Byron, your riddle is dark, I confess,
But dark as it is, I will venture to guess.

Though 'tis found not in youth, nor in manhood, nor age,
Though a stranger alike to the fool and the sage,
Though earth don't contain it, the sun nor the moon.
Though in darkness 'tis absent, and also in noon;
Though 'tis not found in searching the heavens sublime;
Yet by guessing, I think I shall guess it in time.

If disease must possess it, and sickness and pain,
If suspended in air and has long lived in vain,
If in sin you can find it, I will not deny,
As you are freed from it, it must then be =I=.

How "Yankee Doodle Came to Town."

The Famous Air Had a Checkered Career and Hobnobbed With Some
Queer Lyrics Before a British Surgeon Unwittingly Gave to
the American Patriots a Battle Song.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

Our oldest national nickname is "Yankee." In the early Colonial days, the
Indians stumbling over the pronunciation of the language of the pale-face,
called the English "Yenghies." By corruption, "Yenghies" became "Yanghies"
and "Yankees." The settlers took the word "Yankees" back again from their
copper-skinned neighbors, and they seem to have used it in a slangy way.

As early as 1713 Jonathan Hastings, a farmer of Cambridge, in New England,
used the word as a synonym for excellence, saying of anything which he
especially admired:

"It is Yankee good"--that is, probably: "It is as good as if English
made."

However, it is worthy of note that Jamieson's "Scottish Dictionary" gives
a Scottish word, "Yankie," with the definition: "A sharp, clever woman, at
the same time including an idea of forwardness."

The modern notion of Yankee shrewdness might seem to justify the
derivation from the Scottish, but, as it happens, the Yankee was not
generally considered shrewd and clever until a much later period than the
pre-Revolutionary days.

Perhaps, as the occasional explanation has it, the people of the other
colonies got to calling New Englanders "Jonathan Yankees," after Jonathan
Hastings. Also it may be true that the word has more than one
derivation--a possibility which will become apparent when we consider the
origin of the song "Yankee Doodle."

Everybody knows the tune of "Yankee Doodle," but few people know the
words. The air has been ascribed to several different countries. Kossuth,
during his visit to the United States, recogn