Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1890-05-29
HOW THEY CLING TO u.s..
Belief in the Supernatural Older
Than Moses and as Modern
as Ward McAlliSteP.
Many Strange SuperstitiOns That Have
Travelled Down the Centuries
and are Recognizable
InheritanceS.

age, no people, has been exempt from it
| The pythoness of Greece and the augur OF
| Rome may shake hands across twenty CEN
turtles with the spirit-rapper of America
| 1t is the same old human nature. Always
credulous. Always absurd.
Scratch State Street dude with four
leaf clover in his shoe VOLTA. A full
hedged thirty-second degree crocodile
| worshiper of the Nile stands revealed.
Take Abdel Kader, Bushyhead. Cetewago,
Scipio Africanus, Napoleon, Sitting Bull
and Ward McAllister, and stand them up
in row. Don't look much alike. do
they? No! Striking as the superficial
differences may appear, there are, how
ever, at least, two facts common to all of
them: Cut them and they will all bleed,
and they arc all superstitious. Every
mother son IF them is tainted with SUI
perstition in some form, depending upon
the character of environment.
The genesis of superstition is undeter-
mined and apparently Understandable. 1t
Is lost In the misty mass of myths back
of known history. Herbert Spencer, with
his usual prescIence, has thrown a great
deal of light upon the subject, and has
demonstrated the raison d'etre of many
current forms of superstition, but even
that emient thinker has not been ablo to
successfully trace its ultimate analysis 1t
is quite probable that Adam never volun-
tarily broke mirror without an inward
tremor and we are reasonably certain that
Eve never began new dress on Friday.
The writer has collected number of in
stances, both ancient and modern, which
might for lack of better title be called
'CuriOSitiaS of SunerStitiOn -
India, Egypt and Ethiopia contribute a
great undigested mass of superstitiors
| Some of them are grotesquely repulsive,
barbarous and cruel. Others are pictur-
esquely beautiful Many of them are
linked with the religious system, and take
the form of animal worship
Among the Brahmins a certain kind of
| ape was sacred. Also the bull. In the
small town of cawpore there are six hospi-
tails for the care and treatment of sick and
decrepit balloons. The hunch-back OK to,
day enjoyes the freedom of every East
Indian village and if profane European
undertakes any familiarity with these
mild-eyed animals, his relation with the
faithful are liable to become strained
It's very dangerous thing to trife with a
scared highcast OK in some parts of Hin
| dostan.
The Egyptians held the harmless, neces.
sary cat in high veneration, and it became
in time an object of religious worship
| Probably because the acute and nimble tab
| by was invaluable in their grainaries.
| In the Ethiopian Voodoo worship the
serpent occupied the place of honor, and
| there has superstition current among the
peasantry Of some EUROPEAN countries
during the middle ages that an altar
should be raised to snake, if found in
the house. Serpent worship, however
may be said to have become obsolete
Even In the most primitive and barbar-
Gus communities it is no longer considered
good form.
Many of the superstitions of India are
current to-day III exactly the same form
that they have kept for centuries. The
modern Parsees possess the hereditary
prejudice in favor of crocodiles and
against female babies that distinguished
| their remotest ancestors. The result is
| that the humble and unattractive saurian
continues to do land-ofice business in the
free-lunch line, contributing something
incidentally, in a small way, to the burn,
ing question, is marriage failure
| Missionaries have done much to dissi-
pate the more brutal and inhuman super
stitions, but still the Car of Juggernaut
brushes the bones of the faithful and
claims whole hetacombs of lives of mis-
cradle, misguided fanatics.
Greece and Rome, with all their boasted
civilization, were touched with the uni
versal faint Their superstitions, however,
assumed a more human phase than those OF
the far east. Superstitions innumerable
are intertwined with the social and religi-
ious life of classic times. Some of them are
beautiful and all harmless.
The Greeks believed that the plains and
woods were inhabited by spirits in Il 9
form of beautiful women who were called
fair ladies'
They were said to haunt shady trees,
and were sometimes seen lettering about
lonely wells. They also particularly af-
fected the shores of purling brooks and
silver rivers. These fair ladies'" it
seems, sometimes fell in love with hand
some young men, and were said to possess
penchant for babies of which goes
to prove that they were a very amiable
and satisfactory sort of nymph. Not even
the most confirmed pessimist of the Edgar
| Saltus school could object to this kind Of a
| superstition.
The Greeks also had peculiar supersti-
ton lin regard to the dead body of a
wicked man They believed that the body
did not undergo the usual process of dis
solution after death, but that the skin be-
came dry and distended like the parch-
ment of drum. and that the man s spirit
or some demon, entered into it, and at
night walked about the streets knocking
at the doors of houses and calling people
by name. If any person answered he was
sure to die before the next day.
1t was considered by both the Greeks
and Romans very unlucky to spill oil, but
lucky to spill wine. A loaf placed upon
| the table upside down was a pressage OF
death, and if piece of bread were drop
ped it must be picked up on the instant
and kissed before being eaten. The
Greeks had a peculiar and rather disagree
able superstition that all grandmothers
who lived to be over 100 were turned into
vampires. This has doubtless reached
us in corrupted form. The original super
stition probably referred to mothers-in-
| law.
The Romans were very superstitious
people. 1t is recorded that they once de-
graded a priest because his inter fell and
unmade dictator because rat squeaked.
Augustus wore some portion of a sea calf
as a charm against evil, and Caesar cross
ed the Rubicon because he saw a man OF
fine figure on the opposite bank.
Ferdinand Wards Prison Life.
New York Sun.
Of all the prisoners in Sing Sing it is
-.oIaLJo +bo4 Eord;nond Word fooIc his