P.S.—We both send our love to your little girls and boys.
New York.
Dear St. Nicholas: I thought you might like to know how to press flowers. The first thing to do, after you have gathered them, is to lay them smoothly between tissue-paper; then you must have felt drying-paper to put each side of the tissue-paper. The felt must be changed every day. The tissue-paper must not be changed at all, only the felt. Then you must have two pieces of smooth board, to put the papers between, and a box full of stones for a presser. We used a common soap-box, and put in stones to the weight of about thirty-five pounds. The handles were made of rope. I have found this a splendid way to press flowers, as it absorbs the moisture from the flower and does not leave it at all brittle.
Will you publish this, so that all the little girls who take St. Nicholas may have the opportunity of pressing flowers?—and I hope they may enjoy it as much as I did.—Your little friend,
Rosie S. Palmer.
We have received letters in answer to Frank R.M.'s question about an English painter, printed in the May "Letter-Box," from Carrie Johnson, M.S. Bagley, Alice Lanigan, Lillie M. Sutphen. Seth K. Humphrey, Hannah I. Powell, Frank R. Bowman, James Hardy Ropes, Grant Beebe, Isabelle Roorbach, and H.A.M.
Some say the name of the painter is Sir Joshua Reynolds; others say it is John Opie, who, also, was a great painter; and one or two think that while Frank R.M.'s anecdote about the reply "With brains, sir!" belongs to Opie, all the rest of the description concerns Reynolds only. And this last seems to be the fact.
John Opie was born at St. Agnes, near Truro, in the county of Cornwall, England, in the year 1761; and died in the city of London, April 9th, 1807.