Notes and Correspondence. 



55 



Every town and suburb should be provided, just as it now is with 

 parks, beaches, and swimming-pools for summer, with coasting places, 

 slopes for skiing, artificial if necessary, and wide stretches of grounds 

 which can be flooded for skating, curling, hockey, and all the sports 

 which can be played on the ice. 



The Saturday half-holiday, instead of remaining solely a summer 

 institution, should obtain the whole year round, especially in winter, 

 so that those who are confined constantly in the stuffy air of stores, 

 offices, and factories could gain the healthful exhilaration that comes 

 from exercise in the brisk, frosty, open air. In Germany banks are be- 

 ginning to encourage their clerks to take their vacations in winter. 

 Even the sacred hours of school session should be made flexible, instead 

 of like the laws of the Medes and Persians, which alter not. 



Whenever a clear, brilliant sky, a keen bracing wind, and a fresh 

 glittering spread of snow, or good skating ice occurs, books should be 

 closed, lessons and recitations dismissed, and teacher and children 

 turned loose in the open air to engage in sports and games. There is 

 nothing which they can possibly learn out of a book which would be 

 half so helpful and educational in the broadest sense of the term as a 

 good game of snowballing, or storming snow forts, or hockey, or pris- 

 oner's base on skates. — Woods Hutchinson, M. D., in Good House- 

 keeping. 



Indian Name of Convict Lake, and Legend. 



Wit-sa-nap, the Indian name for Convict Lake, bears the following 

 legend : 



The streams which flowed from the mountains were supposed to be 

 filled with Pot-sa-wa-gees, water babies, who lived in spirit, but were 

 visible to the eye, having the face of an Indian child and the body of a 

 fish. Hi-na-nu was a wise and good man; whose spirit the Indians 

 reverenced, and to whom they looked for guidance in earthly matters. 

 However, he was endeavoring to capture the Pot-sa-wa-gees as they 

 traveled up stream. When the source of the streams were reached the 

 water became so shallow that the water babies were in great danger 

 of being taken by their pursuer. They prayed to the Great Spirit for 

 aid, and in answer he caused the waters to flow up hill and to join the 

 waters flowing down from the mountains, uniting in one large, deep lake, 

 wherein the little spirits found safety — Wit-sa-nap, the Convict Lake 

 of to-day. Mrs. A. A. Forbes. 



[The change of name from Convict Lake to Wit-sa-nap would seem 

 most commendable. — Editors.] 



