This Tale originally appeared as a serial in The Monthly Packet beginning in April 1880. The writer’s intention was to embody in each Knot (like medicine so dexterously, but ineffectually, concealed in the 
jam of our early childhood) one or more mathematical questions  in Arithmetic, Algebra, or Geometry, as the case might be  for the amusement, and possible edification, of the fair readers of that magazine.