initial commit of ebook 31717HEADmain

1 files changed, 7296 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/31717.txt b/31717.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b25684d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/31717.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7296 @@
+Project Gutenberg's The Witches of New York, by Q. K. Philander Doesticks
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Witches of New York
+
+Author: Q. K. Philander Doesticks
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2010 [EBook #31717]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCHES OF NEW YORK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Irma Spehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE
+                      WITCHES OF NEW YORK,
+
+                        AS ENCOUNTERED BY
+
+                Q. K. PHILANDER DOESTICKS, P. B.
+
+       NEW YORK: RUDD & CARLETON, 310 BROADWAY. MDCCCLIX.
+
+
+   Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by
+                        RUDD & CARLETON,
+In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
+               the Southern District of New York.
+
+
+                          R. CRAIGHEAD,
+             Printer, Stereotyper, and Electrotyper,
+                        Carton Building,
+                 _81, 83, and 85 Centre Street_.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+What the Witches of New York City personally told me, Doesticks,
+you will find written in this volume, without the slightest
+exaggeration or perversion. I set out now with no intention of
+misrepresenting anything that came under my observation in
+collecting the material for this book, but with an honest desire
+to tell the simple truth about the people I encountered, and the
+prophecies I paid for.
+
+So far from desiring to do any injustice to the Fortune Tellers
+of the Metropolis, I sincerely hope that my labors may avail
+something towards making their true deservings more widely
+appreciated, and their fitting reward more full and speedy. I am
+satisfied that so soon as their character is better understood,
+and certain peculiar features of their business more thoroughly
+comprehended by the public, they will meet with more attention
+from the dignitaries of the land than has ever before been
+vouchsafed them.
+
+I thank the public for the flattering consideration paid to what
+I have heretofore written, and respectfully submit that if they
+would increase the obligation, perhaps the readiest way is to buy
+and read the present volume.
+
+                                                   THE AUTHOR.
+
+  _Sept. 20th, 1858._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+
+CHAPTER I. is simply Explanatory so far as regards the
+book, but in it the author takes occasion to pay himself
+several merited compliments on the score of honesty, ability,
+&c., &c., &c.                                                       15
+
+CHAPTER II. is devoted to the glorification of Madame Prewster,
+of No. 373 Bowery, the Pioneer Witch of New York. The "Individual"
+also herein bears his testimony that she is oily and water-proof.   27
+
+CHAPTER III. wherein are related divers strange things of Madame
+Bruce, the "Mysterious Veiled Lady," of No. 513 Broome Street.      51
+
+CHAPTER IV. Relates the marvellous performances of Madame
+Widger, of No. 3 First Avenue, and how she looks into the
+future through a paving-stone.                                      73
+
+CHAPTER V. Discourses of Mrs. Pugh, of No. 102 South First
+Street, Williamsburgh, and tells what that Nursing Sorceress
+communicated to the Cash Customer.                                  99
+
+CHAPTER VI. in which are narrated the wonderful workings of
+Madame Morrow, the "Astonisher," of No. 76 Broome Street, and how
+by a Crinolinic Stratagem the "Individual" got a sight of his
+"Future Husband."                                                  123
+
+CHAPTER VII. contains a full account of the interview of the Cash
+Customer with Doctor Wilson, the Astrologer, of No. 172 Delancey
+Street. The Fates decree that he shall "pizon his first wife."
+HOORAY!                                                            147
+
+CHAPTER VIII. gives a history of how Mrs. Hayes, the Clairvoyant,
+of No. 176 Grand Street, does the Conjuring Trick.                 169
+
+CHAPTER IX. tells all about Mrs. Seymour, the Clairvoyant,
+of No. 110 Spring Street, and what she had to say.                 195
+
+CHAPTER X. describes Madame Carzo, the "Brazilian Astrologist,"
+and gives all the romantic adventures of the "Individual"
+with the gay South American Maid.                                  215
+
+CHAPTER XI. In which is set down the prophecy of Madame
+Leander Lent, of No. 163 Mulberry Street; and how she
+promised her customer numerous wives and children.                 239
+
+CHAPTER XII. Wherein are described all the particulars of a
+visit to the "Gipsy Girl," of No. 207 Third Avenue; with
+an allusion to Gin, and other luxuries dear to the heart of
+that beautiful Rover.                                              261
+
+CHAPTER XIII. contains a true account of the Magic Establishment
+of Mrs. Fleury, of No. 263 Broome Street; and also shows the
+exact amount of Witchcraft that snuffy personage can afford for
+one dollar.                                                        281
+
+CHAPTER XIV. describes an interview with the "Cullud" Seer Mr.
+Grommer, of No. 34 North Second Street, Williamsburgh, and what
+that respectable Whitewasher and Prophet told his visitor.         305
+
+CHAPTER XV. How the Individual called on Madame Clifton
+of No. 185 Orchard Street, and how that amiable and gifted
+"Seventh daughter of a Seventh daughter," prophesied his
+speedy death and destruction--together with all about the
+"Chinese Ruling Planet Charm."                                     327
+
+CHAPTER XVI. details the particulars of a morning call on
+Madame Harris, and how she covered up her beautiful head
+in a black bag.                                                    353
+
+CHAPTER XVII. Treats of the peculiarities of Several Witches
+in a single batch.                                                 371
+
+CHAPTER XVIII. Conclusion.                                         395
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Which is simply explanatory, so far as regards the book, but in
+which the author takes occasion to pay himself several merited
+compliments, on the score of honesty, ability, etc.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+WHICH IS MERELY EXPLANATORY.
+
+
+The first undertaking of the author of these pages will be to
+convince his readers that he has not set about making a merely
+funny book, and that the subject of which he writes is one that
+challenges their serious and earnest attention. Whatever of
+humorous description may be found in the succeeding chapters, is
+that which grows legitimately out of certain features of the
+theme; for there has been no overstrained effort to _make_ fun
+where none naturally existed.
+
+The Witches of New York exert an influence too powerful and too
+wide-spread to be treated with such light regard as has been too
+long manifested by the community they have swindled for so many
+years; and it is to be desired that the day may come when they
+will be no longer classed with harmless mountebanks, but with
+dangerous criminals.
+
+People, curious in advertisements, have often read the
+"Astrological" announcements of the newspapers, and have turned
+up their critical noses at the ungrammatical style thereof, and
+indulged the while in a sort of innocent wonder as to whether
+these transparent nets ever catch any gulls. These matter-of-fact
+individuals have no doubt often queried in a vague, purposeless
+way, if there really can be in enlightened New York any
+considerable number of persons who have faith in charms and
+love-powders, and who put their trust in the prophetic infallibility
+of a pack of greasy playing-cards. It may open the eyes of these
+innocent querists to the popularity of modern witchcraft to learn
+that the nineteen she-prophets who advertise in the daily
+journals of this city are visited every week by an average of
+_sixteen hundred people_, or at the rate of more than a dozen
+customers a day for each one; and of this immense number
+probably two-thirds place implicit confidence in the miserable
+stuff they hear and pay for.
+
+It is also true that although a part of these visitors are
+ignorant servants, unfortunate girls of the town, or uneducated
+overgrown boys, still there are among them not a few men engaged
+in respectable and influential professions, and many merchants of
+good credit and repute, who periodically consult these women, and
+are actually governed by their advice in business affairs of
+great moment.
+
+Carriages, attended by liveried servants, not unfrequently stop
+at the nearest respectable corner adjoining the abode of a
+notorious Fortune-Teller, while some richly-dressed but
+closely-veiled woman stealthily glides into the habitation of the
+Witch. Many ladies of wealth and social position, led by
+curiosity, or other motives, enter these places for the purpose
+of hearing their "fortunes told." When these ladies are informed
+of the true character of the houses they have thus entered, and
+the real business of many of these women whose fortune-telling is
+but a screen to intercept the public gaze from it, it is not
+likely that any one of them will ever compromise her reputation
+by another visit.
+
+People who do not know anything about the subject will perhaps be
+surprised to hear that most of these humbug sorceresses are now,
+or have been in more youthful and attractive days, women of the
+town, and that several of their present dens are vile assignation
+houses; and that a number of them are professed abortionists, who
+do as much perhaps in the way of child-murder as others whose
+names have been more prominently before the world; and they will
+be astonished to learn that these chaste sibyls have an
+understood partnership with the keepers of houses of
+prostitution, and that the opportunities for a lucrative playing
+into each other's hands are constantly occurring.
+
+The most terrible truth connected with this whole subject is the
+fact that the greater number of these female fortune-tellers are
+but doing their allotted part in a scheme by which, in this city,
+the wholesale seduction of ignorant, simple-hearted girls, in
+the lower walks of life, has been thoroughly systematized.
+
+The fortune-teller is the only one of the organization whose
+operations may be known to the public; the other workers--the
+masculine go-betweens who lead the victims over the space
+intervening between her house and those of deeper shame--are kept
+out of sight and are unheard of. There is a straight path between
+these two points which is travelled every year by hundreds of
+betrayed young girls, who, but for the superstitious snares of
+the one, would never know the horrible realities of the other.
+The exact mode of proceeding adopted by these conspirators
+against virtue, the details of their plans, the various
+stratagems by which their victims are snared and led on to
+certain ruin, are not fit subjects for the present chapter; but
+any individual who is disposed to prosecute the inquiry for
+himself will find in the various police records much matter for
+his serious cogitation, and may there discover the exact
+direction in which to continue his investigations with the
+certainty of demonstrating these facts to his perfect satisfaction.
+
+A few months ago, at the suggestion of the editor of one of the
+leading daily newspapers of America, a series of articles was
+written about the fortune-tellers of New York city, and these
+articles were in due time published in that journal, and
+attracted no little attention from its readers. These chapters,
+with such alterations as were requisite, and with many additions,
+form the bulk of this present volume.
+
+The work has been conscientiously done. Every one of the
+fortune-tellers described herein was personally visited by the
+"Individual," and the predictions were carefully noted down at
+the time, word for word; the descriptions of the necromantic
+ladies and their surroundings are accurate, and can be corroborated
+by the hundreds who have gone over the same ground before and
+since. They were treated in the most fair and frank manner; the
+same data as to time and date of birth, age, nationality, etc.,
+were given in all cases, and the same questions were put to all,
+so that the absurd differences in their statements and predictions
+result from the unmitigated humbug of their pretended art, and
+from no misinformation or misrepresentation on the part of the
+seeker after mystic knowledge.
+
+This latter person was perfectly unknown to the worthy ladies of
+the black art profession; he was to them simply an individual,
+one of the many-headed public, a cash customer, who paid
+liberally for all he required, and who, by reason of the dollars
+he disbursed, was entitled to the very best witchcraft in the
+market.
+
+And he got it.
+
+He undertook a few short journeys in search of the marvellous; he
+went on a couple of dozen voyages of discovery without going out
+of sight of home; he penetrated to the out-of-the-way regions,
+where the two-and-sixpenny witches of our own time grow. He got
+his fill of the cheap prophecy of the day, and procured of the
+oracles in person their oracularest sayings, at the very highest
+market price. For the business-like seers of this age are easily
+moved to prophesy by the sight of current moneys of the land, no
+matter who presents the same; whereas the oracles of the olden
+time dealt only with kings and princes, and nothing less than the
+affairs of an entire nation, or a whole territory, served to get
+their slow prophetic apparatus into working trim. To the
+necromancers of early days the anxieties of private individuals
+were as naught, and from the shekels of humble life they turned
+them contemptuously away.
+
+It is probably a thorough conviction of the necessity of eating
+and drinking, and a constant contemplation from a Penitentiary
+point of view of the consequences of so doing without paying
+therefor, that induces our modern witches to charge a specific
+sum for the exercise of their art, and to demand the inevitable
+dollar in advance.
+
+Whatever there is of Sorcery, Astrology, Necromancy, Prophecy,
+Fortune-telling, and the Black Art generally, practised at this
+time by the professional Witches of New York, is here honestly
+set down.
+
+Should any other individual become particularly interested in the
+subject, and desire to go back of the present record and make his
+exploration personally among the Fortune-tellers, he will find
+their present addresses in the newspapers of the day, and can
+easily verify what is herein written.
+
+With these remarks as to the intention of this book, the reader
+is referred by the Cash Customer to the succeeding chapters for
+further information. And the public will find in the advertisements,
+appended to the name and number of each mysteriously gifted lady,
+the pleasing assurance that she will be happy to see, not only
+the Cash Customer of the present writing, but also any and all
+other customers, equally cash, who are willing to pay the
+customary cash tribute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Is devoted to the glorification of Madame Prewster of No. 373
+Bowery, the Pioneer Witch of New York. The "Individual" also
+herein bears his testimony that she is oily and water-proof.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+MADAME PREWSTER, No. 373 BOWERY.
+
+
+This woman is one of the most dangerous of all those in the city
+who are engaged in the swindling trade of Fortune Telling, and
+has been professionally known to the police and the public of New
+York for about fourteen years. The amount of evil she has
+accomplished in that time is incalculable, for she has been by no
+means idle, nor has she confined her attention even to what
+mischief she could work by the exercise of her pretended magic,
+but if the authenticity of the records may be relied on, she has
+borne a principal part in other illicit transactions of a much
+more criminal nature. She has been engaged in the "Witch"
+business in this city for more years than has any other one whose
+name is now advertised to the public.
+
+If the history of her past life could be published, it would
+astound even this community, which is not wont to be startled out
+of its propriety by criminal development, for if justice were
+done, Madame Prewster would be at this time serving the State in
+the Penitentiary for her past misdoings; but, in some of these
+affairs of hers, men of so much _respectability_ and political
+influence have been implicated, that, having sure reliance on
+their counsel and assistance, the Madame may be regarded as
+secure from punishment, even should any of her many victims
+choose to bring her into court.
+
+The quality of her Witchcraft, by which she ostensibly lives, and
+the amount of faith to be reposed in her mystic predictions, may
+be seen from the history of a visit to her domicile, which is
+hereunto appended in the very words of the "Individual" who made
+it.
+
+
+    The "Cash Customer" makes his first Voyage in a Shower,
+    but encounters an Oily and Waterproof Witch at the end
+    of his Journey.
+
+It rained, and it _meant_ to rain, and it set about it with a
+will.
+
+It was as if some "Union Thunderstorm Company" was just then
+paying its consolidated attention to the city and county of New
+York; or, as if some enterprising Yankee of hydraulic tendencies,
+had contracted for a second deluge and was hurrying up the job to
+get his money; or, as if the clouds were working by the job; or,
+as if the earth was receiving its rations of rain for the year in
+a solid lump; or, as if the world had made a half-turn, leaving
+in the clouds the ocean and rivers, and those auxiliaries to
+navigation were scampering back to their beds as fast as
+possible; or, as if there had been a scrub-race to the earth
+between a score or more full-grown rain storms, and they were all
+coming in together, neck-and-neck, at full speed.
+
+Despite the juiciness of these opening sentences, the
+"Individual" does not propose to accompany the account of his
+heroical setting-forth on his first witch-journey with any
+inventory of natural scenery and phenomena, or with any
+interesting remarks on the wind and weather. Those who have a
+taste for that sort of thing will find in a modern circulating
+library, elaborate accounts of enough "dew-spangled grass" to
+make hay for an army of Nebuchadnezzars and a hundred troops of
+horse--of "bright-eyed daisies" and "modest violets," enough to
+fence all creation with a parti-colored hedge--of "early larks"
+and "sweet-singing nightingales," enough to make musical pot-pies
+and harmonious stews for twenty generations of Heliogabaluses; to
+say nothing of the amount of twaddle we find in American
+sensation books about "hawthorn hedges" and "heather bells," and
+similar transatlantic luxuries that don't grow in America, and
+never did.
+
+And then the sunrises we're treated to, and the sunsets we're
+crammed with, and the "golden clouds," the "grand old woods,"
+the "distant dim blue mountains," the "crystal lakes," the
+"limpid purling brooks," the "green-carpeted meadows," and the
+whole similar lot of affected bosh, is enough to shake the faith
+of a practical man in nature as a natural institution, and to
+make him vote her an artificial humbug.
+
+So the voyager in pursuit of the marvellous, declines to state
+how high the thermometer rose or fell in the sun or in the shade,
+or whether the wind was east-by-north, or sou'-sou'-west by a
+little sou'.
+
+The "dew on the grass" was not shining, for there was in his
+vicinity no dew and no grass, nor anything resembling those rural
+luxuries. Nor was it by any means at "early dawn;" on the
+contrary, if there be such a commodity in a city as "dawn,"
+either early or late, that article had been all disposed of
+several hours in advance of the period at which this chapter
+begins.
+
+But at midday he set forth alone to visit that prophetess of
+renown, Madame Prewster. He was fully prepared to encounter
+whatever of the diabolical machinery of the black art might be
+put in operation to appal his unaccustomed soul.
+
+But as he set forth from the respectable domicile where he takes
+his nightly roost, it rained, as aforementioned. The driving
+drops had nearly drowned the sunshine, and through the sickly
+light that still survived, everything looked dim and spectral.
+Unearthly cars, drawn by ghostly horses, glided swiftly through
+the mist, the intangible apparitions which occupied the drivers'
+usual stands hailing passengers with hollow voices, and
+proffering, with impish finger and goblin wink, silent
+invitations to ride. Fantastic dogs sneaked out of sight round
+distant corners, or skulked miserably under phantom carts for an
+imaginary shelter. The rain enveloped everything with a grey
+veil, making all look unsubstantial and unreal; the human
+unfortunates who were out in the storm appeared cloudy and
+unsolid, as if each man had sent his shadow out to do his work
+and kept his substance safe at home.
+
+The "Individual" travelled on foot, disdaining the miserable
+compromise of an hour's stew in a steaming car, or a prolonged
+shower-bath in a leaky omnibus. Being of burly figure and
+determined spirit, he walked, knowing that his "too-solid flesh"
+would not be likely "to melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a
+dew," and firmly believing that he was not born to be drowned.
+
+He carried no umbrella, preferring to stand up and fight it out
+with the storm face to face, and because he detested a contemptible
+sneaking subterfuge of an umbrella, pretending to keep him dry,
+and all the time surreptitiously leaking small streams down the
+back of his neck, and filling his pockets with indigo colored
+puddles; and because, also, an umbrella would no more have
+protected a man against that storm, than a gun-cotton overcoat
+would have availed against the storm of fire that scorched old
+Sodom.
+
+He placed his trust in a huge pair of water-proof boots, and a
+felt hat that shed water like a duck. He thrust his arms up to
+his elbows into the capacious pockets of his coat, drew his head
+down into the turned-up collar of that said garment, like a
+boy-bothered mud-turtle, and marched on.
+
+With bowed head, set teeth, and sturdy step, the cash customer
+tramped along, astonishing the few pedestrians in the street by
+the energy and emphasis of his remarks in cases of collision, and
+attracting people to the windows to look at him as he splashed
+his way up the street. He minded them no more than he did the
+gentleman in the moon, but drove forward at his best speed, now
+breaking his shins over a dry-goods box, then knocking his head
+against a lamp-post; now getting a great punch in the stomach
+from an unexpected umbrella, then involuntarily gauging the depth
+of some unseen puddle, and then getting out of soundings
+altogether in a muddy inland sea; now swept almost off his feet
+by a sudden torrent of sufficient power to run a saw-mill, and
+only recovering himself to find that he was wrecked on the
+curbstone of some side street that he didn't want to go to. At
+length, after a host of mishaps, including some interesting but
+unpleasant submarine explorations in an unusually large mud-hole
+into which he fell full-length, he arrived, soaked and savage, at
+the house of Madame Prewster.
+
+This elderly and interesting lady has long been an oily pilgrim
+in this vale of tears. The oldest inhabitant cannot remember the
+exact period when this truly great prophetess became a fixture in
+Gotham, and began to earn her bread and butter by fortune-telling
+and kindred occupations. Her unctuous countenance and pinguid
+form are known to hundreds on whose visiting lists her name does
+not conspicuously appear, and to whom, in the way of business,
+she has made revelations which would astonish the unsuspecting
+and unbelieving world. She is neither exclusive nor select in her
+visitors. Whoever is willing to pay the price, in good money--a
+point on which her regulations are stringent--may have the benefit
+of her skill, as may be seen by her advertisement:
+
+     "CARD.--Madame PREWSTER returns thanks to her friends
+     and patrons, and begs to say that, after the
+     thousands, both in this city and Philadelphia, who have
+     consulted her with entire satisfaction, she feels
+     confident that in the questions of astrology, love, and
+     law matters, and books or oracles, as relied on
+     constantly by Napoleon, she has no equal. She will tell
+     the name of the future husband, and also the name of
+     her visitors. No. 373 Bowery, between Fourth and Fifth
+     streets."
+
+The undaunted seeker after mystic lore rang a peal on the
+astonished door-bell that created an instantaneous confusion of
+the startled inmates. There was a good deal of hustling about,
+and running hither, thither, and to the other place, before any
+one appeared; meantime, the dainty fingers of the damp customer
+performed other little solos on the daubed and sticky bell-pull,--and
+he also amused himself with inspection of, and comments on, the
+German-silver plate on the narrow panel, which bore the name of
+the illustrious female who occupied these domains.
+
+At last the door was opened by a greasy girl, and the visitor was
+admitted to the hall, where he stood for a minute, like a
+fresh-water merman, "all dripping from the recent flood."
+
+The juvenile female who had admitted him thus far, evidently took
+him for a disreputable character, and stood prepared to prevent
+depredations. She planted herself firmly before him in the narrow
+hall in an attitude of self-defence, and squaring off scientifically,
+demanded his business. Astrology was mentioned, whereupon the
+threatening fists were lowered, the saucy under-jaw was
+retracted, and the general air of pugnacity was subdued into a
+very suspicious demeanor, as if she thought he hadn't any money,
+and wanted to storm the castle under false pretences. She
+informed him that before matters went any further, he must buy
+tickets, which she was prepared to furnish, on receipt of a
+dollar and a half; he paid the money, which transaction seemed to
+raise him in her estimation to the level of a man who might
+safely be trusted where there was nothing he could steal. One
+fist she still kept loaded, ready to instantly repel any attack
+which might be suddenly made by her designing enemy, the other
+hand cautiously departed petticoatward, and after groping about
+some time in a concealed pocket, produced from the mysterious
+depth a card, too dirty for description, on which these words
+were dimly visible:
+
+    +----------------------------+
+    |   c                      N |
+    |   e                      o |
+    | 5 n   MADAME PREWSTER    . |
+    | 0 t  411 GRAND STREET.     |
+    |   s                      1 |
+    +----------------------------+
+
+The belligerent girl then led the way through a narrow hall, up
+two flights of stairs into a cold room, where she desired her
+visitor to be seated. She then carefully locked one or two doors
+leading into adjoining rooms, put the keys in her pocket, and
+departed. Before her exit she made a sly demonstration with her
+fists and feet, as if she was disposed to break the truce,
+commence hostilities, and punch his unprotected head, without
+regard to the laws of honorable warfare. She departed, however,
+at last, without violence, though the voyager could hear her
+pause on each landing, probably debating whether it wasn't best
+after all to go back and thrash him before the opportunity was
+lost for ever.
+
+This grand reception-room was an apartment about six feet by
+eight; it was uncarpeted, and was luxuriously furnished with six
+wooden chairs, one stove, with no spark of fire, one feeble
+table, one spittoon, and two coal-scuttles.
+
+The view from the window was picturesque to a degree, being made
+up of cats, clothes-lines, chimneys, and crockery, and occasionally,
+when the storm lifted, a low roof near by suggested stables. The
+odor which filled the air had at least the merit of being
+powerful, and those to whose noses it was grateful, could not
+complain that they did not get enough of it. Description must
+necessarily fall far short of the reality, but if the reader will
+endeavor to imagine a couple of oil-mills, a Peck-slip ferry-boat,
+a soap-and-candle manufactory, and three or four bone-boiling
+establishments being simmered together over a slow fire in his
+immediate vicinity, he may possibly arrive at a faint and distant
+notion of the greasy fragrance in which the abode of Madame
+Prewster is immersed.
+
+For an hour and a half by the watch of the Cash Customer (which
+being a cheap article, and being alike insensible to the voice of
+reason and the persuasions of the watchmaker, would take its own
+time to do its work, and the long hands of which generally
+succeeded in getting once round the dial in about eighty minutes)
+was this too damp individual incarcerated in the room by the
+order of the implacable Madame Prewster.
+
+He would long before the end of that time have forfeited his
+dollar and a half and beaten an inglorious retreat, but that he
+feared an ambuscade and a pitching-into at the fair hands of the
+warlike servant.
+
+Finally, this last-named individual came to the rescue, and
+conducted him by a circuitous route, and with half-suppressed
+demonstrations of animosity, to the basement. This room was
+evidently the kitchen, and was fitted up with the customary iron
+and brazen apparatus.
+
+A feeble child, just old enough to run alone, had constructed a
+child's paradise in the lee of the cooking-stove, and was seated
+on a dinner-pot, with one foot in a saucepan; it had been playing
+on the wash-boiler like a drum, but was now engaged in decorating
+some loaves of unbaked bread with bits of charcoal and splinters
+from the broom.
+
+The fighting servant retreated to the far end of the apartment,
+where she began to wash dishes with vindictive earnestness,
+stopping at short intervals to wave her dish-cloth savagely as a
+challenge to instant single combat. There was nothing visible
+that savored of astrology or magic, unless some tin candlesticks
+with battered rims could be cabalistically construed.
+
+Madame Prewster, the renowned, sat majestically in a Windsor
+rocking-chair, extra size, with a large pillow comfortably tucked
+in behind her illustrious and rheumatic back. Her prophetic feet
+rested on a wooden stool; her oracular neck was bound with a
+bright-colored shawl; her necromantic locomotive apparatus was
+incased in a great number of predictive petticoats, and her
+whole aspect was portentous. She is a woman who may be of any age
+from 45 to 120, for her face is so oily that wrinkles won't stay
+in it; they slip out and leave no trace. She is an unctuous
+woman, with plenty of material in her--enough, in fact, for two or
+three. She is adipose to a degree that makes her circumference
+problematical, and her weight a mere matter of conjecture.
+Moreover, one instantly feels that she is thoroughly water-proof,
+and is certain that if she could be induced to shed tears, she
+would weep lard oil.
+
+Grim, grizzled, and stony-eyed, is this juicy old Sibyl; and she
+glared fearfully on the hero with her fishy optics, until he
+wished he hadn't done anything.
+
+She was evidently just out of bed, although it was long past
+noon, and when she yawned, which she did seven times a minute on
+a low average, the effect was gloomy and cavernous, and the timid
+delegate in search of the mysterious trembled in his boots.
+
+At last, he with uncovered head and timid demeanor presented his
+card entitling him to twelve shillings' worth of witchcraft, and
+made an humble request to have it honored. He had previously,
+while pretending to warm himself at the stove, been occupied in
+making horrible grimaces at the baby, and then sketching it in
+his hat as it disfigured its own face by frantic screams; and he
+also took a quiet revenge on the pugnacious servant by making a
+picture of her in a fighting attitude, with one eye bunged and
+her jaw knocked round to her left ear.
+
+When the ponderous Witch had got all ready for business, and had
+taken a very long greasy stare at her customer, as if she was
+making up her mind what sort of a customer on the whole he might
+be, she determined to begin her mighty magic. So she took up the
+cards, which were almost as greasy as she herself, and prepared
+for business, previously giving one most tremendous yawn, which
+opened her sacred jaws so wide that only a very narrow isthmus of
+hair behind her ears connected the top of her respected head with
+the back of her venerated neck.
+
+She then presented the cards for her customer to cut, and when he
+had accomplished that feat, which he did in some perturbation,
+she ran them carelessly over between her fingers, and began to
+speak very slowly, and without much thought of what she was
+about, as if it was a lesson she had learned by heart.
+
+Each word slipped smoothly out from her fat lips as if it had
+been anointed with some patent lubricator, and her speech was as
+follows:--
+
+"You have seen much trouble, some of it in business, and some of
+it in love, but there are brighter days in store for you before
+long--you face up a letter--you face up love--you face up
+marriage--you face up a light-haired woman, with dark eyes, you
+think a great deal of her, and she thinks a great deal of you;
+but then she faces up a dark complexioned man, which is bad for
+you--you must take care and look out for him, for he is trying to
+injure you--she likes you the best, but you must look out for the
+man--you face up better luck in business, you face a change in
+your business, but be careful, or it will not bring you much
+money--you do not face up a great deal of money."
+
+(Here followed a huge yawn which again nearly left the top of her
+head an island.) Then she resumed, "If you will tell me the
+number of letters in the lady's name, I will tell you what her
+name is."
+
+This demand was unexpected, but her cool and collected customer
+replied at random, "Four." The she-Falstaff then referred to a
+book wherein was written a long list of names, of varying lengths
+from one syllable to six, and selecting the names with four
+letters, began to ask.
+
+"Is it Emma?" "No." "Anna?" "No." "Ella?" "No?" "Jane?" "No."
+"Etta?" "No." "Lucy?" "No." "Cora?" "No." At last, finding that
+she would run through all the four-letter names in the language,
+and that he must eventually say something, he agreed to let his
+"true love's" name be Mary. Then she continued her remarks: "You
+face up Mary, you love Mary; Mary is a good girl. You will marry
+Mary at last; but Mary is not now here--Mary is far away; but do
+not fear, for you shall have Mary."
+
+Then she proposed to tell the name of our reporter in the same
+mysterious manner, and on being told that it contains eight
+letters, the first of which is "M," she turned to her register
+and again began to read. It so happens that the proper names
+answering to the description are very few, and the right one did
+not happen to be on her list; so in a short time the greasy
+prophetess became confused, and slipped off the track entirely,
+and after asking about two hundred names of various dimensions,
+from Mark to Melchisedek, she gave it up in despair and glared on
+her twelve-shilling patron as if she thought he was trifling with
+her, and she would like to eat him up alive for his presumption.
+
+Then she suddenly changed her mode of operation and made the
+fearful remark: "Now you may wish three wishes, and I will tell
+whether you will get them or not."
+
+She then laid out the cards into three piles, and her visitor
+stated his wishes aloud, and received the gratifying information
+in three instalments, that he would live to be rich, to marry the
+light-haired maiden, and to effectually smash the dark-complexioned man.
+
+Then she said: "You may now wish one wish in secret, and I will
+tell you whether you will get it." Our avaricious hero instantly
+wished for an enormous amount of ready money, which she kindly
+promised, but which he has not yet seen the color of.
+
+He asked about his prospective wives and children, with
+unsatisfactory results. One wife and four children was, she said,
+the outside limit. At this juncture she began to wriggle uneasily
+in her chair, and her considerate patron respected her "rheumatics"
+and took his leave. This conference, although the results may be
+read by a glib-tongued person in five minutes, occupied more than
+three-quarters of an hour--Madame Prewster's diction being slow
+and ponderous in proportion to her size.
+
+He now prepared to depart, and with a parting contortion of his
+countenance, of terrible malignity, at the unfortunate baby,
+which caused that weird brat to fling itself flat on its back and
+scream in agony of fear, he informed the Madame with mock
+deference that he would not wait any longer. He was then attended
+to the door by the bellicose maiden, who seemed to have fathomed
+his deep dealings with the infuriate infant, and to be desirous
+of giving him bloody battle in the hall, but as he had remarked
+that she had a rolling-pin hidden under her apron, and as he was
+somewhat awed by the sanguinary look of her dish-cloth, he choked
+down his blood-thirstiness and ingloriously retreated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Wherein are related divers strange things of Madame Bruce, the
+"Mysterious Veiled Lady," of No. 513 Broome Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+MADAME BRUCE, "THE MYSTERIOUS VEILED LADY," No. 513 BROOME
+STREET.
+
+
+The woman who assumes the title of "The Mysterious Veiled Lady,"
+is much younger in the Black Art trade than Madame Prewster, and
+has only been publicly known as a "Fortune-Teller" for about six
+years. The mysterious veil is assumed partly for the very
+mystery's sake, and partly to hide a countenance which some of
+her visitors might desire to identify on after occasions. She
+confines herself more exclusively to telling fortunes than do
+many of the others, and has never yet made her appearance in a
+Police Court to answer to an accusation of a grave crime. She has
+many customers, and might have a respectable account at the bank
+if she were disposed to commit her moneys to the care of those
+careful institutions.
+
+It may be mentioned here, however, as a curious fact, that
+although all the "witches" profess to be able to "tell lucky
+numbers," and will at any time give a paying customer the exact
+figures which they are willing to prophesy will draw the capital
+prize in any given lottery, their skill invariably fails them
+when they undertake to do anything in the wheel-of-fortune way on
+their own individual behalf. No one of the professional
+fortune-tellers was ever known to draw a rich prize in a lottery,
+or to make a particularly lucky "hit" on a policy number,
+notwithstanding the fact that most of them make large investments
+in those uncertain financial speculations. Madame Bruce is no
+exception to this general rule, and the propinquity of the
+"lottery agency" and the "policy-shop," just round the corner,
+must be accepted in explanation of the fact that this gifted lady
+has no balance in her favor at the banker's.
+
+The quality of her magic and other interesting facts about her
+are best set forth in the words of the anxious seeker after
+hidden lore, who paid her a visit one pleasant afternoon in
+August.
+
+
+    The "Individual" visits Madame Bruce and has a
+    Conference with that Mysterious Veiled Personage.
+
+A man of strong nerves can recover from the effects of a
+professional interview with the ponderous Prewster in about a
+week; delicately organized persons, particularly susceptible to
+supernatural influences, might be so overpowered by the
+manifestations of her cabalistic lore as to affect their
+appetites for a whole lunar month, and have bad dreams till the
+moon changed; but the daring traveller of this veracious history
+was convalescent in ten days. It is true, that, even after that
+time, he, in his dreams, would imagine himself engaged in
+protracted single combats with the heroine of the rolling-pin,
+and once or twice awoke in an agony of fear, under the impression
+that he had been worsted in the fight, and that the conquering
+fair one was about to cook him in a steamer, or stew him into
+charity soup, and season him strong with red pepper; or broil him
+on a gridiron and serve him up on toast to Madame Prewster, like
+a huge woodcock. In one gastronomic nightmare of a dream he even
+fancied that the triumphant maiden had tied him, hand and foot,
+with links of sausages, then tapped his head with an auger,
+screwed a brass faucet into his helpless skull, and was preparing
+to draw off his brains in small quantities to suit cannibalic
+retail customers.
+
+But he eventually recovered his equanimity, his nocturnal visions
+of the warlike servant became less terrible, and he gradually
+ceased to think of her, except with a dim sort of half-way
+remembrance, as of some fearful danger, from which many years
+before he had been miraculously preserved.
+
+When he had reached this state of mind, he was ready to proceed
+with his inquiries into the mysteries of the cheap and nasty
+necromancy of the day, and to encounter the rest of the
+fifty-cent Sybils with an unperturbed spirit. Accordingly, he
+girded up his loins, and prepared the necessary amount of one
+dollar bills; for, with a most politic and necessary carefulness,
+he always made his own change.
+
+[Note of caution to the future observer of these Modern Witches:
+Never let one of them "break" a large bank-bill for you, and give
+you small notes in exchange, lest the small bills be much more
+badly broken than the large one. Not that the witches' money,
+like the fairies' gold, will be likely to turn into chips and
+pebbles in your pocket, but all these fortune-tellers are expert
+passers of counterfeit and broken bank-notes and bogus coin; and
+they never lose an opportunity thus to victimize a customer.]
+
+Fortified with dinner, dessert, and cigars, the cash customer
+departed on his voyage of discovery in search of "MADAME BRUCE,
+THE MYSTERIOUS VEILED LADY," who carries on all the business she
+can get by the subjoined advertisement:
+
+     "ASTONISHING TO ALL.-Madame BRUCE, the Mysterious
+     Veiled Lady, can be consulted on all events of life, at
+     No. 513 Broome st., one door from Thompson. She is a
+     second-sight seer, and was born with a natural gift."
+
+The "Individual," modestly speaking of himself in the third
+person, admits that, being then a single man of some respectability,
+he was at that very period looking out for a profitable partner
+of his bosom, sorrows, joys, and expenses. He naturally preferred
+one who could do something towards taking a share of the
+expensive responsibility of a family off his hands, and was not
+disposed to object to one who was even afflicted with money;--next
+to that woman, whom he had not yet discovered, a lady with a
+"natural gift" for money-making was evidently the most eligible
+of matrimonial speculations. Whether he really cherished an
+humble hope that the veil of Madame Bruce might be of semi-transparent
+stuff, and that she might discover and be smitten by his manly
+charms, and ask his hand in marriage, and eventually bear him
+away, a blushing husband, to the altar, or whatever might be
+hastily substituted for that connubial convenience, will never be
+officially known to the world. Certain it is that he expected
+great results of some sort to eventuate from his visit to this
+obnubilated prophetess, and that he paid extraordinary attention
+to the decoration of the external homo, and to the administration
+of encouraging stimuli to the inner individual, probably with a
+view to submerge, for the time, his characteristic bashfulness,
+before he set out to visit the fair inscrutable of Broome-street.
+
+The nature of his secret cogitations, as he walked along, was
+somewhat as follows, though he himself has never before revealed
+the same to mortal man.
+
+He was of course uncertain as to her personal attractiveness;
+owing to that mysterious veil there was a doubt as to her
+surpassing beauty. At any rate he did not regret the time spent
+on his toilet.
+
+Madame Bruce might be a lady of the most transcendent loveliness,
+or she might possess a countenance after the style of Mokanna,
+the Veiled Prophet; in either case, a clean shirt collar and a
+little extra polish on the boots would be a touching tribute of
+respect. He thought over the stories of the Oriental ladies, so
+charmingly and complexly described in the "Arabian Nights'
+Entertainments," and in some strange way he connected Madame
+Bruce with Eastern associations; he remembered that in Asiatic
+countries the arts of enchantment are the staple of fashionable
+female education; that the women imbibe the elements of magic
+from their wet nurses, and that their power of charming is
+gradually and surely developed by years and competent instructors,
+until they are able to go forth into the world, and raise the
+devil on their own hook.
