said that all was well; if only we brought
a blessing from Darling Dorel, they should
value it more than an earldom! This Agnes
and I can affirm on oath.'

"On hearing this, the duchess folded her
hands in prayer, looked towards heaven with
tears in her eyes, and still praying, and gave
the signal with her kerchief. Immediately
the damsels placed the rings on the fingers of
their lovers, knelt down before the duchess,
and besought her blessing. The duchess laid
her hands upon the heads of the young girls
and said,

"'God alone, who is in heaven, knows
whether this will prove a blessing or a curse;
but, if God hear the prayer of a weak woman,
it will prove a blessing! Bethink ye of your
deceased parents; and may their blessing
evermore accompany ye! And therefore, let
us most fervently utter the Lord's Prayer.'

"Hereupon all present fell upon their knees,
and prayed in a low voice; but her most
gracious ladyship did say the Lord's Prayer aloud.

"After the prayer was finished, the duchess
made a sign to the chief lady about the court,
who did thereupon bring, on a silver salver,
two half wreaths, which were twined in the
hair of the two damsels, Agnes and Mary,
after they had taken off their own wreaths;
for it was the custom, in Brieg, for betrothed
maidens to wear only half wreaths until their
wedding-day, when they wore whole ones.
The chamberlain did hereupon display from
the window a red flag; upon which signal the
ducal band did strike up a merry tune with
trumpets and kettle-drums from the castle
tower; whereupon a crowd gathered in the
town to know the cause of such rejoicing at
the palace.

"So soon, therefore, as the betrothed
couples had duly thanked his grace and the
duchess by kissing the hems of their garments,
her gracious ladyship did announce to the
betrothed damsels, that they should tarry
with her for the space of one year, in order
more fully to learn their household duties,
and to strengthen them in the practice of
the Christian virtues; seeing that they were
still, as the duchess said, as ignorant as callow
geese! Moreover, their clothes and furniture
had to be provided, and the like. But to
the gentlemen, she said:

"'Mind, gentlemen, ye must also make the
best of it! Ye are scarce out of leading-
strings, and must go through some sort of
ordeal. I would advise you to travel, if so be
your parents can afford it.'

"'By all means,' added the duke; 'my
Darling Dorel is perfectly right: you must
travel; and, if ye know not whither, go to
Jericho, and get ye some beards to your
faces.'

"As it was yet early in the day, his
gracious lordship did order dinner to be prepared;
to which, besides the Town Council, and their
wives and children, Master Valentinus Gierth
and his wife Susanna, were invited.

"His gracious lordship was exceeding
merry, and the duchess was most kind in
her manner; nevertheless, the guests did not
fail to mark that her gracious ladyship did
oftentimes look towards the new brides, and
that big tears did sometimes roll down her
cheek the while."

THE COCOA-NUT PALM.

To a town-bred Englishman, the sight of
the cocus nucifera growing in its native
luxuriance, would suggest little more than untidy
orange shops, in which the nut is dealt out to
retailers; apple-stalls upon which the kernel
is displayed, to tempt amateurs, at a penny a
slice; coir-matting woven from the fibre of
the shell, and patent candles made from the
oil expressed from the nut. He might also,
possibly, suppose that to be the same tree
he is indebted to for an excellent breakfast
beverage: but in that he would be mistaken;
for the cocoa, of which chocolate is
manufactured, is the seed of the Theobroma cacao.

To a native of Ceylon, the cocoa-nut palm
calls up a far wider range of ideas; it
associates itself with nearly every want and
convenience of his life. It might tempt him to
assert that if he were placed upon the earth
with nothing else whatever to minister to his
necessities than the cocoa-nut tree, he could
pass his existence in happiness and content.

When the Cingalese villager has felled one
of these trees after it has ceased bearing (say
in its seventieth year) with its trunk he builds
his hut, and his bullock-stall, which he
thatches with its leaves. His bolts and bars
are slips of the bark; by which he also
suspends the small shelf which holds his stock of
home-made utensils and vessels. He fences
his little plot of chillies, tobacco, and fine
grain, with the leaf-stalks. The infant is
swung to sleep in a rude net of coir-string
made from the husk of the fruit; its meal of
rice and scraped cocoa-nut is boiled over a
fire of cocoa-nut shells and husks, and is
eaten off a dish formed of the plaited green
leaves of the tree, with a spoon cut out of
the nut-shell. When he goes a-fishing by
torch-light his net is of cocoa-nut fibre; the
torch, or chule, is a bundle of dried cocoa-nut
leaves and flower-stalks: the little canoe is a
trunk of the cocoa palm-tree, hollowed by his
own hands. He carries home his net and his
string of fish on a yoke, or pingo, formed of a
cocoa-nut stalk. When he is thirsty, he
drinks of the fresh juice of the young nut;
when he is hungry, he eats its soft kernel.
If he has a mind to be merry, he sips a glass
of arrack, distilled from the fermented juice
of the palm, and dances to the music of rude
cocoa-nut castanets; if he be weary, he quaffs
"toddy," or the unfermented juice, and he
flavours his curry with vinegar made from this
toddy. Should he be sick, his body will be
rubbed with cocoa-nut oil; he sweetens his
coffee with jaggery, or cocoa-nut sugar, and