Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1903-06-13
Aunt Dorothy's Letter
Dear Children

Dear Children;
Did you ever play desert island?' 1t Is
great fun. and when l was child was the
favorite play of my three brothers and
myself. We were great readers of books
of adventure, Swiss Family Robinson
and Robinson Crusoe" and the books of
Mayne Reid and r. NJ Ballantine being
our favorites, and from these We got the
idea of the pastime to which we devoted
most of time in the summer. We lived
in house with very large yard, across
the middle of which was a high trellis COW
cred by a grape vine, and back of this we
children could do almost pleased.
The yard contained six peach trees, seven
pear trees and three cherry trees, besides
some raspberry and currant bushes, and
in one corner we planted little vegetable
garden. The cellar door served our
ship, while the brick walk was the raging
sea and all the rest of the yard was our
desert island" When the ship
wrecked, which happened about once
week we always had very trying and
dangerous time in getting to land, and then
we thoroughly explored our island, as they
always do in books. The cats had to serve
wild animals and l am afraid we made
their lives burden to them. The trees in
the yard we pretended were breadfruits
cocoanuts. bananas and the others always
found in such places In one of the stories
OF adventure IN south America we Tedu OK
the blow guns used by the natives, made
of hollow reeds We had no reeds, but We
found that some onions planted in our
garden had gone to seed and that the seed
pod grew on the end of a long, hollow
stem. from which we made very good
blow guns. though the smell and taste were
rather strong.
In one corner we built a house of large
packing boxes. We put two boxes side by
side the ground and two more facing
them. leaving a passage way between. On
top of these we put four more, and made
roof over the passage The boxes were
large enough for to sit up in, and as
the passage was two stories high we could
stand up in that. Once We thought it
would make our house cooler If We had
grass growing top of ii, put
layer of earth on the roof and sod on top
of that. 1t looked very nice, but, alas, that
night II rained. and we spent great part
of the next day in cleaning out our house
We built little stove of bricks, on which
we did our cooking. our meals consisting
principally of fried ham and fried or baked
potatoes, with plenty of fruit. When we
wanted anything very much, as, for In
stance. frying pan or knife, 1t was very
easy to put ii somewhere along the edge
of the brick walk and then pretend that
there was a great storm and shipwreck.
After that would go down to the
beach" to see what had washed ashore
and of course found just what we wanted
But there was nothing strange in that;
they always do so in books don't they?
I0ul my lttlel - stlllIS lOO loH6 anu
must stop. Perhaps l will tell you more of
this another time. Yours sincerely,
DOROTHY DAY.
Roll of Honor.
Letters stories, puzzle answers and other
contributions of interest have been received
from the following children and are hereby
Acknowledged with thanks:
Lewis Flemer Beulah Smallwood
Estelle Turner. Maud Proctor.
Roy Sexton. lrma Buck.
IneZ Jenkins