As brother Tom takes YOUNG PEOPLE, and we like it so much on
account of the good stories it contains, I thought I would write a
letter to Our Post-office Box. I am eleven years old, and have been
going to school up at Navidad to Mr. S. It is ten miles from here,
and my older brother Tom and I come home every Friday evening, and
go back Sunday evening. We board with our sister Irene. It is now
vacation, and we are at home helping our papa and mamma work. I see
so many writing about their pet cats, dogs, birds, etc. I have two
cats, one a yellow one, and the other a white and gray; but papa
does not like them much, especially when they come about the table.
My business is to hunt up the hens and guineas' nests. Sometimes I
find several dozen eggs in the same nest. I also look after the
turkeys. We have sixty-two young turkeys, some nearly half grown.
They go off every morning, after I feed them with clabber, to the
millet patch and prairie after grasshoppers, and at night come home
to roost. There are nineteen small ones that we keep in the
yard--too small to let out yet. We also have twenty-five young
guineas; they are small, and have to be kept in the yard. They have
a box to roost in to keep from getting drowned when it rains.
We have not had much rain until yesterday for a long time. Our
garden had been parched up, but now I reckon it will revive. There
are a great many cracks in the ground here when it gets very dry,
large enough to put your foot in, and it is very dangerous then to
run a horse on the prairie. I send you two Spanish butterflies
(that is what we call them). They are the most voracious things you
ever saw. Our railroad is completed to Victoria.