Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 8.djvu/97

 9- s. via JOLT 27, HOI.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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Shop,' doubtless with a shrewd idea to business. An American writer visiting the old house, I think in 1881, and seeing the inscription, had his imagina- tion fired with thoughts of Little Nell and Kit and Dick Swiveller and Quilp, and straightway wrote an article f or Scribner's Monthly, in which he assured his readers that this was the old original ' Old Curiosity Shop' of Dickens. These are the only foundations for the statement the Daily Telegraph circulates."

This letter will afford the best answer to MR. ANDREW OLIVER'S question. The exact site of "The Old Curiosity Shop" was left by Dickens in " the great world of uncer- tainty." Even Kit himself forgot the posi- tion of his old master's house when he grew up to manhood, for we read that he some- times took his children to the street where Nell had lived,

was not like the same. The old house had long ago been pulled down, and a fine broad road was in its place. At first he would draw with his stick a square upon the ground where it used to stand. But he soon became uncertain of the spot, and could only say it was thereabouts, he thought, and that these alterations were confusing."
 * ' but new improvements had altered it so much it

JOHN T. PAGE.

West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

MOTTO ON SUNDIAL (9 th S. vii. 467). It is hazardous to make a suggestion here without seeing the dial, so the following is offered with diffidence ; but it seems not improbable that the writer of the epigraph had in mind the Vulgate version of St. Matt. xxiv. 36 and

41 : "De die autem ilia, et hora nemo scit

Nescitis qua hora Dominus vester venturus sit." The pith of these two sayings might be expressed in the brief sentence applicable to the purpose NESCIENT AVTEM HORAM ILLAM (" But they shall not know that hour)." The penultimate "et," however, is a difficulty. MR. BUBB is doubtful about the last word. May it be diem ? CECIL DEEDES.

Brighton.

AUTHORS WANTED (9 th s - vii - 388). Quo- tation No. 4 is from Wordsworth, 'To my Sister,' v. 2 :

There is a blessing in the air, Which seems a sense of joy to yield To the bare trees and mountains bare, And grass in the green field.

The first line of the poem is

It is the first mild day of March.

C. LAWRENCE FORD, B.A. Bath.

PEWS ANNEXED TO HOUSES (9 th S. vii. 388, 517). I live in the house named by your correspondent MR. T. J. JEAKES, but it has not a pew annexed to it, it has not a river-

side lawn nor a Napoleon willow, nor has it ever been occupied by one of the Rutter family. My friend and neighbour Mr. Edward Rutter has a riverside garden, but he has not a pew annexed to his house, and I never heard that he had a Napoleon willow. On the other hand, Shepperton has a faculty pew forming a gallery to itself, and approached by a separate staircase, but it has not a Napoleon willow. I shall be greatly obliged if MR. JEAKES will let me know in which of the three houses his grandfather lived.

J. J. FREEMAN.

Halliford House, Shepperton.

ANIMALS IN PEOPLE'S INSIDES (9 th S. vii. 222, 332, 390). About forty years ago I lived at Alfreton, Derbyshire, and knew very well a youth, the son of a baker from whom my mother bought bread. Like my own family, he came from Nottinghamshire, so I had a special interest in him. For a long time the youth was ill ; the local doctors were not able to do him any good, and it was felt his life was doomed. One Friday he was seen by a quack doctor such men were not uncommon in my boyhood in the market- place of Alfreton. After looking at the youth the quack pronounced that he was troubled with worms, and gave him a mixture which made him sick ; and, to the surprise of the quack and the members of the youth's family, he vomited a live frog ! I cannot enter into any discussion as to the truth of this statement, but the circumstance was generally believed in the district at the time. I merely record the particulars as then related. One fact I can truthfully state, that the youth was restored to health and strength. WILLIAM ANDREWS.

Royal Institution, Hull.

On 10 February, 1854, Mr. Kinahan read before the Dublin Natural History Society a paper ' On the Reproduction and Distribution of the Smooth Newt, and a Notice of the Popular Superstitions relating to It.' It was printed in the Zoologist at the time (Series I. vol. xii. p. 4355), and the portion which deals with superstition was reprinted by me in Folk-Lore (June, 1899, p. 251). From this it appears that persons who go to sleep with their mouths open in the fields, or drink of the streams in which these creatures live, frequently suffer from their going down their throats and making a permanent residence of the interior. Cattle, too, are subject to a similar infliction. When they have made a lodgment there is, however, an infallible means of getting rid of them. The sufferer must abstain from every sort of drink for