USEFUL SUPERSTITIONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 27 May 1927, Page 2

USEFUL SUPERSTITIONS

WHAT TO DO AND WHAT NOT TO

(By "Vox"j To turn your money ou gone £Lrst sight of tho oew moon is always a most useful superstition. AU through tho month you will experience an air of careful exalted confidence. Indeed, you will feci as though you were in close touch with some high official in. the Iringdom of Heaven—an influential personage who is able to pull the strings in your favour and make things "gee." This in itself is no mean help. You will be able to go straight ahead and interview people and carry your business through to a successful issue, convincing the unconvincable. I know from experience and experience proves. I always turn my money.

This month I am trying a new experiment and watching how it will work. On first sight of the new moon from the middle of Trafalgar street at 3.30 p.m., 1 put my hand in my pocket to turn my money according to my unalterable rule and I found none to turn (my last sixpence bad gone in pork sausages), but after a most painstaking search I managed to unearth a providential 10/Bank of New Zealand note, and I turned that. It was, by the way, one of the least clean 10/- notes which bad ever crossed my somewhat erratic pathway ao far. 1 may say it is working all right. The. dividends, though small, are coming in with gratifying celerity. * * t * •

Black cats are. said to be lucky. I'm dubious about it. I remember once, during an evening stroll, I picked up a black cat on the road away up Bishopdale way. I carried him home "for good luck." But that cat gave me a lot of trouble. "He" proved to be a> she, and the families were frequent and painfully numerous. I tried to "lose" her several times, but she always managed to find her way back again. * * * # *

For a black moth to flutter in through the window at eventide is a sign of bad luck. It foretells a death in the family. I know this is true, because it once foretold the sudden extinction of three of my kittens. A boy took them in a bag down to the Collingwood street Bridge, and that was the last I saw of them, and it cost me two shillings.

To spill salt is most unlucky. But pVovadentialry there- is a remedy at hand. To take off the" bad effects throw some of the spilt salt over your left shoulder, but be very careful where you throw it. In connection with this you will pardon a very short digression. I just want to show you. Years ago I was living in a little bush township known as Dannevirke. There were a lot of Danes and Scandies there, and, Lord, how they drank. But our boarding establishment was presided over by a large landlady with red hair and a temper to match, who had originally come from the Emerald Isle. One day at dinner I was unlucky enough to upset the salt cellar, and I instantly put the time-honoured cure into action by throwing a very liberal allowance up over my left shoulder—and it went fair into the right eye of our landlady, who happened to be waiting at table at the time. And the results were not at all pleasant for me. She made out I did it "on purpose," which, for me, would have been an utter impossibility. I couldn't have achieved that feat if I had tried for six months on end.

To smash a mirror is bad, very bad. It will bring you bad lusk for 13 years! And the last six years of them will be the worst. In opening a case of new goods arriving by the latest liner a friend of mine in Bridge street accidentally broke 29 mirrors the other day! I don't know how he will get on. I know I wouldn't like to be in his shoes for a farm, or for all the tea, at present held up in distracted China. * * * # #

To walk under a ladder will bring yon bad luck. Sooner than walk under a ladder I would cheerfully cross over to the other side of the street any day in the week. I positively hate ladders. In one of those numerous lanes off the Tottenham Court Road I was walking one day, pondering the problem of life I was so deeoly engrossed in my meditations that I actually walked under a ladder! Just at that moment a. workman up the ladder upset a can of liquid paint, and the contents went down my neck—the back of fly neck, I mean—and I have never been able to disassociate Loidon from liquid paint from that day to this. J * » * # » To carry a piece A coal in your pocket is a sure lack-Winger—a mascot by the way—within the reach of all. A.! have got to do is to take a casual stroll on the wharf, near the Anchor Shipping Company's present offices, and you will be able to pick up enough coal to load 9, cart. But don't let the bright-eyed lad 9 (who are inside the office, learning the business), see you. They might misconstruct your innocent action.