DEAR POSTMISTRESS,--Will you please try to think of something pleasant for five girls to do. We are trying to get up a club by ourselves. We want to meet in the afternoon, and sometimes in the evening. We would like to have you tell us some name for it, and what kind of badges and what color would be nice. I take HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, and like it very much.
How would you like "We Girls?" I think that would be a pretty name for such a club as yours. As for badges, there is nothing more appropriate than a geranium leaf or two, to be worn when you meet, or you might assume rosettes of pink ribbon, or, prettier still, always wear a white apron when you assemble. I think it would be very charming for you to have some beautiful needle-work on hand, and while one should read aloud, let the others sew. If there are poor little girls in your town who do not know how to sew, or whose mothers are too busy to make comfortable clothing for them, your club, with _your_ mothers' permission, might make garments for them. A cooking club is very popular among girls of your age, and, upon the whole, would perhaps give you more enjoyment, and result in more real benefit to you in making you efficient little house-keepers, than anything else the Postmistress could propose. If you try the latter work, you will need the assistance of some older friend until you are fairly organized. Please write, and tell me what you finally resolve upon.
I am a regular subscriber to your nice paper, and read it with great interest. I would like to tell you about a dog that I know of that was much attached to his master, who is a boat-builder. The other day, while at work placing beams in position in a new boat, one of the poles became loose, and was about to fall on the man, who was in the way. The dog saw his master's danger, and sprang on him, knocking him out of the way. The man was slightly hurt, but the poor dog was killed. He saved his master's life, but lost his own. Please give this to the Postmistress to publish.
I am very glad to publish this letter in memory of the faithful dog who lost his life to save his master's.
There is one thing certain about our paper this week. The C. Y. P. R. U., on the look-out for relations of solemn fact, would never be able to tell which articles were intended for its special entertainment if the Postmistress did not point them out. "The Loss of the _Royal George_" is one, but who that did not know it to be an actual occurrence, and one of the most terrible and heart-rending in English history, would not think the story one of the wildest fancies of some writer's brain? Then who would believe that some birds could be so cruel and heartless as to feed upon the flesh of their fellows, if Dr. W. O. Ayres, of Yale College, did not tell us so in "My Family of Orioles"? Unless the Postmistress is very much mistaken, the articles in YOUNG PEOPLE which will be most widely read this week are those in which "truth is stranger than fiction."