Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. Her unlucky day is Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman. Mrs. Carmine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is born,—does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday. Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts,—in fact, is by this time quite intimate with one or two of the mysterious brotherhood; but at the same time she is at a loss to understand how any woman in her senses, can believe Thursday to be a more fortunate day than Wednesday, or why Monday is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones’s calendar. She can state, on her oath, that the ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza Artichoke, appeared at her bedside on a certain night and she distinctly saw the mole on its left cheek, which poor Eliza, during her brief career, had vainly endeavoured to eradicate, with all sorts of poisonous things. The ghost, moreover, lisped,—so did Eliza! This was all clear enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it a personal insult for anybody to suggest that her vivid apparitions existed only in her own over-wrought imagination. She had an affection for her ghostly visitors, and would not hear a word to their disparagement. The unearthly warnings which Mrs. Piptoss had received had well-nigh spoilt all her furniture. When a relative dies, the fact is not announced to her in the commonplace form of a letter,—no, an invisible sledgehammer falls upon her Broadwood, an invisible power upsets her loo-table, all the doors of her house unanimously blow open, or a coffin flies out of the fire into her lap. Mrs. Grumple, who is a very economical housewife, looks forward to the day when the moon re-appears,—on which occasion she turns her money, taking care not to look at the pale lady through glass. This observance, she devoutly believes, will bring her good fortune. When Miss Caroline has a knot in her lace, she looks for a present; and when Miss Amelia snuffs the candle out, it is her faith that the act defers her marriage for a twelvemonth. Any young lady who dreams the same dream two consecutive Fridays, will tell you that her visions will “come true.”