Note 10 — CONTENTS.

There are few things more remarkable, or to reasoning minds more inexplicable, than the readiness with which men undertook in old times, and even now undertake, to interpret omens and assign prophetic significance to casual events. One can understand that foolish persons should believe in omens, and act upon the ideas suggested by their superstitions. The difficulty is to comprehend how these superstitions came into existence. For instance, who first conceived the idea that a particular line in the palm of the hand is the line of life; and what can possibly have suggested so absurd a notion? To whom did the thought first present itself that the pips on playing-cards are significant of future events; and why did he think so? How did the 'grounds' of a teacup come to acquire that deep significance which they now possess for Mrs. Gamp and Betsy Prig? If the believers in these absurdities be asked why they believe, they answer readily enough either that they themselves or their friends have known remarkable fulfilments of the ominous indications of cards or tea-dregs, which must of necessity be the case where millions of forecasts are daily made by these instructive methods. But the persons who first invented those means of divination can have had no such reasons. They must have possessed imaginations of singular liveliness and not wanting in ingenuity. It is a pity that we know so little of them.