And from whatever circumstance the reverence for peacocks' feathers originated,[18] it is not, even yet, quite exploded. There are some lingering remnants of a superstitious regard for them which may have had their origin in these very times and circumstances. For how surely, where they are rigidly traced, are our country customs, our vulgar ceremonies, our apparently absurd and senseless usages, found to emanate from some principle or superstition of general and prevailing adoption. In some counties we cannot enter a farm-house where the mantel-piece in the parlour is not decorated with a diadem of peacock feathers, which are carefully dusted and preserved. And in houses of more assuming pretensions the same custom frequently prevails; and we knew a lady who carefully preserved some peacock feathers in a drawer long after her association with people in a higher station than that to which she originally belonged had made her ashamed to display them in her parlour. _This_ could not be for _mere_ ornament: there is some idea of _luck_ attached to them, which seems not improbably to have arisen from circumstances connected originally with the "Vow of the Peacock." At any rate, the religious care with which peacocks' feathers are preserved by many who care not for them as ornaments, is not a whit more ridiculous than to see people gravely turn over the money in their pockets when they first hear the cuckoo, or joyfully fasten a dropped horse-shoe on their threshold, or shudderingly turn aside if two straws lie across in their path, or thankfully seize an old shoe accidentally met with, heedless of the probable state of the beggared foot that may unconsciously have left it there, or any other of the million unaccountable customs which diversify and enliven country life, and which still prevail and flourish, notwithstanding the extensive travels and sweeping devastations of the modern "schoolmaster." Do not our readers recollect Cowper's thanksgiving "on finding the heel of a shoe?"-- "Fortune! I thank thee, gentle goddess! thanks! Not that my muse, though bashful, shall deny She would have thanked thee rather, hadst thou cast A treasure in her way; for neither meed Of early breakfast, to dispel the fumes And bowel-raking pains of emptiness, Nor noontide feast, nor ev'ning's cool repast, Hopes she from this--presumptuous, though perhaps The cobbler, leather-carving artist, might. Nathless she thanks thee, and accepts thy boon, Whatever; not as erst the fabled cock, Vain-glorious fool! unknowing what he found, Spurned the rich gem thou gavest him. Wherefore, ah! Why not on me that favour, (worthier sure!) Conferr'dst, goddess! thou art blind, thou sayest: Enough! thy blindness shall excuse the deed." Return we to our needlework.