Papa says YOUNG PEOPLE has been a great benefit to us children, and
I for one think the world of it. I have been intending to write to
the Post-office Box for a long time. I will be eleven years old
next New-Year's, and I have a little sister who will soon be able
to read YOUNG PEOPLE too.
We children are now busy gathering hickory-nuts and butternuts and
the beautiful autumn leaves, and when these pleasures are over, our
out-door fun will be about finished until coasting-time. It is
delightful out-of-doors now. Papa often goes out with us. We find
lovely flowers in the early spring, as soon as the snow goes away,
and later we search for wild strawberries, and then in their turns
come the raspberries, plums, and blackberries, so that all the year
there is something sweet and bright to invite us under the blue
sky. The birds sing for us on our rambles, and we often see
squirrels frisking around in the trees, and sometimes we startle a
rabbit, and see him run for his home. Last spring a beautiful red
fox fled past us, not more than twenty feet away. Papa said the
hounds were after him, and as he was near his den in the rocks, he
did not mind our presence.
Yesterday we observed as the funeral day of our dead President, and
it was very mournful. The two posts of the G. A. R., and all the
other societies, with brass music, fifes, and drums, marched
through the streets, and great crowds of people gathered in the
court-house and church, as the day was rainy. I suppose it was a
sad day over the whole country, but nobody could feel as sorrowful
as the President's children and their mamma and grandma were
feeling.