Almost any one could do all this.  If the scientific gentlemen in question desire to undergo some really notable hardships there are plenty of deep lakes in New York, at the bottom of which they might spend the winter in a diving-bell.  They would probably be frozen in until March, and they would find it much more difficult to use their instruments, and everything far more disagreeable, generally, than in a large room in the Tip-top House.

Still if they would prefer something still more arduous, let them ride day and night, from December until March, in the Third Avenue cars of this city.  If they were to do this, and confine their scientific labors to observations of the decidedly mean altitude of the Sun, they would probably suffer more, in a given time, than any previous party of learned men, and thus accomplish their object much better than by deliberately allowing themselves to be snowed up on Mount Washington.

* * * * *

A SURPRISING PROPHECY.

Years ago Mr. PUNCHINELLO had a very old grandfather, and he well remembers that on the inside of the lid of a certain horse-hair trunk, the property of that estimable old man, was pasted a bit of poetical prophecy, the words of which embedded themselves, like the hot letters of a branding-iron, on the tender skin of Mr. PUNCHINELLO’S mind.  The following is the prophecy: 

    “Add seventy-four and 62,
    And forty and 900 too;
    Then, if to this sum you place
    Seven hundred and an ace,
    You will surely find the year
    When they ought to disappear—­
    Both a Certain Holy ’un
    And the last NAPOLEON. 
    And darkness will come wholly on
    The Sun.  Day, natheless, will glow
    Down in the regions far below.”

Now this is certainly a very astounding prophecy.  If the numbers mentioned at the beginning of the oracular ditty be added together without using the ace, they make the year 1776.  Now the value of an ace in Seven-up (and seven is the uppermost word in the line in which our ace occurs) is four.  So four, added to the former sum, makes the year 1780.  But even the first NAPOLEON had not made his appearance in this year, and so it would seem there must be a mistake somewhere.  But such is not the case.  If, after the manner of the regular prophecy-makers, we treat this sum according to the rule of probabilities, we shall see that, if “seventeen-eighty” will not work prophecy, we must reverse the year and call it “eighteen-seventy.”  This hits the mark exactly, and makes us tremble at the prophetic power of some of those old delvers in the mines of dark prediction.

For now we see plainly that not only the Pope and the ex-Emperor of France will probably disappear this year from the scenes of their glory, but that the Sun, over which a certain dirty mistiness has been stealing for some time past, will be entirely shrouded in the blackness of ruin.  The lines