to leave the room; but a friend of mine taking notice that one of
our female companions was big with child, affirmed there were fourteen in
the room, and that, instead of portending one of the company should die,
it plainly foretold one of them should be born. Had not my friend found
this expedient to break the omen, I question not but half the women in
the company would have fallen sick that very night.

An old maid that is troubled with the vapours produces infinite
disturbances of this kind among her friends and neighbours. I know a
maiden aunt of a great family, who is one of these antiquated Sibyls,
that forebodes and prophesies from one end of the year to the other. She
is always seeing apparitions and hearing death-watches; and was the other
day almost frighted out of her wits by the great house-dog that howled in
the stable, at a time when she lay ill of the toothache. Such an
extravagant cast of mind engages multitudes of people not only in
impertinent terrors, but in supernumerary duties of life, and arises from
that fear and ignorance which are natural to the soul of man. The horror
with which we entertain the thoughts of death, or indeed of any future
evil, and the uncertainty of its approach, fill a melancholy mind with
innumerable apprehensions and suspicions, and consequently dispose it to
the observation of such groundless prodigies and predictions. For as it
is the chief concern of wise men to retrench the evils of life by the
reasonings of philosophy, it is the employment of fools to multiply them
by the sentiments of superstition.

For my own part, I should be very much troubled were I endowed with this
divining quality, though it should inform me truly of everything that can
befall me. I would not anticipate the relish of any happiness, nor feel
the weight of any misery, before it actually arrives.

I know but one way of fortifying my soul against these gloomy presages
and terrors of mind; and that is, by securing to myself the friendship
and protection of that Being who disposes of events and governs futurity.
He sees, at one view, the whole thread of my existence, not only that
part of it which I have already passed through, but that which runs
forward into all the depths of eternity. When I lay me down to sleep, I
recommend myself to His care; when I awake, I give myself up to His
direction. Amidst all the evils that threaten me, I will look up to Him
for help, and question not but He w