'scarcely, however, had I left the house, when the father came
running after me. "You have cast the evil eye on my child," said
he; "come back and spit in its face." And I assure you,' continued
my friend, 'that notwithstanding all I could say, he compelled me
to go back and spit in the face of his child.'

Perhaps there is no nation in the world amongst whom this belief is
so firmly rooted and from so ancient a period as the Jews; it being
a subject treated of, and in the gravest manner, by the old
Rabbinical writers themselves, which induces the conclusion that
the superstition of the evil eye is of an antiquity almost as
remote as the origin of the Hebrew race; (and can we go farther
back?) as the oral traditions of the Jews, contained and commented
upon in what is called the Talmud, are certainly not less ancient
than the inspired writings of the Old Testament, and have unhappily
been at all times regarded by them with equal if not greater
reverence.

The evil eye is mentioned in Scripture, but of course not in the
false and superstitious sense; evil in the eye, which occurs in
Prov. xxiii. v. 6, merely denoting niggardness and illiberality.
The Hebrew words are AIN RA, and stand in contradistinction to AIN
TOUB, or the benignant in eye, which denotes an inclination to
bounty and liberality.

It is imagined that this blight is most easily inflicted when a
person is enjoying himself with little or no care for the future,
when he is reclining in the sun before the door, or when he is full
of health and spirits: it may be cast designedly or not; and the
same effect may be produced by an inadvertent word. It is deemed