Here and there, oftenest in our fixed, valley-sheltered, inland villages,--slumberous Rip Van Winkles, unprogressive and seldom visited,--may be found the same old beliefs in omens, warnings, witchcraft, and supernatural charms which our ancestors brought with them two centuries ago from Europe.
The practice of charms, or what is popularly called "trying projects," is still, to some extent, continued in New England.

The inimitable description which Burns gives of similar practices in his Halloween may not in all respects apply to these domestic conjurations; but the following needs only the substitution of apple-seeds for nuts:-- "The auld gude wife's wheel-hoordet nits Are round an' round divided; An' mony lads and lassies' fates Are there that night decided.
Some kindle couthie side by side An' burn thegither trimly; Some start awa wi' saucy pride And jump out owre the chimlie." One of the most common of these "projects" is as follows: A young woman goes down into the 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.