Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1890-05-29
Belief in the Supernatural Older
Than Moses and as Modern
as Ward MeAlliSter.
Many Strange SuperStitions That Have
Travelled Down the Centuries
and are Recognizable
Inheritances.

credulous Always absurd
Scratch a State Street dude with a four
leaf clover in his shoe VOLTA! A full
hedged thirty-secOnd degree crocodile
wor.hiper of the Nile stands revealed
Take Abdel kader Bushyhead, Cetewago,
Scipio Africans Napoleon, Sitting Bull
and Ward McAlhster and stand them up
in a 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 viii all bleed,
and they arc all superstitious. Every
mother son Of them is tainted with su-
perstition in some form, depending upon
the character of environment.
The genesis of superstition Is uudeter-
mined and apparently Understandable. 1t
is lost in the misty mass of myths back
of known history. Herbert Spencer with
bic usual prescience. has thrown q great
deal of light upon the subject, and has
demonstrated the raison etre of many
current forms Of superstition, but even
that emient thinker has not been abo to
successfully trace its ultimate analysis 1t
is quite probable that Adam never yolun-
tarily broke a mirror without an inward
Eve never began new dress ON Friday.
The writer has collected a number of in
stances. both ancient and modern. which
might for lack of a better title be called
"Curiositiss of Superstition.
India, Egypt and Ethiopia contribute
great undigested mass of superstihors.
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 trifle with a
scared high-cast OK In some parts of Him
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 nimbIe tab
by was Invaluable in their grainaries,
In the Ethiopian Voodoo worship the
serpent occupied the place Of honor, and
there has a superstition current among the
peasantrv of some EUROPEAN countries
during the middle ages that an altar
should be raised to o 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 in exactly the same form
that they have kept for centuries. The
modern Parsees possess the hereditary
prejudice in favor of cr0codiles and
against female babies that distinguished
their remOtest ancestors. The result is
that the humble and mattractiye saurian
continues to DO q land-0ttce business in the
free-lunch line, contributing something
incidentally, in q small way, to the burn
ing question, lis marriage a failure.
Missionaries have done much to disSi-
pate the more brutal and inhuman super
stitions. but still the Car Of luugernaut
brushes the bones OF the faithful and
claims whole hetacOmbs of lives Of mis-
cradle. misguided fanatics,
Greece and Rome, with all their boosted
civilization. We're touched with the uni
versal faint Their superstitions, however
assumed a more human phase than those of
the far east. Suparstitious innumerabe
are interviewed 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
.,-..- ] yg-er- f,,l [.tFa,l ..r,frTt5
form Of beautiful women who were called
fair ladies'
They We're said to haunt shady trees,
and We're sometimes seen lettering about
lonely wells. They also particularly af-
fected the shores of purling brooks and
silver rivers. These fair ladies, il
seems. sometimes fell in love with hand
some young men. and were said 70 possess
a penchant for babies-all of which goes
10 prove that they were a very amiable
and satisfactory sort of uymph. Not even
the most confirmed pessimist of the Edgar
Sdltus school could object to this kind of a
superstition
The Greeks also had a peculiar supersti-
ton in 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 spirit,
or some demon, entered into it, and at
night walked about the streets shocking
at the doors Of houses and calling people
( hy name If any person answered he was
sure 10 die before the next day.
1T was considered by both the Greeks
and Romans very unIucky to spill oil. but