“For gold, as you sees, my dearie, draws gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pockethandkerchief and leaves it, you’ll find it doubled. And wasn’t there the squire’s lady, and didn’t she draw two hundred gold guineas out of the ground when they’d laid in an old grave—and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; and I hope you’ll do better by the poor old gipsy, my dearie.” The gold and all the spoons are tied up—for as the enchantress observes, there may be silver, too—and she solemnly repeats over it certain magical rhymes. The next day the gipsy comes to see how the charm is working. Could anyone look under her cloak she might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken about for three weeks. “Every word you tell about it, my dearie, will be a guinea gone away.” Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said. Back to the farmer’s wife never again. After three weeks another extraordinary instance of gross incredulity appears in the country papers, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the schoolmaster. There is wailing and shame in the house—perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have been swept away. The charm has worked.—_Leland._ THE PLEASURE OF GIVING.—She who gives for the sake of thanks knows not the pleasure of giving. A PARADOX. Bread is the staff of life, they say; And be it also spoken, It won’t support a man a day Unless it first be broken. SLAVES TO PLEASURE. The world’s a bubble; all the pleasures in it, Like morning vapours, vanish in a minute, The vapours vanish, and the bubble’s broke; A slave to pleasure is a slave to smoke. _Francis Quarles._ FOOTNOTES: [2] From Lord Brougham’s “Statesmen of the Time of George III.” Third Series, page 91. ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS. MUSIC. ALLEGRO.—The madrigal (a pastoral song) and the glee are not the same. The musical phrases in the former, complete in themselves, seldom went together in the different voice parts. One phrase began before the ending of the other, as it were over-lapping one another. It was usually sung in chorus, whereas glees were sung in single voices. A catch is of old English origin, as remote as the early days of the Tudors. Several voices are engaged, one catching up the words of the other in a whimsical and burlesque fashion.