I have not been taking YOUNG PEOPLE very long. But my father bought
a few copies when he was at Richmond, Virginia, about two or three
months ago, and I liked them so much that he gave me a subscription
for a birthday present. I have not many pets, but my grandmother,
who lives next door to us, has a fountain about eighteen feet
round, and she has some gold-fish. They are the largest that were
ever seen in this city. They are about ten or twelve inches long,
and they will jump out of the water for something to eat if you
hold it in your fingers. They have two little ones, which appeared
in the spring. At first they were quite dark, very nearly black,
and then they turned a pale yellow on their sides, and finally
became a golden color. The four fish came all the way from
Cincinnati in a quart bucket, and now you could not get one of them
into a bucket so small. They lived all through the cold winter, and
many and many a morning the thermometer was down below zero, and
the fountain was frozen over. They would not eat our food through
the winter, and they must have lived on insects or on air.