Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879

"Play checkers," I suggested.

"No; only two can play that," objected Mamie. "Papa, don't you know something we can play?"

"Well," said papa, folding up his paper, "let me see. Bob, take yourself out of the lamp. Play 'Recondite Forms.'"

"What's recondite?" growled Bob.

"Recondite means hidden, concealed, and this game is called 'Recondite Forms' because— But you will understand it better after you have played it. I want pencils and some rather thin paper."

Bob and Mamie collected the pencils, I brought a supply of French note-paper from my desk, and we all drew our chairs about the table, ready for work.

Papa took a pencil, and made a kind of wiggle, like No. 1 in the picture; then he laid over that another sheet of paper, which was thin enough to allow the pencil mark to show through; this he carefully traced, so as to have an exact copy, and did the same with two other sheets; then gave us each one, and told us to see what kind of a picture we could make out of it; we might add to the line as much as we pleased, but we must not alter nor cross it.

"Oh," said Bob, "I don't know what to make!"

"Hush!" said Mamie; "I want to think."

Then silence reigned—at first puzzled, but afterward busy.

"I've got it!" shouted Bob, dropping his pencil.

"So've I," echoed Mamie.

"Now for a grand exhibition!" said papa, collecting the papers, and laying them in a row on the table.

Bob had made a parrot out of his "wiggle," papa a graceful floating figure, Mamie a high-heeled shoe, and I a fool with cap and bells.

"Now," said papa, "do you see why this is called 'Recondite Forms'? In this first line all the other figures were hidden, and it took only a few pencil strokes to bring them out."

"Yes, I see," said Bob. "Now let's try some more wiggles."

"Wiggles!" said papa; "I don't know but that's a better name than the other."

"Oh yes; re-con-dite is awful hard," said Mamie.

"Wiggles it is, then," said papa.

And "wiggles" it has been ever since. I will add, for the benefit of those outside my own small circle, that instead of French note-paper, the common white wrapping-paper, such as grocers use in tying up parcels of tea, is just as good for the purpose, and a great deal cheaper. With several sheets of this, and two or three lead-pencils, "wiggles" may be played for a whole evening.

In the picture No. 6 is a new "wiggle" for you to try your hand upon. See what you can make of it, and in the next number I will give you my idea.

Hats.—The felt hat is as old as Homer. The Greeks made them in skull-caps, conical, truncated, narrow, or broad-brimmed. The Phrygian bonnet was an elevated cap without a brim, the apex turned over in front. It is known as the cap of Liberty. An ancient figure of Liberty in the times of Antonius Livius, a.d. 115, holds the cap in the right hand. The Persians wore soft caps; plumed hats were the head-dress of the Syrian corps of Xerxes; the broad-brim was worn by the Macedonian kings. Castor means a beaver. The Armenian captive wore a plug hat. The merchants of the fourteenth century wore a Flanders beaver. Charles VII., in 1469, wore a felt hat lined with red, and plumed. The English men and women in 1510 wore close woollen or knitted caps; two centuries ago hats were worn in the house. Pepys, in his diary, wrote: "September, 1664, got a severe cold because he took off his hat at dinner;" and again, in January, 1665, he got another cold by sitting too long with his head bare, to allow his wife's maid to comb his hair and wash his ears; and Lord Clarendon, in his essay, speaking of the decay of respect due the aged, says "that in his younger days he never kept his hat on before those older than himself, except at dinner." In the thirteenth century Pope Innocent IV. allowed the cardinals the use of the scarlet cloth hat. The hats now in use are the cloth hat, leather hat, paper hat, silk hat, opera hat, spring-brim hat, and straw hat.

Sponges.—The coarse, soft, flat sponges, with large pores and great orifices in them, come from the Bahamas and Florida. The finer kinds, suitable for toilet use, are found in the Levant; the best on the coast of Northern Syria, near Tripoli, and secondary qualities among the Greek isles. These are either globular or of a cup-like form, with fine pores, and are not easily torn. They are got by divers plunging from a boat, many fathoms down, with a heavy stone tied to a rope for sinking the man, who snatches the sponges, puts them into a net fastened to his waist, and is then hauled up. Some of the Greeks, instead of diving, throw short harpoons attached to a cord, having first spied their prey at the bottom through a tin tube with a glass bottom immersed below the surface waves.

A YOUNG CENTENARIAN.

Lady (with an eye for the picturesque). "How old are you, little boy?"

Little Darky. "Well, if you goes by wot mudder says, I's six; but if you goes by de fun I's had, I's most a hunderd."

A NEW SERIAL

BY GEORGE MACDONALD

A brilliant serial story by George MacDonald, with illustrations by Alfred Fredericks, will shortly be begun in Harper's Young People.

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