“Listen, child!  If ebber you clean your bed, don’t you never sweep off your springs with a broom.  Always wipe ’em with a rag, or use a brush.  Jest as sho as you do you see or experience death around you.  I took my bed down and swept off my springs, and I jest happened to tell old Mrs. Smith; and she jumped up and said, ’Child, you ought not done that cause it’s a sign of death.’  Sho nuff the same night I lost another child that wuz eight years old.  The child had heart trouble, I think.”

Mrs. Avery believes in luck to a certain extent.  The following are examples of how you may obtain luck: 

“I believe you can change your luck by throwing a teaspoonful of sulphur in the fire at zackly 12 o’clock in the day.  I know last week I was sitting here without a bit of fire, but I wuzn’t thinking bout doing that till a ’oman came by and told me ter scrape up a stick fire and put a spoonful of sulphur on it; and sho nuff in a hour’s time a coal man came by and gave me a tub uv coal.  Long time ago I used ter work fer some white women and every day at 12 o’clock I wuz told ter put a teaspoonful of sulphur in the fire.”

“Another thing, I sho ain’t going ter let a ’oman come in my house on Monday morning unless a man done come in there fust.  No, surree, if it seem lak one ain’t coming soon, I’ll call one of the boy chilluns, jest so it is a male.  The reason fer this is cause women is bad luck.”

The following are a few of the luck charms as described by Mrs. Avery: 

“Black cat bone is taken from a cat.  First, the cat is killed and boiled, after which the meat is scraped from the bones.  The bones are then taken to the creek and thrown in.  The bone that goes up stream is the lucky bone and is the one that should be kept.”  “There is a boy in this neighborhood that sells liquor and I know they done locked him up ten or twelve times but he always git out.  They say he carries a black cat bone,” related Mrs. Avery.

“The Devil’s shoe string looks jest like a fern with a lot of roots.  My mother used to grow them in the corner of our garden.  They are lucky.

“Majres (?) are always carried tied in the corner of a handkerchief.  I don’t know how they make ’em.

“I bought a lucky stick from a man onct.  It looked jest lak a candle, only it wuz small; but he did have some sticks as large as candles and he called them lucky sticks, too, but you had to burn them all night in your room.  He also had some that looked jest lak buttons, small and round.”

The following are two stories of conjure told by Mrs. Avery: 

“I knowed a man onct long ago and he stayed sick all der time.  He had the headache from morning till night.  One day he went to a old man that wuz called a conjurer; this old man told him that somebody had stole the sweat-band out of his cap and less he got it back, something terrible would happen.  They say this man had been going with a ’oman and she had stole his sweat-band.  Well, he never did get it, so he died.