You may procure the numbers you mention by writing to Messrs. Harper & Brothers. They will cost 48 cents.
I would advise a girl of your age to study hard, and prepare herself to earn money in future, rather than to try to earn it while going to school. You might earn some, however, as a young friend of mine did, by crocheting little sacques and socks for a store. She did this in leisure moments, and was very well paid. If you know how to darn and patch very neatly, you might do that on Saturday afternoons for some busy housekeeper, who would pay you for your work. If I knew more about what you have learned to do, I could give you better advice.
Tell you what to make for Christmas, Daisy, Belle, and Theo? I am glad, dear little girls, that you are beginning thus early to think what pretty and useful gifts you may contrive.
One needs a great deal of time to make presents, which must, of course, be secrets from those they are intended for until the happy day arrives. Half the pleasure of Christmas consists in its beautiful surprises.
No gifts are more highly prized than those young people make with their own hands. It is so delightful, as one looks at a pretty or a useful thing, to see and feel that weeks and weeks ago a dear and loving child put her own occupations aside that she might give a token of affection to a darling mother or a sweet elder sister.
It is always a good plan to find out what people would like or are in need of. If you listen, you may some morning hear mamma say, "How I wish I had a pretty breakfast cap or a little shawl to throw over my shoulders." Perhaps papa will wish, as he is cutting the leaves of his magazine with his pen-knife, that he had a proper paper-knife. Grandma may be in want of a work-basket to hold her knitting. Alice may greatly desire a music-roll. Brother Artie, who often takes little journeys, would find a use for a pretty contrivance which you could make of burlaps and work with worsted—a sort of dressing-case to hold combs, brushes, and razors, the whole rolling up and taking a very little space in his travelling-bag.
For little children no more useful present can be thought of than a scrap-book. I have seen some very lovely ones, in which all the pages were filled with the advertisement cards and pictures which you are so fond of collecting. I heard of a puzzle scrap-book not long ago. A young lady made it by cutting out and pasting in order the enigmas, square words, diamonds, and conundrums which she found in the papers and magazines taken at her house. This sort of scrap-book would please a bright, quick-witted boy, and by means of it a family could find a great deal of fun on a winter evening.
How could you make a paper-cutter? Very easily if you know how to paint, as many of you do. Take a smooth slender piece of white-wood, and paint on it a bunch of violets, an ivy leaf, or something else that is pretty.
It is sometimes very pleasant for the boys and girls in a family to form a little club, and adding what money they have, join together in making a nice present to papa or mamma. Remember, dears, it is not the cost of a gift that makes people value it; it is the love it shows on the part of the giver.