116 THE MAGIC OP JEWELS AND CHARMS
One of the chief virtues of the mo-jio is to render the person of the wearer invulnerable; and many an unlucky mo-jio has
succumbed to the popular test, which is to wrap it in a cloth and fire
a bullet at it at short range. If the man misses the cloth, the
authenticity and power of the charm is at once established; if the
stone is fractured it is held not to be a real mo-jio.
Fire
will not consume a house which contains one, though I never heard of
this ordeal being attempted. Last but not least is the known fact that
the owner of a real mo-jio can cut a rainbow in half with it.
Certain
recent happenings have suggested that the name "aviator-stone" would be
a peculiarly appropriate designation for meteorites, and indeed this
new name would only serve to emphasize the legendary belief, that he
who bore with him a meteorite when he was in deadly peril would escape
all injury. By a strange coincidence those who are willing to take
great risks and chances are generally more or less superstitious
regarding small things, and a daring aviator recently remarked that on
one occasion, when his machine had suddenly fallen fifty feet, he felt
for his tie and said to himself: "This accident has happened because I
forgot to put on my opal pin, but I have been saved from injury because
I carried a meteorite. ' ' This aviator, having mentioned the incident
to Harmon, a few minutes before the latter made his successful attempt
to win the Doubleday-Page_aviation prize, Harmon immediately took the
meteorite which had been shown to him, saying: "Let me have it." He
accomplished his task, and although both the competing machines were
injured, the aviators themselves were saved.
A
meteorite, of course, cannot be claimed to be a preventive of danger
on all occasions, but several who have always carried them have seemed
to escape all sorts of harm. Some years ago a meteorite was given to
Edward Heron Allen, the famous writer on palmistry and the violin, and
this gifted man always wore it about him. One morning he awakened to
find that the entire roof above him had fallen
