GLUT.-I grant it doth exhaust the purse. ECHо.-Worse. GLUT.-Is't this which dulls the sharpest wit? GLUT.-Is't this which brings infirmities? GLUT.-Whither will't bring my soul? canst tell? GLUT.-Dost thou no gluttons virtuous know? GLUT. Wouldst have me temperate till I die? GLUT.-Shall I therein find ease and pleasure? GLUT. But is't a thing which profit brings? What must be done to conduct a newspaper right?-Write. What would give a blind man the greatest delight?—Light. What is the best counsel given by a justice of the peace ?-Peace. Who commit the greatest abominations?-Nations. What cry is the greatest terrifier?--Fire. What are some women's chief exercise?-Sighs. REMARKABLE ECHOES. An echo in Woodstock Park, Oxfordshire, repeats seventeen syllables by day, and twenty by night. One on the banks of the Lago del Lupo, above the fall of Terni, repeats fifteen. But the most remarkable echo known is one on the north side of Shipley Church, in Sussex, which distinctly repeats twentyone syllables. In the Abbey church at St. Alban's is a curious echo. The tick of a watch may be heard from one end of the church to the other. In Gloucester Cathedral, a gallery of an octagonal form conveys a whisper seventy-five feet across the nave. In the Cathedral of Girgenti, in Sicily, the slightest whisper is borne with perfect distinctness from the great western door to the cornice behind the high altar,-a distance of two hundred and fifty feet. By a most unlucky coincidence, the precise focus of divergence at the former station was chosen for the place of the confessional. Secrets never intended for the public ear thus became known, to the dismay of the confessors, and the scandal of the people, by the resort of the curious to the opposite point, (which seems to have been discovered accidentally,) till at length, one listener having had his curiosity somewhat over-gratified by hearing his wife's avowal of her own infidelity, this tell-tale peculiarity became generally known, and the confessional was removed. In the whispering-gallery of St. Paul's, London, the faintest sound is faithfully conveyed from one side to the other of the dome, but is not heard at any intermediate point. In the Manfroni Palace at Venice is a square room about twenty-five feet high, with a concave roof, in which a person standing in the centre, and stamping gently with his foot on the floor, hears the sound repeated a great many times; but as his position deviates from the centre, the reflected sounds grow fainter, and at a short distance wholly cease. The same phenomenon occurs in the large room of the Library of the Museum at Naples. EXTRAORDINARY FACTS IN ACOUSTICS. An intelligent and very respectable gentleman, named Ebenezer Snell, who is still living, at the age of eighty and upwards, was in a corn-field with a negro on the 17th of June, 1776, in the township of Cummington, Mass., one hundred and twentynine miles west of Bunker Hill by the course of the road, and at least one hundred in an air-line. Some time during the day, the negro was lying on the ground, and remarked to Ebenezer that there was war somewhere, for he could distinctly hear the cannonading. Ebenezer put his ear to the ground, and also heard the firing distinctly, and for a considerable time. He remembers the fact, which made a deep impression on his mind, as plainly as though it was yesterday. Over water, or a surface of ice, sound is propagated with remarkable clearness and strength. Dr. Hutton relates that, on a quiet part of the Thames near Chelsea, he could hear a person read distinctly at the distance of one hundred and forty feet, while on the land the same could only be heard at seventy-six. Lieut. Foster, in the third Polar expedition of Capt. Parry, found that he could hold conversation with a man across the harbor of Port Bowen, a distance of six thousand six hundred and ninetysix feet, or about a mile and a quarter. This, however, falls short of what is asserted by Derham and Dr. Young,-viz., that at Gibraltar the human voice has been heard at the distance of ten miles, the distance across the strait.. Guns fired at Carlscroon were heard across the southern extremity of Sweden as far as Denmark,-eighty miles, as Derham states from memory, but according to the map, at least one hundred and twenty. Dr. Hearn, a Swedish physician, relates that he heard guns fired at Stockholm, on the occasion of the death of one of the royal family, in 1685, at the distance of thirty Swedish or one hundred and eighty British miles. The cannonade of a sea-fight between the English and Dutch, in 1672, was heard across England as far as Shrewsbury, and even in Wales, a distance of upwards of two hundred miles from the scene of action. The noise of the battle at Waterloo was very distinctly heard by a detachment of the Brunswick Hussars at Ghent. Puzzles. THE fastidiousness of mere book-learning, or the overweening importance of politicians and men of business, may be employed to cast contempt, or even odium, on the labor which is spent in the solution of puzzles which produce no useful knowledge when disclosed; but that which agreeably amuses both young and old should, if not entitled to regard, be at least exempt from censure. Nor have the greatest wits of this and other countries disdained to show their skill in these trifles. Homer, it is said, died of chagrin at not being able to expound a riddle propounded by a simple fisherman,-" Leaving what's taken, what we took not we bring." Aristotle was amazingly perplexed, and Philetas, the celebrated grammarian and poet of Cos, puzzled himself to death in fruitless endeavors to solve the sophism called by the ancients The Liar:-" If you say of yourself, I lie,' and in so saying tell the truth, you lie. If you say, 'I lie,' and in so saying tell a lie, you tell the truth." Dean Swift, who could so agreeably descend to the slightest badinage, was very fond of puzzles. Many of the best riddles in circulation may be traced to the sportive moments of men of the greatest celebrity, who gladly seek occasional relaxation from the graver pursuits of life, in comparative trifles. Mrs. Barbauld says, Finding out riddles is the same kind of exercise for the mind as running, leaping, and wrestling are for the body. They are of no use in themselves; they are not work, but play; but they prepare the body, and make it alert and active for any thing it may be called upon to perform. So does the finding out good riddles give quickness of thought, and facility for turning about a problem every way, and viewing it in every possible light. The French have excelled all other people in this species of literary amusement. Their language is favorable to it, and their writers have always indulged a fondness for it. As a |