His words are:
Whereso’er be thine abode,
Always harbinger of good.
And again in that admirable little tale of Charles Dickens, entitled “The Cricket on the Hearth,” this good and happy superstition is embodied. “It’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has been so. To have a Cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in the world,” says its heroine.
All these superstitions are more or less entertained in America, brought here by the English themselves, and retained by their descendants. That the Cricket is the “harbinger of good,” it gives me pleasure to say, is the most common.
Another superstition obtaining in this country, and particularly in Maryland and Virginia, is that Crickets are old folks and ought not therefore to be destroyed. This probably arose from Crickets being found about the kitchen hearth where the old folks were accustomed to sit.
Milton chose for his contemplative pleasures a spot where Crickets resorted:
Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,