Boitsfort, Belgium.
Dear St. Nicholas: I receive your paper every month since November, when mother took it for a birthday present to me. I see that many children write to you. Perhaps you will publish my letter because it comes from a little Belgian girl. We live in a pretty place called Boitsfort, quite near Brussels, and quite near the Forêt de Seignes, where we take pleasant rides, I on my pony, my brother and sister on the two donkeys. My brother Louis is nine, my sister Tata is six, and I am eleven. My cousin Helen, who is nineteen, traveled all over America last year with her father, and likes very much your country and the ways of the people there. She brought several papers for children, and we decided that St. Nicholas was the best; that's why mother gave it me. I hope I too will go once to the United States. Believe me, dear St. Nicholas, yours sincerely,
Alice Solvay.
San Remo, Italy.
Dear St. Nicholas: Some of your readers might like to know what an Italian peasant's house is like. On the ground floor the donkey lives, on the second and third floors the people live, and on the roof the chickens live.
If you wish to go and see them, you have to go up some narrow stairs that are very dark, but when you come out on the roof there is the most beautiful view of the quaint old town, with its red roofs, and the sky and sea. We went to walk to-day, and found violets, blue hyacinths, and daisies growing wild under the olive-trees.
I get my St. Nicholas from London, but I am a little American girl from Cleveland, Ohio.
Your loving reader,
Lily May Z.