THE INCOMPLETE TEXT.
My Dear Jack: The letter E is the one to be added to that church-wall text which you gave to your chicks in May. If this vowel is set in at the right places, the text will read:
"Persevere, ye perfect men;
Ever keep these precepts ten!"
This refers, of course, to the Ten Commandments that came through Moses. In a postscript you will find the names of the bright chicks who sent in the whole text in its complete form. Please give them my good wishes.—Yours sincerely,
Silas Green.
P.S.—Fred S. Mead, Charles F. Fitts, Mary H. Bradley, Lou D. Denison, H.J.W., Arnold Guyot Cameron, "Nane," A.R.C., "Daisy," Nellie Emerson; Bessie and Charlie Wheeler; Marie Armstrong, Neils E. Hansen, Katie Burnett, Lucy V. McRill, O.K.H., Bessie Dorsey, S.C., Edward A. Page, Bessie P.; Gladys H. Wilkinson, of Manchester, England; and Lane MacGregor.
[THE LETTER-BOX.]
Boston, Mass., May 2, 1878.
Dear Saint Nicholas: Will you give me room to rectify a slip of the pen? My "Sing-away Bird," in your May number, is not a thrush, but a sparrow; and I ought to be ashamed of the mistake, for I knew he was a sparrow, and had already spoken of him, in a story in verse, published three or four years ago, as
"Only a sparrow with a snowy throat."
Not only that, I hear his music every year, when I go into the White Mountain region, and consider it one of the chief charms of the wild scenery there. He sang this particular song to me last autumn, on the banks of the Androscoggin at Berlin Falls.
I ask his pardon and yours for the blunder, and send the stanza as I have corrected it to make it tell the truth: