laughed at; and perhaps our vanity is not
a little flattered by the contrast which
presents itself, between our own highly cultivated
condition, and the wretched state of our
ancestors.

Yet Mrs. Flimmins will not undertake a
sea-voyage on a Friday; nor would she on
any account allow her daughter Mary to be
married on that day of the week. She has
great pity for the poor Red Indians who
will not do certain things while the moon
presents a certain appearance, and who
attach all kinds of powers to poor dumb
brutes: yet if her cat purrs more than usual,
she accepts the warning, and abandons the trip
she had promised herself on the morrow.

Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund
for eradicating superstitions from the minds
of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka;
and while she is calculating the advantages to
be derived from a mission to the South Sea
Islands, to do away with the fearful
superstitious reverence in which those poor dear
islanders hold the native flea: a coal pops
from her fire, and she at once augurs from its
shape, an abundance of money that will enable
her to set her pious undertaking in operation;
but on no account will she commence
collecting subscriptions for the anti-drinking-
slave-grown-sugar-in-tea society, because she
has always remarked that Monday is her
unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle died,
and on a Monday she caught that severe cold
at Brighton, from the effects of which she is
afraid she will never recover.

Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded
woman. Her unlucky day is Wednesday.
On a Wednesday she first caught that flush
which she has never been able to chase from
her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days her
Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she
will not go to a pic-nic on a Wednesday,
because she feels convinced that the day will
turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off
the carriage. Yet the other morning, when a
gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter
her fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly
reproached the first-born for her weakness, in
giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the
old woman. Mrs. Carmine is considered to
be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She
attaches no importance whatever to the star
under which a child is born,—does not think
there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and
Neptune; and she has a positive contempt
for ghosts; but she believes in nothing that
is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.

Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen
many ghosts,—in fact, is by this time quite
intimate with one or two of the mysterious
brotherhood; but at the same time she is at a
loss to understand how any woman in her
senses, can believe Thursday to be a more
fortunate day than Wednesday, or why Monday
is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones's
calendar. She can state, on her oath, that the
ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza Artichoke,
appeared at her bedside on a certain night and
she distinctly saw the mole on its left cheek,
which poor Eliza, during her brief career, had
vainly endeavoured to eradicate, with all sorts
of poisonous things. The ghost, moreover,
lisped,—so did Eliza! This was all clear
enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it
a personal insult for anybody to suggest that
her vivid apparitions existed only in her own
over-wrought imagination. She had an affection
for her ghostly visitors, and would not
hear a word to their disparagement.

The unearthly warnings which Mrs. Piptoss
had received had well-nigh spoilt all her
furniture. When a relative dies, the fact is
not announced to her in the commonplace
form of a letter,—no, an invisible sledge-
hammer falls upon her Broadwood, an
invisible power upsets her loo-table, all the
doors of her house unanimously blow open,
or a coffin flies out of the fire into her lap.

Mrs. Grumple, who is a very economical
housewife, looks forward to the day when the
moon re-appears,—on which occasion she turns
her money, taking care not to look at the pale
lady through glass. This observance, she
devoutly believes, will bring her good fortune.
When Miss Caroline has a knot in her lace,
she looks for a present; and when Miss Amelia
snuffs the candle out, it is her faith that the
act defers her marriage for a twelvemonth.
Any young lady who dreams the same dream
two consecutive Fridays, will tell you that
her visions will "come true."

Yet these are exactly the ladies, who most
deplore the "gross state of superstition" in
which many "benighted savages" live, and
willingly subscribe their money for its
eradication. The superstition so generally
connected with Friday, may easily be traced to
its source. It undoubtedly and confessedly
has its origin in scriptural history: it is the
day on which the Saviour suffered. The
superstition is the more revolting from this
circumstance; and it is painful to find that it
exists among persons of education. There is no
branch of the public service, for instance, in
which so much sound mathematical knowledge
is to be found, as in the Navy. Yet who are
more superstitious than sailors, from the
admiral down to the cabin boy? Friday
fatality is still strong among them. Some
years ago, in order to lessen this folly, it was
determined that a ship should be laid down
on a Friday, and launched on a Friday; that
she should be called "Friday," and that she
should commence her first voyage on a Friday.
After much difficulty a captain was found
who owned to the name of Friday; and after
a great deal more difficulty men were
obtained, so little superstitious, as to form a
crew. Unhappily, this experiment had the
effect of confirming the superstition it was
meant to abolish. The "Friday" was lost—
was never, in fact, heard of from the day she
set sail.

Day-fatality, as Miss Nippers interprets it