Love-Charms

--Come, do not weep, my girl,
Forget him, pretty pensiveness; there will
Come others, every day, as good as he.

SIR J. SUCKLING.

The approach of a wedding in a family is always an event of great
importance, but particularly so in a household like this, in a retired
part of the country. Master Simon, who is a pervading spirit, and,
through means of the butler and housekeeper, knows everything that goes
forward, tells me that the maid-servants are continually trying their
fortunes, and that the servants' hall has of late been quite a scene of
incantation.

It is amusing to notice how the oddities of the head of a family flow
down through all the branches. The squire, in the indulgence of his love
of everything that smacks of old times, has held so many grave
conversations with the parson at table, about popular superstitions and
traditional rites, that they have been carried from the parlour to the
kitchen by the listening domestics, and, being apparently sanctioned by
such high authorities, the whole house has become infected by them.

The servants are all versed in the common modes of trying luck, and the
charms to ensure constancy. They read their fortunes by drawing strokes
in the ashes, or by repeating a form of words, and looking in a pail of
water. St. Mark's Eve, I am told, was a busy time with them; being an
appointed night for certain mystic ceremonies. Several of them sowed
hemp-seed, to be reaped by their true lovers; and they even ventured
upon the solemn and fearful preparation of the dumb-cake. This must be
done fasting and in silence. The ingredients are handed down in
traditional form:--"An egg-shell full of salt, an egg-shell full of
malt, and an egg-shell full of barley meal." When the cake is ready, it
is put upon a pan over the fire, and the future husband will appear,
turn the cake, and retire; but if a word is spoken, or a fast is broken,
during this awful ceremony, there is no knowing what horrible
consequence would ensue!

The experiments in the present instance came to no result; they that
sowed the hemp-seed forgot the magic rhyme that they were to pronounce,
so the true lover never appeared; and as to the dumb-cake, what between
the awful stillness they had to keep, and the awfulness of the midnight
hour, their hearts failed them when they had put the cake in the pan, so
that, on the striking of the great house-clock in the servants' hall,
they were seized with a sudden panic, and ran out of the room, to which
they did not return until morning, when they found the mystic cake burnt
to a cinder.

The most persevering at these spells, however, is Phoebe Wilkins, the
housekeeper's niece. As she is a kind of privileged personage, and