It is a great pity that you should have formed a taste for exciting novels at fourteen, but if I were you, I would overcome it by reading interesting and entertaining books which are true. Fact is often stranger and more thrilling than fiction. As you have never been away from home, why not take up books of travel? You can sit at ease in your own room, or perched in a crotch of the apple-tree, or half hidden in a heap of fragrant hay, and go with Miss Bird to Japan, with Arthur Arnold to Persia, with Miss Cumming to the Feejee Islands, or with Du Chaillu to the Land of the Midnight Sun. There is hardly an out-of-the-way corner of our globe to which some brave traveller has not gone, and while reading the story of adventure or peril which the traveller relates, you will learn a great deal, and will cure yourself of a love for that sort of reading which is a mere waste of time.
A Little Heroine.—The Postmistress mentions with honor the name of Edith Baxter, of New York City. One bright afternoon in August, as the children at the Avon Beach Hotel, Bath, Long Island, were playing on the shore and in the surf, a little fellow named Harry Lee, five years old, followed his companions to a float, on which he stepped without thought of danger. Seeing them dive from it, he did the same. Presently a cry was heard that Harry was drowning. Edith Baxter, a fearless little swimmer, plunged in to the rescue, and as Harry came to the surface for the third time, she caught and held him by his golden hair, and boldly struck out for the shore. Help came, and the boy was saved. His grateful parents and the other guests of the hotel presented Edith with a beautiful gold watch and chain as a token of their admiration of her bravery.
Stapleton, New York.
Dear Postmistress,—Will you kindly suggest some nice game or games for a party of "grown-ups" on a summer's evening? If possible, I should like something which can be played outside on the piazza of a country house. If you will kindly help me, I shall be very much indebted to you.
Puzzled Inquirer.
The season for sitting out-doors in the evening is almost over, but there are many pleasant games which are equally suitable for the veranda or the parlor. What do you think of this one? A group of friends are seated together, and one begins by asking the company, "If you had your choice, which would you be, a dragon-fly or an eel?" The word to be brought into your answer is Roses.
A bright answer would be this: