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: