The Worcester spy., 1898-10-31
The Charms of
Halloween.
THE LASSIES LEARN
The Fate That Future Has
in Store For Them.


ries walk abroad and fate unfolds its
mysteries to the believers in the super
natural. Tonight of all the nights in
the year, the young people can dis
cover their affinities and penetrate the
veil of the dark matrimonial future to-
ward which the faces of most of them
are hopefully turned.
Tonight any blooming damseI may
tell, if she has the requisite nerve and
knowledge, who is going to be her theo-
retica. lord and MASTER" and every
lonely swain can assure himself as to
his prospects of married bliss for the
year to come. The occult has the floor
tonight and mystery is the essential
of every observance of the feast of all
the saints combined
An olden days the night before All
SAINTS day was observed with much
more real belief in the prevalence of
the powers of the unseen world than it
is now. The charms that now are
sport We're then serious, earnest, relig-
louS ceremonies, and the verdicts of the
same tricks that are a source of anuse-
ment nowadays were then accepted as
the DEGREES of the saints. They very
the belief in them. Nowadays of
course, nobody believes that if a girl
walks down the cellar stairs backward
at midnight tonight, and sees a man in
mirror at the bottom, she will marry
that man within a year, but all the
same. there are few of the girls that
would want to see the wrong man in
the mirror, even in this matter of fact
age.
If ic inst fl,;c ala,,,o,,+ ,e .1.....s go
half belief in the efficacy of the old
charms, that makes the celebration of
the old-tine festival so enjoyable. All
over Worcester, tonight, as all over
New England, there will be merry par
ties of lads and lassies who will claim
the privilege of the day to gaze through
the medium of some medieval charm
INTO the cloudy future land of their
lives. All sorts of things will be done
to lift the veil between us and thai
which is to come, and however effica-
clous the entertainments may be- 1t is
safe to wager that the young people
VIII have jolly good time in giving
each other delightful shivers as they
gather round the open wood fires and
relate the awful secrets of the magic
Of the night.
What girl is there. however prosaic,
who will not tonight pare an apple,
and, throwing the peel over her shoul-
der,N in a dimly lighted room, read in
half fearful wonder, the initial of her
future husband in the shape the par
ing takes? Or, if She be of good lung
power and not afraid of strangulation,
Will not walk around some building
with her mouth full of water, listening
to hear the fairies speak the name
that means fate to her?
Then there are other and more elab-
crate methods of ascertaining her fate.
If you are not satisfied to know the
initial of the name that is to be the
dearest on earth to you and would have
the whole In plain print, prepare an
alphabet OF separate letters on pieces
of paper and place them beneath your
pillow. Then, before you retire, eat
half IN egg shell filed with salt and
lie down to dream you are shipwrecked
in the Sahara.
AS often as you awake, and that
ought to be about once a minute it
would be supposed, take one of the
pieces of paper from beneath your pill
low without looking at it, and throw it
into q basin of water that you have
placed beside the bed. In the morn>
ing all the letters except those spell
ing the name of the future charmer,
wrong side up.
Then there are numberless methods
of reading the decraes of fate by
means of candles which you must blow
out or must not blow out, and raisins
that must float a certain way in hot
brandy to mean one thing and in just
the same way to mean just the other
thing. And there are apples in tubs
of water that you must catch or miss
Just as it happens, in order to have
the fates decree just what you desire
of them. The best of all the charms
is that YOU never fail to have the re-
suits come out right if you arc SUBJ
sequsntly little careful about the
matter.
But while the fairies are aiding Gu
pid in his campaigns among the youths
and maidens in the parlor, the ubiqui-
tous small boy will be getting in his
| Halloween and making the fate or
fsome of his elders miserable. To the
| irrepressible young American, Hal
lowe'en is not the feast of all the saints
with its delicious fragments of tradi~
ton still clinging to it, but it is the
prosaic cabbage stump night, sort
of saturnaIia of all the inlps Of mis-
| chief with limitless possibilities in the
way Of disturbing other people and
harassing irascible Cnes to the verge
of insanity.
| Tonight the imps will be out of doors
while the fairies are inside, and II you
| hear a dull thump on your door or
rattle of shot or peas against your
window panes, you had better bear it
| for while in patience, and then as
sumo the role of a very powerful fairy
! armed with a stout magician's wand in
the shape of a walking cane and sally
| out ana exercise as many imps as you
can catch, applying the exoreism on
| the portion of their anatomy, where
| exorcisms naturally fit.
WAS IMPRESSIVE.