Millbrook, New York.
Dear Postmistress,—My teacher gave me as a prize for improvement in reading, a very entertaining book by E. Warren Clarke. Its title is From Hong-Kong to the Himalayas. I was much interested in the author's description of his first ride on an elephant. He and a friend went together, and on the neck of each animal sat a Hindoo driver, who guided its movements, and punished it when he chose with a cruel iron instrument, heavy, sharp, and dull, shaped something like the head of a harpoon. Mr. Clarke found the motion of the elephant very much like the rolling of a ship at sea. The elephants moved noiselessly along, picking their steps and avoiding holes, and sometimes they gathered grasses, leaves, and twigs with their trunks, and threw them skillfully into their mouths.
"The largest elephant became very thirsty," says Mr. Clarke, "and as he was quite warm, and we would not allow him to stop and drink, he made a peculiar plaintive utterance, which seemed to be understood by the other elephant; the latter came deliberately up, and placed his trunk in the open mouth of the thirsty one, and gave him to drink from his own stomach, or some unseen reservoir with which, like a camel, he appeared to be provided."
Wasn't that kind? I should have loved such a good elephant.
Now, Postmistress, I'll tell you one thing more, and then I'll stop. This author says that wild elephants do very little harm, and show good dispositions, not attacking you unless you disturb them; but an elephant which has once been tamed, and after that relapses into a wild state, is very dangerous indeed. He acts as if he hated mankind, and had been made bitter by his dwelling with them; and so the natives call such a fellow a "rogue" elephant.
Joe J. H.
Your letter pleases me very much, for it shows me that you are learning how to study. Some boys think that they can learn all that is essential about a branch or a study from their school text-books. On the contrary, the most that a text-book can do is to give outlines and arbitrary facts or lay down principles. A full and rounded scholarship implies a great deal of side study. The ambitious pupil will find something to bear on what he is learning in Harper's Young People, in the books he finds at a friend's house or in his father's library, and in the daily paper. When the attention is duly called to it, it is wonderful how all sorts of things seem to come to your help in the special line of study you have adopted. If the C. Y.'s will notice this, they will be surprised to observe how many curious coincidences there are to aid progress when people are very earnestly bent on one pursuit.
Will the Postmistress please tell me why unmarried ladies are sometimes called spinsters? It never seems to me like a title of respect.
Jennie F.
It is a very honorable title, because it suggests that the person bearing it is not an idler, but a useful woman. In olden times—a hundred years ago, for instance—in every household there would be a spinning-wheel and a loom, and part of the regular work of the daughters of the house was to spin, weave, bleach, dye, and prepare the garments of the family. To be a spinster was to be an important member of the community.
Is it right to say party when you mean person?