With pleasant plausibility Heine has traced the origin of one kind of fairy-lore to the associations and feelings which we form for familiar objects. A coin, a penknife, a pebble, which has long been carried in the pocket or worn by any one, seems to become imbued with his or her personality. If it could speak, we should expect to hear from it an echo of the familiar voice of the wearer; as happened, indeed, in Thuringia in the year 1562, when a fair maid, Adelhait von Helbach, was carried into captivity by certain ill-mannered persons. "Now her friends, pursuing, knew not whither to go, when they heard her voice, albeit very small and feeble, calling to them; and, seeking, they found in the bush by the road a silver image of the Virgin, which she had worn: and this image told them which road to take. Following the direction, they recovered her; the Raubritter who bore her away being broken on the wheel, and the image hung up for the glory of the Virgin, who had spoken by it, in the Church of our Lady of Kalbrunn." Again, these objects have such strange ways of remaining with one that we end by suspecting that they have a will of their own. With certain persons these small familiar friends become at last fetishes, which bring luck, giving to those who firmly believe in them great comfort and endurance in adversity. Who has not been amazed at the persistency with which some button or pebble picked up, or placed perchance in the pocket, remains in all the migrations of keys and pencils and coins, faithful to the charge? How some card or counter will lurk in our pocket-book (misnamed "purse") or porte-monnaie, until it becomes clear as daylight that it has a reasonable intelligence, and stays with us because it wants to. As soon as this is recognized--especially by some person who is accustomed to feel mystery in everything, and who doubts nothing--the object becomes something which knows, possibly, a great deal which we do not. Therefore it is to be treated with care and respect, and in due time it becomes a kind of god, or at least the shrine of a small respectable genius, or fairy. I have heard of a gentleman in the Western United States who had a cane in which, as he seriously believed, a spirit had taken up its abode, and he reverenced it accordingly. The very ancient and widely-spread belief in the efficiency of magic wands probably came from an early faith in such implements as had been warranted to have magic virtues as weapons, or to aid a pedestrian in walking. Hence it happened that swords which had been enchanted, or which had taken lives, were supposed to have some indwelling intelligence. Hence also the names given to swords, and indeed to all weapons, by the Norsemen. It was believed that the sword of an executioner, after it had beheaded a certain number of men, pined for more victims, and manifested its desire by unearthly rattling or ringing. Apropos of which I have in my possession such a