Marie G. Hamblin proposes that the boys and girls who read Young People shall emulate Secretary Blaine, and learn to repeat in their order the names of the sovereigns of England, and the dates of their respective coronations. She suggests that all who do so shall send their names, accompanied by the signatures of their parents or teachers, to the Postmistress, that the Editor of Harper's Young People and Dr. Vincent may know that they are trying to acquire useful knowledge. The Postmistress approves of the plan, and gives the remainder of 1881 as the time in which all who wish may endeavor to thus exercise their memories. The names of the diligent students will be duly printed in this column.
Many persons erroneously think that a letter if left unsealed will be sent by the Post-office Department for one cent. They write their letter, leave it open, and affix a one-cent stamp to the envelope. In all such cases the recipient is compelled to pay the additional postage. And while this may not be an affair of great importance to an individual who receives an occasional letter, it involves a large expenditure when, as in the case of Harper & Brothers, letters are received by the thousands weekly.
Full letter postage is at the rate of three cents per every half ounce in America. Letters to Europe cost five cents per half ounce. Little readers will please remember this, and remind their elders, if they forget it.
AUTUMN PICTURES FOR THE COMMON-PLACE-BOOK.
Along the river's summer walk
The withered tufts of asters nod,
And trembles on its arid stalk
The hoar plume of the golden-rod.
And on a ground of sombre fir
And azure-studded juniper
The silver-birch its buds of purple shows,
And scarlet berries tell where bloomed the sweet wild rose.
—John G. Whittier.
The ash her purple drops forgivingly
And sadly, breaking not the general hush;
The maple swamps glow like a sunset sea,
Each leaf a ripple with its separate flush;
All round the wood's edge creeps the skirting blaze
Of bushes low, as when on cloudy days
Ere the rain falls the cautious farmer burns his brush.
—James Russell Lowell.
What School of Design can vie with the autumn colors? The leaves are not dipped in one dye, as at the dye-house, but they are dyed in light of various degrees of strength, and left to set and dry there.—Henry D. Thoreau.
The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds, and naked woods, and meadows brown and sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove the autumn leaves lie dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread.
—William Cullen Bryant.