The zoo was the best place, though, where the monkeys and the zebra and the elephant performed, and you could watch all their motions and the way they look.

One day the hippopotamus wouldn't come up out of the water, but he did finally. When he came up, all huge leathery, and he was snorting, I thought it was very funny. I enjoyed it very much, and I laughed a lot. He was quivering all over, he was snorting so much, and he made a lot of noise plunging up out of the water.

I fed Mary Ann or Minnie the elephant, and I watched her perform in a dance at two o'clock. She was called Mary Ann the second, a big old wonderful elephant. The first Mary Ann came to the zoo in 1922, and she was more popular than all the other animals. She lived there for 20 years, then she fell down while she was asleep and sprained he insides, and she died. She was the first elephant the zoo had. She was a baby when she came, and 2,000 boys and girls who were members of the Jungle Circle group raised $700 towards paying for her.

The duck pond is beautiful. We spent lots of time there watching the duck families bathe and walk around and preen themselves. It is shaded by big old trees there, and it's always cool.

There are lots of different kinds of birds there. There are all kinds of ducks and heron and geese, and they quack and quack and splash around all the time. I loved to watch them swim around and duck down into the water and then come out and sun themselves and spread their wings. I always stayed a long time there.

Around the pond, there is a tall steel wire fence, and the fence curves because the stream does. It winds around under the beautiful trees. It's a lovely spot.

One day I made a list of the animals and the birds of the zoo. Mommy helped me. The crown herons and the flamingoes were on my list. I never got tired of hearing their names; the ones we use and the zoo names too. I learned all I could about them. I liked to describe them. There was no zoo in Urbana, and I was very happy to see all the animals and birds I read about.

The flamingoes are rose-pink. There is a lacy fringe on the top of the Crown Heron's head. Both birds have stick-pole legs, and they are very colorful. They are a "novelty," because the other members of the bird clan are not as unusual. Maria, who has the beautiful Italian restaurant in Little Italy near the Port of Baltimore, gave the flamingoes.

All the winged creatures scramble quickly to the spot when children push food for them through the fence. They forget how very proudly, a minute before, they stood and smoothed their feathers, and they fight for the food with ruffled feathers. There are some very beautifully feathered peacocks, too, strutting around with greenish bluish colors and tassels on their heads.

We went to all the historical places in Baltimore. One day we went to see the memorial house on Amity Street where Edgar Allen Poe lived, here in Baltimore. We climbed up narrow circular stairs to the second story, and, in a very small room, there was a big bed with big feathered pillows. The home is on a narrow street in a colored neighborhood, and a little colored girl with long wiry pigtails and big red bows said, "Gollee, did dat man sleep in dat bed? I'd sure like to sleep in dat myself," and she started thumping the bed before the guide could stop her. It was very amusing. I smiled and laughed to myself.

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