AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
59 
ccnviction of its truth to every heart. *She was rigidly 
cross-examined. The counsel plied her with infinite and 
ingenious questioning, but she varied from her first state 
orient in nothing. The truth as spoken by that little child 
was sublime. Falsehood and perjury had preceded her 
testimony. The prisoner had entrenched himself in lies, 
until he deemed himself impregnable. Witnesses had 
fa,sified facts in his favor, and villany had manufactured, 
for a supposed clear acquittal. But before her testimony, 
falsehood scattered like chaff. The little child, for whom 
a motner had prayed for strength to be given her to speak 
the truth as it was before God, broke the cunning devices 
of matured villany to pieces like a potter’s vessel. The 
strength that her mother prayed for was given her, and 
the sublime and terrible simplicity (teirible I mean to the 
prisoner and his associates) with which she spoke, was 
like a revelation from God himself. 
Boys’ and Girls Own Columns. 
Work for Winter Evenings-Use 
of Letters. 
By letters, we do not mean communications sent through 
the Post Office, but only the little tilings of which 
words are made. There are only twenty-six of them, 
but they can be made to accomplish a great deal, and to 
afford no little pleasure. They are of no service, how¬ 
ever, to one who does not know how to use them. Learn¬ 
ing to spell isratliei dull business ; and yet, to spell cor¬ 
rectly is a most desirable, though rare accomplishment. 
But something can he done to make it pleasant, and we 
are going to propose a plan that will be found very use¬ 
ful, even to those who feel above resorting to the spelling- 
book. 
To begin with, all that is needed is a large numbe r 
of cards, about half ail inch square, each containing a 
letter of the alphabet. Those who live near a printing- 
office can get a few alphabets printed at a cheap rate, and 
those who do not can make the letters with a pencil, on 
cards, or even on pieces of paper 
And what then ? Let two persons—or a dozen if they 
like to—sit down at the table, with the pile of cards before 
them, and each one choose some word with which to puz¬ 
zle his neighbor. Then he must carefully select all the 
letters of which the word is composed, from the pile be¬ 
fore him, and pass them along to the other, who is to ar¬ 
range them in proper order, if he can. 
We have said enough to make the plan understood. It 
seems a very simple thing ; but we will assure our young 
readers that if they will try it, they will take a great deal 
of pleasure in it. And if there are grown up persons in 
the room, they will be very apt to try their skill too. 
We add a few hints that are in place. 1. Great care 
must be taken that the letters are properly selected ; the 
right ones; not too many, nor too few. 
2. The person to whom they are given should arrange 
them correctly, so as to spell the word intended ; not 
making such an error, e. g., to put e before i in the word 
piece. 
3. ft will usually be found, that words of from four to 
nine letters are sufficiently puzzling, without resorting to 
tlie longest contained in the dictionary. 
4. It may be agreed at any time, to limit the words to 
some particular class ; as to nouns, or verbs, or animals, or 
the names of objects in the room, &c. 
5. Sometimes it will be found, that the letters composing 
one word will also spell a very different one—as acts 
cats, cast. 
6. Usually, those words will be found most difficult, 
which have a dipthong, or some silent letter, as reign, or 
knight; or several consonants with a single vowel, as 
strength, or shrubs, or trench ; or the same letter many 
times repeated, as scissors, cocoon. 
7. Some persons have a natural tact for solving such 
questions ; others find it more difficult. Something de¬ 
pends on a knowledge of words, and of their terminations. 
So many words end in flora, that the occurrence of those 
four letters would lead one to pronounce that, the last 
syllable of the word ; yet those letters are also to be found 
in the word notice, tonic, and others. No complete rule 
can be furnished. The brightest, quickest minds will suc¬ 
ceed best. 
-—.-— - —- 
“ Tlie Best Miss it Sometimes.” 
A New-Hampshire Lay writes : 
“ At the time of renewing my subscription for the ‘ Ag¬ 
riculturist,’ i sent to you an answer to Pnj.lem No. 12. 
But on receiving the January No. I was gnially surprised 
to find the answer there given not agreeing with the one 
which I sent, as 1 knew I had wrought it on correct prin¬ 
ciples However, to be certain of the matter, I carefully 
evised the process, and found that I had made a mistake 
each time 1 had previously worked it ThtJS von see the 
Nrrl mlje it somn-timor ' 
How l'iclures are Made. 
A “ little girl ” writes, that she was much interested in 
our description of stereotyping, in last volume, and she 
Wishes we would tell her, and others, something about how- 
pictures are made. We cheerfully comply, though we 
are very busy now, and our room is much crowded by an 
unusual number of very good, but far too long articles, in 
the preceding pages. 
PAINTINGS. 
There' are several kinds of pictures. First, we will 
name paintings. Some of these are made with paints 
mixed in oil. These are called “oil paintings,” and are 
usually upon canvas—that is cloth stretched upon 
a frame. Paintings in water colors are those, generally 
made on paper, with the paints mixed in water instead of 
oil. These would lie spoiled by wetting, which rs not tlie 
case with oil paintings, as they can usually be washed, if 
it be done carefully. 
There are lithograph pictures, daguerreotypes, photo¬ 
graphs, crayons, Ac., Ac., but we cannot stop to tell you 
all about them now . It would lake several pages lo do it- 
We will at this time speak only of the pictures in this 
paper, winch are called 
ENGRAVINGS. 
We shall ask Mr. Orr to lalk to you hereafter on this 
topic and give some illustrations. Bill while waiting for 
him we w : ll say a word or two. Examine carefully the 
following picture, which is called 
A SHADOW. 
You will see that il is made only of little black marks 
put upon the paper. In the darkei portions there are more 
of these marks than upon tlie lighter parts. It w as made 
thus : 
First, the person conceiving the idea of such a picture, 
with a pencil puts upon paper just such marks as you here 
see, and you will notice that there are hundreds of them. 
