Deacon Green says that these letters were found on a wall in a church in Wales, painted, like a text, above an inscription of the ten commandments.

Some of you may have seen it before, he thinks; but, if not, it will be good fun for you to find out what it means.  He adds that there is but one letter of the alphabet wanting, to make sense; this is used over and over, and, if you put it into the right places, the text will turn into a rhymed couplet.

A REMEDY FOR HARD TIMES.

I have a message from a bird on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina.

“Here,” says my friend, “I lately found a remedy for hard times.  Looking for food one day, I came close to the home of a silk-spider who was about to make a new web.  Now, what do you think I saw him doing?  Why, he was eating up the old web, so as to turn it into thread again, and use it a second time!  Another curious thing that I found out about this economical old fellow is that, although he has a great many eyes, he can see only just well enough to tell light from darkness.”

Now, what in the world can be the use of that spider’s eyes, I’d like to know, if he can’t see the things around him?

A QUEER CHURN.

    New Haven, Conn.

Dear Jack:  Last year in April you gave us a picture of a very small doll-churn that a little girl had made, and I thought it was very ’cute.  But I read the other day of another churn quite as odd.  It is simply the skin of a goat, hung by a rope from the roof.  It is used in Persia, and, when they want to churn, they fill the goat-skin with milk, and swing it forward and backward until the butter comes.  The children do the swinging, and I think it must be better fun than turning a crank or working a plunger.—­Yours affectionately, O.T.

CATS IN SPAIN.

Cats have a nice time in Spain, I hear.  No dismal moonlight prowlings over fences and back sheds for them!  They have the roofs of the whole country for their walks, and need never touch the ground unless they choose.  I’ll tell you why.  Grain is stored in the attics of Spain, because they are too hot for anything else.  But rats and mice delight in attics, as well as in grain.  So each owner cuts a small door from the roof, big enough for puss, and any homeless cat is welcome to her warm home, in return for which she keeps away rats.  In a sudden rain it must be funny to see dozens of cats scampering over the roofs to their homes among the grain-bags.

“SINCERE” STATUES.

    Cambridge, Mass.