+
+In this case the veil was of the East, Eastern; and what was more
+probable than that the "Mysterious Veiled Lady" was that
+fascinating Oriental young woman whose attainments in magic made
+her the dire terror of her enemies, most of whom she changed into
+pigs, and oxen, and monkeys, and other useful domestic animals;
+who had transformed her unruly grandfather into a cat of the
+species called Tom; had metamorphosed her vicious aunt into a
+screech-owl, and had turned an ungentlemanly second-cousin into a
+one-eyed donkey.
+
+What a treasure, thought the "Individual," would such an
+accomplished wife be in republican America,--how exceedingly
+useful in the case of her husband's rivals for Custom-house
+honors, and how invaluable when creditors become clamorous. What
+a perfect treasure would a wife be who could turn a clamorous
+butcher into spring lamb, and his brown apron and leather
+breeches into the indispensable peas and mint-sauce to eat him
+with; who could make the rascally baker instantly become a green
+parrot with only power to say, "Pretty Polly wants a cracker;"
+who could transform the dunning tailor into a greater goose than
+any in his own shop; who could go to Stewart's, buy a couple of
+thousands of dollars' worth of goods, and then turn the clerks
+into cockroaches, and scrunch them with her little gaiter if they
+interfered with her walking off with the plunder; or who, in the
+event of a scarcity of money, could invite a select party of
+fifty or sixty friends to a nice little dinner, and then change
+the whole lot into lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants, and
+ostriches, and sell the entire batch to Van Amburgh & Co. at a
+high premium, as a freshly imported menagerie, all very fat and
+valuable.
+
+Then he came down from this rather elevated flight of fancy, and
+filled away on another tack. Before he reached the house he had
+fully made up his mind that Madame Bruce, the Mysterious Veiled
+Lady, must be a stray Oriental Princess in reduced circumstances,
+cruelly thrust from the paternal mansion by the infuriated
+proprietor, her father, and compelled to seek her fortune in a
+strange land. He had never seen a princess, and he resolved to
+treat this one with all respect and loyal veneration; to do this,
+if possible, without compromising his conscience as a republican
+and a voter in the tenth ward,--but to do it at all hazards.
+
+The immense fortune which would undoubtedly be hers in the event
+of the relenting of her brutal though opulent father, suggested
+the feasibility of a future elopement, and a legal marriage,
+according to the forms of any country that she preferred--he
+couldn't bethink him of a Persian justice of the peace, but he
+did not despair of being able to manage it to her entire and
+perfect satisfaction.
+
+Her undoubted great misfortunes had touched his tender heart. He
+would see this suffering Princess--he would tender his sympathy
+and offer his hand and the fortune he hoped she would be able to
+make for him. If this was haughtily declined there would still
+remain the poor privilege of buying a dose of magic, paying the
+price in current money, and letting her make her own change.
+
+Having matured this disinterested resolve, he proceeded calmly on
+his journey, wondering as he walked along, whether, in the event
+of a gracious reception by his Princess, it would be more courtly
+and correct to kneel on both knees, or to make an Oriental
+cushion of his overcoat and sit down cross-legged on the floor.
+
+This knotty point was not settled to his entire satisfaction when
+he reached that lovely portion of fairy-land near the angle of
+Broome and Thompson streets. The Princess had taken up her
+temporary residence in the tenant-house No. 513 Broome, which,
+elegant mansion affords a refuge to about seventeen other
+families, mostly Hibernian, without very high pretensions to
+aristocracy.
+
+His ring at the door of the noble mansion was answered by a
+grizzly woman speaking French very badly broken, in fact
+irreparably fractured. This grizzly Gaul let him into the house,
+heard his request to see Madame Bruce, and then she called to a
+shock-headed boy who was looking over the bannisters, to come and
+take the visitor in charge.
+
+Two minutes' observation convinced the distinguished caller that
+the servants of the Princess were not particular in the matter of
+dirt.
+
+The walls were stained, discolored, and bedaubed, and the floor
+had a sufficient thickness of soil for a vegetable garden; at one
+end of the hall, indeed, an Irish woman was on her knees, making
+experimental excavations, possibly with a view to planting early
+lettuce and peppergrass.
+
+A glance at the shock-headed boy showed a peculiarity in his
+visual organs; his eyes, which were black naturally, had
+evidently suffered in some kind of a fisticuff demonstration, and
+one of them still showed the marks; it was twice black, naturally
+and artificially; it had a dual nigritude, and might, perhaps, be
+called a double-barrelled black eye. This pleasant young man
+conducted his visitor to the top of the first flight of stairs,
+where he said, "Please stop here a minute," and disappeared into
+the Princess's room, leaving her devoted slave alone in the hall
+with two aged washtubs and a battered broom. There ensued an
+immediate flurry in the rooms of the Princess, and the customer
+thought of the forty black slaves, with jars of jewels on their
+heads, who, in Oriental countries, are in the habit of receiving
+princesses' visitors with all the honors. He hardly thought to
+see the forty black slaves, with the jars of gems, but rather
+expected the shock-headed youth to presently reappear, with a mug
+of rubies, or a kettle of sapphires and emeralds, and invite him
+in courtly language to help himself to a few--or, that that active
+young man would presently come out with an amethyst snuff-box
+full of diamond-dust and ask him to take a pinch, and then
+present him with that expensive article as a slight token of
+respect from the Princess.
+
+"Not so, not so, my child."
+
+The great shuffling and pitching about of things continued, as if
+the furniture had been indulging in an extemporaneous jig, and
+couldn't stop on so short a notice, or else objected to any
+interruption of the festivities.
+
+Finally the rattling of chairs and tables subsided into a calm,
+and the boy reappeared. He came, however, without the tea-kettle
+full of valuables, and minus even the snuff-box; he merely
+remarked, with an insinuating wink of the lightest-colored eye,
+"Please to walk this way."
+
+It _did_ please his auditor to walk in the designated direction,
+and he entered the room, when the eye spoke again to a very low
+accompaniment of the voice, as if he was afraid he might damage
+that organ by playing on it too loudly.
+
+The anxious visitor looked for the Princess, but not seeing her,
+or the slaves with the pots of jewels, and observing, also, that
+the chairs were not too luxuriously gorgeous for people to sit
+on, he sat down.
+
+A single glance convinced him that the Princess could have had no
+opportunity to carry off her jewels from her eastern home, or
+that she must have spent the proceeds before she furnished her
+present domicile. An iron bedstead, a small cooking-stove, four
+chairs, and a table, on which the breakfast crockery stood
+unwashed, was the amount of the furniture. A dirty slatternly
+young woman of about twenty-three years, with filthy hands and
+uncombed hair, and whose clothes looked as if they had been
+tossed on with a pitchfork, seated herself in one of the chairs
+and commenced conversation--not in Persian. It was one o'clock,
+P.M., but she attempted an apology for the unmade bed, the
+unswept room, the unwashed breakfast dishes, and the untidy
+appearance of everything. Before she had concluded her fruitless
+explanation, the boy with the variegated eye suddenly came from
+a closet which the customer had not noticed and was unprepared
+for, and said, in winning tones, "Please to walk in this room,"
+which was done, with some fear and no little trembling, whereupon
+the optical youth incontinently vanished.
+
+At last, then, the imaginative visitor stood in the presence of
+royalty, and beheld the wronged Princess of his heart. He was
+about to drop on his bended knees to pay his premeditated homage,
+but a hurried glance at the floor showed that such a course of
+proceeding would result in the ineffaceable soiling of his best
+pantaloons; so he stood sturdily erect.
+
+Before he suffered his eyes to rest upon the peerless beauty who,
+he was convinced, stood before him, he took a survey of the regal
+apartment.
+
+An unpainted pine table stood in the corner, a gaudily colored
+shade was at the window, and an iron single bedstead upon which
+the clothes had been hastily "spread up," and two chairs, on one
+of which sat the enchantress, completed the list.
+
+The Princess was attired in deep black, and a thick black veil,
+reaching from her head to her waist, entirely concealed her
+features from the beholders who still devoutly believed in her
+royal birth and cruel misfortunes--nor was this belief dissipated
+until she spoke; but when she called "Pete" to the double-barrelled
+youth with the eye, and gave him a "blowing up" in the most
+emphatic kind of English for not bringing her pocket-handkerchief,
+then the beautiful Princess of his imagination vanished into the
+thinnest kind of air, and there remained only the unromantic
+reality of a very vulgar woman, in a very dirty dress, and who
+had a very bad cold in her head. There was still a hope that she
+might be pretty, and her would-be admirer fervently trusted that
+she might be compelled to lift her veil to blow her nose, but she
+didn't do it. Then he offered her his hand, not in marriage, but
+for her to read his fortune in, and stood, no longer trembling
+with expectation, but with stony indifference, for as he
+approached her, a strong odor of an onion-laden breath from
+beneath the veil, gave the death-blow to the fair creature of his
+imagination, and convinced him that he had got the wrong ----
+Princess by the fist. She looked at him closely for a couple of
+minutes, and then spoke these words--the peculiar pronunciation
+being probably induced by the cold in her head.
+
+"You are a badd who has saw a great beddy chadges add it seebs
+here as if you was goidg to be bore settled in the future--it
+seebs here like as if you had sobetibes in your life beed very
+buch cast dowd, but it seebs here like as if you had always got
+up agaid.--It seebs here like as if you had saw id your past life
+sobe lady what you liked very buch add had beed disappointed--it
+seebs here like as if there was two barriages for you, wud id a
+very short tibe--wud lady seebs here to stadd very dear to you,
+add you two bay be barried or you bay dot--if you are dot already
+barried you will be very sood--it seebs here as if you woulddt
+have a very large fabily--five childred will be all that you will
+have--you will have a good deal of buddy (money) id your life--sobe
+of your relatives what you dever have saw will sood die add leave
+you sobe property--but you will dot be expectidg it add it seebs
+here as if you would have trouble id getting it, for there will
+sobe wud else try to get it away frob you--it seebs as if the lady
+you will barry will dot be too dark cobplexiod, dor yet too
+light--dot too tall, dor yet very short, dot too large, dor too
+thid--she thidks a great deal of you, bore thad you do of her,--you
+have already saw her id the course of your life, and she loves
+you very buch. There are people about you id your busidess who
+are dot so buch your friends as they preted to be--you are goidg
+to bake sub chadge id your busidess, it will be a good thidg for
+you add will cub out buch better thad you expect."
+
+Here she stopped and intimated that she would answer any
+questions that her customer desired to ask, and in reply to his
+interrogatories the following important information was elicited:
+
+"You will be lodg lived, add you will have two wives, add will
+live beddy years with your first wife."
+
+The "Individual" proclaimed himself satisfied, and paid his
+money, whereupon Madame Bruce instantly yelled "Pete," when the
+Eye-Boy reappeared to show the door, and the Cash Customer
+departed, leaving the Mysterious Veiled Lady shivering on her
+stool, and exceedingly desirous of an opportunity to use her
+pocket-handkerchief.
+
+And this is all there was of the Persian Princess. As the seeker
+after wisdom went away he made one single audible remark by way
+of consoling himself for his crushed hopes and blighted anonymous
+love. It was to this effect. "I believe she squints, and I _know_
+she's got bad teeth."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Relates the marvellous performances of Madame Widger, of No. 3,
+First Avenue, and how she looks into the future through a
+Paving-Stone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MADAME WIDGER, No. 3 FIRST AVENUE.
+
+
+Madame Widger came from Albany to this city about four years ago,
+and at once set up as an "Astrologer." She has been a "witch" for
+a great many years, and has, directly and indirectly, done about
+as much mischief as it is possible for one person to accomplish
+in the same length of time. She was a woman of great repute in
+and about Albany, as a fortune-teller, and was supposed to be
+conversant with practices more criminal. She at last became so
+well known as a bad woman, that she found it advisable to leave
+Albany, after she had settled certain lawsuits in which she had
+become entangled.
+
+Among other speculations of hers, in that place, she once sued
+the city to recover indemnifying moneys for certain imaginary
+damages, alleged to have been done to her property by the
+unbidden entrance of the river into her private apartments,
+during one of the periodical inundations with which Albany is
+favored. By the shrewd management of certain of her lawyer
+friends with whom she had business dealings, she at last got a
+judgment against the city, but, owing to some other awkward law
+complications, it became expedient to change her place of
+residence before she had collected her money, and the amount
+remains unpaid to this day.
+
+She then came to this city, and set up in the Sorceress way, and,
+by dint of advertising, she soon got a good many customers. She
+now has as much to do as she can easily manage to get along with,
+is making a good deal of money by "Astrology," and by other more
+unscrupulous means; and she is probably worth some considerable
+property. She is a bold, brazen, ignorant, unscrupulous,
+dangerous woman. She has some peculiar ways of her own in telling
+the fortunes of her visitors, and is the only person in the city
+who professes to read the future through a magic stone, or
+"second-sight pebble." Her manner of using this wonderful
+geological specimen is fully described hereafter.
+
+
+    The "Individual" Visits a Grim Witch, who reads his
+    Future through a Moderate-Sized Paving-Stone.
+
+Disappointed in his fond hope of discovering, in the person of
+Madame Bruce, an eligible partner, who should bridal him and lead
+him coyly to the altar, that bourne from which no bachelor
+returns, the Cash Customer was for many days downcast in his
+demeanor and neglectful of his person. When he eventually
+recovered from his strong attack of Madame Bruce, he was not by
+any means cured of his romantic desire to procure a witch wife.
+He had carefully figured up the conveniences of such an article,
+and the sum total was an irresistible argument.
+
+If he could win a witch of the right sort, perhaps she could
+teach him the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, and the Elixir
+of Life, and show him the locality of the Fountain of Youth, so
+that he could take the wrinkles out of himself and his friends,
+at the cost of only a short journey by rail-road. A barrel or so
+of that wonderful water, peddled out by the bottle, would meet a
+readier sale and pay a larger profit than any Paphian Lotion that
+was ever advertised on the rocks of Jersey. All this, to say
+nothing of a family of young wizards and sorcerers, who could, by
+virtue of the maternal magic, swallow swords from the day of
+their birth, do mighty feats of legerdemain, such as cutting off
+the heads of innumerable pigs and chickens, and producing the
+decapitated animals alive again from the coat-tails of the
+bystanders, to the astonishment of the crowd and the great
+emolument of their proud dad. Even if these profitable babies
+should not be natural necromancers, with the power of second
+sight, and any quantity of "natural gifts," they must surely be
+spirit-rappers of the most lucrative "sphere," capable of
+organizing "circles," and instructing "mediums," and otherwise
+bringing into the family fund large piles of that circulating
+medium so much to be desired. Or, even failing this popular
+gift, they _must_ all be born with some strong instincts of
+money-making vagabondism. If the girls failed in fortune-telling
+they would certainly have a genius for the tight-rope, or a
+decided talent for the female circus and negro-minstrel business;
+and the boys would be brought into the world with the power of
+throwing a miraculous number of consecutive flip-flaps--of putting
+cocked hats on their juvenile heads while turning somersets over
+long rows of Arab steeds of the desert--of poising their infant
+bodies on pyramids of bottles, and drinking glasses of molasses
+and water, under the contemptible subterfuge of wine, to the
+health of the terror-stricken beholders--or of climbing to the
+tops of very tall poles without soiling their spangled dresses,
+and there displaying their anatomy for the admiration of the
+gazing multitude, in divers attitudes, for the most part
+extraordinarily wrong side up with very particular care--or, at
+least, they would be born with the astounding gift of tying their
+young legs in double bow-knots across the backs of their
+adolescent necks, and while in that graceful position kissing
+their little fingers to the bewildered audience.
+
+Under the constant influence of such comfortable and ennobling
+thoughts, it is not in the elastic nature of the human mind to
+remain long dejected. In the contemplation of the future glories
+of his might-be wife and possible family, the "Individual"
+recovered somewhat of his former gaiety. Remembering that "Care
+killed a cat," he resolved that he would not be chronicled as a
+second victim, so he kicked Care out of doors, so to speak, and
+warned Despair and Discouragement off the premises.
+
+He attired him in his best, and appeared once more before the
+world in the joyful garb of a man with Hope in his heart and
+money in his pantaloons. In fact, so radiant did he appear, that
+he might have been set down for a person who had just had a new
+main of joy laid on in his heart, and had turned the cocks of all
+the pipes, and let on the full head just to see how the new
+apparatus worked. Or, as if he'd been in a shower-bath of
+good-nature, and come out dripping.
+
+He also took kindly to that innocuous beverage, lager bier, which
+was a good sign in itself, inasmuch as he had, for a few days,
+been drinking as many varieties of strong drinks, as if he'd been
+brought up on Professor Anderson's Inexhaustible Bottle, and had
+never overcome the influences of his infant education.
+
+Seeking out a friend to whom he confided his hopes of a lucrative
+wife and a profitable progeny, the Cash Customer suggested that
+they proceed immediately in search of the fair enchantress who
+was to be his comfort and consolation, for the rest of his
+respectable life.
+
+Being somewhat disgusted with the result of his visit to the
+witch with the romantic designation of the "Mysterious Veiled
+Lady," he had determined to seek out one on this occasion with
+the most common-place and every-day cognomen, in the whole list.
+There being a Madame Widger in that delightful catalogue, of
+course Widger was the one selected. It is true, she sometimes
+advertised herself as the "Mysterious Spanish Lady," but in the
+judgment of the Individual, the Widger was too much for the
+Spanish and the mystery.
+
+So Madame Widger was resolved on. Her modest advertisement is
+given, that the impartial reader may be brought to acknowledge
+that the inducements to wed the Widger were not of the common
+order.
+
+     "MADAME WIDGER, the Natural-Gifted Astrologist,
+     Second-Sight Seer and Doctress, tells past, present,
+     and future events; love, courtship, marriage, absent
+     friends, sickness; prescribes medicines for all
+     diseases, property lost or stolen, at No. 3 First-av.,
+     near Houston-st."
+
+The slight lack of perspicuity in this announcement seems to be a
+mysterious peculiarity, common to all the Fortune Tellers, as if
+they were all imbued with the same commendable contempt for all
+the rules of English grammar.
+
+The voyager being attired in a captivating costume, and being
+also provided with pencils and paper to make a life-sketch, with
+a view to an expansive portrait of his enslaver, whose beauty was
+with him a foregone conclusion, set out with his faithful friend
+for the delightful locality mentioned in the advertisement, where
+the charming Circe, Widger, held her magic court.
+
+He was not aware, at that time, that his intended bride was not a
+blushing blooming maiden, but an ancient dame, whose very
+wrinkles date back into the eighteenth century. But of that
+hereafter.
+
+He was determined to have her tell his "love, courtship, or
+marriage, absent friends, or sickness," and to insist that she
+should "prescribe medicines for property lost or stolen,"
+according to the exact wording of the advertisement.
+
+The doughty "Individual" trembled somewhat, with an undefined
+sensation of awe, as though some fearful ordeal was before him--to
+use his own elegant and forcible language, he felt as though he
+was going to encounter an earthquake with volcano trimmings.
+
+"It is the fluttering of new-born love in your manly bosom,"
+remarked his companion.
+
+"Well," was the reply, "if a baby love kicks so very like a horse
+of vicious propensities, a full-grown Cupid would be so
+unmanageable as to defy the very Rarey and all his works."
+
+Without any noteworthy adventure they kept on their way to the
+First Avenue, and in due time stood, awe-struck, before the
+mansion of the enchantress.
+
+After the first impression had worn off, the scene was somewhat
+stripped of its mysteriousness, and assumed an aspect commonplace,
+not to say seedy. As soon as the sense of bewilderment with which
+they at first gazed upon the domicile of the mysterious damsel so
+favored of the fates, had passed away, they found themselves in a
+condition to make the observations of the place and its
+surroundings that are detailed below.
+
+The house, a three-story brick, seemed to have that architectural
+disease which is a perpetual epidemic among the tenant-houses of
+the city, and which makes them look as if they had all been
+dipped in a strong solution of something that had taken the skin
+off. The paint was blistered and peeling off in flakes; the
+blinds were hanging cornerwise by solitary hinges; the shingles
+were starting from their places with a strange air of disquietude,
+as if some mighty hand had stroked them the wrong way; the
+door-steps were shaky and crazy in the knees; the door itself had
+a curious air of debility and emaciation, and the bell-knob was
+too weak to return to its place after it had feebly done its
+brazen duty. There was no door-plate, but on a battered tin sign
+was blazoned, in fat letters, the mystic word "Widger." The Cash
+Customer rang the bell, not once merely, or twice, but continuously,
+in pursuance of a dogma which he laid down as follows:
+
+"It is a mistake to ever stop ringing till somebody comes. The
+feebler you ring, the more the servants think you're a dun, and
+therefore the more they don't come to let you in--but if you keep
+it up regularly they'll think you're a rich relation and will
+rush to the rescue."
+
+So he kept on, and the voice of the bell sharply clattered
+through the dismal old house, making as much noise as if it
+suddenly wakened a thousand echoes that had been locked up there
+for many years without the power to speak till now. If a timid
+ring denotes a dun, and a boisterous one a rich relation, then
+must the inhabitants of that cleanly suburb have been convinced
+that the present performer on the bell not only had no claims as
+a creditor on the people of the house, but was a rich California
+uncle, come to give each adult member of that happy family a gold
+mine or so, and to distribute a cart-load of diamonds among the
+children.
+
+The door at last was opened by an uncertain old man with very
+weak eyes, who appeared to have, in a milder form, the same
+malady which afflicted the house; perhaps he was a twin, and
+suffered from brotherly sympathy--at any rate the dilapidating
+disease had touched him sorely; its ravages were particularly
+noticeable in the toes of his boots and the elbows of his coat.
+Violent remedies had evidently been applied in the latter case,
+but the patches were of different colors, and suggestive of the
+rag-bag; the boots were past hope of convalescence; his
+shirt-collar was sunk under a greasy billow of a neckcloth, and
+only one slender string was visible to show where it had gone
+down; the nether garment was a ragged wreck, that set a hundred
+tattered sails to every breeze, but was anchored fast at the
+shoulder with a single disreputable suspender.
+
+Guided by this equivocal individual the two visitors entered a
+small shabbily furnished room, and bestowed themselves in a
+couple of treacherous chairs, in pursuance of an imbecile
+invitation from the battered old gentleman.
+
+The anticipations of the enthusiastic lover again began to fall,
+and in five minutes his heart, which so lately was "burning with
+high hope," was so cold as to be uncomfortable.
+
+On a seven-by-nine cooking-stove, which three pints of coal would
+have driven blazing crazy, stood a diminutive iron kettle, in
+which something was noisily stewing; the something may have been
+a decoction of magic herbs, or it may have been Madame Widger's
+dinner. A tumble-down trunk in a corner of the room did
+precarious duty for a chair; a faded carpet hid the floor; a
+cheap rocking-chair in the act of moulting its upholstery spread
+its luxurious arms invitingly near the dim window; and a table,
+on which a pack of German playing cards was coyly half concealed
+by a newspaper, a coal-hod, and a poker, completed the necessary
+furnishing of the apartment.
+
+The ornaments are soon inventoried; a certificate of membership
+of the New York State Agricultural Society, given at Albany to
+Mr. M. G. Bivins, hung in a cheap frame over the table. The other
+decorations were a few prints of high-colored saints, an
+engraving of a purple Virgin Mary with a pea-green child, and a
+picture of a blue Joseph being sold by yellow brethren to a crowd
+of scarlet merchants who were paying for him with money that
+looked like peppermint lozenges.
+
+Madame Widger, the "Mysterious Spanish Lady," was not at first
+visible to the naked eye, but a loud, shrill, vicious voice,
+which made itself heard through the partition dividing the
+reception-room from some apartment as yet unexplored by them,
+directed the attention of her visitors to her exact locality.
+
+She was "engaged" with another gentleman, said the knight of the
+ragged inexpressibles.
+
+Had not what he had already seen of the mansion decidedly cooled
+the passion of the love-lorn customer, this intelligence would
+have been likely to rouse his ire against the interloping swain,
+and make him pant for vengeance and fistic damages to the other
+party; but in his present confused state of mind he received this
+blow with philosophic indifference.
+
+The old man subsided into a chair, and in a weak sort of way
+began to talk, evidently with some insane idea of pleasingly
+filling up the time until the prophetess should be disengaged.
+His conversation seemed to run to disasters, with a particular
+partiality to shipwrecks. He accordingly detailed, with wonderful
+exactness, the perils encountered by a certain canal-boat of
+his, "loaded principally with butter and cheese," during a
+dangerous voyage from Albany to New York, and which was finally
+brought safely to a secure harbor by the power of the Widger,
+which circumstance had made him her slave for life.
+
+The shrill voice then ceased, and the person to whom it had been
+addressed came forth. The lime on his blue jean garments, and the
+cloudy appearance of his boots, declared him to be something in
+the mason line. He deported himself with becoming reverence, and
+departed in apparent awe. He did not look like a dangerous rival,
+and he was not molested.
+
+A discreditable and disordered head now thrust itself out of the
+mysterious closet, opened its mouth, and the vicious voice said:
+"I will see you now, sir." The sighing swain, with a fluttering
+heart and unsteady steps, summoned his courage and entered the
+place, to him as mysterious as was Bluebeard's golden-keyed
+closet to his ninth wife. The first glance at Madame Widger at
+once scattered again all his dreams of love and of happiness
+with that potent and fearful female.
+
+He encountered a cadaverous bony-looking woman, very tall, very
+old, though with hair still black; with grey eyes, and false
+gleaming teeth. She was attired in calico; quality, ten cents a
+yard; appearance, dirty. Hardly was the door closed, when the
+vicious voice spitefully remarked, "Sit down, sir;" and a skinny
+finger pointed to a cane-bottomed chair. While seating himself
+and taking off his gloves, he took an observation.
+
+The apartment was not large; in an unfurnished state, a
+moderately-hooped belle might have stood in it without serious
+damage to her outskirts, but there would be little extra room for
+any enterprising adventurer to circumnavigate her. In one corner
+was a small pine light-stand, on which was a sceptical looking
+Bible, with a very black brass key tied in it; a volume of Cowper
+bound in full calf; a little lamp with a single lighted wick, and
+a pile of the Madame's business hand-bills.
+
+She at once showed her experience of human nature and her distrust
+of her present visitor by her practical and matter-of-fact conduct.
+
+She sat uncomfortably down on the very edge of an angular chair,
+folded her hands, shut herself half up like a jack-knife, and the
+vicious voice mentioned this fearful fact: "My terms are a dollar
+for gentlemen;" and the grey eyes stonily stared until the dollar
+aforesaid was produced.
+
+The voice then prepared for business by sundry "Ahems!" and when
+fairly in working order it proceeded: "Give me your hand--your
+_left_ hand."
+
+The Widger took the extended palm in her shrivelled fingers and
+made four rapid dabs in the middle of it with the forefinger of
+her other hand, as if she were scornfully pointing out defects in
+its workmanship; then she opened the drawer of the little stand
+with a spiteful jerk, and withdrew thence something which she put
+to her sinister optic, and began rapidly screwing it round with
+both hands, as if she had got water on the brain and was trying
+to tap herself in the eye.
+
+Then the vicious voice began, in a loud mechanical manner, to
+speak with the greatest volubility, running the sentences
+together, and not thinking of a comma or a period till her breath
+was exhausted, in a manner that would have fairly distanced Susan
+Nipper herself, even if that rapid young lady had twenty seconds
+the start.
+
+"I see by looking in this stone that you was born under two
+planets one is the planet Mars you will die under the planet
+Jupiter but it won't be this year or next you have seen a great
+deal of trouble and misfortune in your past life but better days
+are surely in store for you you have passed through many things
+which if written in a book would make a most interesting volume I
+see by looking more closely in the stone that you are about to
+receive two letters one a business letter the other a let--"
+
+Here her breath failed, and as soon as it came back the voice
+continued--
+
+"ter from a friend it is written very closely and is crossed I
+see by looking more closely in the stone that one of the letters
+will contain news which will distress you exceedingly for a
+little while but you need not be troubled for it will all be for
+your good you are soon to have an interview with a man of light
+hair and blue eyes who will profess great interest in you but he
+will get the advantage of you if he can you must beware of him I
+see by looking more closely in the stone that you will live to be
+68 years old but you will die before you are 70." Here was
+another station where the locomotive voice stopped to take in
+air, and then instantly dashed ahead at a greater speed than
+ever. "I see by looking more closely in the stone that good luck
+will befall you a near friend will die and leave you a fortune I
+see by looking more closely in the stone that this will happen to
+you when you are between 32 and 34 years old that is all I see in
+this stone."
+
+Another grab brought from the little drawer another pebble,
+which the Madame placed at her eye, the boring operation was
+recommenced, and the vicious voice once more got up steam.
+
+"I see by looking closely in this stone that you will have two
+wives one will be blue-eyed and the other will be black-eyed with
+the first one you will not live long but with the last one you
+will be happy many years I see by looking more closely in the
+stone that you will have six children which will be very
+comfortable the lady who is to be your first wife is at this
+moment thinking of you I see by looking more closely in the stone
+that a man with light hair and blue eyes is trying to get her
+away from you but she scorns him and turns away I see by looking
+more closely in the stone that she has a strong feeling for you
+you need not fear the man with light hair and blue eyes for you
+will get her you and you only will possess her heart I see by
+looking more closely in the stone that she is good gentle kind
+loving affectionate true-hearted and pleasant."
+
+(The vicious voice resented each one of these good-natured
+adjectives, as if it had been a gross personal insult to the
+Widger, and spit them spitefully at her trembling customer, as if
+they tasted badly in her mouth.)
+
+"and will make you a good wife; you will be rich and happy you
+will be successful in business you will be hereafter always lucky
+you will be distinguished you will be eminent you will be good
+you will be respected you will be beloved honored cherished and
+will reach a good old age I see by looking in this stone--that is
+all I see by looking in this stone."
+
+Here she ceased, and choking down her indignation, which had
+risen to a fearful pitch during the complimentary peroration, she
+said, taking up the equivocal Bible with the key tied in it,
+"Take hold of the key with your finger, I will give you one wish,
+if the book turns round you will have your wish." The guest took
+the key in the required manner, and the Widger closed her eyes
+and muttered something which may have been either a prayer or a
+recipe for pickling red cabbage, for he was unable to satisfy
+himself with any degree of certainty what it was; at the
+appointed time the book turned and the wish was therefore
+graciously granted.
+
+Her hearer smiled his grimmest smile, and ventured to inquire if
+his unknown rival was making any progress in securing the
+affections of the lady in dispute, and received the satisfying
+answer, "She scorns him and turns away." Reassured by this, the
+susceptible individual mentally and fiercely defied the blue-eyed
+intruder to do his worst, and with a reverential obeisance left
+the presence. As he departed, the skinny hand presented him with
+a handbill, but the vicious voice was silent.
+
+Carefully conning the handbill as they slowly departed from the
+august realm of the Madame, the seekers of magic for the lowest
+cash price read the following particulars:
+
+     "Madame Widger was born with this wonderful gift of
+     revealing the destinies of man, and she has revealed
+     mysteries that no mortal knew. She states that she
+     advertises nothing but what she can do with entire
+     satisfaction to all who wish to consult her.
+
+        "Also, she will scan aright,
+         Dreams and visions of the night."
+
+The tender inquirer went away in a desponding mood. The Widger
+was out of the question as a bride, "for she was old enough," he
+said, "to have been grandmother to his father's uncle."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+Discourses of Mrs. Pugh, of No. 102 South First Street,
+Williamsburgh, and tells all that Nursing Sorceress communicated
+to her Cash Customer.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MRS. PUGH, No. 102 SOUTH FIRST STREET, WILLIAMSBURGH.
+
+
+It is travelling a little away from home to go to Williamsburgh
+in search of a witch, but there are some peculiar circumstances
+about the present case, that give it more than common interest.
+Mrs. Pugh is not an _advertising_ sorceress, but practises all
+her magic slily, and generally under a promise of secresy, which
+is exacted lest the fame of her fortune-telling should come to
+the ears of certain respectable families, who employ her as a
+nurse. She is much resorted to by a number of young persons of
+both sexes, and has considerable notoriety among the low and
+ignorant classes as a practiser of the black art. She is by no
+means the only "nurse" who is given to this reprehensible
+practice, but very many of the old women who officiate as
+professional nurses are proficients in telling fortunes with
+cards, and with the Bible and key, and are always glad of an
+opportunity to exhibit their pretended skill. Being at times
+received into families where there are daughters, not grown up,
+they become most dangerous persons if they are encouraged or
+permitted to thus practise on the credulity of these young girls.
+
+The mere encouragement of hurtful superstitious notions is a
+great ill in itself, but is by no means the extent of the evil
+done by some of these persons. They not unfrequently take an
+active part in bringing about meetings between unsuspecting girls
+and evil-disposed men, thus paving the way to the wretchedness
+and ruin of the former. More than one instance is known, where
+the going astray of a loved daughter can be traced directly to
+the mischievous teachings of a fortune-telling nurse.
+
+These are the reasons that give the case of Mrs. Pugh an
+importance greater than attaches to many others.
+
+It is right that people should know that a certain degree of
+circumspection ought to be used, with regard to moral character,
+as well as other qualifications, in the selection of a nurse,
+lest a person be employed who will work irreparable mischief
+among the younger members of the family.
+
+
+    The Individual calls on a Nursing Sorceress.
+
+Who shall say that broomstick locomotion is a lost art, and that
+steam has superseded magic in the matter of travelling? Because
+no one of us has ever encountered a witch on her basswood steed,
+shall we presume to assert that witches no longer bestride
+basswood steeds and make their nocturnal excursions to blasted
+heaths, there to meet the devil in the social midnight orgie, and
+kick up their withered heels in the gay diabolical dance with
+other ancient females of like kidney with themselves? Because no
+one of us has ever beheld with his own personal optics, an old
+woman change herself into a black cat, shall we therefore assert
+that the ancient dames of our own day are unable to accomplish
+that feline transformation? "Not by no manner of means whatsomdever,"
+as Mr. Weller would remark.
+
+Let us not then be found without charity for the peculiar and
+persistent faith of the hero of this book, who, though thrice
+bitterly disappointed in his matrimonial speculations among the
+witches, still clung to the fond belief that a bride with
+supernatural powers of doing things would be a splendid
+speculation, and that such a spouse could be found if he, her
+ardent lover, did not give up the chase too soon. Spite of his
+disappointment with Madame Bruce, and his crushing discomfiture
+with Madame Widger, Hope still sprang eternal in the "Individual's"
+breast, and he felt, like the immortal Mr. Brown of classic
+verse, that it would "never do to give it up so."
+
+He had something of a natural turn for mechanics, and having been
+of late engaged in some entertaining speculations on steam
+engines, he came not unnaturally to think of the wonderful
+advantage the magically-endowed people of old had over the
+present age in the matter of locomotion. He thought of that
+wonderful carpet on which a jolly little party had but to seat
+themselves and wish to be transported to any far-off spot, and
+presto! change! there they were instanter. No collisions to be
+feared; no running off the track at a speed of ever-so-many
+unaccountable miles an hour; no cast-iron-voiced conductor at
+short intervals demanding tickets; no old women with sour babies;
+no obtrusive boys with double-priced books and magazines; no
+other boys with peanuts, apples, and pop-corn; nothing, in fact,
+save one's own social circle but a civil genie, not of Irish
+extraction, to fly alongside to mix the juleps and carry the
+morning paper.
+
+It was very natural to consider whether there wasn't a yard or
+two left somewhere of that valuable carpet, and to regret that on
+the whole probably the original owners had occasion to use the
+entire piece.
+
+Then the thought was very naturally suggested of the marvellous
+wooden horse with the pegs in his neck, who soared with his
+riders a great deal higher than does Mr. Wise in his clumsy
+balloon, and always came down a great deal easier than ever Mr.
+Wise did yet. Of course the Cash Customer was from the start
+perfectly convinced that _that_ breed of horses is long since
+extinct, so long ago that no record of them is now to be found in
+either the "American Racing Calendar," or the "English Stud
+Book."
+
+Then very naturally came thoughts of the broomstick changes of
+the more modern witches. Perhaps, he thought, these are the colts
+of the wooden horse, degenerate, it is true, and lacking in the
+grace and symmetry of their extraordinary sire, but still perhaps
+not inferior in speed or in safety of carriage.
+
+The thought was a brilliant one, and it was really worth while to
+inquire into the matter and pursue this phantom steed until he
+was fairly hunted down and bridled ready for use.
+
+It needed no long cogitation or extended argument to convince
+Johannes, the "Individual," the Cash Customer, of the immense
+practical value of such a steed, to say nothing of his costing
+nothing to keep, and of its therefore being utterly impossible
+for him to "eat his own head off," and of his never growing old,
+and of his never having any of the multitudinous diseases that
+afflict ordinary horses without any intermixture of magic blood,
+and therefore of it being out of the question for anybody to
+cheat his owner in a horse-trade.
+
+Why, only think of his value for livery purposes in case his
+happy proprietor was disposed to let other folks use him for a
+proper compensation. He could of course be trained to carry
+double, and no doubt Mr. Rarey, or some other person potent in
+horse education, could easily break him to go in harness.
+
+It wasn't likely, Johannes cogitated, that the judges would allow
+him to enter his ligneous racer at the Fashion Course, so that
+he'd not get a chance to win any money from Lancet and Flora
+Temple, still there was a hope, even on that point.
+
+So, in search of the witch wife, whose dower should be the
+broomstick horse, that should set the fond couple up in business,
+started the sanguine lover.
+
+Having had some experience of New York fortune-tellers and others
+in the magic line, and not thinking they were of the sort likely
+to have so great a treasure, he started for the suburbs, and
+crossed the ferry to Williamsburgh, in order to pay a visit of
+inquiry, and if possible to take the initiatory step in courting
+Mrs. Pugh, of No. 102 South First Street, in that city.
