SUPERSTITION.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 25, 14 September 1911, Page 2

SUPERSTITION.

A HANDICAPPED BOARDINGHOUSE.' * It ,would bo interesting ito 1.n0.w whether any house-holdei s in Christchurch have objected to have the unlucky number 13 placed on their houses. The London County Council recently compelled a Paddington heal'd-ing-liouse keeper to accept i 3 for the number of her house. 1: was a bard . decision, for the poor woman declared that the number operated a gainsher business. Her lodgers gate no ticc, and prospective ones passed hei by, because of the 13 on tiio front door. An Appeal to the autn.u.'itkyreaving failed, she changed the number to 12A, but the*council feeling that if it began to countenance suiki station it would have a greit neal oJ trouble on its ba-uds, compelled her t< restore the old one. Tliei;c must be thousands of number thirtcens in England, but we have not heard of another case of objection. One would think that if the thirteen superstition were potent, so many objections would bo raised that property owners in solldcfoncc would have to insist on being permitted to uso 12A instead. It may lie, as the secretary of the Ec centric Club thinks, that the couragems work of Thirteen Clubs in Eng land, Franco, and Afnerica has done a good deal to break down the power of the superstition. But this gentleman also thinks that superstition in general is still very rife. Jt is “a real and potent force in thi j* world, which "has had quite as groat an in.iuonce on our boasted civilisation as either- education or religion.'* He says that not one person m five hundred in London will walk under a ladder, and that “even r).e mest erudite and emancipated minds of to-day ire not entirely free from superstition in some form or other. He avn casts doubts on the Eccentrics rhemsebis. who boast that they are aim - o riicb folly. ‘‘l doubt if any cue of us would spurn the gift of an opal, t veil if we wore not born in October; 1 it I wonder bow many of us have hoi sc •does nailed over,our doors You v.e, it’s in the blood, ami it " ’ll v take more heroic treatment than the Lonlan County Council can command to eradicate it from the human race ” J i: is may ho true, hut it rill :u t ho much comfort to the unfortu iahe occupant of No. 13 Oxford terrace, Paddington.