248 ANECDOTE. 



like subtilties ; but when we notice passing events, we 

 lament the ills and are pleased with the good luck of a 

 neighbor : and a little turn happened lately to a parish- 

 ioner, which in former times, when events were viewed 

 under aspects different from those by which we now re- 

 gard them, might have occasioned more wonderment 

 and comment than it did. An industrious laboring 

 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, carelessly twisting a 

 straw, and ruminating what his next resource might be; 

 when casting his eyes to the ground, he discovered, im- 

 mediately 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 ho super- 

 fluous 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 per- 

 plexity 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 little deserv- 

 ing df narration, but has been done from two motives : 

 we village historians meet with but few important 

 events to detail from the annals of our district ; we have 

 no gazettes, few; public records or official documents to 

 embellish our pages, and if we will write, must be con- 

 tent with such small matters as present themselves ; and 

 to point out how frequently very mysterious circum- 

 stances may be elucidated, and appear as consistent 

 events by an unbiassed examination. We may not be 



