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In the larger towns the priest has defamed me through the press, and when I have answered him also by that means, he has heaped insult upon injury, excluded me from society, and made me a pariah and a byword to the superstitious people. I have been stoned and spat upon, hurled to the ground, had half-wild dogs set on me, and my horse frightened that he might throw me.

As a general rule the Muscovites are the most superstitious Christians in the world. Their liturgy is in Greek, of which the people understand nothing, and the clergy, themselves extremely ignorant, gladly leave them completely in the dark on all matters connected with religion.

He awoke once at the sound of the great bell from the tower calling the monks to the night-office, and smiled at the fantastic folly of it all. His work during the last month had erased the last remnants of superstitious fear, and to him now more than ever the Religious Houses were but noisy rookeries, clamant with bells and chanting, and foul with the refuse of idleness.

Disloyalty among the Totonacs, treachery that only waited an opportunity in Texcoco, an ancient tradition of hate in Tlascala, and the superstition that obscured the judgment and paralyzed the action of the despotic ruler these were the materials from which the astute invader evolved the machinery for his conquest." Montezuma was in a pitiable state of superstitious indecision.

When each individual got his portion of medicine, his eyes were radiant with joy notwithstanding by nature they are a thankless and impassive race and upon his face was written the unquestioning faith that nothing on earth could prevent the patient from getting well now. Christ knew how to preach to these simple, superstitious, disease-tortured creatures: He healed the sick.

With a fine constancy the Colonel still retained his partner's name on his doorplate, and, it was alleged by the superstitious, kept a certain invincibility also through the 'manes' of that lamented and somewhat feared man.

Whenever ignorant priests are permitted to guide the opinions of nations, science can make but a very slender progress: natural discoveries will be always held inimical to the interest of bigotted superstitious men.

The old woman of the hills was an ancient character about whom clung a thousand spookish traditions, but who, in the opinion of John Tuilis, was nothing more than a wise fortune-teller and necromancer who knew every trick in the trade of hoodwinking the superstitious. He had seen her and he had been properly impressed.

And so through the night the shuttle of superstitious talk went backward and forward and wove a still more marvellous garment of fancy to drape the reputation of elephant and man. The godship that the common belief had long endowed Badshah with was being transferred to his master; and a mere Indian Army Major was transformed into a mysterious Hindu deity.

There are three reasons why you and I should not marry. I have thought of them through all last night and all to-day, and I know them. The first is my solemn vow to the dying man who loved me so well and who asked nothing but that whose wife I never was, but whose name I bear. Think me mad, superstitious what you will I cannot break that promise.