“That’s pretty fair,” said Marcus; “but I suspect memory didn’t have a great deal to do with it—only a few of the lines have a familiar sound to my ear.”
“Well, to tell the truth,” replied Kate, “my memory is one of the kind that never can think of anything when you happen to want it; so I helped it along a little, with two or three books of poetry.”
The request was general that a copy of these lines, and also of the “thread-paper poem,” should be furnished for publication in the “Home Wreath.” The successive numbers of this little paper were carefully kept on file, after all had read them, and it was a custom to insert in its pages anything of suitable length that the family wished to preserve. The next number of the “Wreath,” which appeared on Saturday afternoon, contained one of these poems, together with an unusual variety of original matter, which an editorial paragraph pleasantly attributed to the protracted storm, remarking that “it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good.” Among the contributions were several arithmetical problems. One was as follows: “So arrange four nines as to make one hundred.” Another was:—“If you take nine from six, ten from nine, and fifty from forty, there will then six remain.” Jessie, in the course of the evening, threw off the following rhyming answers to these questions, designing to send them to the editor for insertion the next week:
“Two nines I place upon a line,
And that will make just ninety-nine; ... 99
In form of fraction then I write
Nine-ninths, and to the first unite, .... ⁹⁄₉
And that the number makes just right ... 100.”
“From S, I, X, I take I, X,
And that will leave an .... S,