aham a precious stone which had
the power of preserving him from all kinds of sickness.

When any person was troubled with a morbid hunger accompanied with pain
in the stomach, it was believed that that affliction was caused by the
sufferer having swallowed some animal, which continued to live in the
stomach, and that when this was empty it knawed the stomach and produced
the pain felt. Several strange instances illustrative of the truth of
this theory were current in my native village. Let one case suffice. An
old soldier having on some long march been induced through extreme
thirst to drink from a ditch, had swallowed some animal. Years after he
was taken ill, and came home. His hunger for food was so great that he
could scarcely be satisfied, and notwithstanding the great quantities of
food which he consumed, he became thinner and thinner, and his hunger
was accompanied with great pain. Doctors could do him no good. At length
he met with a skilly old man, who told him that there was an animal in
his stomach, and advised him to procure a salt herring and eat it raw,
and on no account to take any drink, but go at once to the side of a
pool or burn and lie down there with his mouth open, and watch the
result. He had not lain long when he felt something moving within him,
and by and bye an ugly toad came out of his mouth, and made for the
water. Having drank its fill, it was returning to its old quarters, when
the old soldier rose and killed it. Many in the village had seen the
dead toad. After this the man recovered rapidly. Many other stories of
people swallowing _asks_ (newts), and other water animals which lived in
their stomachs, and produced serious diseases, were current in my young
days. This gave boys a great fear of stretching down and drinking from a
pool, or even a running stream.

CHAPTER VII.

_DIVINING._

There is another class of superstitions which have prevailed from ages
the most remote to the present day, although now they are dying out--at
least, they are not now employed to determine such important matters as
they once were. I refer to the practice of divining, or casting lots. In
early times such practices were regarded as a direct appeal to God. From
the Old and New Testaments we learn that these practices were resorted
to by the Jews; but in modern times, and among Western nations, the lot
was regarded as an appeal to the devil as much as to God. I have known
people object to the lot