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For coffee and cigars we moved to the terrace outside. Here an orchestra played, the peoples of many nations sat at little tables, the peddlers, fakirs, jugglers, and fortune-tellers swarmed. A half-dozen postal cards seemed sufficient to set a small boy up in trade, and to imbue him with all the importance and insistence of a merchant with jewels.
This is the recognized explanation of the credit given, in spite of reason and evidence, to many classes of impostors; to quack-doctors, and fortune-tellers in all ages; to the “cunning man” of modern times, and the oracles of old. Few have considered the extent to which this fallacy operates in practice, even in the teeth of the most palpable negative evidence.
We had about a dozen small shows in our company, fortune-tellers, minstrels, magic wonders, and all that and the band had to march from one tent to the next, and stand out in front and play, to get the crowd in a bunch, so the free exhibition could work on their nerves. And I'd beat away, in my red coat...and there were always the strange faces, staring, staring but I was so little!
Nothing is more easy, when a great warrior, statesman, poet, philosopher or philanthropist is explicitly placed before us, than for the credulous inspector or fond visionary to examine the lines of his countenance, and to point at the marks which should plainly shew us that he ought to have been the very thing that he is. This is the very trick of gipsies and fortune-tellers.
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.
Fortune-tellers generally ask to look at one's palm." Having delivered herself of this wise opinion, Julia flitted off to the house to secure the disguising scarf. "I defy you to pick me out as a twin," was her merry challenge, when returning to the group on the lawn she wound her long chiffon scarf twice about her head. "Thank goodness, Sarah and I never dress alike.
Fortune-tellers, of both sexes, quacks, cardcutters, herbalists, cow-doctors, whisperers, with a long list of such cheats, were at the time a prevailing nuisance throughout the kingdom; nor was there a fair proportion of them wanting here.
In 1579, so much alarm was excited in the neighbourhood of Melun by the increase of witches and loup-garous, that a council was held to devise some measures to stay the evil. A decree was passed, that all witches, and consulters with witches, should be punished with death; and not only those, but fortune-tellers and conjurors of every kind.
These terrors and apprehensions of the people led them into a thousand weak, foolish, and wicked things, which they wanted not a sort of people really wicked to encourage them to: and this was running about to fortune-tellers, cunning-men, and astrologers to know their fortune, or, as it is vulgarly expressed, to have their fortunes told them, their nativities calculated, and the like; and this folly presently made the town swarm with a wicked generation of pretenders to magic, to the black art, as they called it, and I know not what; nay, to a thousand worse dealings with the devil than they were really guilty of.
It is only in what Joseph Jastrow has called the slums of psychology that the explanation of character is regarded as a fixed system to be applied by phrenologists, palmists, fortune-tellers, mind-readers, and a few political professors. There are things he will not do as a patriot that he will do when he is not thinking of himself as a patriot.
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