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The new fire thus produced was carried into the temple of Vesta by one of the virgins in a bronze sieve. Among the Celts of Ireland a new fire was annually kindled on Hallowe'en or the Eve of Samhain, as they called it, the last day of October, from which the Irish new year began; and all the hearths throughout the country are said to have been relighted from the fresh fire.
The hour was late moving on toward midnight but in the tall black precipices of Manhattan scattered lights gleamed, in an odd, irregular pattern like the sparse punctures on the raffle-board "take a chance on a Milk-Fed Turkey" the East Indian elevator-boy presents to apartment-house tenants about Hallowe'en.
They were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other on Allhallow Even or Hallowe'en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saints' or Allhallows' Day.
So all dem folks shake dere hands an' 'low "Howdy," an' some ob dem say: "Why, dere 's li'l Mose! Howdy, li'l' Mose?" An' he so please' he jes grin' an' grin', 'ca'se he aint reckon whut gwine happen. So byme-by Sally Ann, whut live up de road, she say', "Ain't no sort o' Hallowe'en lest we got a jack-o'-lantern."
Along about the beginning of the Christian "Erie," says an elderly Englishman, the Queen Boadicea got so disgusted with the Romans who carried on there in England just as they had been in the habit of doing at home, cutting up like a hallowe'en party in its junior year, that she got her Britons together, had a steel dress made to fight in comfortably and not tight under the arms, then she said, "Is there any one here who hath a culverin with him?"
An old woman told a lady that she had tried this mode of divination in her youth, that the name of Archibald "came up as it were from the very ground," and that Archibald sure enough was the name of her husband. In South Uist and Eriskay, two of the outer Hebrides, a salt cake called Bonnach Salainn is eaten at Hallowe'en to induce dreams that will reveal the future.
The tone of the meeting changed from that of serious-minded discussion of a theft and its treatment, to care-free chatter about an evening of fun. Even Marjorie put aside her trouble for the time and entered heartily into the preparations. The Hallowe'en party was to be the last event of the Scout troop as it now stood.
So whin Hallowe'en come erlong, dat li'l black Mose he jes mek up he mind he ain't gwine outen de shack at all. He cogitate he gwine stay right snug in de shack wid he pa an' he ma, 'ca'se de rain-doves tek notice dat de ghosts are philanderin' roun' de country, 'ca'se dey mourn out, "Oo-oo-o-o-o!" an' de owls dey mourn out, "You-you-o-o-o!"
Whoever gets the coin will be rich; whoever gets the ring will be married first; whoever gets the chip of wood, which stands for a coffin, will die first; and whoever gets the sloe will live longest, because the fairies blight the sloes in the hedges on Hallowe'en, so that the sloe in the cake will be the last of the year.
"Come on, girls," they heard her call to the others, "let's waste no more time on them." When all was quiet the seven intriguers slipped down the fire escape and disappeared in the darkness safely escaping discovery. "Anne," called a chorus of boys' and girls' voices, "come out and have some fun. Have you forgotten it's Hallowe'en?"
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