+
+He designed, of course, to buy a "fortune" at a liberal price,
+for the purpose of setting the lady in good-humor as a necessary
+preliminary step. He really had hopes that she would prove to be
+of a slightly different style from some of the New York
+fortune-tellers, who seem to have mistaken their profession and
+to be hardly up to reading the stars with success, although they
+might be fully equal to all the financial exigencies of an apple
+and peanut stand, or might win an honorable distinction crying
+"radishes and lettuce" in the early morning hours; or upon trial,
+might, perhaps, evince a decided genius for the rag-picking
+business, or preside over the fortunes of a soap-fat cart with
+distinguished ability.
+
+Threading the winding ways of Williamsburgh is by no means an
+easy task for one unaccustomed, and it was only by incessantly
+stopping the passers-by and making the most minute inquiries that
+this lady was ever achieved at all.
+
+This constant questioning of the public revealed, however, the
+fact that Mrs. Pugh does not by any means depend upon her
+fortune-telling for her bread-and-butter; she is a nurse, as many
+a Williamsburgh baby could testify if it could command its
+emotions long enough to speak. What will be the influence of her
+supernaturalism and witchcraft upon the children intrusted to her
+fostering care--whether they will in after life prove to be
+devils, demi-gods, heroes, or mere ordinary "humans," time alone
+can show. This illustrious lady does not advertise in the
+newspapers; in fact, her fortune-telling is done on the sly, as
+if she were yet an apprentice, and a little ashamed of her
+bungling jobs, for which, by the way, she only charges half
+price. She is in a very undecided state, and evidently undetermined
+whether her proper vocation is tending babies or revealing the
+decrees of the fates at twenty-five cents a head, and when her
+visitors made their appearance she was puzzled to know whether
+their business was baby or black art.
+
+Her exertions in either profession have not as yet gained her a
+very large fortune, judging from the surroundings of her eligible
+residence.
+
+The domicile of this chrysalis enchantress is a low frame house
+of two stories, standing back from the street, directly in the
+rear of another row of more pretentious mansions, as if it had
+been sent into the back yard in disgrace and never permitted to
+show itself in good society again. It seems conscious of its
+humiliation, and wears an air of architectural dejection that is
+quite touching. A troop of dirty-faced children was in the yard,
+and in the corner was a pile of other household incumbrances,
+consisting principally of mops and washtubs.
+
+Johannes critically examined this interesting collection, but the
+wished-for broomstick was not there. A modest rap brought to the
+door a large ill-favored man with a red nose and a ponderous pair
+of boots, whose speciality seemed to be drinking whatever
+spirituous liquors were consumed about the establishment.
+
+Having passed this shirt-sleeved sentinel without damage, though
+not without fear, the Cash Customer sat down to take an
+observation.
+
+The wooden courser was not to be seen at first glance. The room
+was a small irregularly-shaped one, with an intrusive chimney
+jutting out into the floor from one side, as if it were a sturdy
+brick-and-mortar poor relation of the premises come a visiting
+and not to be got rid of at any price. A small cooking-stove was
+in the fireplace, with an attendant on either side in the shape
+of a battered coal-scuttle, and a small saucepan full of
+charcoal; the floor was covered with a dirty rag carpet that had
+long since outlived its beauty and its usefulness, and was now in
+the last extremity of a tattered old age; half-a-dozen chairs of
+different patterns, all much shattered in health and enfeebled by
+long years of labor, and a decrepit lounge in the last stages of
+a decline, were the seats reserved for visitors; the other
+furniture of the room was an antique chest of drawers of a most
+curious and complicated pattern--it seemed as if the mechanic had
+been uncertain whether he was to construct a bureau or a
+cow-shed, and had accordingly satisfied his conscience by making
+half-a-dozen drawers and building a sloping roof over them; the
+joints were warped apart, and through the chinks could be seen
+fragments of clean shirt, and ends of lace, and bits of flannel,
+suggesting babies. At a wink from the female, the male with the
+ponderous boots retired from the presence.
+
+Mrs. Pugh is a woman of medium height and size, with a clear
+grey eye, and light hair, and wearing that sycophantic smile
+peculiar to people who have much to do with ugly babies whose
+beauty must be constantly praised to the doting parents. She was
+attired in a neat calico dress, constructed for family use, and
+for the particular accommodation of the younger members of the
+household.
+
+Johannes, who had been taking a sly look, had made up his mind
+that she would not be quite so objectionable for a wife as he had
+feared, and he had fully resolved to woo and wed her off-hand,
+provided she had the broomstick of his hopes.
+
+So, by way of a beginning, he announced that he would like her to
+exercise her magic powers in his behalf.
+
+Mrs. Pugh had evidently previously regarded him as an
+enthusiastic young father with a pair of troublesome twins, who
+had come to seek her ministrations, and she undoubtedly had high
+wages, innumerable presents, and exorbitant perquisites in her
+mind's eye at that instant.
+
+When, however, she learned that her visitor merely wished to know
+what the fates had resolved to do about his particular case, she
+was slightly disappointed, for the babies are more profitable
+than the planets. However, she soon reconciled herself to her
+fate, and produced from some cranny immediately under the eaves
+of the cow-shed bureau, a pack of cards wrapped up in an old
+newspaper. She then carefully locked the door to keep out the
+children, and drew down the curtains lest their inquiring minds
+should lead them to observe her mysterious operations through the
+window. Then taking the wonder-working pieces of pasteboard in
+her hands, and seating herself opposite her visitor, she
+announced her gracious will, thus: "You shall have six wishes."
+
+Then, without asking him what he wished for, or whether he wished
+for anything, she shuffled the cards a few seconds, and read off
+their mysterious significance as follows, her curious and anxious
+customer looking furtively around, meanwhile, to spy out the
+hiding-place of the wooden courser:
+
+"'Pears to me you will have good luck in futur, though it seems
+to me that you have had a great deal of bad luck and misfortune
+in your life; but you will certainly do better in your futur days
+than you have done yet in your life, at least, so it seems to me.
+'Pears to me your good luck will commence right away, pretty
+soon, immediate, in a very few days; you will have some great
+good luck befal you within a 9. I designate time by days, and
+weeks, and months, and sometimes years, so this good luck of
+which I told you, you will certainly have within 9 days, or 9
+weeks, or 9 months, or possibly 9 years--9 days I think; yes, I am
+sure; within 9 days, at least so it 'pears to me. You are going
+to make a change in your business, so it seems to me--you are
+going to leave your present business, and make a change; you will
+make this change within a 7, which may be 7 days or weeks; weeks
+I think, yes certainly within 7 weeks, at least so it 'pears to
+me--this change in your business which will take place in 7 days,
+or weeks, I think, yes weeks I'm sure, will be a change for the
+better, and you will profit by it much, at least so it seems to
+me--and it will come to pass within a 7; as I said before, within
+a 7, months or days it may be, but weeks I think; yes, now I look
+again, within a 7, weeks I'm certain, at least, so it 'pears to
+me--you will receive a letter within a 3; years, perhaps, months,
+it may be, but still it looks like days; yes, days I'm sure, days
+it must be; within a 3, and days they are; you will receive a
+letter within 3 days, I'm positively sure, or so it 'pears to me.
+You have friends across water, from whom you will hear speedily
+and soon, within a 5, which may be months, although I think not,
+for it looks like years; did I say years? no, days; yes, days it
+is again; within a 5, and days they are; this letter you will
+have within 5 days; it will contain excellent news, which will
+please you much; money, the news will be, and you will get the
+letter within a 5, which may be months or years, but days it
+looks like, and first-rate news it is, of money; I am positively
+certain that it is within a 5, at least it seems so to me. You
+face up good luck and prosperity, and you will be very rich
+before you die, though I do not see how you are to get your
+money, whether by business or legacy; but you will be very rich,
+or so it seems to me. You will receive some money within a 4; it
+will be in three parcels, and there will be considerable of it.
+You will get it in three parcels within a 4, not hours, nor
+years, nor yet months, but weeks; money in three parcels within a
+4, and weeks they are, I'm certain. The money will be in three
+parcels--three parcels; in three parcels you will get money within
+a 4, which, now I look again, it may be years, but still I think
+not. No, it is weeks; I'm certain, at least, so it 'pears to me.
+There is a lady that has a good heart for you. She is a
+light-complexioned lady, with black eyes; she has a good heart
+for you, and I do not see any trouble between you, which means
+that there is no opposition to your match, and that you will
+certainly marry her within a 2, at least so it 'pears to me.
+Within a 2 you will marry this light-complexioned lady, within a
+2, which is not hours, nor yet days, I think it is months. I'll
+look again; no, it is not months, but years; within a 2 and years
+they are, yes, 2 years; before a 2, and years they are, this lady
+will be your wife--at least, so it seems to me. 'Pears to me you
+will get money with her, I do not know how much, but you will
+certainly get money in three parcels, as I once remarked before,
+within a 4, which I'm sure is weeks. You will be married twice;
+once within a 2, once again within a 5 or 7 after your first wife
+dies. I think it is a 5, though it may be a 7; and months it
+looks like, though it may be weeks or days. You will live with
+your first wife a 10; days it can't be, though it looks like
+days--a 10, you'll live with her a 10, can it be hours, no, years
+it is, it must be, because you will have five children by your
+first wife, which makes it years--10 years it is, I know, at least
+so it 'pears to me. You will have five children by your first
+wife, but you will not raise them all. All will die but two, and
+then your wife will die within a 1, which is a month, or so it
+seems to me."
+
+The inquirer was charmed with the lively prospect of so many
+funerals, and mentally resolved to buy a couple of acres in
+Greenwood for the accommodation of his future family. His
+meditations were interrupted by the lady, who thus continued:
+
+"You will marry a second wife, but you will have trouble about
+her; there is a dark-complexioned man who interferes, and who
+will trouble you for an 8, which may be years, although I think
+not, nor hours, nor days, but months; I'm sure it is--yes, the
+dark-complexioned man will trouble you for an 8, which I am sure
+is months, yes, months it is, an 8 I say, and months they are, I
+am certain, at least so it 'pears to me. By your second wife you
+will have three children, who will all live--I see a funeral here
+within a 6; it does not look like a friend or a relative, but it
+is some acquaintance, or the friend of some acquaintance, or the
+acquaintance of some friend--the funeral is within a 6, but it
+does not come very near to you--you will go to a wedding within a
+3, and you will receive a present of a ring within a 2, which
+may be days--you will after this be very prosperous and happy, you
+will be very long-lived--you will get a letter and a present from
+the light-complexioned lady within a 9, which, as I said before,
+it may be hours, which I think it is, though weeks it may be, or
+months, or even years; though certainly within a 9, which, now I
+look again, is days, yes, I am sure, certain, within a 9, a
+letter and a present from the light-complexioned lady, a 9 it is
+and days, within a 9, and days they are, at least, so it 'pears
+to me."
+
+Here ended the communication, and, on inquiring the price,
+Johannes was astonished to learn that he had received but
+twenty-five cents' worth. Regretting that he had not invested a
+dollar in a commodity so "cheap and very filling at the price"
+for future consumption, he departed, first taking a long
+lingering look to find, if possible, the lurking-place of the
+magic broomstick charger. He didn't see it, and gave it up, and
+came away declaring that such a woman was not qualified to take
+the social position his wife must assume. He did not, however,
+wish to discourage her; he thought that the water-melon trade
+might be comprehended by a lady of her abilities, or that she
+could perhaps thoroughly master the pop-corn and molasses candy
+business, and make it lucrative.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+In which are narrated the Wonderful Workings of Madame Morrow,
+the "Astonisher," of No. 76. Broome Street; and how, by a
+Crinolinic Stratagem, the "Individual" got a Sight of his "Future
+Husband."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+MADAME MORROW, THE ASTONISHER, No. 76 BROOME STREET.
+
+
+Madame Morrow is the only one of the fortune-telling fraternity
+in New York who refuses to dispense her astrological favors to
+both sexes. She positively declines receiving any visits from
+"gentlemen," and confines her business attention exclusively to
+"ladies," of whom many are her regular customers. One reason for
+this course of conduct is, that she imagines her own sex to be
+the more credulous, and more readily disposed to put faith in her
+claims to supernatural knowledge, and she naturally prefers to
+deal with believers rather than with sceptics. Her "lady"
+customers are more tractable and easily managed than men, and are
+not so apt to ask puzzling and impertinent questions; and as the
+Madame can manage more of them in a day, of course the pecuniary
+return is larger than if she exercised her art in behalf of
+curious masculinity as well.
+
+Of her history before she engaged in her present business, not
+much is known to those who have met her only of late years, for
+with regard to her early life she chooses to exercise a politic
+reticence. The whole "style" of the woman, however, her dress,
+manner, and conversation, are strong indications that her younger
+and more attractive days were not passed in a nunnery, but more
+probably in establishments where "Free Love" is more than a
+theory. The character of the greater part of her "lady" visitors
+is of a grade that goes to corroborate this supposition, and
+leads to the belief that among women of doubtful virtue "old
+acquaintance" is not easily "forgot." By far the greater number
+of Madame Morrow's customers are girls of the town, and women of
+even more disreputable character.
+
+The fact that a visit to this renowned sorceress must be paid in
+a feminine disguise, made the attempt to secure an interview of
+more than ordinary interest. How this difficulty was mastered,
+and how an entrance was finally effected into the citadel from
+which all mankind is rigorously excluded, is best told in the
+words of the "Individual" who accomplished that curious feat.
+
+
+    How the Cash Customer visited the "Astonisher"--How he
+    was Astonished--and How he saw his Future Husband.
+
+The Cash Customer in pursuit of a wife had been rebuffed, but was
+not disheartened. He had, so to speak, fought a number of very
+severe hymeneal rounds and got the worst of them all; but he had
+taken his punishment like a man, and had still wind and pluck to
+come up bravely to the matrimonial scratch when "time" was
+called, and as yet showed no signs of giving in. His backers, if
+he'd had any, would have still been tolerably sure of their
+money, and not painfully anxious to hedge. The bets would have
+been about even that he'd win the fight yet, and come out of the
+battle a triumphant husband, instead of being knocked out of the
+field a disconsolate and discomfited bachelor.
+
+But, although his ardor had not cooled, and though his strength
+and determination still held out, he had grown slightly cautious,
+and had conceived a plan for going like a spy into the camp of
+the enemy, and there thoroughly reconnoitring the positions that
+he had to storm, and at the same time making himself master of
+the wiles and stratagems that were the peculiar weapons of the
+female foe, and so learn some infallible way to capture a
+first-quality wife. At any rate, he would give himself the
+benefit of the doubt and make the experiment. He would a-wooing
+go, not apparelled in conquering broadcloth, in subjugating
+marseilles, or overpowering doeskin, but carrying the unaccustomed,
+but not less potent weapons of laces, moire-antique, crinoline,
+and gaiters.
+
+In fact, there was also a stern necessity in the case, for the
+lady on whom he had now set his young affections was particular
+as to her customers, and did not admit the shirt-collar gender to
+the honor of her confidence.
+
+But was this to stop him? If the lady shut out the whole
+masculine world from the inevitable fascinations of her
+superabundant charms, was it not for sweet charity's sake, that a
+whole community might not go into ecstatic frenzies over her
+peerless beauty, and all men, being stricken in love of the same
+woman, go to cutting each other's throats with bowie-knives and
+other modern improvements!
+
+It was easy to see that _Madame Morrow_ did not want to become
+another Helen, to be abducted to some modern Troy, and have a ten
+years' row, and any quantity of habeas corpuses, and innumerable
+contempts of interminable courts, after the modern fashion of
+conducting a strife about a runaway maiden.
+
+Such a considerate beauty, veiling her undoubted fascinations
+from the rude gaze of man, from purely prudential reasons, must
+be a prize of rare value, and well worth the winning.
+
+Her qualifications in magic, too, seemed to be of the very first
+order, to judge from her notification to the wonder-seeking
+world.
+
+     "ASTONISHING TO ALL.--Madame MORROW claims to be the
+     most wonderful astrologist in the world, or that has
+     ever been known, as I am the seventh daughter of the
+     seventh daughter, who was also a great astrologist. I
+     have a natural gift to tell past, present, and future
+     events of life. I have astonished thousands during my
+     travels in Europe. I will tell how many times you are
+     to be married, how soon, and will show you the likeness
+     of your future husband, and will cause you to be
+     speedily married, and you will enjoy the greatest
+     happiness of matrimonial bliss and good luck through
+     your whole life. I will also show the likeness of
+     absent friends and relations, and I will tell so true
+     all the concerns of life that you cannot help being
+     astonished. No charge, if not satisfied. Gentlemen not
+     admitted. No. 76 Broome street, near Columbia."
+
+There was but one thing in this that troubled the "Individual"
+with any particularly sharp pangs. He intended to marry the
+Astonisher, but he was a little bothered what to do with the
+seven daughters, for of course the Madame would not fail to
+follow the excellent example of her revered mother, and would
+never stop short of the mystic number.
+
+He finally concluded that all his duties as a father would be
+faithfully performed if he taught them to read, write, and play
+on the piano, and then gave them each a sewing-machine to begin
+the world with. He did think of bringing them up for the ballet,
+but their success in that profession being somewhat dependent on
+the size and symmetry of their dancing implements, he felt it
+would be improper to positively determine on that line of
+business before he had been favored with a sight of the young
+ladies. Reserving, therefore, his decision on this knotty point
+until time should further develop the subject, he prepared for
+the unsexing which was indicated as an inevitable preliminary to
+a visit to Madame Morrow, by the sentence "Gentlemen not
+admitted."
+
+He proposed to get himself up in a way that would slightly
+astonish the Madame herself, although she had faithfully promised
+in her advertisement to astonish him. He would have been willing
+to wager a small sum that with all her witchcraft she would be
+unable to keep that promise, for in the regular course of his
+business, he had become so accustomed to marvels, wonders, and
+miracles, that the upheaval of a volcano in the Park wouldn't
+discompose him unless it singed his whiskers. He had a strong
+desire, however, to realize the old sensation of astonishment,
+and he was of the opinion that the "likeness of his future
+husband" would accomplish that feat if anything could.
+
+Heroic was Johannes, and withal ingenious, and this then was his
+wonderful plan.
+
+He would visit this Madame Morrow, not by proxy, but in his own
+proper person; if not as a man, then as a woman; yes, he would
+petticoat himself up to the required dimensions, if it took a
+week to tie on the machinery. Off with the pantaloons; on with
+the skirts; down with the broadcloth; hurrah for the cotton and
+hey for victory, and a look at his future husband.
+
+To an inventor of theatrical costumes hied he with this fell
+design in his heart.
+
+The requisite paraphernalia were bargained for and sent home to
+the ambitious voyager, who, at the sight thereof, was "astonished"
+in advance, and stricken aghast by the complicated mysteries of
+laces, ribbons, strings, bones, buttons, pins, capes, collars,
+and other inexplicable articles that met his gaze.
+
+The question instantly occurred, "Could he get into these
+things?"
+
+Not a bit of it; he would sooner undertake to report in
+short-hand the speech of a thunder-cloud, and with much better
+prospects of success. He felt his own insignificance, and as he
+looked out at the window, he regarded a passing female with awe.
+He felt that he was fast becoming imbecile, not to say idiotic,
+when he bethought him of his friends. Two discreet married men,
+who knew the ropes, were called to the rescue, and began the
+work; they piled on layer after layer of the material, and in
+the course of four or five hours had built him into a pyramid of
+the proper size, when they gave him their solemn assurance that
+he was "all right." He has since discovered that they had tied
+his under-sleeves round his ankles, and that the things he wore
+on his arms must have belonged somewhere else. There was trouble
+about the hair, and it required the combined ingenuity and wisdom
+of the masculine trio to keep the bonnet on, and this difficulty
+was only overcome at last by tying strings from the inside of the
+crown of that invention to the ears of the sufferer.
+
+Then, and not till then, had anybody thought of the whiskers.
+They must be sacrificed; and though the miserable victim to his
+own ambition consented to the disfigurement, how was it to be
+accomplished? The luckless Johannes could no more sit down in a
+barber's chair than the City Hall could get into an omnibus. At
+last he knelt down, which was the nearest approach he could make
+to a sitting position, and Jenkins, mounted on the bed, shaved
+him as well as he could at arm's length.
+
+When the operation was concluded, his head looked as if it had
+been parboiled and the skin taken off. He didn't dare to curse
+Jenkins for his clumsiness, knowing that if he relieved his mind
+in that desirable manner, Jenkins would refuse to help him
+undress when he wanted to get out of the innumerable manacles
+that now confined every joint. He was as helpless as a turtle
+that the unkind hand of ruthless man has rolled over on his back.
+
+However, the disguise was complete; he looked in the glass and
+thought he was his own landlady; his best friends wouldn't have
+known him, and the teller of the bank would have pronounced him a
+forgery and refused to certify him; he felt like a full-rigged
+clipper ship, and got under sail as soon as possible and bore
+down upon Madame Morrow's residence. He nearly capsized as he
+stepped into the street, but he righted after a heavy lurch to
+the north-east, and kept his course without further serious
+disaster. He made a speedy run to Broome street, the voyage being
+accomplished in less than the expected time, although a heavy
+sea, in the shape of a boy with a wheelbarrow, struck him
+amidships, on the corner of Sheriff street, doing some damage to
+his lower works and carrying away a yard or so of lace from his
+main skirt. He finally came up to the house in splendid style,
+and cast anchor on the opposite sidewalk to take an observation.
+
+The anchorage was good, and he rode securely for a short time
+until he could repair damages, he having carried away some of his
+upper rigging; in other words, he had caught his veil on a
+meat-hook and had been unable to rescue it. He rigged a sort of
+jury-veil with the end of his shawl, so that he could hide his
+blushing countenance in case of too close scrutiny.
+
+Madame Morrow lives, as he now discovered, in a low, three-story
+brick house, which cannot be called dirty, simply because that
+mild word expresses an approximation towards cleanliness which no
+house in this locality has known for years. City readers can get
+an idea of its condition by understanding that it is in the worst
+part of "The Hook;" to readers in the country, who have luckily
+never seen anything filthier than a barn yard, no information can
+be given which would meet the case. Sunshine is the only
+protection for a well-dressed man against the population of this
+part of the town. In the twilight or darkness he would be robbed,
+if not garroted and murdered. The boldest and most desperate
+burglars, and others of that stamp, have their homes about
+here--fathers who teach their children the thief's profession, and
+mothers who carry pickpockets at the breast. In the midst of this
+nest of crime the fortune-teller has her home, and here she
+thrives.
+
+The daring man, protected by his false colors, there being no
+officious authority in that neighborhood to exercise the right of
+search, came alongside the house and prepared, metaphorically, to
+board; that is, he rang the bell.
+
+He was admitted by an Irish girl, whose incrusted face showed
+that the same deposit of dirt had probably held possession
+undisturbed for weeks. They had just entered the hall door when
+two small children, who were contending for their vested rights
+with a big yellow dog that had interfered with their dinner,
+commenced an unearthly squalling, which, for the instant, made
+the millinery delegate fairly believe that Tophet was out for
+noon. The Hibernian maiden, with great presence of mind,
+immediately attempted to quiet the storm by administering to each
+inverted brat a sound correction, in the manner usually adopted
+by mothers.
+
+Particulars are omitted.
+
+Then she resumed her attentions to the stranger, and convoyed him
+into port in the parlor. Securely harbored in this safe retreat,
+Johannes took another observation.
+
+The room was small, and what few things were in it looked shabby
+and dirty of course. The principal article of furniture was a
+huge basketful of soiled linen, which had probably been "taken
+in" to wash, and from a respectable family, for every single
+article looked ashamed to be caught in such company, and tried to
+burrow down out of sight. Disconsolate shirts elbowed humiliated
+socks, which in turn kicked against mortified flannels, or hid
+themselves beneath disconcerted sheets; abashed shirt-collars and
+humbled dickies tried to shrink out of sight in very shame
+beneath a dishonored tablecloth, the wine-stains on which showed
+it to belong in better society. A dejected and cast-down woman
+was assorting the despairing contents of the basket with a look
+of desolation.
+
+The girl, who had disappeared, now returned, and with an air of
+mystery slipped into the hand of her visitor a red card, on which
+was inscribed:
+
+    +-------------------------------------------------+
+    |No Person allowed to remain in the Establishment |
+    |without a ticket. Please present this on entering|
+    |Madame Morrow's room. Fee in full, $1.           |
+    +-------------------------------------------------+
+
+For an hour and a half after the receipt of this card and the
+payment of $1 therefor, did Johannes quietly wait in the room
+with the big basket, being entertained meanwhile by the two women
+who conversed with each other upon the relative merits of engines
+No. 18 and 27, and with a long discussion as to the comparative
+personal beauty of "Tom" and "Dick," who, it seemed, belonged
+respectively to those two mechanical constituents of our Fire
+Department.
+
+At the end of that time the Irish girl, who had succeeded in
+establishing "Dick's" claim to her satisfaction, arose and
+invited the stranger to the room of Madame Morrow.
+
+He passed up a narrow flight of stairs, the condition of which,
+as to dirt, was concealed by no friendly carpet; then he sailed
+into a front parlor which was furnished elegantly, and perhaps
+gorgeously, with carpets, mirrors, sofas, and all the usual
+requirements of a lady's apartment.
+
+Madame herself appeared at the door. She is a tall,
+sallow-looking woman, with a complexion the color of old
+parchment: with light brown eyes and light hair; being attired in
+a handsome delaine dress of half-mourning, and decorated with a
+costly cameo pin and ear-drops, she looked not unlike a servant
+out for a holiday, making a sensation in her mistress's finery.
+
+She led her lovely visitor into a little closet-like room, in
+which were a bureau, two chairs, a table, and a small stand,
+covered with a number of her business hand-bills and a pack of
+cards. She asked first: "What month was you born?" On receiving
+the answer, the Astonisher took a book from the bureau and read
+as follows: "A person born in this month is of an amiable and
+frank disposition, benevolent, and an amiable and desirable
+partner in the marriage relation. Your lucky days are Tuesdays
+and Thursdays, on which days you may enter on any undertaking, or
+attempt any enterprise with a good prospect of success." Then she
+took up the cards again, and after the usual shuffling and
+cutting, the Astonisher fired away as follows.
+
+"You face luck, you face prosperity, you face true love and
+disinterested affection, you face a speedy marriage, you face a
+letter which will come in three days and will contain pleasant
+news--you face a ring, you face a present of jewelry done up in a
+small package; the latter will come within two hours, two days,
+two weeks, or two months--you face an agreeable surprise, you face
+the death of a friend, you face the seven of clubs which is the
+luckiest card in the pack--you face two gentlemen with a view to
+matrimony, one of whom has brown hair and brown eyes, and the
+other has lighter hair and blue eyes--they are both thinking of
+you at the present time, but the nearest one you face is the one
+with light eyes--your marriage runs within six or nine months."
+
+There was very much more to the same effect, but as Johannes was
+pining all this time for a look at his future husband, he did not
+pay the strictest attention to it. Finally, when she had finished
+talking, she said, "Step this way and see your future husband."
+
+This was the eventful moment.
+
+The disguised one went to the table and there beheld a pine box,
+about the size of an ordinary candle-box, though shallower; it
+was unpainted, and decidedly unornamental as an article of
+furniture. In one end of it was an aperture about the size of the
+eye-hole of a telescope; this was carefully covered with a small
+black curtain. This mystic contrivance was placed upon a table so
+low that the husband-seeker was compelled to go on his knees to
+get his eye down low enough to see through. He accomplished this
+feat without grumbling, although his knees were scarified by the
+whalebones which surrounded him. The Astonisher then drew aside
+the little curtain with a grand flourish, and her customer beheld
+an indistinct figure of a bloated face with a mustache, with
+black eyes and black hair; it was a hang-dog, thief-like face,
+and one that he would not have passed in the street without
+involuntarily putting his hands on his pockets to assure himself
+that all was right. But he felt that he had no hope of a future
+husband if he did not accept this one, and he made up his mind to
+be reconciled to the match.
+
+This contrivance for showing the "future husband" is sometimes
+called the Magic Mirror, and may be procured at any optician's
+for a dollar and a quarter. The "future husband" may of course be
+varied to suit circumstances, by merely shifting the pictures at
+one end of the instrument; or a horse or a dog might be
+substituted with equal propriety and probability.
+
+Disappointed, and sick at heart and stomach, the Cash Customer
+bore away for home, and accomplished the return voyage without
+disaster. He didn't so much mind the unexpected difference in the
+personal attractions of Madame Morrow from what he had hoped, for
+he had been rather accustomed to disappointments of that sort of
+late, but he couldn't see that his admission to the camp of the
+enemy had enabled him to spy out anything of particular
+advantage to him in future operations. So he cogitated and
+mournfully whistled slow tunes, as he cut himself out of his
+unaccustomed harness by the help of a pen-knife with a file-blade.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+Contains a full account of the interview of the Cash Customer
+with Doctor Wilson, the Astrologer, of No. 172 Delancey Street.
+The Fates decree that he shall "pizon his first Wife." HOORAY!!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+DR. WILSON, No. 172 DELANCEY STREET.
+
+
+This ignorant, half-imbecile old man is the only _wizard_ in New
+York whose fame has become public. There are several other men
+who sometimes, as a matter of favor to a curious friend, exercise
+their astrological skill, but they do not profess witchcraft as a
+means of living; they do not advertise their gifts, but only
+dabble in necromancy in an amateur way, more as a means of
+amusement than for any other purpose. On the other hand Dr.
+Wilson freely uses the newspapers to announce to the public his
+star-reading ability, and his willingness, for a consideration,
+to tell all events, past and future, of a paying customer's life.
+He professes to do all his fortune-telling in a "strictly
+scientific" manner, and it is but justice to him to say, that he
+alone, of all the witches of New York, drew a horoscope,
+consulted books of magic, made intricate mathematical calculations,
+and made a show of being scientific. In his case only was any
+attempt made to convince the seeker after hidden wisdom, that
+modern fortune-telling is aught else than very lame and shabby
+guesswork. The old Doctor has by no means so many customers as
+many of his female rivals; he is old and unprepossessing--were he
+young and handsome the case might be otherwise.
+
+He has been a pretended "botanic physician," or what country
+people term a "root doctor;" but failing to earn a living by the
+practice of medicine, he took up "Demonology and Witchcraft" to
+aid him to eke out a scanty subsistence. He does but little in
+either branch of his business, the public appearing to have
+slight faith in his ability either to cure their maladies or
+foretell their future.
+
+The character of his surroundings is noted in the following
+description, and his oracular communication is given, word for
+word.
+
+
+    An Hour with a Wizard.--The Cash Customer is to "Pizon"
+    his First Wife, and then get Another. Hooray!
+
+"I am like a vagabond pig with no family ties, who has no lady
+pig to welcome him home o'nights, and with no tender sucklings to
+call him 'papa,' in that prattling porcine language that must
+fall so sweetly on the ears of all parents of innocent porklings.
+Like Othello, I have no wife, and really I can see little hope in
+the future."
+
+Thus moralized the "Individual," the morning after his experiment
+with the women's gear, and his failure to learn, at a single
+lesson, the whole art of catching a wife. Then he bethought him
+that perhaps the art could not be learned without a master; and
+then came the other thought that no one could tell so well how to
+win a witch-wife as one who had himself been successful in that
+risky experiment.
+
+To find a man with a fortune-telling wife is no easy matter, for
+most of the marriages contracted by these ladies are by no means
+of a permanent character, and the male parties to the temporary
+partnerships are always kept in the background. But if he could
+discover up a wizard, a masculine master of the Black Art, there
+were strong probabilities that such an individual could put him
+in the way of winning a miracle-working spouse, at the very least
+possible trouble and expense. He would seek that man as a
+preliminary to winning that woman. The daily newspapers showed
+him that in the person of a learned doctor, surnamed Wilson, he
+would probably find the man he wanted. He searched out that
+wonderful man, and the results of his visit are given in this
+identical chapter.
+
+Old dreamy Sol Gills, of coffee-colored memory, has been
+admiringly recommended to the good opinion of the world by his
+friend, Capt. Ed'ard Cuttle, mariner of England, as a man "chock
+full of science." From the same eminent authority we also learn
+that Jack Bunsby was an individual of learning so vast, and
+experience so varied and comprehensive, that he never opened his
+oracular mouth but out fell "solid chunks of wisdom." That the
+person now dwells in our city who combines the scientific
+attainments of Gills with the intuitive wisdom of Bunsby, we have
+the solemn word of Johannes. The science is a trifle more dreamy
+and misty even than of old, and the wisdom is solider and
+chunkier, but both are as undeniable, as convincing, as
+"stunning," as in the best days of the Little Wooden Midshipman.
+The fortunate possessor of this inestimable wealth of knowledge
+secludes himself from the curious public in the basement of the
+house No. 172 Delancey street, like an underground hermit.
+However, this unselfish and generous sage, not wishing to hide
+entirely the light of his great learning from a benighted world,
+kindly condescends, in the advertisement herewith given, to
+retail his wisdom to anxious inquirers at a dollar a chunk:
+
+     "ASTROLOGY.--Dr. Wilson, 172 Delancey street, gives the
+     most scientific and reliable information to be found on
+     all concerns of life, past, present, and future.
+     Terms--ladies, 50 cents; gentlemen, $1. Birth required."
+
+The last sentence is slightly obscure, and it was not quite clear
+to Johannes that he would not have to be "born again" on the
+premises. But at all events there was something refreshing in the
+novelty of consulting a "learned pundit" in pantaloons, after all
+the tough conjurers of the other sex that he had undergone of
+late.
+
+So he repaired to Delancey street in a joyous mood, nothing
+daunted by the requirements of the advertisement.
+
+Delancey street is not Paradise, quite the contrary. In fact it
+may be set down as unsavory, not to say dirty in the extreme. The
+man that can walk through the east end of this delicious
+thoroughfare without a constant sensation of sea-sickness, has a
+stomach that would be true to him in a dissecting-room. The
+individual that can explore with his unwilling boots its slimy
+depths without a feeling of the most intense disgust for
+everything in the city and of the city, ought to live in Delancey
+street and buy his provisions at the corner grocery. He never
+ought to see the country, or even to smell the breath of a
+country cow. He should be exiled to the city; be banished to
+perpetual bricks and mortar; be condemned to a never-ending
+series of omnibus rides, and to innumerable varieties of short
+change.
+
+The delegate picked his way gingerly enough, thinking all the
+while that if Leander had been compelled to wade through Delancey
+street, instead of taking a clean swim across the sea, Hero might
+have died a respectable old maid for all Leander. And yet
+Johannes says he doesn't believe that History will give _him_ any
+credit for his valorous navigation of the said street.
+
+He at last reached the designated spot, sound as to body, though
+wofully soiled as to garments, and approached the semi-subterranean
+abode of the great prophet, and immediately after his modest rap
+at the basement door, was met by the venerable sage in person.
+He walked in, and then proceeded to take an observation of the
+cabalistic instruments and mysterious surroundings of the great
+philosopher.
+
+The room was a small, low apartment, about ten feet by twelve,
+the floor uncarpeted and uneven; the walls were damp, and the
+whole place was like a vault. The furniture was very scanty, and
+all had an unwholesome moisture about it, and a curious odor, as
+if it gathered unhealthy dews by being kept underground. Three
+feeble chairs were all the seats, and a table which leaned
+against the wall was too ill and rickety to do its intended duty;
+many of the books which had once probably covered it, were now
+thrown in a promiscuous heap on the floor, where they slowly
+mildewed and gave out a graveyard smell. A miniature stove in the
+middle of the room, sweated and sweltered, and in its struggles
+to warm the unhealthy atmosphere had succeeded in suffusing
+itself with a clammy perspiration; it was in the last stages of
+debility; old age and abuse had used it sadly, and it now stood
+helplessly upon its crippled legs, and supported its nerveless
+elbow upon a sturdy whitewash brush. There were a few symptoms of
+medical pretensions in the shape of some vials, and bottles of
+drugs, and colored liquids on the mantelpiece; a great attempt at
+a display of scientific apparatus began and ended with an
+insulating stool, and an old-fashioned "cylinder and cushion"
+electrical machine; a number of highly-colored prints of animals
+pasted on the wall, having evidently been scissored from the
+show-bill of a menagerie, had a look towards natural history, and
+a jar or two of acids suggested chemical researches. The books
+that still remained on the enervated table were an odd volume of
+Braithwaite's Retrospect, a treatise on Human Physiology, and
+another on Materia Medica; a number of bound volumes of Zadkiel's
+Astronomical Ephemeris, Raphael's Prophetic Almanac, Raphael's
+Prophetic Messenger, and a file of Robert White's Celestial
+Atlas, running back to 1808.
+
+The appearance of the venerable sage of Delancey street was not
+so imposing as to strike a stranger with awe--quite the contrary.
+He partook of the character of the room, and was a fitting
+occupant of such a place; he seemed some kind of unwholesome
+vegetable that had found that noisome atmosphere congenial, and
+had sprung indigenously from the slimy soil. One looked
+instinctively at his feet to see what kind of roots he had, and
+then glanced back at his head as if it were a huge bud, and about
+to blossom into some unhealthy flower. The traces of its earthy
+origin were plainly visible about this mouldy old plant;
+quantities of the rank soil still adhered to the face, filled up
+the wrinkles of the cheeks, found ample lodging in the ears and
+on the neck, and crowding under the horny and distorted nails,
+made them still more ugly; and streaks and ridges of dirt clung
+to every portion of the garments, which answered to the bark or
+rind of this perspiring herb.
+
+To drop this botanic figure of speech, Dr. Wilson is a man of
+about fifty-eight years of age, rather stout and thick-set, with
+grey eyes, and hair which was once brown, but is now grey, and
+with thin brown whiskers; the top of his head is nearly bald,
+except a few thin, furzy, short hairs, which made his skull look
+as if it had been kept in that damp room until mould had gathered
+on it. He was in his shirt sleeves, and was attired, for the most
+part, in a pair of sheep's grey pantaloons, which were made to
+cover that fraction of his body between his ankles and his
+armpits; the little patch of shirt that was visible above the
+waistband of that garment, was streaked with irregular lines of
+dirty black, as if it had gone into half mourning for the
+scarcity of water.
