There are also several methods of performing this act of divination with apples. The one most practised in New England is this: First pare an apple. If you succeed in removing the peel all in one piece, throw it over your head, and should the charm work well, the peel will so fall as to form the first letter of your future husband’s name, or as Gay poetically puts it:-- “I pare this pippin round and round again, My shepherd’s name to nourish on the plain: I fling th’ unbroken paring o’er my head, Upon the grass a perfect L is read.” When sleeping in a strange bed for the first time, name the four posts for some of your male friends. The post that you first look at, upon waking in the morning, bears the name of the one whom you will marry. Care is usually taken to fall asleep on the right side of the bed. By walking down the cellar stairs backward, holding a mirror over your head as you go, the face of the person whom you will marry will presently appear in the mirror. The oracle of the daisy flower, so effectively made use of in Goethe’s “Faust,” is of great antiquity, and is perhaps more often consulted by blushing maidens than any other. When plucking away the snowy petals, the fair questioner of fate should murmur low to herself the cabalistic formula:-- “‘He loves me, loves me not,’ she said, Bending low her dainty head O’er the daisy’s mystic spell. ‘He loves me, loves me not, he loves,’ She murmurs ’mid the golden groves Of the corn-fields on the fell.” As the last leaf falls, so goes the prophecy. If you put a four-leaved clover in your shoe before going out for a walk, you will presently meet the one you are to marry. The same charm is used to bring back an absent or wayward lover. Consequently there is much looking for this bashful little plant at all of our matrimonial resorts. The rhymed version runs in this wise:-- “A clover, a clover of two, Put it in your right shoe; The first young man you meet, In field, street, or lane, You’ll get him, or one of his name.” In some localities a bean-pod or a pea-pod put over the door acts as a charm to bring the favored of fortune to lift the latch and walk in. This is old. The poet Gay has it in rhyme thus:-- “As peascods once I pluck’d, I chanc’d to see One that was closely filled with three times three; Which when I cropp’d, I safely home convey’d, And o’er the door the spell in secret laid:-- The latch moved up, when who should first come in, But in his proper person--Lubberkin!” Another mode of divination runs in this way: On going to bed the girl eats two spoonfuls of salt. The salt causes her to dream that she is dying of thirst; and whoever the young man may be that brings her a cup of water, in her dream, is the one she will marry.[16] If after seeing a white horse you count a hundred, the first gentleman you meet will be your future husband.