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ENIGMA NÓ. I.

I AM a sentence consisting of 36 letters.

My 4, 34, 15, 9, and 25, was a man who saw and did more wonderful things than most other men.

My 31, 8, 24, 30, and 5, was a relative of him who was slain in consequence of the improper discharge of his official duties.

My 28, 14, 36, 16, 31, and 32, is where my 4, 34, 15, 9, and 25, once resided.

My 7, 21, 8, 13, 2, and 32, is where a good king once resided and reigned.

My 9, 33, 35, 31, and 1, is the name of one of his wives.

My 28, 16, 6, 30, 31, and 35, is the name of another.

My 20, 31, 10, and 30, is a place to which he once fled from his enemy.

My 12, 35, 14, 30, 5, 8, 5, 13, 13, 16, 11, and 17, is living practical illustration of my whole.

My 32, 9, 3, 8, 13, 24, 22, 29, 31 and 32, is the place of his nativity. My 23, 19, 13, 6, 21, 25, 29, 12, and 13, is where he now resides, honorably filling the station of my 21, 26, 14, 18, 27, and 13.

My whole is too wise a saying to need any comment of mine.

THE HORSE-SHOE PUZZLE.

66

SIGMA.

n

You see this picture of a horse-shoe, don't you, boys and girls? You see that there are in it six nail holes. Well, I found this in Forrester's Magazine, and I want you first to draw this figure of the horse-shoe on a piece of paper. Then I want you to cut it into six pieces. "Oh, that can be done easily enough, Uncle Frank. I can do it, and not more than half try." Stop three seconds, my brave fellow. There is something else to be added to the puzzle. You will please to cut the figure of the horseshoe into six pieces, by only two straight cuts with a pair of scissors. That alters the case a little, does not it? But you can do the feat, though, I presume. Please to try your hand-both hands, if you prefer—at the puzzle, and let me know the result.

CONUNDRUM NO. I.

Why does my second, when made in my first, become my whole?

52

A LABYRINTH-BY 8. N.

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The puzzle is to get from the gate B to the garden A, by following the space between the white lines, without crossing them.

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For myself,

THOUGH I spent some six weeks in the great British metropolis, and was unusually industrious in the matter of sight-seeing for most of the time, I was obliged to leave many interesting objects unseen. London is a world in itself. I suppose that you might be as busy as a bee, day after day, for a whole year, in hunting up lions in that famous city, and looking at them after they were hunted up, and still you would not see all of them. One hardly knows where to go first, when he arrives at his hotel. after balancing the matter dubiously in my mind for a minute or two, as the ass is represented to have done in the case of the two bundles of hay of equal size and quality, my first visit was to Westminster Abbey. It was a cold morning (cold for London; it would have been considered moderate in New York or Boston) in March, when I made my first visit to the Abbey. I shall never forget how happy it made me-I give you full liberty to smile at this, if you feel so disposed-as I walked around the outside of the edifice, to see hundreds of sparrows building their nests in the little

nooks and crannies formed by the crumbling of the stones and mortar. The song of the English sparrows is not remarkable for its melody. There is not much variety in it. Like their cousins on the western side of the Atlantic, they make very few pretensions to high artistic excellence. I presume there never was a sparrow in either hemisphere that set himself up for a great vocalist. But the sparrows about Westminster Abbey charmed me, nevertheless, with their simple song. They were happy themselves; they infused the spirit of cheerfulness into their song, and that song made me cheerful too, although a little inclined to sadness just then, at the thought that there was an ocean interposed between me and my dearest friends. The little sparrows sang away my sadness, and from my heart I blessed the great God for the kind mission of the birds to gladden the heart of men.

Westminster Abbey, like a great many other buildings in London, was so familiar to me from the pictures I have seen of it, that I should not have needed any one to point it out to me. I knew it as soon as my eye fell upon it. The first portion of the Abbey to which I directed my steps was the Poet's Corner, where are numerous monuments to the most gifted of England's dead. Most, though not all of the illustrious persons who have monuments in the Abbey, sleep there. Some were interred elsewhere by their friends—others fell in battle in foreign lands, or were lost at sea.

Shall we first examine the Poet's Corner, or walk around the rest of the building, before we linger awhile among these graves of the great and the good? Suppose we take the walk first. The service-which is held in the Abbey every day, in the morning-is just over. The beadle, dressed in a long black gown, with a cocked hat on his head, and a huge mace in his hand, is ready to wait upon us. How much he looks like a man of a past age, who has somehow or other made a mistake of two or three centuries, and got sadly out of his place in the chronicles of time! You see he has a bunch of keys in his hands, and looks invitingly toward you, his countenance saying as plainly as his lips could, if he were to use them, "Shall I show you through the Abbey ?" Do not deceive yourself, now, into the notion that that smile on his countenance is owing solely to his interest in your happiness. We hear a great deal of disin

terested, unmixed goodness, as we pass along in our sight-seeing through Europe; but we do not see it quite so often. The gentleman in black is happy to serve you, no doubt-happy because you are to be pleased. But that smile would not be quite as deep, if he were to serve you gratuitously. He is going to do no such thing as that. Each one of a party pays twelve cents for such an escort; and so great is the number of visitors to the venerable old pile, that quite a revenue is derived from the fee.

Stop a moment, friend. Do you know the age of this Abbey, and how much claim it has on your respect? It is said to have been founded by Sebert, one of the Saxon kings, as early as the year 616. At first, though not many years, I think, it was occupied by the Benedictine monks as a monastery. It was enlarged under the reigns of Edgar and Edward the Confessor, and almost entirely rebuilt, in its present form, by Henry II. and his son Edward I. In this Abbey, the kings and queens of England have been crowned from Edward the Confessor to Victoria, the present sovereign, and here many of them are buried.

There are a good many chapels in the Abbey, through which the guide shows us. The one called the chapel of Henry VII. interested me most. The interior is rich in the extreme. Perhaps there is not in all England a more splendid specimen of architecture, though to me it did not derive its interest solely from this circumstance, but partly from the fact that here were interred some of the greatest of England's monarchs. As you enter one aisle of the chapel, you see the altar-tomb of Henry VII. and his queen, with effigies of each. This tomb is in the centre of the chapel. In another aisle is the tomb of Elizabeth, "the lion-hearted queen." Her sister Mary lies by her side. They were both buried in the same tomb. Elizabeth has a splendid monument-her sister has none. Whether one was ever erected to her or not, I do not know. But the only honor now accorded to her dust, is that of sleeping in this gorgeous chapel, and—if it be an honor-of lying so near her great rival.

There was another monument in this chapel, though in a separate aisle, which interested me even more than the one of the "good Queen Bess," as she is sometimes-rather inaptly, I think-called by the English people. I mean the altar-tomb of Mary Queen of

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