+
+The man of science made a musty remark or two about the weather
+and the walking, and then, after carefully seating himself at the
+decrepit table, he said: "I suppose your business is of a
+fortun'-tellin' natur; if so, my terms is one dollar." The
+affirmative answer to the question and the payment of the dollar
+put new energy into the mouldy old man, and he prepared to
+astonish the beholder.
+
+He demanded the age of his visitor, and then desired to be
+informed of the date of his birth, with particular reference to
+the exact time of day; Johannes drummed up his youthful
+recollections of that interesting event, and gave the day, the
+hour, and the minute, with his accustomed accuracy. The sage made
+an exact minute of these wet-nurse items on a cheap slate with a
+stub of a pencil; then taking another cheap slate, he proceeded
+to draw a horoscope thereon, pausing a little over the signs of
+the zodiac, as if he was a little out in his astronomy, and
+wasn't exactly certain whether there should be twelve or twenty.
+He settled this little matter by filling one half the slate as
+full as it would hold, and then carrying some to the other side,
+so as to have a few on hand in case of any emergency.
+
+When the figure was drawn, and all the mysterious signs
+completed, the shirt-sleeve prophet became absorbed in an
+intricate calculation of such mysterious import that all his
+customer's mathematical proficiency was unable to make out what
+it was all about. First he set down a long row of figures, which
+he added together with much difficulty, and then seemed to
+instantly conceive the most unrelenting hostility to the sum
+total. The mathematical tortures to which he put that unhappy
+amount; the arithmetical abuse which he heaped upon it, and the
+algebraic contumely with which he overwhelmed it, almost defy
+description. He first belabored it with the four simple rules; he
+stretched it with Addition; he cut it in two with Subtraction; he
+made it top-heavy with Multiplication, and tore it to pieces with
+Division--then he extracted its square root; then extracted the
+cube root of that, which left nothing of the unfortunate sum
+total but a small fraction, which he then divided by _ab_, and
+made "equal to" an infinitesimal part of some unknown _x_. Having
+thus wreaked his vengeance on the unhappy number, he laid away
+the surviving fraction in a cold corner of the slate, where he
+left it, first, however, giving a parting token of his bitter
+malignity by writing the minus sign before it, which made it
+perpetually worse than nothing, and reduced it to a state of
+irredeemable algebraic bankruptcy. This praiseworthy object being
+finally achieved, he proceeded to translate into intelligible
+English the result of his calculations, which he announced in the
+terms following:
+
+"The testimonial is not the most sanguine. If the time of birth
+is given correct there is reason to apprehend that something of
+an affective nature occurred at about eight years and ten
+months--at 16 x 10 I think I may say, if the time of birth is
+given correct, there is from the figures reason to expect that
+there is a probability of a similar sitiwation of events. At 24
+there was a favorable sitiwation of events, if there was not
+somebody or somethin' afflictive on the contrary, the which I am
+disposed to think might be possible. At 25, if the time of birth
+is given correct, there is reason to expect great likelihoods of
+some success in life; I may, it is true, be mistaken in my
+calculations, but as the significators are angular, I think there
+is indications that such will be the sitiwation of events. At 30,
+if the time of birth is given correct, I think you are an
+individdyal as may look for some species of misfortin--there will
+be some rather singular circumstances occur, which might denote
+loss of friends, or the fallin' to you of a fortin, or great
+travellin' by water or land, or losin' money at cards, or
+breakin' your leg, or makin' a great discovery, or inventin'
+somethin', or gettin' put into prison on suspicion of sorcery and
+witchcraft. You will see that there are indications to denote
+that you will certainly be accused of sorcery and witchcraft by
+some individdyals who are not your friends--the indications denote
+great likelihoods that this will make you uneasy in your mind,
+but I think there is nothin' of a very serious natur' to be
+feared at that time of life, if the time of birth is given
+correct. When any misfortin' is comin' upon you there is no doubt
+(though I am not goin' to state positively that such will be the
+case, still there is strong likelihoods that the indications give
+such a probability) that it will give you warnin' of its
+approach. At 36, if the time of birth is given correct, there is
+indications of a likelihood that you will fall upon some other
+misfortin'; I am not prepared to state positively that such will
+be the case, but I think you will have a misfortin', though I
+don't think it would be of a very afflictive natur'. There is at
+that time a circumstance of an unfriendly natur', though it may
+not happen to yourself; it might denote that your brother will
+get sick. There is another evil condition about this time which I
+will examine still furder. I see that there is indications of a
+likelihood that there is a probability of your having somethin'
+amiss by a partner, if somethin' of a favorable natur' does not
+interpose, which is not unlikely, though I may be mistaken and
+will not say positively. You will be lucky, however, after that,
+and many of your evils will gradually begin to recline, as it
+were. There is reason to believe that the significators denote
+that in the course of your futur' life you will sometimes be
+thrown in with men who you will think is your friends, but who
+will prove to be your enemy. This I will not say positively, for
+I may be mistaken, which I think I am not, but if the time of
+birth is correct, you are an individdyal as gives likelihoods
+that such might be the case."
+
+For more than an hour had the Inquirer been edified and
+instructed by these "solid chunks of wisdom," which, it will be
+remembered, were not delivered off-hand, but were carefully
+ciphered out by elaborate calculations on the slate aforesaid.
+Lucid and elegant as was the language, and interesting as was the
+matter of these oracular communications, he felt it to be his
+duty to interrupt them for a time and change the subject to a
+theme in which he felt a nearer interest; accordingly he asked
+the musty Seer about his prospects of future wedded bliss. This
+was a subject of so great importance that all the other
+calculations had to be erased from the slate--this little
+operation was accomplished in the manner of the schoolboys who
+haint got any sponge, and the dirty hand plied briskly for a
+minute between the juicy mouth and the dingy slate, and became a
+shade grimier by this cleanly process. Then a new horoscope was
+drawn with more signs of the zodiac than ever, and in due time
+the result was thus announced:
+
+"I shall now endeavor to give you a description of the sort of
+person you might be most likeliest to marry. There is indications
+that your wife might be respectable. The significators do not
+denote that there is a likelihood that you might marry a very old
+woman. She would be as likely to have fair hair and blue eyes as
+anything else; nor would she be likely to be very much too tall,
+and I don't imagine you are an individdyal that might be likely
+to marry a woman who was very short. She may not be very old, but
+I do not think that the indications point her out as being likely
+to be a child; in fact, I think it possible that she may be of
+the ordinary age, though I do not wish to be understood as being
+positive on all these points, for I may be mistaken, though I
+think you will find that there is a likelihood that these things
+may be so. You will be married twice, and I think you are an
+individdyal that would be likely to have children--six children I
+think there is indications that you may be likely to have. The
+significators point out one very evil condition, and I think I
+may say that I'm quite sure. I'm positive that you will separate
+from your first wife. No, I will not say that yours is a
+quarrelsome natur', but the significators look bad. Things is
+worse, in fact, than I told you of, and now I look again and am
+sure you are prepared, I will say that there cannot be a doubt
+that _you will pizon your first wife_. It cannot be any other
+way; there is no mistake; it is so; it must be true; the fact is
+this, and thus I tell you, _you will pizon your first wife_. And,
+my young friend, I will advise you, in case your married futur'
+is unhappy, and you do find it necessary to give pizon to your
+consort, do not tell anybody of your intentions; do not let it be
+known; and you must do it in such a way as not to be suspected,
+or people will think hard of you, and there may be trouble."
+
+This was a touch of wisdom for which Johannes was not prepared;
+so he snatched his hat and hastily left the sepulchral premises,
+conscious of his inability to receive another such a "chunk"
+without being completely floored.
+
+He now expresses the opinion that Dr. Wilson wanted to get the
+job of "pizoning" that first wife, and that he would have done it
+with pleasure at less than the market price.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+Gives a history of how Mrs. Hayes, the Clairvoyant, of No. 176
+Grand Street, does the Conjuring Trick.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MRS. HAYES, A CLAIRVOYANT, No. 176 GRAND STREET.
+
+
+There are a dozen or more of these "Clairvoyants" in the city who
+profess to cure diseases, and to work other wonders by the aid of
+their so-called wonderful power. As their mode of proceeding is
+very much the same in all cases, a description of one or two will
+give an idea of the whole. Their principal business is to
+prescribe for bodily ills, and did they confine themselves to
+this alone, they would not be legitimate subjects of mention in
+this book. But in addition to their medical practice they also
+tell about "absent friends;" tell whether projected business
+undertakings will fall out well or ill; whether contemplated
+marriages will be prosperous or otherwise: whether a person will
+be "lucky" in life, whether his children will be happy, and, in
+short, they do pretty much the regular fortune-telling routine,
+whenever the questions of the customer lead that way.
+
+The theory as given by them, of a Clairvoyant diagnosis of a
+malady, is this: that the Clairvoyant, when thrown by mesmeric
+influence into the "trance" state, is enabled to _see into the
+body of the patient_ and discern what organs, if any, are
+deranged, and in what manner; or to ascertain precisely the
+nature of the morbific condition of the body, and having thus
+discovered what part of the vital mechanism is out of order, they
+are able, they argue, to prescribe the best means for restoring
+the apparatus to a normal state.
+
+There are many thousands of persons who believe this stuff, and
+endanger their lives and health by trusting to these empirics.
+Several of the most popular of them have as many patients as they
+can attend to, and are rapidly amassing fortunes. Most of them
+have a superficial knowledge of Medicine, and are thus enabled to
+do, with a certain amount of impunity, many dark deeds. It is
+reported of more than one of these women that she has done as
+many deeds of child-murder as did even the notorious Madame
+Restell.
+
+In this regard, they are among the most dangerous and criminal of
+all the Witches.
+
+The "Individual" visited Mrs. Hayes, who is one of the most
+ignorant of the whole lot, and Mrs. Seymour, who is one of the
+most intelligent of all. He sets down the particulars of his
+visit to the former, in the words following:
+
+
+    How the "Individual" sees a Clairvoyant--How he pays a
+    Dollar, and what he gets for his money.
+
+Not all the sorcery of all the sorcerers; not all the necromancy
+of all the necromancers; not all the conjurations of all
+masculine conjurers; not all the magic of all male magicians; not
+all the charming of all the charmers, charm they never so wisely,
+could have induced Johannes to ever more place the slightest
+trust in a wizard, or repose in any wonderworker of the bearded
+sex the merest trifle of faith, even the most infinitesimal
+trituration of the homoeopathicest grain. The single dose he had
+received from the renowned Doctor Wilson was quite enough, and
+had satisfied all his longings for wisdom of that sort.
+
+Besides, his coming events cast such peculiar and very unpleasant
+shadows before, that he preferred to keep out of the grim
+presence of such shady men, and for all after time to bask him
+only in the sunshine of smiling women.
+
+"_Pizon his first wife_," would he? Well, he could have taken
+that "pizon" with tolerable composure from the lips of lovely
+woman, but to receive it from the mumbling mouth of a skinny old
+man, was too much to accept without divers rebellious grins.
+
+A peach-cheeked witch, a cherry-lipped conjuress; a Circe, with
+only enough charms to make a respectable photograph, might with
+impunity have called him a counterfeiter, or a horse-thief, or
+even a thimble-rigger; or might have told him that he would, upon
+opportunity, garotte his grandmother for the small price of
+seventy cents and her snuff-box; or that he was in the habit of
+attending funerals to pick the pockets of the mourners, and of
+going to church that he might steal the pennies from the
+poor-box, all this would he have borne uncomplainingly from a
+woman; but these unpalatable statements from one of the masculine
+gender would be "most tolerable and not to be endured."
+
+He felt that if he had not rushed incontinently from the presence
+of that underground star-gazer Dr. Wilson, he must either have
+punched that respected person's venerated head, or have laughed
+in his honored face. In either case he would, of course, have
+roused the extensive ire of that potent worthy, and have been at
+once exposed to a fire of supernatural influences that would have
+been probably unpleasant, to say the least.
+
+The unmusical Johannes looks upon accordeons as cruel instruments
+of refined torture, and detests them as the vilest of all created
+or invented things, and he had been very careful to offend none
+of the magic community, lest he should, by some high-pressure
+power of their enchanted spells, be transformed into an
+accordeon, and be condemned to eternally have shrieking music
+pulled out of his bowels by unrelenting boys.
+
+Having this terrible possible doom continually before his mind's
+optics, he felt that it would be only the part of prudence to
+avoid the company of those black art professors in whose presence
+he could not keep all his feelings well in hand. So, no more
+wizards would he visit, but the witches should henceforth have
+his entire attention.
+
+It is a fortunate circumstance that there are no other men than
+the aforesaid Doctor Wilson, in the witch business in New York,
+so that there would be no temptation to break this resolve, and
+he probably would not be troubled to keep it.
+
+There is one breed of the modern witch that pretends to a sort of
+superiority in blood and manners, and those who practise this
+peculiar branch of the business put on certain aristocratic airs
+and utterly refuse to consort with those of another stamp. They
+disdain the title of "Astrologers," or "Astrologists," as most of
+them phrase it, and in their advertisements utterly repudiate the
+idea that they are "Fortune Tellers."
+
+These are the "Clairvoyants," who do business by means of certain
+select mummeries of their own, and who make a great deal of money
+in their trade. There are a great number of these in the city, so
+many indeed that the business is over-done, and the price of
+retail clairvoyance has come materially down. The same dose of
+this article that formerly cost five dollars, may now be had for
+fifty cents, and the quality is not deteriorated, but is quite as
+good now as it ever was.
+
+To one of these supernatural women did the hero resolve to pay
+his next visit, and he selected the abode of Mrs. Hayes, of 176
+Grand Street, for his initiatory consultation.
+
+With the mysterious psychological phenomena denominated by those
+who profess to know them best, "clairvoyant manifestations,"
+Johannes had nothing to do, and was content, as every one of the
+uninitiated must perforce be, to accept the say-so of the
+spiritualistic journals that there are such phenomena and that
+they are unexplained and mysterious. No outside unbelievers in
+Spiritualism and the kindred arts may ever know anything of
+clairvoyant developments and demonstrations, save such one-sided
+varnished statements as the journals that deal in that sort of
+commodities choose to lay before the world. Every man must be
+spiritually wound up to concert pitch before he is in a condition
+to receive the highest revelations of the clairvoyant speculators.
+So that, whether the clairvoyance that is sold for money be a
+spurious or a superfine article few can tell. Certain it is that
+it is the same sort of stuff that has ever been retailed to the
+public under the name of clairvoyance, ever since the discovery
+of that remunerative humbug. It is more than likely that the
+twaddle of Mrs. Hayes, Mrs. Seymour, and the rest of the
+fortune-telling crew, would be repudiated by Andrew Jackson Davis
+and the rest of the spiritualistic firstchoppers, but it is none
+the less true that these gifted women sell their pretended
+knowledge of spirits and spiritual persons and things, with as
+much pretentiousness to unerring truth, as that veritable seer
+himself, and at a much lower price.
+
+The clairvoyant department of modern witchcraft is necessarily
+carried on by a partnership, and one which is not identical with
+the legendary league with the devil. Two visible persons
+constitute the firm, for it takes a double team to do the work,
+and if the amiable gentleman just referred to makes a third in
+the concern, he is a silent partner who merely furnishes capital,
+while his name is not known in the business. The whole theory of
+clairvoyance as applied to fortune-telling and other branches of
+cheap necromancy, seems to be somewhat like this.
+
+A strong-minded person, generally a man with a _physique_ like a
+Centre-Market butcher boy, obtains by some means possession of an
+extra soul or two, or spirit, or whatever else that intangible
+thing may be called. These spirits are always second-rate
+articles, not good enough to be put into vigorous and strong
+bodies, and which have been therefore hastily cased up in an
+inferior kind of human frame as a sort of make-shift for men and
+women.
+
+Your professional clairvoyant is always, both as to soul and
+body, a botched-up job that nature ought to be ashamed of, and
+probably is, if she'd own up.
+
+The senior partner of the clairvoyant fortune-telling firm, the
+strong-minded one, according to their professions, has the
+arbitrary control of the cast-off souls that animate these refuse
+bodies. By what spiritual hocus-pocus this is managed is not
+known to those outside the trade. He uses their half-baked
+spirits at his will, and makes his living by farming them out to
+do dirty jobs for the paying public. He disconnects them from
+their mortal vehicles, and sends them on errands in the
+spirit-land in behalf of his customers, looking up their "absent
+friends," both in and out of the body--telling of their health and
+prosperity if they are still alive, and picking up little bits of
+scandal about their angels if they are dead. The senior partner
+also sends his abject two-and-sixpenny souls to explore the
+bodies of his sick customers and examine their internal
+machinery, point out any little defects or disarrangements, and
+suggest the proper remedies therefor, and in short, to do
+whatever other dirty work the customer may choose to pay for.
+
+The senior partner of course pockets all the money, merely
+keeping the mortal tenement in which the working partner dwells
+in a good state of repair, in consideration of services rendered.
+
+Such a partnership is the one of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, whose place
+of business is advertised every day in the morning papers in the
+words following:
+
+     "CLAIRVOYANCE.--Astonishing cures and great discoveries
+     daily made by MRS. HAYES, that superior and wonderful
+     clairvoyant. All diseases discovered and cured (if
+     curable). Unerring advice given respecting persons in
+     business, absent friends, &c. Satisfactory examinations
+     given in all cases, or no charge made. Residence, 176
+     Grand St. N. Y."
+
+Johannes, whose general health was excellent, and whose internal
+apparatus was all right so far as heard from, had therefore no
+occasion to be astonishingly cured, or to have any great
+discoveries made in him by Mrs. Hayes; still he was desirous of a
+little "unerring advice about absent friends," etc., from "that
+superior and wonderful clairvoyant."
+
+Besides, it was barely possible that in the person of the
+superior and wonderful Mrs. Hayes, he might find the bride for
+whom he pined. With hope slightly renewed within his speculative
+breast, he set off joyfully for the designated domicile, which he
+achieved in the due course of travel.
+
+The house No. 176 Grand Street is a brick two-story dwelling, of
+a dingy drab color, as though it had been steeped in a Quaker
+atmosphere and had there imbibed its color, which had since been
+overlaid with "world's people's" dirt.
+
+The door was opened by Mrs. Hayes in person, her body on this
+occasion being sent with her spirit to do a bit of drudgery.
+
+She is a woman of the most abject and cringing manner
+imaginable; a female counterpart of Uriah Heep, with an unknown
+multiplication of that vermicular gentleman's writhings; she wore
+no hoops, she would have squirmed herself out of them in an
+instant; her dress was fastened securely on with numerous visible
+hooks and eyes, and pins, and strings, in spite of which
+precautions her visitor expected to see her worm out of it before
+she got up stairs, and would scarcely have been astonished to see
+her jerk her skeleton out of her skin, and complete her errand in
+her bones.
+
+With a propitiating bow, whose intense servility would have
+become Mr. Sampson Brass in the day of his discomfiture, she
+asked her customer into the house, cringingly preceded him up
+stairs, deferentially placed a chair, and abjectly departed into
+an inner room, pausing at the door to execute an obsequious
+wriggle, and to once more humble herself in the dust (of which
+there was plenty) before her astonished visitor.
+
+The reception-room to which she led him, is an apartment of
+moderate size, from the front windows of which the beholder may
+regale his eyes with a comprehensive view of Centre Market and
+its charming surroundings; Mott and Mulberry Streets lie just
+beyond, and the Tombs are visible in the dim distance. The room
+was furnished with a superfluity of gaudy furniture; and sofas,
+tables, chairs and pictures, crowded and elbowed each other,
+showing plainly that the upholstery of a couple, at least, of
+parlors had been there compressed into a bedroom.
+
+From the inner room came a great sound, made up of so many
+household ingredients as to defy accurate analysis--but the crying
+of babies, the frizzling of cooking meat, the scraping of
+saucepans, and a sound of somebody scolding everybody else,
+predominated.
+
+The voyager was unprepared for any _Mister_ Hayes, having taken
+it for granted that the _Mrs._ of the superior and wonderful
+clairvoyant did not imply a husband, but was merely assumed
+because it looks more dignified in the advertisement. But there
+_was_ a _Mr._ Hayes, and presently the door opened and that
+worthy appeared; he was surrounded by an atmosphere of fried
+onions, and the fragrant and greasy perspiration in his face
+seemed to have been distilled from that favorite vegetable.
+
+Mr. Hayes is a tall, fierce, sharp-spoken man, of manners so very
+rough and bearish that his wife and children quailed when he
+spoke as if they expected an instant blow. We don't know that it
+ever will be possible for a man to garrote his guardian angel for
+the sake of her golden crown, but the idea occurred to Johannes
+that if that amiable feat is ever accomplished, it will be by
+such another man as this. He seemed as unable to speak a kind or
+gentle word as to pull his boots off over his ears. He is an
+Englishman, and speaks with the most intolerable cockney accent.
+Moderating his harsh tones until they were almost as pleasant as
+the threatenings of an ill-natured bull-dog, and addressing his
+auditor, he growled out the following specimen of delectable
+English:
+
+"There is lots of folks goin' round town pretendin' to do
+clairvoyance, and to cure sick folks, and to tell fortunes, and
+business, and journeys, and stole property; but we ain't none of
+them people. We only do this for the sake of doin' good, and we
+don't want to do nothin' that will make any trouble. We used to
+tell things about stole property, and about family troubles, and
+so we sometimes used to get folks into musses, but we don't do
+nothin' of that kind now. If your business is about any kind of
+muss and trouble in your family we don't want nothin' to do with
+it. Sometimes folks that has quarrelled their wives away come to
+us and wants us to get them back again, but we don't do nothing
+of that sort. We can tell 'em if their wives are well, or if
+they're sick and all about what ails 'em, and so we can about any
+people that is gone off anywhere, and them's what we call 'absent
+friends.' So if you've got any trouble with your wife we can't do
+nothin' for you."
+
+The love-lorn visitor had no wives, a fact known to the reader
+already, and when he does accumulate a help-meet, he sincerely
+trusts she may not be so unruly as to require the interference of
+outsiders to preserve harmony in the family. He expressed
+himself to that effect, and added that his business was to find
+out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to
+ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his
+peace of mind.
+
+Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened
+the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other
+room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady,
+who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly
+writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and
+began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each
+one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth
+by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the
+tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable
+habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.
+
+While this curious process was going on, the Doctor had drawn
+down the window-shades, thus darkening the room, and now
+approached for the purpose of unhooking from its earthly
+tabernacle the soul that was to step up to Minnesota and bring
+back word to his customer "how all the folks got along." This he
+accomplished by a few mysterious mesmeric passes, and when the
+trance was induced, and the spirit had, so to speak, tucked its
+breeches into its boots ready for the muddy journey, he placed in
+the hand of Johannes that of the corpus which still remained in
+the armchair, and said to the disembodied spirit:
+
+"Now, I want you to go with this gentleman to Brooklyn and take a
+fair start from there, and then go where he tells you to, and
+tell him what things there is there that you see."
+
+Having delivered this injunction in a tone so indescribably
+savage that he had better a thousand times have struck her in the
+face, this amiable animal retired to the Babel, taking with him
+the fried-onion atmosphere.
+
+Then the woman in the chair began to speak, in a style the most
+disagreeable and affected that anybody ever listened to. It was
+more like that sickening gibberish that nurses call "_baby-talk_,"
+than anything else in the world. She spoke with a detestable
+whine, and pronounced each syllable of every word separately, as
+if she feared a two-syllable word might choke her. Sick at the
+stomach as was her visitor at the whole babyish performance, he
+so far controlled his qualms as to note down the words hereunder
+written.
+
+Whoever has heard this woman in a professional way can testify to
+the verbatim truth of this sketch.
+
+"There is wa-ter that we must cross, we must go in a boat musn't
+we? Now we're in the boat, and O I see so many put-ty things,
+men, and dogs, and ships and things going up and down; such
+beau-ti-ful things I have never seened before. Now we are a-cross
+the riv-er, and now we must get on the car, musn't we? What car
+must we get on? O I see it now, the yellow car. Now we are going
+a-long and I can see--O what a pret-ty dress in that store. O what
+real nice can-dy that is. I wish I had some don't you? Now we're
+at the house. Is it the one on the cor-ner, or the next one to
+it, or is it the brick house with the green blinds? No, the wood
+one with green blinds; so it is, but I didn't be here be-fore
+ev-er in my life. Now we will go in-to the house; I see a car-pet
+there and some chairs and some--O what a pret-ty pic-ture, and
+what a nice fire. I see a la-dy of ver-y pret-ty ap-pear-ance.
+She is a young la-dy; she has got blue eyes, she is stand-ing
+sideways so I can't see noth-ing of her but one side of her face.
+There is al-so an el-der-ly la-dy, but I can't see much of her.
+They appear to be go-ing on a jour-ney, shall I go with them?
+Yes, well I will. Now we are on the wa-ter and--O what a pret-ty
+boat--now we are get-ting off of the boat--I didn't nev-er be here
+be-fore. Now we are on a rail-road, I nev-er seened this
+rail-road be-fore but--O what a pret-ty ba-by. Now we go along,
+along, along, along, and now we are at the de-pot. I didn't ev-er
+be here ei-ther--there is a riv-er here, and a mill and a--O what a
+pret-ty cow--somebody is go-ing to milk the cow. There is a town
+here--it seems as if I did be here before--yes I am sure--O what a
+pret-ty lit-tle car-riage, and what a pret-ty dog. Yes I am sure
+I seened this town be-fore, but these rail-roads didn't be here
+then."
+
+By this time the travellers were supposed to have reached St.
+Paul, and the reliable clairvoyant then proceeded to describe
+that interesting young city; and in the course of her speech made
+more improvements there than will be accomplished in reality in
+less than a year or two certainly.
+
+Among other things, Mrs. Hayes described as at present existing
+in St. Paul, two Colleges, a City Hall built of white marble, a
+locomotive factory, and a place where they were building seven
+ocean steamers.
+
+She then, when she arrived at the house, in the course of her
+mesmeric journey, where the people concerning whom Johannes had
+inquired were supposed to be at that present domiciled, proceeded
+to give descriptions of those whom she saw there, of the looks of
+the country and of the house.
+
+And _such_ descriptions, as much like the truth as a ton of "T"
+rail is like a boiled custard.
+
+By asking leading questions the seeker after clairvoyant
+knowledge got some very original information. He only began this
+course after he found that she, if left to herself, could
+describe nothing, and could utter no speech more coherent or
+sensible than that already set down as coming from her illustrious lips.
+
+In fact, the policy of the clairvoyant-witch in every case, is to
+wait for leading questions from the anxious inquirer, so that the
+answers may be framed to suit the exigencies of the case.
+Johannes was not slow to perceive this, and by way of testing the
+science, or rather, art of clairvoyance, he put a series of
+questions which established the following interesting facts, all
+of which were positively averred to be true by Mrs. Hayes, "that
+superior and wonderful clairvoyant."
+
+Minnesota Territory is a small town situated 911 miles south-east
+of the mouth of the Mississippi River--its officers are a chief
+cook and 23 high privates, besides the younger brother of
+Shakspeare, who is the Mayor of the Territory, and whose
+principal business it is to keep the American flag at half-mast,
+upside down.
+
+When this last important information had been elicited, Johannes,
+who thought he had got the worth of his money, recalled Dr.
+Hayes, who reappeared, surrounded by the same old atmosphere of
+the same old onions; to him the customer resigned the hand of the
+twaddling adult baby who had held his hand for an hour and a
+half, paid his dollar, and then prepared to depart.
+
+The soul of the woman then returned from its long journey, and
+was locked up in its squirmy body by the Doctor, ready to serve
+future customers at one dollar a head.
+
+She didn't seem glad to get her soul back again, there probably
+not being enough to give her any great joy, after she had got it.
+
+Johannes turned moodily away, feeling that the conjuress, his
+future bride, the renovator of his broken fortunes, and the ready
+relief to his present necessities, was as far distant as ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Tells all about Mrs. Seymour, the Clairvoyant, of No. 110 Spring
+Street, and what she had to say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+MRS. SEYMOUR, CLAIRVOYANT, No. 110 SPRING STREET.
+
+
+This woman is at the same time one of the most pretentious and
+most clever of the clairvoyants, and she does a very large
+business. Most of her customers come for medical advice,
+although, in accordance with her printed announcement, she is
+willing to talk about "absent friends," and whatever other
+business the client may choose to pay for.
+
+One branch of the clairvoyant trade which formerly brought as
+much money to their pockets as any other department of their
+business, was the finding lost or stolen property, and giving
+directions for the detection of the thieves. This specialty has
+however been pretty much abandoned of late by nearly all of them,
+in consequence of law-proceedings against certain ones of the
+sisterhood, which have in three or four instances been commenced
+by parties who have been wrongfully accused of theft, through the
+agency of the clairvoyant impostors. Several suits have been
+instituted against them for defamation of character, and they
+have been made to smart so severely that they are now all very
+careful about accusing persons of crimes.
+
+As an evidence of the implicit faith put in these people by their
+dupes, it may be mentioned that many applications have been made
+to Judge Welsh, of this city, and to the other judges, for
+warrants of arrest against respectable persons, for theft, the
+only grounds of suspicion against them being, that some
+clairvoyant had said that the property had been stolen by a
+person of such and such a height, with hair and eyes of this or
+that color, and that the suspected person happened to answer the
+description. Of course, all such applications for legal process
+have been refused by the magistrates, and the applicants
+dismissed with a severe rebuke.
+
+Mrs. Seymour was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cunningham, of the
+Burdell-murder notoriety, and was a witness in that memorable
+trial.
+
+The Cash Customer had an interview with this woman, which he thus
+describes:
+
+
+    Another Clairvoyant, who is not much in particular.
+
+If a man be desirous of knowing what sort of a moral character he
+bears in the spirit-world, and what style of society his
+disembodied soul will circulate in, or if he desires to know the
+particulars of the after-death behavior of any of his acquaintances,
+of course he will find it to his interest to marry a "medium" of
+average respectability, and in good practice, and so save the
+expense of frequent consultations. The "rapping" and "table-tipping"
+communications from the spirit-world are hardly satisfactory. It
+is, very likely, pleasant for a man to be on speaking terms with
+his bedroom furniture, to spend an agreeable hour occasionally in
+conversation with his washhand-stand, to enjoy a spirited
+argument with his bedstead and rocking-chair, or to receive now
+and then a confidential communication from his bootjack, but on
+the whole, these upholstery dialogues do not satisfy the
+"yearnings of the soul after the infinite." The powers of speech
+of a washhand-stand are circumscribed, bedsteads and rocking-chairs
+are seldom equal to a sustained conversation, and the most
+talkative bootjack has not a sufficient command of language to
+make itself agreeable for any great length of time. The logic of
+a poker may sometimes be convincing, but it is not generally
+agreeable; and the rhetoric of uneducated coal-scuttles is hardly
+elegant enough to pass the criticism of a refined taste. It is
+therefore much more satisfactory as well as economical, for a
+person who desires to enjoy his daily chat with the Spirits, to
+get a "speaking medium" to translate the eloquence of all parties
+and make the thing pleasant. Even then, confidential communications
+must be very guarded, and on this account the person who invents
+some means by which every man can be his own medium, will win an
+equal immortality with the author of that invaluable book, "Every
+Man his own Washerwoman."
+
+Johannes had been thinking over the spiritual subject, of course
+with a view to profitable matrimony, for he thought he could
+manage to turn an intimacy with the spirits to good pecuniary
+account, and inveigle those incorporeal gentlemen into doing
+something for those of their friends who are yet bothered with
+bodies.
+
+He knew that there are in New York, plenty of spiritualists in
+such constant communication with their acquaintances on the
+"other side of Jordan," that they know the bill of fare with
+which those seventh-heaveners are served every day, and whenever
+their jolly ghostships sit down to a pleasant game of whist, they
+send word to their earthly relatives by "medium" every fresh
+deal, what the new trump is, who hold the honors, and how the
+game stands generally.
+
+So close a familiarity with superior beings as this, could be
+easily turned to practical account and made to pay handsomely, by
+a Spiritualist with a utilitarian turn of mind. If he could but
+get his spirits into proper subjection how useful would they not
+be in the patent medicine business, in the way of inventing new
+remedies; how invaluable would they be to an editor; in fact, how
+particularly useful in almost any kind of business.
+
+But his great plan was to train a corps of light-footed and
+gentle ghosts to carry news; they would of course beat locomotives,
+carrier pigeons, and electric telegraphs out of sight; seas,
+mountains, and such trifling obstacles would be no hindrance to
+them, and the Associated Press, to say nothing of the Board of
+Brokers, would pay handsomely for their services. Of course a
+ghost with any pretensions to speed would bring us detailed news
+from London in half-an-hour or so, without putting himself out of
+breath in the least, thus beating the telegraph by a length. And
+so Johannes, fully determined on this promising scheme, began to
+cast about him for a medium who was acquainted in the spirit
+sphere, to introduce him to some of the eligible ghosts.
+
+He knew that most of the clairvoyant women are "mediums," and
+thought very naturally that women who already earned their living
+by clairvoyance, would be the very ones to enter heart and soul
+with him into his spiritualistic scheme.
+
+Yes, he would marry a medium, and if she was a professional
+clairvoyant, so much the better, his bow would have another
+string.
+
+In his search for a witch-wife he would not have been justified
+in interfering at all with the clairvoyants had it not been for
+the fact that they mix a little witchcraft with their regular
+business. Their ostensible trade is to diagnose and prescribe for
+different varieties of internal disease, and so this particular
+branch of humbug would not have come within the scope of the
+voyager's investigations, were it not that several of these
+practitioners advertise to "tell the past, present, and future,
+describe the future husband or wife, mark out correctly the exact
+course of future life, give unerring advice about business,
+absent friends, etc."
+
+All this had too strong a savor of witchcraft to be ignored, and
+accordingly Johannes set forth on his journey to visit another of
+these mysteriously clear-sighted persons, keeping in view all the
+time the probabilities of her being an A 1 spiritual medium, and
+the very person whose aid would be invaluable in his new
+journalistic enterprise.
+
+Mrs. Seymour, of No. 110 Spring Street, was the person towards
+whose house the Cash Customer bent his steps, after reading the
+subjoined advertisement of her powers and capabilities.
+
+     "CLAIRVOYANCE.--MRS. SEYMOUR, 110 Spring Street, a few
+     doors west of Broadway, the most successful medical and
+     business Clairvoyant in America. All diseases
+     discovered and cured, if curable; unerring advice on
+     business, absent friends, &c., and satisfaction in all
+     cases, or no charge made."
+
+The clairvoyant branch of the fortune-telling business seems to
+require a certain amount of respectability in its practices, and
+they sneer at the grosser deceptions of the more vulgar of the
+necromantic trade. They keep aloof from the greasier sisters of
+the profession, and they feel it due to the dignity of their
+station to reject the cards, the magic mirrors, the Bibles and
+keys, the mysterious pebbles and the other tricks which do well
+enough for twenty-five cent customers; to sojourn in reputable
+streets, in respectable houses, and to have clean faces when
+visitors come in. There are, it is true, clairvoyants in the city
+who live wretchedly in miserable cellars, whose garments and very
+hair are populated with various specimens of animated nature, and
+whose bodies are so filthy that the beholder wonders why the
+spirits, which are so often disconnected from them and sent on
+far-off missions, do not avail themselves of the leave of absence
+to desert for ever such unsavory corporeal habitations. But the
+majority of these persons prefer parlors to basements, and make
+up the difference in expenses by double-charging their customers.
+Many of them, as before stated, combine a little spiritualism of
+the other sort with the clairvoyance, and they can all go into a
+trance on short notice and rhapsodize with all the fervor if not
+the eloquence of Mrs. Cora Hatch; they can all do the table-tipping
+trick, and are up to more rappings than the Rochester Fox girls
+ever thought of. For these several reasons therefore Mrs. Seymour
+would be a wife worth having, or at least so thought Johannes as
+he pondered these truths, and arranged in his mind his plan of
+attack on the affections of that susceptible lady.
+
+The house No. 110 Spring Street, occupied by Mrs. Seymour for
+business purposes, is not more seedy in appearance than the
+majority of half-way decent tenant houses, which all have a
+decrepit look after they are four or five years old, as though
+youthful dissipations had made them weak in the joints. From
+appearances, Mrs. Seymour's house had been more than commonly
+rakish in its juvenility, but it still had that look of better
+days departed, which, in the human kind, is peculiar to decayed
+ministers of the gospel. It is a house where a man on a small
+salary would apply for cheap board. Hither the inquirer repaired,
+and shamefacedly knocked at the door, and was admitted by a
+frowzy, coarse, plump, semi-respectable girl, who would have been
+the better for a washing. She opened the door and the customer
+entered the reception-room, and had ample time before the
+appearance of the mistress to take an observation.
+
+The parlor was neatly, though rather scantily furnished, with a
+rigid economy in the article of chairs. The apartment communicated
+by folding-doors with another room, whence could be heard an iron
+noise as of some one scraping a saucepan with a kitchen-spoon.
+The frowzy girl disappeared into this retired spot, and in about
+the space of time that would be occupied by an enterprising woman
+in rolling down her sleeves, taking off her apron, and washing
+her hands, the door opened, and Mrs. Seymour presented herself.
+
+She was a frigid-looking woman, of about 35 years of age, with
+dark hair and eyes, projecting lips and heavy chin, and was of
+medium height and size. Her appearance was perhaps lady-like, her
+movements slow and well considered. She was perfectly self-possessed
+and calculating, and appeared to cherish no dissatisfaction with
+herself. Her demeanor, on the whole, was repelling and chilly,
+and impressed her visitor very much as if some one had slipped a
+lump of ice down his back and made him sit on it till it melted.
+
+She regarded him with a look of professional suspicion, cast her
+eye round the room with a quick glance, which instantly
+inventoried everything therein contained, as though to assure
+herself of the safety of any small articles which might be
+scattered about, and then seated herself with an air of
+preparedness, as if she was perfectly on guard and not to be
+taken by surprise by anything that might occur. She volunteered a
+frozen remark or two about the state of the weather, and then
+subsided into silence, evidently waiting to hear the object of
+the visit.
