JOHN BUNYAN AND MINCE-PIES.
In No. 417 of this Journal it is chronicled that John Bunyan scrupled to eat mince-pies, because of the superstitious character popularly attached to them; but it would appear from an anecdote sent to us by a correspondent, that if this was true at all of the author of the Pilgrim's Progress, he must have received new light upon the subject at a later period of life. When he was imprisoned for preaching—so says the anecdote—in Bedford jail, a superstitious lady, thinking to entrap him, sent a servant to request his acceptance of a Christmas pie; whereupon Banyan replied: 'Tell your mistress that I accept her present thankfully, for I have learned to distinguish between a mince-pie and superstition.'
FOREST-TEACHINGS.
There was travelling in the wild-wood
Once, a child of song;
And he marked the forest-monarchs
As he went along.
Here, the oak, broad-eaved and spreading;
Here, the poplar tall;
Here, the holly, forky-leaved;
Here, the yew, for the bereaved;
Here, the chestnut, with its flowers, and its spine-bestudded ball.
Here, the cedar, palmy-branchèd;
Here, the hazel low;
Here, the aspen, quivering ever;
Here, the powdered sloe.
Wondrous was their form and fashion,
Passing beautiful to see
How the branches interlaced,
How the leaves each other chased,
Fluttering lightly hither, thither on the wind-arousèd tree.
Then he spake to those wood-dwellers:
'Ye are like to men,
And I learn a lesson from ye
With my spirit's ken.
Like to us in low beginning,
Children of the patient earth;
Born, like us, to rise on high,
Ever nearer to the sky,
And, like us, by slow advances from the minute of your birth.