The RURAL N^W- YORKER 
I 161 
for another year. This is my first letter 
to' you. MARGARET FLOOD. 
New York. 
Margaret wrote this letter last Winter 
and enclosed the picture which you see 
on this page. I have just found the 
chance to use it. Quite a good many of 
you have been sending photographs lately, 
and once more I want to thank you for 
the help. The more generous you are the 
Proud of His Crop 
better page your editor can make. See 
what a fine hunch of pictures we have 
this month ! 
1 have just read the Boys’ and Girls’ 
Page and find it very interesting, espe¬ 
cially the drawings. I wonder if you 
would like to get a letter from a girl in 
Delaware? 
I am 34 years of age and have been liv¬ 
ing on a farm for eight years. T go to 
school and am in the seventh grade, will 
be promoted to the eighth if I go, hut I 
do not think about going to school. I 
have a good bit of work at home to do. I 
help a good bit with farm work, too. I 
do not like the farm. It is not very en¬ 
joyable. I do go to parties, picnics and 
festivals and places like that, but I like 
to have a place to go where it is enjoy¬ 
able. I also have two brothers; one is 
35 and the other is seven years of age. 
They think that I am right. They do not 
like the farm either. I have often thought 
of the few words in the song “How are 
you going to keep ’em down on the farm?” 
when there is nothing to keep them with 
but hard work. I do not mind hard work, 
because I do most of the cooking and 
washing. You might find some girls and 
boys that like the farm, but I do not like 
it. 
As I think my letter is getting too long 
for the first time I will close. Yours 
sincerely. MARY HELLER. 
Delaware. 
Here is one of our readers who takes a 
different view from most of us and frankly 
says so. She certainly gives us something 
to think about. Is she right or wrong? 
What would you say if you were going to 
answer Mary’s letter? I hope many of 
you will rally to this call and send some 
fine, strong, helpful letters. 
Another Idea for Our Page 
The funny little drawing of the goose¬ 
berries and the poem about them were 
sent by Ruth M. Watts, a 14-year-old 
New York girl. You will all enjoy them. 
This suggests another way in which you 
can help Our Page. There are no end of 
things connected with farm life, home life, 
school life and out-of-door wild life that 
you can use for little sketches, rhymes, 
verses, riddles, puzzles and the like. Try 
vqur hand at it and send in what you do. 
Some time T hope we shall have a good 
drawing from one of our readers for use 
as a heading in place of the boxes we now 
have. When do you suppose that will he? 
The Boy and His Cap 
1 know a hoy whose eyes are bright, 
And sharper than a cat’s at night; 
He never even has to squint 
When looking at the finest print. 
A thousand things lie’s sure to spy, 
Things that escape his mother’s eye; 
But though his bright eves fairly snap, 
lie never, somehow, sees his cap. 
I’ve seen him hunt it everywhere, 
< *n every table, every chair. 
And when his strength was wasted, quite, 
TIis mother saw it, plain in sight. 
T wonder if some fellow here 
Can make this funny thing quite clear, 
Can tell me why a bright-eyed chap 
Gan never, never find his cap. 
REBECCA IS. FOESMAN. 
Helen E. I.edyard, a Pennsylvania read¬ 
er, found this poem and thought it would 
be a good one for Our Page. It was 
printed in Bison’s Primary School Read¬ 
er. You will all enjoy the verses, and 
will know how true they are sometimes. 
Of course there is one good reason why 
the cap is hard to find. I know some 
grown-up boys and girls who are always 
bothering themselves and everyone else 
looking for things that they left out of 
place and then forgot. One of the good 
old sayings that it is worth learning to 
practice is “A place for everything and 
everything in its place.” Have you 
formed this good habit? Some day it may 
mean the difference between success and 
failure to you. 
What Was in the Rain Barrel? 
Those who knew were: 
E. Katharine French, Margareta M. 
Carlson, Hazel E. Duntz, Dorothy Mack¬ 
ey and Gladys Feldberg of New York. 
Dorothy Adams and Dorothy Middle- 
ton of New Jersey. 
Robert Albright, Lucille S. and Esther 
K. Bowman of Ohio. 
Dorothy Gu.ver of Pennsylvania. 
You will find the answer in the follow¬ 
ing letter : 
School days are nearly here and T am 
glad. I like to go to school. I expect to 
go to high school next year. 
You did not print the picture which I 
drew, but I will not get discouraged. I 
will try again. I was glad to get honor¬ 
able mention, anyway. 
I think the answer to the puzzle for 
August is a bunch of mosquito _ eggs. 
Alice’s grandmother put kerosene in the 
water to kill the little mosquitoes which 
would hatch out of the eggs. 
I think it is a good plan to print the 
full names of boys and girls. 
One day last year our whole school 
Out For a Drive 
went out into the woods. We gathered 
twigs of all different kinds of trees that 
we could find and made a chart of them. 
Your friend, hazel e. duntz. 
New York. 
Some said that the answer to the puz¬ 
zle was “wigglers.” Of course it would 
not he long before the wigglers appeared, 
but what Alice actually had in her hand 
was the little raft of eggs that floated on 
the surface of the water. Who will 
write the best story of the life of a mos¬ 
quito. and of good methods for control- 
ing mosquitoes? I wonder whether all 
our readers know this story. I think we 
ought to print it, but I want it to come 
from you. Perhaps we could have some 
drawings, too. 
The Nature Puzzle 
This month’s puzzle comes from a 
Western State. Probably most of you 
have never seen the animal described, hut 
you may have read about it. However, 1 
am sure some of our many readers must 
have had interesting experiences with 
-and will tell us of them. 
