e Shrew" (ii. 1):

"Yet I have faced it with a card of ten."

The phrase, also, "to face me down," implied insisting upon anything in
opposition. So, in the "Comedy of Errors" (iii. 1), Antipholus of
Ephesus says:

"But here's a villain that would face me down
He met me on the mart."

_Feet._ Stumbling has from the earliest period been considered
ominous.[911] Thus, Cicero mentions it among the superstitions of his
day; and numerous instances of this unlucky act have been handed down
from bygone times. We are told by Ovid how Myrrha, on her way to
Cinyra's chamber, stumbled thrice, but was not deterred by the omen from
an unnatural and fatal crime; and Tibullus (lib. I., eleg. iii. 20),
refers to it:

"O! quoties ingressus iter, mihi tristia dixi,
Offensum in porta signa dedisse pedem."

[911] See Brand's "Pop. Antiq.," 1849, vol. iii. p. 249;
Jones's "Credulities Past and Present," pp. 529-531; "Notes and
Queries," 5th series, vol. viii. p. 201.

This superstition is alluded to by Shakespeare, who, in "3 Henry VI."
(iv. 7), makes Gloster say:

"For many men that stumble at the threshold
Are well foretold that danger lurks within."

In "Richard III." (iii. 4), Hastings relates:[912]

"Three times to-day my foot-cloth horse did stumble,
And started when he look'd upon the Tower,
As loath to bear me to the slaughter-house."

[912] The following is from Holinshed, who copies Sir Thomas
More: "In riding toward the Tower the same morning in which he
(Hastings) was beheaded his horse twice or thrice stumbled with
him, almost to the falling; which thing, albeit each man wot
well daily happeneth to them to whome no such mischance is
toward; yet hath it beene of an olde rite and custome observed
as a token oftentimes notablie foregoing some great
misfortune."

In the same way, stumbling at a grave has been regarded as equally
unlucky; and in "Romeo and Juliet" (v. 3), Friar Laurence says:

"how oft to-night
Have my old feet stumbled at graves."

_Hair._ From time immemorial there has been a strong antipathy to red
hair, which originated, according to some antiquarians, in a tradition
that Judas had hair of this color. One reason, it may be, why the
dislike to it arose, was that this color was considered ugly and
unfashionable, and on this account a person with red hair would soon be
regarded wit