The Myths and Fables of To-Day

by Samuel Adams Drake

These unbelieving jesters, who so audaciously defied the fatal omen, did not seem to realize that a popular superstition is not to be laughed out of existence in so summary a manner. Equally futile was the attempt to put it to a scientific test, as, if tried by that means, it appears that, of any group of thirteen persons, the chances are about equal that one will die within the year. Therefore, the attempt to break the spell by inviting a greater number of persons could have the effect only of increasing, rather than diminishing, the probability of the event so much dreaded.[18]

It has been stated in the newspapers, from which I take it, that there are many hotels in New York which contain no room numbered thirteen. There are other hotels and office buildings wherein the rooms that are so numbered cannot be leased except once in a great while. In large hotels one custom is to letter the first thirteen rooms and call them parlors. Another custom is simply to skip the unpopular number, and call the thirteenth room “No. 14.” A man who had just rented an office which bears the objectionable number, in a down-town building, asserts that though he has no superstitious dread of the number, he finds that others will not transact business with him in that office. I also find it stated as a fact that the new monster passenger steamship Oceanic has no cabin or seat at the table numbered thirteen.

It was again instanced as a deathblow to a certain candidate’s hopes of a reëlection to the United States Senate, that repeated ballotings showed him to be just thirteen votes short of the required number. From the same state, Pennsylvania, comes this highly significant announcement in regard to a base-ball team: “Because the team left here on a very rainy day, and on a train that pulled out from track No. 13, the superstitious local fans (sic) are in a sad state of mind to-night, regarding the coincidence as an evil omen.” Again the small number of six, in the graduating class of a certain high school, was gravely referred to as owing to there having originally been thirteen in that class.

At the same time there are exceptions which, however, the superstitious may claim only go to prove the rule. For instance the Thirteen Colonies did not prove so very unlucky a venture.

As regards the superstitions of actors and actresses, the following anecdote, though not new, probably as truly reflects the state of mind existing among the profession to-day as it did when the incident happened to which it refers. When the celebrated Madame Rachel returned from Egypt in 1857, she asked Arsène Houssaye, within a year thereafter, the question: “Do you recollect the dinner we had at the house of Victor Hugo? There were thirteen of us,—Hugo and his wife, you and your wife, Rebecca and I, Girardin and his wife, Gerard de Nerval, Pradier, Alfred de Musset, Perrèe, of the Siècle, and the Count d’Orsay, thirteen in all. Well, where are they to-day? Victor Hugo and his wife are in Jersey, your wife is dead, Madame de Girardin is dead, my sister Rebecca is dead, De Nerval, Pradier, Alfred de Musset, and d’Orsay are dead. I say no more. There remain but Girardin and you. Adieu, my friends. Never laugh at thirteen at a table.”

The world, however, especially that part of it represented by diners out, goes on believing in the evil augury just the same. A dinner party is recalled at which two of the invited guests were given seats at a side table on account of that terrible bugbear “thirteen at table.” When mentioning the circumstance to a friend, he was reminded of an occasion where an additional guest had been summoned in haste to break the direful spell.

Unquestionably, the newspapers might do much toward suppressing the spread of superstition by refusing to print such accounts as this, taken from a Boston daily paper, as probably nothing is read by a certain class with greater avidity. It says “that engine No. 13 of the Boston, Hoosac Tunnel & Western Railroad has, within three weeks, killed no less than three men. The railway hands fear the locomotive, and say that its number is unlucky.” It is true, we understand, that the standard number of a wrecked locomotive, that has been in a fatal accident, is not unfrequently changed in deference to this feeling on the part of the engine-men.

It is held to be unlucky to pass underneath a ladder, an act which indeed might be dangerous to life or limb should the ladder fall. But it is even harder to understand the philosophy of the dictum that to meet a squinting woman denotes ill luck.

The bird was formerly accounted an unlucky symbol, perhaps from the fact that good fortune, like riches, is apt to take to itself wings. The hooting of an owl, the croaking of a raven, the cry of a whip-poor-will, and even the sight of a solitary magpie were always associated with malignant influences or evil presages. Poe’s raven furnishes the theme for one of his best-known poems. And the swan was long believed to sing her own death-song. Be that as it may, the fact is well remembered that a ring, bearing the device of a bird upon it, or any other object having the image of the feathered kind, was not considered a suitable gift to a woman. That article of superstition, like some others that could be mentioned, has vanished before the resistless command of fashion, so completely indeed, that birds of every known clime and plumage have since been considered the really proper adornment for woman’s headgear.

There is, however, an odd superstition connected with the magpie, an instance of which is found related by Lord Roberts, in “Forty-one Years in India.” We could not do better than give it in his own words: “On the 15th July Major Cavagnari, who had been selected as the envoy and plenipotentiary to the Amir of Kabul, arrived in Kuram. I, with some fifty officers who were anxious to do honor to the envoy and see the country beyond Kuram, marched with Cavagnari to within five miles of the crest of Shutargardan pass, where we encamped, and my staff and I dined that evening with the mission. After dinner I was asked to propose the health of Cavagnari and those with him, but somehow I did not feel equal to the task: I was so thoroughly depressed, and my mind filled with such gloomy forebodings as to the fate of these fine fellows, that I could not utter a word.