"Petit bonhomme vit encore."
German children play a similar game with a stick instead of a firebrand, and Halliwell gives the rhyme describing the English game as—
"Jack's alive and in very good health,
If he die in your hand you must look to yourself."
RUSSIAN SUPERSTITION.
An old custom of the Russian maiden—identical with the English girl's habit on St. Valentine's Day—is still in vogue. Going into the street she asks the first man she meets his Christian name, believing that her future husband will be sure to bear the same.