The above rule or custom has held good to this day. In the United States the prescribed salute to the President is twenty-one guns; seventeen to the Vice-President, and so on in descending scale, according to rank, in the several branches of the civil, military, and naval service. Medicines are often taken an odd number of times, though not invariably, as they once were. A hen is always set on an odd number of eggs, although I could never find any one who could give any other reason than custom for it. What Biddy does when she “steals her own nest” is not ascertained. It appears from such data as we have been able to gather that the number Three and its multiple Nine were formerly held to be indispensable to the successful working of the magician’s arts. In “Macbeth,” the weird sisters mutter the dark incantation:-- “Thrice to thine, and thrice to mine, And thrice again to make up nine!-- Peace!--the charm’s wound up.” And yet again, when concocting their charmed hell-broth, while awaiting the coming of the ambitious thane to learn his fate of them, the mystic rite begins by declaring the omens propitious:-- “1 _Witch_. Thrice the brinded cat hath mewed. 2 _Witch_. Thrice and once the hedge-pig whined.” With the Romans, three handfuls of salt cast over a dead body had all the virtues of a funeral. Pirates were formerly hung at low-water mark and left hanging there until three tides had overflowed them. Shakespeare makes Falstaff say: “This is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers.” Even now, the cabalistic phrase “third time never fails,” prompts the twice unsuccessful candidate for fortune’s favors to renewed and more vigorous effort. In short, there seems to be no end to the virtues inherent in odd numbers. But as all rules have their exceptions, so with this prophetic rule of three, the fates would seem to have ordained that it might be made to work both ways. Simply by keeping one’s eyes and ears open one sees and hears many things. An enterprising news-gatherer jots down a bit of superstition touching the fateful side of the rule in question that came to him in this easy sort of way: “I heard,” he says, “a most sensible person, the other day, exclaim because Queen Victoria had been obliged twice to postpone her trip to the south of France, once on account of the unsettled state of affairs over there, and again because of the unsettled state of the weather. ‘The third time will be fatal to her,’ added this cheerful individual; ‘you just mark my words.’” It is nevertheless true, however, that the cabalistic number Thirteen stands quite alone, so far as we are informed, as the sombre herald of misfortune. But here, as elsewhere, the exception only goes to prove the rule.