I have wished for some time to write and thank you for the great
pleasure YOUNG PEOPLE gives me. I love so its coming once a week.
I wish I had something to offer little Marie Louise Usher in
exchange for her deer horns. We all read her letter with so much
pleasure last week. One of my uncles went, some winters ago, to
look after his interests in Hope Estate, Louisiana. It adjoins Dr.
Usher's residence; and Uncle George says then Marie Louise was a
little girl like I am now, not more than six or seven years old. He
was so pleased to read her letter, for he enjoyed his visit to the
sunny South.
My subscription to YOUNG PEOPLE runs out the 11th of December, but
Aunt Kate, who is going to Baltimore in a few days, will renew it
for another year. I made the money myself, selling "Stowell's
Evergreen Corn." I have every number of this year, not one torn or
soiled, and I want to have it bound by the Baltimore News Company,
where I subscribe. It was a Christmas gift this year from my two
aunts.
I have a nice little girl, Clara, from an orphan asylum, who plays
with and reads to me. I go to school, and do not play much with
dolls, though I have eighteen. Like most of the subscribers, I have
a cat, Toby; for "Toby Tyler" was the very nicest continued story I
ever read.
I was in a spelling-class yesterday of a dozen or more girls and
boys, and I spelled "duenna" after it had passed almost all the
others. I was so "clapped" (because I am so little), I thought the
school-house was on fire; so I began to cry.
I shall think it a very nice Christmas gift if you will publish my
letter. Good-by, Mr. Harper.