as to take them out of that figure and place them side by side.
What the absurdity was which I had committed I did not know, but I
suppose there was some traditionary superstition in it; and
therefore, in obedience to the lady of the house, I disposed of my
knife and fork in two parallel lines, which is the figure I shall
always lay them in for the future, though I do not know any reason
for it.

It is not difficult for a man to see that a person has conceived an
aversion to him. For my own part, I quickly found, by the lady's
looks, that she regarded me as a very odd kind of fellow, with an
unfortunate aspect: for which reason I took my leave immediately
after dinner, and withdrew to my own lodgings. Upon my return home,
I fell into a profound contemplation on the evils that attend these
superstitious follies of mankind; how they subject us to imaginary
afflictions, and additional sorrows, that do not properly come
within our lot. As if the natural calamities of life were not
sufficient for it, we turn the most indifferent circumstances into
misfortunes, and suffer as much from trifling accidents as from real
evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest;
and have seen a man in love grow pale, and lose his appetite, upon
the plucking of a merry-thought. A screech-owl at midnight has
alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a
cricket hath struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There
is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an
imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics: a rusty nail
or a crooked pin shoot up into prodigies.

I remember I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of noise and
mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed there were