WHAT TO DO WITH EGG-SHELLS. 275 



the table, the housekeeper, a staid and respectable-looking woman, 

 well advanced in years, walked over and took the egg-shells — there 

 were four or five of them — and, placing them one after another 

 into an egg-cup, she took a small knife, and passed it with a smart 

 tap through the bottoms or hitherto unbroken ends of the lot, and 

 then turned away to some other employment. This was all, for 

 our host immediately suggested that we should visit the stables. 

 We were a good deal puzzled, having seen so little, where we 

 expected to have seen a great deal, and that little so seemingly 

 without meaning and purposeless. When we got to the stables, 

 our host asked if we understood the meaning of the old lady's 

 manner of dealing with the egg-shells. We confessed our pro- 

 found ignorance, having never seen — never, at least, seen so as 

 seriously to notice — anything of this kind before. "My house- 

 keeper, you must know," continued our friend, "is a most excellent 

 woman, but much given to little superstitious observances and 

 harmless giosragan. She will not allow a single egg-shell to go 

 out of her sight without first making a hole through it, knocking 

 out its bottom in short, in case, as she has more than once seriously 

 told me, a witch should get hold of it and use it as a boat, in which 

 to set to sea in order to raise violent storms, in which the ablest 

 seamanship could not possibly save hundreds of vessels from being 

 miserably wrecked ! " " You may smile," he went on, " for it is 

 supremely absurd, to be sure, that an otherwise sensible woman 

 should give credence to such nonsense ; but, after all, if you make 

 inquiry, you wiU find that the superstition in question is quite a 

 common one. Pew middle-aged women, brought up in the High- 

 lands, but will act as you saw my housekeeper act with the empty 

 egg-shells, knocking a hole through their unbroken ends before 

 throwing them aside, or frequently even more effectually providing 

 against the possibility of their being used as witched life-boats, by 

 crushing the whole shell into a crumpled mass bodily in the hand." 



