'Wait,' he said, 'and let me finish the drama. We managed to keep the matter very quiet; and before leaving France, I was able to call on Mrs Rae, who is now at Boulogne, for I had a letter of introduction to her from a Parisian acquaintance. When I saw her first, she knew nothing of the affair, but at last I broke the intelligence to her and to her daughter. I found Alice to be a pretty girl, somewhat spoilt by her long mourning, and not very much inclined to listen to me; but my dear fellow, after three weeks of hard persuasion she gave in, and now she and her mother are coming over next week. I believe you were to give Alice away. When she arrives, you shall have a capital opportunity.'
'And,' I added, shaking my friend's hand warmly, 'I shall be delighted to do so.'
Most people accept it as a fact that superstition went out with the advent of steam, the telegraph, and the penny-post. A little honest observation, however, will assure us that there still exist a number of pitiable though petty superstitions. Among certain classes there are lucky and unlucky days in their calendar. They will not attempt an important task on Friday. The horseshoe still hangs behind or over the door in the Highlands, and in some places much less removed from the centres of civilisation. East-coast fishermen will yet occasionally burn or otherwise destroy a boat from which the lives of any of the crew have been lost, no matter how seaworthy or valuable the boat may be. A hare crossing the path of one of these hardy sons of the sea will cause him to forego an intended journey or voyage. To rustic and fisherman alike a concourse of magpies is an evil omen. As for dreams, the belief that they are the forecasts of events is perhaps the strongest of all the forms of their superstition. We might multiply examples, but have said enough to suggest that the follies of their great-grandfathers have still no slight fascination for the ignorant, in spite of the strides which intelligence has made.
But have superstitious beliefs quite left the more intelligent ranks of society? On the very subject of dreams itself is there not a sneaking credulity which goes far to prove the contrary? True, any one of us is quite able to account in a natural way for the character of his or her dreams. Nevertheless, the lady who chides her children for repeating the interpretation which the housemaid has put upon their sleeping vagaries, and sagely instructs them on the subject of imperfect digestion and its effects upon the brain during sleep, is not ashamed to impart to her husband any morning the particulars of her own shocking dreams, or to piously express the hope that something untoward is not about to happen. Her better-half pooh-poohs the matter doubtless, as becomes his superior dignity, but is visited none the less with a vague sense of uneasiness when he remembers that he himself had a vision of losing a tooth or seeing a house on fire. Having courageously quizzed his wife at the breakfast-table on the folly of _her_ augury, and bade her and the children good-bye for the day, he inwardly deplores the unlucky omen of having to turn back for his forgotten umbrella or pocket-book!