+
+Her appearance and demeanor had instantly frozen out of the
+voyager's mind all thoughts of marriage; he would as soon have
+wedded an iceberg, or have taken to his heart of hearts a
+thermometer with its mercury frozen solid. All he could do was to
+buy a dollar's worth of her clairvoyance and then get out.
+
+As soon therefore as the first chill had passed off, and he had
+thawed out a few words for immediate use he asked for a little of
+that commodity.
+
+When as he announced that he desired to know about the present
+well or ill of some absent friends, and that clairvoyance was the
+branch of her business which would on this occasion be called
+into requisition, she rose from her seat, walked to the door,
+never taking her eyes from the hands and pockets of her customer,
+and called to some one to come in. In obedience to the summons,
+the frowzy girl entered; this latter individual, since her first
+appearance, had taken off her apron and pinned some kind of a
+collar around her neck, but had not yet found time to comb her
+hair, which was exceedingly demonstrative, and forced itself upon
+attention.
+
+Mrs. Seymour seated herself in a rocking-chair and closed her
+eyes; the plump girl stood behind her and pressed her thumbs
+firmly upon the temples of Mrs. S. for about two minutes, during
+which time this latter lady lost every instant something of life
+and animation, until at last she froze up entirely. Then the
+frowzy girl made one or two mysterious mesmeric passes over the
+sleeping beauty from her head to her feet, to fix her in the
+iceberg state; then placing the hand of Mrs. S. in the palm of
+the customer, she left the room.
+
+The worst of it was that Mrs. Seymour's hand is not an agreeable
+one to hold; it is cold and flabby, and not suggestive of
+vitality. Her face, too, had become pallid and corpse-like, and
+her thin blue lips were not pleasant to regard. Johannes was
+puzzled; he didn't know what to do with the flabby hand, and how
+he was to get any information about absent friends from a
+fast-asleep woman he did not, as yet, exactly comprehend. At this
+juncture, the lips asked, "Where am I to go to?" The sitter
+suppressed a sulphurous reply, and substituted, "To Minnesota."
+Thereupon, without any more definite direction as to what part of
+that rather extensive territory she was expected to visit, she
+sent her spirit off, and immediately uttered these words:
+
+"I see two old people, two _very_ old people--one is a man and
+one is a woman; one of them has been very sick of bilious fever,
+but is now better, and will soon be quite well again. I can't
+tell exactly how these people look except that they are very old
+and both are very grey. They may be husband and wife. I think
+they are. They are both sitting down now. I also see two young
+people--one of them is a male and the other a female. The male I
+do not perceive very plainly, and I cannot make out much about
+him; he seems to be standing up and looking very sad, but I can't
+tell you a great deal about him. The female I can see much
+better, and can make out more about. She is tall, and has dark
+hair. She appears to be connected in some way to the old people,
+but I do not think she is related to the young man, though I
+cannot exactly make out. She is a very agreeable-looking female,
+rather pretty, I should say, if not positively handsome. She has
+straight hair and does not wear curls. She is standing up now,
+and appears to be talking to the young man, who has his back
+partly turned toward her. I don't quite make out what they are
+saying. She has had a very severe attack of sickness, but has
+nearly or quite recovered. She is not, however, what I should
+call a healthy female, and she will soon have another fit of
+sickness, which will be worse than the first, and will bring her
+very low indeed--very near to death. But she will not die then,
+though she is not what I should call a long-lived person. She
+will certainly die in six or eight years. What disease she will
+die of I can't just make out, but it will not be of a lingering
+character: it will carry her off suddenly. These people are all
+very anxious about you, as if you was one of their family. They
+have not heard from you lately, and are looking daily for
+intelligence from you. They have written to you twice within
+three months. One of the letters got to this city--a man took it
+out of the mail. I don't know where he took it out, and I can't
+exactly describe the man, but a man took it out of the mail.
+These people are not satisfied to live where they are now; they
+are discontented with the country, and will return here in the
+Spring. They are talking about it now. They would like to come
+back this Winter, but circumstances are so that they cannot. You
+may be sure, however, that you will see them here in the Spring.
+There is no doubt of it; they will come here in the Spring. The
+other letter that I told you of that they had written has got
+here safe, and is now in the Post-Office. You will find it there
+if you inquire; you will be sure to get it as soon as you go down
+to the office."
+
+This was delivered in a very jerky manner, with occasional
+twitchings of the face and violent claspings of the hand, which
+her visitor retained, although it gave him a cold sweat to do it.
+Johannes, who has friends in Minnesota, and whose questions were
+therefore all in good faith, tried to get the sleeping female to
+descend a little more to particulars, to describe individuals or
+localities minutely enough to be recognised if the descriptions
+approached the truth; but Mrs. Seymour was not to be caught in
+this manner. She invariably dodged the question, and dealt only
+in the most vague and uncertain generalities--giving no
+description of persons or things that might not have applied with
+equal accuracy to a hundred other persons or things in that or
+any other locality. Her assertions concerning the persons
+supposed to be her customer's friends did not approach the truth
+in any one particular; nor was there the slightest shadow of even
+probability in any single statement she uttered. She is not,
+however, a woman to lack customers, so long as there remain in
+the world fools of either sex.
+
+When the inquirer had concluded his questioning, he was somewhat
+at a loss how to awake the woman from her trance, but she solved
+that little difficulty herself by opening her eyes (as if she had
+been wide awake all the time) and calling for the beauteous
+maiden of the snarly hair, who accordingly appeared and made a
+few mysterious mesmeric passes lengthwise of her sleeping
+mistress, and awoke her to the necessity of dunning her visitor,
+which she did instantly and with a relish. He paid the demanded
+dollar and departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Describes Madame Carzo, the Brazilian Astrologist, of No. 151
+Bowery, and gives all the romantic adventures of the "Individual"
+with that gay South American Naiad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MADAME CARZO, THE BRAZILIAN ASTROLOGIST, No. 151 BOWERY.
+
+
+The illustrious lady who is the subject of the present chapter,
+came to the city of New York in 1856, and at once took lodgings
+and began business in the fortune-telling way. She did well,
+pecuniarily speaking, for a time, but the details of a visit to
+her having been published at length in one of the daily journals,
+she at once retired from the business, and subsided into private
+life. She is not now extant as a witch, and it is not impossible
+that she is earning an honester living in other ways.
+
+The newspaper article that convinced her of the error of her
+ways, and induced her to give up fortune-telling, is the
+subjoined chapter by the "Individual:"
+
+
+He meets a Yankee-Brazilian. She is not ill-looking, etc.
+
+Whether the budding beauties of maidenhood are inconsistent with
+the orgies of witchcraft; whether there be an irreconcilable
+antagonism between youth and loveliness, and the unknown
+mysteries of the black art, is a vexed question of some interest.
+Can't a woman be supposed to indulge in a little devilment before
+her hair turns grey, and her teeth fall out? and is it impossible
+for her to have reliable and trustworthy dealings with Old
+Scratch until she is wrinkled and withered?
+
+That's what I want to know.
+
+And I am very naturally urged to the inquiry by the observation
+that every professional witch in New York calls herself a
+"Madame." There is not a "Miss" or a "Mademoiselle," in the whole
+batch. They all make a pretence of being widows, or wives at the
+very least, as if a certain amount of matrimonial tribulation was
+indispensable to their accomplishment in the arts of sorcery and
+magic. The only exception to this rule is found in the person of
+a female calling herself "The Gipsy Girl," who is otherwheres
+mentioned, and in _her_ case the several agencies of nature, rum,
+and small-pox have made her so strikingly ugly that old age could
+not add a single other trait of repulsiveness to her excruciating
+features.
+
+Now this is all a sad mistake. Let some young and undeniably
+pretty girl go into the business, and she'd soon get a run of
+exclusive customers who would stand any price and pay without
+grumbling. If the original Satan should refuse to recognise her
+eligibility, and should decline to furnish her with the requisite
+quantity of diabolic knowledge to set her up in business, she
+could easily find an opposition devil who would provide her stock
+in trade, and possibly at something less than the usual rates.
+I'll be bound that Lucifer doesn't monopolize the whole trade in
+witchcraft, and pocket all the profits himself; for if some of
+the numerous clerks in his employ haven't yet learned the trick
+of stealing the stock and selling it at a reduced price, then the
+young gentlemen of our earthly mercantile houses are a good deal
+up-to-snuffer than the virtuous demons of Mr. Satan's establishment.
+This last-named dealer generally demands the soul of the contracting
+party in return for the powers and privileges conferred; and in
+very many cases he must get decidedly the worst of the bargain,
+for some of his precious adopted children never had soul enough
+to pay for the ink to sign it away with; but there is no doubt,
+in case a brisk competition should arise for customers, that some
+of his cashiers and head-clerks would contrive to under-sell him
+even at this price.
+
+The person who is so very anxious to effect this desirable
+consummation, and to bring on a crop of young and pretty witches
+to supersede the grizzled ones of this present generation was
+Johannes, who had of late been getting rather sick of the
+"Madames," and would prefer, if possible, to have the rest of his
+fortunes told by ladies of tenderer age, and greater inexperience
+in the ways of the world.
+
+However, he was not the man to be deterred, in his pursuit of
+wisdom, by the age and ugliness, grey hairs, wrinkles, false
+teeth, _no_ teeth, dirt, ignorance, and imbecility he had
+encountered, and he was determined to go on to the very end and
+see if these are the sum total of modern witchcraft.
+
+And then _duns_ came o'er the spirit of his dream, and fond
+visions of sundry small debts, paid by magic and a wife, as soon
+as he should succeed in finding the wife who had the magic,
+floated across his hard-up brain, and encouraged him to
+perseverance in his matrimonial quest. And when he had won that
+invaluable lady, he would stuff his mattress with receipted
+bills, and cram his pillow with cancelled notes, lie down to
+pleasant dreams, and awake to ready cash.
+
+Sweet thought!
+
+So he made ready to visit the humble abode of MADAME CARZO, THE
+BRAZILIAN ASTROLOGIST, _No. 151 Bowery_.
+
+To say that he discovered, in this lady, the ideal of his search,
+that he found her handsome, intelligent, learned in the stars and
+thoroughly posted in the other branches of her trade, would be
+to anticipate. Suffice to say that boa-constrictors, half-naked
+savages, dye-woods, Jesuit's bark, cockatoos, scorpions and
+ring-tailed monkeys, are not, as he had hitherto supposed, the
+only contributions to the happiness of mankind afforded by South
+America, for the Province of Brazil grows fortune-tellers of a
+very superior quality as to respectability and neatness of
+appearance. A Brazilian witch was something new, and without
+stopping to inquire how she had strayed so far away from home, he
+immediately argued that that single fact was decidedly in her
+favor. Thus ran the logic:
+
+If there be any diabolism in modern witchcraft, the practisers
+thereof who have received their education in tropical latitudes
+ought to be the most worthy of credence and belief, inasmuch as
+the temperature of their places of residence seems to afford a
+supposition that they live nearer head-quarters, and are,
+therefore, most likely to receive information by the shortest
+routes.
+
+By the time he arrived at the spot where the great astrologist
+condescended to abide, he had, by this course of reasoning,
+convinced himself that he ought to place implicit confidence in
+any revelations of the future made by the mysterious woman who
+advertised herself and her calling, daily in the papers as
+follows:
+
+     "MADAME CARZO, the gifted Brazilian Astrologist, tells
+     the fate of every person who visits her with wonderful
+     accuracy, about love, marriage, business, property,
+     losses, things stolen, luck in lotteries, absent
+     friends, at No. 151 Bowery, corner of Broome."
+
+The South American lady had located her mysterious self in a
+fragrant spot.
+
+The corner of Bowery and Broome Street and vicinity seems to have
+some kind of a constitutional disorder, and it relieves itself by
+a cutaneous eruption of low rum shops and pustulous beer saloons,
+which always look as if they ought to be squeezed and rubbed with
+ointment of red lead. To an observing person it appears as if the
+city wanted to scratch itself in that particular part to relieve
+the local irritation, and then ought, for the sake of its general
+health, to take a large dose of brimstone immediately afterward.
+The liquors sold at these places are those pure and healthful
+beverages, "warranted to kill at forty rods," and are the very
+drinks with which a convivial, but revengeful man, would wish to
+regale his friend against whom he held a secret grudge. Why
+Madame Carzo had chosen this particular locality, does not
+appear; perhaps because the liquor was cheap and the rent low.
+Certain it is that there she sat, at a window overlooking the
+Bowery, in full view of all the pedestrians in the street and the
+passengers in the 4th Avenue Railroad.
+
+Madame Carzo was, doubtless, deeply attached to her old Brazilian
+home, and loved to surround herself with circumstances and things
+that would constantly and vividly recall pleasant memories of her
+southern country. Cherishing, probably, kindly and regretful
+remembrances of the harmless reptiles of her own Brazilian
+forests, she had taken up her abode in the very thick of the
+Bowery bar-rooms, as the only things afforded by our frigid
+climate, at all approaching in life-destroying malignity the
+speedier venoms to which she had been accustomed in her
+delightful southern home. First-rate facilities for drugging a
+man into a state of crazy madness are offered at the bar across
+the way; he may swill himself into a condition of beastly
+stupidity with lager beer from next door below; he may be
+pleasantly poisoned by degrees with the drugged alcohol, in
+various forms, which is sold next door above; or he may be more
+speedily disposed of with a couple of doses of "doctored" whiskey
+from the festering den just round the corner. Lucrezia Borgia was
+a novice, a mere babe in toxicology. New York wholesale liquor
+dealers could teach her the alphabet in the fine art of slow
+poisoning. She would no longer need the subtle chemistry of the
+Borgias; she could learn of them to poison wholesale and to do
+the work by labor-saving machinery.
+
+Johannes, resolved that if he should marry the astrologist he
+would move out of the neighborhood, and take a house in a cleaner
+part of the city, for he felt that if he had to do even the
+courting here, he would have to fumigate himself after every
+visit to his lady-love as though he had just come out of a
+yellow-fever ship. He knew that if he should chance to meet the
+Health Officer in the street after a two hours' stay in that
+locality, that trusty official would, from the unhealthy smell of
+his coat, quarantine him for forty days, and put him up to his
+neck in a barrel of chloride of lime every morning.
+
+But a full-fledged Cupid is a plucky animal, and not easily
+killed by anything no more tangible than smell, and the
+particular Cupid that had possession of the voyager's heart came
+of a long-suffering breed, and was equal to almost any emergency.
+So as Johannes did not feel his ardent passion die, or even turn
+sick at the stomach, he thought he could manage to get through.
+If he couldn't get along any other way, he could fill his pockets
+with brimstone matches, and his boots full of blue vitriol. Or
+he could carry a bunch of Chinese fire-crackers in his hat, and
+touch them off on the sly whenever he felt himself in need of a
+healthy smell. Then he could wash himself all over in lime-water,
+and drink a quart or so of some liquid disinfectant every time he
+came away. So he went ahead.
+
+Madame Carzo, the Brazilian interpreter of Yankee fate and
+fortunes, lives in the third story of the house No. 151 Bowery,
+with her sister, a girl of about fifteen years of age. The two
+occupy themselves with plain sewing, except when the Madame is
+overhauling the future and taking a look at the hereafter of some
+anxious inquirer, who pays her as much for the reliable
+information she imparts in three minutes, as she would charge him
+for making three shirts. The inquirer gave his customary modest
+ring at the door, and was admitted with as little question as if
+he had been the taxes, the Croton water, or the gas. Up the two
+flights of stairs walked the gentleman in the pursuit of
+witchcraft, gave a bashful knock at the door, at the side of
+which was painted, on a small bit of pasteboard, "Madame
+Carzo"--repented of his temerity before the echo of the knock had
+died away, but was admitted into the room before his repentance
+had time to develop itself into running away.
+
+A shabby-looking girl, with her hair in as much confusion as if
+the city had contracted to keep it straight, with one ear-ring in
+her ear, and the other on the table, with her shoes down at the
+heel, her dress unhooked behind, and her breast-pin wrong side
+up, was the model young woman who had answered the knock. She had
+evidently been engaged in an animated single combat with another
+young woman, of about the same quality and age, who was seated on
+a low stool in the corner, for she instantly renewed hostilities
+by stabbing her antagonist in the arm with a needle, tapping her
+on the head with a thimble, and kicking her pin-cushion under the
+table, so she could not recover it without crawling on her hands
+and knees.
+
+On a small sofa or lounge at the side of the room was a quantity
+of what ladies call "work," thrown down in a great hurry, with
+the needle yet sticking in it, and the scissors, and the beeswax,
+and the measuring tape, and the bodkin half-concealed inside, as
+if the knock at the door had startled the needle-woman, and she
+had flown to parts unknown. It was undoubtedly Madame Carzo
+herself who had so unceremoniously deserted her colors and her
+weapons, and Johannes looked at the needle with veneration,
+viewed the thimble with respect, and regarded the beeswax and the
+bodkin with concentrated awe.
+
+A small cooking-stove was in the side of the room, and
+immediately over it was a picture of St. Andrew in such a
+position that he could smell all the dinners; a number of other
+pictures of Roman Catholic subjects were neatly framed and
+hanging against the wall. St. Somebody taking his ease on an
+X-shaped cross, St. Somebody Else comfortably cooking on a
+gridiron, and St. Somebody, different from either of these,
+impaled on a spear like a bug in an Entomological Museum. There
+was also an atrocious colored print labelled "Millard Fillmore,"
+which, if it at all resembled that venerated gentleman, must
+have been taken when he had the measles, complicated with the
+mumps and toothache, and was attired in a sky-blue coat, a red
+cravat, yellow vest, and butternut-colored pantaloons.
+
+The room was neatly furnished with carpet, table, chairs, cheap
+mirror, and a lounge. While the visitor was taking this
+observation, the two young ladies before mentioned had continued
+to spar after a feminine fashion, and had finished about three
+rounds; the model, who had answered the bell, had got the other
+one, who was black-haired and vicious, under the table, and was
+following up her advantage by sticking a bodkin into the tender
+places on her feet and ancles. When the model had at length
+thoroughly subjugated and subdued the black-haired one, and
+reduced her to a state of passive misery, she turned to her
+visitor with an amiable smile, and asked him if he desired to see
+the Madame. Receiving an affirmative reply, she gave a sly kick
+to her fallen foe, stepped on her toes under pretence of moving
+away a chair, and then disappeared into another room to inform
+Madame Carzo that visitors and dollars were awaiting her
+respectful consideration in the anteroom.
+
+The "gifted Brazilian astrologist" regarded the suggestion with a
+favorable eye, for the model soon reappeared and showed the
+searcher after hidden knowledge into a bedroom nearly dark,
+wherein were several dresses hanging on the wall, a bed, two
+chairs, a table, and Madame Carzo. The light was so arranged as
+to fall directly in the face of the stranger, while the
+countenance of the Madame was, to a certain extent, hidden in
+shadow.
+
+Johannes, nevertheless, in spite of this disadvantage, by careful
+observation, is enabled to give a tolerably accurate description
+of Madame Carzo, as follows: She is a tall, comely-looking woman,
+with unusually large black eyes, clear complexion, dark hair worn
+_a la Jenny Lind_, a small hand, clean, and with the nails
+trimmed, and she has a low sweet voice. Her dress was lady-like,
+being a neat half-mourning plaid, with a plain linen collar at
+the neck, turned smoothly over; altogether, Madame Carzo, the
+Brazilian astrologist, who speaks without a symptom of foreign
+accent, impressed her customer as being a transplanted Yankee
+school ma'am, with shrewdness enough to see that while civilization
+and enlightenment would only pay her twenty dollars a month, and
+superstition and ignorance would give her twice that sum in a
+week, she couldn't, of course, afford to live in a civilized and
+enlightened neighborhood, and depend exclusively on civilization
+and enlightenment for a living.
+
+And Johannes was smitten, he had found her, and if his fortune
+was propitious he would yet win and wed the Brazilian astrologist,
+and she should have the honor of paying his debt, and earning his
+bread and butter. But he would make no advances yet for fear of
+accidents; he would not commit himself until he had called upon
+the rest of the witches on his list, to see, if perchance, he
+might not find one more eligible. If not, then by all means
+Madame Carzo should be the chosen one. The first thing evidently
+was to ascertain her proficiency in the magic arts.
+
+The sorceress and the anxious inquirer seated themselves face to
+face, and the following dialogue ensued: "Do you wish to consult
+me, Sir?" "Yes."
+
+"My terms are a dollar for gentlemen."
+
+The expected dollar was handed over, when the 'cute Yankeeism of
+the Brazilian lady blazed out brilliantly, for she instantly
+produced a "Thompson's Bank-note Detector" from under a pillow,
+and a one dollar note, issued by the President and Directors of
+the "Quinnipiack Bank" of Connecticut, underwent a severe
+scrutiny. At last the genuineness of the bill and the solvency of
+the bank were certified to the Madame's satisfaction, in his
+oracular pamphlet, by Thompson with a "p," and Madame Carzo was
+evidently satisfied that her customer didn't mean to swindle her,
+but was good for small debts not exceeding one dollar each.
+Accordingly she took his left hand, regarded it for some time,
+apparently delighted with its model symmetry, but at last so far
+conquered her silent admiration as to speak and say:
+
+"You were born under two planets, Moon and Mars, Moon brings you
+a great deal of trouble in the early part of your life. Moon has
+occasioned a great deal of anxiety to your parents on your
+account. Moon made you liable to accidents and misfortunes while
+you was a boy, and Moon will give you great trouble until you
+arrive at middle age. You were born, I should say, across the
+water, and you will die across the water in a city, but not a
+great city. You are, I should say, now far away from that city,
+and from your home, and parents, and friends, who are, I should
+say, all now far across the water. You will be sure, however, I
+should say, for to see them all before you die, and to die in the
+city that I told you of. Your line of life runs to 60; you will,
+I should say, live to be 60, but not much after. Moon will cause
+you much trouble for many years, but you will be certain for to
+succeed well in the end, I should say. You will be certain for to
+have final success and to conquer every obstacle, in spite of
+Moon, I should say."
+
+Incensed as was Johannes at Moon for thus unjustifiably
+interfering with his prospects and meddling with his private
+affairs, he still admired the more the profitable science of the
+wonderful lady whose acquirements in magic had given her so
+intimate an acquaintance with Moon, as to enable her to tell so
+exactly the plans and intentions of that unruly and adverse
+planet.
+
+He mastered his indignation and listened attentively to the
+sequel.
+
+On the small stand were two packs of cards of different sizes,
+and a volume of Byron. Madame Carzo took up one pack of the
+cards, presented them to the young man, waited for them to be cut
+three times, after which she said:
+
+"You face up a good fortune I should say, you have had trouble
+but can now, I should say, see the end of it--you face up money,
+which is coming to you from over the water, I should say, and you
+will be sure for to get it before a great while. You will never
+have much money from relations or friends, though you will, I
+should say, perhaps have some--but though you will handle a great
+deal of money in your lifetime you will make the most of it
+yourself, I should say--you will not, however, I should say, ever
+be able for to become very rich, for you will never be able for
+to keep money, although you will have the handling of a great
+deal in your life. No, I am certain that you will never be rich."
+
+Here Johannes remembered the malicious influence of Moon upon his
+fortunes, and as he clinched his fists, felt as if he would like
+to get at the man who resides in that ill-conditioned planet, and
+have a back-hold wrestle with him on stony ground.
+
+But the astrologist continued thus: "You face up a letter; you
+also face up good news which is to come speedily I should say;
+you don't face up a sick bed, or a coffin, or a funeral, or any
+kind of immediate bad luck that I am able to see. You face up two
+men, one dark and one light complexioned. You must beware of the
+dark-complexioned man, for I should say he will do you an injury
+if you allow him for to have a chance. You like to study: the
+kind of business you would do best in is _doctor_. You face up a
+light-complexioned lady; you will, I should say, be able to marry
+this lady, though a dark-complexioned man stands in the way. You
+must, I should say, be particularly careful to beware of the
+dark-complexioned man. You will be married twice; your first wife
+will die, but your last wife, I should say, will be likely for to
+outlive you. You will have three children, which will be all, I
+should say, that you will be likely for to have."
+
+And this was all for the present, except that she told her
+visitor that he might draw thirteen cards, and make a wish, which
+he did, and she, on carefully examining the cards, told him that
+he would certainly have his wish.
+
+Cheered by this last grateful promise, and bidding a mental
+defiance to Moon, the traveller left the room. In the reception
+chamber he found the model and the black-eyed one just coming to
+time for what he should judge was the twenty-seventh round, both
+much damaged in the hair, but plucky to the last.
+
+Johannes walked briskly away, feeling that his matrimonial
+prospects were brighter now than for many a day, and fully
+determined that if, on going further he fared worse, he would
+certainly retrace his steps and wed Madame Carzo off-hand.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+In which is set down the prophecy of Madame Leander Lent, of No.
+163 Mulberry Street; and how she promised her Customer numerous
+Wives and Children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+MADAME LEANDER LENT, No. 163 MULBERRY STREET.
+
+
+I have before suggested, in as plain terms as the peculiar nature
+of the subject will allow, that these fortune-telling women,
+having most of them been prostitutes in their younger days, in
+their withered age become professional procuresses, and make a
+trade of the betrayal of innocence into the power of Lust and
+Lechery. This assertion is so eminently probable that few will be
+inclined to dispute it, but I wish to be understood that this is
+no matter of mere surmise with me--it is a proven fact. And the
+evidences of its truth have been gathered, not alone from the
+formal and hurried records of the police courts, but from the
+lips of certain inmates of various Magdalen Asylums who have
+been reclaimed from their former homes of shame; and from the
+mouths of other repentant women, who, under circumstances where
+there was no object to deceive, and at times when their hearts
+were full of grateful love for those who had interposed to save
+them from utter despair, have in all simple truthfulness and
+honor, related their life-histories. It is impossible to give
+even a plausible guess at the aggregate number of young women, in
+this great city, who compromise their honorable reputations in
+the course of a single year; but of those whose shame becomes
+publicly known, and especially of those who eventually enter
+houses of ill-repute, the percentage whose fall was accomplished
+through the instrumentality, more or less direct, of the
+professional fortune-tellers, is astounding. And a curious fact
+connected with this subject is, that of these unfortunates who
+thus wander astray, not one in ten but has ever after the most
+superstitious and implicit faith in the supernatural powers of
+the witch. Each one sees in her own case certain things that have
+been foretold to her by the fortune-teller with such circumstantiality
+of time and place, and which have afterwards "come to pass," so
+exactly in accordance with the prophecy, that she can only
+account for it by ascribing supernatural prescience to the
+prophetess.
+
+The true solution of the matter is, of course, that the wonderful
+fulfilments are achieved by means of confederacy and collusion
+with parties with whom the dupe is never brought in contact; a
+common _modus operandi_ of this sort is elsewhere described.
+
+Nor are the fortune-tellers and the brothel-keepers by any means
+content with playing into each other's hands in a general sort of
+way; there are, in New York, several _firms_, consisting each of
+a fortune-teller and a mistress of a bawdy-house, who have
+entered into a perfectly organized business partnership, and who
+ply their fearful trade with as much zeal and enthusiasm as is
+ever exhibited in the active competition between rival commercial
+houses engaged in legitimate trade.
+
+Although this fact is one that cannot be substantiated by the
+production of any sworn documents, it is as well proven by the
+observations of keen-eyed detectives attached to the police
+department, and to some of the charitable institutions of this
+city, as though attested articles of co-partnership could be
+exhibited with the signatures of the contracting parties attached
+thereto. A gentleman of this city, in whose word I have the most
+perfect confidence, tells me that he once, by a curious accident,
+overheard a business consultation between the two members of such
+a firm; and that such partnerships _do_ exist, and that by their
+means hundreds of ignorant young women, of the lower classes, are
+every year betrayed to their moral ruin, I no more doubt than I
+doubt the rotundity of the earth.
+
+If the illustrious woman who is the subject of the present
+chapter should ever surmise that the foregoing observations are
+intended to have a personal application to herself, the author
+will give her much more credit for sagacity and discernment than
+he did for supernatural wisdom.
+
+Madame Leander Lent is one of the most shrewd, unscrupulous, and
+dirty of all the goodly sisterhood of New York witches. She has
+so great a run of customers that her doors are often besieged by
+anxious inquirers as early as eight o'clock in the morning, and
+the servant is frequently puzzled to find room and chairs to
+accommodate the shame-faced throng, till her ladyship sees fit to
+get out of bed and begin the labors of the day. She is then
+impartial in the distribution of her favors; the audiences are
+governed by barber-shop rules, and the visitors are admitted to
+the presence in the order of their coming, and any one going out
+forfeits his or her "turn" and on returning must take position at
+the tail end of the queue.
+
+The Fates show no favoritism.
+
+The quarter in which Madame Lent has domiciled herself and her
+familiars, is by no means in the most aristocratic part of the
+city. "Mulberry," is the pomological name of the street, and it
+has never been celebrated for its cleanliness or for its
+eligibility as a site for princely mansions. In fact it has
+been, on the whole, rather neglected by that class of society who
+generally indulge in palatial luxuries.
+
+Hercules, in his capacity of an amateur scavenger, once attempted
+the cleaning of the Augean stables, or some such trifle, and his
+success was trumpeted throughout the neighborhood as a triumph of
+ingenuity and perseverance. If Hercules would come to Gotham and
+try his hand at the purgation of Mulberry Street, our word for
+it, he would, in less than a week, knock out his brains with his
+own club in utter despair.
+
+There never yet were swine with stomachs strong enough to feed
+upon the garbage of its gutters, or with instincts so perverted
+as to wallow in its filth. Dogs, lean and wild-eyed, the outcasts
+of the canine world, sometimes, driven by sore stress of hunger,
+sneak here with drooping tails and shame-faced looks, to search
+for bones, and then, wounded in their self-respect by the very
+act, they drag their osseous provender to a distance, and upon
+some sunny mud-heap, dine in dainty neatness. The very pavement
+is broken into countless hillocks and ruts like waves, as if, in
+utter disgust at the place and its associations, the street was
+trying to roll itself away in stony billows. The shattered wrecks
+of worn-out drays and carts stand forsaken in the street, keeping
+each other dismal company, while an occasional shackly wheelbarrow
+makes the place look as though, after some monstrous fashion, it
+were a lying-in hospital for poverty-stricken vehicles, and the
+wheelbarrows were the new-born children, decrepit even in their
+babyhood. The houses in this pleasant vale have a disheartened
+tumble-down look, and give the impression of having been
+originally built by apprentices out of second-hand material. They
+lean maliciously over the narrow sidewalks, and keep up a
+constant threatening of a sudden collapse and a general smash of
+passers-by. If the houses are not dirtier than the street, it is
+only because every possible element of filth enters into the
+latter; if they are not dirtier inside than outside, it is
+because superlatives have no superlative.
+
+Pawnbrokers' shops are plentiful, kept always by sharp-featured
+restless Jews, who watch for unwary passers-by like unclean
+beasts crouching in noisome, dangerous lairs; while bar-rooms
+yawn in frequent cellars to devour bodily the victims the Jews
+only rob.
+
+In this, one of the dirtiest streets in this dirty metropolis,
+directly opposite the English Lutheran Church of St. James, in
+one of the dirtiest tenant-houses in the street, abideth Madame
+Leander Lent, the prophetess. Why the mysterious powers didn't
+select an earthly representative with a more reputable dwelling-place
+is a mystery; but there seems to be an inseparable congeniality
+between prophetic knowledge and concentrated nastiness, utterly
+beyond all power of explanation. The Madame advises the public of
+her business in the terms following:
+
+     "ASTROLOGY.--Madame LEANDER LENT can be consulted about
+     love, marriage, and absent friends; she tells all the
+     events of life at No. 169 Mulberry-st., first floor,
+     back room. Ladies 25 cents; gents 50 cents. She causes
+     speedy marriage. Charge extra."
+
+Her customers are much more addicted to love than marriage, so
+that the wedlock clause cannot be relied on to bring many fish to
+the net, but it is supposed to give an air of respectability to
+the advertisement.
+
+The Cash Customer was, perhaps, an exception to this general
+rule, and feeling that he would on the whole rather like a
+"speedy marriage," and wouldn't so much mind the "extra charge,"
+he went, in cold blood, with this matrimonial intent to the
+street, found the number, and heroically entered the house in the
+very face of a threatened unclean baptism from the upper windows.
+
+His timid knock at the door of the room was answered by a sturdy
+"Come in," from the inside; hat deferentially in hand he modestly
+entered, and was received by a fat woman with a bust of
+proportions exceeding those of Mrs. Merdle in "Little Dorrit,"
+and who was attired in a dress which may have been clean in the
+earlier years of its history, though the supposition is
+exceedingly apocryphal. This lady pointed to a chair, and then
+composedly seated herself and resumed her explorations with a
+comb, in the hair of a vicious boy of about three years old, the
+eldest scion of Madame Leander.
+
+Her enthusiasm in the cause of entomological science was too
+ardent to be quenched by the mere presence of an observer, and
+she continued to hunt her insect prey with all the ardor of a
+she-Nimrod, and with a zeal that was rewarded by a brilliant
+success. The youth, over whose fertile head the game seemed to
+rove and range in countless numbers, was somewhat restless under
+the operation, and oftentimes disturbed the eager sportswoman by
+manifesting a desire to run into the street and carry the
+hunting-ground with him, and was as often recalled to a sense of
+the proprieties by a few judicious slaps, which he stoically
+endured without a whimper, being evidently used to it.
+
+This feminine lover of the chase, this Diana of the fiery scalp,
+looked up from her occupations long enough to say to her visitor
+that Madame Lent would soon be disengaged. Meantime, he made a
+careful survey of the premises.
+
+Two chairs, an old lounge with its dingy red cover fastened on
+with pins, and a trunk covered with an old bit of carpet, were
+the accommodations for seating visitors. A cooking-stove, and a
+suspicious-looking wash-bowl which stood in the corner of the
+room, without a pitcher, were probably for the accommodation of
+the Madame and the lady with the comb. On the shabby lounge sat a
+stolid-looking Irish girl, who was waiting her turn to have her
+fortune told. Having fully comprehended the room and everything
+in it, the visitor turned his attention to literary pursuits, and
+thoroughly perused an odd copy of a newspaper that lay invitingly
+on the table.
+
+Visitors kept dropping in, mostly servant-appearing girls, though
+there were three women attired in silk and laces, who would have
+appeared respectable had their faces been hidden and their
+conversation been suppressed. The lady with the comb and the boy
+presently departed to some unknown region, and soon returned
+with a reinforcement of chairs and stools. The number of visitors
+increased, until, besides the original stranger, nine were
+waiting. Among others, there came, in a friendly way, but still
+with a sharp eye to business, a tall woman, attired in a red
+dress and a purple bonnet, who is the keeper of a well-known
+house in Sullivan street, and whose name is not strange to the
+police. An unrestrained business conversation ensued between her
+and the heroine of the comb, which must have been interesting to
+the female listeners.
+
+One hour and eleven minutes did the Cash Customer patiently wait
+before he was admitted to the mysterious conference with the
+queen of magic. At last, after the man who was at first closeted
+with her had concluded his inquiries, and the stolid Irish girl
+had been disposed of, the woman with the suggestive bust beckoned
+the long-suffering and patient man to follow, and he fearfully
+entered the sanctum.
+
+The room of conjuration was a closet, dark and dirty, and was
+lighted by one tallow candle, stuck in a Scotch ale bottle. A
+number of shabby dresses, bony petticoats, and other mysterious
+articles of women's gear, hung upon the walls; two weak-kneed
+chairs, a tattered bit of carpet upon about two feet square of
+the floor, and a little table covered with a greasy oilcloth,
+composed the furniture of the mystic cell. The cabalistic
+paraphernalia was limited, there being nothing but a dirty pack
+of double-headed cards, a small pasteboard box with some scraps
+of paper in it, and two kinds of powder in little bottles, like
+hair-oil pots.
+
+Madame Lent is a woman of medium height, about thirty-five years
+of age, with light-grey eyes, false teeth, a head nearly bald,
+and hair, what there is of it, of a bright red. Her manner is
+hurried and confused, and she has a trick of drawing her upper
+lip disagreeably up under the end of her nose, which labial
+distortion she doubtless intends for a smile.
+
+She was robed in a bright-colored plaid dress, a dirty lace
+collar, and a coarse woollen shawl over her shoulders. Motioning
+her visitor to one chair, she instantly seated herself in the
+other, and, without demanding pay in advance, commenced
+operations. She handed the cards to be cut, and then laying them
+out in their piles, uttered the following sentences:
+
+"I see that your fortune has been and is quite a curious one.
+Your cards run rather mixed up, you have been very much worried
+in your head, you were born under two planets, which means that
+you have seen a great deal of trouble in your younger days, but
+you are now getting over it and your cards run to better luck,
+but it is rather mixed up, your cards run to a lady, she is
+light-haired and blue-eyed, but she is jealous of you, for
+sometimes you treat her more kinder and sometimes more harsher,
+and just now she is in trouble and very much mixed up about you.
+There is a man of black hair and eyes, a dark-_complected_ man
+who pretends to be your friend and is very fair to your face, but
+you must beware of him, for he is your secret enemy and will do
+you an injury if he can; he is trying to get the lady, but I
+don't think he'll do it, though I don't know, for the thing is
+so much mixed up--he has deceived you, and the lady has deceived
+you, they have both deceived you, but now they have got mixed up,
+and she turns from him with scorn, and seems to like you the
+best--I don't exactly see how it all is, for it seems rather mixed
+up like--you must persevere, you must coax her more; you can coax
+her to do anything, but you can't drive her any more than you can
+drive that wall--always treat her more kinder and never more
+harsher, and she will soon be yours entirely--beware of the
+dark-complected man; you must not talk so much and be so open in
+your mind, and above all don't talk so much to the dark-complected
+man, for he seems to worry you, and your affairs and his are all
+mixed up like."
