SUPERSTITIOUS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 147, 24 June 1898, Page 6

SUPERSTITIOUS.

At an eveningl party in Washing-ton in the room set apart for the wraps o£ the women guests was a maid who was directed to see to it that uobodv's hat was placed on the bed, for the laying- of a hat on the bed, as the hostess explained later, always signifies the approaching- death of an intimate friend of the house. The superstition is of Sicilian origin. The Formosan aborigines regard photography with strong superstition Towards the close of September last the heir of the chieftain of a certain tribe and several other young men visited the Toseikaku Pacification and Reclamation Office, and in the course of their stay they offered themselves to be photographed. Lately several or those young men appeared at the same office and requested that their portraits should be returned to them for they heard to their surprise from the elders of the tribe that persons who are photographed are in a similar condition as if their souls had been

abstracted, and hence they would "be sure to suffer, serious iliness. The only way to provide against this calamity lay in burning nil the photographs. The office people earnestly tried to undeceive the young men, but without effect, and were therefore obliged to give them their photographs. The famotis 'incarnations of Durga Mai' that were causing such a furore at Sialkot have arrived in Lahore, in India, and are at present on public view near the railway station. In a window half concealed from view are two pretty girls, one about eight and the other about six, and swarming round the buildings are hundreds o! devotees, who from time to time shout 'All hail to our Mother Durga!' Men of the Khatri caste, carried away by their religious frenzy, are alleged to have cut off their tongues as a sacrifice to Durga. And it is stated that eighty-four men in all—at Sialkot, Faridkot, Amritsar, and Lahore — have performed this act of devotion, and that in every case their tongues have been made whole by Dnrga Mai, who dwells in these little girls.