190 157. (50 equals L) (eyes) (X equals ten) (ears) h (ear) n (o G oo Do F) (tea) (he) (M's) (elves) - Listeners hear no good of themselves. 158. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. 159. (Wood) (man) s (pear) (tea) (hat) (tree) Woodman, spare that tree. 160. Elm, ash- Ethopia, lass, March. 161. (Tie) (knot) a (knee) (zth in G) (tooth, ink on nought) - 'Tis not an easy thing to think on nothing. 162. V Vine Cup - Winecup. 163. (Noose) Neuse, river in North Carolina. 164. Happen. ENIGMA. 167. It is composed of 29 letters. The 1, 22, 17, 12, 28, 14 is a metal. The 8, 16, 11, 4, 29, 20, 28 is easily broken. The 15, 5, 14, 21, 3, 20, 6 is a discordant noise. The 19, 13, 18, 27 is a verb. The 6, 10, 2 is a part of the body. The 26, 18, 24, 6, 25, 14, 29 is a city in Italy. The 23, 7, 9 is a nickname. The whole is a proverb. FRANK LYON. 166. I stand high in the church; but, not liking my position, I desire to be beheaded; if you will do that, I will tell stories for your amusement; behead me again, and I am puffed up with pride; that is bad, and I need beheading, which operation makes me tardy at school; and if you have again beheaded me, I have devoured much food. I am getting into bad ways; I need transposition; by this I am first changed into a beverage, then I am soon feeding quietly. Now behead me, and I am a preposition; curtail me, and only a poor little article remains. K. 272. HE ERE we are, far into spring! How the winter did slip away, with scarcely snow and ice enough to suit the skaters, and the coasters, and the snow-ballers, and the sleighriders! But we are not safely through yet; and March has many a stormy day and blustering night, when the winds whistle, and the snow or the rain falls, and the sky and earth seem dreary. But the days are longer, the sun is warmer and brighter, the morning and evening twilights are full of promise, and - But stop! We have a large pile of letters to attend to. Pen Holder wants some one to translate the following: "Pugno, pugnas, pugnat." It is an old Latin witticism, but may be new to some. Horatio thinks that Covington is the worst place the Ohio River has to pass, because it gets a Licking there! - Hugh Mility is a good quality, and in No. 1 and No. 3 is indorsed by us. - The books S. Ample inquires about would be sent by express, and the expense would vary with the distance and place. Middy's enigma has but one fault, and that is in the first line. Can he guess what it is?- Homer H. Richardson sends us a curious puzzle, in which one short sentence reads in two thousand ways; it is good, but we have not space to print it. 1 our friends send us the same puzzles, hidden words, &c., as original? Remarkable coincidences, surely! - Next time, Willie O'B., we think you will be up to the mark. Try again. Deer Slayer has done well at guessing; we hope he has recovered from his sickness. Jack Straw has a capital reason for not getting up a club in his vicinity: the boys and girls all take the Magazine. We should like to see that place; it must be a model of excellence. The rebus is good. -Skiff is ingenious; and if you don't believe it, we will prove it to you one of these days. We receive some curious" blanks," and shall tax the wits of our friends with them. Let not "buried cities" be too easily found, and hide your "hidden words" a little better. Who's hit now? Reindeer is welcome. Ernest A. Young has done well with his second enigma, and we are glad to hear so good an account of him; we thank him for loving the Magazine "more and more;" so do we! -Jerry Jingle does not give our readers enough credit for smartness; should not all understand, by this time, that it is not an easy thing to puzzle our boys and girls? WISH CORRESPONDENTS. - Frank H. Bell, Rye, Westchester County, N. Y.-Nick Gnarl, 99 State Street, Rochester, N. Y.- Blarney, care of H. A. Halsted, Deckertown, N. Y. Architect's address is 36 Bedford Street; W. G. S., 354 West Thirtieth Street, New Romeo is taken into the family, and thus York City. Styx, Jr., 48 Carroll Street, "what's in a name "! proves Cute and Buffalo, N. Y.-Marathon, Wilmington, Del. Specs are on hand, as usual. - Lord Pals-- H. A. P., Summit Street, Chestnut Hall, gravé will excuse our liberty with his lord- Pa. Atlantic Cable, care of A. Thompson ship, and must bear in mind that the Yankees Wolff, Box 130, Salem Cross-Roads, Westnever did feel afraid of "my lud."