When we consider the already long list of material or immaterial objects threatening us with dire misfortune, the wonder is how poor humanity should have survived so many dangers ever impending over it like the sword of Damocles. Really, we seem “walking between life and death.” The catalogue is, however, by no means exhausted. A picture, particularly if it be a family portrait, falling down from the wall, bodes a death in the family, or at least some great misfortune. This incident, somewhat startling, it must be confessed, to weak nerves, has been quite effectively used in fiction. Notwithstanding it is the national color of Ireland, green has the name of being unlucky. More strange still is the statement made by Mr. Parnell’s biographer that the famous Irish leader could not bear the sight of green. Queer notion this, in a son of the Emerald Isle! Mr. Barry O’Brien goes on to say that Parnell “would not pass another person on the stairs; was horror-stricken to find himself sitting with three lighted candles; that the fall of a picture in a room made him dejected for the entire afternoon; and that he would have nothing to say to an important bill, drawn up by a colleague, because it happened to contain thirteen clauses.” It is added that the sight of green banners, at the political meetings he addressed, often unnerved him. The singular actions of a pet cat have recently gained wide currency and wider comment in connection with the ill-fated steamer Portland, which went down with all on board, during the great gale of November 27, 1898. Not a soul was left to tell the tale. It was remarked that puss came off the boat before the regular hour for sailing had arrived, and though she had never before been known to miss a trip, she could not be called or coaxed back on board, and the doomed craft therefore sailed without her. As a matter of fact, it has been noticed that in times of great disasters, like that just related, superstition that has lain dormant for a time, always shows a new vigor, and finds a new reason for being. In the course of my rambles along the New England coast, I found many people holding to beliefs of one sort or another, who hotly resented the mere suggestion that they were superstitious. The quaint and curious delusions which have become ingrained in their lives from generation to generation, they do not regard in that light. For one thing they believe that if a dead body should remain in the house over Sunday, there will be another death in the family before the year is out.