The letter is wonderful, yet due to the childhood manor in which it is written, it doesn’t feel old or ‘of its time’. The way children develop phrasing style of writing hasn’t changed. The text feels like a classic 21st century child’s response to being asked to write a thank you style letter after Christmas. This involves writing all the interesting things you can think of at the beginning and when you soon run out of ideas, just list all the things you received and then what other people gave each other, until the page is full and you can stop. I am guilty of doing something similar when I wrote thank you letters after Birthdays and Christmas’ until I was about 15. Although it makes it hard to read at times, the basic grammar, wobbly handwriting and little to no punctuation, make for a delightfully charming read, and you can tell she tried to do her very best writing.
The envelope address, written in a pristine cursive script, leads me to believe her mother addressed it just to make sure it got to its destination. I am unsure however, why the envelope has a date stamp that seems to read “Aug 23 1888”. This makes no sense in context with the letter, except if it got lost in the post and was only stamped and delivered several years late.