The only difference between people is, that some are honest about their superstitions and others—are not!
I met a lady not long ago at a foreign table d'hôte who started our acquaintance by remarking that she was thankful to say she had not a single superstition. Before we had spent ten days under the same roof I discovered that she believed in portents and lucky stones and the "whole bag of tricks," and possessed the power of seeing people in their astral bodies.
This is to introduce my own strongest superstition, which is a horror of seeing the new moon for the first time through glass. Breaking glass is almost as disastrous in my experience, even if the article itself only costs a few pence.
Now I do not for one moment suggest that either one or other is the cause of my subsequent misfortunes. No one surely can be childish enough to suppose such a thing; yet I have known sensible people labour this point in order to show me the folly of my ways—and thoughts.
Again, I am quite aware that some people may break as much glass or china as the proverbial bull, and see the moon through the former medium every month of their lives, and not be a penny the worse for it—beyond the amount of their breakages. I only maintain that for me these two things are invariably the precursors of misfortune.
When people say to me: "How can a sensible woman like yourself be so foolish as to think such things?" I can only truthfully answer that I should be very much more foolish if so many years of my life had passed without my noticing the sequence of events.
But to explain the phenomena is quite another matter.
It seems to me quite reasonable that, allowing the possibility of influences coming to us from the other side, some sign—no matter how trivial—might be impressed upon us as a gentle warning to be prepared for disasters, more or less severe.
Another curious thing is this: I have never found that avoiding seeing the moon through glass in any artificial way prevents disaster. I used to let kind friends, indulgent to my "folly," lead me blindfold up to the window, carefully thrown open for my benefit. I can remember a most elaborate scene of precaution once, in an American railway carriage between Philadelphia and Boston, when a charming American lady, about to lecture on Woman's Suffrage, and grateful to me for some points I had given her with regard to the woman's question in New Zealand, insisted upon having a heavy window pulled up by a negro attendant, when she found out my little weakness.
It was all of no avail. Left alone, I should most certainly have seen the moon through glass on that occasion, and I felt, even at the moment, that I had not really altered anything by falling in with the kind American lady's suggestion.