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ought to be carried out. I think, however, the practice of rising 

 early on that morning, to carry into the house sticks, coals, etc., is 

 obsolete ; as is also the great provision that used to be made by 

 the old people for that day, by emptying their dirty water, throwing 

 out the ashes, and completing multifarious other household duties 

 on the New Year's Eve. 



Then what a halo of bad luck seems to surround Friday ! It is 

 the day, of all others, upon which nothing important should be 

 done. It is unlucky to marry on that day ; and in England, at 

 least, hardly anybody would like to get married on that day. I 

 know a couple who married on a Friday, and though it was said 

 their marriage would prove unlucky, they have lived happily 

 together about forty years. Of course everybody knows the ill-luck 

 believed to attach to flitting on a Friday. " Friday flit, short sit," 

 is a saying which, though perhaps not so much heeded now-a-days, 

 has, nevertheless, a good many champions. You will find very 

 few servants out of our own district go to their places on that day ; 

 and I know farmers who are very unwilling to commence sowing 

 corn on that day. Why is this ? Perhaps this is the reason : 

 Friday was the day of our Lord's crucifixion, and is, therefore, a 

 fast day in the Roman Catholic church. Popular superstition soon 

 marked it as an unlucky day, and this idea has survived long after 

 the original reason which brought the day into disfavour has been 

 neglected or forgotten. In Scotland, so strong was the antipathy 

 to Roman Catholicism, that it actually divested poor Friday of its 

 character of " unluckiness," and that day is now in Scotland a great 

 day for weddings. 



The present age, however, is apt to deal a little roughly with the 

 beliefs of its predecessors, and a modern Englishman who found 

 that it would suit his convenience to get married on a Friday, 

 would hardly be diverted from his purpose if he were told that on 

 that day Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, or that Adam died 

 on a Friday. To shew the extent to which the belief in the 

 un-luck of Friday is carried, I might tell that a young man, a friend 

 of my own, visited his aunt, a maiden lady who keeps a cow, about 

 six weeks ago. He suggested the necessity of trimming the cow's 



