35. When you sleep in a strange bed, remember your dream and tell it before breakfast. Observing these precautions, the dream will probably come to pass. 36. To break a needle while making a garment, is a sign that the owner will live to wear it out. 37. If you return after starting on a journey, it signifies bad luck. (See 27.) 38. To remove a cat, with a family when changing residence, will bring bad luck. 39. If a vacant rocking-chair is rocked violently, the next person who sits in it will be in danger of being ill within the year. 40. It is a lucky sign to have crickets in the house. Grose says it is held extremely unlucky to kill a cricket, perhaps from the idea of its being a breach of hospitality, this insect taking refuge in houses. The voice of a cricket, says the “Spectator,” has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. The following line occurs in Dryden’s and Lee’s “Œdipus:” “Owls, ravens, _crickets_, seem the watch of death.” Melton says that “it is a signe of death to some in that house where crickets have been many yeares, if on a sudden they forsake the chimney.” (See 14.) 41. It is said that a married person will not get rich until the wedding clothes are worn out. It is also said to be a sign that one will fail to get rich who tries to see to work between daylight and dark. 42. It is a bad omen to postpone a marriage after the time positively appointed. 43. If your right ear burns or itches, it is a sign that some absent person is speaking well of you; your left ear burning, signifies that you are being spoken ill of. 44. The superstition has become almost universal, that the ticking of a little insect called the “death-watch,” presages the death of some one in the house. “How many people have I seen in the most terrible palpitations, for months together, expecting every hour the approach of some calamity, only by a little worm, which breeds in an old wainscot, and, endeavoring to eat its way out, makes a noise like the movement of a watch!”--_Secret Memoirs of the late Mr. Duncan Campbell_, 1732. The following witty account of this superstition, by Dean Swift, furnishes us with a charm to avert the omen: ----“A wood-worm That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form, With teeth or with claws it will bite, or will scratch, And chambermaids christen this worm a death-watch, Because, like a watch it always cries click; Then woe be to those in the house who are sick; For as sure as a gun they will give up the ghost, If the maggot cries click, when it scratches the post. But a kettle of boiling hot water injected Infallibly cures the timber affected; The omen is broken, the danger is over, The maggot will die, and the sick will recover.” 45. If a knife, scissors, or any sharp-pointed instrument is dropped, and stands, sticking in the floor, company may be expected.