TABLEAUX FROM ST. NICHOLAS PICTURES.

    Brooklyn, November, 1877.

DEAR OLD ST. NICHOLAS:  My little sisters and my brother love you, and so do I, for your monthly visits make our house brighter and pleasanter to us all.  I am fifteen, not yet too old to be one of your children, you see.

What I want to tell you is how easily some of your pictures can be turned into tableaux-vivants, or even acted.  There was “Pattikin’s House;” I am sure we had the greatest fun with those pictures, we being so many girls:  and “The man all tattered and torn that married the maiden all forlorn;” that was on p. 652 of the volume for 1876:  “The Minuet,” in January, 1877:  “Hagar in the Desert,” in June, 1877; my aunty did that, and it was lovely:  the little girl in “The Owl That Stared,” in November, 1876; and “Leap-Year,” in the same number.  All these we had at our own home, but there are lots of others that might suit some folks better than they would suit us.

This winter some of your pictures will be used in a series of grand tableaux for our Sunday-school entertainments.  A number of people belonging to the school can paint scenes, get up costumes, and all that.  It is going to be splendid.

    I thought that your other children, you dear old ST. NICHOLAS,
    would surely like to know about this, and I hope I have not made my
    letter too long.  From yours lovingly,

    MINA B.H.

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MARY C. WARREN answered correctly all the puzzles in the October “Riddle-Box,” but her answers came too late for acknowledgment in the November number.

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    Black Oak Ridge, Passaic County, N.J.

MRS. EDITOR:  Excuse me writing to you, but I want to ask you if you think it is right to be killing cats all the time, for my brother Eddie has killed fifteen this year, and whenever I scold him about it, he begins to sing pilly willy winkum bang dow diddle ee ing ding poo poo fordy, pilly willy winkum bang.  There, there he stands now behind the barn with his hands full of lumps of coal watching for one that killed his chicken a month ago.  O dear, if he would only stop killing cats what a good boy he would be!  He always gives me half of his candy, and he raises such nice melons in his garden.  O, O, as true as I live there he goes now after the poor cat.  Good, good, good—­neither piece of coal hit her.  What can I do to stop his bad habit.  I think it is too bad even if they do kill his chicks once in a while.  I have only got two cats left, Dick and Mizy, and he watches them awful close.—­Your friend,

    KATIE BAKER.

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    New York.

    DEAR ST NICHOLAS:  I want to send this story to The letter box that
    I wrote when I was 6 years old this is it