I forgot to tell you I was born on the 23d of April, 1564, and died on the 23d of April, 1616—not an old man, you see, to have gained such fame; yet every year many pilgrims visit my birth-place and my grave, the epitaph on which has alone enabled me to lie quietly in the country church-yard, for many would like to see me in Westminster Abbey, where there is a fine monument to me.
THE ABSURD PENGUIN PUZZLE.
Fig. 1.
This Puzzle appeared in No. 25, page 344. It was, with two straight cuts of the scissors, to change the fish, Fig. 1, into an absurd penguin catching a herring, as is shown in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
A Spider's Instinct.—Spiders crawling more abundantly and conspicuously than usual upon the in-door walls of houses foretell the near approach of rain; but the following anecdote shows that some of their habits are the equally certain indication of frost being at hand. Quartermaster Disjouval, seeking to beguile the tedium of his eight years of prison life at Utrecht, had studied attentively the habits of the spider. In December of 1794 the French army, on whose success his restoration to liberty depended, was in Holland, and victory seemed certain if the frost, then of unprecedented severity, continued. The Dutch Envoy had failed to negotiate a peace, and Holland was despairing, when the frost suddenly broke. The Dutch were now exulting, and the French Generals prepared to retreat; but the spider warned Disjouval that the thaw would be of short duration. He contrived to communicate with the army of his countrymen, and its Generals relied upon his assurance that within a few days the water would again be passable by troops. They delayed their retreat. Within twelve days the frost had returned, and the French army triumphed.