- Ski dis- moreland County, Pa. (amateur papers). plays much ingenuity in his rebuses, but we Israel Kimball, Jr., 374 North Capitol Street, can't publish all that are sent us. But never Washington, D. C. (foreign stamps). - R. mind; we like to study them, and not a single Willie Eaton, Norridgewock, Me. (phonograone escapes us. Send them on; we will en- phy). - Horace R. Patten, Box 997, Bath, joy all that come. There are more "small Me. (debating clubs). Frank Sherman, potatoes" to the rebus by Brutus than to him! Flushing Institute, Flushing, L. I. - John Will not some of our "right smart" friends Drew, Surrogate's Office, Buffalo, N. Y. invent some new kinds of puzzles, instead of Fred G. Beach, Drawer 26, Albion, Orleans following in the beaten tracks? County, N. Y. (printers). W. S. S., Lock Box 5S, Cadiz, O. Harry F. Pollock, 1239 South Fifth Street, Philadelphia, Pa. - Martin Gales, Box 2, Brookfield, Mass. (stamps). Excelsior has an original vein, which, with a little more working, will just meet our wants. How does it happen that several of 1 OUR BOYS GIRLS OLIVER OPTIC, Editor. SOME THINGS ABOUT MARCH. MARCE ARCH, the first of the spring months, has its name from Mars, the Roman god of war; and in early times it was the first month of the year, as Our Boys and Girls, who read what we wrote about January in No. 157, will remember. Even in England the legal year began on the 26th of March, until 1752. It is long, and generally blustering and stormy, as if cold and warm weather, winter and summer, frost and sunshine, were striving for the mastery. Our Anglo-Saxon ancestors sometimes called it Hlyd Monath, stormy month; sometimes Hraed Monath, rugged month; and sometimes Lenet Monath, long month. From this last title comes the word "Lent," applied to the ecclesiastical season preceding Easter. An old proverb or tradition represents March as borrowing three days from April; and that these were unlucky days, as if such a thing were possible! In a song once sung at the firesides of the Scottish peasantry is this reference to the "borrowed days: ". "The first of them was wind and weet; It froze the birds' nebs to the trees." hands, and afterwards distributed among them his "maunds"- gifts of food, clothing, and money. Queen Elizabeth performed this ceremony, but it has been omitted since the time of James II. of England, as a personal act of the sovereign. For many years it was done by persons selected for the purpose. The custom of the washing of feet has fallen into disuse; and since the beginning of the reign of Victoria, money only has been distributed. Good Friday is another "church day" that comes in March. In Roman Catholic coun tries it is celebrated with great ceremony; but in Protestant countries its observance is generally only by religious services, and chiefly confined to Episcopalians. Curious superstitions cluster around certain days. Thus, in olden times, bread baked on Good Friday was supposed to have some peculiar virtues in healing diseases, and families were careful to preserve some of it through the year. The famous Hot-Cross Buns had their origin in this superstition. In England the morning of Good Friday was ushered in with the street cry of "Hot cross buns," and they are served at the breakfast-table. It is a small bun, highly spiced, with a cross marked on its sugared surface. The familiar cry is, "One-a-penny buns, Two-a-penny buns; Antiquarians assert that these buns really originated in a sort of bread-worship, common in the early days of China and Egypt. In the latter country the cakes were made Some of these words will furnish good guess- with horns, to resemble the head of the sacred work for our readers. Maundy-Thursday" comes in March, the day before "Good Friday;" and as we have been asked in regard to the origin of the name, we will give it briefly. In early times it was customary for all classes of people — kings, clergy, and others to give to the poor, and perform various acts of charity and humility; this was chiefly true of Catholic countries, but its observance in England was formerly quite general. Maund was a name for a basket or hamper; and gradually the name of the basket came to be used for the gifts carried in it, and maunds was a term applied to the gifts; and the day on which these gifts were bestowed was called MaundyThursday, and money thus given was called Maundy-money. It was customary for the king of England, on this day, to have as many poor people as he was years old brought to him, and he washed their feet with his own heifer, and thence called bous, a word which, in one of its oblique cases, is boun; and hence casily comes our word bun! March is a wide stepping-stone between cold and warm weather, and it well earns its name of "the blusterer." But we enjoy it; not so much for what it is, as for what it promises. We can feel that winter is gone, and that, day by day, the sun comes nearer and nearer, and that he takes a longer time between his rising and setting; that April showers and May flowers are not far distant; and that soon warm days, and the songs of birds, and the bursting buds and opening leaves will gladden every heart. THE boy who, when he is alone and without witnesses, acts and is the same as when he is in public, is nearly always an honest boy. |