Her implicit belief in the wonders of second
sight, and the strange tales she told of this mysterious faculty, used
to astonish not a little her sober English friends; and it will be
seen, that, at so late a period as the death of his friend Shelley,
the idea of fetches and forewarnings impressed upon him by his mother
had not wholly lost possession of the poet's mind. As an instance of a
more playful sort of superstition I may be allowed to mention a slight
circumstance told me of him by one of his Southwell friends. This lady
had a large agate bead with a wire through it, which had been taken
out of a barrow, and lay always in her work-box. Lord Byron asking one
day what it was, she told him that it had been given her as an amulet,
and the charm was, that as long as she had this bead in her
possession, she should never be in love. "Then give it to me," he
cried, eagerly, "for that's just the thing I want." The young lady
refused;--but it was not long before the bead disappeared. She taxed
him with the theft, and he owned it; but said, she never should see
her amulet again.
Of his charity and kind-heartedness he left behind him at
Southwell--as, indeed, at every place, throughout life, where he
resided any time--the most cordial recollections. "He never," says a
person, who knew him intimately at this period, "met with objects of
distress without affording them succour." Among many little traits of
this nature, which his friends delight to tell, I select the
following,--less as a proof of his generosity, than from the interest
which the simple incident itself, as connected with the name of Byron,
presents.
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