COMMON THINGS TIME. 



ourselves totally exempt from ideas altogether as absurd, it not 

 quite as mischievous. Who has not met with persons professing 

 some claims to education and intellectual position, who object to a 

 dinner party composed of thirteen, and to an odd, number of 

 candles being lighted on certain occasions? How many who 

 would consider themselves insulted if they were charged with 

 ignorance, object to start upon a journey, or to commence any 

 serious enterprise on a Friday ? 



The difficulty of recollecting which months have thirty-one and 

 which only thirty days, has been so generally acknowledged, that 

 various technical aids to the memory have been contrived by which 

 they may be at any moment ascertained. 



If the months be reckoned in numerical order from tht; 

 beginning of the year, the odd months, as far as the seventh, and 

 the even ones afterwards, are those which have thirty-one days. 

 Thus, they are the first, third, fifth, seventh, eighth, tenth, and. 

 twelfth, which are January, March, May, July, August, October, 

 and December. 



When we close the hand there are four projecting knuckles of 

 the four fingers, with depressions between them. If we give the 

 knuckles and intermediate depressions the names of the successive 

 months, recommencing from the first knuckle, after having once 

 gone over them, we shall find that the months of thirty-one days 

 are those which fall upon the knuckles. Thus, the knuckle of the 

 first finger is January, that of the second March, that of the third 

 May, and that of the fourth July. Recommencing then, that of 

 the first is August, that of the second October, and that of the 

 third December. 



Every one is familiar with the lines 



" Thirty days hath November, 

 April, June, and September ; 

 February hath twenty-eight alone, 

 And all the rest have thirty-one." 



64. The first clay of a month was called by the Romans CALENDS, 

 a name which was also applied to the months themselves. Hence 

 it came that a table, showing for the current year the succession 

 of months, and of the days in each month, came to be called a 

 CALENDAR. 



65. The name Calends was not used by the Greeks. Hence 

 arose a saying when any thing was indefinitely adjourned, that it 

 was postponed to the " Greek Calends." 



66. The seventh days of the four great months, as those con- 

 sisting of thirty-one days were denominated, and the fifth days 

 of all the lesser months, consisting of twenty-nine days, were called 

 NOXES. 



