Various

“ People often grumble at the bore of letter-writing, but seldom think of the boon they enjoy in the penny post. To write, address, and post a letter—and this is all the sender is required to do—is a mere trifle, compared with the labour of the Post-office in earning the 'nimble penny,' which is affixed to the letter in the shape of the 'Queen's Head.' Think of what has to be done for a letter posted, say, in the suburbs of London, and addressed to some remote village in the north of England or in Scotland. ”

“ Some insects, as well as birds, are deemed ominous of evil. There are many, even among educated people, who cannot hear the ticking of the little beetle called the death-watch without a feeling of fear; and among the vulgar, the belief is universal that it presages death in the house. And yet it is only the male insect knocking his head against the woodwork as a signal to his mate. In some parts of England the elephant hawk-moth is regarded not only as presaging, but as producing murrain. The death's-head moth is regarded with even greater aversion. ”

“ Away he goes, ere yet it is daylight, bag on shoulder, stick in hand, thinking less, probably, of the precious secrets of which he is the bearer, than of his return with a similar, although probably a lighter load in the evening. His life is not exactly one round of pleasure, but an out-and-home sort of journey, in which there is very little real progress, and the 'lettered ease' of which consists in the occasional Sundays on which he is relieved of his burden. ”

“ It is true that Goethe says that 'English pride is invulnerable, because it is based on the majesty of money;' but he does not refer to the mean desire of gain. He has elsewhere indeed expressed himself with some favour on the national character: 'Is it then derivation, or their soil, or their free constitution, or national education—who can tell?—but it is a fact that the English appear to have the advantage of many other nations. There is in them nothing turned and twisted, and no half-measures and after-thoughts. Whatever they are, they are always complete men. ”

“ Janet was filled with indignation when Mrs Danton first took up her residence with Mrs Petre, as she well knew the inferiority of her position, which had hitherto only been acknowledged by the latter so far as the gift of an occasional sovereign or a bundle of cast-off garments went; and to have her suddenly set at the head of affairs, and to have to listen silently to her scurrilous abuse of Mr Aubrey, was more than Janet could calmly submit to. However, when Mrs Petre herself told her that she did not wish her to remain, she had no choice but to depart ”

“ On coming to live at the great palace he had built, she found herself treated like a princess in a fairy tale, surrounded with luxury, the richest gifts showered upon her, a host of attendants ready to obey her slightest whim, and above all, the orthodox Prince Charming to lay his heart at her feet. ”

“ The colour, the habits, and the hoarse croak of the raven may be supposed naturally suggestive of unpleasant thoughts; and it is easy to understand how the imagination may be affected by the loud hooting of the owl when it breaks the stillness of the night amidst the loneliness of the forest. ”

“ Perhaps the most curious of all the popular superstitions concerning insects (and we could narrate many) is one which prevails, in Suffolk at least, as to bees. It is deemed unlucky that a stray swarm of bees should settle on your premises, unclaimed by the owner; it presages a death in the family within a year. A popular belief in Suffolk is that it is unlucky to kill a harvestman—a long-legged spider, very common in the fields in autumn—because if you do kill one there will be a bad harvest. ”

“ La Bruyère says: 'Women for the most part have no principles, as men understand the word. They are guided by their feelings, and have full faith in their guide. Their notions of propriety and impropriety, right and wrong, they get from the little world embraced by their affections.' Alphonse Karr says: 'Never attempt to prove anything to a woman: she believes only according to her feelings. ”

“ There every one ought to know that the latter is harmless, and that it is easily distinguished from the viper, which is poisonous. Curiously, too, the blind-worm or slow-worm, which, although not now ranked by naturalists among true serpents, but among the lizards, agrees with serpents in general appearance, and is in many places regarded with the utmost dread, being popularly believed to be as venomous as the viper itself. This is the case equally where it is common, as it is in many parts of England, and in Scotland where it is rare and found in comparatively few localities. ”

“ To many the errors with which their superstitions are connected, and the superstitions themselves, appear supported by a great weight of authority, such as they have been accustomed most to respect—the authority of their seniors, and of those who are looked upon as the oracles of their little circle. And if they have not instances of their own observation to adduce in justification of their beliefs, they have been assured of instances enough that have come under the observation of others. ”

