Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I — John Shaqi
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. IVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
Miss Nippers subscribes largely to the fund for eradicating
superstitions from the minds of the wretched inhabitants of Kamschatka;
and while she is calculating the advantages to be derived from a mission
to the South Sea Islands, to do away with the fearful superstitious
reverence in which these poor dear islanders hold their native flea: a
coal pops from her fire, and she at once augurs from its shape an
abundance of money, that will enable her to set her pious undertaking in
operation; but on no account will she commence collecting subscriptions
for the anti-drinking-slave-grown-sugar-in-tea society, because she has
always remarked that Monday is her unlucky day. On a Monday her poodle
died, and on a Monday she caught that severe cold at Brighton, from the
effects of which she is afraid she will never recover.
Mrs. Carmine is a very strong-minded woman. Her unlucky day is
Wednesday. On a Wednesday she first caught that flush which she has
never been able to chase from her cheeks, and on one of these fatal days
her Maria took the scarlet fever. Therefore, she will not go to a
pic-nic on a Wednesday, because she feels convinced that the day will
turn out wet, or that the wheel will come off the carriage. Yet the
other morning, when a gipsy was caught telling her eldest daughter her
fortune, Mrs. Carmine very properly reproached the first-born for her
weakness, in giving any heed to the silly mumblings of the old woman.
Mrs. Carmine is considered to be a woman of uncommon acuteness. She
attaches no importance whatever to the star under which a child is
born--does not think there is a pin to choose between Jupiter and
Neptune; and she has a positive contempt for ghosts; but she believes in
nothing that is begun, continued, or ended on a Wednesday.
Miss Crumple, on the contrary, has seen many ghosts, in fact, is by this
time quite intimate with one or two of the mysterious brotherhood; but
at the same time she is at a loss to understand how any woman in her
senses, can believe Thursday to be a more fortunate day than Wednesday,
or why Monday is to be black-balled from the Mrs. Jones's calendar. She
can state on her oath, that the ghost of her old schoolfellow, Eliza
Artichoke, appeared at her bedside on a certain night, and she
distinctly saw the mole on its left cheek, which poor Eliza, during her
brief career, had vainly endeavored to eradicate, with all sorts of
poisonous things. The ghost, moreover, lisped--so did Eliza! This was
all clear enough to Miss Crumple, and she considered it a personal
insult for any body to suggest that her vivid apparitions existed only
in her over-wrought imagination. She had an affection for her ghostly
visitors, and would not hear a word to their disparagement.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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