Death by Superstition "When the human race has once acquired a supersitition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it."
By taylor88
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spider
Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. (Twain, 3) -
coin around neck
Jim always kept that five-center
piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a
charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and
told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch
witches whenever he wanted to just by saying some-
thing to it; (Twain,5) -
cross
Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. (Twain, 8) -
hair ball oracle
"Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fouth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. he said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything." (Twain, 15) -
hairy arms and chest mean you will be rich
"Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's a-gwyne to be rich."
Chapter 8. page 41 -
snake bite
That all comes of my being such a fool as
to not remember that wherever you leave a dead snake its mate always comes there and curls around it. (Twain, 47) -
Snake Skin
I made up my mind I wouldn't ever take a-holt of a snake-skin again with my hands, now that I see what had come of it. (Twain, 48) -
on the raft
Then he said he must start in and "'terpret" it, because it was sent for a warning. He said the first towhead stood for a man that would try to do us some good, but the current was another man that would get us away from him. The whoops was warnings that would come to us every now and then, and if we didn't try hard to make out to understand them they'd just take us into bad luck, 'stead of keeping us out of it. (twain, 77)
