ly said, "Why,
Ellen, do you believe it is a letter?"

"Why, of course it is! Don't you see it's in a' envelope and all
sealed and everything?"

"Yes, but it hasn't any stamp and how could a turkey bring it--how did
it get in him?"

"Oh," laughed Ellen, "that's the question! You'd better take it right
up to your mother and get her to read it to you and perhaps it will
tell."

So Freddie, all excitement, rushed upstairs and into his mother's
room, shouting as we have read.

His mother took the letter from him. "Where did you get this,
Freddie--what do you mean by finding it in the turkey?"

"Why, Ellen found it in the turkey when she was fixing him, and I
don't see how it got there."

Mrs. Page turned the envelope and slowly read, "To the lady who buys
this turkey," written with a pencil and in rather crooked letters on
the outside; then opening the envelope she found, surely enough, a
letter within, also written in pencil, in rather uncertain letters,
some large, some quite small, some on the line, others above or below,
but all bearing sufficient relation to one another for her finally to
decipher the following:

_Nov. 20_,

_Mad River Village, N. H._

dere lady I doo want a dol for Christmas orful and mother
says that Sante Claws is so busy in the city that she gueses
he forgits the cuntry and for me to rite to the city lady
who buys our turkey and ask her if she will pleas to ask
Sante Claws if he could send a dol way up here in the cuntry
to me. I will hang my stockin in the chimly and he cannot
mistake the house becaus it is the only house that is black
in the hole place. I have prayed to him lots of times to
give me a dol but I gues he does not mind prayers much from
a little girl so far away so will you pleas to ask him for
me and oblige

LUCY TILLAGE.

P. S.--I hope the turkey will be good to eat, he is our very
best one and I was sorry to have him killed, but I never had
a dol.

Freddie listened, very much interested, sometimes helping to make out
the letters while his mother read this remarkable letter. At its
conclusion he dropped upon a chair in deep thought while in his
imagination he saw a small black house surrounded by turkeys running
wildly about while a little girl tried to catch the largest.

"Oh, mother," at length he sighed, "only think of a girl who never had
a doll, and Beth has so many she don't know what