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Title: The Witches of New York
Author: Doesticks, Q. K. Philander, 1831-1875
Language: English
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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 × 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 homœopathicest 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
_à 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 könig, 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 13½, 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.
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