66

66

the very thing I was going to say," muttered Rachel; "I meant eyes though I said hair, for I know his hair is as brown as a chestnut, and his eyes as black as a sloe." "So they are, sure enough," cried Sally; "how in the world could you know that?" forgetting that she herself had just told her so. And it is thus that these hags pick out of the credulous all which they afterwards pretend to reveal to them. 'O, I know a pretty deal more than that," said Rachel," but you must be aware of this man." Why so?" cried Sally with great quickness. "Because," answered Rachel, "you are fated to marry a man worth a hundred of him, who has blue eyes, light hair, and a stoop in the shoulders." No, indeed, but I can't," said Sally; "I have promised Jacob, and Jacob I will marry." "You cannot, child," returned Rachel in a solemn tone; "it is out of your power; you are fated to marry the gray eyes and light hair." "Nay indeed," said Sally, sighing deeply, "if I am fated, I must; I know there's no resisting one's fate." This is a

66

common cant with poor deluded girls, who are not aware that they themselves make their fate by their folly, and then complain there is no resisting it. "What can I do?" said Sally. "I will tell you that too," said Rachel. "You must take a walk next Sunday afternoon to the church-yard, and the first man you meet in a blue coat, with a large posy of pinks and southernwood in his bosom, sitting on the churchyard wall, about seven o'clock, he will be the man.' "Provided," said Sally, much disturbed, "that he has gray eyes, and stoops." "O, to be sure," said Rachel, "otherwise it is not the right man." "But if I should mistake," said Sally, "for two men may happen to have a coat and eyes of the same color?" "To prevent that," replied Rachel, "if it is the right man, the two first letters of his name will be R. P. This man has got money beyond sea." "Oh, I do not value his money,' said Sally, with tears in her eyes, "for I love Jacob better than house or land; but if I am fated to marry another, I can't help it; you know there is no struggling against my fate."

Poor Sally thought of nothing and dreamed of nothing all the week, but the blue coat and the gray eyes. She made a hundred blunders at her work. She put her rennet into the butter-pan, and her skimming-dish into the cheese-tub. She gave the curd to the hogs, and put the whey into the vats. She put her little knife out of the pocket, for fear it should cut love; and would not stay in the kitchen if there was not an even number of people, lest it should break the charm. She grew cold and mysterious in her behavior to faithful

Jacob, whom she truly loved. But the more she thought of the fortune-teller, the more she was convinced that brown hair and black eyes were not what she was fated to marry, and therefore, though she trembled to think it, Jacob could not be the man.

On Sunday she was too uneasy to go to church; for poor Sally had never been taught that her being uneasy was only a fresh reason why she ought to go thither. She spent the whole afternoon in her little garret, dressing in all her best. First she put on her red riband, which she had bought at last Lammas fair: then she recollected that red was an unlucky color, and changed it for a blue riband, tied in a truelover's knot; but, suddenly calling to mind that poor Jacob had bought this knot for her of a pedler at the door, and that she had promised to wear it for his sake, her heart smote her, and she laid it by, sighing to think she was not fated to marry the man who had given it to her. When she had looked at herself twenty times in the glass (for one vain action always brings on another), she set off, trembling and shaking every step she went. She walked eagerly towards the church-yard, not daring to look to the right or left, for fear she should spy Jacob, who would have offered to walk with her, and so have spoiled all. As soon as she came within sight of the wall, she spied a man sitting upon it. Her heart beat violently. She looked again; but, alas! the stranger not only had on a black coat, but neither hair nor eyes answered the description. She now happened to cast her eyes on the church clock, and found she was two hours before her time. This was some comfort. She walked away, and got rid of the two hours as well as she could, paying great attention, as she went, not to walk over any straws which lay across, and carefully looking to see if there were never an old horse-shoe in the way-that infallible symptom of good fortune. While the clock was striking seven, she returned to the church-yard, and, O! the wonderful power of fortunetellers! there she saw him! there sat the very man! his hair as light as flax, his eyes as blue as buttermilk, and his shoulders as round as a tub. Every tittle agreed, to the very nosegay in his waistcoat button-hole. At first, indeed, she thought it had been sweetbrier, and, glad to catch at a straw, whispered to herself, "It is not he, and I shall marry Jacob still;" but, on looking again, she saw it was southernwood, plain enough, and that, of course, all was over. The man accosted her with some very nonsensical, but too acceptable, compliments. Sally was naturally a modest girl, and, but for Rachel's wicked arts, would not have had courage to talk

with a strange man: but how could she resist her fate, you know? After a little discourse, she asked him, with a trembling heart, what might be his name. "Robert Price, at your service," was the answer. "Robert Price! that is R. P. as sure as I am alive, and the fortune-teller was a witch! It is all out! it is all out! O the wonderful art of fortune-tellers!"

