THE biggest thing in St. Louis is the bridge by which you get to it. It has three arches, each over five hundred feet long, and it makes a road over fifty feet wide. My uncle says it is a big thing, and he knows, for he is a bridge builder. There is a tunnel under it, and a railroad track. I rode into St. Louis once through this tunnel; it is a mile long. It is lighted with electricity, and they say it has ventilating shafts; but they don’t give you much air to breathe, that I know. Father had to fan mother every minute, and we were afraid she would faint. I think I should have found it hard work to breathe myself, if I hadn’t been so dreadfully worried about mother that I forgot all about it. But for all that it is a splendid thing—the tunnel is, I mean. The piers of the bridge are built on a rock, and they go down more than a hundred feet below the surface. This bridge cost over six millions of dollars. I could tell you more things, for I staid in St. Louis a whole week, but mother says my letter is long enough.

Willard J. Mooney.

All the Pansies tell how the city they are writing about got its name. I cannot find out about St. Louis, but I know the first settlement there was made by Pierre Laclede Liguest. I was wondering if they did not put pieces of his queer name together, and make a word which in time came to be St. Louis? Anyhow, I am glad they did not name the place for him, it would have been so hard to pronounce. That is only about a hundred and thirty years ago. St. Louis did not grow very fast; for a long time nobody thought it was going to be a city, and fifty years ago there were only about sixteen thousand inhabitants; but it has grown fast enough since. There are more than five hundred thousand people there now, and large, beautiful buildings, and everything which helps to make a city handsome. It is hot there, though; at least my auntie thinks so. She used to have to wait three hours in a St. Louis depot for a train every time she came home for her summer vacation, and went back in September, and she says the warmest she has ever been in her life was during those hours; and she never in five years struck a cool day! So she says she cannot help thinking that St. Louis is always warm. But probably if she had been there in January, instead of June or September, she would have thought differently. Women are apt to think that things stay always just as they happened to find them.

Robert Campbell.

The prettiest place to go to in St. Louis is “Shaw’s Garden.” It has other names, “The Missouri Botanical Gardens,” and “Tower Grove Park,” which is a piece of the gardens, but when I was there everybody said “Shaw’s Garden.” The land was presented by Mr. Henry Shaw, an Englishman, and he used to keep the lovely great park in order at his own expense; I don’t know whether he does now or not. There are more than two hundred and fifty acres just in Tower Grove Park. I have never been to Central Park, that some of the Pansies told about, but I do not see how it could be prettier than Tower Grove Park. There is a statue of Shakespeare, and another of Humboldt in the park, and they cost over a million of dollars. I don’t see why; I didn’t admire them very much; but that is what the gentleman said who went with us. There are a great many other parks in St. Louis—about twenty, I think—but none are so beautiful as this; and the Botanical Gardens are said to have the finest collection of plants of any city in the United States. My brother Roger says that cities always say such things about themselves, and that he doesn’t suppose it is finer than can be found in New York and Chicago, but that is what they told us.

Nellie Shermann.

I read a description of the St. Louis Court House which was very interesting. It is built in the form of a Greek cross, and has a splendid dome whose lantern can be seen as much as twenty miles away. It cost a good deal over a million dollars—the building did, not the lantern. Aunt Kate told me to put that sentence in: I don’t see why; of course you would know that a lantern did not cost all that! I like handsome buildings; I am going to be an architect.

I study all the different forms of buildings; I like the Greek cross style very well, but I don’t know how it would look for a private house. Aunt Kate says all that has nothing to do with St. Louis, but I don’t care. You don’t mind my telling what interests me, do you?

Arthur Blakeman.

There is a building in St. Louis called “Four Courts,” named after the “Four Courts” of Dublin. But I think it was queer to name it Four Courts, and then have only three courts held in it. It is a stone building, and cost a good deal of money. Stone buildings always do; I suppose that is because they last so long; things that last always cost a great deal. I have hunted and hunted to find something interesting about St. Louis that everybody else would not be likely to tell, and the only thing I could find was this about the Four Courts. I don’t know as that is interesting, but it is the best I could do.

Mary Blakeman.

They have a splendid Public-school Library in St. Louis. My father said when he was there ten years ago there were over fifty thousand volumes in it—books to help teachers and scholars. My father says he thinks other cities might copy after them in this. Colleges have libraries on purpose for their students, why should not public schools?

Will Vandenberg.

They have a splendid Custom House and Post-Office in St. Louis. Father says the building cost half a million. He was there when it was being built, and he says there is something grand-looking about it. And father says they have splendid schools there; not only public schools, but lots of private ones. The Washington University is there, and so, of course, is the St. Louis University; and they have the finest kindergartens there, I think, to be found outside of Germany. My uncle says I might as well leave that sentence out, for the kindergartens in the United States are better than those in Germany. But I am not going to leave it out; I don’t like crossed-out lines in a letter, and I haven’t time to copy this. Besides, lots of people think that things in other countries are nicer than our own, of course.

Charles J. Prescott, Jr.