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 rather idle, she has more time to occupy herself with these matters.  She has always had her head full of love and matrimony, she knows the dreaming book by heart, and is quite an oracle among the little girls of the family, who always come to her to interpret their dreams in the mornings.