Now, what in the world can be the use of that spider's eyes, I'd like to know, if he can't see the things around him?
A QUEER CHURN.
New Haven, Conn.
Dear Jack: Last year in April you gave us a picture of a very small doll-churn that a little girl had made, and I thought it was very 'cute. But I read the other day of another churn quite as odd. It is simply the skin of a goat, hung by a rope from the roof. It is used in Persia, and, when they want to churn, they fill the goat-skin with milk, and swing it forward and backward until the butter comes. The children do the swinging, and I think it must be better fun than turning a crank or working a plunger.—Yours affectionately,
O.T.
CATS IN SPAIN.
Cats have a nice time in Spain, I hear. No dismal moonlight prowlings over fences and back sheds for them! They have the roofs of the whole country for their walks, and need never touch the ground unless they choose. I'll tell you why. Grain is stored in the attics of Spain, because they are too hot for anything else. But rats and mice delight in attics, as well as in grain. So each owner cuts a small door from the roof, big enough for puss, and any homeless cat is welcome to her warm home, in return for which she keeps away rats. In a sudden rain it must be funny to see dozens of cats scampering over the roofs to their homes among the grain-bags.
"SINCERE" STATUES.
Cambridge, Mass.
DEAR LITTLE SCHOOLMA'AM: In ST. NICHOLAS for December, 1877, Jack-in-the-Pulpit says that "sincere" is made of the words sine-cera, meaning "honey without wax." I have been told that it refers also to the Greeks, who, when they found a crack in a statue, would sometimes fill the flaw with wax; and that hence a "sincere" statue, one "without wax," would have no flaw, but be a true and honest statue.
I have not been able to find any authority for this, otherwise I should have written sooner.—Yours sincerely,
F.B.J.