I am a little boy four years old. My name is Clifford, but when any
one calls me, they say Chippy. I have two brothers and a sister
Bessie. We have a mamma kitty that is ours, and she has a family of
six kittycats. She takes five of them away every evening, and
leaves one there. We don't know where she goes to, but she comes
back to get ready to go again. She pays no attention to the one she
leaves. We are all good little boys, I and my brothers; never play
in the dirt to get ourselves dirty, and yet we are never clean. We
try awfully hard. Do you know why? We play circus in the barn.
There are no horses there. We jump over the barrels and in the
barrels, pull on a long rope, and do lots of tricks. Our grandma
made us a clown's suit. She took white cloth, and cut out big
flowers and animals out of some more cloth, then took some flour
and water and pasted and sewed them all on the white cloth. It
covers us over; and we have a big cap just like it. We have a
circus, when the people will come; the people are Clinton and Emma
and Winnie. My mamma sent me to Sunday-school to-day, but I did not
get my Golden Text. All the other children said theirs, but I know
a nice one that my auntie sent me in a little letter, "Little
children, love one another." I like to say that every time; then I
don't have to learn another. Please hurry up and put this into a
little paper, so I can see how it looks. My mamma is writing this
for me; but I can write, but nobody can read it, so I guess you
couldn't, for I make little lines all over, and then put little
round marks all over. I knew you wanted to hear from me, because I
wanted to write to you; and mamma reads the little letters to me
out of your nice paper every Sunday afternoon.