FABLES FOR GOOD OLD BOYS AND GIRLS. 



139 



" Enjoy your mushroom dignity, stinking of the varnish of yesterday's veneering, 

 since you like it," said he ; " suffice it for the Tumble-Bugs that they come of a 

 race that rolled their fragrant spheres down the solemn aisles of antiquity, and left 

 their imperishable works embalmed in the Old Red Sandstone to proclaim it to the 



lies as they file 



wasting centu- 

 along the high- 

 "O, take a 

 chief of the ex- 

 derision, 

 passed, and win- 

 In and about 

 ems were what 

 inscriptions, 

 scientists said 

 inscriptions, 

 were not. The 

 Professor Wood- 

 tained that they 

 done in a char- 

 known to schol- 

 language equal- 

 He had early 



way of Time ! " 

 walk ! " said the 

 pedition, w it h 

 The summer 

 ter approached, 

 many of the cav- 

 seemed to be 

 Most of the 

 they were in- 

 a few said they 

 chief philologist, 

 louse, main- 

 were writings, 

 acter utterly un- 

 ars, and in a 

 ly unknown, 

 ordered his 



artists and draughtsmen to make fac-similes of all that were discovered ; and had set 

 himself about finding the key to the hidden tongue. In this work he had followed 

 the method which had always been used by decipherers previously. That is to say, 

 he placed a number of copies of inscriptions before him and studied thetn both col- 

 lectively and in detail. To begin with, he placed the following copies together : 



The American . Hotel. Meals at all Hours. 



The Shades. No Smoking. 



Boats for Hire Cheap. Union Prayer Meeting, 4 P. M. 



Billiards. The Waterside Journal. 



The a I Barber Shop. Telegraph Office. 



