The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1874-03-13
Curiosities of Sunerstition.

Louis Napoleon in his will empha
sizes the solemn declaration: "Witl
regard to my son, let him keep as a tai
isman the seal ] used to wear attached
to my watch" This piece of fetichisn1
would appear to have formed yet an.
other link between the imperial exile
that has passed from our midst, and
those Latin races whose cause he affec-
| ted to represent, whose superstition he
/ certainly shared. Indeed, the ancient
Romans degra led a priest because his
mitre fell, and unmade a dictator be-
cause a rat squeaked. Caesar crossed
the RubicOn, because on the opposite
bank he saw a man with fine figure.
His nephew felt confident of winning
| the battle of Actium, because he met a
peasant by the name of Nicolaus noun
| ted on an ass. Wolsey was warned of
his doom by crozierhead Seianus by
a flight of crows. DR.. johnson objec..
ted 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 1uck's sake Augustus wore some
portion of a sea calf; Charlemagne,
some trinket of unknown value. Mo-
manned was all fate; Bonaparte all
star and destiny. Cromwell believed
in September 3, and Louis Napoleon in
December 2. Sulla called himself Felix,
the favored child of fortune, and limo
leon 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
10 IL 4,
of Tyre in 332 b. c.. His seer, Aris-
tander, forsaw in this crimson efflux of
the vital stream out of the commissariat
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
bewitching bloody milk, several times
in each century, gave simple folk a
scare. Thus it was noticed in 1864. I'M
der Urban ~, at Bolsena, not far from
Civita Veccbia and Raphael 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 1883, when Heinrich Won Bulow de-
stroyed the village and church at Wills
mach, drops of blood were found eight
days afterward on the host placed on
the altar. But the victims of supersti-
tion have the bu"Ip of casualty largely
developed, and in 1910 thirty eight Jews
were burnt be ause they had tortured
the consecrated host till it bled. Again,
the sight was seen on the Moselle in
1924, and in 1848 the famous Gutenberg
analyzed 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 monads or vibrois,
which have a red color, and are so min
ute that from 46, Csc, 900, 900 to S84, 634,-
900, 900 distinct 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 Ehrenberg existed to point
out to their superstitious butchers what
they called proof of the consecrated
host being tortured until it bled, was
merely due to an aggregation of hungry
red insects.