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Updated: September 14, 2025
I knew of a blind doctor who habitually told character by the tone of the voice, and men and women often went to him to have their characters described as one would go to a palmist. Once a woman spoke to him earnestly for that purpose and he replied, "Madam, your voice has been so much cultivated that there is nothing of you in it I cannot tell your real character at all."
Stripped of twenty pounds odd in the guise of a fine and costs, and having narrowly missed the rigours of our county jail, that fashionable palmist and soothsayer had returned to Bond Street full of hate and respect for Midland justice, which fears not and has a fist like a navvy's. The attention of the Five Towns had thus been naturally drawn to fortune-telling in general.
I accordingly made other inquiries from those who were in a position to know; and I learned that this medium, a celebrated "Doctor of the Occult, Astrologer, Palmist and Spirit Medium," was at that time giving private sittings in Council Bluffs to earnest inquirers only, for the small sum of two dollars.
One hard-working girl of my acquaintance, told by a palmist that "diamonds were coming to her soon," afterwards accepted without a moment's hesitation a so-called diamond ring from a man whose improper attentions she had hitherto withstood.
Such things as "Old Souls," "The Snake Charmer," "The Palmist," three capital examples of his work, are often, and not quite wrongly, objected to in different forms of some such a phrase as this: "Poetry that is perfect poetry ought never to subject any tolerable intellect to the necessity of searching for its meaning.
In London, such a man as himself would have found it difficult to have ascertained at a moment's notice the address of even a famous palmist or fortune-teller. But in everything to do with social life Paris is highly organised, London singularly chaotic.
It would be idle to take up in any detail the claims of phrenologist and palmist. The former had a very respectable start in the work of Broca and Gall in that the localization of function in the various parts of the brain made at least partly logical the belief that the conformation of the head also indicated functions of character.
He was called off at this point to attend to another customer, leaving me to ponder over the information he had given me. I felt that somehow or other I must make Mademoiselle Vivien's acquaintance. A beautiful palmist, for whom George deserted his business at eleven in the morning, was just the sort of person who might prove extremely interesting to me.
"But, Marian, why should your Hermann be jealous of my writing poetry about my own sister?" "He ain't jealous," she sobbed. "He says it was indecent, ob obscene." Martin emitted a long, low whistle of incredulity, then proceeded to resurrect and read a carbon copy of "The Palmist." "I can't see it," he said finally, proffering the manuscript to her.
I was fond of Mortimer Sturgis, and I could see trouble ahead for him as plainly as though I had been a palmist reading his hand at two guineas a visit.
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