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the request of one of the good friends of, we take pleasure in reprinting the following item and its illustration, believing that it will interest our young readers of to-day as much as it did those who were our readers in 1879, when it appeared in “Jack-in-the-Pulpit.” It was written by Mary Mapes Dodge.

, my serious young botanists, here is something for you, and for everybody else who has a magnifying-glass, to look at carefully—a Magic Leaf, which your Jack presents to you with the compliments of the season.

The leaf has the necromantic power of revealing the secret most important for a person to know; but it will act only on three conditions: First, that the inquirer be quite alone; second, that every line on the leaf be examined through a good magnifying-glass, and with the left eye only, the right eye being kept closed by a gentle pressure from the middle finger of the left hand, which must first be passed around by the back of the head; and third, that the secret, when known, be faithfully kept by the lucky finder.

If you will follow these simple rules closely, my young wiseacres, the secret no longer will be a mystery to you.

gladly give place in the Letter-Box this month to this clever little translation, by a member of The St. Nicholas League, Katherine Bull, of three verses entitled “Toddlekins and Trot,” written by, and published in in September, 1886. We reprint also the original verses, following the translation, so that those of our young readers who are French students may compare the two.


 * You must excuse me if I don’t write to you very well, but it is the first year that I learn English.

Perhaps you know all about Naples, and how beautiful the sea and the sky is when it is blue. I am a little Neapolitan, and I like it very much.

One of my friends, Nora Ricasoli, is also a League member, and she has had the silver badge. The first time I read the, I thought that badge was the same thing as bag, so I ran off to tell my father that gave away bags full of gold and silver! Nobody would believe me, and my English governess laughed at me very much, and told me what “badge” meant, and I saw the big difference!


 * I have taken you for nearly four years, and this is the first time I have written to you.

I have only seen two or three letters in the from Alaska, and just one from Nome; so I thought if I wrote, you might publish my letter, as the boys and girls in the States seem to be quite interested in the far North.

We came to Alaska in the fall of 1902, and have lived here ever since. Nome is not our home though, as we live at Shelton, in the Kougarok precinct, about eighty miles north of Nome.

My brother and I came down to Nome last fall to attend the public school as there is n’t any school in the Kougarok except the government school at Igloo for the Eskimos.

We have long, cold winters and short, hot summers here. In the winter, it is sometimes 50° or 60° below zero, and in the summer the mercury has been known to reach 100° above.

The country is very hilly, with small lakes and swamps between. In quite a few places the ground between the lakes is just like a sponge filled with water. When a