ore robust, and their voices, especially those of the
women, have a soft and mellow intonation very different from those of
their cousins in New England. The customs and habits are also different.
In Canada one sees little of the hurried life of the States, always at
high pressure. The people take life more easily than we do, and look
less anxious. Do these differences arise from different political
institutions, and are the burdens of life greater in a republic than
under a monarchy?

C.

NOTES.

Self-deception and superstition nowhere reign more supremely, at least
in civilized communities, than among the wretched devotees of the
gaming-table, who are ever promising themselves to quit the mad pursuit,
ever flattering themselves that the next _coup_ will be their last, and
always expecting that some quite supernatural piece of luck in that
final _coup_ will secure the long-sought fortune. Some time ago we
referred in a "Note" to the fanciful combinations which the gamesters of
Europe had been making, in their play, on the numerals connected with
the death of Napoleon III. M. de Villemessant in his last work gives a
very ludicrous instance of the extent to which a superstitious gambler
can carry his belief in presentiments, in theories of luck and in
prognostications. He tells us that a certain Paris vaudevillist was
persuaded that if a man unexpectedly found a piece of money when
destitute, it would bring him good luck. Accordingly, before setting
foot in a gambling-house he never failed to hide--from himself--a coin
in the bottom of a pocket, where he was fully determined to forget it.
When he had lost his all (except, of course, the aforesaid lucky piece)
he would put on his overcoat, tie up his comforter, seize his umbrella,
and open the door, when, all of a sudden, his hand happening to be
thrust by mere chance into his watch-fob, would, wonderful to relate!
hit upon the very piece whose existence he had pledged himself never to
suspect save in the case of direst need. "What a streak of luck!" he
then regularly exclaimed. "I can't be mistaken, can I? It isn't a louis,
any way? By George, it is! Well, if this isn't luck alive!" Then our
good vaudevillist would hurry back, deposit his umbrella, unroll his
muffler, shed his overcoat, throw his lucky louis on the cloth--and lose
it! After all, incredible as this story seems, M. Villemessant's
vaudevillist is but a type of a great class of men who deceive
themselv