“ A curious inquiry it would be, How many abandoned ships are at this moment locked up in densely packed ice? No great difficulty will be felt in understanding that derelicts have a peculiar history in the Arctic regions. When a ship is left forlorn in any sea or ocean, the probability is that fire or leakage has rendered the abandonment necessary as the only chance of escape for passengers and crew. ”

“ The establishment consisted of a cook, a very old woman; a housemaid, equally elderly, who was supposed, as it afterwards turned out, to wait at table, and also to attend personally on Mrs Petre; and a rather more juvenile coachman, whose duty it was to drive out Mrs Petre daily in a small brougham with one horse, the lady being invariably accompanied by the other member of her household—last, but certainly not least in her own opinion, Mrs Danton, her cousin, confidante, companion, or custodian—whatever she was, no one seemed quite to know which. ”

“ A general favourite in society is usually thought to be an exceptionally clever and cultivated person; but this is not in fact the case. 'A delicacy of taste,' says David Hume, 'is favourable to love and friendship, by confining our choice to few people, and making us indifferent to the company and conversation of the greater part of men.... ”

“ Indeed, some of the stupidest works that have ever been published have appeared under the title of 'Beauties,' 'Selections,' 'Sayings,' &c., and have injured as far as possible the memories of those great men whom it was their object to embalm. To 'form a collection' from natural history, it is requisite that a man should not only possess the articles in question, but know how to arrange them both in order and by contrast ”

“ Let us hope that, by the progress of education, the minds even of the humblest classes of the people will erelong be freed from the fear of dangers merely imaginary, and elevated above the pitiful superstitions by which they are still too frequently enslaved and degraded. ”

“ There is gravity enough, but it is the gravity of a man who despises gaiety, without being able to rise by contemplation. The love of money always creates a certain coarseness in the moral texture, either of a nation or an individual.' This last remark has certainly an application on the other side of the Atlantic. ”

“ The woodpecker pecks only where the wood is already decayed, which it does in quest of insects and their larvæ, and by pecking out the decayed wood, prevents the gangrene from extending, thus doing good to the tree and not harm.
The popular errors regarding plants are not so numerous, so wide-spread, or so remarkable as those regarding animals; nor do they seem anywhere to have taken so firm a hold of the minds of any class of the people, if we except perhaps the popular ideas regarding mushrooms and toadstools. Many people imagine that all fungi, except 'the mushroom,' are poisonous. ”

“ Their sayings about them are very severe. 'Whenever two women form a friendship, it is merely a coalition against a third,' writes Karr; and even Rochefoucauld confesses, 'Most women care little about friendship; they find it insipid as soon as they have known what it is to love.' 'No woman is pleased,' asserts Octave Feuillet, 'at being told by a man that he loves her like a sister.' At the same time, our Parisian philosophers give every credit to female attractions. ”

“ She had been in power for about two years when they came to Hilton Lodge, and in that time Mrs Danton had wormed her way pretty successfully into the confidence of Mrs Petre's old friends, and poisoned their minds most thoroughly against her nephew, who after, to his great joy, having been sent for and fully forgiven by Mrs Petre, had suddenly been told his visits to her house were not desired, and that, although she had forgiven, she had no intention of holding any further intercourse with him! ”

“ Indeed, Mr Galton's views if carried to their full length would approach to fatalism, and might almost be placed beside the famous song of Messrs Moody and Sankey:
Doing is a deadly thing; doing ends in death. ”

“ How few of us can realise at the first blush what a thousand millions represents!
While the average number of letters to each person in the United Kingdom in 1875 was thirty-one, it was as high as thirty-five in England and Wales, and as low as thirteen in Ireland. Scotland occupies the happy medium between the two, shewing an average exactly double that of Ireland, and about twenty-five per cent. ”

“ This large moth, nowhere very common, has markings on the back and thorax somewhat resembling a skull and cross-bones; hence it inspires a superstitious terror, and its appearance is believed to be the harbinger of pestilence and woe. The ghost-moth inspires similar alarm. The female is of a dull brown colour; the upper surface of the male is of a silvery whiteness. In the evening the male makes his appearance, hovering over the grass in which the female lurks, often in churchyards where the grass is green and luxuriant. If alarmed, the insect disappears in an instant, settling on the ground ”

