Can our readers gather from it the lesson, that when things seem to be at the worst, a turn of fortune’s wheel may set them on their legs again, and change the merest melancholy to the merriest mirth? A reverse of another sort will set things right. Turn the page round!

[Solution]

A lady, to whom the momentous question had been put with some diffidence, handed to her lover a slip of paper, telling him that it embodied her reply. Nothing was written but the word “stripes,” which seemed at first to be of sinister omen; but to his relief and joy the fateful letters presently resolved themselves into a message of direct encouragement, and never was an anagram more welcome than this which bade him “persist.”

No. LXIX.—THE EXPLOSIVE RAFT

With eight large wooden matches form a miniature raft, as is shown in the diagram:—

Place the little raft on a wine-glass, and apply a lighted match to one of its corners. The tension on its parts will cause the whole construction to fly asunder as soon as the pressure on any point is removed.

A NOTABLE HISTORIC ANAGRAM

It is very remarkable that the letters which form the sentence—

“The Jubilee Day of Victoria, Queen and Empress,” also exactly spell—