living-room I used in my first card. I chose it
because I love the person who lives in it; because it always
looks beautiful in the snow, and because the tree is so
picturesque. The fact that it is gray for lack of paint may
remind a casual wanderer that there is something to do, now
and then, for the "folks back home." The verse is just as
bad as I thought it would be. It seems incredible that any
one should buy it, but ours is a big country and there are
many kinds of people living in it, so who knows? Why don't
you accept my picture and then you write the card? I could
not put my initials on this! They are unknown, to be sure,
and I should want them to be, if you use it!

Sincerely yours,
REBA LARRABEE.

Now here's a Christmas greeting
To the "folks back home."
It comes to you across the space,
Dear folks back home!
I've searched the wide world over,
But no matter where I roam,
No friends are like the old friends,
No folks like those back home!

DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--

I gave you five dollars for the first picture and verses,
which you, as a writer, regard more highly than I, who am
merely a manufacturer. Please accept twenty dollars for "The
Folks Back Home," on which I hope to make up my loss on the
first card! I insist on signing the despised verse with your
initials. In case R. L. should later come to mean
something, you will be glad that a few thousand people have
seen it.

Sincerely,
REUBEN SMALL.

The Hessian soldier andirons, the portrait over the Boynton mantel,
and even Letty Boynton's cape were identified on the first card,
sooner or later, but it was obvious that Mrs. Larrabee had to have a
picture for her verses and couldn't be supposed to make one up "out of
her head"; though Osh Popham declared it had been done again and again
in other parts of the world. Also it was agreed that, as Letty's face
was not distinguishable, nobody outside of Beulah could recognize her
by her cape; and that anyhow it couldn't make much difference, for if
anybody wanted to spend fifteen cents on a card he would certainly buy
the one about "the folks back home." The popul