+
+Here her auditor expressed a desire to know something definite
+and certain about his future wife, whereupon the red-haired
+prophetess shuffled the cards again with the following result:
+
+"You will have but one more wife. She will be good and true, and
+will not be mixed up with any dark-complected man. She will be
+rich and you will be rich, for your business cards run very
+smooth, but your marriage cards do not run very close to you, and
+you will not be married for six or eight months; you will have
+three children; you will see your future wife within nine hours,
+nine days, or nine weeks; do not blame me if it runs into the
+tens, but I tell you it will fall within the nines. Another man
+is trying to get her away from you, he is a light-complected man,
+he has had some influence over her, but she now turns from him
+with disdain, and she will be yours and yours only--things are a
+little worried and mixed up now, but she will be yours and yours
+only, the light-complected man can't hurt you. I have something
+that I can give you that will make her love you tender and true;
+it will force her to do it and she won't have no power to help
+herself, but you can do with her just what you please; I charge
+extra for that."
+
+Here was a chance to procure a love-philtre at a reasonable rate,
+and unless the dark woman kept that article ready made and done
+up in packages to suit customers, he could observe the terrible
+ceremonies with which it was prepared, listen to the spells and
+incantations with an attent eye, and take mental notes of all the
+mighty magic. The opportunity was too good to be lost, and he at
+once signified his desire to try a little of the extra witchcraft,
+and his willingness to draw on his purse for the requisite amount
+of ready cash to purchase this gratification of a laudable curiosity.
+
+Madame Lent now assumed an air of the most intense gravity, and
+shook into a very dirty bit of paper a little white powder from
+one of the pomatum pots, and a corresponding quantity of grayish
+powder from pot No. 2, and stirred them carefully together with
+the tip of her finger. When she had mixed them to her liking she
+folded the diabolical compound in a small paper. Then she
+prepared another mixture in the same manner, and made a pretence
+of adding another ingredient from a little pasteboard box, which
+probably hadn't had anything in it for a month. Folding this
+also in a paper she presented them both to her interested guest,
+with these directions:
+
+"You must shake some of the first powder on your true-love's
+head, or neck, or arms, if you can, but if you can't manage this,
+put it on her dress--the other powder you must sprinkle about your
+room when you go to bed to-night--this will draw her to you, and
+she will love you and you alone and can't help herself; this will
+surely operate, if it don't, come and tell me."
+
+One more cabalistic performance and the hocus-pocus was ended.
+She desired her customer to give her the first letter of his true
+love's name. He, unabashed by the unexpected demand, with great
+presence of mind promptly invented a sweetheart on the spot, and
+extemporized a name for her before the question was repeated.
+Then the mysterious Madame required his own initial, which, being
+obtained, she wrote the two on slips of paper with some mystic
+figures appended, in manner following. E., 17; M., 24. Then she
+shiveringly whispered:
+
+"You must do as I told you with the powders before eleven o'clock
+to-night, for between the hours of eleven and twelve I shall boil
+your name and hers in herbs which will draw her to you, and she
+can't help herself but will be tender and true, and will be yours
+and yours only. When she is drawed to you then you must marry
+her."
+
+The anxious inquirer promised obedience, and agreed to give the
+powders as per prescription, before the midnight cookery should
+commence, paid his dollar (fifty cents for the consultation and a
+like sum for the love-powders), and made his exit with a
+comprehensive bow, which included the Madame, the bony petticoats,
+the beer-bottle, and the fast-vanishing remains of the single
+tallow-candle in one reverential farewell.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Wherein are inscribed all the particulars of a visit to the
+"Gipsy Girl," of No. 207, Third Avenue, with an allusion to Gin,
+and other luxuries dear to the heart of that beautiful Rover.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+THE GIPSY GIRL.
+
+
+There is much less affectation of high-flown and lofty-sounding
+names among the ladies of the black-art mysteries, than might
+very naturally be expected. Most of them are content with plain
+"Madame" Smith, or unadorned "Mrs." Jones, and "The Gipsy Girl"
+is almost the only exception to this rule that is to be
+encountered among all the fortune-tellers of the city.
+
+This arises from no poverty of invention on their part, but from
+a sound conviction that in this case, simplicity is an element of
+sound policy. There has been no lack of "mysteriously gifted
+prophetesses," and of "astonishing star readers;" there have
+been, I believe, within the last few years, a "Daughter of
+Saturn," and a "Sorceress of the Silver Girdle;" and once the
+"Queen of the Seven Mysteries" condescended to sojourn in Gotham
+for five weeks, but on the whole it has been found that a more
+modest title pays better. To be sure, the "Daughter of Saturn"
+was tried for conspiring with two other persons to swindle an old
+and wealthy gentleman out of seventeen hundred dollars, and the
+"Queen of the Seven Mysteries" was dispossessed by a constable
+for non-payment of rent; and these untoward circumstances may
+have acted as a "modest quencher" on the then growing disposition
+to indulge in fantastic and romantic appellations.
+
+At this present time "The Gipsy Girl" enjoys almost a monopoly of
+this sort of thing, and she is by no means constant to one name,
+but sometimes announces herself as "The Gipsy Woman," "The Gipsy
+Palmist," and "The Gipsy Wonder," as her whim changes.
+
+This woman has not been in New York years enough to become
+complicated in as many rascalities as some of her elder sisters
+in the mystic arts, but her surroundings are of a nature to
+indicate that she has not been backward in her American education
+on these points. She has not been remarkably successful in making
+money, as a witch; not having been educated among the strumpets
+and gamblers of the city she lacked that extensive acquaintance
+on going into business, that had secured for her rivals in trade
+such immediate success. Her fondness for gin has also proved a
+serious bar to her rapid advancement, and has given not a few of
+her customers the idea that she is not so eminently trustworthy
+as one having the control of the destinies of others should be.
+In fact, she loves her enemy, the bottle, to that extent, that
+she has many times permitted her devotion to it to interfere
+seriously with her business, leading her to disappoint customers.
+The quality of her sober predictions is about the same as that of
+others in the same profession, but her intoxicated foretellings
+are deserving of a chapter to themselves, and they shall have it,
+for from force of peculiar circumstances, which will be
+explained hereafter, the Cash Customer made three visits to this
+celebrated woman. Her first address was 207 3d Avenue, between
+Eighteenth and Nineteenth Streets.
+
+The Gipsy Girl! How romantically suggestive was this feminine
+phrase to the fancy of an enthusiastic reporter. Was it then,
+indeed, permitted that he should know Meg Merrilees in private
+life? His heart danced at the poetic possibility, and his heels
+would have extemporized a vigorous hornpipe but that his
+saltatory ardor was quenched by the depressing sturdiness of
+cow-hide boots. With the most pleasing anticipations he perused
+the subjoined advertisement again and again, and looked to the
+happy future with a joyful hope.
+
+     "A Wonder--The Gipsy Girl.--If you wish to know all the
+     secrets of your past and future life, the knowledge of
+     which may save you years of sorrow and care, don't fail
+     to consult the above-named palmist. Charge 50 cents.
+     The Gipsy has also on hand a secret which will enable
+     any lady or gentleman to win or obtain the affections
+     of the opposite sex. Charge extra. No. 207 3d av.,
+     between 18th and 19th sts."
+
+How the knowledge of all the secrets of his past life was to save
+him years of sorrow and care at this late day he could not
+exactly comprehend, and was willing to pay fifty cents for the
+information. And then wasn't it worth half a dollar to see a live
+gipsy? Of course it was.
+
+Kettles, camp-fires, white tents under green trees, indigenous
+brown babies and exotic white ones, with a panorama of empty
+cradles and mourning mothers in the distance, moonlight nights,
+midnight foraging excursions, expeditions against impertinent
+game-keepers, demonstrations against hen-roosts--successful by
+masterly generalship and pure strategic science--and the midnight
+forest cookery of contraband game, surreptitious pigs and
+clandestine chickens--were among the romantic ideas of a
+delightful vagabond gipsy life that at once suggested themselves
+to the mind of the Cash Customer. He did not really expect to
+find the Third-Avenue gipsy camped out under a bed-quilt tent in
+the lee of the house, or cooking her dinner in an iron pot over
+an out-door fire in the back yard, but he had a vague undefined
+hope that there would be some visible indications of gipsy life,
+if it was nothing more than the pawn-tickets for stolen spoons.
+
+He thought to find at least one or two beautiful babies knocking
+about, decorated with coral necklaces and golden clasps,
+suggestive of rich parents and better days, and had firmly
+resolved to send the little innocents to the alms-house by way of
+improving their condition. Full of these romantic notions, the
+reporter started on his philanthropic mission, taking the
+preliminary precaution of leaving at home his watch and
+pocket-book, and carrying with him only small change enough to
+pay the advertised charges.
+
+In one of those three-story brick houses so abounding in this
+city, which seem to have been built by the mile and cut off in
+slices to suit purchasers, in the Third Avenue above Eighteenth
+Street, dwelt at that time the gay Bohemian. The building in
+which she lived, though three stories in height, is very short
+between joints, which style of architecture makes all the rooms
+low and squat, as if somebody had shut the house into itself like
+a telescope, and had never pulled it out again.
+
+Out of the chimney, which was the little end of the telescope,
+issued a sickly smoke; and through a door in the lower story,
+which was the big end thereof, was the stranger admitted by a
+little girl. This girl was, probably, a pure article of gipsy
+herself originally, but had been so much adulterated by partial
+civilization that she combed her hair daily and submitted to
+shoes and stockings without a murmur. Ragged indeed was this
+reclaimed wanderer; saucy and dirty-faced was this sprouting
+young maiden, but she was sharp-witted, and scented money as
+quickly as if she had been the oldest hag of her tribe; so she
+asked her customer to walk up stairs, which he did. She herself
+went up stairs with a skip and a whirl, showed her visitor into
+the grand reception room with a gyrating flourish, and disappeared
+in a "courtesy" of so many complex and dizzy rotations that she
+seemed to the eyes of the bewildered traveller to evaporate in a
+red flannel mist. As soon as she had spun herself out of sight he
+recovered his presence of mind and looked about him.
+
+The romantic gipsy who sojourned here had tried to furnish her
+rooms like civilized people, doubtless out of respect to her many
+patrons. A thread-bare carpet was under foot; a little parlor
+stove with a little fire in it was standing on a little piece of
+zinc, and did its little utmost to heat the room; an uncomfortable
+looking sofa covered with shabby and faded red damask graced one
+side of the apartment, and a lounge, of curtailed dimensions,
+partially covered with shreds of turkey red calico, adorned
+another side.
+
+This latter article of furniture, with its tattered cover,
+through which suspicious bits of curled hair peeped out, and wide
+crevices in its rickety frame were plainly visible, looked much
+too suggestive of cockroaches and other insect delicacies of the
+season to be an inviting place of repose.
+
+Three chairs were dispersed throughout the room, on one of which
+the reporter bestowed himself, and the rest of the furniture
+consisted of a table, so exceedingly shaky and sensitive in the
+joints that it might have been the grim skeleton of some former
+table, loosely hung together with unseen wires; and a cheap
+looking-glass that had suffered so serious a comminuted fracture
+as to be past all surgery--this was all except some little plaster
+images of saints, strangers to the Cash Customer, and a black
+rosary, which article would seem to show that efforts had been
+put forth to Christianize this nut-brown gipsy maid.
+
+A clinking of glasses was heard in the adjoining apartment, then
+the door was opened with an independent flirt, and the gay
+Bohemian appeared on the scene.
+
+If it were desired to fancy visions of enchanting loveliness it
+would be necessary to insert therein other ingredients than the
+gipsy girl of the Third Avenue; alone she would be insufficient;
+too much would be left to the imagination; and in any event the
+illusion would be too great to last long.
+
+She is of medium height, her eyes are brown and bright, and her
+hands are very large and red. She has no hair, but wears a
+scratch red wig, which gives her head a utilitarian character.
+Her face is deeply pitted with the small-pox, more than
+pitted--gullied, scarred, and seamed, as though some jealous rival
+had been trying to plough her complexion under; little short
+light hairs are thinly scattered on her cheek bones and upper
+lip, and in the shadows of the little ridges that disease had
+left, irresistibly compelling the mind to make an absurd
+comparison of her face with a sterile field, and imagine that at
+some past day it had been spaded up to plant a beard, which had
+only grown in scanty patches, here and there. Her nails were
+horny and ill-shaped, and underneath them and at their roots were
+large deposits of dirt and other fertilizing compounds, under the
+stimulating influence of which they had grown lank and long. Her
+attire was a sort of cross between the picturesque wildness of
+the gipsy, and the more civilized and unbecoming dress of Third
+Avenue Christians.
+
+She was apparelled, principally, in a red flannel jacket, and a
+check handkerchief, which was passed under her chin and tied on
+the top of her wig, where the knot looked like a blue butterfly.
+There was a gown, but a series of subsoiling experiments would
+have been necessary to determine the material and texture; the
+surface was palpably dirt. Accompanying her there was a strong
+smell of gin, and from the odor of the liquor the visitor judged
+that it was a very poor article.
+
+This gay old gipsy drew a chair to the table, and sat down, not
+in a graceful and composed manner, but more as if she had been
+dumped from a cart. She soon partially recovered herself, and
+straightened up slightly from the heap into which she had
+collapsed, and, turning her head away from her customer, she
+elaborately remarked: "Fifty cents and your left 'and."
+
+The Individual made a careful search for his small change, and
+fished out the exact amount which he promptly paid over.
+
+This delightful gipsy then took his left hand and looked at it
+for a minute in an imbecile kind of way, as if she didn't know
+exactly what to do with it, and was undecided whether it was to
+be made into soup, or she was to drink it immediately with warm
+water and a little sugar. This last impression evidently
+prevailed, for she tried to pour it into her apron, and only
+recovered from her delusion when the fingers tangled themselves
+up in the strings. Then a glimmering of the true state of the
+case seemed to dawn upon her, and she began to have a dim idea
+that she was expected to say something.
+
+Now the roving gipsy was not by any means intoxicated at this
+time; that is to say, she may have been partaking of gin, or gin
+and water, or may have been sucking sugar that had gin on it, or
+she may have been taking a little gin and peppermint for a
+stomach-ache, or she may have been bathing her head in gin, or
+have been otherwise making use of that potent remedy as a
+medicine, but she was by no means a subject for official
+interference in case she had wandered into the street, but she
+was, to tell the truth, not in her most clear-headed condition;
+although probably she did not see more than one Cash Customer
+sitting solemnly before her, still that one was quite as many as
+she could well manage at that time.
+
+After the signal failure of her little demonstration on the hand
+of her guest, she, by a strong effort, seemed to concentrate her
+faculties, and after several trials she roused herself and spoke
+as follows, emphasizing the short words with spiteful vindictiveness,
+and paying the most particular attention to the improper aspiration
+of the h's.
+
+"You _are_ a person as _has_ seen a great deal _of_ dif--"
+
+The gay Bohemian here evidently desired to say "difficulty," but
+the word was a sad stumbling-block, a four-syllable rock ahead
+which was too much for her powers in her then exhausted state of
+mind; she charged on the unfortunate word boldly, however, and
+tried to carry it by storm, but each time was repulsed with great
+loss of breath--"a great deal of dif--dif--dif--diffle"--it was no
+use, so she tried back and began again.
+
+"You _are_ a man as _has_ seen a great deal of _diffleculency_,"
+was what she said, but it didn't seem to satisfy her, so she
+tried again, and after a number of trials she hit a happy medium
+between "_dif_" and "_diffleculency_" and compromised on
+"_difflety_," which useful addition to the language she took
+occasion to repeat as often as possible with an air of decided
+triumph.
+
+"You _are_ a man as _has_ seen a great deal of difflety _and_
+trouble--I would not go _to_ say you 'ave been through too much
+difflety _and_ trouble, still you 'ave seen difflety _and_
+trouble. If you had been a luckier man _in_ your past life you
+_would_ not 'ave seen _so_ much difflety and trouble, still you
+_'ave_ seen difflety _and_ trouble--I 'ope you will not see so
+much difflety _and_ trouble _in_ the future--Life: you _will_ live
+long; you will live _to_ be 69 years of _hage and will_ die of a
+lingering disease--you _will_ be sick for a long time, and _will_
+not suffer much difflety and trouble--sixty-nine years of _hage_
+you _will_ live to be--Death: don't think _of_ death; that is
+_too_ far hoff a you _to_ think of--but you _will_ die when you
+_are_ 69 years of hage, and you _may_ 'ope to go right hup to
+'eaven, for you _will_ 'ave no more difflety and trouble
+then--Money: you _will_ 'ave money, and you _will_ 'ave plenty of
+money, but you must not look for money until _you_ 'ave reached
+your middle _hage_--a distant Hinglish relative of yours _will_
+leave you money, but you _will_ 'ave difflety _and_ trouble in
+getting it; do not hexpect _to_ get _this_ money without
+difflety, no do not cherish _such_ a 'ope--hit _will_ be _in_ the
+'ands of a man who wont hanswer your letters nor take notice of
+your happlications, you _will_ 'ave _to_ cross the hocean
+yourself; this money _will_ be a good deal of money _and_ will
+make _you_ 'appy for the rest _of_ your days--Business: you _will_
+thrive in business, you _will_ never be hunfortunate in business,
+you _will_ 'ave luck in business, you will always _do_ a good
+business, may hexpect to make money _by_ large speculations in
+business; difflety _and_ trouble in business you _will_ not
+know--Great Troubles: you need not hexpect to 'ave many great
+troubles _for_ you will not; you 'ave 'ad your great troubles
+_in_ your hearly days--Sickness: you _will_ never see no sickness,
+'ave no fear of sickness for you _will_ not see none; sickness,
+do not care for it and make your mind _heasy_--Friends: you 'ave
+_got_ many friends, both 'ere and helsewhere, your friends _will_
+be 'appy and you will be 'appy, there will be no difflety _and_
+trouble between you, you 'ave 'ad trouble with your friends, but
+you face brighter days, be 'appy--Wives: you _will_ 'ave _but_ one
+wife; in the third month _from_ now you _will_ 'ear from 'er, you
+_will_ get a letter from 'er, and in the fourth month you _will_
+be married--she is not particularly 'andsome, nor she _is_ not
+specially hugly, she 'as got blue heyes and brown 'air, _is_
+partickler fond of 'ome and is now heighteen years of hage--'Appiness:
+you _will_ be the 'appiest people in _all_ the land, you can't
+himagine the 'appiness you _will_ 'ave--Children: you _will_ 'ave
+three children, after you are married you _will_ see no more
+difflety _and_ trouble; you _will_ die _in_ a foreign land
+across the hocean but you _will_ die 'appy. 'Ope for 'appiness
+and 'ave _no_ huneasiness."
+
+Thus prophesied the gay Bohemian, the nut-brown maid, the
+dark-eyed oracle, the wise charmer, the female seer, the
+beautiful sibyl, the lovely enchantress, the romantic "gipsy
+girl" of the Third Avenue.
+
+Romance and poesy were effectually demolished by the overpowering
+realities of dirt, vulgarity, cockneyism, ignorance, scratch-wigs,
+bad English, and bad gin. Sadly the Individual walked down stairs
+behind the gyrating girl, who reappeared with an agile pirouette,
+twirled down on her toes, and opened the door with a dizzy
+revolution that made her look as if her head and shoulders had
+got into a whirlpool of petticoats, and were past all hope of
+mortal rescue. The little chink, as of a bottle and glass, came
+faintly from the apartment which is the home of the gipsy, and
+the individual fancied that the gay Bohemian had returned to her
+devotions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Contains a true account of the Magic Establishment of Mrs.
+Fleury, of No. 263 Broome Street, and also shows the exact
+quantity of Witchcraft that snuffy personage can afford for one
+Dollar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+MADAME FLEURY, No. 263 BROOME STREET.
+
+
+From what the reader has already perused of the predictions and
+prophecies of these modern dealers in magic, he will hardly think
+them of a character to inspire any great degree of confidence in
+the minds of people of ordinary common sense. Still less will he
+be disposed to believe that merchants of "credit and renown;"
+business men, engaged in occupations, the operations of which are
+presumed to be governed by the nicest mathematical calculations,
+are ever so far influenced by the miserable jargon of these
+"fortune-tellers," as to seriously consult them in business
+matters of great importance.
+
+Such, however, is the humiliating truth.
+
+There are in New York city a number of merchants, bankers,
+brokers, and other persons eminent in the business world, and
+respectable in all social relations, who never make an important
+business move in any direction, until after consultation with one
+or another of the Witches of New York.
+
+There are many who are regular periodical customers, and who
+visit the shrine of the oracle once a month, or once in six
+weeks, as regularly as they make out their balance-sheets, or
+take an account of stock, and who guide their future investments
+and business ventures as much by the written fifty-cent prophecy
+as by either of the other documents.
+
+Many country merchants have also learned this trick, and some of
+them are in constant correspondence with the cheap sybils of
+Grand Street; and others, when they come to the city for their
+stock of goods for the next half year, visit their chosen
+fortune-teller and get full and explicit directions how to
+conduct their business for the coming six months. Of course,
+these proceedings are conducted with the greatest possible
+secrecy, and the attention of the writer was first awakened to
+this fact by the indiscreet boastings of certain ones of the
+witches themselves, who are not a little proud of their
+influence, and after observations afforded ample proof and
+corroboration of all he had been told.
+
+Great money enterprises have without doubt been seriously
+affected by the yea or nay of the Bible and key, and perhaps the
+Atlantic Cable Company would have received more hearty assistance,
+and its stock more extensive subscriptions in Wall Street, if
+certain ones of the fortune-tellers had possessed more faith in
+its success, and had so advised their patrons.
+
+Incredible as these statements may seem, they are nevertheless
+true, and this fact is another proof that gross superstition is
+not confined to the low and filthy parts of the city, where rags
+and dirt are the universal rule, but that it has likewise a
+thrifty growth in quarters of the town where stand the palaces of
+the "merchant princes," and in avenues where rags are almost
+unknown, and broadcloth, and gold, and fine-twined linen are the
+common wear.
+
+It is said that certain counsel eminent in the learned profession
+of the law, and that certain even of the judges of the bench,
+have been known to consult the female practicers of the Black
+Art, but the author has never been personally cognizant of a case
+of this kind, and has no means of knowing whether the consultation
+was intended to benefit the lawyer or the witch; whether the
+former desired enlightenment as to the management of some knotty
+professional point, or whether the latter wanted legal advice as
+to some of the side branches of her business.
+
+_Mrs. Fleury_, whose domicile and mode of procedure are described
+in this present chapter, has a large run of this sort of what may
+be termed _respectable_ custom, and she does not fail to profit
+by it to the utmost. She came to New York, from France, about six
+or seven years ago, and at once established herself in the witch
+business, which she could advertise extensively in the papers,
+although the other branches of her profession, by which she
+probably makes more money than by telling fortunes, would by no
+means bear newspaper publicity. What these other branches are,
+is more explicitly stated in other chapters of this book, and, in
+fact, needs to be but hinted at, to be at once understood by
+nearly all who read.
+
+Madame Fleury advertised the world of her arrival in America, and
+of her supernatural powers, and in a short time customers began
+to flock in. It is now her boast that she has as "respectable a
+connexion" as any one in the trade, and that she has as great a
+number of "regular, reliable customers," as any conjuress in
+America. She says that most of her "regular customers" visit her
+once in six weeks, six being with her a favorite number, and she
+not undertaking to guarantee her _business_ predictions for a
+greater length of time.
+
+Whether she makes any discount from her ordinary prices to these
+regular traders, she did not state, but probably witchcraft is
+governed by the same rule as other commodities, and comes cheaper
+to wholesale dealers.
+
+Duly armed and equipped with staff and scrip, and duly fortified
+within by such stimulants as the exigencies of the case seemed
+to demand, the Cash Customer set out for 263 Broome Street, and
+after strict trial and due examination of the premises and the
+people, he made the following report.
+
+It was a favorite remark of a learned though mistaken philosopher
+of the olden time, that "you can't make a whistle of a pig's
+tail." The philosopher died, but his saying was accepted by the
+world as an axiom--a bit of incontrovertible truth, eternal,
+Godlike, fully up to par, worth a hundred per cent., with no
+possibility of discount. Time, however, which often demonstrates
+the fallibility of human wisdom, has not spared even this
+oft-quoted adage; and now there is not a collection of curiosities
+in the land which lacks a pig-tail whistle to proclaim in the
+shrillest tones the falsity of the wise man's proposition, and
+the triumph of Yankee ingenuity. Had this same philosopher been
+interrogated on the subject, he would undoubtedly have announced,
+and with an equal show of probability on his side of the
+argument, that "you can't make a star-reading prophetess out of a
+snuffy old woman;" but had he lived to the present day, the Cash
+Customer would have taken great pleasure in exhibiting to him
+these two apparently irreconcilable characters combined in a
+single person, and that person Mrs. Fleury, who pays for the
+daily insertion of the following advertisement in the newspapers.
+
+     "ASTROLOGY.--MRS. FLEURY, from Paris, is the most
+     celebrated lady of the present age, in telling future
+     events, true and certain. She answers questions on
+     business, marriage, absent friends, &c., by magnetism.
+     Office No. 263 Broome-st."
+
+There is not so much of promise in this paragraph, as there is in
+some of the more grandiloquent announcements of the other
+witches--not probably, that Madame Fleury is any less pretentious
+than they, but her knowledge of the English language is not
+perfect enough to enable her to give her ideas their full effect.
+
+The Cash Customer resolved to visit this "most celebrated lady of
+the age," who had come all the way from Paris, to tell his
+"future events true and certain," nothing daunted by the
+circumstance that she lives in the filthiest part of Broome
+Street, which has never been swept clean since it was a very new
+Broome indeed.
+
+If our fancy farmers, who expend so much money upon the various
+foreign manures and fertilizing compounds, would but turn their
+eyes in the direction of Broome Street, a single glance would
+convince them of the inexhaustible resources of their own
+country, while guano would instantly depreciate in value, and the
+island of Ichaboe not be worth a quarrel. This prolific and
+valuable deposit that covers Broome Street bears perennial crops:
+in the spring and summer, dirty-faced children and mean-looking
+dogs seem to spring from it spontaneously; they are succeeded
+during the colder weather by a crop of tumble-down barrels, and
+cast-away broken carts; while the humbler and more insignificant
+things, the uncared for weeds, so to speak, of the abundant
+harvest, such as potato parings, and fish heads, and shreds of
+ragged dish-cloths, and bits of broken crockery, and old bones,
+are in season all the year round.
+
+In the midst of this filth, with policy-shops adjacent, and
+pawnbrokers' offices close at hand, and rum shops convenient in
+the neighborhood--where the reeking streets and stagnant gutters,
+and the heaps of decomposing garbage, send up a stench so thick
+and heavy that it beslimes everything it touches, and makes a man
+feel as if he were far past the saving powers of soap and soft
+water, and was fast dissolving into rancid lard oil--in this
+congenial atmosphere flourishes the prophetess, and here is found
+the mansion of Mrs. Fleury, "the most celebrated lady of the age
+in telling future events." Her mansion is not one that would be
+selected as a permanent residence by any one with a superabundance
+of cash capital, nor did it seem quite suited to the deservings
+of the "most celebrated lady of the present age;" the house, a
+three-story brick, originally intended to be something above the
+common, has been for so many years misused and badly treated by
+reckless tenants, that it has completely lost its good temper, as
+well as its good looks, and is now in a perpetual state of
+aggravated sulkiness. It resents the presence of a stranger as
+an impertinent intrusion, and avenges the personality in various
+disagreeable ways. It twitches its rickety stairways impatiently
+under his feet, as if to shake him off and damage him by the
+fall--it viciously attempts to pinch and jam his fingers with
+moody dogged doors, which hold back as long as they can, and then
+close with a sudden snap, exceedingly dangerous to the unwary--it
+tears his clothes with ambushed rusty nails, and unsuspected
+hooks, and sharp and jagged splinters--it creaks its floors under
+his tread with a doleful whine, and complains of his cruel
+treatment in sharp-pointed, many-cornered tears of plaster, which
+it drops from the ceiling upon his head the instant he takes his
+hat off--it yawns its wide cellar doors open like a greedy mouth,
+evidently hoping that an unlucky step will pitch him headlong
+down--and it conducts itself in a thousand ill-natured ways like a
+sulky child that has been waked up too early in the morning, and
+not properly whipped into good behavior. The Individual, however,
+entered the doors, unabashed by the malignant scowl which was
+visible all over the face of the unamiable mansion, and stumbled
+through a narrow, dirty hall, up two flights of groaning stairs,
+before he discovered any sign of the whereabouts of Madame. She
+evidently did not occupy the entire of this sulky edifice, or he
+would have seen some of the servants or retainers, who would have
+been only too happy to direct him to the head-quarters of the
+sorceress. But the few people he saw about the place seemed to be
+each one occupied with his or her own private affairs, and to be
+too much taken up therewith to pay the slightest attention to the
+new-comer. Their attentions to each other were confined to reproaches,
+uncomplimentary assertions, and sundry maledictory remarks, accompanied,
+in case of the younger members of the various tribes, with pinches,
+pokes, punches, and small but frequent showers of brickbats.
+
+The Individual disregarded these evidences of good feeling, not
+considering himself called upon to reply to any which were not
+addressed to him individually, and plodded on till his roving
+eye rested on a tin sign, on which was inscribed, "Madame Fleury,
+Room No. 4." There were no mysterious emblems or cabalistic
+flourishes accompanying this simple announcement.
+
+He pulled the knob and the door was instantly opened by the lady
+herself, so quickly that the bell had no time to ring until all
+necessity for it was over--she had evidently heard the advancing
+footsteps of her customer, and had stood ready to pounce upon
+him. She ushered him into the apartment, where he soon recovered
+his self-possession, and took an observation.
+
+The room was a small square one, shabbily furnished with very few
+articles of furniture, and these were dimly visible through the
+snuffy mist which filled the apartment; there was snuff
+everywhere; there was a snuffy dust on the chairs; there was a
+precipitate of snuff on the floor, and, if snuff was capable of
+crystallization, there would undoubtedly have been stalactitic
+formations of snuff depending from the ceiling; the Madame
+herself was snuff-colored, as if she had been boiled in a
+decoction of tobacco.
+
+She is a Frenchwoman, and has had about half a century's
+experience of her present fleshly tabernacle, which is somewhat
+the worse for wear, although from the fossil remains of bygone
+beauty, still visible in her ancient countenance, her customer
+inclined to the belief that in some remote age she was comely and
+pleasant to the eye. He founded this hypothesis upon the brown
+hair and hazel eyes which time has spared.
+
+In respect to personal cleanliness, the Individual regrets to say
+that the Madame was not in every respect what a critical observer
+would wish to see; her hands and arms were in a condition which
+would naturally lead to the belief that the Croton Corporation
+had cut off the water; and under each of her finger-nails was a
+dark-colored deposit, which may have been snuff, but looked like
+something dirtier. She was dressed in a light striped calico
+dress, over which was a black velvet mantle trimmed with fur,
+and on her head was a portentous head-dress which was fearfully
+and wonderfully made of shabby black lace; her face was in the
+same condition as her hands and arms, as was also her neck, which
+was only visible to the upper edge of the collar-bone--further
+deponent saith not.
+
+She more nearly approached the Cash Customer's notion of the
+Witch of Endor, than any other lady he had ever heard mentioned
+in polite society. She at once prepared for business.
+
+She seated herself behind a small stand, dusty with snuff, on
+which were a number of little books on astrology, written in
+French and German, and as dirty and as fragrant as if they had
+been some kind of clumsy vegetable which had been grown in a
+tobacco plantation.
+
+She asked her visitor if he spoke French or German, to which he
+replied that, had he been conversant with all the languages
+invented at the Babel smash-up, he would on this occasion, for
+particular reasons, prefer to confine himself to English. He also
+ventured an inquiry as to terms, upon which she produced a card
+containing a list of her charges, printed in English, French, and
+German. He learned from this dingy document that the prices of
+telling fortunes by lines of the hand, by cards, and by the
+stars, varied in amount from one to five dollars. The Individual
+concluded that one dollar's worth would suffice, and, approaching
+the little table, he announced the result of his cogitations. The
+enchantress, who was so saturated with snuff and tobacco that
+every time her customer looked her in the face he sneezed, then
+brought a pack of very filthy cards, which were covered over with
+mysterious hieroglyphics done in black paint. She asked her
+visitor to "cut" them, which he reverently though daintily did,
+whereupon she laid them on the table before her in four rows, and
+spoke, having previously explained that she used no witchcraft
+but did all her wonders by the signs of the zodiac. The
+Individual concentrated his attention, and listened with all his
+ears while the witch of Broome Street spoke thus:
+
+"I will tell you first what these cards indicate, then I will
+look at the lines of your hand, and then I will answer three
+questions."
+
+Here she paused, while her agitated listener sneezed a couple of
+times; then she resumed, speaking with a strong foreign accent:
+
+"You are good disposition--have excellent memory, you don't have
+many enemy, but what you do is of your own sex--you are very frank
+person and you was born in the sign of the Crab. You have some
+lucky days which are Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays, whatever
+you do on these days is well, but you shall not wash your hair on
+Thursdays, if so, you will wash all your luck away. You must be
+very careful of fire and water, you will be in great danger of
+fire and water and you must be very careful. You may die by fire
+or water, I cannot say but you must certain be very careful of
+fire and water. You must also be very careful of dogs, very
+careful of dogs, you may die by a dog, but you must certain be
+very careful of dogs."
+
+Here she paused again, and while her visitor was meditating
+on the full force of what he had heard, and was inwardly
+resolving to go immediately home, shoot Juno, and drown her
+as-yet-unoffending-but-in-after-days-dangerous-to-his-peace-of-
+mind-and-the-happiness-of-his-life pups, she prepared for the
+second portion of her discourse.
+
+Taking the Individual's hand in hers, a proceeding which made him
+feel as if he had put his fingers into a bladder of Maccoboy, she
+made the following prediction: "You will be the father of five
+children, two of them will be boys, who will be a great comfort
+to you when you grow old."
+
+She spoke no good of the girls, and the customer foresaw feminine
+trouble in his household with those same young ladies. Having a
+few moments to himself before she resumed, he worked himself into
+a great passion with the ungrateful hussies who were about to
+treat their kind old father in so scandalous a manner; but
+presently recollecting that they were as yet in the condition of
+"your sister, Betsey Trotwood, who never was born," he felt that
+he was slightly premature in his wrath, so he cooled down and
+resolved to make the best of it with his comfortable boys.
+
+The yellow sorceress continued: "Your line of life is long, and
+you will live to a good old age. You have had much trouble in
+love affairs, and now your first love is entirely lost to you.
+You can never reclaim her, and you must never venture anything in
+lotteries."
+
+Whether Madame Fleury supposed that her visitor intended to spend
+his salary in lottery tickets, in the hope of winning back his
+early love, or whether she supposed that the woman then
+exhibiting herself as "Perham's Gift Lady," was the person, is
+not in evidence; but, from the peculiar construction of her last
+remark, something of the kind must have been in her thoughts. She
+had now reached the third part of her discourse, and come to the
+"three questions." She produced an old French Bible, dingy with
+age and snuff, and which she informed the observer had been in
+her family for three hundred years; an old iron key was tied
+between the leaves, with the ring and part of the shank of the
+key projecting, and the Bible was tightly bound round with many
+folds of black ribbon. Making her visitor hold one side of the
+ring of the key, while she held the other, she said: "Ask your
+three questions, and if they are to be answered in the affirmative
+the book will turn."
+
+The Individual, who had been much impressed by her canine
+observation of a few minutes before, and whose thoughts were
+still running upon his pet Juno, and her six innocent offspring,
+in a fit of absence of mind propounded this interrogatory:
+
+"Shall I marry the person of whom I am now thinking?" The potent
+enchantress repeated the question aloud in French, and then, with
+pale lips and trembling voice, she addressed the book and key
+thus:
+
+"Holy Bible, I ask you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and
+the Holy Ghost, will this man marry the person now in his
+mind?"--then she closed her eyes for a moment, placed one hand
+over her heart, and rapidly muttered something in so low a tone
+that it was inaudible to her listener. Immediately the Bible
+commenced to turn slowly towards her, and soon had made a
+complete revolution, thus expressing a very decided affirmative.
+
+Having started a matrimonial subject with so satisfactory a
+result, her customer thought he could do no better than to follow
+it up, and accordingly asked question No. 2:
+
+"If I marry this person, will the marriage be a happy one?" The
+same answer was given, in the same manner. Being now satisfied as
+to his own matrimonial prospects, he concluded to ascertain those
+of his children, and question No. 3 was asked, as follows:
+
+"Shall I live to see my children happily married?"
+
+There was a long delay, which was undoubtedly occasioned by the
+difficulty of properly providing for those refractory girls, but
+at last there came a reluctant "Yes."
+
+Having now got all that his dollar entitled him to, the customer
+prepared to depart. The Madame informed him that in a few days
+she would have her "_Magic Mirror_" from Paris, with which she
+could do new wonders, and she hoped that he would soon call
+again, adding, "If I was ten year younger I would not admit
+gentlemen, but now I am old and I must."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Describes an interview with the "Cullud" Seer, Mr. Grommer, of
+No. 34 North Second Street, Williamsburgh, and what that
+respectable Whitewasher and Prophet told his Visitor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+A BLACK PROPHET, MR. GROMMER, No. 34 NORTH SECOND STREET,
+WILLIAMSBURGH.
+
+
+Besides those who advertise in the daily journals, there are many
+other witches in and about the city who do not deign so to inform
+the world of their miraculous powers. Either they have not full
+faith in their own supernatural gifts, or they distrust the
+policy of advertising; at any rate they are only known to the
+inquiring stranger by accidental rumors, and mysterious
+side-whisperings emanating from those credulous ones who have had
+ocular proof of the miracle-working facility of these veiled
+prophets.
