of smokers'
requisites. In the handbook of Welsh antiquities published in connection
with the National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff, there are allusions to
several interesting specimens, the writer of the guide quoting some
lines penned by a sixteenth-century poet, who extolled tobacco thus:--

"Tobacco engages
Both sexes, all ages--
The poor as well as the wealthy;
From the Court to the cottage,
From childhood to dotage,
Both those that are sick and the healthy."

XIII

LOVE TOKENS AND LUCKY EMBLEMS

CHAPTER XIII

LOVE TOKENS AND LUCKY EMBLEMS

Amulets--Horse trappings--Emblems of luck--Lovespoons--Glass
curios.

The collector rarely troubles about attempting to solve matters of
dispute, and cares little to enter into argumentative discussions in
reference to the supposed purposes of the curios he collects, or the
different uses with which they have been associated. He does not inquire
too deeply into the faiths and beliefs which may have been held and
revered by his ancestors when he puts in his cabinet some curiosity
which may have been regarded almost with reverential feelings and
handled with superstitious regard by its original possessor. The more
thoughtful man does, however, pay some tribute to their early
associations. Our museums are filled with such relics, with delightfully
carved reliquaries, triptychs, and marvellously carved beads which in
their religious use as rosaries have been looked upon as something more
than mere specimens of the carver's art. There are mysteries in beliefs
which have been held dear in the past which are not understood by
succeeding generations.

It is difficult to understand in the present day the deep-seated faith
in amulets and charms, which were thought to have brought about what
would now be regarded as curious coincidences, or to place reliance upon
the babbling utterances of some old crone who posed as a witch or a
fortune-teller. Yet among such old-world stories there are germs of
truth although misapplied. The emblems, amulets, and charms so
implicitly believed in a few centuries ago are objects numbered among
collectable curios, valued even in this prosaic age not only for their
intrinsic worth and antiquarian interest, but for the so-called magic
influences they were supposed to possess.

There is something more understandable about love tokens, for we can
tell their purpose, and indeed to-day, stripp