Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 April 1875 — Signs and Saws. [ARTICLE]

Signs and Saws.

Thm» are a myriad of small superstition* at loose among us, a sort of intellectual vermin, of which, if we cannot wytamtinate them all, we ma/ catch and examine a few for our amusement, as the patient Italian caught and harnessed and taught his fleas to go through all those pretty maneuvers of chariot drawing and driving and cannon-firing and bell-ringing that belong to the trained canaries These superstitions have psaaed into, vogue among us in the shape of proverbs whose wisdom it is folly to dispute, and are in almost everybody’s mouth on favorable occasion. Yet they . are not by any means proverbs in reality, but mere base Brummagem coin in the midst of sterling currency. A proverb is always a condensed drop of wisdom; its imitations are but condensed drops of folly. “Aphorisms,” Bays Lord Bacon, “ except they should be ridiculous, cannot be made but of the pith and heart of the sciences.” But of the other kind, those that have some flavor of supernatnralism al»out them, since there is no reason to back them in simSy natural things, he observes that in his dgment “ they ought ail to be despised, and ought to serve but for winter talk by the fireside; though when I say despised, I mean as for belief; for, otherwise, the spreading or publishing of them is in no sort to be despised; for they have done much mischief.”

A proverb is the expression of the wit or poetry peculiar to the idiosyncrasy of a nation; a single one sometimes contains volumes; they have been struck out of the brain of genius at n whits heat, and they have been instantly recognized and adopted by the people. “ A rolling stone gathers no moss.” said a village wiseacre perhaps; and it has been echoing to the lips of all the village wiseacres since. “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,”said Milton; and the multitude, without forgetting their tribute to him, appropriated his property in the line. “ Distance lends enchantment to the view,” says another poet; and the world again, the English-speak ing world, see the truth and beauty and pithiness of the phrase, and make it their own without more ado. But how it is that the base kind got established in popular usage would puzzle a conjurer, as the saying is, to tell—whether they are the sediment of old heathen rites, or whether tthey are, as their adherents claim, the “gathered wisdom of a thousand years," the observations of countless old women of countless generations. “ Cut your nails on Sunday, and you’ll be ashamed on Monday,” says one of these silly saws. “ Friday’s undertaking is sure to come to breaking,” says another. “See a pin and pick it up, all the day you'll have good Tuck,” a third announces, with more sense than rhyme. “ See a pin and lei it lie. you’ll want a pin before you die.” And al) across the country, when night falls, the young maidens are looking at the first star that glimmers through the twilight, and repeating, “ Starlight, starlight, first star I’ve seen to-night ; I wish I could, I wish I might, have the wish I wish to-night! ” But why should we not then trim our nails on Sunday, if we will, without fear of disgrace? iVhat occult harmonies of the cosmos are broken by the process, and is there really any wizardy behind it all* The simplest wizardry in the world explains it, at any rate, and just as simple a solution can be produced. to every one of the little superstitions in its turn. Why should you not trim your nails on Sunday? Because under the old civilization in which the saying had rise the thorough toilet, we blush to say, was a weekly and not a daily institution. It was supposed to be the part of every decent body to have the person in order for the beginning of the week, and if you were so laggard as to be going through the operation on Sunday instead of Saturday, why, you naturally then would be laggard enough in other things to get behindhand and to be ashamed of yourself on Monday. This affair of the fingernails, though, is a fruitful one for these signs and saws, and, according to another, although Sunday is still a forbidden day, you can trim them on Monday if you want news; “Tuesdav for shoes; Wednesday for wealth, Thursday for health, Friday for sorrow, Saturday, see your true-love tomorrow,” which, if you go to the same church, you very probably would do anyway. As lor the “ Friday’s undertakings"—alas! how .many of us, even nows au.res, are yet in the bonds of that couplet, w ill not begin a journey or a piece of work on Friday and would almost rather remain single forever than run the risk of taking Friday for our wedding-day. in spite of the example of the Scotch, who prefer it for a wedding day, and in spite of the example of the Russians, who regard it as the luckiest of all days! And I why should we not begin a choice undertaking on Friday? The answer is as simple as the clown's conundrums —not because Friday is hanging dav. but because there isn’t 'time to finish it in the same week; pres-; ently comes Sunday, and the openinc of the new week brings its own work, 1 and the thing begun on Friday is likely to drag along till one is sick of it. and so i never get done at all. Then, to go on, I why, if you pick up a pin, will it brine you good luck? Simply for the reason that the person who is’ both observant and careful enough to stoop and pick up such a trifle is naturally and intrinsically in the way of good luck and success, and for no other. Ex pede Herculem: as it is with one precept so it is with the whole body of the law. Why do they say you will get your wish if" you wish by a hundred white horses? Because it■ will take you a lifetime to see a hundred white horses and always remember to countone and skip nunc, and possibly because a thing wished for w ith so much persistence is likely to be gained by other means. Why" will you quarrel with the person between whom and yourself you spill the salt at table? Because such carelessness in one thing is only indicative of corresponding carelessness in all things, and the common result of carelessness, whether it comes from greedy haste or inattention, is a quarrel. Why may you not drive a nail on Sunday without death ensuing in the familv before the year closes?’ Carelessness again. The people who are so improvident as to leave their nail-driving, till Sunday are reckless enough, under the old form of ideas,.xo fall from a housetop or meet with any other of the calamities called judgments at any time. Why may we none of us sit down thirteen at table without entailing death on one of the banqueters again before the year is out? Because the number thirteen being a baker’s dozen and the devil’s dozen got a bad name early, and the average of death being within such proportion that whether you sit down at table or not some one of any given thirteen is liable to death within the given year. And thus the answer rises to nearly all

of these little riddles. Nearly, but not quite all; for why in the world, when a bit of the wick refuses to burn and darkens the flame, the good-wife should start in dismay, and cry that there is a shroud in the candle, or why seeing the moon over one shoulder should bring you better luck than seeing it over the other, though it Is very evident why it should be better luck when you have silver in your pocket; or why, because you fall upstairs, it should follow that you lover is thinking of you—these and the rest of them are riddles that not all the wisdom of puzzlecraft can solve. Yet about some of these superstitions a certain shadow of poetry rests, as when you hear a dog howl under the window at night, and feci the sound add a horror to the darkness and desolation of the hour, because just so the fabled banshee howls and presages death, or when the same presage occurs at the breaking of the looking-glass and the shattering of the reflected image there. But whether poetical or not, whether explainable or not, it seems to us that any heed of, not to say belief in, such absurdities isjitterly unbecoming members of a Christian community, and we agree with Lord Bacon in thinking them not only idle and puerile, but low-bred and mischievous.— Harper’s Batar.