LADY BABBIE.—It is related of a great physician that a girl once came to him complaining, as you do, that she made horrible grimaces, moving her scalp and eyebrows about in a most absurd manner, and making herself look ridiculous. Of course he knew at once what was the matter, and said to her, “Let me see you make these grimaces.” When she had finished, he said to her, “What you have got the matter with you is of no moment, but I warn you not to let anyone see you making those grimaces, because when you do so you present a striking resemblance to Mrs. ——” (a famous criminal of the time, then “wanted” by the police), “and you may get run in if you don’t take care!” This so frightened the girl that she never made grimaces again! This curious habit can be cured, as you see. It is semi-involuntary—that is, it was originally voluntary, but from constant repetition it has become a habit. It is a habit from which you must break yourself. It is no good saying you cannot—we say you can; but you must try, and at present avoid anything which is liable to produce it. We have not asked you to do anything impossible—“to do lessons or anything of _that_ sort”—but why do you have such an objection “to do lessons or anything of _that_ sort?” You will find that there are more unpleasant things in life than lessons! MISCELLANEOUS. REBECCA.—The invention of the gamut and the lines of the stave is attributed to D’Arezzo, an Italian who flourished in the eleventh century. At the Vatican, and in the King’s Library, Paris, there are valuable copies of his famous _Micrologus_. PERPLEXED.—We think it would be for your own happiness if you cleared up the question, as no honest man has any right to be paying his addresses to two women at once. If you have a mother, you had better let her make the inquiry. MARGUERITE.—The simnel-cakes made in Lent, at Eastertide, and Christmas, in Shropshire and Herefordshire—more especially at Shrewsbury—date back to great antiquity. Herrick speaks of them in one of his epigrams, from which it appears that at Gloucester it was the custom for young people to carry simnels to their mothers on mid-Lent Sunday, called “Mothering Sunday.” In Mediæval Latin it is called _siminellus_, and is derived from the Latin _simila_, or fine flour. Like the religious signification of the hot-cross-buns, the simnel-cakes were, in early times, marked with a figure of Christ or of the Virgin Mary. The Pagan Saxons ate cakes in honour or commemoration of their goddess Eastre, and, unable to prevent people from so doing as a heathen custom, the Christian clergy had the buns marked with a cross, to remind them of our Lord and His work of redemption.