DEAR AUNTY:--You will cry when you read this, I am sure. It is all done for, my entire collection; all killed with a dust-cloth, squashed, smashed, driven out of windows, and into holes, and all by a maid-servant. As I had no boxes for them, I naturally put my specimens into the best places I could find for them. In the writing-desk in my room were ever so many little divisions, just the very thing to put different varieties into. When the maid came to clear up the room, she didn’t know anything about their value, of course, and she thrust her hateful brush right in and destroyed them all. She is a savage, an ignorant savage. I did as you told me, dear aunty. Not one tiny little frog even have I carried in my pockets, not even a beetle; and this is the result. I will not tell you all the things I had found; I couldn’t bear to describe them. Two such beauties of beetles--bright red wings, the body lilac blue, and glittering as any precious stone! Such a rare species! And an oleander-sphinx! And my magnificent caterpillar of the humming-bird moth!--you know, aunty, that one with yellow stripes and blue eye-spots. All trodden to death on the floor. I must stop; the longer I think of it, the worse I feel. I will say one thing though. You may call a person “Aunty,” but that doesn’t make her one. When we first came here, I used to say to Fani, when he wanted anything, “Why don’t you go and ask Aunt Clarissa?” and he answered more than a dozen times, “That isn’t allowed here.” So at last I understood, and as I didn’t want to lead him to do anything out of the way, I didn’t say it any more. But now you see the difference between a real aunt and a make-believe one. There is nothing in the world that we can’t ask you. If you can’t do it, you say so, and there’s the end of it. But that’s no reason for not asking another time; there is always something to ask, and you understand that, and don’t expect us to stop asking just because you have to say no sometimes. Now, this whole trouble comes from this; for when I asked Fani to ask Aunt Clarissa to give me some twenty or thirty old boxes to keep my specimens in, he said it was not proper to ask for so many things, and I could pack them in paper. Just think of that! To wrap living creatures up in paper! Of course Fani doesn’t understand anything about such things.