Note 8 — IV.—PORTENTS OR OMENS, AUGURIES, LUCKY NUMBERS AND DREAMS.
Reading edition
Number three is greatly in favor for luck; school-boys insist that the third time will be fair, or will result in success. There is an old superstition or maxim, call it which we may, that three handfuls of sand on a dead body are as good as a funeral.—Chambers’ Journal.—Falstaff, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, is entrapped a third time in the belief that “there is luck in odd numbers.” ↑