A quite old writer on our staff says:
My congratulations on the issue of No. 1000 of our dear Girl’s Own Paper in her pretty new dress. You must look back on the nearly twenty years of healthy, useful, and refining life that your and our paper has passed through with infinite pleasure and thankfulness, for it has been and it is a blessing both to the girls and their elders. It was with no little emotion that I looked at No. 1000, for to my connection with The Girl’s Own Paper I am indebted for one who has been from the beginning of our acquaintance the best and truest of friends to me that I am proud to call such. May God bless you, and give you in the future to see more and more abundant fruit for your labours. It seemed so wonderful for me to be able to say, “I had one complete short paper and two chapters of another in the second number of The Girl’s Own Paper, and the 1000th Number has in it a paper of mine also.” Didn’t I feel proud when I saw a paper of mine in the number? I have grown, I will not say gray, but very white in the service of The Girl’s Own Paper, and it will cost me a terrible pang when I am no longer able to write anything worthy of a place in the dear, familiar pages. I am trying to get new subscribers to our paper. I got two at the beginning of the volume. If only each reader could get one more! The paper ought to be a greater favourite than ever, for it is prettier, and has never been in every way so good as it is now.
One who has written but very seldom writes:
My Dear Old Friend,—Amid the many cries of congratulation from important people and numerous friends, let my small voice be heard. It seems to me a great triumph, in spite of opposition, to have sailed calmly on and made your thousandth port unattended by serious rivals.
My own idea of celebrating such an event is a dinner given by “the staff” to the Editor, and I for one would make a struggle to form one of such an interesting and pleasing company.
What happy memories for me are included in that span of 1000 Numbers, quorum pars parva fui.
Another very occasional contributor says:
This wonderful number of the Girl’s Own Paper will quite overwhelm you with congratulations, I am sure, for it is a record one! For myself, I am humbly delighted with it, and I never hope to have a greater honour than to be associated with so many infinitely more worthy names than my own.
This number will be treasured in the annals of the family, especially, too, as I see dear friends’ faces as well therein, and I am next but one to my father’s life-long friend.
You must have taken such an amount of pains to collect all the photographs, and our thanks are immensely due to you for all your kind trouble and taste in doing so. While most heartily echoing the first four lines of the last stanza of our valued mutual friend, Miss Helen Burnside,