DURING MY SUMMER outing I picked up the following odd piece of history which bears out the claim that one trick, with the knack of showing it cleverly, or even a couple of conundrums trotted out at opportune moments, will give a stupid fellow a life-long reputation for smartness: Captain Woods, who for many years used to pilot the little steamboat so close up under the falls of Niagara, had two stock jokes which were sprung on every trip, and which lasted him during his eventful life.

Of course, veterans who made the trip in days of yore will remember the jolly captain and his pet cat, as well as his two jokes, which penetrated with the driving mists through their oilskin caps. It always commenced and ended in the same way. Moving his hand carefully along the side rail of the boat, as if examining the woodwork minutely, he would look up inquiringly and ask: “I say, stranger, do you know what this boat is made of?”

“Why, pine or oak, isn't it?”

“No, sir-ree, sir! Nor it ain’t hemlock nor cedar, neither. And can you tell me why we call this cat Niagara?”

After you gave up both questions, he would give the answers, and laugh just as heartily as if he had not enjoyed the same jokes right along for nearly half a century.

Can you guess the answers to the two conundrums?

2. A Big Pain

Not wishing to dissent from the poet of Stratford, who some three hundred and odd years ago told us that�”

The poor beetle that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

I wish to quote my old friend P. T. Barnum, as differing with the above sentiment so often quoted to us in our childhood days when we found pleasure in pulling wings from flies. He used to say that, despite of his great hulk, Jumbo's appreciation of pain was out of all proportion to his size. On one occasion when he was afflicted with a simple green-apple stomach-ache, he howled in such a way as to drown the members of the combined menagerie who roared out of sympathy, and would not be pacified until they sent home for his regular physician. The story is such a good subject for a puzzle idea that our juveniles are asked to discover the locality of the incident, hidden in the description of the picture.