T live in Montana, on the banks, of the 
Yellowstone River. I have two brothers 
and three sisters. I am 12 and the oldest. 
We enjoy The R. N.-Y. and the Boys’ 
and Girls’ Page very much. We go to 
s'liool in the school bus, which passes our 
place. It is just a plain bus and carries 
14 children besides the man that drives 
it. I am in the seventh grade. 
Spring Valley is the name of the farm 
we live on. This is a new country, and 
there are many homesteaders here. There 
are many sheep and cattle raised. The 
hilly laud is used for pasture and the level 
is used for b y and other farm crops. 
The farms along the river are irrigated. 
We children help mamma and papa 
with the work. We girls mend. sew. 
ccok. help milk and separate, and the 
boys do the chores, shuck corn and sepa¬ 
rate. sometimes carry in wood and coal. 
Can you guess this nature puzzle? 
what is IT? 
There is an animal lives here that is 
covered with long brownish-gray hair and 
something else, can travel very fast, 
lives on grain and the bark of trees, 
won't hurt you if you leave it alone, but 
if you get close enough for it to strike 
you with its tail it will hurt badly. Our 
dog often comes in with something in its 
nose that this animal has put there. 
Montana. NINA sharp. 
The Watermelon Picture 
Those six boys are having a great time, 
aren’t they? We would all like to join 
them. I wonder how many watermelons 
they could eat among them? The picture 
was sent by W. D. Millner, .Tr„ of Vir¬ 
ginia, who says he is “a hard-working boy 
who rarely gets time to write.” But In¬ 
is interested in Our Page and wanted to 
help. He certainly has helped, you will 
agree. 
Speaking of watermelons and boys, I 
am reminded of a village I know where 
if is almost impossible for anyone to 
raise a watermelon or a muskinelon that 
will be left alone. Some of the boys and 
some of the girls, too, T am sorry to gay. 
seem to take delight in raiding patches 
and destroying melons. I do not know 
whether any of those boys and girls are 
readers of Our Page, but I should be 
ashamed if I thought they were. 
What are th - plain words to describe 
going into someone’s melon patch and de¬ 
stroying or taking melons? In the first 
place it is trespass, and in tin- second 
place it is theft. Both of these are crimes 
in the eyes of the law. I cannot see that 
it makes any difference how old the per¬ 
son is who does these things, can you? 
And I often wonder whether it is the boys 
and girls that raid melon patches who 
grow into the men and women that steal 
fruit and run away in an automobile, or 
camp on some one’s property and leave 
behind papers and cans and litter, or 
damage historic places to get souvenirs, 
or carelessly throw down matches and 
cigarette stubs and start serious forest 
fires. 
T think you know by this time that 
your editor believes in lots of good fun 
and good sport for boys and girls. I 
want them to have all the happy times 
possible. But I do not believe that such 
a thing as melon raiding is really sport 
or ever gives happiness. It seems to me 
that the boy or girl who respects the 
rights of others is more likely to grow 
into the man or woman whom others re¬ 
spect and honor as a worthy neighbor 
and friend. There is an old saying known 
as the Golden Rule. I wish we could all 
sec that to follow the Golden Rule is 
very good common sense, as well as very 
good morals. 
Anyway, the next time you are invited 
to go on a melon raid, think twice before 
you accept. First put yourself in the 
place of the owner of tin 1 patch, and then 
put yourself ahead a few years to the 
time when you will have melon patches 
and children of your own. I behove that 
most boys and girls do such things with¬ 
out thinking how se-ious they are. But I 
want the boys and girls who read Our 
Pago to be the kind who do think and act 
fair and square in every way. After all. 
it is not the damage to the melons that 
is the worst part: it. is the damage to 
character. 
A Few Notes 
This month's Box was sent by Warren 
G. Brown of Vermont. If Our Page can 
make a big family of us all, interested in 
each other, helping each other, standing 
for the best things in life, then it will be 
a true success. Are you doing your 
share? 
1 want to ask Charles S., New York, 
whose letter and Swiss goat pictures were 
"Oh. My Ears and Whiskers /” 
printed on <*ur Page for July, please to 
send me his full name and address. Sev¬ 
eral readers have inquired about these 
goats. 
The questions are asked, “Do we have 
to pay to belong to Our Page?” and 
“When sending you drawings, pictures, 
etc., should we enclose a stamped cnvel- 
one if we wish them returned?” The 
answer to the first question is that you 
do not have to pay anything. The answer 
to the second is that it is better to send 
postage when you want something re¬ 
turned. 
The picture of the . children with the 
fine big potatoes was sent by their father. 
James Arnold, a New York reader. The 
young man in his field of corn is Steve 
Pol in ski. New York. Helen L. Stewart 
of Pennsylvania sent the picture of the 
two sun-bonnet girls out for a drive. 
Fred Seely, a Delaware farmer, snapped 
his daughter Elina ampng the young 
chickens. The other pictures you already 
know about. 
Many of you were quick to guess the 
answer to the puzzle sent by Helen S. 
last month. Of course it was nothing 
less than Our Page itself. 
Three or four lists of birds that walk 
have come in. 1 should like some more 
before I send them to our friend the 
County Agent. 
(Mice more good by. Make the most of 
those lovely Fall days. Send your letters 
and helps for Our Page to Edward M. 
Tuttle, in care The R. N.-Y.. 1m West 
.‘50th Street. New York City. 
