A snapper up of unconsidered trifles. SHAKSPEARE.
SUPERSTITION.
Catherine de Medicis, in order to be assured of the assistance of heaven in a certain project, vowed to send a pilgrim to Jerusalem, who should walk three feet forwards and one backwards all the way. A countryman of Picardy undertook the fulfilment of this vow, and having employed a whole year in the task, was rewarded with a title and a large sum of money.
The Romans deposed their Dictator, Minutius, and the general of their cavalry, Caius Flaminius, on the same day they had been elected, because one of the citizens of Rome had heard a mouse squeak.
A.V.M.
NAPKINS.
When Diego de Torres, the Spanish ambassador, in 1547, first dined with the Emperor of Morocco at his court, he was amused by the customs of the table; neither knives, forks, nor spoons, were provided; but each person helped himself with his fingers, and cleaned his hands with his tongue, excepting the emperor, who wiped the hand he took his meat up with on the head of a black boy, ten years old, who stood by his side. The ambassador smiled, and the emperor observing it, asked what Christian kings wiped their hands with at meals, and what such things were worth? "Fine napkins," replied the ambassador, "a clean one at every meal, worth a crown a piece or more." "Don't you think this napkin much better," said the emperor, wiping his hand again on the black boy's head, "which is worth seventy or eighty crowns."