The Convent Puzzle.
This puzzle is a translation from the French, and is over two hundred years old.
In a certain convent were nine cells, of which all but the central one were occupied by nuns. An abbess resided in the middle room, and visited the eight cells at regular intervals, to make sure that the sisters were keeping their vows, and each time found three nuns in each cell, which made nine in every row. Four nuns went out, however, but the abbess on her second round still found nine in a row. The four nuns now came back, each bringing a friend, and the good abbess still had no misgivings when she found the same number in each row as before. Four more friends were introduced, and still the correct number was found in the cells. How was all this possible? The answer to this puzzle will be published later on.
Vincent V. M. Beede.
A Day on an Island of the Sea.
I will try to tell the Table something about one of the islands of our coast, namely, St. Helena. It is a large island, and on it is grown that famous sea-island cotton valuable on account of its long fibre. St. Helena is now almost wholly peopled by colored folk, not a few of whom were once slaves. They are not equal to the raising of island cotton of so long fibre as are the white growers; but in almost every other respect they do exceedingly well at imitating the successful methods of their former masters.
They have divided the island into small farms. These the more prosperous have purchased, and, what is equally important, they are paying for them. A few years ago they thought they had reached a wonderful degree of progress because they were able to begin putting glass into their house windows. Since then they have adopted other improvements, such as lamps, and even modern ploughs and other field implements. These negroes chiefly raise vegetables for the Northern markets, and I doubt not that not a few vegetables which you have bought early in the season, and paid a high price for, were grown on this island of the sea.
The negroes of St. Helena have one quaint superstition, which some, but not all cling to yet. It is that if a child be carried from a house while asleep, its spirit remains behind beckoning the child back. The negroes here, as in many other parts of the South, will not work on Saturdays, and cannot by any inducement be made to do so. This comes from an old custom of slavery times, when Saturdays were devoted to clearing up the negro cabins, and then a holiday.
Lucy H. Emory.
Beaufort, S. C.
At Church in Wesley's Chapel.
A few days after our trip up the Thames and our visit to Teddington and Hampton Court, we—there was nearly the same party—went into East London to see what may be called "the Cradle of Methodism." It is City Road Chapel, which both John and Charles Wesley preached in. It has been several times restored, but is now almost exactly as it was when the Wesleys lived. We went on a tram-car, which had a double deck to it, and which went as slowly as do the few remaining horse-cars in our own land. Our route lay out behind the Bank of England, into a poor part of the city, but a part that makes an attempt to brush itself up along the line of broad City Road.
The chapel is still the centre of Wesleyan activity, and we got to it in time to hear a part of the morning service—a service which was, by-the-way, an odd mixture of Church of England forms and Methodist simplicity. After service we met the pastor, a charming man of sixty, who, knowing us at once as Americans, showed us every part of the chapel. I even read a verse from Wesley's Bible while standing in the pulpit in which he preached. The grave of John Wesley is a few feet without the rear chancel window of the chapel, and within thirty or forty feet of the pulpit. It is a common grave in the sense that it is in the ground and not in a building, and a fence surrounds it. Charles Wesley is buried at the right of the path, fifty feet farther back, and Susannah Wesley, the mother of both men, is interred in Bunhill Fields, which is across the street from City Road Chapel; and not very far from her, in the very centre of the "Field," lies John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim's Progress.
We enjoyed our Sunday exceedingly—so well that two of us went back on Monday to see more of this old "Cradle of Methodism."