1875.1 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
27 
IB©YS dmw 
About ISall Covering. 
It requires considerable skill to cover a ball nicely, and 
when a boy is known to be handy at the job, his friends 
are quite sure to give him all the work of this kind that 
he wants. The old way was to make the covering like 
an orange rind, cut in quarters for peeling, and very good 
covers have been made in this way. The fault with this 
Fig. 1.—THE BALL COVERED. 
kind of a cover is that the seams all meet at one place, 
and the divisions all taper here to a point, so that this is 
the weak spot, and the place where the cover gives out 
first. The balls that are sold in the stores are covered in 
quite a different manner; there is no one point where 
the seams come together, and upon no part of the ball 
can any more seams be seen than in figure 1. The cover 
is made of two pieces of the shape showrn in fig. 2. And 
when put together upon the ball, each rounded end fits 
into the hollow part of the other piece, as shown in the 
upper part of fig. 2. For a ball 2J inches diameter, the 
pieces are, through the line A, 61 inches long, and through 
the narrowest part, B, 1 inch. A ball 2J inches through, 
will be about 7£ inches round, and the length of one of 
these pieces, and the width through the narrow part of 
the other, make 7J inches. In making a cover for balls 
of other sizes, this rule must be observed—the length of 
one of the pieces and the width of the narrowest part of 
the other, should be equal to the circumference of the 
ball. Figure 2 gives the proper shape, and this for a 
larger ball, can be readily got at by trying with a paper 
pattern. The leather is put on damp, so that it will be 
tight when dry, and allowance should be made for this. 
Aunt Sue’s Clints. 
Addie says they are “going to have a fair to make 
some money to pay for an organ ” at her church ; and 
that she is a 
little bit of a 
girl, but she 
wishes she 
could make 
something for 
it. Well, Ad¬ 
dle, suppose 
you begin by 
making some 
match - scrap¬ 
ers ; they will 
be very use¬ 
ful, if the 
Bridgets in 
your village 
' Fig. 1. — pin-cushion. scratch the 
walls with 
matches as ours do. Get two or three sheets of black 
sand-paper, (or emery paper,) at the hardware store, and 
one sheet of gilt paper, at the stationer's. Cut your 
sand-paper into pieces about six inches long by four 
inches wide. Stick each of these, with flour paste, on to 
a piece of cardboard the same size; then bind the edges 
with strips of 
gilt paper. Now 
make a cord by 
twisting together 
some worsted, 
(red and white, 
blue and white, 
or all of one 
color, if you r 
choose,) put a lit¬ 
tle worsted tassel 
at each end of 
the cord ; pierce 
two holes in the 
scraper, and put 
the cord through 
to hang it by, 
as you see in 
the cut, (fig. 2.) 
Then there is 
the “ tomato-pin¬ 
cushion,” which 
is very easy to 
make, and very 
useful in the 
ladies’ work-bas¬ 
kets, both for 
pins and needles. 
Cut two circles 
of crimson (or 
any other colored) merino, about as large as one of 
your little preserve saucers. Sew them all round, ex¬ 
cept a couple of inches, on the wrong side; then turn 
them. Fill the pincushion, (through the two inch open¬ 
ing left unsewed.) with bran, or clippings of flannel, un¬ 
til it is about full enough, (you will soon find out what is 
'‘enough”): then sew up the two inches. Now take 
some sewing silk of the same color as the merino ; 
thread your needle with it, doubled. Pass the needle up 
through the center of the cushion, take the silk over and 
under, and pass the needle up through the same hole 
again, drawing the silk pretty tight; repeat this until 
you have divided your tomato into the right number of 
sections, then fasten the silk off carefully, and your pin¬ 
cushion will be completed, and be like figure 1. 
Fig. 2.— MATCH-SCRAPEB. 
Diamond Puzzle. — 
B 
BED 
BEGUM 
BUN 
M 
Cp.oss-wonD Enigma.— Uncle Tim. 
Equivocal Words.— 1. Commit. 2. Concordance. 
Corn. 4. Count. 5. Crab. 0. Craft. 
Square Words.— 1.—M E A N 
ELLA 
ALUM 
NAME 
3. 
Transpositions.— 1. Brute, tuber. 
3. Talma, Malta. 4. Binder, rebind. 
2.—M ODE 
OPAL 
DARK 
ELKS 
2. Geneva, avenge. 
5. Grown, wrong. 
Arithmetical Puzzle. —Machine, engines. 
