Before dismissing the subject of numerals, I would call attention to a few other associations connected with them.  They are often personified by children, and characters are assigned to them, it may be on account of the part they play in the multiplication table, or owing to some fanciful association with their appearance or their sound.  To the minds of some persons the multiplication table appears dramatised, and any chance group of figures may afford a plot for a tale.  I have collated six full and trustworthy accounts, and find a curious dissimilarity in the personifications and preferences; thus the number 3 is described as (1) disliked; (2) a treacherous sneak; (3) a good old friend; (4) delightful and amusing; (5) a female companion to 2; (6) a feeble edition of 9.  In one point alone do I find any approach to unanimity, and that is in the respect paid to 12, as in the following examples:—­(1) important and influential; (2) good and cautious—­so good as to be almost noble; (3) a more beautiful number than 10, from the many multiples that make it up—­in other words, its kindly relations to so many small numbers; (4) a great love for 12, a large-hearted motherly person because of the number of little ones that it takes, as it were, under its protection.  The decimal system seemed to me treason against this motherly 12.—­All this concurs with the importance assigned for other reasons to the number 12 in the Number-Form.

There is no agreement as to the sex of numbers; I myself had absurdly enough fancied that of course the even numbers would be taken to be of the male sex, and was surprised to find that they were not.  I mention this as an example of the curious way in which our minds may be unconsciously prejudiced by the survival of some forgotten early fancies.  I cannot find on inquiring of philologists any indications of different sexes having been assigned in any language to different numbers.

Mr. Hershon has published an analysis of the Talmud, on the odd principle of indexing the various passages according to the number they may happen to contain; thus such a phrase as “there were three men who,” etc., would be entered under the number 3.  I cannot find any particular preferences given there to especial numbers; even 7 occurs less often than 1, 2, 3, 4, and 10.  Their respective frequency being 47, 54, 53, 64, 54, 51; 12 occurs only sixteen times.  Gamblers have not unfrequently the silliest ideas concerning numbers, their heads being filled with notions about lucky figures and beautiful combinations of them.  There is a very amusing chapter in Rome Contemporaine, by E. About, in which he speaks of this in connection with the rage for lottery tickets.

COLOUR ASSOCIATIONS.

Numerals are occasionally seen in Arabic or other figures, not disposed in any particular Form, but coloured.  An instance of this is represented in Fig. 69 towards the middle part of the column, but as I shall have shortly to enter at length into the colour associations of the author, I will pass over this portion of them, and will quote in preference from the letter of another correspondent.