wytheville, virginia.
we are three little girls who have often read and enjoyed harper's young people very much. we meet successively at each other's home every friday evening, and read the stories in it. we live in a beautiful town in the mountains of southwest virginia. we three go to the same school, and like our teachers very much. our parents take all your papers—the monthly, bazar, and weekly—and we take young people. we look forward to wednesday with a great deal of pleasure, for we know it is the day our paper comes. we are so glad to see mrs. john lillie is going to write a new story, and we are sure it will be very interesting, as all her others are. please print this, as we would like to surprise our mammas.
ellie c., helen s. s., and susie w.
well, ellie, susie, and helen, though i do not know which of you has brown eyes and which blue, which is the tall slender girl, which the merry-faced one with the dancing dimples, and which the plump little maiden who always thinks before she speaks, i send my love to each of you, and am glad to hear of your pleasant friday evenings. you and the thousands of other girls for whom mrs. lillie has written her charming story have a real treat before you in reading it. i sometimes wish myself a girl again just to feel for an hour the delight i used to when beginning a beautiful new story. the girls who form mrs. lillie's audience have better times in the story way than girls did when your mammas and myself were at your age. but i, for one, still dearly love a bright sketch or a beautiful serial; and if i were near you, i might sometimes glide in and take an easy-chair in the corner on your reading evenings—that is, if you would let me in on my promising to be very good indeed.
some of you who have empty cologne or scent bottles may make very pretty presents for your friends by covering them with silk or plush, and finishing off with a dainty lace ruffle and a narrow ribbon around the neck. a beautiful tidy which i saw the other day was crocheted in heavy cord, and looped over crimson silk. very lovely plaques are made of the birch-bark plates on which butter is sent home by the grocer. they must be covered very neatly with silk or satin, on which a design is worked or painted. the pretty little japanese umbrellas, which cost but a few cents, may be inverted, opened, and caught at each point with a ribbon. suspended from a nail, they make dainty little scrap-bags.
the letter which follows contains a suggestion which the postmistress thinks excellent. she will keep a corner in the post-office box for all such letters as our correspondent invites:
boston, massachusetts.
dear postmistress,—i remember when i was eight or ten years younger than i am now, how hard it used to be for me to find anything new to make for christmas for all the aunts and cousins, and now, as christmas is drawing near, my younger sister comes to me and says: "can not you think of something for christmas? i want something for aunt mary and aunt lizzie, something i have not made for them before." i have no doubt that many other little people say the same thing. now, i have a plan to propose to you, and if you think it a good one, will you mention it in the post-office box? let each little girl—and boy too, if he wishes—write and describe something that he or she makes for christmas, and then if you will be so good as to publish the letters i think before christmas we may have quite a variety of ideas. of course each article mentioned would not be new to all, but it would be new to some, and i think many little girls would be greatly aided. now what do you think?
one of your older readers.
