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363 THE GREAT SIBERIAN ROAD IN WINTER 363 All the scholars of the Sunday-school, to my great surprise, were standing in their places with their backs to the plat- form. As I came in, however, the superintendent said, " You will now please resume your seats," and the boys and girls all turned around and sat down. The superintendent then gave out a hymn, and while it was being sung I made a few notes on the back of an envelope to aid me in the ex- tempore address that I was about to deliver. I decided to give the scholars a talk on the comparative merits of Bud- dhism and Mohammedanism, and I was just considering the question whether I should not also include fetishism when the hymn came to an end. The superintendent then announced, "We will now proceed to the lessons of the day." " Good!" I said to myself ; "that will give me time to think up my speech." As the recitation began I noticed, to my surprise, that all the scholars held in their hands big, round soda-biscuits, which they looked at now and then as if they were lesson- books. I did not have time, however, to investigate this remarkable phenomenon, because it was urgently necessary that I should get my extempore remarks into some sort of shape before the superintendent should call upon me to speak. I paid no heed, therefore, to the questions that he was propounding to the scholars until he came to one that nobody, apparently, could answer. He repeated it solemnly several times, pausing for a reply, until at last it attracted my attention. It was, "Who was the first progressive-euchre player that after his death was brought back from Alaska amid the mourning of a nation?" As I glanced around at the faces of the scholars I could see that everybody had given up this extraordinary conundrum, and I turned with interest to the superintendent, expecting that he would in- form us who this lamented Alaskan euchre-player was. Instead of doing so, however, he bowed towards me and said, "The distinguished friend whom we have with us to- day will please tell us who was the first progressive-euchre