Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 December 1899 — PET SUPERSTITIONS. [ARTICLE]

PET SUPERSTITIONS.

Some that Influence Mostly All Sorts of People. Dr. Samuel Johnson would never enter a room left foot foremost; the brave Marshal Saxe screamed in terror at the sight of a cat; Peter the Great wan not equal to crossing a bridge when he came to it, unless to do so was absolutely necessary; Byron shared with less famous people than he the dislike to having the salt kt table spilled between him and his neighbor. A sneeze is with half the nations of the world nothing to be sneezed at. To exclaim “God bless you” when any one sneezes .in your presence is a relic of what the Roman did before us, and before him the Greek. Mohammed gives directions of the same kind to his followers, and the Hindu of to-day utters his pious ejaculation after the sneeze by way of prayer or good wish on behalf of the victim. Many people will avoid going under a ladder If they can get around it. The belief that if you put on your stocking the wrong side out it is lucky Is very general, or was until the schoolmaster returned from abroad; and I myself remember an old woman who was. convinced that turning her stocking inside out saved her from being lost when the fairies, one pitch-dark night, had misled her on a trackless English moor. What is to take the place of a lucky horseshoe when we all ride in automobiles? There is no room for the imagination in them. Some new mascot will have to be discovered. Charms of one kind or another are carried by people that have a pious contempt for heathen superstitious; a small potato, for example, to avert rheumatism, or a chestnut. The late journalist, George Augustus Sala, never traveled without carrying with him, as a lucky card, an ace of spades. Somehow it failed to save him from his creditors. But creditors are notoriously deficient in imagination. If Shylock had remembered this when he drew up his bond “The Merchant of Venice” would never have been written.—Rochester PostExpress. ~ ,