Minor Superstitions

"You don't know how these mlnot uperstitions have eaten their way lnto the fabric of society. Take the matter of 13 at table. Everybody professes to laughatit, butnobody - until we started the opposition - dared to oppose it," aid a member of the Thirteen Club to a writer in the Epooh. "The idea of 13 being an unlucky nuraber at table is as old as the church fathers. It sprang from the traditions of the Last Supper, just as hansjman's day is said to be a tradítion of the crucifixion. Perhaps you think that the strong practical sense of this ape has outgrown these weaknesses? If so, the next time that you catch a party of intelligent, even religious people, at table, make the experiment. Cry out that there are 18 at table, and remind them that one will die within the year. Then see to what expedients they will resort to make the number 12 or 14. But they will protest that it is only a joke. "1 have given sorae attention to popular superstitions, and lot me teil you that argument is powerless against them. They have a grip upon the imagination that nothing but ridicule will lessen. "Let me give you a few instances. "There is an old and widespread notion that the m rrors must be removed from a room in which a corpse is lying. 1 found tbe custom in Iroland, among the peasantry of France, and the i'ievv Englanders of Oh. o and Minnesota. In those latter places they cover the mirror up with cloths instoad of removingr it Now make the expeiiment yourself, and the noxt time you are called upon to sit up with a corpse, notice how uncomfortable a mirror will make you feel. Of course it is a matter of the imagination, but you can't reason against it All the ingrained torrors of .rx thousand yoars are in your bones. Yon walk across the fioor, and catcli a plimpse of yourself in the glass. You start; was there not a spectral something behind you? So you cover it up. "It makes you smile when you think that the g-if t of a pocket knife is supposed to cut friendship in two, and yet, when you wish to give a knifo to your son or sorne dear friend, you go tbrough the farce of selling it to him. I have seen the wisest and best of men do this. Rather than load my little nephew with unknown evils, I have done it mysclf. "When you want idiotie superstitions you have to take actors and singers - persons who might be supposed to know better. I know actors who would rather sleep on the roof of a hotel than in room No. 13, or any particular nuraber v;hich could be construed as unlucky. There are certain actors who are called Jonahs, because their presence is supposod to bring ill luck. Cross-eyed men or vvomen are particularly feared in a company, and an actor who is marked with small-pox can scarcely get an engagr;nent. Actors all carry charms and amulets around with them; thry have their lucky days and their unlucky days, and are slaves to superstition. "The form of superstition which we flnd likely to bafBo even ridicule is the idea that certain houses are unlucky. In my own experience I have known several houses which roally seemed to bring misfortune upon their tenants. It is hard to ridicule this sort of thinfr; of oourso it is all infernal nonsense, but people insist that there are f acts to be facod. "