he future at
cut rates.

Skirmishing about among the planets for twenty years involves a great
deal of fatigue and exposure, to say nothing of the night work, and so
Mme. La Foy has the air of one who has put in a very busy life. She is
as familiar with planets though as you or I might be with our own
family, and calls them by their first names. She would know Jupiter,
Venus, Saturn, Adonis or any of the other fixed stars the darkest night
that ever blew.

"Mme. La Foy De Graw," said I, bowing with the easy grace of a gentleman
of the old school, "would you mind peering into the future for me about
a half dollar's worth, not necessarily for publication, et cetera."

"Certainly not. What would you like to know?"

"Why, I want to know all I can for the money," I said in a bantering
tone. "Of course I do not wish to know what I already know. It is what I
do not know that I desire to know. Tell me what I do not know, Madame. I
will detain you but a moment."

She gave me back my large, round half dollar and told me that she was
already weary. She asked me to excuse her. She was willing to unveil the
future to me in her poor, weak way, but she could not guarantee to let a
large flood of light into the darkened basement of a benighted mind for
half a dollar.

"You can tell me what year and on what day of the month you were born,"
said Mme. La Foy, "and I will outline your life to you. I generally
require a lock of the hair, but in your case we will dispense with it."

I told her when I was born and the circumstances as well as I could
recall them.

"This brings you under Venus, Mercury and Mars. These three planets were
in conjunction at the time of your birth. You were born when the sign
was wrong and you have had more or less trouble ever since. Had you been
born when the sign was in the head or the heart, instead of the feet,
you would not have spread out over the ground so much.

"Your health is very good, as is the health of those generally who are
born under the same auspices that you were. People who are born under
the reign of the crab are apt to be cancerous. You, however, have great
lung power and wonderful gastric possibilities. Yet, at times, you would
be easily upset. A strong cyclone that would unroof a court-house or tip
over a through train would also upset you, in spite of your broad, firm
feet if the wind got behind one of your ears.

"You will be married early, and you will be very happy, though