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Show New Moons. In former years the night watchmen of European towns, as they went their rounds, called out the hour and the etate of the weather, j These watchmen were generally old men, whose infirmities, rather than their fitness, made them guardians of the night. Of one of them, a watchman of Canterbury, Cooper, the English artist, tells a story amusingly illustrative of the mental dullness of the class. One night it had been raining between the hours of the old man's rounds, a fact of which he was ignorant, having snoozed, as usual, in his watch box. When he started on his next round the rain had ceased, and the light of the inoon was reflected in many pools of water. As the old man went along he was heard to call out: j "Past 11 o'clock, a wet night and more j moons than usual!" |