Stupid Superstitions

The belief that diseasea are caused by the dead is of great antiquity. It was applied in the case of vampires, which were supposed in the middlo ages to be the spirits of diseased individuals, which left their graves at night and sucked tho blood of the living. The most horrible part of the fancy, which set all Europe panicstricken a few centuries ago, was the theory that the victims were obliged themselves to become vampires after death. To prevent this thousands of suspected corpses were dug up in order that their hearts might be transfixed with stake8 to prevent the fiends from going abroad. In 1875 the body of a woman in Chicago who had died of consumption was exhumed and her lungs burned, undsr the persuasión that she was drawing others after her into the grave. Passing orer a hidden grave is thought in some parts of England to produce a rash, while in New Jersey the same cause brings about incurable cramps in the foot In China and Scotland also people are reluctant to save a drowning man for fear that the latter, if nis life is preserved, will do gome dreadful injury to his savior. The Scotch believe that the spirit of the last person buried has to keep watch in the churchyard until another is entombed there, to whom he delivers his charges. The duty of the latest interred to stand sentry at the graveyard gate every night until relieved often gives much uneasiness to the deceased's surviving friends in thinly inhabited parts of the country. - New York Evening Star. Ftve young ladies and gentlemen liave gtepped out of school, to higher ■esponsibilities, eays the Morenci Obaerver. Two to one they're stepping ïigher now than they will, with the ïarnCMs of life fully on and the tues hitched