56 
BY THE WAY BIDE 
Maywood. Ill., November 30,1904. 
Dear Wayside: 
The other day I saw a dock of geese and 
some hunters tracing up the flock of geese. 
The first thing they knew the geese had all 
lighted upon the river and the hunters had 
shot at them and they all went under the wa¬ 
ter. 
Agred 12. George Warde. 
© O 
Maywood, Ill., Nov. 30, 1904. 
Dear Wayside: 
One day I was walking through a large field 
and I saw a little bird fly from the ground. 1 
looked around and on the ground I saw a lit¬ 
tle bird’s nest. It had four little white eggs 
with brown spots on them. The eggs were 
warm. The bird was brown and black. It 
was a meadow lark. 
Aged 11. Verra Port 
A BLUE JAY’S NEST. 
This summer two blue jays built a nest in 
an old apple tree in our yard. Every day for 
four days the mother bird laid an egg in the 
nest. Then she began to sit on the eggs. 
The mother bird sat on the eggs for a long 
time. At last the eggs hatched. Then the 
birds threw the egg shells out of the nest. For 
a long time the little birds had no feathers. 
After a while they began to have little feath¬ 
ers. When they were hungry they would open 
their mouths very wide. 
I went every day to see them. It made the 
old birds very angry to have me look at the 
little birds. One day when I went to look 
at them the little birds were gone. I never 
saw them any more. I suppose they had flown 
away. 
Aged 11. Belle G. Bement. 
Kilbourn, Wis. 
Deer Park, Wis., April 29, 1904. 
Dear Wayside: 
One morning we were out haying and wt 
took up a cock and under that cock there were 
nine rabbits. We kept them a while, but mj 
brother let them out, and when we were har¬ 
vesting Ave saw one of them. But it Avas big 
then and I tried to catch it but it ran aAvay. 
Second Grade. OAven Knerr. 
WHAT I KNOW ABOUT BIRDS 
When I go out to feed the chickens and 
ducks in the morning, I see different kinds of 
birds. One day a little blue bird came hop¬ 
ping on the fence and then it flew OA'er to a 
little house my brother had fixed for the Jenny 
wrens and it tried to get in but the holes were 
too small. Just before the last snow storm a 
flock of blue birds came from the south and I 
Avas so glad to hear their SAveet voices again 
because I thought spring Avas here. And then 
the snow and Avind came and I Avondered Avhere 
they had gone to, and Avhat they had to eat 
and whether they had frozen or starved. Last 
summer a pair of chippie birds built their nest 
in a peach tree near our cistern. 
Our neighbor’s maltese cat came over and 
climbed the tree and caught the mother bird 
and tore her nest down and tAvo of the tiny 
blue eggs fell on the Avalk. The father bird felt 
so distressed and cried so pitifully and kept 
calling for his mate that it made my heart 
ache. And since then I saw the cat walking 
off Avith a beautiful blue bird in his mouth. 
And noAV I can not love cats because they are 
so cruel. 
Aged 9. Grace A. Fiedler. 
Alton, Ill. 
Letters have been received from EdAvard 
Gaylard, Rosetta Ball, Mary Williams, Alice 
Urelins, Ruth Bjorn and Enna Winch, of the 
Julia Ward Howe School, Chicago; from Agnes 
Hector, Elsie Gesch, Helen Heinemann, El¬ 
more Mensior, of MavAvood, Ill.; and compo¬ 
sitions on birds from Rhea Curdie, Walter Hef¬ 
ner, Cora Wuerker, Clara Fiedler, Elizabeth 
Dorman, Gladys Bockstruck, Myrtle Brown, 
William Stritmatter, Myrtle Volz, Minnie Ue- 
belhack, Thomas Bushell, Nellie Higgins, Adele 
Sotier, Lucy Rippe, Fay Scott, Charles Clark, 
Eva Devenue, Walter Uzzell, Lucile Chamber- 
lain, Frances Richards, Isabell Brooke, Alice 
Joesting, Johannah Fox, Nora Hinderhan, La¬ 
val Evans, Bessie Brockstruck, Helen Ban- 
gert, Anna Schwartz Ruby Russel, Pearl Shear- 
lock, Sophie Giles, of Alton, Ill. 