+
+In certain of the older States of the Union, there cannot
+probably be found any country village that does not boast its old
+crones of fortune-telling celebrity--women who are not named by
+the awe-struck youngsters of the town, but with low breath and a
+startled sort of look thrown backward over the shoulder every
+minute as if in half-fear that the evil eye is even there upon
+them. And in almost every neighborhood in any part of the
+country, there will be one or more old women who delight in
+mystifying the young folks by telling fortunes in tea-cups, by
+means of the ominous settling of the "grounds;"--or who,
+sometimes, even "run the cards," or aspire to read the fates by
+the portentous turning of the Bible and key. All these conjurations
+are given without money and without price in the rural districts,
+but they sometimes work no little mischief.
+
+There people do not advertise their willingness to read the
+fates, and only exercise their gifts in that direction as a
+matter of friendship to certain favored ones. The city and the
+suburbs are full of people of this kind, who profess to know the
+gift of prophecy and of miracles, but who do not make their whole
+living by the exercise of their supernatural powers, depending
+in part on some popular branch of industry. They differ, however,
+from their sisters of the country in this regard; whenever they
+do consent to do a little magic for the accommodation of an
+anxious inquirer, they are very careful to charge him a round
+price for it. Many of them combine fortune-telling with hard
+work, and do their full day's work of faithful toil at some
+legitimate employment, and in the evening amuse themselves with
+witchcraft.
+
+These are chrysalis witches; prophets in embryo; magicians in a
+state of apprenticeship; they are learning the trade, and as soon
+as they feel competent to do journey-work, they drop their hard
+labor, and at once set up for full-fledged witches or conjurors.
+
+Mr. Grommer, the Black Sage of Williamsburgh, and his solid and
+amiable wife, were in this half-way state when they were visited
+by the Cash Customer. Their fame had reached his ears by the
+means of some kind friends who were cognisant of his peculiar
+investigations at that time, and who told him of the supernatural
+gifts of this amiable old couple.
+
+Accordingly the Individual, having made exact inquiries as to
+their local habitation, one fine morning set out in pursuit, and
+in due time made up the following report. Since that time it is
+reported that this worthy pair have followed the law of
+progression hereinbefore hinted at, and having arrived at the
+fulness of all magical knowledge, have laid aside the whitewash
+pail and discarded the scrubbing-brush, and given their time
+entirely to the practice of the Black Art.
+
+The Individual beginneth his discourse thus:--
+
+It is an old saying, that "The Devil is never so black as he is
+painted." What may be the precise shade of the complexion of his
+amiable majesty the Cash Customer has no means of ascertaining to
+an exact nicety at this present time of writing; but he makes the
+positive assertion, that some of the Satanic human employees are
+so black as to need no painting of any description.
+
+Whether or not the ancient "wise men from the East" were swarthy
+skinned he is not competent to decide; but he is able to prove,
+by ocular demonstration, to an unbelieving sceptic, that some of
+the modern "wise men" are particularly "dark-complected."
+
+Mrs. Grommer, of No. 34 North Second Street, in the suburb of
+Williamsburgh, is a case in point. The fame of this illustrious
+ebony lady had gone abroad through the land, and her skill in
+prophecy had been vouched for by those who professed to have
+personal knowledge of the truthfulness of her predictions. But an
+air of mystery surrounded the sable sorceress, and it was
+declared to be impossible to obtain a knowledge of her exact
+whereabouts, except by a preliminary visit to a certain
+mysterious "cave," the locality of which was accurately
+described.
+
+A cave! this promised well; no other witches encountered by the
+Cash Customer, had he found in a cave, or in anything resembling
+that hollow luxury.
+
+A cave! the very word smacked of diabolism, and had the true
+flavor of genuine witchcraft. Our overjoyed hero thought of the
+Witch of Vesuvius in her mountain cavern--of her lank, grey, dead
+hair; her livid, corpse-like skin; her stony eye; her shrivelled,
+blue lips; her hollow voice, and her threatening arm, and skinny,
+menacing forefinger--of the red-eyed fox at her side, the crested
+serpent at her feet, the mystic lamp above her head, and the
+statue in the background, triple-headed with skulls of dog, and
+horse, and boar. Something of this kind he hoped to witness in
+the present instance, for he argued that any sorceress who lived
+in a cave must surely be supplied with some more cabalistic
+instruments with which to work her spells than greasy playing-cards
+or rusty brass door-keys. At last, then, he had discovered
+something in modern witchcraft worthy the ancient romance of the
+name. Triumphant and overjoyed, he prepared for the visit,
+confident in his ability to witness any spectacle, however
+terrible, without flinching, and in his courage to pass any
+ordeal, however fearful. He swallowed no countercharms or
+protective potions, and did not even take the precaution to sew
+a horse-shoe in the seat of his pantaloons.
+
+It is true he was rash, but much must be forgiven to youthful
+curiosity, especially when conjoined with professional ambition.
+The carelessness, in respect to his own safety, was productive of
+no ill effects, for he returned from this perilous excursion in
+every regard as good as he went. He had by this time entirely
+recovered from his matrimonial aspirations, and had given up all
+hope of a witch wife. Still, he hoped to find in the _cave_,
+something more worthy the ancient and honorable name of
+witchcraft than anything he had yet seen.
+
+Alas! for the uncertainty of mortal hopes. All is vanity, bosh,
+and botheration.
+
+On arriving at the enchanted spot, it soon became evident to the
+senses of our astonished friend that the "Cave" was not a cavern,
+fit for the habitation of a powerful sorceress, but was merely a
+mystifying cognomen applied to a drinking saloon with a billiard
+room attached, which had accommodations, also, for persons who
+wished to participate in other profane games.
+
+On entering the "Cave," your deluded customer saw no toothless
+hag with the expected witch-like surroundings, but observed only
+a company of men, seemingly respectable, indulging in plentiful
+potations of beer and certain other liquids, which appeared, at
+the distance from which he observed them, to be the popular
+compounds designated in the vulgar tongue as "whiskey toddies."
+Addressing the nearest bystander, the gulled Individual
+ascertained the habitation of Mrs. Grommer, and immediately
+departed in search of that interesting female.
+
+The way was crooked, as all Williamsburgh ways are, but after an
+irregular, curvilinear journey of half an hour, the anxious
+inquirer stood in front of the looked-for mansion.
+
+The grading of the street has left at this point a gravel bank
+some six or eight feet high, on the summit of which is perched
+the house of Mrs. Grommer, like a contented mud-turtle on a sunny
+stump. It is a one-story affair, with several irregular wings or
+additions sprouting out of it at unexpected angles, and, on the
+whole, it looks as if it had been originally built tall and slim
+like a tallow candle, but had melted and run down into its
+present indescribable shape. The architect neglected to provide
+this beautiful edifice with a front door, and the inquirer was
+compelled to ascend the bank by a flight of rheumatic steps, and
+make a grand detour through currant bushes, chickens, washtubs,
+rain-barrels, and colored children, irregular as to size, and
+variegated as to hue, to the back, and only door. Here his modest
+rap was unanswered, and he composedly walked in, unasked, through
+the kitchen, and took a seat in the parlor, where he was
+presently discovered by the lady of the house, but not until he
+had time to take an accurate observation.
+
+Mrs. Grommer had, up to this time, been engaged in making a
+public example of certain ones of her grandchildren, who had been
+trespassing on the currant bushes of a neighbor, and had been
+caught in the act. Their indulgent grandmother, being scandalized
+by this exhibition of youthful depravity, with a regard for the
+demands of strict justice that did her infinite credit, had
+inflicted on several of the delinquents that mild punishment
+known as "spanking." The novelty of the sight had drawn together
+quite a collection of the neighbors, who signified their approval
+of the deed by encouraging cheers.
+
+Meantime the Individual had ample time to contemplate the inside
+beauties of the mansion of the sable prophet. Mrs. Grommer soon
+finished her athletic exercise out-doors, and came into the house
+to rearrange her dress and receive her company.
+
+The reception-room was about 10 by 12, and so low that a tall man
+could not yawn in it without rapping his head against the
+ceiling. In places the plaster had been displaced and the bare
+lath showed through, reminding one of skeletons. The floor was
+dingily carpeted; a double bed occupied one side of the room, a
+small cooking-stove stood in the middle of the floor and had a
+disproportionately slim pipe issuing out of the corner, like a
+straw in a mint-julep; seven chairs of varied patterns, a small
+round table, on which lay a pack of cards covered with a cloth,
+and a tumble-down chest of drawers completed the necessary
+furniture of the apartment. The ornaments are quickly enumerated.
+A black wooden cross hung by the windows, a few cheap and gaudy
+Scriptural prints were fastened against the wall, a chemist's
+bottle, of large dimensions, and filled with a blue liquid,
+reposed on the chest of drawers, side by side with a few
+miniature casts of lambs and dogs; and on a little shelf stood a
+quarter-size plaster bust of some unknown worthy, of which the
+head had been knocked off and its place significantly supplied
+with a goose-egg.
+
+In a short time Mrs. Grommer emerged from an unlooked-for apartment
+and entered the room. She is a negress and a grandmother--her age is
+65, and a brood of children, together with a swarm of the
+aforesaid grandchildren, reside near at hand and keep the old
+lady's mansion constantly besieged.
+
+As to size--she is large, apparently solid, and would struggle
+severely with a 200 pound weight before she would acknowledge
+herself conquered. She was neatly attired, and, in fact, a most
+grateful air of cleanliness pervaded the entire establishment,
+and it was a refreshing contrast to most of the dens of the
+fairer-skinned witches heretofore encountered by the cash
+delegate.
+
+The sable one entered into conversation, and a few minutes were
+passed in cheerful chat, in the course of which she thus referred
+to the scapegrace husband of one of her numerous daughters: "They
+think Anson is dead, but I can't station him dead. I think he's
+at sea somewhere, or in a foreign land, but I can't station him
+dead. He might as well be under ground for all the good he is,
+for he is such a poor, mis'able, drinkin' feller that he aint no
+use, but, after all, I can't run him dead."
+
+At last, the object of the visit was mentioned, and, to the
+individual's great surprise, Mrs. Grommer positively and
+peremptorily refused to give him the benefit of her prophetic
+powers.
+
+She said: "It aint no use; I never does for gentlemen. I does
+sometimes for ladies, but I can't do it for gentlemen."
+Remonstrance and entreaty were alike useless; she was immovable.
+At last, she said she would call her "old man," who could tell
+fortunes as well as she could, but she added, with a determined
+shake of the head: "He'll do it, but he will charge you a dollar;
+and he wont do it under, neither." When her hearer expressed his
+willingness to learn his future fate by the masculine medium, she
+addressed him thus: "You station there, in that chair, and I'll
+send him." The disappointed one "stationed" in the designated
+chair, and awaited the coming of the "old man." He soon appeared
+and seated himself, ready to begin.
+
+"Old Man" Grommer is a professor of the whitewashing branch of
+decorative art. He occasionally relaxes his noble mind from the
+arduous mental labor attendant upon the successful carrying on of
+his regular business, and condescends to earn an easy dollar by
+fortune-telling. He is a shrewd-looking old man, with a dash of
+white blood in his composition; his hair curls tightly all over
+his head, but is elaborated on each side of his face into a
+single hard-twisted ringlet; short crisped whiskers, streaked
+with grey, encircle his face, and an imperial completes his
+hirsute attractions; his cheeks and forehead are marked with the
+small-pox.
+
+He was attired in a grey and striped dress, the peculiarity of
+which was that the coat and vest were bound with wide stripes of
+black velvet. He speaks with but little of the peculiar negro
+dialect, except when he forgets himself for an instant, and
+unguardedly relapses into the old habits, which he has evidently
+carefully endeavored to overcome. He looked at his visitor very
+sharply for a minute or two, while he pretended to be abstractedly
+shuffling the cards; and collecting his valuable thoughts, at
+last he remarked:
+
+"I s'pose you want me to run the cards for you?" The reply was in
+the affirmative, and the colored prophet concentrated his mind
+and began. Slowly he dealt the cards, and spake as follows:
+
+"You don't believe in fortunes, my son--I see that. Must tell you
+what I see here--can't help it--if I see it in the cards, must tell
+you. You've had great deal trouble, my son; more comin'. Can't
+help it; mus' tell you. I see trouble in de cards; I see razackly
+what it is."
+
+Here he suddenly stopped, and resuming his guarded manner,
+continued: "You've lost something, my son; something that you
+think a great deal of. Now I don't like to tell about lost
+things; I'se 'fraid I'll get myself into a snare; I'd rather not
+say nothing about it; fear I'll get myself into trouble." His
+auditor here gave him the most positive assurances that he should
+never be called into court to identify the thief of the missing
+article, and that he should be held free from all harm; whereupon
+he consented to impart the following information:
+
+"Dis thing you lost is something that hangs up on a
+nail--something bright and round--you thinks a great deal of it, my
+son--when it went away it had on a bright guard--hasn't got a
+bright guard on now; got a black guard--you see I knows all about
+de article, my son, and I can tell you razackly where de article
+is--but I'se rather not tell you 'bout it, my son; 'fraid I'll run
+myself into a snare; dat's the truth, my son, rather no say
+nothin' 'bout de article."
+
+Being again assured of safety, he went on: "Well, my son, I'll
+tell you 'bout this yer thing. Has you got any boys in yer
+employ? No. Got two girls have you? One of dem girls is
+light-haired and de other is dark--the light one is de one who
+comes in your room in your boarding-house every morning when
+you'se gone away--'cause you lives in a boardin' house, I sees
+that--can see it in the cards, can always tell razackly. If you
+make a fuss about dat article you make your landlady feel bad.
+You has accused somebody of taking that article, but you 'cused
+de wrong person. The light-haired girl is who's got that article.
+Can't help it, my son, must tell you--de light-haired girl is de
+person. Mebbe she's put it back, my son, I'll see."
+
+Here he cut the cards carefully, and continued:
+
+"There's trouble 'bout dat article, my son, can't help it, must
+tell you--but you'll get the article, but you'll have disappointment.
+Whenever you see dat card you may know there's disappointment
+comin'--dat card is always disappointment--can't help it, my son,
+must tell you." Here he exhibited the nine of spades, to the
+malignant influence of which he attributed the future woes of his
+hearer.
+
+"When you go home look in your bed between the mattresses and see
+if the article is there, for mebbe she'll put it back--if it aint
+there you must go to her and 'cuse her of it, 'cause it's in the
+house and she's got it--can't help it, my son, must tell you."
+
+It is perhaps needless to say that the customer had met with no
+loss of property, and that all this was entirely gratuitous on
+the part of Mr. Grommer. Having, however, settled the matter to
+his satisfaction, that gentleman turned his attention to other
+things, and in the intervals of repeated shufflings and cuttings
+of the cards he said:
+
+"Dere is a journey for you soon--and dis journey is going to be
+the best thing that ever happened to you--but dere is a little
+disappointment first--can't help it, my son, must tell--here you
+can see for yourself," and out came the malicious nine of spades
+again. "You will get money from beyond sea, my son--lots of money,
+lots of money, my son--here it is, you can see for yourself," and
+he exhibited the cheerful faces of the eight, nine, and ten of
+diamonds. "You will have disappointment before you get this
+money," and up came the hateful visage of the nine of spades once
+more. "You was born under a good star, my son--under a morning
+star--you was born under the planet Jupiter, my son, at 28 minutes
+past four in the morning--lucky star, my son, very lucky star. You
+are going to make a great change in your business, my son, which
+will be good; you will always be successful in business, but I
+think there is a little disappointment first; can't help it, must
+tell you." Here the listener looked for the nine of spades again,
+but it didn't come. "After a little while you turns your back on
+trouble; here, you can see for yourself--see, this is you."
+
+The king of clubs was the Individual at that instant, and the
+troubles upon which he turned his back are, as nearly as he can
+remember, the knave of clubs, the nine of spades, and the deuce
+of diamonds.
+
+The sage went on. "I'm comin' now to your marriage. You'se goin'
+to be married, but you'll have some disappointment first--can't
+help it, my son, must tell you. You see, here is a dark-complected
+lady that you like, and she has a heart for you, but her father
+don't like you--he prefers a young man of lighter complexion--see,
+here you all are, my son. This is you," and he showed the king of
+clubs--"and this is her." The "her" of whom he spoke so irreverently,
+was the queen of clubs. "This is the heart she has for you," and
+he exhibited the seven of that amorous suit. "This is her
+father"--the obstinate and cruel "parient" here displayed, was the
+king of spades--"and dis yer is de young man her father likes,"
+and he placed before the eyes of the customer a hated rival in
+the shape of the knave of diamonds. "You see how it is, my son,
+dere is trouble between you--can't help it. You may possibly marry
+de dark-complected lady yet, but don't you do it, my son, don't
+you do it--now mind I tell you, don't you do it--she is not the
+lady for you--can't help it, must tell you; if you marry dat lady
+you will be sorry dat you ever tie de knot. See, here is the
+knot," and he showed the ace of diamonds. "See, this is the lady
+you ought to marry," and he produced the queen of diamonds; "and
+she will be your second wife if you do marry de dark-complected
+lady, but you'd better marry her first if you can get her, and
+let de dark-complected lady go for ebber; dat's so, my son, now
+mind I tell you."
+
+He condescended no more, and the Cash Customer disbursed his
+dollar and departed, all the grandchildren gathering on the bank
+to give him three cheers as a parting salute.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+How the "Individual" calls on Madame Clifton, of No. 185 Orchard
+Street, and how that amiable and gifted "Seventh daughter of a
+seventh daughter," prophesies his speedy death and destruction,
+together with all about the "Chinese Ruling Planet Charm."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+MADAME CLIFTON, 185 ORCHARD STREET.
+
+
+Perhaps there is no class of men brought constantly and
+prominently before the public eye, that is so great a puzzle to
+that public, as the class popularly denominated "sporting men."
+There is not a corner on Broadway where they do not congregate;
+there is not a theatre where they do not abound, and there is not
+a concert-room that does not overrun with them. There is a
+uniformity in their appearance that makes them easily recognised,
+for they all affect the ultra stylish in costume, even to the
+extreme of light kid gloves in the street; they all have the
+crisp moustache, the smooth-shaven cheeks, and the same keen,
+ever-watchful eye, constantly on the look-out for a "customer,"
+that respectable word meaning, in their slang, a person to be
+victimized and swindled. Every lady who walks the street has to
+run the gauntlet of their insolent glances, and not unfrequently
+to hear their vulgar and offensive criticisms on her personal
+appearance; and every gentleman whose business calls him into
+Broadway of a pleasant day, has seen these persons grouped on the
+corner leisurely surveying the passers-by, or gathered into a
+little knot before some favorite rum-shop, discussing what is, to
+them, the absorbing topic of the day--probably the "good strike"
+Blobbsby made, "fighting the tiger," the night before; the "heavy
+run" a favorite billiard-player made on a certain occasion, or
+the respective chances of success of the two distinguished
+gentlemen who may chance at that time to be in training with a
+view of battering each other's heads until one concedes his claim
+to the brutal "honors" of the prize ring.
+
+No gentlemen of fashion and fortune are more expensively dressed
+than these men; no class of people wear more finely stitched and
+embroidered linen, more costly broadcloth, more showy golden
+ornaments, or more brilliant diamonds; but for all, the man is
+yet to be found who has ever seen one of them put his hand or his
+brain to one single hour's honest work. Unsophisticated persons
+are often puzzled to account for the apparently irreconcilable
+circumstances of no work, and plenty of money, and in their
+endeavors to invent a plausible hypothesis on the basis of
+honesty, must ever be bewildered. The city man knows them at a
+glance to be "sporting men."
+
+This phrase is a particularly comprehensive one; the "sporting
+man" is a gambler by profession, and therefore a swindler by
+necessity, for an "honest gambler" would fill a niche in the
+scale of created beings that has never yet been occupied; in
+addition to this, nearly every sporting man is a thief whenever
+opportunity offers. They probably would not pick a sober man's
+pocket, or knock him down at night and take his watch and money,
+for the risk of detection would be too great; but they are kept
+from downright stealing by no excess of virtue.
+
+These remarks apply to the "sporting men," by profession--to those
+plausible gallows-birds who have no other ostensible means of
+getting a living. There are many men who sometimes spend an hour
+or two at a faro table, or who occasionally pass an evening in
+gambling at some other game, who do all fairly, and are above all
+suspicion of foul play; these persons are of course plundered by
+sharpers who surround them, and are called "good fellows" because
+they submit to their losses without grumbling.
+
+The "sporting men" all have mistresses, on whom they sometimes
+rely for funds whenever an "unlucky hit," or a "bad streak of
+luck," has run their own purses low.
+
+It is not part of the present purpose of this book to give
+particulars as to who and what their mistresses are, further than
+to state that at least one or two of the "Witches" described
+herein, officiate in that capacity. It is true, that the most of
+them are not of a style to tempt the lust of any man, but there
+are certain exceptions to the general rule, and in one or two
+instances the "Individual" found the fortune-teller to be comely
+and pleasant to the eye. As these women generally have plenty of
+money, they are very eligible partners for gamblers, who are
+liable to as many reverses as ever Mr. Micawber encountered, and
+who, when once down, might remain perpetually floored, did not
+some kind friend set them on their financial feet again.
+
+And this is one of the duties of the monied mistress. When the
+"sporting man" is in funds, no one is more recklessly extravagant
+than he, and no one cuts a greater dash than his "ladye-love," if
+he chooses so to do; but when the cards run cross, and the purse
+is empty, it devolves upon her to furnish the capital to start in
+the world again.
+
+The fact is well known to those who have taken the trouble to
+inquire into the subject, that several of the more fashionable
+fortune-tellers of the city sustain this sort of illicit relation
+to certain "sporting men," whose faces a man may see, perhaps,
+half a dozen times in the course of a lounge up and down
+Broadway of a pleasant afternoon.
+
+Madame Clifton is, on the whole, a comely woman, and does a good
+business, but of course no sane person will think of applying
+these remarks personally to that respected matron.
+
+The "Individual" paid a lengthened visit to Madame Clifton, and
+his remarks are recorded below. Because he met a sleek,
+close-shaved, finely moustached gentleman coming away from the
+door, he was of course not justified in believing that the said
+gentleman belonged to the establishment. Of course not.
+
+The female professors of the black art hitherto visited by the
+Cash Customer, had not impressed him with a profound belief in
+their supernatural powers; he was "anxious," and was "awakened to
+inquiry," but he still had doubts, and there was great danger of
+his backsliding if there wasn't something immediately done for
+him.
+
+He had been greatly disappointed by the absence from the
+domiciles of these good ladies of all the traditional necromantic
+implements and tools. His disposition to adhere to the modern
+witch-faith would have been greatly strengthened by the sight of
+a skull and cross-bones; a tame snake, or a little devil in a
+bottle, would have fixed his wavering belief; and his conversion
+would have been thoroughly assured by the timely exhibition of a
+broomstick on which he could see the saddle-marks.
+
+None of these things had as yet been forthcoming, and the anxious
+inquirer, mourning the departure of all the romance of the art of
+witchcraft, was fast sinking into a state of incurable scepticism
+on the subject of even its utility, in the degenerate hands of
+modern practitioners. Hope had not, however, entirely deserted
+his heart, but still retained her fabled position in the bottom
+of his chest, near that important viscus, and he, therefore,
+courageously continued his pursuit of witchcraft under difficulties.
+
+His next visit was to Orchard street, and he was induced to
+expect favorable results by the encouraging and positive
+assertion which concludes the subjoined advertisement, that
+"Madame Clifton is no humbug:"
+
+     "AN ASTROLOGIST THAT BEATS THE WORLD, and $5,000 reward
+     is offered to pay any person who can surpass her in
+     giving correct statements on past, present, and future
+     events, particularly absent friends, losses, lawsuits,
+     &c. She also gives lucky numbers. She surpasses any
+     person that has ever visited our city. She is also
+     making great cures. All persons who are afflicted with
+     consumption, liver complaint, scrofula, rheumatism, or
+     any other lingering disease, would do well to call and
+     see this wonderful and natural gifted lady, and you
+     will not go away dissatisfied. N.B.--Madame Clifton is
+     no humbug. Call and satisfy yourselves. Residence No.
+     185 Orchard-st., between Houston and Stanton."
+
+Although Orchard Street is by no means so objectionable a
+thoroughfare as human ingenuity might make it, still, in spite of
+its pleasant-sounding name, it is not altogether a vernal
+paradise. If there ever was any fitness in the name it must have
+been many years ago, and the ancient orchard bears now no fruit,
+but low brick houses of assorted sizes and colors, seedy, and,
+in appearance, semi-respectable. Occasionally a blacksmith's
+shop, a paint room, or a livery stable, lower or meaner and more
+contracted than their neighbors, look as if they never got ripe,
+but had shrivelled and dropped off before their time.
+
+The street is in a state of perennial bloom with half-built
+dwellings like gaudy scarlet blossoms, which are ripened into
+tenements by the fostering care of masons and carpenters with the
+most industrious forcing; and buds of buildings are scattered in
+every direction, in the shape of mortar-beds and piles of brick
+and lumber, waiting the due time for their architectural
+sprouting.
+
+The house of Madame Clifton is of moderate growth, being but two
+stories high; it has a red brick front and green window-blinds,
+and is so ingeniously grafted to its nearest neighbor that some
+little care is necessary to determine which is the parent stock.
+It presents a fair outside, is but little damaged by age or
+weather, and is seemingly in a state of good repair.
+
+A neat-looking colored girl answered the bell, and, showing our
+reporter into the parlor, asked his business, and if he "knew
+Madame Clifton's terms?"
+
+Now when it is understood that fortune-telling is by no means the
+only, or the most lucrative part of Madame Clifton's business, it
+will be perceived that this inquiry had a peculiar significance.
+Having the fear of libel suits before his eyes, the Individual
+cannot state in precise and plain terms the exact nature of the
+business which the colored girl evidently thought had brought him
+there; he will content himself with delicately insinuating, that
+if his errand had been of the nature insinuated by that female
+delegate from Africa, there would have been a "lady in the case."
+
+Fortunately the Cash Customer had erred not thus, but he made
+known to the colored lady his simple business.
+
+Learning that he only wanted to have his fortune told by the
+Madame, and had no occasion to test her skill in the more
+expensive departments of her profession, the girl appeared to be
+satisfied of the responsibility of her visitor for that limited
+amount, and departed to inform her mistress.
+
+The customer took an observation.
+
+The room was a neatly-furnished parlor, a little flashy perhaps
+in the article of mirrors, but the sofas, chairs, carpet, &c.,
+were plain and not offensive to good taste. A piano was in the
+room, but it was closed, and its tone and quality are unknown.
+One curious article, for a parlor ornament, stood in the corner
+of the room; it was the huge sign-board of a perfumery store, and
+bore in large letters the name of a dealer in sweet-scented
+merchandise, blazoned thereon in all the finery of Dutch metal
+and bronze. This conspicuous article, though mysterious and
+unaccountable, was not cabalistic, and savored not of witchcraft.
+
+Presently the quiet colored girl returned, and in a low voice,
+and with a subdued well-trained manner, invited her visitor to
+follow her; meekly obeying, he was led up two flights of
+respectable stairs into a room wherein there was nothing
+mysterious, nor was there anything particularly suggestive
+except a large glass case filled with a stock of perfumery. What
+was the propriety of so very many bottles filled with perfumes
+and medicines did not at first appear; but the assortment of
+imprisoned odors, and liquid drugs, and the store-sign down
+stairs, and Madame Clifton, and a certain perfumery store in
+Broadway, and the proprietor thereof, so tangled themselves
+together in the brain of the inquirer that he has never since
+that time been able to disconnect one from the other.
+
+Upon a small stand were two packs of cards--the one an ordinary
+playing pack, and the other what are known sometimes as
+fortune-telling cards. The devices on these latter differed
+materially from those in ordinary use; there were no plain cards;
+every one was ornamented with some kind of a significant design;
+there were pictures of women, of men, of ships and raging seas,
+of hearses, and sickbeds, and shrouds, and coffins, and corpses,
+and graves, and tombstones, and similar cheerful objects; then
+there were squares, and circles, and hands with scales, and
+hands with daggers, and hands sticking through clouds, and purses
+of money, and carriages, and moons, and suns, and serpents, and
+hearts, and Cupids, and eyes, and rays of light coming from
+nowhere, and shining on nothing, and Herculeses with big clubs,
+and big arms, bigger than the clubs, and big legs, bigger than
+both together, and swords, and spears, and sundials, and many
+other designs equally intelligible and portentous.
+
+Soon the Madame appeared, and the attention of the Individual was
+immediately diverted from surrounding objects and riveted on the
+incomprehensible woman who was "no humbug," and who, according to
+her own opinion of herself, would have exactly realized Mr. Edmund
+Sparkler's idea of a "dem'd fine woman, with nobigodnonsense about her."
+
+On the first glance, Madame Clifton is what would be called
+"fine-looking," but she does not analyse well. She is of medium
+height, aged about thirty-five years, with very light, piercing
+blue eyes, and very black hair, one little lock of which is
+precisely twisted into a very elaborate little curl, which rests
+in the middle of her forehead between her eyes, as if to keep
+those quarrelsome orbs apart. Her eyebrows are unusually heavy,
+so much so as to give a curious menacing look to the upper part
+of her face, which disagreeable expression is intensified by the
+extreme paleness of her countenance.
+
+Her dress was unassuming, neat, and tasteful, save in the one
+article of jewelry, of which she wore as much as if the stock in
+trade at the Broadway perfumery store had been pearls, and gold,
+and diamonds, instead of perfumes and essences. Her deportment
+was self-possessed and lady-like, that is, if an expression of
+tireless watchfulness and unsleeping suspicion are consistent
+with refined and easy manners. She never took her steel-blue eyes
+from her visitor's face; she did not for an instant relax her
+confident smile; she did not speak but in the lowest softest
+tones; but her auditor felt every instant more convinced that the
+voice was the falsest voice he ever heard, the smile the falsest
+smile he ever saw, and that the cold piercing eye alone was
+true, and that was only true because no art could conceal its
+calculating glitter.
+
+If one could imagine a smiling cat, Madame Clifton would resemble
+that cat more than any one thing in the world. Neat and precise
+in her outward appearance; not a fold of her garments, not a
+thread of lace or ribbon, not a hair of her head, but was exactly
+smooth and orderly, and in its exact place; not a glance of her
+eye that was not watchful and suspicious; not a tone or word that
+was not treacherous in sound; not a movement of body or of limb
+that was not soft and stealthy; her feline resemblances developed
+themselves more and more every instant, until at last the
+Individual came to regard her as some kind of dangerous animal in
+a state of temporary and perfidious repose. And this impression
+deepened every instant, so much so, that when the small soft hand
+was laid in his, he almost expected to see the sharp claws
+unsheathe themselves from the velvet finger-tips and fasten in
+his flesh.
+
+The language she used, when freed from the technical phrases of
+her trade, was good enough for every day, and she did not
+distinguish herself by any specialty of bad English.
+
+She asked her customer, with her most insinuating smile, if he
+would have her "run the cards for him," and on receiving an
+affirmative answer she took the pack of playing cards into her
+velvet hands, pawed them dexterously over a few times to shuffle
+them, laid them in three rows with the faces upward, and softly
+purred the following words:
+
+"I am uncertain whether to run you a club or a diamond, for I do
+not exactly see how it is; but I will run you a club first, and
+if you find that it does not tell your past history, please to
+mention the fact to me, and I will then run you a diamond."
+
+She then proceeded to mention a number of fictitious events which
+she asserted had happened in the past life of her listener, but
+that individual, who did not find that her revelations agreed
+with his own knowledge of his former history, tremblingly
+informed her of that fact; and she then, with a most vicious
+contraction of the overhanging eyebrows, broke short the thread
+of her fanciful story, and proceeded to "run him a diamond."
+
+She evidently was determined to make the diamond come nearer the
+truth--to which end she dexterously strove by a series of very
+sharp cross-questionings to elicit some circumstance of his early
+history, on which she might enlarge, or to get some clue to his
+present circumstances, and hopes, and aspirations, that she might
+find some peg on which to hang a prediction with an appearance of
+probability. The Individual--with humiliation he confesses it--was
+a bachelor. His heart had proved unsusceptible, and Cupid had hitherto
+failed to hit him. On this occasion he proved characteristically
+unimpressible; and the insinuating smile, the inquiring look, and
+the winning manner, all failed of effect, and he remained
+pertinaciously non-committal.
+
+Finding this to be the case, the feline Madame changed her
+tactics, and, as if to spite her intractable customer, began to
+prophesy innumerable ills and evils for him. She apparently
+strove to mitigate, in some degree, the sting of her predictions
+by an increased softness of manner, which was only a more
+cat-like demeanor than ever. She spoke as follows--the cold eye
+growing more cruel, and the wicked smile more treacherous every
+instant. First, however, came this guileful question, which was
+but a declaration of war under a flag of truce:
+
+"You do not want me to flatter you, do you? You want me to tell
+you exactly what I see in the cards, do you not?" The customer
+stated that he was able to bear at least the recital of his
+future adversity, even if, when the reality came, he should be
+utterly smashed; whereupon she proceeded:
+
+"I see here a great disappointment; you will be disappointed in
+business, and the disappointment will be very bitter and hard to
+bear--but that is not all, nor the worst, by any means. I see a
+burial--it may be only a death of one of your dearest friends, or
+some near relative, such as your sister, but I see that you
+yourself are weak in the chest and lungs; you are impulsive,
+proud, ambitious, and quick-tempered, which last quality tends
+much to aggravate any diseases of the chest, and I fear that the
+burial may be your own. Your disease is serious, you cannot live
+long, I think--I do not think you will live a year--in fact, there
+is the strongest probability that you will die before nine
+months. I think you will certainly die before nine months, but if
+you survive, it will only be after a most severe and painful
+illness, in the course of which you will undergo the extreme of
+human suffering. I see that you love a light-complexioned lady,
+but her friends object to her marriage with you, and are doing
+all they can to prevent it. A dark-complexioned man is trying to
+get her away from you; you must beware of him or he will do you
+great injury, for he has both the will and the power; he has
+already deceived and injured you, and will do so again even more
+deeply than he has yet. I see a journey, trouble, and misfortune,
+grief, sorrow, heavy loss, and heaviness of heart. I again tell
+you that you will die before nine months; but if you chance to
+survive, it will only be to encounter perpetual crosses and
+misfortunes. I might, if I was disposed to flatter you and give
+you false hopes, tell you that you will be lucky, fortunate in
+business, that you will get the lady, and I might promise you all
+sorts of good luck, but I don't want to flatter you; it would be
+much more agreeable to me to tell you a good life, for it
+sometimes pains me more than I can tell you to read bad lives to
+people, and I feel it very deeply; but I assure you that I never
+saw anybody's cards run as badly as do yours--I never saw so many
+losses and crosses, and so much trouble and misfortune in
+anybody's cards in my whole life--even if you outlive the nine
+months you will have the greatest trouble in getting the lady,
+and will always have bad luck."
+
+She then tried by means of the cards to spell out the Inquirer's
+name, but failed utterly, not getting a single letter right; then
+she recommenced and threatened him with so much bad luck that he
+began almost to fear that he would break his leg before he rose
+from his chair, or would instantly fall down in a fit and be
+carried off to die at the Hospital. She told him that his lucky
+days were the 1st, 5th, 17th, 27th, and 29th of every month. Then
+perceiving that his feelings were deeply moved by the intractability
+of the "cruel parients" of the light-complexioned lady, and the
+black look of things generally, she slightly relented, and went
+on to say:
+
+"If you will put your trust in me, and take my advice as a
+friend, I can sell you something that will surely secure you the
+lady, and thwart all your enemies--it is not for my interest that
+I tell you this, for upon my honor I make only five shillings
+upon fifty dollars' worth--it is no trick, but it is a charm which
+you must wear about you, and which you must wish over about the
+girl at stated times, and it will be sure to have the desired
+effect."
+
+The customer asked the price of this wonderful charm.
+
+"It is from five to fifty dollars, but as you are so
+extraordinarily unlucky I would advise you to take the full
+charm. It is the _Chinese Ruling Planet Charm_, and I import it
+from China at great expense. You must wear it about you, and
+every time you use it you must do it in the name of God; so you
+see there can be no demon about it. By means of this charm I have
+brought together husbands and wives who have been apart for three
+years, and I say a woman who can do that is doing good, and there
+is no demon about her. While you wear it you will not die or meet
+with bad luck, but it will change the whole current of your
+life."
+
+She then told her unlucky hearer to make a wish and she would
+tell him by the cards whether he could have it or not. The answer
+was in the negative, and it was evident that nothing but the
+_Chinese Ruling Planet Charm_ would save him, and no less than
+$50 worth of that. So the smiling Madame returned to the charge.
+"If you will take my advice as a friend, take the charm; it is
+for your sake only that I say this, for I make nothing by it--but
+I feel an interest in you, and I wish you would buy the charm for
+my sake as well as your own, for I want to see its effect on a
+fortune so bad as yours. If you don't buy it, and all kinds of
+ill-fortune befalls you, don't say I didn't warn you, and don't
+call Madame Clifton a humbug; but if you do buy it, you may be
+sure that you will ever bless the day you saw Madame Clifton."
+
+It is, perhaps, needless to state that the Individual didn't have
+with him the fifty dollars to pay for the charm, but intimated
+that he would call again, after he got his year's salary.
+
+She then said: "If you happen to call when I am engaged, tell the
+girl to say that you want to see me about _medicine_, and I will
+see you, for I never put off anybody who wants _medicine_, no
+matter who is with me, say _medicine_, and I will see you
+instantly." Here she softly showed her visitor to the door, and
+smiled on him until he stood on the outside steps. He then
+departed, secretly wondering what kind of "medicine" she was
+prepared to furnish in case any unlooked for occasion should
+suggest a second call. Her last remark suggested that Madame
+Clifton derives a larger profit from the peculiar kinds of
+"_medicine_" she deals in, than from all her other witchery.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Details the particulars of a morning call on Madame Harris, of
+No. 80 West 19th Street, and how she covered up her beautiful
+head in a black bag.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+MADAME HARRIS, No. 80 WEST 19TH STREET, NEAR SIXTH AVENUE.
