Harper's Round Table, August 27, 1895 Part 11

It is desired to correct the Order's records, especially all changes in addresses. The new Patent is now ready, and all will want it. It is far handsomer than the old certificate. We make a special request, therefore, to all Founders and members to send us at once their names and permanent addresses. Use English capital letters, which you can easily make with your pen, and spell out in full at least one Christian or given name.

A "given" name is the name given you by your parents, as distinguished from your last name, which you have from your father. Use a postal card, not a letter, and put no other matter upon it. Address the card Messrs.

Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York, and put in the lower left-hand corner the words "Round Table." On the back of the card write the letter "A," and follow it with name, as directed, and address in full--street and number if any, town or city, and State. If you are a Founder, write that word in full anywhere on the card. Your new Patent will then bear that word. If you were not a Founder, do not use the word.

Remember that if a certificate was ever issued to you, you are still a member, no matter if you have now pa.s.sed your eighteenth birthday.

Chapter officers are asked to send, on postal cards, names and addresses of their Chapter members. They are also asked to send names of any grown-up friends of the Chapter whom they may wish to honor by making them Patrons of the Round Table Order.

All who have not pa.s.sed their eighteenth birthday, even if not formerly members, are urged to send postal cards as directed. So, too, are grown folks interested in the Order. If you have pa.s.sed your eighteenth birthday, and have not previously held a certificate of members.h.i.+p, send your name and address and use the letter "D." Members are urged to send names and addresses of their friends, that we may give Patents to them.

Your teacher may be made a Patron.

To all who comply with these suggestions we will send Patents in the Order, bearing their names, creating them Founders, Knights, Ladies, or Patrons. The advantages of belonging to the Order will be attached--and there are many. We will also send our prize offers for 1895-6, in which money incentives are to be offered for pen-drawing, story-writing, poems, nonsense verses, entertainment programmes, photography, and music settings, and for distributing some advertising matter about Harper's Round Table.

This matter consists of announcements and a Handy Book. The latter is a neat memorandum-book, which, besides blank pages, contains lists of words often misspelled, interscholastic sport records, a calendar, list of books to read, hints about amateur newspapers, how to get into West Point, values of rare stamps and coins, and a great number of other useful facts.

Of course no member or Patron is required or even asked to undertake this work any more than they are asked to compete for prizes. Many members wish to earn the rewards offered by the Table, and to all such we desire to offer the first chance. These rewards consist of Order badges in silver and gold, rubber stamps bearing your name and address, fifty visiting cards with the copper plate, and a very limited number, because we have only a few copies, of bound volumes of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE for 1893 or 1894. These rewards are offered, not for subscriptions, but for giving printed matter to your friends. The offer is limited, since we can allow only one member or Patron to accept it in each town or neighborhood.

We repeat that the Order has no "have to's." But it has many literary and prize advantages. We want the names and permanent addresses again in order to correct our records. To all who send us such we forward the Order's new Patent and our prize offers. Use a postal card--and write as soon as convenient.

Who can give Us a Morsel on This?

An experience I once had with a garter-snake leads me to believe that the family to which it belongs consists of more than one variety. One warm day in May, while scouring the woods in search of something of interest, I came upon a small pool at the edge of the woods, seemingly a drinking-place for cattle. Yet the water was black with a myriad of tadpoles, presided over by a monster frog--the largest I have ever seen. I was interested in the queer little wigglers, and did not notice the approach of a large snake, making its way to the pool, till it had taken its fill of water, as I then supposed. I quickly picked up a stone and killed the snake, at first thinking it to be a water-adder. A second glance showed it to be an unusually large garter-snake, less brilliantly striped than any I had before seen.

I was about to leave the pool when I saw that the reptile's paunch was considerably swollen, and that in it some live creature was imprisoned. This aroused my curiosity, and in another moment I had opened the paunch. To my astonishment seven squirming tadpoles wriggled out upon the ground. I placed them in the pool, and all swam off as briskly as before they had, Jonah-like, been swallowed by a hungry monster.

Since this experience I have questioned in vain whether or not there is a separate variety of the garter-snake which lives in or near the water; or whether the snake was of the common variety, and simply forced by hunger to make a meal of tadpoles. Can some one enlighten me?

VINCENT V. M. BEEDE, R.T.F.

EAST ORANGE, N. J.

One Way to Learn.

One of the best ways to broaden one's mental horizon, to make one think of more than the familiar things about him, is to enter into correspondence with persons who live in distant States and countries.

You can find such correspondents in a variety of ways. Look in your geography and see the name of a town in a far distant part of the country. Perhaps it is a small village. It has a princ.i.p.al of a public school. Write him a letter, briefly stating your purpose, and ask him for the name of a pupil who wishes to correspond with you.

Are you interested in stamps, bugs, b.u.t.terflies, minerals, rocks, plants, autographs, cameras, amateur papers--anything? Enclose in your letter a good specimen. It will interest somebody and hardly fail to bring you a response. You can also find addresses through Sunday-school teachers, Round Table Chapters, etc. Or you can, upon meeting a friend, ask him or her for names of relatives who might like to correspond, trade specimens, etc.

