36() ANECDOTE. 



different 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, 

 carelessly 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 fre- 

 quenters 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 pro- 

 bable 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 coat- 

 ing it about, as to secrete it for a time, some heavy 



