The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[387] cellar, or into a dark room, with a mirror in her hand, and looking in it, sees the face of her future husband peering at her through the darkness,— the mirror being, for the time, as potent as the famous Cambuscan glass of which Chaucer discourses. A neighbor of mine, in speaking of this conjuration, adduces a case in point. One of her schoolmates made the experiment and saw the face of a strange man in the glass; and many years afterwards she saw the very man pass her father's door. He proved to be an English emigrant just landed, and in due time became her husband. Burns alludes to something like the spell above described:—

Wee Jenny to her grannie says,
     “Will ye go wia me, grannie, To eat an apple at the glass
     I got from Uncle Johnnie?
”
She fuff't her pipe wia sic a lunt,
     In wrath she was so vaporina,
She noticed na ana azle brunt
     Her bran new worset apron.

Ye little skelpan-limmer's face,
     How dare ye try sic sportina,
Ana seek the foul thief ony place
     For him to try your fortune?
Nae doubt but ye may get a sight;
     Great cause ye hae to fear it;
For mony a one has gotten a fright,
     Ana lived and died deleerit.

It is not to be denied, and for truth's sake not to be regretted, that this amusing juvenile glammary has seen its best days in New England. The schoolmaster has been abroad to some purpose. Not without results have our lyceum lecturers and