the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses. A neighbor of
mine, in speaking of this conjuration, adduces a case in point. One of
her schoolmates made the experiment and saw the face of a strange man in
the glass; and many years afterwards she saw the very man pass her
father's door. He proved to be an English emigrant just landed, and in
due time became her husband. Burns alludes to something like the spell
above described:--

"Wee Jenny to her grannie says,
'will ye go wi' me, grannie,
To eat an apple at the glass
I got from Uncle Johnnie?'
She fuff't her pipe wi' sic a lunt,
In wrath she was so vaporin',
She noticed na an' azle brunt
Her bran new worset apron.

"Ye little skelpan-limmer's face,
How dare ye try sic sportin',
An' seek the foul thief ony place
For him to try your fortune?
Nae doubt but ye may get a sight;
Great cause ye hae to fear it;
For mony a one has gotten a fright,
An' lived and died delecrit."

It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that
this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England.
The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose. Not without results
have our lyceum lecturers and travels of Peter Parley brought everything
in heaven above and in the earth below to the level of childhood's
capacities. In our cities and large towns children nowadays pass
through the opening acts of life's marvellous drama with as little
manifestation of wonder and surprise as the Indian does through the
streets of a civilized city which he has entered for the first time.
Yet Nature, sooner or later, vindicates her mysteries; voices from the
unseen penetrate the din of civilization. The child philosopher and
materialist often becomes the visionary of riper years, running into
illuminism, magnetism, and transcendentalism, with its inspired priests
and priestesses, its revelations and oracular responses.

But in many a green valley of rural New England there are children yet;
boys and girls are still to be found not quite overtaken by the march of
mind. There, too, are huskings, and apple-bees, and quilting parties,
and huge old-fashioned fireplaces piled with crackling walnut, flinging
its rosy light over happy countenances of youth and scarcely less happy
age. If it be true that, according to Cornelius Agrippa, "a wood fire
doth drive away dark spirits," i