A good number of competitors had been unable to discover how these Nottinghamshire worthies obtained their unenviable notoriety. According to tradition, King John once intended to pass through Gotham on his way to Nottingham, but the inhabitants prevented him, for some reason or other best known to themselves. The king, in a rage, sent some of his servants to inquire why they had been so uncivil, and the Gothamites, hearing of their approach, thought of an expedient to turn away the monarch’s displeasure—they pretended more stupidity than really belonged to them. When the messengers arrived they found some of the inhabitants endeavouring to drown an eel in a pool of water; some were employed in dragging carts into a large barn to shade the wood from the sun, and lifting horses into lofts to eat hay; and others were engaged in building a hedge round a cuckoo which had perched in a bush. In short they were all employed in some ridiculous task or other, which convinced the king’s servants that Gotham was a village of fools—a reputation it has ever since maintained. Such is the story, but its truth is another matter. In one paper we find a good word for Gotham quoted from Fuller, to the effect that “Gotham doth breed as _wise_ people as any which causelessly laugh at their simplicity.” =65. Is length of life greater now than it used to be?= The best answer to this question will be to quote some interesting statistics given by Mr. Holt Schooling, who takes for the basis of his statements the three official English life-tables (for 1838-1854, 1871-1880, and 1881-1890). These tables show an increase in the second period over the first of 1.44 years expectation of life at birth to every male, and 2.77 to every female; and in the third period over the first of 3.75 to every male, and 5.33 to every female. In other words, 3¾ years of life have been added on the average to every male child, and 5¹⁄₃ years to every female child. Thus the children born in any one year in England and Wales will in the mass live more than four million years longer than at the beginning of the period dealt with in these tables. Girls who puzzled over such old examples as the Countess of Desmond, who is said to have died at 145, Thomas Parr, credited with 152, and Henry Jenkins, who is reported to have died at 169, should take note that the ages of these persons are generally allowed to have been much exaggerated, and that, even if the figures were authentic, it does not do, from a few isolated instances, to infer a general conclusion. =66. Of what literary work has it been said that it is “perhaps the only book about which the educated minority has come over to the opinion of the common people?”=