What causes the curious difference between the people on the two sides of the boundary-line? for a difference exists in customs, in appearance and in the tones of the voice. It has been a favorite theory that the New England thinness of fibre and sharpness of voice came from the harsh climate and piercing winds; but in Canada the climate is more severe, and the winds are as piercing, yet the faces and forms of the people are rounder and more robust, and their voices, especially those of the women, have a soft and mellow intonation very different from those of their cousins in New England. The customs and habits are also different. In Canada one sees little of the hurried life of the States, always at high pressure. The people take life more easily than we do, and look less anxious. Do these differences arise from different political institutions, and are the burdens of life greater in a republic than under a monarchy? C. NOTES. Self-deception and superstition nowhere reign more supremely, at least in civilized communities, than among the wretched devotees of the gaming-table, who are ever promising themselves to quit the mad pursuit, ever flattering themselves that the next _coup_ will be their last, and always expecting that some quite supernatural piece of luck in that final _coup_ will secure the long-sought fortune. Some time ago we referred in a "Note" to the fanciful combinations which the gamesters of Europe had been making, in their play, on the numerals connected with the death of Napoleon III. M. de Villemessant in his last work gives a very ludicrous instance of the extent to which a superstitious gambler can carry his belief in presentiments, in theories of luck and in prognostications. He tells us that a certain Paris vaudevillist was persuaded that if a man unexpectedly found a piece of money when destitute, it would bring him good luck. Accordingly, before setting foot in a gambling-house he never failed to hide--from himself--a coin in the bottom of a pocket, where he was fully determined to forget it. When he had lost his all (except, of course, the aforesaid lucky piece) he would put on his overcoat, tie up his comforter, seize his umbrella, and open the door, when, all of a sudden, his hand happening to be thrust by mere chance into his watch-fob, would, wonderful to relate! hit upon the very piece whose existence he had pledged himself never to suspect save in the case of direst need. "What a streak of luck!" he then regularly exclaimed. "I can't be mistaken, can I? It isn't a louis, any way? By George, it is! Well, if this isn't luck alive!" Then our good vaudevillist would hurry back, deposit his umbrella, unroll his muffler, shed his overcoat, throw his lucky louis on the cloth--and lose it! After all, incredible as this story seems, M. Villemessant's vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive themselves by devices which in others they would pronounce