The Court of Abundance

Dear Cousins:

We are very happy and cheerful children - we have often heard people say so - but behind our smiling faces lies the deep and consuming sorrow that we have not a brother of our own age.

We can never understand why kind Providence did not create us triplets instead of twins and make one-third of us boy! It would have made no difference to kind Providence, and would have been much better for us.

We have never needed a brother as much as we do in seeing this Fair, though of course we say nothing to father about it as we realize that he is doing his best for us, but he so often has to leave us while he attends to some business or other, and then it is we feel the need of a brother of our own age. An older one would be of no use, as our fifteen-year-old one is not any good to us. He says he has interests of his own.

We were waiting in the Court of Abundance today for father, and were having a lovely time pretending that the lanterns between the arches were the homes of the light fairies, which would come out after the sun went away, and waving their golden wands would say, "Let there be light," and there would be light, and that the color fairies would come down from the pictures and dance with the light fairies, and goodness only knows what we might not have accomplished in the way of a six best seller when a young sparrow fell out of his nest. He was disturbed about it, very naturally, but we were so sorry for him that we could not go on with our pretend. If we had had a brother of course he could have climbed up and put the poor little thing back, but a guard came and got him, and while of course we shall never know what happened, we have our fears.

Father came just then and we asked him if he wanted to give us a lesson, and he remarked that he feared the Court of Abundance was almost too big for a couple of ten-year-old tots to get much out of except perhaps fresh air and incipient inspiration, That cannot be as serious as it sounds, because we are sure father would not expose us to anything, but we shall look up "incipient" as soon as we get home. We stayed down and saw the lights this evening and when the vapor is rising from the urns and the serpents are writhing, or at least seeming to, and all the lanterns are lighted, it looks like something out of our Arabian Nights' book.

We shall try to finish our little play sometime, when the sparrows have taught their young ones to fly properly.

Your loving cousins,

Jane and Ellen.