Here is my mother's recipe for johnny-cake for Mary G. One cup of white sugar, three eggs, half a cup of butter. Beat these together until they are light and creamy. Then add one cup of wheat flour, three cups of Indian meal (yellow is best), three tea-spoonfuls of Royal baking powder, one tea-spoonful of salt, sweet milk enough to make a cake batter. Beat until very light, and bake in a quick oven about thirty minutes. We like it best baked in little patty-pans, but you can bake it in a large sheet just as well.
Recipes similar to the above have been sent by Louise H. A., Irma C. Terry, Lena Fox, Jane L. Wilson, Ada Philips, Alexina N., and other little housewives; and all unite in the wish that Mary G. may win the prize offered by her papa.
I would like to tell you how I get YOUNG PEOPLE. We have a very nice teacher at the school where I attend, and every week each scholar who is perfect in deportment gets a copy of YOUNG PEOPLE. All the scholars like the paper very much, and they all try to be good. I have had a copy every week since the teacher began to give them, and so have several other scholars.
I am eight years old. I live in Northern Michigan, between the two large lakes.
I have a pet fawn. I call it Beauty. It followed me to church last Sunday night; and although it behaved with perfect decorum, it attracted so much attention that papa had to put it out. I have every number of YOUNG PEOPLE.
I belong to the Boys' Exploring Association, and last summer we discovered the finest cave in the Rocky Mountains. It was filled with beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. I have some of the stalactites in my collection. The only living things we saw in the cave were a bat and two old mountain rats, one of which had young ones.
A few days ago I visited a coal mine about six miles from Colorado Springs. The coal there is soft, and lies in a narrow vein. Above and below the coal are veins or strata of sandstone, which is well covered with impressions of leaves, large and small. As I entered the mine I looked up, and right over my head there was a perfect impression of a palm-leaf, just like a palm-leaf fan. I tried to take it out whole, but it would break in pieces. There were also many impressions of small leaves, and I found pieces of the tree itself. I brought a great many of these impressions home with me. They must be many thousand years old, like the fossil shells, baculites, and ammonites which I have in my collection. I would like to exchange some of the leaf impressions with the readers of YOUNG PEOPLE. I would like for them Florida beans, sea-shells, or moss, or minerals from California or New Mexico. I have also some new specimens of different minerals which I would exchange for others.