THOUGH superstition is pretty well laughed away, yet there are some points in which we can never get the better of it. The wedding ring in coffee grounds—the coffin in the candle—the stranger in the fire, are marked by none but vulgar and foolish eyes. You see salt spilt, hear death-watches—owls hoot—dogs howl, and despise the omen—you are above it. But yet let me ask you, an enlightened philosopher—Whether you are above choice of seats at whist? Whether you have not really believed that your chance for winning was much bettered by your taking the fortunate chairs, and of course obliging your adversaries to sit, not in those of the scornful, but of the losers? When you quit the game on a run of ill luck, what is it but declaring your belief that the games already played have an influence upon those which are to come?

Each ticket in a lottery has an equal chance——do you think so? Number 1000 got the great prize in the last lottery—now, confess honestly that you feel something within that tells you the same number can never win the great prize again—you would prefer every other number to it—and yet reason says, that all the tickets have an equal probability of success. In these instances and many others, superstition, even in cultivated minds, will be always more than a match for truth.

A gentleman coming a passenger in a vessel from the West-Indies, finding it more inconvenient to be shaved than to wear his beard, chose the latter——but he was not suffered to have his choice long—it was the unanimous opinion of the sailors, and indeed of the Captain as well, that there was not the least probability of a wind as long as this ominous beard was suffered to grow. They petitioned—they remonstrated, and at last prepared to cut the fatal hairs by violence. Now, as there is no operation at which it is so much the patient’s interest to consent, as that of the barber——the gentleman quietly submitted—nor could the wind resist the potent spell which instantly filled all their sails, and “wafted them merrily away.”

You see we have only got rid of general superstition, we still retain that which belongs to our particular profession or pursuits.

Adieu.