I accept your offer of five dollars for my maiden effort in Christmas cards with thanks, and will try my hand at something more popular.  I am not above liking to make a “wide appeal,” but the subject you propose is rather a staggering one, because you accompany it with a phrase lacking rhythm, and difficult to rhyme.  You will at once see, by running through the alphabet, that “roam” is the only serviceable rhyme for “home,” but the union of the two suggests jingle or doggerel.  I defy any minor poet when furnished with such a phrase, to refrain from bursting at once into:—­

No matter where you travel, no matter where you roam,
You’ll never dum-di-dum-di-dee
The folks back home.

Sincerely yours,
REBA LARRABEE.

P.S.  On second thought I believe James Whitcomb Riley could
do it and overcome the difficulties, but alas!  I have not
his touch!

DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:—­

We never refuse verses because they are too good for the
public.  Nothing is too good for the public, but the public
must be the judge of what pleases it.

“The folks back home” is a phrase that will strike the eye and ear of thousands of wandering sons and daughters.  They will choose that card from the heaped-up masses on the counters and send it to every State in the Union.  If you will glance at your first card you will see that though people may read it they will always leave it on the counter.  I want my cards on counters, by the thousand, but I don’t intend that they should be left there!

Make an effort, dear Mrs. Larrabee!  I could get “the folks back home” done here in the office in half an hour, but I’m giving you the chance because you live in Beulah, New Hampshire, and because you make beautiful pictures.

Sincerely yours,
REUBEN SMALL.

DEAR MR. SMALL:—­

I enclose a colored sketch of the outside of the cottage whose living-room I used in my first card.  I chose it because I love the person who lives in it; because it always looks beautiful in the snow, and because the tree is so picturesque.  The fact that it is gray for lack of paint may remind a casual wanderer that there is something to do, now and then, for the “folks back home.”  The verse is just as bad as I thought it would be.  It seems incredible that any one should buy it, but ours is a big country and there are many kinds of people living in it, so who knows?  Why don’t you accept my picture and then you write the card?  I could not put my initials on this!  They are unknown, to be sure, and I should want them to be, if you use it!

Sincerely yours,
REBA LARRABEE.

Now here’s a Christmas greeting
To the “folks back home.” 
It comes to you across the space,
Dear folks back home! 
I’ve searched the wide world over,
But no matter where I roam,
No friends are like the old friends,
No folks like those back home!