Part 1 — UNGUESSED RIDDLES.
Reading edition
As, on Louis Gaylord Clarke’s authority, “no museum is complete without the club that killed Captain Cook”—he had seen it in six—so no collection of riddles can be considered even presentable without the famous enigma so often republished, and always with the promise of “£50 reward for a solution.” It was first printed in the Gentlemen’s Magazine, London, in March, 1757.
The compiler of this little book has no hope of winning the prize, and leaves the lists open to her readers, with a hope that some one of them may succeed in “guessing” not only this, but the next riddle, of whose true answer she has not the faintest idea.
The noblest object in the works of art; The brightest scenes which Nature can impart; The well-known signal in the time of peace; The point essential in a tenant’s lease; The farmer’s comfort as he drives the plough; A soldier’s duty, and a lover’s vow; A contract made before the nuptial tie; A blessing riches never can supply; A spot that adds new charms to pretty faces; An engine used in fundamental cases; A planet seen between the earth and sun; A prize that merit never yet has won; A loss which prudence seldom can retrieve; The death of Judas, and the fall of Eve; A part between the ancle and the knee; A Papist’s toast, and a physician’s fee; A wife’s ambition, and a parson’s dues; A miser’s idol, and the badge of Jews. If now, your happy genius can divine The corresponding word in every line, By the first letter plainly may be found An ancient city that is much renowned.
The other unguessed, if not unguessable, riddle claims to come from Cambridge, and is as follows:
A Headless man had a letter to write; It was read by one who had lost his sight; The Dumb repeated it, word for word; And he was Deaf who listened and heard.
(See Key.)
QUESTIONS NOT TO BE ANSWERED UNTIL THE WORLD IS WISER.
Considering how useful the ocean is to mankind, are poets justified in calling it “a waste of waters”?
How can we catch soft water when it is raining hard?
Where is the chair that “Verbum sat” in?
How does it happen that Fast days are always provokingly slow days?
How is it that a storm looks heavy when it keeps lightening? And the darker it grows, the more it lightens?
When it is said of a man that “he never forgets himself,” are we to understand that his conduct is absolute perfection, or that it is the perfection of selfishness?
PARADOXES.
1st. Polus instructed Ctesiphon in the art of pleading. Teacher and pupil agreed that the tuition-fee should be paid when the latter should win his first case. Some time having gone by, and the young man being still without case or client, Polus, in despair of his fee, brought the matter before the Court, each party pleading his own cause. Polus spoke first, as follows:
“It is indifferent to me how the Court may decide this case. For, if the decision be in my favor, I recover my fee by virtue of the judgment; but, if my opponent wins the case, this being his first, I obtain my fee according to the contract.”
Ctesiphon, being called on for his defense, said:
“The decision of the Court is indifferent to me. For, if in my favor, I am thereby released from my debt to Polus. But, if I lose the case, the fee cannot be demanded, according to our contract.”
2d. A certain king once built a bridge, and decreed that all persons about to cross it, should be interrogated as to their destination. If they told the truth they should be permitted to pass unharmed; but, if they answered falsely, they should be hanged on a gallows erected at the centre of the bridge. One day a man, about to cross, was asked the usual question, and replied:
“I am going to be hanged on that gallows!”
Now, if they hanged him, he had told the truth, and ought to have escaped; but, if they did not hang him, he had “answered falsely,” and ought to have suffered the penalty of the law.