Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 April 1893 — Some By-Gone Superstitions. [ARTICLE]

Some By-Gone Superstitions.

The ancient custom of whirling the teacup and telling fortunes by the dregs, seeing a kiss here, and a ring there, clear sky, or tears, is now known as a part of the old divination which even the more enlightened of the heathen ridiculed; the notion of the disaster with thirteen at table has been exploded long ago; the idea that Friday is a day of ill luck, that any of GoiVs days can be days of ill luck, ranks one adhering to it as among the low and igorant. That one must not trim one’s nails on Sunday, lest one do so nothing one is ashamed of before the n :xt Sunday; that the scissors dropping into the floor, instead of upon it, announce a coming guest; the rocking of au empty chair gives spiritual warnings: that the baying of a dog at night, the breaking of a looking-glass, the putting on of another's crape, all prophesy death —the belief in these and kindred superstitions, and the expression or exercise Ol such belief, gives one a low caste, and is no longer to be indulged in with safety by those ambitious of social correctness and elegance. Enlightenment has gone too far in these days for those desiring its extension tosubject themselves to the idleness of a belief if any possible power over us inherent in any combination of inanimate substances. We have come* out into the light, and left the bats and owls and creeping things of night behind us. We caunot be hampered by those who persist in looking back and lingering over such dust and ashes; we drop their hands and go on. It has become, by the edict not only of Christian faith but even of gav society, au evidence of vulgiti breeding, both inadmissible and impossible, to give any more heed than we should to objects of curiosity to these notions and fancies which arc in amount the creed of the igorant beldams of dark ages. These useless and depraving things must all go together into the caldron where the sisters of the blasted heath performed their incantations, belonging to the legends of dark history and unhappy ages, and be allowed to bear no relation whatever to the sweetness aud light of our own fortunate days, and those more fortunate, perhaps, to come.—[Harper’s Bazar.