The ticking of the death-watch, once believed to forebode the approaching dissolution of some member of the family, so terrifying to our fathers and mothers, is now, fortunately, seldom heard or little regarded. While the superstition did prevail, there was nothing so calculated to strike terror to the very marrow of the appalled listeners as the noise of this harmless little beetle, only a quarter of an inch long, tapping away in the decaying woodwork of an ancient wainscot. There is no end of legendary matter concerning clocks. Sometimes nervous people have been frightened half out of their wits at hearing a clock that had stopped, suddenly strike the hour. Clocks have been known to stop, too, at the exact hour when a death took place in the house. But even more startling was an instance, lately vouched for by reputable witnesses, of a clock, of the coffin pattern, of course, from which the works had been removed, playing this same grewsome trick. The first case might be accounted for, rationally, by some fault in the mechanism, or some rusty spring suddenly set in motion; but all theories necessarily fail with clocks without works. Admonitions or warnings are often associated with clocks, as has been noticed in connection with marriage customs. And the mystical relation between time and eternity is often brought to mind by the stopping of the watch in a drowned person’s pocket, or the relation of some curious legend like the following, without comment or qualification, in a reputable newspaper:-- “There is a curious legend about the old clock, which is to be superseded by a new one, at Washington, Pennsylvania. It is stated that about twenty years ago a person was hung in the courtyard. The clock, which had always tolled out the hour regularly, stopped at the hour of two o’clock, being the hour at which the drop fell that sent the unfortunate into eternity. Since that time, many aver, the clock has never struck again.” So, also, the howling of a dog, either by day or by night, under a sick person’s window, is to this day held by the weak-minded to portend the death of that person. Some writers think they have traced this belief to the symbolism of ancient mythology, where the dog stands for the howling night-wind, on which the souls of the dead rode to the banks of the Styx, but this hypothesis seems quite far-fetched. The winding-sheet in the candle is another self-tormenting belief of evil portent, now happily gone out with the candle. Then again, to pass from this subject, a single case of nosebleed often excites the liveliest fears on the part of nervous people, on account of a very old belief that it was a sure omen of a death taking place in the family. Not long ago the following choice morsel met my eye while reading in a book: “Our steward has this moment lost a drop of blood, which involuntarily fell from his pug nose. ‘There,’ said he, ‘I have lost my mother--a good friend.’”