“ Every mushroom is a fungus; and although the term mushroom can never be applied to the minute fungi, such as blight, smut, mildew, and mould, it is very commonly applied to many of the larger kinds. Many fungi{112} are not only not poisonous, but are wholesome and pleasant articles of food. Truffles and morels are edible fungi, and though they are found in England, they are not so common anywhere in Britain as in some parts of the continent of Europe. Some other species are also occasionally gathered and used in England ”

“ Both in England and Scotland, however, far less use is made of the edible fungi than in France, Italy, Germany, and other continental countries, where they form a not inconsiderable part of the food of the people during summer and autumn; whilst with us, through ignorance and prejudice, they are allowed to rot and go to waste. It is proper to add, that of the larger kinds of fungi, many of the poisonous species are of the very group to which the common mushroom belongs ”

“ There may be a bag to sort and drop before the train has accomplished the first dozen miles of its journey. Our letter is amongst the heap lying ready to be operated upon; it will be got ready by-and-by, and towards the gray of the morning it will be dropped at some little roadside station, whither the mail-cart driver has driven half-a-dozen miles or more to receive it. Thence to the post-office, another half-dozen miles; and here again the familiar process of unpacking, resorting, and re-stamping. Our letter is not for the town at which the bag is opened, but for one of its outlying villages ”

“ Whenever a person of rank without abilities is placed in power, and to the surprise of everybody, does not make a complete failure, his friends say: 'Ah, but he has good administrative capacity;' and Vauvenargues has told us what it means. ”

“ Some other errors in the natural history of animals have been long and widely prevalent, but have no superstitions connected with them. It will be enough merely to mention them. It is a common but a purely erroneous belief that the goatsucker and the hedgehog suck the teats of cows lying in the field—the latter being persecuted on that account. The woodpecker is ruthlessly killed because of the injury which it is supposed to do to trees by pecking holes in the wood and causing them to rot. ”

“ The ignorant rustic imagines it to be a ghost; and even if it were caught and shewn to him, he would be hard to be persuaded that it has no occult relation to the dead, or that its appearance is not ominous of evil to the living. ”

“ Some excuse is therefore to be made for the general aversion prevalent in Great Britain to all kinds of fungi; and as long as we remain ignorant of the difference between the edible and the poisonous species, this aversion will naturally survive. But a wider diffusion of knowledge concerning the edible fungi is very desirable, and would enable many often to enjoy a cheap and agreeable repast.
The superstitions connected with plants seem also to have possessed less vitality than those connected with animals. In fact, they have mostly quite died out. ”

“ The desire to lay field to field and house to house has been the ruin of some great minds; but{103} it is generally an attribute of the small. A few have almost no other vice save that of acquisitiveness. A whole nation indeed is said to be characterised by it. ”

“ Jurists and legislators have had to determine the ownership of property that seems for the time to belong to no one. Derelict is the lawyers' name for such property, so far at anyrate as regards abandoned ships. Where a crew merely quit their ship to obtain assistance, or for any other temporary purpose, it is not derelict: they intend to return; but when the master and crew abandon her without hope of recovery, she becomes ownerless for a time, and then falls to the lot of the finder. ”

“ Similar to the popular opinion as to the blind-worm is that concerning the little active slender lizard common in moors, and that concerning the eft or newt, both of which are deemed extremely venomous, dangerous animals, whilst in reality both are quite harmless. We do not know how far the error as to the lizard prevails in England, but it is certainly very generally prevalent in Scotland, almost every rustic dreading what he calls an ask, that is a lizard, nearly as much as an adder. ”

“ Not a few even among generally well-informed people still imagine that all Fungi are poisonous—including even the mushroom. Many more take it for granted that all serpents sting, and that the forked tongue is the weapon by which the 'sting' is given ”

“ She tried hard to be a lady, and no doubt was fully persuaded that she succeeded in her attempts. By degrees, however, she made her way into the good graces of one or two of the families round about; and into their ears—often in Mrs Petre's presence, who would sit silently drinking in the oft repeated story of her wrongs—she would pour out the history of the nephew's delinquencies. Such a villain as Aubrey Stanmore, Mrs Danton alleged, did not exist ”

“ In London there are no fewer than eighteen hundred receptacles for letters, and of these more than eleven hundred are pillar and wall letter-boxes. The public have a peculiar affection for the pillar-box, thinking probably that it can tell no tales. The writer remembers perfectly well seeing a pillar-box thrown down by a passing wagon in one of the streets of London, and afterwards turned with the 'slit' or aperture downward, so that it might not be used until re-erected. ”