nd a lady standing in this window,
while a little girl held out to Biddy a bunch of flowers that smelled as
sweet as a whole summer garden.

Biddy had not understood the meaning of these things; she had only
wearily noticed that the little girl was pretty, and not at all like
her, and that the flowers and greens were "jolly." That day, when she
fled with her doll, she thought of the hospital; and though she did not
understand any better than before why there should be such great
difference in the lives of little children, she for the first time felt
that the lady and her little girl had been kind, had been sorry for her.
So you _see_ that even after so long a time as a whole year, a little
seed of kindness may sprout in the heart; and don't you think, dear
children of New York, you who have every day the good luck of health,
happy homes, and pleasant things, that it would be delightful to bring
just one taste of such luck to the little ones in the New York
hospitals? Would you not like to blessedly surprise them on next
Christmas morning? You know the best hospital in the world can not be
like home with father and mother in it. But if you want to make the
hospitals seem almost like home to the little children for a whole happy
day, you can not begin too soon to look over all your little treasures,
and choose all you can part with. You all have cast-off toys,
story-books that have been read through, and boxes full of odds and
ends, and it takes very little to brighten the face of a poor sick child
lying alone in a hospital cot. A single pretty picture-card will do it.
Then, too, you can save your pennies and dimes, so that before Christmas
comes you can go into the stores and buy some of the books and
playthings that children like best; and all of you who can must tie on
your warm hoods and scamper away into the woods after the lovely
prince's-pine and scarlet berries. All the pretty things you can gather
to make bright the place where these other children stay will make your
own Christmas one of the merriest you ever knew, for when you are
pulling out the "goodies" from your plump bunchy stockings at home, you
will like to think of so many other little eyes and hands and hearts
brimful of the Christmas happiness which you have made.

[Illustration: OUR POST-OFFICE BOX.]

Our young correspondents ask us for so many things that it would be
impossible to gratify them all at once. Their requests are carefully
fil