I had a big pitcher of water thrown all over me when asleep in my berth.
Charlie P. R.
Carlinville, Illinois.
I would like to tell Wickie J. M., of Ann Arbor, about two little brothers who are as fond of playing marbles as he is. Their names are Harry and Louis W., of this place. I am Harry. Mamma does not think marbles a very nice game, because we wear such big holes in the knees of our pants and stockings. We don't intend to play it very often any more, but are trying to get a collection of pretty ones. I would like to take a peep into that bag of beautiful marbles of yours, Wickie. We never play keeps.
Louis is six and I am eight years of age. We both go to school, and take lessons on the piano. The only pets we have now are four little kittens, whose eyes are just open. We once had two rabbits, but they were killed by dogs. The mother of our little kittens is a beautiful tortoise-shell and white cat. She does not like children very much, but she catches rats and mice. She always wants mamma to notice her when she has a mouse, and when she can will bring it to her and purr and rub around her until she speaks to her.
There are apple-trees in our yard, and every spring a great many robins and other birds come and build in them. Louis and I often feed them. One day we put some bread in some empty cigar-boxes and set them on the ground for the birds; but they did not eat out of the boxes, so we emptied the bread off the ground, and very soon we saw a number of birds eating it. I think they did not like the smell of tobacco which was about the boxes. Last year two robins had a nest of young ones in one of the trees. The old cat killed the mother, and the father fed and took care of the little robins until they were grown. The cat killed so many birds last year that we had to keep her shut up in the chicken-coop a great deal of the time.
I must tell you that we have a dear little blue-eyed brother nearly three years old, named Willis, whom we all think lovelier and sweeter than any other pet.
Mamma wishes me to tell you of a few funny things that Louis has said. One day, when he was about five years old, mamma was teaching him his Sunday-school lesson, and she asked the question, "How did Adam and Eve feel when the angel drove them out of the garden?" He answered, "Dus spendid." He had been told a story of a little boy who was lost. After the parents and friends had searched the woods and town in vain, he was found in the hay-loft fast asleep. Louis said, "When a little boy is lost, you must always look in the hay-loft, for that is a specially place for boys." One very warm and dusty day, while at play, Louis in some way got the top of his head quite covered with dirt and ashes. When mamma saw it, she said, "Why, Louis, I believe I could plant potatoes on the top of your head." He said, "But you mustn't; for if you should, when I go up town everybody would say, 'Hello, garden!'"
I have not learned to write with a pen, and I suppose you will think my letter is not written very nicely. If it will do to put in the Post-office Box, it will surprise and please my papa very much to see it there.
Harry W.