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Show I CTHE WHY of I SUPERSTITIONS By H. IRVINQ KING; DIVINING BY LIVE-FOREVER DID you ever, when a child, take a leaf of live-forever sedum Tel-ephlum Tel-ephlum nnd squeezing it to loosen the Inner and outer skin, blow Into It to make It puff up like a balloon? If you never did there were many thousands of other children who did nnd many thousands who do the same today. It Is a time-honored way of finding out whether you will have a long life and be married, or the reverse. re-verse. If the leaf blows up easily the answer Is In favor of the long life and the marriage. Another common way of divining by live-forever is to pin two shoots of It on the wall and let them represent a couple of young people who are "keeping "keep-ing company." If the shoots grow towards to-wards each other the couple will he married; If from each other they will become estranged. This is a good classic superstition of the most respectable sort nnd Is highly spoken of by Theocritus In his Third Idyll, written nearly three hundred hun-dred years before the birth of Christ. The Telephlum was so named from Telephus, a legendary king of Mysla, the son of Hercules and Auge, or Augela, that Indiscreet priestess of Atehene. In the birth and history of Telephus love played a leading part which fact, combined with the Idea of the ancients that the order of plant9 to which what Is commonly known as live-forever belongs possessed certain medical qualities, makes It very appropriate ap-propriate material for divinations regarding re-garding love and marriage. ( by McClure Nowapupor Syndicate.) O |