Blanche is a little girl who lives in the new state of Idaho, or the "Gem of the Mountains" as people living there love to call it. It truly is like a beautiful gem set in a ring of mountains, for the mountains entirely surround it. Her home is a sunny little cottage of eight rooms, on a farm six miles from town, and on a road having little travel; so she sees few people except her own family and an occasional visitor.
Perhaps you will wonder how she amuses herself, with no little friends to see every day. On a farm, there are many living and loving creatures that help to make a bright, sweet child happy. Two of her pets are cunning little Jersey calves,— but these are fast "growing up"; Buttercup and Daisy are their names. The birds in the trees sing and chirp to her, and she seems to understand them. Do you suppose she learned the bird-language of the two little canaries of which she has the care? One of these, Tommy, she has had almost five years; having brought him all the way, in the cars, from her distant Iowa home. If he gets a belief of being sick, his little mistress treats him; and he at once recovers, and sings again. But Blanche loves all kinds of birds — wild ones, as well as her own caged pets.
In this new country there are many coyotes (ki'-ö-tës) a kind of small prairie-wolf about as large as a good-sized dog. They are a great trouble to the farmers, for they steal chickens and lambs; so, sometimes, men put a piece of poisoned meat near the coyotes' dens. One day Blanche's brother David was walking a long way from home, when he found a poor crow fluttering on the ground near a piece of this meat, evidently suffering from the mortal belief of strychnine-poisoning. Most men would have left it; but he thought how sorry Blanche would feel if she saw the poor bird.