Use your ingenuity to find persons with the same hobby as your own. When you find them, write them a really good letter; that is, treat them well, not ill. Do not ask any one to excuse blots in letters. Busy business men even do not do that. They write the letter over again, and their time is more valuable than yours. Never say, "That isn't the best I could do, but it is good enough." Only the best is good enough. Treat your correspondents well, and you will derive much of both knowledge and pleasure from them.

A Fire by the Esquimaux Method.

I read about the Esquimaux method of lighting fires in _Snow-shoes and Sledges_. I had read about the method before, but had always been somewhat sceptical on the subject. But as the directions were plainer than any I had previously seen, I thought I would try it myself. I procured a piece of soft pine and worked a hole in it with my knife. The pencil I made of oak, and the piece that went on top of the pencil I made of whitewood.

I then took an old bow, and taking the string off, put on a larger one about an eighth of an inch in diameter. I took a turn of this around the oak pencil, and drew the bow back and forth. At first I could perceive no fire, but before long, to my surprise, the wood began to smoke, and when I took the pencil out I found it was somewhat charred. I have tried it several times since with more or less success. I would like to know whether any one else has tried this experiment, and how they have succeeded.

I would like some correspondents.

Ca.s.sIUS MORFORD.

BANFIELD, MICH.

Questions and Answers.

Avis K. Smith, Box 84, San Luis Obispo, Cal., wants to hear from a Chapter that admits corresponding members. Gerasime Dubois, 21 Chaussie du Vouldy, Troyes, Champagne, France, is a French Knight of the Order, and wants to correspond in French, German, or English, to improve his own and his correspondents' language construction. He will write in any or all of the languages. O. Prussack, R. T. K., 84 Norfolk Street, New York, wants to join a literary Chapter.

Elizabeth A. Hyde, 1458 Euclid Place, N. W., Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., wants to hear from other Was.h.i.+ngton members willing to help her get up an entertainment in that city in aid of the School Fund. S. L. Barksdale, a Mississippi Knight, says he has a good many correspondents. It is their custom, besides describing places each may have visited, to propound questions. They differ about answers sometimes, and so they send us five questions, agreeing to abide by our decisions. What is the Flower City and what the Flour City? Springfield, Ill. and Rochester. N. Y.

respectively. How does a spider get his web from one tree to another?

How does he spin a round web? How does he keep lines the same distance apart? And what keeps him from falling?

The spider possesses no special ability to get from one tree to another.

He depends upon the wind generally. He spins a single thread long enough to reach across and then trusts to the wind. If the end attaches itself at what he deems the wrong place, he goes over it where it is, or around by way of the ground and adjusts it. He makes the web regular, both in size and distances apart, because he possesses mathematical and mechanical instinct, just as does the bee, only in less degree. He keeps from falling by clinging to his web. He possesses no peculiar power in this respect over other insects. We cannot express an opinion whether a certain firm is reliable or not. The price of Abbott's _Life of Napoleon_ is $5 in cloth.

The rules of knucks up, with marbles, vary greatly. Here is one way to play it: Dig three holes in the ground three inches in diameter and four feet or more apart. The first player starting at the first hole tries to get his marble into the second hole. If he succeeds he takes a span with his hand and proceeds to the third; if he fails, the next player follows. Should he manage to get into the hole, he plays again, and can either try for the third hole or try to knock his opponent further away from the hole. He also has the privilege of a span. If he should hit his opponent's marble, the hit counts another hole for him, but he must put his marble into the hole he was playing for before he can shoot at his opponent's marble. There is a point to be gained in carrying your opponent's marble from hole to hole. You can finish the game in this way.

The players continue in this way until one or the other has gone up and down three times. The player who has lost the game places his clinched fist on one side of any of the holes, with his marble in front of his fist. The winner gets on the opposite side. He then takes aim, closes his eyes, and shoots. He does this three times, his eyes closed, and every time he misses, or hits his opponent's marble, he has to put his knuckles up on his side of the hole while the loser shoots at them.

These are called the "blind" shots. Then he shoots three times at the loser's knuckles with his eyes open. These shots he very seldom misses.

It is best not to have too many players, because there is likely to be confusion in the marbles and the holes. You can also play partners in the same way.

The largest city in the United States is New York, and its population, recently enumerated, is only a little below 2,000,000. The following States fought for the Southern cause of 1861, pa.s.sing secession ordinances on dates in the order named: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. The States of Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware refused to secede, but pa.s.sed ordinances declaring themselves to be neutral.

A VILLAGE OF CHESS-PLAYERS.

We learn from a foreign journal that the village of Stroebeck is known throughout the whole of Germany as the "chess-playing village." For centuries every native of that village, from the prosperous freeholder down to the poor shepherd, has been an enthusiastic and a more or less efficient chess-player.

From time immemorial the knowledge and love of the game have been handed down from one generation to another, and parents are still in the habit of teaching it to their children as soon almost as they are able to walk. It is one of the regular subjects taught at the village school.