202 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



will bring him good luck, and, if he makes a wish, will 

 cause that wish to come true, especially if it is a wish 

 for money and is accompanied by the jingling of some 

 loose change in the pocket? The moon, indeed, is 

 vastly important. Not only was it once supposed 

 that all crops, especially onions and beans, did better 

 when planted in the old of the moon (the beans, other- 

 wise, as I recall, would run to vine), but even in this 

 day of popularized science you will hear farmers say, 

 as they look at the young crescent: "It's goin' to be 

 a dry month," or "It's goin' to be a wet month." In 

 the city you will never see the new moon; some tall 

 building will always hide it. But in the country, as 

 the sunset glow is dying out, as the bird songs are 

 hushed and the night insects have not begun their 

 antiphonal chorus, in "the still-time of the world," you 

 will suddenly become aware in the west of that sweetly 

 curved, golden crescent, dropping down, perhaps, into 

 a feathery treetop, or hung over quiet water, or poised 

 on the tip of a pointed fir. It was "an old Injun sign" 

 that if you can hang your powder horn on the new 

 moon, it is going to be a dry month. If you can't, it 

 will be a wet one. Doubtless this superstition goes 

 back to some primitive belief that rains come from the 

 moon. If the crescent were tipped up enough to hold 

 the powder horn on one point, it meant the crescent 

 would hold water, too. Otherwise the water would 

 spill out. Though nowadays this primitive prediction 



