We plant the shade, from the hot sun free;
We plant all these when we plant the tree.
ORIGIN OF THE EASTER EGG.
ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE.
NOW is the time of year when we feel called upon to inform our readers that the peacock does not lay the pretty colored Easter eggs.
This valuable bit of information the great American humorist feels called upon to make year after year, and though we elder folk smile, and the young query, how many of us are familiar with the history of the custom of observing the closing of Lent with the egg feast?
One must go back to the Persians for the first observance of the egg day. According to one of the ancient cosmogonies, all things were produced from an egg, hence called the mundane egg. This cosmogony was received in Persia, and on this account there obtained, among the people of that country, a custom of presenting each other with an egg, the symbol of a new beginning of time on every New Year's day; that is, on the day when the sun enters Aries, the Persians reckoning the beginning of the new year from that day, which occurred in March. The doctrine of the mundane egg was not confined to the limits of Persia, but was spread, together with the practice of presenting New Year's eggs, through various other countries. But the New Year was not kept on the day when the sun enters Aries, or at least it ceased, in process of time, to be so kept. In Persia itself the introduction of the Mohammedan faith brought with it the removal of New Year's day.