It is, in Germany, a popular belief, that the Stag-beetle (perhaps the same insect) carries burning coals into houses by means of its jaws, and that it has thus occasioned many dreadful fires. (How convenient would Swing find such a superstition in England!) The Death-watch superstition is too well known to need particular notice in this paper.  It is singular that the House-cricket should by some persons be considered an unlucky, by others a lucky, inmate of the mansion:  those who hold the latter opinion consider its destruction the means of bringing misfortune on their habitations.  “In Dumfries-shire,” says Sir William Jardine, “it is a common superstition that if crickets forsake a house which they have long inhabited, some evil will befal the family; generally the death of some member is portended.  In like manner the presence or return of this cheerful little insect is lucky, and portends some good to the family.”

(To be continued.)

* * * * *

NOTES OF A READER.

DOMESTIC LIFE IN AMERICA.

Servants.

The following sketch of what the Americans feel on this point, from Mrs. Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, is clever and amusing:—­

“The greatest difficulty in organizing a family establishment in Ohio is getting servants, or, as it is there called, ‘getting help,’ for it is more than petty treason to the republic to call a free citizen a servant.  The whole class of young women, whose bread depends upon their labour, are taught to believe that the most abject poverty is preferable to domestic service.  Hundreds of half-naked girls work in the paper-mills, or in any other manufactory, for less than half the wages they would receive in service:  but they think their equality is compromised by the latter, and nothing but the wish to obtain some particular article of finery will ever induce them to submit to it.  A kind friend, however, exerted herself so effectually for me, that a tall stately lass soon presented herself, saying, ‘I be come to help you.’  The intelligence was very agreeable, and I welcomed her in the most gracious manner possible, and asked what I should give her by the year.  ‘Oh Gimini!’ exclaimed the damsel, with a loud laugh, ’you be a downright Englisher, sure enough.  I should like to see a young lady engage by the year in America!  I hope I shall get a husband before many months, or I expect I shall be an outright old maid, for I be most seventeen already; besides, mayhap I may want to go to school.  You must just give me a dollar and a half a week; and mother’s slave, Phillis, must come over once a week, I expect, from t’other side the water, to help me clean.’  I agreed to the bargain, of course, with all dutiful submission; and seeing she was preparing to set to work in a yellow dress parseme with red roses, I gently hinted, that