Even the days of the week possess peculiar significance to the future welfare of the newborn infant:—
“Sunday’s child is full of grace,
Monday’s child is fair of face,
Tuesday’s child is solemn and sad,
Wednesday’s child is merry and glad;
Thursday’s child is inclined to thieving,
Friday’s child is free in giving:
Saturday’s child works hard for his living.”
This saying is familiar to every one:—
“Whistling girls and crowing hens
Always come to no good ends.”
Or, as they say it in the Old Country:—
“A whistling woman and crowing hen,
Are neither fit for God nor men.”
An old woman, skilled in such matters, declares that when vagrant cats begin to collect around the back-yards, “it’s a sure sign the winter’s broken.”
Whistling to keep one’s courage up, or for a wind, are rather in the nature of an invocation to some occult power than a sign. Sailors, it is well known, have a superstitious fear of whistling at sea, believing it will bring on a storm.
Yawning is said to be catching. Well, if it is not catching, it comes so near to being so, that most persons accept it as a fact; and laugh as we may, daily experience goes to confirm it as such, and must continue to do so until some more satisfactory explanation is found than we yet know of.