PTINID.E — DEATH-WATCH, ETC. 59 



Grose, in his Antiquities, thus expresses this superstition : 

 "The clicking of a Death-watch is an omen of the death of 

 some one in the house wherein it is heard." Watts says: 

 "We learn to presage approaching death in a family by 

 ravens and little worms, which we therefore call a Death- 

 watch."^ Gay, in one of his Pastorals, thus alludes to it: 



When Blonzelincl expired, .... 



The solemn Death-watch click'd the hour she died.2 



And Train, — 



An' when she heard the Dead-watch tick, 



She raving wild did say, 

 <'I am thy murderer, my child; 



I see thee, come away," 



And Pope, — 



Misers are muck-worms, silkwoi'ms beaux, 

 And Death watches physicians. ^ 



" It will take," says Mrs. Taylor, a writer in Harper's 

 New Monthly Magazine, "a force unknown at the present 

 time to physiological science to eradicate the feeling of ter- 

 ror and apprehension felt by almost every one on hearing 

 this small insect." She herself, an entomologist, confesses to 

 have been very much annoyed at times by coming in contact 

 with this "strange nuisance;" but she was cured by an 

 overapplication. "I went to pay a visit," says she, "to a 

 friend in the country. The first night I fancied I should 

 have gone mad before morning. The walls of the bed -room 

 were papered, and from them beat, as it were, a thousand 

 w^atches — tick, tick, tick ! Turn which way I would, cover 

 my head under the bedclothes to suffocation, every pulse in 

 my body had an answering tick, tick, tick ! But at last the 

 welcome morning dawned, and early I was down in the 

 library ; even here every book, on shelf above shelf, was 

 riotous with tick, tick, tick ! At the breakfast table, be- 

 neath the plates, cups, and dishes, beat the hateful sound. 

 In the parlor, the withdrawing-room, the kitchen, nothing 



1 Johnson's Eng. Diet. 



2 4th Past., 1. 101. 



3 In Kirby's Wonderful Museum, ii. 309, there is an article on the 

 Death-watch, headed "A curious Description and Explanation of the 

 Death-watch, so commonly listened to with such dread." 



