The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-08-28
.curiositles Of sunarstitien.

Lot.is Napoleon in his will empha-
sizes the solemn declaration "With
regard to my son, let him keep as tai
isman the seal I used TO wear attached
to my watch" This piece of fetichism
would appear to have formed yet anoth-
er link between the imperial e*ile that
| has passed from oir midst and those
| Latin tsces whose cause he affected to
| represent, whose superstition he GER
| tainly shared. Indeed, the ancient
Romans degraded priest because
his miter fell, ana unmade a dictator
because a rat squeaked. Caesar crossed
the Rnbicon, because, on the opposite
bank, he saw man with a fine figure
His nephew felt confident of winning
| the battle of ActiUm, because he met a
peasant OF the name of Nicholaus
mounted on an ass. Wolsey was warned
OF his doom by a crosier-head Seia-
nus, by flight of crows. DR.. johnson
objected to going under a ladder.
Montaigne avoided giving his left foot
priority in putting on his stock
ings. Alexander was believed to
have united the Gordian knot with
a slice of his sword. For good
lucks sake, Augustus wore some por-
tion of seacalf Charlemagne some
trinkets of unknown value. Mahommed
was all fate. Bonaparte all star and
destiny. Cromwell believed in Sept. 8,
and Louis Napoleon in December 2.
Sulla called himself Felix, the IA
Vored child of fortune, and Timoleon
turned his house into a temple of
chance. Alexander, if we may credit
the account given by Quintus Curtius,
was terrified by blood flowing from in
side his soldiers bread during the siege
of Tyre in 1882 B. g. His seer. Aris-
tander, foresaw in this crimson eff1ux of
the vital stream out of the commissariat
happy issue for the Macedoniars and
the warriors thus nerved took Tyre.
From the year 1904, the alarming spec
tacle of the bleeding host and bread,
as we'll as the bewitched bloody milk,
several times in each century, gave sim.
pie folks scare thus, it was noticed
not far from Civita Vecchia; and Ra-
phael has taken this for the subject OF
his picture called the "Miraculo de
Bolsena," which is at all events,
miracle of the pencil. In 1888,
when Heinrich Won Bulow destroyed
the village and church of Wilsnach,
drops of blood were found eight days
afterwards on the host placed on the
altar. But the victims of superstition
have the bump of casualty remarkably
developed and in 1910, thirty eight |
Jews were burnt to ashes because they
had tortured the consecrated host until
it bled. Again, the sight was seen on
the Moselle in 1924 and in 1S4S the
famous Ehrenberg analysed the terrible
portent. Alter stopping with his micro
scope over the led stains on bread,
cheese, and potatoes, this savant de-
clared that they are caused by small |
monads of vibrois, which have a red |
color, and are so minute that from 49,
556, ,000,O 900 to S94, 736, 900, 900, 900 dis
tinct beings adorn the space of one
cubic inch. Unfortunately, when, in
1910, thirty eight Israelites, as we have |
seen, were burnt to ashes, no scientific
existed to point out to their
butchers that what they
called proof of the consecrated host
being tortured until it bled, was merely
iue to aggregation of hungry red in
scots. Chambers Journal.