M- at -E 
A- 11a -N 
C- lo -G 
H-1 
I- :nna -N 
N- ic -E 
E- lve -S 
Pi.—A great genius will candidly acknowledge his de¬ 
fects. 
Thanks for letters, puzzles, etc., to Dot, Lily, Yankee 
Doodle, Bullfinch, G. II. Fuller, W. M. I., Mary J. D., 
O’Toole, Addie, and J. R. D. 
Send communications for the Puzzle Box to Aunt Sue , 
Box 111, P. 0., Brooklyn, Jff. Y., and not to 245 Broadway. 
Aunt file’s IPuzzle-lSox. 
CHANGED HEADS. 
Change my head several times and make: 1, An nni 
mal ; 2. An emotion ; 3. Beloved; 4. Accoutrements; 5 
One of Shakespeare’s characters; 6. 
Almost; 7. To elevate ; 8. To dry; 
9. To sever; 10. A period of time; 11. 
A dam ; and 12. A fruit. 
DOUBLE ACROSTIC. 
The initials form a city in Russia ; 
the finals a city in Ohio. 
1. A city in Pennsylvania. 
2. A city in Turkey in Asia. 
3. A county in Kentucky. 
4. A city in New York. 
5. A city in Austria. 
G. A county in Maryland. 
Billy Button. 
NUMERICAL ENIGMA. 
1. I am composed of 14 letters : 
My 9, 11, 14. is to prosecute at law. 
My 1, 2, 14, is color. 
My 5, 4. 7, 10, is to pierce. 
My 3, 7, 8. is a girl’s nickname. 
My 6,7, 3.12,13,14, is to cut to pieces. 
My whole is a musical instrument. 
Mary. 
SQUARE WORDS. 
1st.—1. To kiss loudly. 2. A fruit. 
3. Single. 4. A bow. 5. To bend 
down. M. M. 
2nd.—1. To submit. 2. To invest. 
3. A decree. 4. Money. 5. To hinder. 
F. Yondersmith. 
ANAGRAMS. 
1. Wire in tent. 6. A small herd. 
2. Missing toy. 7. This is Mac C. 
3. I laud a riot. 8. O ! cur is on gun. 
4. Cure Sir. 9. Free a crab ? No. 
5. O ! but I arise. 10. Go fly one bird. 
QUERY. 
What river in the South is suggestive 
of a fast person ? G. Farmin. 
RIDDLE. 
Two rows of men, all clad in snowy 
white, 
,7ho never leave their camp to show 
you fight, 
But if you venture in are sure to bite. 
Mrs. Lizzie Moore. 
The Doctor’s Talks—Blowing; 
Soap Bubkles. 
Where there are a lot of nephews and nieces, ranging 
ail the way from the ages of three to eighteen, who look 
to their uncle for amusement, it is not easy to hit upon 
something that will interest all. The other evening lit¬ 
tle Fanny proposed soap-bubbles. Whereupon Master 
Walter, with all the dignity that belongs to the mature 
age of 16, pooh-poohed at the idea—soap-bubbles would 
do well enough for little children, but they were quite 
beneath the attention of the venerable youth.—“Wat,” 
said I, “ there is a good deal to be learned from a soap- 
bubble. It is indeed a very interesting thing, and has 
been studied by some of the most learned scientific men, 
who have investigated it very carefully.”—“ Well,” said 
Wat, “ a soap-bubble is nothing but a soap-bubble, and 
all you have got to do is to blow it, and after you have 
made it, off it goes into nothing, and that’s all there is 
about it—science indeed; why, even Fan knows as much 
about soap-bubbles as the scientific men. The idea that 
there is anything about a bubble that we all don’t know 
seems to me absurd.”—“All right, we will make soma 
bubbles. Fanny will get the water and the pipes.”— 
“Water,” said Wat, “ you can’t blow bubbles with wa¬ 
ANSWERS TO PUZZLES IN THE NOVEMBER NUMBER. 
Numerical Enigmas.— 1. Lafargeville. 2. Thou shalt 
not steal. 
Puzzles.—1. Sackbut, (cask, tub, butt.) 2. Walnut, 
(nut, law.) 3. U C U 0 0, (you see you owe nothing.) 
THE SOAP BUBBLE TOY. 
ter.”—“Why not?”—“Because you can’t.”—“I fail to 
see that you have given any reason. And as you know 
all about bubbles, please tell us why you need soap in the 
water.”—“I know,” said Arthur, “it makes them hold 
together.”—“ Yes, that is the reason, the attraction be¬ 
tween the molecules of soapy water is greater than that 
