So in the morning they went; and there were half a dozen cranes, each standing, as is the way of cranes, on one leg. “There, master,” she said, “what did I tell you? only one leg!” The master clapped his hands, and said “Shoo! shoo!” and all the birds put down the other legs, ran a few yards, and flew away. “What did I tell you?” he said, “Two Legs!” “Ah,” said she, “but if you’d have clapped your hands and said Shoo, shoo, at that crane last night, maybe he’d have put down another leg and flown away, and you’d have lost your supper.” The difficulty was with the girls. In a mixed school, while the boys were laughing, the girls in the same class would be reflecting that the cook “didn’t ought to have took the leg,” speculating also whether they should write “crain” like “rain,” or “creign” like “reign.” Androcles is their man. But even the boys failed me sometimes. This was notable in the extreme case of the Speculative Maid and the Hamburg lottery. I told it to my best boys’ school with much confidence: “There was a lottery in Hamburg last year, and the first prize was £1,000. The tickets were sold in the Town Hall, and the Mayor was there to see fair-play. About an hour after they began to sell, a servant girl came in a great hurry and said she wanted to buy No. 23. They told her it was sold already. She cried so much that the Mayor asked whether another ticket wouldn’t do as well: she could have No. 21. But she said ‘No,’ she must have 23, and no other. The Mayor was so sorry for her, that he sent a clerk to the man who bought No. 23, and asked him to change it. This was done without any trouble, and the girl went away happy. When the lottery was drawn, No. 23 won the first prize of £1,000, and the Mayor was so much surprised that he sent for the girl and asked her what made her think of that number. “Well,” she said, “it was this way: I had a dream that No. 7 won it; and then I dreamt again that 7 won; and then a third time I dreamt that 7 won; and I said to myself ‘three sevens is 23,’ and I came here and got it.” And when I had got to the end, the whole class rose deferentially from their seats, and said, “Three sevens are 21.” Let me add two wholly irrelevant appendices--appendicitis is the disease of the story-teller: First, was it Huxley or Tyndall, who, after hearing this, said it was the only dream story that ever carried conviction to his mind? Secondly, I was told on the highest authority that the story is traditional in the Deanery of Westminster, because it was told there at the dinner table of Arthur P. Stanley; whose bent was not scientific: and when it came to an end, all laughed except the Dean, who, after some thought, said he could not see the joke: but, after increased laughter of the others, hazarded the surmise that “perhaps three times seven is not 23?”