ney matters will be scarce with me next week or
otherwise, and if so what I had better do about it?"

"Towards the last of the week you will experience considerable monetary
prostration, but just as you have become despondent, at the very tail
end of the week, the horizon will clear up and a slight, dark gentleman,
with wide trousers, who is a total stranger to you, will loan you quite
a sum of money, with the understanding that it is to be repaid on
Monday."

"Then you would not advise me to go to Coney Island until the week after
next?"

"Certainly not."

"Would it be etiquette in dancing a quadrille to swing a young person of
the opposite sex twice round at a select party when you are but slightly
acquainted, but feel quite confident that her partner is unarmed?"

"Yes."

"Does your horoscope tell a person what to do with raspberry jelly that
will not jell?"

"No, not at the present prices."

"So you predict an early marriage, with threatening weather and strong
prevailing easterly winds along the Gulf States?"

"Yes, sir."

"And is there no way that this early marriage may be evaded?"

"No, not unless you put it off till later in life."

"Thank you," I said, rising and looking out the window over a broad
sweep of undulating alley and wind-swept roofing, "and now, how much are
you out on this?"

"Sir!"

"What's the damage?"

"Oh, one dollar."

"But don't you advertise to read the past, present and future for fifty
cents?"

"Well, that is where a person has had other information before in his
life and has some knowledge to begin with; but where I fill up a vacant
mind entirely and store it with facts of all kinds and stock it up so
that it can do business for itself, I charge a dollar. I cannot
thoroughly refit and refurnish a mental tenement from the ground up for
fifty cents."

I do not think we have as good "Astrologists" now as we used to have.
Astrologists cannot crawl under the tent and pry into the future as they
could three or four thousand years ago.

Mr. Silberberg

[Illustration]

I like me yet dot leedle chile
Vich climb my lap up in to-day,
Unt took my cheap cigair avay,
Unt laugh and kiss me purty whvile,--
Possescially I like dose mout'
Vich taste his moder's like--unt so,
Off my cigair it gone glean out
--Yust let it go!

Vat I caire den for anyding?
Der paper schlip out fon my hand,
And