[CONTENTS]
| PAGE | ||
| I. | A Reckoning with Time | [1] |
| II. | The Folk-lore of Childhood | [25] |
| III. | Weather Lore | [34] |
| IV. | Signs of All Sorts | [47] |
| V. | Charms to Good Luck | [55] |
| VI. | Charms against Disease | [85] |
| VII. | Of Fate in Jewels | [109] |
| VIII. | Of Love and Marriage | [122] |
| IX. | Of Evil Omens | [144] |
| X. | Of Haunted Houses, Persons, and Places | [182] |
| XI. | Of Presentiments | [208] |
| XII. | The Divining-rod | [229] |
| XIII. | Wonders of the Physical Universe | [234] |
| XIV. | “Ships that Pass in the Night” | [244] |
| XV. | Fortune-telling, Astrology, and Palmistry | [259] |
[I]
A RECKONING WITH TIME
“Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.”
To say that superstition is one of the facts of history is only to state a truism. If that were all, we might treat the subject from a purely philosophical or historical point of view, as one of the inexplicable phenomena of an age much lower in intelligence than our own, and there leave it.
But if, also, we must admit superstition to be a present, a living, fact, influencing, if not controlling, the everyday acts of men, we have to deal with a problem as yet unsolved, if not insolvable.