FEBRUARY 19.
Neptune came this morning to request that the name of his
son, Oscar, might be changed to that of Julius, which (it
seems) had been that of his own father. The child, he said,
had always been weakly, and he was persuaded that its ill-health
proceeded frin his deceased grand-father's being displeased, because it had
not been called after
him. The other day, too, a
woman, who had a child sick in the hospital, begged me to
change its name for any other which might please me best—she
cared not what ; but she was sure that it would never do well
so long as it should be called Lucia. Perhaps, this prejudice
respecting the power of names produces in some measure their
unwillingness to be christened. They find no change produced
in them, except the alteration if their namem and hence they
conclude that this name contains in it some secret power ; while,
on the other hand, theu conceive that the ghosts of their ancestors cannot
fail to be offended at
their abandoning an appellation,
either hereditary in the family or given by themselves. It is
another negro prejudice, that the eructation of the breath of a
sucking child has something in it venomous ; and frequently
nursing mothers, on showing the doctor a swelled breast, will
very gravely and positively attribute it to the infant's having
broken wind while hanging on the nipple.
