And the marshal was as good as his word. [B] ...[missing text]... Hercules" is said to have achieved a similar feat more than once. [Illustration] JACK-IN-THE-PULPIT. It is beginning to feel something like spring. However, we mustn't be too certain, for April is the month for little tricks of all kinds. Let us be careful and not be caught by make-believe spring weather. HAIR-BRAIDS IN THE OLDEN TIME. I'm told that, eight centuries ago, girls and women wore their hair in braids. Each woman had two braids, which she slipped separately into long, narrow cases of silk, or some other material, and wound with ribbon. They hung like base-ball bats. On the statue of a queen of those times, the braids, cased in this style, reached lower than the knees. Years ago, every British sailor dressed his hair in a pigtail at the back, so that it hung "Long and bushy and thick, Like a pump-handle stuck on the end of a stick." I heard of one sailor whose mates did his hair so tightly that he couldn't shut his eyes, and he nearly got punished for staring at his commanding officer,--a hair-breadth escape, as somebody called it. KNOTS AND THE NORTH POLE. My feathered friends tell me of a bird called the knot, something like a snipe in shape, whose color is ashen gray in winter and bright Indian red in summer. They say he is very particular about the weather, and likes best fine bracing days with sunshine and a moderate breeze; so, in winter he flies south, but in summer he goes farther north than man has yet been able to go. Now, I've been told that the farther north you go, the colder is the climate; but this bird, who likes pleasant weather so much, goes beyond the coldest places known! Perhaps he has found a cheerful and comfortable summer home, bright and bracing, somewhere near the North Pole, on which somebody will find him, may be, one of these days, quietly perched, preening himself, and looking at a distance like a bit of red cloth on a broomstick. If he _has_ found a cozy spot away up there, he's smarter than any Arctic explorer I ever heard of. THE TRAILING ARBUTUS. Johnstown, Pa., March, 1878.