We have a teacher who lives in town, Miss Elvira Strother. She's a good
teacher. The older girls help teach the little ones, and next year I'm
to help.

This Asylum is over ninety (90) years old, but looks much older. There
is just money enough to run it, and it hasn't had any paint or
improvements in the memory of man, except the electric lights. The town
put those in for safety, and don't charge for them.

I wish the town would put in bath-tubs for the same reason. It would
make the children much nicer. They just naturally don't like to wash,
and one small pitcher of water for two girls don't allow much splashing.

But Yorkburg hasn't any water-works, not being born with them. I mean,
water-works not being the fashion when Yorkburg was first begun, nobody
has ever thought of putting them in. Mr. Loyall, he's the mayor, says
everybody has gotten on very well for over two hundred years without
them, and he don't see any use in stirring up the subject. So there'll
never be any change until he's dead, and in Yorkburg nobody dies till
the last thing.

There wouldn't be any electric lights if the shoe factory hadn't come
here. The men who brought it came from New Jersey, and they wanted
light, and got it. And Yorkburg was so pleased that it moved a little
and made some light for itself; and now everything in town just blazes,
even the Asylum.

I used to sleep in No. 4, but I don't sleep there now. It is a big room,
and has six windows in it, and in winter we children used to play we
were arctic explorers and would search for icebergs. The North Pole was