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We embarrasingly found this buried in our email inbox. It's only been seven days since Christmas Day, so we present it to you. We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Zine: Dear Editor ~ I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Larry Peery. Papa says, "If you see it in The Diplomatic Pouch, it is so." So, please tell me the truth, is there a Larry Peery? Virginia O'Hanlon Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge. Yes, Virginia, there is a Larry Peery. He exists as certainly as No Move Received, and a bungled convoy, or misspelling exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Larry! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. Larry Peery is a present-day riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Larry's interests. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Larry Peery! You might as well not believe in fairies [not that there's anything wrong with fairies]. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the board game tables or personal computer keyboards on Christmas Eve to catch Larry Peery, but even if you did not see him, what would that prove? Nobody sees Larry Peery, but that is no sign that there is no Larry Peery. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn [not that there is anything wrong with that]? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world. You can tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside [as Larry has reportedly done], but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Larry Peery! Thank God! He lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood, and puzzle his contemporaries with his esoteric writing.  ----------------- This loving parody is blatantly stolen from "Is There a Santa Claus?" reprinted from the September 21, 1897 edition of the (now defunct) New York Sun.
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