Breaking a looking-glass denotes that a death will take place in the family within the year. This mode of self-torture is supposed to derive its origin from the great use formerly made of mirrors by magicians and other obsolete impostors in carrying on their mystical trade. Astrologers also made use of the looking-glass in practising the art of divination or foretelling events, probably by means of some such cunning contrivances as are now employed with startling effects by our own “wizards” and “necromancers.” Quite naturally the innocent glass itself came to be looked upon by the ignorant with superstitious awe, and the breaking of one as the sure forerunner of calamity. We do not think, however, that this old superstition is by any means as widely prevalent as it once was. It is pleasing to chronicle the total disappearance of that terrible bugaboo, the Evil Eye, which so long kept our ancestors in a state of nervous apprehension fearful to contemplate. It is now only perpetuated by a saying. So with that other equally repulsive belief in the efficacy of touching a dead body, as a means of convicting a suspected murderer by the fresh bleeding from the wound. Both of these superstitions were fully accepted by the first settlers of New England, and perhaps also in other of the colonies. John Winthrop relates a very harrowing case of infanticide, in which this monstrous test was put in practice to convict the erring mother.[19] The superstition is said to be of German origin. The following very curious piece of superstition is found in Colonel May’s Journal of his trip to the Ohio, early in the century. It seems that a man had fallen into the river and was drowned before help could reach him. The following method was employed to recover the body. First they took the shirt which the drowned man had last worn, put a whole loaf of good, new bread, weighing four pounds, into it, and tied it up carefully into a bundle. The bundle was then taken in a boat to the place where the man had fallen in, a line and tackle attached to it, and then set afloat on the water. The rescuers said that the bread would float until it should come directly over the body, when it would sink and thus discover the location of the dead man. Unfortunately, the line was not long enough, so that when the loaf filled with water and sank, the tackle disappeared with it. [Illustration] X OF HAUNTED HOUSES, PERSONS, AND PLACES “Three times all in the dead of night, A bell was heard to ring.”--_Tickell._