1881 .J 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
533 
Understood. 7. Educated. 8. Inferior. 0. Im¬ 
pressive. 10. Lengthwise. 
Places in Virginia Enigmatically Expressed. 
—1. Bedford. 2. Riogwood. 3. Charleston. 4. Wood¬ 
stock. 5. Moorefield. 6. Cloverhill. 
Positives and Comparatives.— 1. Tit-titter. 2. 
Colt-colter. 3. Tail-tailor. 4. Wick-wicker. 5. 
Fault-falter. 6. Wrath-rather. 
Transitions. —1. Root—toot, trot, tret, tree. 2. 
Vest—best, beat, boat, coat. 3. Seas—sees, seed, 
send, lend, land. 4. Barn—bare, bane, lane. 5. 
Room—boom, boot, blot, blow, slow, snow. 6. 
Moon—moan, roan, roar, soar, star. 7. Mean— 
mead, read, road, goad, good. 8. Silk—sill, pill, 
poll, pole, pore, core, cord. 
Cross Puzzle. —1. Calvary. 3. Cruelty. 3. Di¬ 
lute. 4. Revere. 
Numerical Enigma. 
Diamond.— 
C 
COD 
MOULD 
COUNTRY 
EATER 
ARK 
Y 
Knowledge is power. 
Illustrated Rebus.— 
No. 488. — Man’s inhu¬ 
manity to man, makes 
countless thousands 
mourn. 
Anagrammatical Pic¬ 
torial Proverb.— Time 
and tide wait for no man. 
Out of which may be made—die, inn, mit, wood, 
meat, fan, and rat. 
ISoys and Tliimhles. 
No man can, like the writer, live sixty years, 
without often wishing he had learned to use a sew¬ 
ing-thimble well in his early boyhood, especially if 
he has gone about the world much. Buttons will 
come off, stitches will break, and how handy it is 
forboys at school, for men at a hotel, at a friend’s 
house, indeed anywhere away from home—often at 
home—to be able to whip on a button, stop a start¬ 
ing rent, and do many other little sewings, without 
calling on a woman, or perchance sending for a 
tailor, before being able to appear at a hotel table. 
One seldom, if ever, learns to use a thimble, if this 
part of his education has been neglected in small 
boyhood. The writer has travelled a good deal, 
and at a rough guess he has broken threads at 
least five hundred times in attempting to work a 
needle through a button or garment without a 
thimble. Boyi, take our advice, and every one of 
you learn to use a thimble well before you grow 
up. Do it this very winter; it is not feminine to 
do so. Do it, and if you live long you will many 
times thank us for this advice. 
“Nem. Con.—Sine die.”— There are many 
phrases that frequently appear in the newspapers, 
not pedantically but because they are brief and ex¬ 
pressive. Thus we often read of bills and resolu¬ 
tions passed in public bodies “nem. con ."—This 
means, passed without objection. Nem. Con. are 
abbreviations of the long Latin words demine con- 
tradicenle, which mean : No one contradicting, or 
speaking against. The vote may not be unani¬ 
mous, but no one objects... .Some young people 
may not understand exactly what adjourning 
sine die means, which is in very commou use. 
The Latin word sine means without. Die is the 
Latin for day. Adjourning sine die is the same as 
if the longer expression had been used, “ The 
meeting adjourned Without naming any day for 
assembling again.” 
'Those 'Two Boys. 
The other morning, on coming in from our coun¬ 
try home, we found standing in a corner of our 
office two lads 14 to 10 years old, whose down-cast 
looks and swollen eyes indicated troubled hearts. 
They desired a private talk. To be brief, they 
were in a strange city, hundreds of miles from 
home—penniless, and not knowing a single familiar 
face in this wilderness of people. They belonged 
to good families, 
and as their 
fathers were sub¬ 
scribers to the 
American Agricul¬ 
turist ., and they 
had read it, they 
had an idea that 
the Editor might 
possibly befriend 
them. Their sense 
of shame was so 
great that, as 
they confessed, 
they had passed 
the office several 
times before dar¬ 
ing to enter, and 
twice walked to¬ 
ward the dock, 
half resolved to 
end their troubles 
by jumping into 
the water, but 
the “beyond the 
grave” held them 
back. Telegrams 
to and from their 
anxious parents 
certified to their 
identity. — How 
came they here ? 
