w: There sat "Walton's Kitty," dipping her
paw deep down into the pitcher, taking it out, and then lapping the
milk from it! If she dropped the smallest drop, she stopped and
cleaned that up, and then went on. As the milk dwindled to the
bottom of the pitcher she shook her paw around; and she never left
off until every drop of milk was gone!

Since then, the milk for tea stands in a covered pitcher, but
"Walton's Kitty" has hers in a tall, narrow goblet. It is a very
affecting sight, and people laugh till they cry as they watch
her.--Yours truly,

M.B.C.S.

FLINT ONCE WAS SPONGE.

You never would think it, would you, my dears? But the Little
Schoolma'am says that it was; and she always is right.

She says that flint really is nothing more nor less than sponge turned
to stone. Once the sponge grew at the bottom of the sea, as other
sponges grow now; but that was ages and ages ago, and since then the
sponge, turned to flint, has lain covered by rocks and earth of many
kinds piled thick above it. Seen with a microscope, flint shows the
make of sponge in its fibers; and sometimes you can see, bedded in it,
the shells of the tiny creatures on which the sponge had fed. Now and
then, inside a flint, will be found bits of the sponge not yet changed.

That last proof settles it; but I must say it's hard to believe;--hard
as the flint, almost.

SOME OLD PUZZLES.

Here are two letters, with old puzzles in them, that may amuse you for
a while on one of these shivery evenings, my chicks. I'll tell you the
answers next month.

Michigan.

DEAR JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT: The other night one of my brothers said he
did not believe we could pronounce a certain word after he should
have spelled it. I will tell you what it is, though you may have
heard about it already:

A cross, a circle complete,
An upright where two semi-circles do meet,
A triangle standing upon two feet,
Two semi-circles, a circle complete.

Yours truly, CORA.

Oswego, N.Y.

DEAR JACK: I send you a riddle which I found. I take ST. NICHOLAS
and like it very much. I have all of the volumes from 1874.

I am a word of plural number,
A foe to peace and human slumber,
Yet, do but add the letter S,--
Lo! what a metamorphosis!
What plural was, is plural now no more,
And sweet'