430 Collectanea.
meet with the woman's approval. " No, you take first turn, sir," she said, "and bring me luck." I inquired whether she thought a man would bring more luck than a woman. " Yes, I do, sir," she replied ; " but it must be some one dark." Accordingly, to oblige her I had the first shy, at which she was much pleased. " There's some folks," she said, " as don't believe it makes any difference whether the first that shies is dark or fair. But I do. I have taken notice of it, and there's a deal in it." She herself, she added, was a very lucky person. " There's a many " (small itinerant vendors, she meant) " likes to have a halfpenny or a penny off" me first thing in the morning, because I bring 'em luck." On leaving I paid her a shilling, which she promptly spat on for luck before putting it into her pocket. It was the first money she had taken that day.
F. A. Milne.
How TO ANNUL " BlOOD-BrOTHERHOOD."
The following extract from the official despatches of the Lango Expedition of 1901 against a band of Soudanese mutineers and their Lango allies in the Nile Province of Uganda, published in the Gazette of 12th Sept. 1902, is here quoted from the Morni?ig Post of Sept. 13th.
" The mutineers [who] had established themselves in the country of the Chief Obokhe (now a prisoner), made friends with such of the Lango clans as surrounded them most nearly, and in most
cases made ' blood-brotherhood ' with them When some
of the Chiefs subsequently said they wished to help us but dared not, owing to this ' blood-brotherhood,' a sufficiently ridiculous ceremony had to be gone through to free their consciences. Dr. Bagshawe, with due formalities, injected a dose of apomorphia into the cicatrix of the incision made in the ' blood-brotherhood ' rites. This made the patient violently sick in about five minutes. A few nauseous draughts afterwards completed the operation, and the subject's satisfaction in the breaking of the spell."
Chvrlotte S. Burne.
