r
Clytemnestra, when I get home! No letter would ever be long enough to
get them all in. There will be enough to talk about all next winter.

You don't know anything about the clam-bake we had last week, nor how
Dora and I got lost one day in a cave--a real _boner fidy_ cave, as papa
says, dark and dreadful, where smugglers used to hide their things.

I'm saving up lots of things to tell you some day, and if your eyes
don't open wider than ever before, it will only be because something is
the matter with your wires. Such fun as I am having this summer! And,
oh, Clytie! what do you think? Mamma is busy packing the trunk, and we
are going away from here to-morrow. We are going with some other people
to Mount Desert, 'way round the coast of Maine, ever so much farther
than this.

It is lovely everywhere here, and I don't believe Maine is half so
crooked and queer along the shore as it looks in the geography, and I'm
going to tell the girls so when I get back to school.

There's no sense in working so hard on our maps if 'tisn't true, and
Maine was the very hardest State of all to draw, for 'twas so awful
jiggly along the edge. Really, it isn't so a bit, for I have seen it,
and ought to know.

Here come Snip and Moppet, and I hear Fan and Dora rushing up stairs for
me, so I will bid you good-by, or "orevo," as I heard Dr. Le Baron say
to Miss Farrar when he went away last night--that is, it _sounded_ like
orevo. I don't know as I spell it right, for I can not find it anywhere
in my dictionary.

With ever so much love to the rest of the dolls, as well as to yourself,
dear Clytie, good-night.

Your little mamma,
BESSIE MAYNARD.

WASHING THE BABIES' FACES.

THE GREEDY LITTLE MOUSE.

BY E. C.

Tottie and Lillie were twins, with the same wide-open blue eyes, the
same rosy dimples, and bright yellow hair. One day, when they were
seated at the little table in the nursery eating their dinner--for they
were too young yet to dine with mamma--Tottie thought she saw a little
black bead shining in a hole by the closet door. No, it could not be a
bead, for it popped in and out. Presently out came a little pointed
nose, with long stiff whiskers, two little round ears, and two bright
black--not beads, but eyes. The children sat very still, and thought
they had never seen anything quite so pretty as the little plump body
and long graceful tail whisking rapidly and noiselessly, while the
little creature peer