Older children have innumerable tricks of this kind. A sort of game is to strike on a table with a spoon or on the floor with a card and repeat the formula “He can do little who can’t do this, this,” and pass the stick or spoon to the next neighbour with the left hand. The uninitiated who attempt to do this usually pass it with the right hand and are much puzzled when told that they are wrong. There is much of this element, too, in the games of magic which children are so fond of. For examples of it among adults it is only necessary to turn again to the old jokes of students. In a university town a merchant, Karl Klingel, was roused in the middle of the night by a ring at the bell. The visitor was a student named Karl, who pretended to think that the name on the sign was a signal for him. “Mystification,” says Goethe in Wahrheit und Dichtung, “is and ever will be amusement for idle people who are more or less intelligent. Indolent mischievousness, selfish enjoyment of doing some damage is a resource to those who are without occupation or any wholesome external interests. No age is entirely free from such proclivities.” Moreover, one whole day in every year is given over to this jesting deception. The civilized world over the first of April is fool’s day. Wagner thinks that this custom arose from the change of the new year from the vernal equinox to January 1st, thus giving to the customary exchange of New Year’s gifts the character of jests, and to those who should forget the change of time the appearance of fools. So they are called Aprilnarren, poisson d’Avril, April fools, and in Scotland gowks.[462]