You doubtless remember that an epact is the excess of the solar year over the twelve lunar months, or about eleven days. In Walsh’s _Mercantile Arithmetic_, published in 1807, there is an example that certainly would not have pleased Neal Dow. This is the problem: If 8 boarders drink a barrel of cider in 12 days, how long would it last if 4 more came among them? I quote another problem that must surely have sent the distracted teacher to her dictionary for first aid to the tormented: How much will 189 bazar maunds (a maund = 82.14 lbs.) 31 seer (a seer = 2.06 lbs.) 8 chattacks (a chattack = 1/16 of a seer, or 2 oz.) of sugar come to, at 6 rupees per maund? One arithmetic maker, Jacob Willetts, of Poughkeepsie, set many of his problems in rhyme; for instance, When first the marriage knot was ty’d Between my wife and me, My age was to that of my bride, As three times three to three. But now when ten, and half ten years We man and wife have been, Her age to mine exactly bears, As eight is to sixteen; Now tell, I pray, from what I’ve said, What were our ages when we wed? _Ans._--Thy age, when marry’d, must have been Just forty-five; thy wife’s fifteen. Dillworth’s _Schoolmaster’s Assistant_, first published in London in 1774 and reprinted in Philadelphia in 1769, and considerably used in the colonies, contains two examples which the author called “Pleasant and Diverting Questions.” The first is as follows: A farmer with a fox, a goose and a bag of corn has to cross a river in a boat so small that he can take only two of these three burdens with him at a time. How can he so handle matters that nothing will be destroyed, because he cannot leave the fox and the goose together, nor can he leave the goose and the corn. The next was an example, the solution of which might possibly be of practical help to distressed husbands: Three jealous husbands, each with a wife, meet on a river bank. How are they to cross so that none of the wives is left in the company of one or two men unless her husband is also present?