Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1874-03-04
CurI0sities Of Superstition.

LOUIS NapOIeOu III Ills Will empha
sizes the solemn declaration I" Will
regard to my son, let him keep as 8
talisman the seal [ used to wear at.
tached to my watch" This piece oil
fetichism would appear to have formed
yet another link between the imperial
exile that has passed from our midst,
and those Latin races whose cause he
effected to represent, whose supersti
ton he certainly shared. Indeed, the
ancient Romans degraded priest be-
cause his mitre fell, and unmade die
tator because a rat sqeaked. Caesar
crossed the Rubicon, because on the
opposite bank he saw man with a
fine figure. His nephew felt con-
fident of winning the battle
OF Actium. because he met a
peasant by the name of Nicolaus
mounted on an ass. Wolsey was warn
ed of his doom by crozierhead; Sc
janus by flight of crows. DR.. John
son objected to going under ladder.
Montaigne avoided giving his left foot
priority in putting on his stockings.
Alexander was believed to have united
the Gordian knot with a slice of his
sword. For good luck's sake Angus
tus wore some portion of sea calf;
Charlemagne, some trinkeu of unknown
value. Mohammed was all fate; Buo-
naparte all star and destiny. Cromwell
believed in September 8, and Louis
Napoleon in December 2. Sulla called
himself Felix, the favored child of for
tune, and Timoleon turned his house
into temple of chance. Alexander, if
we may credit the account given by
Quintus Curtius, was terrified by
blood flowing from inside his
soldiers bread during the seige of
Tyre in 1872 B. G. His seer, Aristander,
foresaw in this crimson ef1ux of
the vital stream out Of the commissa-
riat happy issue for the Macedonian !;
and the warriors thus never took Tyre.
From the year 1904, the spectacle
of the bleeding host and bread as we'll
as the bewitched bloody milk, several
times in each century, gave simple
folk a scare; thus it was noticed in
1854, under Urban ~, at Bolsena,
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, a
miracle of the pencil. In 1888, when
Heinrich Won Bulow destroyed the vii
lage and church at Wilsnach, drops of
blood were found eight days afterward
on the host placed on the altar. But
the victims of superstition have the
bump of casualty largely developed,
and in 1410 thirty eight Jews were
burnt because they had tortured tn e
consecrated host until it bled. Again,
the sight was seen on the Moselle in
1924, and in 1848 the famous Gutenberg
analysed the terrible potent After
STOPPING with his microscope over the
red stains on bread, cheese, and pota-
toes, this savant declared that they are
caused by small mopads or vibrois,
which have a red color, and are so
minute that from rs, Csc, 600, 900 to 1874,
634, 100000 distinct beings adorn the
space of one cubic inch. Unfortunate
ly, when, in 1910, thirty-eight. Israel
ties, as we have seen, were burnt to
ashes. no scientific Ehrenberg existed
to point out to their superstitious
butchers what they called proof Of
the consecrated host being tortured I'M
til it bled, was merely due to aggrega-
ton of hungry red Insects. Chambers
JOal7n0l.