And surely enough the next Sunday it did rain, harder than on either of the preceding Sundays.
“Now, what do you think?” said the old lady, solemnly. “I tell you that sign never fails. It wont do to doubt the ways of Providence,” she added with a sigh, “for His ways are mysterious and past finding out.”
The following Sunday the sun rose in a cloudless sky, and not the slightest appearance of rain was manifested through the day. The old lady was greatly disappointed, and did not like to hear any allusion to the subject; but two years afterwards, when she was once more my guest, it again happened to rain on the first Sunday in the month, and I heard her solemnly predict that it would, every succeeding Sunday in the month, for, she remarked, “it is a sign that never fails.” She had forgotten the failure of two years before; indeed, the continuance and prevalence of many popular superstitions is due to the fact that we notice the “sign” when it happens to be verified, and do not observe it, or we forget it, when it fails. Many persons are exceedingly superstitious in regard to the number “thirteen.” This is particularly the case, I have noticed, in Catholic countries I have visited, and I have been told that superstition originated in the fact of a thirteenth apostle having been chosen, on account of the treachery of Judas. At any rate, I have known numbers of French persons who had quite a horror of this fatal number. Once I knew a French lady who had taken passage in an ocean steamer, and who, on going aboard, and finding her assigned state-room to be “No. 13,” insisted upon it that she would not sail in the ship at all; she had rather forfeit her passage money, though finally she was persuaded to take another room. And a great many people, French, English, and American will not undertake any important enterprise on the thirteenth day of the month, nor sit at table with the full complement of thirteen persons. With regard to this number to which so many superstitions cling, I have some interesting experiences and curious coincidences, which are worth relating as a part of my personal history.
When I was first in England with General Tom Thumb, I well remember dining one Christmas day with my friends, the Brettells, in St. James’s Palace, in London. Just before the dinner was finished (it is a wonder it was not noticed before) it was discovered that the number at table was exactly thirteen.
“How very unfortunate,” remarked one of the guests; “I would not have dined under such circumstances for any consideration, had I known it!”
“Nor I either,” seriously remarked another guest.
“Do you really suppose there is any truth in the old superstition on that subject?” I asked.
“Truth!” solemnly replied an old lady. “Truth! Why I myself have known three instances, and have heard of scores of others, where thirteen persons have eaten at the same table, and in every case one of the number died before the year was out!”
This assertion, made with so much earnestness, evidently affected several of the guests, whose nerves were easily excited. I can truthfully state, however, that I dined at the Palace again the following Christmas, and although there were seventeen persons present, every one of the original thirteen who dined there the preceding Christmas, was among this number, and all in good health; although, of course, it would have been nothing very remarkable if one had happened to have died during the last twelve months.
While I was on my Western lecturing tour in 1866, long before I got out of Illinois, I began to observe that at the various hotels where I stopped my room very frequently was No. 13. Indeed, it seemed as if this number turned up to me as often as four times per week, and so before many days I almost expected to have that number set down to my name wherever I signed it upon the register of the hotel. Still, I laughed to myself, at what I was convinced was simply a coincidence. On one occasion I was travelling from Clinton to Mount Vernon, Iowa, and was to lecture in the college of the latter place that evening. Ordinarily, I should have arrived at two o’clock P. M.; but owing to an accident which had occurred to the train from the West, the conductor informed me that our arrival in Mount Vernon would probably be delayed until after seven o’clock. I telegraphed that fact to the committee who were expecting me, and told them to be patient.