For years they 
had been perus¬ 
ing Boys’ Story 
Papers and Books 
in which they 
had read tales of the sea, of life on the ocean, 
of visits to foreign lands, of the grand times on 
shipboard, of boys rising from “ before the mast ” 
to be captains of great ships, etc., etc.-—all so highly 
colored, that their imaginations had been capti¬ 
vated. Their quiet home-life and studies had be¬ 
come painfully irksome, and so, after months of 
hoarding of pennies and dimes, they each got to¬ 
gether enough to pay their fare to New York, and 
a dollar or two more. Retiring to bed they 
stealthily left their rooms, met on a night train, and 
after twenty hours’ ride arrived here. For days 
they wandered along the docks, going on to scores 
of ships, seeking the positions they supposed open 
to them. They soon found that their dreams 
were not realities—very far from it. Rough sail¬ 
ors often drove them ashore. The enchanting 
ships were grim, often repulsive with the real odor 
of tar and worse. The forecastles were anything 
but the fine quarters they had fancied. Repulsed 
at every point, their last dimes gone for food; cold, 
wet, hungry, questioned by the police, and often 
in danger of being locked up as vagrants, they fi¬ 
nally inquired their way to our office. Funds in this 
case were telegraphed to us for their fare home, 
and they are now there, wiser boys to say the least. 
These are not the only similar cases that we have 
personally known of. Indeed there are hundreds of 
like ones every year—and unhappily, few of them 
end as well. The police records of this and other 
seaboard cities abound in them, though seldom pub¬ 
lished. Multitudes of such youth are entrapped 
into vice and crime. Occasionally one gets on 
shipboard, but in ninety-nine such cases in every 
hundred, they would fare better in a country jail. 
Boys, let the above true record be a lesson to 
each of you. These story papers are all the work 
of imagination, not pictures of real life. Often the 
most popular story writers are those who can tell 
the biggest lies in a way to make them seem true. 
You, boys, have troubles and anxieties, and as¬ 
pirations. All boys have, and grown people too, 
but do not let these writers, who make up their 
stories because paid for doing it, lead you to imagine 
there is, somewhere, on land or sea, an occupation 
free from trouble. Among your friends, where 
there is some one to care for and love you, is the 
best place after all, despite the annoyances.—Do 
the best you can ; use every opportunity to improve 
and enlarge your minds by study and good read¬ 
ing. Above all, avoid such “story papers,” as 
they will always give you false ideas of the world. 
Siulian 'S’riltc Fu/zle Picture. 
Here is not exactly a story of “ Ten Little Indi¬ 
ans,” but there are that number of tribes of the 
“ Red Man.” It will not be difficult for the young 
readers to make out the names of these tribes. It 
would be a far different thing to find the tribes 
themselves, as some of them are extinct, or as it is 
sometimes said, have “perished from before the 
advance of the pale faces.” 
Some of the tribes here represented were once 
very powerful, and dwelt upon the lands now oc¬ 
cupied by the finest farms in the United States. 
How very different it must have been there when 
only wild men roamed through the unbroken for¬ 
est, hunting the various kinds of wild animals for 
their food, or fighting with other tribes for the pos¬ 
session of the land. Perhaps some of you know 
by experience something of the life of the Indians 
—and if you do not, many of you have fathers or 
grandfathers who can tell you interesting stories of 
the doings of the savage Red Men. The boys and 
girls of a hundred years ago knew much of them— 
and sometimes to their sorrow—but to-day the 
country is more settled up, and the Indians are 
growing less savage in their ways of life. 
A Problem.—Prof. Hyde, of Alleghany College, 
sends to the American Agriculturist the following, 
as occurring in Western Pa. : Forty-three years ago 
Mr. B- lost his wife. In looking for a tomb¬ 
stone he found one for 84, but two of them could 
be had for $7. As a matter of economy, he took 
both, reserving one for himself, and it has now 
been put up to mark his grave. How many boys 
and girls can tell us just how much he saved or lost, 
reckoning compound interest, at 6 per cent, and the 
price of tombstones to have advanced 50 per cent. 
A GROUP OF TEN TRIBES OF AMERICAN INDIANS. 