Two or three different marks—a little longer or shorter, 
heavier or lighter, in any part of it, would have spoiled 
the appearance of the whole. When the picture was 
complete, an artist took a block of wood, sawn from the 
end of a hard boxwood tree, just one inch through One end 
of this was made very smooth, and whitened with a little 
paint ; and on this smooth end, he made with a pencil an 
exact copy of the first pictui^ on paper, but turned the 
figures ail round, from left to right, so that when the 
block wms turned over upon this page, the marks would 
come right again, as here seen. 
This done, our Engraver took the block, and with small 
shaip chisels and gouges, cut away all the wood where 
there were no marks. He bad to work long, patiently, and 
carefully, for bad nit graver or tool slipped once, it would 
have clipped off some point that should have been left. 
As the marks are very small, tlie engraver usually places 
a magnifying glass on a frame between his eye and the 
block he is cutting. This makes the lines look larger 
and he can work around them belter, though he must 
keep his hand very steady. We forget, it was not his 
hand, but her hand, for tins picture chanced to be engrav. 
ed by a lady. You can readily imagine that it took long 
and patient work to make even tins one small picture, for 
there are, as we have before said, many hundreds of points 
and lines where the wood was left uncut. How much 
work do you think it takes to cut all the pictures that are 
printed from month to month in the Agriculturist, for they 
are all made just as we have described forthisone. Will 
you not look at them all with more interest hereafter, now 
that you know how much work it is to make even a single 
one T Just look at tlie many-engraving’s, flowers, and 
trees, and see the fine lines, and think how carefully the 
engraver must work to leave so many points and lines 
“ sticking up” on tlie surface of tlie block, and make ihem 
all “ back-handed” too, so that they will print right when 
turned over upon paper. 
fl Wlwn lh» Mi »4 m H’P 111x1(11, me uHntfW, >,» re «•», null 
him, the pressman, sets it on the limiting press and runt 
an inked roller on it The rollei leaves a little ink on 
each ponil of wood left by the engraver. A sheet of pa¬ 
per is then laid on and a heavy pressure put upon it, which 
makes tlie paper pick up the ink, and thus is f ormed the 
picture, made entirely of diminutive ink marks, if we 
find the picture or impression, or proof as we call it. all 
right, we then hand tlie block over to Our type setters. 
(“ compositors” we call them,) and they set it hi the page 
with tlie types or letters arranged, above and below and 
around it. This done, tlie page is ready lo be printed 
from, though, as we have before described, we first get 
a plast-r mold from the page—types, pictures, and all. 
and by casting into this tnoid some melted type meta 
we net as lid thin stereotype plate, having upon one side 
of it, just the projecting surfaces necessary to leave the 
ink on eve y - o you see on tlie page. These plates we 
keep using them lor extra editions whenever needed. 
The type is t- e to pieces again for a new page, and the 
wooden blocks, or wood engravings are stored away, 01 
perhaps loaned to a brother editor w ho does not wish to 
01 can not be at the trouble and expense of gelling up pic¬ 
tures. Sometimes these blocks or stereotype copies of 
them, are sent away over tlie ocean, to be used there, 
wliile we keep tlie stereotype fac similes in our plates. 
There now, after all our trying, we have used a word 
that you may not understand. “ Fac simile 1 ’—what does 
that mean ? Get down that big Dictionary - all that have 
earned one. For others vt ho have not got il yet. we’l I say • 
Fac, means made, and simile means just like. So fat 
simile means, made just like, ot an exact copy. 
New Problems. 
Prob 21—To arrange the following five pieces into a 
perfect hexagon— that is, a figure having six equal sides, 
Prob. 25 —Contributed by George H. Gilbert, Oheshrre 
Co., N. H — A gentleman gave to each of his sons a gat 
den. John’s garden was circular; James’was a rectangle 
rr square- The ground was worth 3 cenls per square fool 
and the price of each garden in 3-cenl coins just inclosed 
it—the coins being taken at 1-2 inch m diameter each 
What was tlie size and value of eacli garden 1 
Prob. 26—A farmer in plowing a square field contain¬ 
ing ten acres, went round the whole field, cutting a lur. 
row ten inches wide, and continued thus imtil he finished 
at the center Question 1st—How many miles did he 
travel. Question 2d—How many “bouts” did lie make? 
_This problem has been discussed for some time by a 
‘‘crowd of boys” at Henry, Marshall Co., ill. One of 
them has sent us their answer, which we will keep unti 
we hear from some of the rest of our large family ol hoys 
and girls. 
Answers to Problems, 
Prob. 12—We add to the small list of correct answerers 
of the difficult problem 12, the name of O W 1)., ol Great 
Falls, New-Hampshire, who, though lie modestly sup¬ 
presses his own full name, justly thinks ttie “Granite 
State” should have credll for mathematical skill and in¬ 
genuity alongside of New-Jersey and Pennsylvania We 
are happy to accord due credit, not only to the Granite 
State in general, but to Great Fails in particuiai, for to 
that single Post Office we send some forty copies of the 
Agriculturist. Are not they a reading people 1 
Prob 13—Additional answers received from J. Mor¬ 
gan, and from E. C. Selteck, Marion Co., Ill. 
Prob. 22—Q.—What will it cost to pave the space G 
between the two circular flower beds below, with grav 
el, at 12 cents per square yard ? The distance from a to I 
is 20 feet, and the circles 12 feet in diameter. 
Ans.—so and 2 mills 
Up to thin date. (Jan. 18), answers like the abote ha 
boon rof-ntvcii from IVnthw.n BlnkeslMe. Oakland ''' 
