But no matter where I roam,
No friends are like the old friends,
No folks like those back home!

DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--

I gave you five dollars for the first picture and verses,
which you, as a writer, regard more highly than I, who am
merely a manufacturer. Please accept twenty dollars for "The
Folks Back Home," on which I hope to make up my loss on the
first card! I insist on signing the despised verse with your
initials. In case R. L. should later come to mean
something, you will be glad that a few thousand people have
seen it.

Sincerely,
REUBEN SMALL.

The Hessian soldier andirons, the portrait over the Boynton mantel,
and even Letty Boynton's cape were identified on the first card,
sooner or later, but it was obvious that Mrs. Larrabee had to have a
picture for her verses and couldn't be supposed to make one up "out of
her head"; though Osh Popham declared it had been done again and again
in other parts of the world. Also it was agreed that, as Letty's face
was not distinguishable, nobody outside of Beulah could recognize her
by her cape; and that anyhow it couldn't make much difference, for if
anybody wanted to spend fifteen cents on a card he would certainly buy
the one about "the folks back home." The popularity of this was
established by the fact that it was selling, not only in Beulah and
Greentown, but in Boston, and in Racine, Wisconsin, and, it was