Apples have a quite different use. On Halloween they are placed in large quantities in a big tub nearly full of water. The apples are then stirred round vigorously, while the boys and girls, each in turn, try to snatch an apple from the water, not using their hands, but their teeth alone. Sometimes one has to dip one's head right down to the bottom of the tub in chase of a big apple, and that is rather a chilly experience, as I am able to testify. The modern plan of dropping a fork into the tub, over the back of a chair, may spoil, just a little, the apples that are impaled, but it is a good preventitive of a cold in the head--the usual result of ducking for apples. There are many other customs connected with Halloween, some of them mysterious and uncanny, which you will learn by and bye. But these two, the burning of nuts and the hunting of apples will do you no possible harm. On the contrary, where there is a lot of you children present, they will give much innocent fun and laughter. GUY FAWKES' DAY. There is another name for this day; it is sometimes called Gunpowder Plot Day, and that name informs us how it happened that the 5th November became famous in English history. That was the day upon which a few Catholic gentlemen, over-zealous for their religion, determined to destroy King James I., and the Houses of Lords and Commons, by means of gunpowder. It was a gentleman named Catesby who conceived this murderous plot, and he was joined by several other conspirators. The most famous of these, although he can scarcely be regarded as the most guilty, was a gentleman called Guy Fawkes who had fought bravely with the Spanish army in Flanders. He was brought over to England in order to carry out the plot, and like all the other conspirators he took a vow of secrecy. In itself the plot was very simple. The conspirators hired a house near to the building where Parliament met, and their intention was to dig an underground passage-way between the two buildings, and to prepare under Parliament House a large mine charged with gunpowder. They found difficulties, however, in carrying out this scheme, chief of these being the thickness of the wall through which they had to pierce. Eventually, the digging of this underground passage-way was abandoned, because the conspirators found that they could hire a cellar right under the House of Lords. This would be far more convenient, they thought; so they hired it from a coal-dealer, and put thirty-six barrels of gunpowder into it. The barrels were carefully covered with faggots, and in the month of May, 1605, all was ready to blow the King and his Parliament into the air.