What They Say in New England. Collected by Clifton Johnson
(Lee and Shepard, Boston.)—We confess to a fondness for books of folk-lore, especially when they are not too recondite and have the true smack of rusticity. There is often so much shrewdness, and even worldly wisdom, mingled with these old sayings and superstitions, that they afford infinite food to the meditative and philosophic mind. It is commonly held that the Board-schools are eradicating these things, as they are uprooting our ancient dialects ; but the process is slow, much slower than we in the big cities are:prone to believe. If any one will pay close attention to the little ways and customs of his educated friends he will bo astonished to find how many an old superstition survives in the most unlikely quarters. Mr. Clifton Johnson has been out and among our near kinsmen, the country-folk of New England, and has listened attentively to their wise and foolish sayings on the weather, on dreams, charms, fortune-telling, luck, and what-not, and the result is a very readable and entertaining little book. Doubtless many of these New England sayings come straight from Old England ; but we are rather astonished not to find them more distinctly and shrewdly Yankee in outward garb. Most of them, especially those under the heading " Love and Sentiment," might have come direct from a Suffolk cottage or a Devonshire hamlet. But the " Old Stories " at the end of the book are more American in flavour.
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