Merry's Book of Puzzles

CONTENTS.

	PAGE
The Nest Builders	7
Kindness	9
Snow Flakes	11
Spring Flowers	12
Top Philosophy	13
By the Lake	15
Gentle Words	17
The Frost	18
Skating—Woman’s Rights	21
School Sonnet	25
The Language of Flowers	27
The Song of the Exile	29
The Harvest	31
The Snow House	35
Cold Water	36
The Good Old Plow	39
Winter	40
June	43
Work and Play	44
The Butterfly	46
Cold Water	48
The Telegraph—its Secret	49
The April Shower	53
The Ostrich	56
The Plowman	58
The House-Dog "Watch"	59
Gone—all Gone	61
The Christmas Tree	62
My Mother’s Birthplace	66
The Song of Bob Lincoln	67
A Will and a Way	69
Blowing Bubbles	71
After School	75
The Nightingale	76
Leap Frog	77
A World of Love at Home	78
I must Hasten Home	79
The Evening Prayer	81
Acrostic	82
Our Nebby	83
The New Song	84
The Chinaman	85
The Indian Dandy	86
The Shadow	88

Transcriber's Note

Missing or damaged punctuation has been repaired.

Book 1.

Page 86: 11.: 'stich' corrected to 'stitch'.

"Stitch! stitch! stitch!"

Page 87: 42.: '10,000' corrected to '10,100'.

"Arithmetic!: 202 x 50 = 10,100"

Page 91: 123.:

123.

{

√(60 - 30²) = 51.96152
√(60 - 40²) = 44.72136

}

corrected to

123.

{

√(60² - 30²) = 51.96152
√(60² - 40²) = 44.72136

}

Page 92: 156. 'chittim wood'

Genesis 6, 14 in the King James Bible and the Revised Standard Version state that the ark was made of gopher wood, covered with pitch, inside and out. The New English Bible gives cypress ribs, covered with reeds, and then pitched, inside and out. Concise Oxford English Dictionary agrees with the King James version (and RSV). Some other versions of the Bible may have given chittim wood - an American shrub:

Chittimwood - definition of chittimwood by The Free Dictionary Noun, 1. chittimwood - shrubby tree of the Pacific coast of the United States; yields cascara sagrada. bearberry, bearwood, cascara buckthorn, chittamwood, ...
... and Merry's Book of Puzzles was published in New York.

Pp. various: 'rod' is a pre-decimal measure of length. A rod, pole, or perch - 5½ yards, or 16½ feet. = 5.03 metres

Book 2.

Page 18: 'wh' correctred to 'who'.

68. Behead an article of apparel, and leave one who sometimes wears it.

Page 35: 'diamter' corrected to 'diameter'.

"The third, of which the diameter is one foot, circumscribes the first and second."

Page 62: 'know' corrected to 'known'.

"My first in cities is well known"

Page 89: Second '102.' corrected to '103.'.

"103. Apollos."

Page 90: 'I'ts' corrected to 'It's'.

"146. When It's mild (it smiled.)"

Page 92: 242. 'Heah-less.' corrected to 'head-less.'

Page 93: 317. 'Heartseaso.' corrected to 'Heartsease.'

Page 94:

383. A yard and a quarter. Abe—Abe-L.

Ell (from Wikipedia)

... In England, the ell was usually 45 in (1.143 m), or a yard and a quarter. It was mainly used in the tailoring business but is now obsolete....

Book 3.

Pages 21-22: Illustration moved to front of poem to avoid breaking the stanza.

Page 51: 'Know-Kothing' corrected to 'Know-Nothing'

"Set me down for a Know-Nothing;"

Page 84: 'wo' is probably an old form of 'woe'.

"Ransomed from the depths of wo."

Page 90: The following extraneous entries have been removed from the list of Contents, and the (correct) page numbers below reinstated with the correct Poem titles.

Our Garret	71
Charley and his Boat	74
Blessed is he that Considereth the Poor	75
The Dissatisfied Angler Boy	77
The Destroyer Destroyed	79
The Rose in the Vale	81
Of What is the Alphabet Composed?	83
Geography and Astronomy	83
Going to School	84
The Way to Do It	85
When One Won't Quarrel, Two Can't	85
The Caterpillar	87
The Warning Bell	88

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