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
sinc