“I hope you will like your red mittens and red and black socks. They are just as purty as the red bird that roosts in the cedar trees near the barn. Granny said most of the men in the blue grass wore black socks but I said they is not nice enough for you, so to please everybody I made them red with black toes and tops. Maybe my gay little soldier of the cedar trees was the cause I made them red and black. He has so much to whistle about even when it is cold and the snow is deep. Just now he lit on the window sill, knocking off the snow. I had a good look into his bright black face. How purty and red his coat was against the snow. If it was not for him and my dolls and the books you gave me I would be lonesome. Granny says I am too old to play with dolls; but she does not know what they whisper to me. “How still it is in the winter time. By day we hear the red bird and the crows; at night if it storms, the wind; if it is still and snowing, the murmur of the flakes; if the moon is full a great owl calls; if I wake in the night and it is dark and still I hear the whispers of either the angels or of my dolls who sleep with me. One of the dolls is granny and the other is my mother, and they tell me what they used to do when they were girls like me. Sometimes grandpa calls and when I go to him he asks: ‘Did you hear that?’ ‘What, grandpa?’ ‘Someone calling, it sounded like your pa.’ Grandma says he is going to die soon. I believe up here we hear voices you cannot hear where there is so much noise. “I know Santa Claus will bring you nice things because you are so good. “Yours truly, “Jeanette.” “Well, it is nice to be remembered, even though the remembrance is impossible. I will put them and the letter away with other treasured and impractical things that have been sent me by girl friends. I feel sorry for that lonesome little half-starved thing. She will grow up into a scrawny, tired-looking woman; marry some man who will work her to death. No telling what she might do with advantages and in another environment.” After breakfast, he telephoned a book store asking that a dictionary and some appropriate books be sent to Miss Jeannette Litman, Big Creek, Kentucky. The clerk who took the order, having recently read Mark Twain’s Joan of Arc, mailed a copy of that book with the dictionary. A week later Mr. Allen received a letter from Jeannette thanking him for the books. ———— Verona, Italy. ——— Hospital, Ward 11. December 2, 1917. Dear Little Jeannette: To children like you nothing is unexpected. You believe witches are abroad on dark nights, while fairies dance in the moonlight; and that angels protect you from evil spirits. When you grow older experience plucks these pinions of fancy; you can no longer soar but become an earth stained materialist, surprised if your plans of the morrow miscarry and you find yourself in New York when you expected to be in Washington.