A correspondent of the “Notes and Queries” mentions the Cricket’s cry as foreboding good luck.[287] So also a writer for “The Mirror,” remarking, 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, he adds, consider the destruction of these insects the means of bringing misfortunes on their habitations.[288] Grose thus expresses this last superstition: Persons killing these insects (including the Lady-bird, before mentioned) will infallibly, within the course of the year, break a bone, or meet with some other dreadful misfortune.[289] That the belief that the appearance of Crickets in a house is a good omen, and prognosticates cheerfulness and plenty, is pretty generally entertained in England, may be inferred also from the manner in which it has been embodied by Cowper, in his address to a Cricket Chirping on his kitchen hearth. His words are: Whereso’er be thine abode, Always harbinger of good. And again in that admirable little tale of Charles Dickens, entitled “The Cricket on the Hearth,” this good and happy superstition is embodied. “It’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has been so. To have a Cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in the world,” says its heroine. All these superstitions are more or less entertained in America, brought here by the English themselves, and retained by their descendants. That the Cricket is the “harbinger of good,” it gives me pleasure to say, is the most common. Another superstition obtaining in this country, and particularly in Maryland and Virginia, is that Crickets are old folks and ought not therefore to be destroyed. This probably arose from Crickets being found about the kitchen hearth where the old folks were accustomed to sit. Milton chose for his contemplative pleasures a spot where Crickets resorted: Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the Cricket on the hearth.[290] The learned Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amusement in his study.[291] Mrs. Taylor, the writer of a very interesting series of papers on insects for Harper’s Magazine, relates that in her travels through Wales, she obtained several House-crickets in the old Castle of Caernarvon. These she carried with her, in her journeyings to and fro over the Kingdom, for several years, and at last brought them to this country, where they were liberated in the snuggest corner of a Southern hearth. Again a wanderer for many years, she went back to the old house to see how her chirping friends were coming on, but, alas! she was told by the then residents, with the utmost calmness, “they had had great difficulty in _scalding_ them out, and they hoped there was not one left on the premises!”[292]