The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 980, October 8, 1898Various
General
The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. XX, No. 980, October 8, 1898
Various
Children's literature -- Periodicals
which was sticking upright in the ground near the hedge.
Many of these modern stories of lost and found sound like repetitions
of old ones--"chestnuts," in fact. But they are not; and in this
matter, as well as in others of a different kind, history appears to
repeat itself. The Canadian story which follows is one of these, but
it is quite a new one. It was told me by a friend, and confirmed by
her husband, and by the original letter containing the account of the
dream, which came from far-off Assiniboinia.
The tale begins with a family who dwelt on a farm by the lake of J----
in Ontario; but finding that the rocky land on its shores was not
conducive to successful farming, they moved up to the Great North-West
and took up fresh land in Assiniboinia. The family consisted of the
father and mother, their son and his wife, and several children, and my
tale relates to the son's wife only, who had lost, some years before
her departure, in the garden of the old home, her wedding-ring. To a
woman it will not be at all wonderful to hear that this loss was a
subject of great concern, and also somewhat superstitious fear; for by
many people such a loss is thought to be an omen of ill-luck. Some of
the family still remained on the lake of J----, a married daughter, the
sister-in-law of the loser of the ring. One morning, about two years
after the departure of her family, she had a letter from her brother's
wife, to beg her to go across the lake to the old homestead, for she
had had a very vivid dream about the lost ring; and in this dream she
had seen it, lying at the root of a white flower, a phlox, she thought,
which grew on the right side of the front door, close to the wall of
the house and the door-step.
A few days after the receipt of this letter, Mrs. B---- and her husband
rowed across the lake and visited the old farm. It had never been let,
and a buyer in those regions is hard to find; so the garden paths were
overgrown, and the house neglected and forlorn; but growing by the
front door-step there was a white phlox in full bloom, and taking the
spade they had brought with them, they dug it up, and at its roots they
found the lost wedding-ring.
I also gleaned another story in Canada of the same kind. A worthy
alderman of a small town in Ontario was digging potatoes in his garden
one summer morning, in the year 1894. His wife had several times
summoned him to breakfast, but on her last summons he declared he could
not come until he had dug up one more hill. When he finally came in to
breakfast he brought with him a ring which she had lost in the garden
seven years before, and which he had unearthed in that last potato hill.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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