e houses may be found haunted by
ghosts, which Americans believe have made the places so disagreeable
that the houses have been in consequence deserted. So well-defined is
the superstition, and so recurrent are the beliefs in ghosts and
spirits, that the best-educated people have found it necessary to
establish a society, called the Society for Psychical Research, in order
to demonstrate that ghosts are not possible. I believe I am not
overstepping the bounds when I say that this vainglorious people, who
claim to have the finest public-school system in the world, are,
considering their advantages, the most superstitious of all the white
races. Out of perhaps thirty men, whom I asked, not one was willing to
say he could pass through a graveyard at night without fear at heart, an
undefined nervous feeling, due to innate superstition. The middle-class
woman who stumbles upstairs considers it to mean that she will not
marry. To break a mirror, or receive as a present a knife, also means
bad luck. Many people wear amulets, safe-guards, and good-luck stones.
Several millions of the Catholic sect wear a charm, which they think
will save them from sudden death. All Catholics believe that some of
their churches own the bones of saints, which have the power to give
them health and other good things. Many Americans wear the seed of the
horse-chestnut, and many others wear lucky coins. Belief in the luck of
the four-leaf clover, instead of that with three leaves, is so strong
that people will spend hours in hunting for one. They are designed into
pins and certain insignia, and used in a hundred other ways.

But more remarkable than all is the old horseshoe superstition. I have
seen beautifully gowned ladies stop their driver, descend from the
carriage, and pick up such a shoe and carry it home, telling me that
they never failed to pick up one, as it brought good luck; yet this lady
laughed at our dragon! In the country, horseshoes are commonly seen over
the doors of stables, and even of houses. These same people once hung
women for witchcraft, and slaughtered women for persisting in certain
religious beliefs. I had the pleasure of meeting a well-known man, who
stated that he had the power of the "evil eye." Innumerable people
believe the paw of an animal called the rabbit to contain sovereign good
luck. They carry it about, and can buy it in shops. Indeed, I could fill
a volume, much less a letter, with the absurd superstitions of t