ANECDOTE. 
248 
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 no 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 of 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 