+
+
+Madame Harris is one of the most ignorant and filthy of all the
+witches of New York. She does not depend entirely on her
+"astrology" for her subsistence, but relies on it merely to bring
+in a few dollars in the spare hours not occupied in the practice
+of the other dirty trades by which she picks up a dishonest
+living. She has a good many customers, and in one way and another
+she contrives to get a good deal of money from the gullible
+public. She has been engaged in business a number of years, and
+has thriven much better than she probably would, had she been
+employed in an honester avocation.
+
+The "Individual" paid her a visit, and carefully noted down all
+her valuable communications; he has told the whole story in the
+words following:
+
+We all believe in Aladdin, and have as much faith in his uncle as
+in our own; but we don't know the pattern of his lamp, we have no
+photograph of the genii that obeyed it, and we can make no
+correct computation of the market value of the two hundred slaves
+with jars of jewels on their heads. The customer, who is
+determined that posterity shall be able to make no such complaint
+of him or of his history, here solemnly undertakes, upon the
+faith of his salary, to relate the unadorned truth, and to
+indulge in no _ad libitum_ variations--imagining, while he writes,
+that he sees in the distance the critical public, like a
+many-headed Gradgrind, singing out lustily for "Facts, sir,
+facts."
+
+The next fact, then, to be investigated and sworn to, is this
+Madame Harris, a very dirty female fact indeed, residing in the
+upper part of the city, and advertising as follows:
+
+     "MADAME HARRIS.--This mysterious Lady is a wonder to
+     all--her predictions are so true. She can tell all the
+     events of life. Office, No. 80 West 19th-st., near
+     6th-av. Hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ladies 25 cts.;
+     Gentlemen 50 cts. She causes speedy marriages; charge
+     extra."
+
+Wearily the inquirer plodded his way on foot to West 19th Street,
+fearing to trust himself to a stage or car, lest the careless
+conversation of the unthinking, and the reprehensible jocularity
+of the little boys who hang about the corners of the streets
+which intersect the Sixth Avenue, and pelt unwary passengers with
+paving-stones, should divert his mind from the importance and
+great moral responsibility of his mission.
+
+After encountering a large assortment of the dangers and
+discomforts incident to pedestrianism in New York in muddy
+weather, he achieved West 19th street, and stood in sight of the
+mysterious domicile of Madame Harris.
+
+It is a tenement house, shabby-genteel even in its first
+pretentious newness; but it has now lost its former appearance
+even of semi-respectability, and has degenerated to a state of
+dirt only conceivable by those unhappy families who live two in a
+house, and are in a constant state of pot-and-kettle war, and of
+mutual refusing to clean out the common hall.
+
+A little mountain of potato skins, and bones, and other kitchen
+refuse, round which he was forced to make a detour, plainly said
+to the traveller that the population of the house No. 80 were in
+the habit of depositing garbage in the gutters, under cover of
+the night, and in violation of the city ordinance. A highly-perfumed
+atmosphere surrounds this delightful abode, for the first floor
+thereof is occupied as a livery stable, which constantly exhales
+those sweet and pungent odors peculiar to equine habitations.
+
+Pulling the sticky bell-handle with as dainty a touch as
+possible, the Individual was admitted by a slatternly weak-eyed
+girl of about eighteen, with her hair and dress as tumbled as
+though she had just been run through a corn-shelling machine, and
+who was so unnecessarily dirty that even her face had not been
+washed. She was further distinguished by a wart on her nose of
+such shape and dimensions that it gave her face the appearance of
+being fortified by a many-sided fort, which commanded the whole
+countenance.
+
+This interesting young female welcomed her visitor with a clammy
+"Come in," and led the way up stairs, he following, in due dread
+of being for ever extinguished by an avalanche of unwashed
+keelers and kettles, which were unsteadily piled up on the
+landing, and which an incautious touch would have toppled over,
+and deluged the stairs with unknown sweet-smelling compounds,
+whose legitimate destination was the sewer. On the second floor,
+directly, judging from the noise, over the stall of the balkiest
+horse in the stable below, is the room of the Madame.
+
+The customer took an observation:
+
+The furnishings of the apartment showed an attempt to keep up a
+show, which was by far too miserably transparent to hide the
+slovenliness which peeped out everywhere through the tawdry
+gilding. There were so many oil paintings on the walls, in such
+gaudy frames, that it seemed as if the room had been dipped into
+a bath of cheap auction pictures, and hadn't been wiped dry, or
+had been out in a shower of them, and hadn't come in until it had
+got very wet. A broad gilt window cornice stood leaning in the
+corner of the room, instead of being in its legitimate place; a
+pair of lace curtains were wadded up and thrown in a chair, while
+the windows were covered with the commonest painted muslin
+shades; a piano-stool stood in the middle of the room, but there
+was no piano.
+
+These were the indications of "better days;" these were the
+shallow traps set to inveigle the beholder into a belief in the
+opulence of the occupants of this charming residence.
+
+But the little cooking-stove, on which two smoothing irons were
+heating, the scraps of different patterned carpets which hid the
+floor, and made it appear as if covered with some kind of
+variegated woollen chowder, the second-hand, conciliating
+please-buy-me look of the three chairs, and the dirt and greasy
+grime which gave a character to the place, told at once the true
+state of facts.
+
+On one side of the room was a little door, evidently
+communicating with a closet or small bedroom; on this door was a
+slip of tin, on which was painted
+
+    +------------------------------------+
+    |                                    |
+    | Office.--Madam Harris, Astrologist. |
+    |                                    |
+    +------------------------------------+
+
+and into this "office" the weak-eyed girl disappeared, with a
+shame-faced look, as if she had tried to steal her visitor's
+pocket-book, and hadn't succeeded. Presently there came from the
+closet a sound of half-suppressed merriment, as if a constant
+succession of laughs were born there, full grown and boisterous,
+but were instantly garroted by some unknown power, until each one
+expired in a kind of choky giggle. There was also a noise of the
+making of a bed, the hustling of chairs, the putting away of
+toilet articles out of sight, and over all was heard the chiding
+voice of Madame Harris, who was evidently dressing herself,
+superintending these other various operations, and scolding the
+weak-eyed maiden all at once.
+
+At last this latter individual got so far the better of her
+jocularity that she was able to deport herself with outward
+seriousness when she emerged from the mysterious closet, and said
+to the Individual, "Walk in." At this time she was under so great
+a head of laugh that she would inevitably have exploded, had she
+not, the instant her visitor turned his back, let go her
+safety-valve, and relieved herself by a guffaw which would have
+been an honor and a credit to any one of the horses on the first
+floor.
+
+The room in which Madame Harris was waiting to receive her
+customer was so dark that he stumbled over a chair, and fell
+across a bed before he could see where he was. Then he recovered
+himself, and took an observation.
+
+The room was a very small one--so diminutive, indeed, that the
+bed, which occupied one side of it, reduced the available space
+more than two-thirds. It was partitioned off from the rest of
+the room by a dirty patch-work bed-quilt, with more holes than
+patches. The walls were scrawled over with pencil-marks,
+evidently drawings made by young children, who had the usual
+childish notions of proportion and perspective; and on one side
+of the wall, near the head of the bed, a bit of pasteboard
+persisted in this startling announcement--
+
+    +----------------+
+    | tE_R_ms C_a_sH |
+    +----------------+
+
+A narrow strip of rag carpet was on the floor; a small stand and
+a chair completed the furnishing of the room, and a single smoky
+pewter lamp exhausted itself in a dismal combat with the gloom,
+which constantly got the better of it.
+
+When the Cash Inquirer stumbled, and took an involuntary leap
+into the middle of the bed, an awful voice came out of the
+dreariness, saying, "There is a chair right there behind you."
+This information proved to be correct, and the discomfited
+delegate subsided into it, and gazed stolidly at the Madame. If
+Madame Harris were worth as much by the pound as beef, her
+market-price would be about twenty-five dollars. She was attired
+in a loose morning-gown, of an exceedingly flashy pattern, open
+before, disclosing a skirt meant to be white, but whose
+cleanliness was merely traditional. Of her countenance her
+visitor cannot speak, for it was carefully hidden from his
+inquiring gaze, and its unknown beauties are left to the
+imagination of the reader. Perched mysteriously on the back of
+her head, where it was retained by some feminine hocus-pocus,
+which has ever been a sealed mystery to _man_kind, was a little
+black bonnet, marvellous in pattern and design; from this
+depended a long black veil, covering her countenance, and
+disguising her as effectually as if she had washed her face and
+put on a clean dress.
+
+She proceeded at once to business, and opened conversation with
+this appropriate remark: "My terms is fifty cents for gentlemen,
+and the pay is always in advance."
+
+Here followed a disbursement on the part of the anxious seeker
+after knowledge, and an approving chuckle was heard under the
+veil.
+
+Taking up a pack of cards so overlaid with dirt that it was a
+work of time and study to tell a queen from a nine spot, or
+distinguish the knaves from the aces, she presented them with the
+imperative remark: "Cut them once."
+
+Then ensued the following wonderful predictions uttered by a
+dubious and uncertain voice under the veil--which voice seemed one
+minute to come from the mouth, then it issued from the throat,
+then it sprawled out of the stomach, then it was heard from the
+back of the head under the bonnet, and in the course of a few
+minutes it came from so many places, that the puzzled hearer was
+dubious as to its exact whereabouts--these curious effects being,
+doubtless, attributable to the thick covering over the face. But
+its various communications, when gathered together, were found to
+sum up as follows:
+
+"You face back misfortune and trouble, of which you have had
+much, but they are now behind you, and you have no more to fear.
+You will henceforth be successful in business, you will have a
+great deal of money. Your affection card faces up a young woman
+with dark eyes and dark hair, about twenty-three years old; she
+is older than she has led you to believe; there is a dark-complexioned
+man whom you will see in two days, who is your enemy; you may not
+know it, but you had better beware of him, for he will do you an
+injury, if he can; you will see him and speak with him the night
+of day-after-to-morrow. Your marriage card faces up this dark
+woman, as I said before. I don't see a great deal of money layin'
+round her, but there is plenty of money layin' round you in the
+future. Somebody will die and leave you money within nine weeks,
+not counting this week. You was born under the planet Mars, which
+gives you two lucky days in every week--Mondays and Thursdays;
+anything you begin on those days will surely succeed."
+
+Here she handed the cards to be cut again, which operation
+disclosed a new feature in the Individual's matrimonial future,
+for she went on to say:
+
+"There is another woman who faces your love-card, who has light
+hair and light eyes; she favors your love-card and will be your
+first wife; you will have five children--four girls and one boy;
+look out for the dark-complexioned man, for he favors your first
+wife, and, though she does not favor him very much, he will try
+to get her away from you. Your line of life is long; you will
+live to be sixty-eight years old, but you will die very suddenly,
+for your line of death crosses your line of life very suddenly,
+which always brings sudden death."
+
+Having given this cheering promise, she again held out the cards
+to be cut, and said, "Cut them again now, and make a wish at the
+same time, and I will tell you if you will have your wish."
+
+When the required ceremony had been solemnly performed, she
+continued: "You will have your wish, but not right away; don't
+expect to get it before week after next, but then you will be
+sure to have it, for there is no disappointment in the cards for
+you." She then informed her customer that she always answered
+unerringly two questions, which he was now at liberty to
+propound. He made a couple of inquiries relative to his future
+business prospects, and received in reply the promise of most
+gratifying results.
+
+Having then, as he supposed, got his money's worth, he was about
+to take his leave, when she interrupted him thus:
+
+"I have a charm for securing good luck to whoever wears it; you
+can wear it, and your most intimate friend would never suspect
+it; my charge is one dollar for gentlemen; a great many have
+bought it of me; many merchants who were on the point of failing
+have come to me and possessed this charm, and been saved; you had
+better possess it, for it will be sure to bring you good luck; if
+you possess it, you will always be successful in business; Mr.
+Lynch of Mott Street possessed it, and has been very lucky ever
+since, besides a great number I could name; my advice to you is,
+possess the charm."
+
+She then put her elbows on her knees after the manner of a Fulton
+Market apple-pedler, in which classic attitude she awaited an
+answer. The decision was not favorable to her hopes; for the
+economical customer concluded not to invest in the charm,
+although it had brought such excellent fortune to Mr. Lynch of
+Mott Street. He departed, encountering again in his progress the
+weak-eyed one, who met him with a smile, escorted him to the door
+with a great laugh, and dismissed him with a joyous grin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+Treats of the peculiarities of several Witches in a single
+batch.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A BATCH OF WITCHES.
+
+
+The fortune-tellers so elaborately described in the foregoing
+chapters are by no means the only ones in New York, engaged in
+that lucrative occupation; there are several others who were
+visited by the Individual, but who in their surroundings approach
+so nearly to those already set down, that a detailed description
+of each would necessarily be a somewhat monotonous repetition. So
+the prophecy only of each one is here writ down, with a few words
+suggestive of the character of the immediate neighborhood,
+leaving the imaginative reader to fill up the blank himself, or
+to turn back to some foregoing chapter for a picture of a similar
+locality, if he prefers it ready-made to his hands.
+
+
+MADAME DE BELLINI, No. 159 FORSYTH STREET.
+
+For the benefit of those not familiar with the streets of New
+York, it is perhaps well to mention that Forsyth Street is a
+dirty thoroughfare, two streets east of the Bowery, and that it
+is filled for the most part with small groceries, junk shops,
+swill milk dispensaries, and stalls for the sale of diseased
+vegetables and decaying fruit, and that the inhabitants are
+mostly delegates from Africa, and from the Green Isle of the Sea.
+
+Immediately adjoining the domicil of Madame de Bellini is a
+filthy little vegetable store, and on the opposite corner is an
+equally filthy Irish grocery, where are dispensed swill milk and
+poisoned whiskey. The residence of the Madame is a low two-story
+brick house, of rather better appearance than many of its
+neighbors, which are principally wooden buildings with those
+old-fashioned peculiar roofs, with little windows close under the
+cornice, which make a house look as if it had had its hat knocked
+over its eyes.
+
+Madame de Bellini is a Dutchwoman of very large dimensions, being
+a two-hundred-and-fifty-pounder at the lowest estimate. Like most
+fat women, she is good-natured and smiling. She is apparently 35
+years old, of pleasant manners, somewhat embarrassed by the
+difficulty she has in communicating her ideas in English, and is
+much neater in person and dress than the majority of ladies in
+the same line of business. She would be a popular bar-maid at a
+lager-bier saloon, and would preside over the fortunes of the
+sausage and Swiss cheese table, with eminent success, and
+satisfaction to the public.
+
+She welcomed the Cash Customer in a jolly sort of way, introduced
+him to her private apartment, and seated him on a chair at one
+side of a little table, while she bestowed herself on a stool
+opposite.
+
+Having ascertained that he did not speak German with sufficient
+fluency to carry on an animated conversation in that tongue, or
+to comprehend a rapidly spoken discourse delivered therein, she
+was compelled to ventilate her English, which she did, beginning
+as follows:
+
+"I speak not vera mooch goot English--I speak German and French,
+but no goot English."
+
+The Individual, with his usual caution, inquired how much she
+proposed to charge for her services. She responded thus:
+
+"I tell your for_toon_ fier ein tollar, or I can tell your
+for_toon_ fier ein half-tollar."
+
+Fifty cents' worth was enough to begin with, so she took his left
+hand in her huge fist, and as a preliminary operation squeezed it
+till he gave it up for lost, and in the intervals of his
+suffering hastily ran over in his mind the various ways in which
+one-handed people get a living; then she relented and did not
+deprive him of that useful member, but said:
+
+"You have goot hand, vera goot hand--your hand gifs you goot
+fortoon. You was born under goot blanet, vera nice blanet, you
+have vera nice fortoon. You have mooch rich, vera great monish;
+you haf seen drubbles, (trouble) vera mooch drubbles--more
+drubbles you haf seen, as you will see some more--dat is, you
+shall not have so many drubbles py and py as you haf had long
+ago, for you haf goot blanet. You will journeys make mooch in
+footoor (future) years. You will have two wifes and mooch kindes
+(children) in der footoor years, and you will be vera mooch happy
+und bleasant mit der wife vot you shall have der first dime, but
+not so mooch happy und bleasant mit der wife vot you shall have
+der two time, but you shall vera mooch monish have in der fortoor
+years."
+
+She then released the hand of her visitor, who was very glad to
+get it back again, and took up a pack of cards, which she
+manipulated in the customary style, and then said:
+
+"Your carts run vera nice; you have goot carts; here is a
+shentleman's as ish vera goot to you, he is great friends mit
+you: here is a letter vot you shall be come to you right avays
+vera soon--it ish goot news to you; you must do joost vot das
+letter says. Here ish a brown girls vot lofs (loves) you vera
+mooch, but you do not lofs dat girls, so much as das girls lofs
+you--you will not be der vife of das girl, for there is anunther
+girls vot you lofs bretty bad und you will marry her; she is
+bretty goot girls und you will be happy, you will hof lots of
+kindes mit das girls. Das girls haf a man now vos lof her vera
+mooch--he is was you call das soldier; he lofs her mooch but he
+shall not hof her, you shall hof das girls. Here is great man was
+will be good friend to you; he ish vera great man, a big king;
+not vas you call der koenig, but your big mans, your, vos is das,
+your bresident--de bresident bees goot friends mit you--here is
+dark mans, he ish no goot friend mit you, und you must keep away
+from das dark mans."
+
+This was all the information she appeared to derive from this
+pack, which were ordinary playing cards, so she laid them aside
+and took up the regular fortune-telling cards, which are covered
+with various mysterious devices. These did not seem to communicate
+anything of very special importance in addition to what she had
+already said, for she examined them closely and then merely
+summed up as follows:
+
+"Goot fortoon, goot blanet, goot vifes, blenty monish, mooch
+kindes, not more troubles in der footoor years, big friends,
+bresident mooch friends mit you, lif long, ninety-nine years
+before you die, leave fortoon to vife und two kindes."
+
+The Individual was curious to inquire wherein the fifty-cent dose
+he had received, differed from the fortunes for which she charged
+"ein tollar," and he received the following information:
+
+"For ein tollar I gifs you a charm as you vears on your necks,
+und it gifs you goot luck for ever, und you never gets drownded,
+und you lifs long viles, und you bees rich und vera mooch happy."
+
+The Madame was also good-natured enough to exhibit one of these
+powerful charms to her customer. It was a piece of parchment,
+originally about four inches square, but which had been scalloped
+on the edges, and otherwise cut and carved; on it were inscribed
+in German, several cabalistic words; this potent document was to
+be always worn next the heart.
+
+Madame de Bellini has been in New York but a year or two; she
+speaks French and German, and is taking lessons in English from
+an American lady. She has many customers, mostly German, and, as
+in the case of all the other witches, the greatest majority of
+her visitors are women.
+
+
+MADAME LEBOND, No. 175 HUDSON STREET.
+
+The house in which this woman was sojourning at the time of the
+visit hereinafter described, is a boarding-house, and the room of
+the Madame is the back parlor on the second floor.
+
+The Individual was received at the door by a short, greasy, dirty
+man, about forty years of age, who invited him into the front
+parlor, to wait until the Madame was disengaged. This man, who is
+an ignorant, half-imbecile person, passes for the husband of the
+fortune teller, and is known as _Doctor_ Lebond. He is a man of
+peculiar appearance; the top of his head is perfectly bald, and
+the fringe of hair about the lower part of it, is twisted into
+long corkscrew ringlets, that fall low down on his shoulders.
+
+He informed the customer that the Madame was then engaged, but he
+seemed undecided about the exact nature of her present employment.
+He first said she was "tellin' the futur for a young gal;" then
+she was "engaged with a literary man;" then "a dry-goods merchant
+wanted to find out if his head clerk didn't drink;" but finally
+he said that "Madame L. is a eatin' of her dinner." After some
+ingenious drawing-out, the _Doctor_ vouchsafed the subjoined
+statement of his business prospects.
+
+"We seen the time when we hadn't fifteen minutes a day, on
+account of young gals a comin' for to have their fortune told; we
+used to be busy from mornin' till ten and 'levin o'clock at night
+a-tellin' fortunes an' a doctorin'--but now, we don't do so much
+'cause the young gals don't like to come to a boardin'-house
+where young men can see 'em, 'specially in the evenin'. We's too
+public here; the young men a-boardin' here likes for to have the
+young gals come, they likes for to see 'em in the parlor, but the
+young gals won't come so much, 'cause we's too public. We'll have
+for to get another house on account of business.
+
+"I don't get so much doctorin' to do as I used to, 'cause we's
+too public. I have doctored lots of folks, principally young
+fellers and young gals, and I can do it right. If you ever get
+into any trouble you'll find me and my wife _all right_; you can
+come to us--we mean to be all right, and to give everybody the
+worth of their money, and we _is_ all right."
+
+By this time, Madame Lebond had finished her dinner, and was
+waiting in the back parlor. She is a fat, slovenly-looking woman,
+forty years old or more, having no teeth, and taking prodigious
+quantities of snuff, which gives her enunciation some peculiar
+characteristics.
+
+When the Individual first beheld her, she was standing in the
+middle of the floor, picking her teeth. She requested her visitor
+to take a seat, and to pay her half-a-dollar, with both of which
+requests he complied. She then put into his hand the end of a
+brass tube about an inch in diameter and a foot long, and said:
+"Give be the tibe of your birth as dear as possible."
+
+This was done, and the following brief dialogue ensued:--
+
+"Was you bord id the bording?"
+
+"I really don't remember."
+
+"Do you have beddy dreabs?"
+
+"I do not dream much."
+
+"Thed you dod't have bad dreabs?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Thed you was bord id the bording," by which mysterious word she
+probably meant, "morning." She then continued:--
+
+"You are a pretty keed sbart chap--sharp id busidess, but dot good
+id speculatiods, ad you should codfide your attedtiods to
+busidess. If you keep od as you are goidg dow, ad works hard, ad
+dod't bix id bad cobpady, ad is hodest, ad dod't spend your
+buddy, you will be rich. You will travel buch--you _have_
+travelled buch, but your travels is hardly begud; there is a
+lodg jourdey at sea dow before you, ad you will start od this
+jourdey bost udexpectedly; you will always be lucky, ad will be
+very rich. I dod't say dothin' to flatter do wud; lots of fellers
+ad gals cub here ad I tell theb all jest what I see; if I see bad
+luck I tell theb so; but yours is all good luck, ad I see lots of
+it for you. You have had bad luck lately, but you will get over
+your bad luck for you are a pretty sbardt chap, ad have got a
+good deal of abbitiod, ad you go ahead pretty well. You will
+barry a gal--a gal as you have seed but dod't know. Very well, she
+is a youdg gal, ad a rich gal, ad a good-lookidg gal; you will
+dot barry her for sobe tibe, but you will barry her at last. She
+has a beau ad you will likely have sobe trouble with hib, but you
+will get the gal at last. The gal has light hair ad blue eyes, ad
+I cad show her to you if you would like to see her."
+
+Of course the visitor liked to see her; so he was directed to
+clasp the brass tube in his right hand, and place his hand over
+the top. Then she stepped behind his chair and began to go
+through with some extraordinary manual exercises on his head. She
+felt of the bumps, she squeezed his head, punched it, jerked it
+from side to side, and twisted it about in every possible
+direction. What was the object and intention of this performance
+she did not disclose, but when she had kneaded his unfortunate
+skull to her satisfaction, she bade him step to the window and
+look into the tube.
+
+This he did, and he saw a very dingy-looking daguerreotype of a
+fair-haired damsel with blue eyes, who bore, of course, not the
+most distant resemblance to any lady of his acquaintance.
+
+Then the fat Madame had a charm to sell, to be worn about the
+neck, and never taken off, in which case it would secure for the
+wearer "good luck" for ever.
+
+The Individual declined to purchase and departed, meeting at the
+door the curly _Doctor_, who once again offered his medical
+services in case the stranger ever got into "trouble," and who
+once again assured that person with an air of mystery that "me
+and my wife is all right--yes, you may depend, we is all right, we
+is."
+
+
+MADAME MAR, AND MADAME DE GORE, No. 176 VARICK STREET.
+
+These two eminent sorceresses are in partnership, and drive a
+tolerably fair trade. They advertise in the papers, one week the
+heading being "Madame Mar, assisted by Madame de Gore," and the
+next week, it will be "Madame de Gore, assisted by Madame Mar,"
+and the profits of the business are shared in the same impartial
+manner.
+
+The house, No. 176, is in the worst part of Varick Street, and
+the room occupied by the pair of witches is over a boot and shoe
+store, and a pawnbroker's shop is directly opposite.
+
+The room is a small parlor, neatly though plainly furnished, and
+with no professional implements visible. When the inquirer made
+his call, Madame de Gore was engaged in the kitchen, in her
+various household duties, and Madame Mar attended to his call.
+She is a tall and rather pleasing woman, neatly dressed and of
+quiet manners.
+
+She secured a dollar in advance, and then led her customer into a
+little closet-like room, furnished only with a small table and
+two chairs. She then announced that she is a "phrenologist," and
+exhibited a plaster bust with the "bumps" scientifically marked
+out, and also some phrenological charts and other publications.
+She proceeded to give the character of her visitor in the usual
+mode of phrenological examinations, after which she prophesied as
+follows:
+
+"You were born between Jupiter and Mars, with such stars you can
+never be unlucky, for although you have seen trouble, it is past.
+Your luck runs in threes and fives--that is, you are unlucky three
+years in succession, and lucky the five years following. You are
+never _very_ unlucky, but you do not do so well in your third
+house as in your fifth house. You could not be unlucky in your
+fifth house if you tried. You have now two months to run in your
+third house, then comes on your fifth house. Just now your life
+seems to be under a cloud, but after two months you will come out
+bright and will enjoy five years of clear sunshine, and you will
+then be very wealthy. You will have more money then than you ever
+will again, though you will always have plenty. Your wealth runs
+14 at the end of five years; after that runs 131/2, which is very
+wealthy. You will marry a young girl, wealthy and beautiful. You
+will raise two daughters, but you will never have a large family.
+You will be the father of many children, but your family will
+never be more than two children. You will go in business with a
+very wealthy Southern man, his wealth runs 14--he has two sons and
+a daughter. You will marry the daughter, though you will be
+opposed by the father and one son, but the other son will stick
+by you. You will live with that wife twenty-five years, then she
+will die and you will travel with your two daughters. You will go
+to Europe. In England you will marry a French widow. Your two
+daughters will marry well, and at 72 or 73 years old you will
+die, leaving a widow, two daughters, and a large fortune."
+
+Madame de Gore did not make her appearance at all, and after
+Madame Mar had failed to induce her visitor to pay her an extra
+dollar for a phrenological chart, she politely showed him out.
+
+
+MADAME LANE, No. 159 MULBERRY STREET.
+
+This distinguished lady lives in a dirty, dilapidated mansion, at
+the corner of Grand and Mulberry Streets. The Cash Customer was
+admitted by the Madame herself, who desired him to be seated for
+a few minutes, until she had concluded her business with a boy of
+about 17 years old, who had called to find out what would be the
+winning numbers in the next Georgia lottery. Two dirty-faced
+children were playing about the room, making a great noise.
+
+One corner of the room was fenced off with rough boards, forming
+a narrow closet, in which two people could, with some difficulty,
+sit down. This was the astrological chamber; the mystic room
+into which visitors were conducted to have their fortunes told.
+
+Madame Lane is of the Irish breed; is red-haired, freckled, and
+dirty to a degree. Her dress was ragged, showing a soiled, dingy
+petticoat through the rents.
+
+She seated her customer in the little room, produced a pack of
+cards, and proceeded to tell his future, at times shouting out
+threats and words of warning to the noisy brats outside. Then she
+said:
+
+"You are a man as has seen a great deal of trouble in the past."
+
+It will be noticed that this is almost a universal remark with
+the witches, probably because it is a perfectly safe thing to
+assert of any person in the world.
+
+"Yes, you have seen trouble in the past, not _real_ trouble, such
+as sickness, or losses in business, but still, trouble, and your
+mind has been going this way and that way and t'other way, but
+now all your trouble and disappointment is past, and your mind
+won't go this way and that way any more. Stop that noise you
+brats or I'll beat you." (This to the children.)
+
+"Your cards run lucky, 'cause you were born under Jupiter, and
+folks as is borned under Jupiter will always be lucky in
+business, in love, and in everything they undertake. If your
+business sometimes goes this way, and that way, and t'other way,
+it will all come out right, for when a man is borned under
+Jupiter he must be all right in his business, and in his love,
+and in his marriage, and in his children. Young ones stop that
+noise or I'll beat you black and blue. You have had sickness
+lately and your mind has been going this way, and that way, and
+t'other way, but you need not worry for it will be all right
+soon. Children stop that row or clear right out to the kitchen.
+Now mind. I tell you. I see a girl here that loves you very much,
+but you don't love her and won't marry her, but you will marry
+another girl with black whiskers; no, I mean the feller that is
+coortin' her has got black whiskers, and I fear you will have
+trouble with black whiskers if you are not careful--the girl has
+got black hair and is miserable because you don't write to her.
+I'm coming after you, young ones there, with a raw hide and I'll
+cut the skin off your backs. You will marry this gal and you will
+be very happy, and will have three children, which will be joys
+to you. Children, I'll come and kill you in two minutes. And you
+will always be prosperous in your business, and you will be very
+rich, and you will live to be eighty-five years old. Now you can
+cut the cards and make a wish and I will tell you if it will come
+true. Yes, your wish will come true, because you have cut the
+knave, and queen, and king--if you'd like a speedy marriage with
+the gal I told you of, I'll fix it for you for fifty cents extra;
+children if you don't shut up I'll come and beat you blind."
+
+The Individual invested a half-dollar as requested, and received
+in return a white powder with these instructions;--
+
+"You will burn that powder just before you get into bed, and if
+you see the gal to-night you won't see no change in her, but she
+will be changed to-morrow. She is kinder down on you now, but she
+loves you though her mind is kinder this way and that way, but
+she will be changed toward you to-night by what I will do after
+you are gone."
+
+The customer departed, leaving this fond mother engaged in an
+active skirmish with the two children, both of whom finally
+escaped into the street with great howlings.
+
+Madame Lane does a good business. She says that in pleasant
+weather she has from twenty-five to fifty calls a-day, mostly
+women; but in bad weather not more than fifteen or twenty, and
+these of the other sex. Many of these come only to learn lucky
+numbers for lottery gambling, and policy playing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+Conclusion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+It has been already mentioned that there are a number of persons
+in the city who do more or less in the fortune-telling way, who
+never advertise for customers. These we must leave to their own
+seclusion; as our business has been with those who make a
+business of this species of swindling, and who use all manner of
+arts to entice the curious, or the credulous, into their dens,
+there not only robbing them of their money, but often putting
+them in the way to be injured much more deeply. This, of course,
+is especially the case with young girls.
+
+In order to give the readers of this book an idea of the part
+taken by these fortune-telling women in many of the terrible
+dramas of crime constantly enacting in city life, an extract
+showing the _modus operandi_ is here inserted. It is from one of
+a series of very useful little books published in this city, and
+entitled, "Tricks and Traps of New York."
+
+Speaking of New York fortune-tellers, the author says, having
+previously indulged in some severe remarks about "yellow-covered"
+novels:
+
+"To see how the fortune-teller performs her part, let us suppose
+a case:
+
+"A young, credulous girl, whose mind has been poisoned by the
+class of fictions above referred to, is induced to visit a modern
+witch, for the purpose of having her 'fortune told.' The woman is
+very shrewd, and perceives, in a moment, the kind of customer she
+has to deal with. Understanding her business well, she is
+perfectly aware that love and marriage--courtship, lovers, and
+wedded bliss--are the subjects which are most agreeable.
+
+"She begins by complimenting her customer: 'such beautiful eyes,
+such elegant hair, such a charming form, and graceful manners,
+are altogether too fine for a servant or working girl.' She must
+surely be intended for a higher station in life, and she will
+certainly attain it. She will rise in the world, by marriage, and
+will one day be one of the finest ladies in the land. Her husband
+will be the handsomest man she has ever seen, and her children
+will be the most beautiful in the world. Fortune-tellers always
+foretell many children to their female customers; for the
+instinct of maternity, the yearning desire for offspring, is one
+of the strongest feelings of human nature.
+
+"Much more of this sort is said; and if the witch finds her talk
+eagerly listened to, she knows exactly how to proceed. She
+appoints days for other visits; for she desires to get as many
+half-dollars out of her dupe as she can. Meantime, the girl has
+been thinking of what she has heard, has pictured to herself a
+brilliant future--a rich husband--every luxury and enjoyment--and,
+upon the whole, has built so many castles in the air, that her
+brain is half-bewildered. Even though she may not believe a
+tittle of what is said to her, feminine curiosity will generally
+lead her to make a second visit; and when the fortune-teller sees
+her come upon a like errand a second time, she sets down her prey
+as tolerably sure and lays her plans accordingly.
+
+"She goes on to state to the girl, in her usual rigmarole style,
+that she will, in a few weeks, meet with a lover; and perhaps she
+may receive a present of jewelry; and by that she will know that
+the 'handsome young man' has seen, and been smitten by her many
+charms.
+
+"When the half-believing girl has gone, the scheming sorceress
+calls to her aid her confederate in the game--the party who is to
+personate 'the handsome young man.' This is usually a spruce-looking
+fellow, who makes this particular kind of work his regular business;
+or it may be some rich debauchee, who is seeking another victim,
+will come and lie in wait, either behind the curtain or in the
+next room, where, through some well-contrived crevice, he can see
+and hear all that is going on. One or the other of these men it
+is that is to assist the witch in fulfilling her prophecies; who
+is, at the proper time, to be in the way to personate the 'young
+beau,' or 'rich southerner,' and to induce her to visit a house
+of assignation, or, in some way, accomplish her ruin.
+
+"Persons who have been puzzled to know how many of the young
+fellows get their living who are seen about town, always well
+dressed, and with plenty of cash, and yet having no apparently
+respectable means of living, will find a future solution of their
+questions in this explanation. Many of these men are 'kept' by
+their mistresses, or by the proprietors of houses of ill-fame; in
+the latter case, to make acquaintance with strangers, and to
+bring business to those houses. They are often very fine-looking
+and well-appearing men, and possessed of good natural abilities;
+but, from laziness or crime, or some other cause, adopt the
+meanest possible business a man can stoop to. Humiliating as this
+may seem, and degrading as it is to poor human nature, what we
+state is, nevertheless, the literal truth.
+
+"But, to come back to our supposed case. A few days after her
+visit to the witch, the girl actually does, perhaps, receive a
+present, as the witch predicted; this not only pleases her vanity
+and love of admiration, but disposes her to put confidence in the
+powers of the fortune-teller to read coming events. Straightway
+the deluded girl goes again to the witch, to tell how things have
+fallen out, as she foretold, and to seek further light upon the
+subject. It is now the cue of the prophetess to describe the
+young man. This she does in glowing terms; never failing to endow
+him with a large fortune; and the poor girl goes away with her
+head more turned than ever."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Enraptured with a description, or sight of the picture of her
+fond love, the deluded girl is now all anxiety to see him in
+person. The witch accordingly gives her some magical powder
+(price one dollar), which she is to put under her pillow every
+night for seven nights, or wear next her heart for nine days, or
+some other nonsense of that kind, at the end of which time, she
+is told to take the ferry-boat to Hoboken or some such place, at
+a certain hour in the afternoon, and somewhere on her route she
+will have a sight of the gentleman she is almost crazed to see.
+The result is plain, the 'gentleman' is there as foretold, an
+acquaintance is commenced, and the girl is ultimately ruined.
+
+"We have been thus particular to give, step by step, the details
+of the mode of management pursued in these cases. There are, of
+course, many varieties, dictated by the circumstances of each
+case, but the general features and the _result_, are the same.
+
+"The incidents above given are the outlines of a real case in
+which the end of the conspirators was accomplished; the girl,
+however, was rescued by the Managers of the Magdalen Asylum, and
+is now leading a blameless life."
+
+The "Individual" has now concluded his labors, and he hopes not
+without profit to the community at large.
+
+He has heard it urged that this book will merely advertise the
+fortune-tellers, and that they will go on driving a more
+flourishing trade than ever. He cannot think that this will be
+the case; he cannot believe that any persons who read in this
+book the candid exposition of the style of necromancy dealt out
+by the modern Circes, will be willing to pay money for any
+personal experience of them, and he respectfully submits that
+although they have heretofore been consulted by many ladies of
+respectability, from motives of mere curiosity, those ladies will
+risk no further visits when they learn that they may with as much
+propriety visit any other assignation house, as a fortune-teller's den.
+
+A recapitulation of the various prophecies made to the Cash
+Customer would show that he has been promised thirty-three wives,
+and something over ninety children--that he was brought into the
+world on various occasions between 1820 and 1833--that he was born
+under nearly all the planets known to astronomers--that he has
+more birth-places than he has fingers and toes--that he has passed
+through so many scenes of unexpected happiness and complicated
+misfortune in his past life, that he must have lived fifty hours
+to the day and been wide awake all the time--and he has so many
+future fortunes marked out for him that at three hundred and
+fifty years old his work will not be half done, and when at last
+all _is_ finally accomplished, a minute dissection of his aged
+corpus will be necessary, that his earthly remains may be buried
+in all the places set down for him by these prophets.
+
+But aside from a humorous contemplation of the subjects, he
+trusts he has done his work well; he is sure he has done it
+faithfully, and he honestly hopes that some good may come of his
+labors to write down here honestly the ignorance and imbecility
+of The Witches of New York.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Witches of New York, by
+Q. K. Philander Doesticks
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WITCHES OF NEW YORK ***
+
+***** This file should be named 31717.txt or 31717.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+        http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/7/1/31717/
+
+Produced by Chris Curnow, Irma Spehar and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+http://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at http://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit http://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
+To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     http://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.