etting out on a Friday, I find myself
compelled to admit that the holiday in which I was not able to get
away till Saturday was, on the whole, the best I ever had. But the
salt--I refuse to throw salt over my shoulder, no matter what happens.
I prefer to exorcise the demon with some formula from trigonometry, as
I once heard a man doing when he passed under a ladder. And if I
retain a hankering faith in black cats, it is, as I have said, the
most cheerful superstition in the world. About two months ago I was
sitting one night in the depths of gloom expecting news of a tragedy.
Suddenly, I heard a cat mewing as if in difficulties. It seemed some
way up the road, and I thought that it must be caught in a hedge, or
that somebody was tormenting it. I went downstairs and put my hat on
to go out and look for it, and had hardly opened the door, when in
walked a little black kitten with bright eyes and its tail in the air.
I defy anyone to have disbelieved in black kittens at that moment. It
seemed more like an omen than anything I have ever known. I had never
seen the kitten before, and its owner has reclaimed it since. But I
cannot help being grateful to it for anticipating with its gleaming
eyes the happy news that reached me a day or two later. Of course, I
do not believe the black cat superstition any more than I believe that
it is unlucky to see the new moon for the first time through glass.
But still, if you happen to be requiring a black cat at any time, I
advise you to make quite sure that there are no white hairs in its
coat. One white hair spoils all, and puts it on a level with any
common squaller in the back garden.

XVIII

ON BEING SHOCKED

Being shocked is evidently still one of the favourite pastimes of the
British people. There has been something of a festival of it since the
production of Mr Shaw's new play. Even the open Bible, it appears, is
not a greater danger to souls than _Androcles and the Lion_. Of
course, the open Bible has become generally accepted in England now,
but one remembers how the Church used to censor it, and one looks back
to the first men who protested against its being banned as to bright
heroes of adventure. Everybody knows, however, that if the Bible were
not already an accepted book--if we could read it with a fresh eye as
a book written by real people like ourselves and only just published
for the first time--it would leave most of us as profoundly shocked as
Canon Hensle