MONTEREY, CALIFORNIA. I like YOUNG PEOPLE ever so much. I always read the letters in Our Post-office Box the first thing--they seem so sociable, as if all the children knew each other well. I enjoy "The Moral Pirates" and the Information Cards. My home is in San Francisco, but at present I am visiting in Monterey, a small town on the coast. Monterey is the oldest town in California. It was first settled by the Spanish, and the greater part of the inhabitants now are Spaniards. On a little knoll near the beach, and within a stone's-throw of the water's edge, there is a large wooden cross; it is the spot where the Spanish fathers first landed, and the date on the cross is June 3, 1770. I think this is the queerest old town imaginable. Almost all the houses are "adobe" houses, that is, made of a kind of black mud, then whitewashed, and they have tiled roofs. And around the gardens are high adobe walls. Nearly all of these adobe houses are fifty years old, and some of them are said to have been built one hundred years ago. I am gathering some abalone and other kinds of shells, and some fine sea-mosses, and when I get home I expect to make lots of pretty things. I love to play on the beach, and pick up pretty little things, and run out after the waves, then turn and let them chase me back; sometimes they catch me, and give my feet a good soaking; but I don't care, for I like it, only I look like a fright by the time I get back to the hotel. I have been sailing on the Pacific Ocean, and was not a bit seasick, but I was never on the Atlantic. I wish some of the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE that live on the Atlantic coast would tell me if they find pretty shells, and if they get abalone shells and sea-moss on the Atlantic coast as we do here on this coast. IDA B. D. * * * * * RUSSELL, KANSAS.