One day twelve men of Gotham went a-fishing, and on their way home they suddenly discovered that they had lost one of their number, and each counted in his turn, and could find only eleven. In fact, each forgot to count himself. In the midst of their distress--for they believed their companion to be drowned--a stranger approached, and learnt the cause of their sorrow. Finding they were not to be convinced of their mistake by mere argument, he offered, on certain conditions, to find the lost Gothamite, and he proceeded as follows. He took one by one each of the twelve Gothamites, struck him a hard blow on the shoulder, which made him scream, and at each cry counted one, two, three, &c. When it came to twelve, they were all satisfied that the lost Gothamite had returned, and paid the man for the service he had rendered them. As a chap-book, this history of the men of Gotham became so popular, that it gave rise to a host of other books of similar character, which were compiled at a later period under such titles--formerly well known to children--as, "The Merry Frolicks, or the Comical Cheats of Swalpo;" "The Witty and Entertaining Exploits of George Buchanan, commonly called the King's Fool;" "Simple Simon's Misfortunes;" and the like. Nor must it be forgotten that the history of Eulenspiegel was the prototype of a class of popular histories of larger dimensions, represented in our own literature by "The English Rogue," the work of Richard Head and Francis Kirkman, in the reign of Charles II., and various other "rogues" belonging to different countries, which appeared about that time, or not long afterwards. The earliest of these books was "The Spanish Rogue, or Life of Guzman de Alfarache," written in Spanish by Mateo Aleman in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Curiously enough, some Englishman, not knowing apparently that the history of Eulenspiegel had appeared in English under the name of Owlglass, took it into his head to introduce him among the family of rogues which had thus come into fashion, and, in 1720, published as "Made English from the High Dutch," what he called "The German Rogue, or the Life and Merry Adventures, Cheats, Stratagems, and Contrivances of Tiel Eulespiegle."