The little sleep she had that night, was disturbed with dreams of graves, and ghosts, and funerals; but as they were morning dreams, she knew those always went by contraries, and that a funeral denoted a wedding. Still a sigh would now and then heave to think that, in that wedding, Jacob could have no part. Such of my readers as know the power which superstition has over the weak and credulous mind, scarcely need be told, that poor Sally's unhappiness was soon completed. She forgot all her vows to Jacob; she at once forsook an honest man, whom she loved, and consented to marry a stranger, of whom she knew nothing, from a ridiculous notion, that she was compelled to do so by a decree which she had it not in her power to resist. She married this Robert Price, the strange gardener, whom she soon found to be very worthless, and very much in debt. He had no such thing as "money beyond sea," as the fortuneteller had told her; but, alas! he had another wife there. He got immediate possession of Sally's twenty pounds. Rachel put in for her share, but he refused to give her a farthing, and bid her get away, or he would have her taken up on the vagrant act. He soon ran away from Sally, leaving her to bewail her own weakness; for it was that indeed, and not any irresistible fate, which had been the cause of her ruin. To complete her misery, she herself was suspected of having stolen the silver cup which Rachel had pocketed. Her master, however, would not prosecute her, as she was falling into a deep decline; and she died, in a few months, of a broken heart-a sad warning to all credulous girls.

Rachel, whenever she got near home, used to drop her trade of fortune-telling, and only dealt in the wares of her basket. Mr. Wilson, the clergyman, found her, one day, dealing out some very wicked ballads to some children. He went up, with a view to give her a reprimand; but had no sooner begun his exhortation, than up came a constable, followed by several people. "There she is; that is she; that is the old witch who tricked my wife out of the five guineas," said one of them. "Do your office, constable; seize that old hag. She may tell fortunes and find pots of gold in Taunton jail, for there she will have nothing else to do!" This was that very Farmer Jenkins, whose wife had

been cheated by Rachel of the five guineas. He had taken pains to trace her to her own parish: he did not so much value the loss of the money, as he thought it was a duty he owed the public to clear the country of such vermin. Mr. Wilson immediately committed her. She took her trial at the next assizes, when she was sentenced to a year's imprisonment. In the mean time the pawnbroker, to whom she had sold the silver cup, which she had stolen from poor Sally's master, impeached her; and as the robbery was fully proved upon Rachel, she was sentenced, for this crime, to Botany Bay: and a happy day it was for the county of Somerset, when such a nuisance was sent out of it. She was transported much about the same time that her husband Giles lost his life in stealing the net from the garden wall, as related in the Second Part of Poaching Giles.

I have thought it my duty to print this little history, as a kind warning to all you young men and maidens, not to have any thing to say to cheats, impostors, cunning women, fortunetellers, conjurers, and interpreters of dreams. Listen to me, your true friend, when I assure you, that God never reveals to weak and wicked women those secret designs of his providence, which no human wisdom is able to foresee. To consult these false oracles is not only foolish, but sinful. It is foolish, because they are themselves as ignorant as those whom they pretend to teach; and it is sinful, because it is prying into that futurity which God, in mercy as well as wisdom, hides from men. God, indeed, orders all things; but when you have a mind to do a foolish thing, do not fancy you are fated to do it. This is tempting Providence, and not trusting him. It is indeed charging God with folly. Prudence is his gift, and you obey him better when you make use of prudence, under the direction of prayer, than when you madly run into ruin, and think you are only submitting to your fate. Never fancy that you are compelled to undo yourself, or to rush upon your own destruction, in compliance with any supposed fatality. Never believe that God conceals his will from a sober Christian who obeys his laws, and reveals it to a vagabond gipsy, who runs up and down breaking the laws both of God and man. King Saul never consulted the witch till he had left off serving God. The Bible will direct us what to do, better than any conjurer; and there are no days unlucky, but those which we make so by our cwn vanity, sin, and folly.

VILLAGE POLITICS,

ADDRESSED TO ALL THE

MECHANICS, JOURNEYMEN, AND LABORERS,

IN GREAT BRITAIN.

BY WILL CHIP, A COUNTRY CARPENTER.*

It is a privilege to be prescribed to in things about which our minds would otherwise be tossed with various apprehensions. And for pleasure, I shall profess myself so far from doting on that popular idol, Liberty, that I hardly think it possible for any kind of obedience to be more painful than an unrestrained liberty. Were there not true bounds of magistrates, of laws, of piety, of reason in the heart, every man would have a fool, nay, a mad tyrant, to his master, that would multiply him more sorrows than the briers and thorns did to Adam, when he was freed from the bliss at once, and the restraint of paradise, and became a greater slave in the wilderness than in the inclosure. Dr. Hammond's Sermons.

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN JACK ANVIL, THE BLACKSMITH, AND TOM HOD, THE MASON.

Jack. WHAT'S the matter, Tom? Why dost look so dismal?

Tom.

Jack.

Dismal indeed! Well enough I may.

What! is the old mare dead? or work scarce? Tom. No, no, work's plenty enough, if a man had but the heart to go to it.

Jack. What book art reading? Why dost look so like a hang-dog?

Tom (looking on his book). Cause enough. Why, I find here that I am very unhappy, and very miserable; which I should never have known, if I had not had the good luck to meet with this book. O, 'tis a precious book!

What is the

Jack. A good sign, tho'-that you can't find out you're unhappy, without looking into a book for it! matter?

*This piece, as a pamphlet, was published, and most extensively circulated, in 1793, to counteract the pernicious doctrines, which, owing to the French rev olution, were then become seriously alarming to the friends of religion and gov. ernment in every part of Europe.-ED.