As to furniture, this is the table, where I am writing; it is a stained one, without leaves, large enough for six to eat from, and it cost just two dollars and a quarter. There are a half dozen chairs, black, with yellow figures, and this is the rocking-chair, where we get baby to sleep. That is E.’s rag mat before the stove, and George fixed that shelf for the water-pail in the corner. The coffee-mill is close to it, and that’s all. Now don’t you call us rich? I’m sure we feel grand enough. Now, if you would only just come and make us a visit in earnest, Emeline would make you some nice corn-meal fritters, and you should have some cream and sugar on them; and I would make you some nice doughnuts, for I’ve learned so much; and you should have milk or coffee, just as you pleased; it is genteel to drink coffee for breakfast, dinner, and supper, here. Then, if you didn’t feel satisfied, we should say that it was because you hadn’t lived on johnny-cakes and milk a week, as we did. I have got to begin to be very dignified, for I am going to begin to keep school next Monday, in a little log-cabin, all alone. One of the “committee men” took me to Lebanon, last Saturday, in his prairie wagon, to be examined. You’ve no idea how frightened I was, but I answered all their questions, and didn’t make any more mistakes than they did. They told me I made handsome figures, wrote a good hand, and spoke correctly, so I begin to feel as if I knew most as much as other folks. Emeline does not gain any flesh, although she has grown very handsome since she came to the land of “hog and hominy.” Your humble servant is as fat as a pig, as usual, though she has not tasted any of the porkers since her emigration, for the same reason that a certain gentleman would not eat any of Aunt Betsey’s cucumbers,--“not fit to eat.” That’s my opinion, and if you had seen such specimens of the living animal as I have, since I left home, you’d say so, too. LUCY. TO MRS. I. W. BAKER. LOOKING-GLASS PRAIRIE, June 9, 1846. DEAR SISTER,--Here I am, just got home from school; all at once a notion takes me that I want to write to you, and I’m doing it. I’m sitting in our parlor, or at least, what we call our parlor, because the cooking-stove is not in it, and because Emeline has laid her pretty rag mat before the hearth, and because the sofa is in here. There! you didn’t think we’d get a sofa out here, did you? Well, to be sure, it isn’t exactly like your sofa, because it isn’t stuffed, nor covered, nor has it any back, only the side of the house; nor any legs, only red ones, made of brick; dear me! I’m afraid you’ll “find out,” after all,--but it certainly did come all the way from St. Louis, in the wagon with the other furniture. We keep our “cheers” in the kitchen, and we find that Becky Wallis’s definition of them, _i. e._, “to sit on,” don’t tell the whole story now.