ANECDOTE. 373 



times, when events were viewed under aspects dif- 

 ferent from those by which we now regard them, 

 might have occasioned more wonderment and com- 

 ment than it did. An industrious labouring man 

 had been some time unemployed, and having sought 

 an engagement at all those places most likely to 

 have afforded it, but without success, sat himself 

 down upon a bank in one of our potato fields, care- 

 lessly twisting a straw, and ruminating what his 

 next resource might be ; when, casting his eyes to 

 the ground, he discovered, immediately between his 

 feet, a guinea ! a guinea perfect in all its requisites ! 

 The finding of such a coin, at such a time, was no 

 common occurrence ; but by what casualty did the 

 money come there ? The frequenters of our fields, 

 breakers of stone, and delvers of the soil, inhabiters 

 of the tenement and the cot, have no superfluous 

 gold to drop unheeded in their progress, and one 

 should have supposed that the various operations 

 which the field had undergone in the potato culture 

 would have brought to view any coin of that size 

 and lustre. Upon looking at the land, however, 

 much of our perplexity was removed by observing 

 that the ground had been in part manured by 

 scrapings from our turnpike road, rendering it 

 highly probable that this golden stranger had been 

 dropped by some traveller, not missed by him, or 

 lost in the mire, this mortar from the road possibly 

 so coating it about, as to secrete it for a time, 

 some heavy rain dissolving the clod, and bringing 

 it to view. This, I am sensible, is an incident 



