e. They were treated in the most fair and frank manner; the
same data as to time and date of birth, age, nationality, etc.,
were given in all cases, and the same questions were put to all,
so that the absurd differences in their statements and predictions
result from the unmitigated humbug of their pretended art, and
from no misinformation or misrepresentation on the part of the
seeker after mystic knowledge.

This latter person was perfectly unknown to the worthy ladies of
the black art profession; he was to them simply an individual,
one of the many-headed public, a cash customer, who paid
liberally for all he required, and who, by reason of the dollars
he disbursed, was entitled to the very best witchcraft in the
market.

And he got it.

He undertook a few short journeys in search of the marvellous; he
went on a couple of dozen voyages of discovery without going out
of sight of home; he penetrated to the out-of-the-way regions,
where the two-and-sixpenny witches of our own time grow. He got
his fill of the cheap prophecy of the day, and procured of the
oracles in person their oracularest sayings, at the very highest
market price. For the business-like seers of this age are easily
moved to prophesy by the sight of current moneys of the land, no
matter who presents the same; whereas the oracles of the olden
time dealt only with kings and princes, and nothing less than the
affairs of an entire nation, or a whole territory, served to get
their slow prophetic apparatus into working trim. To the
necromancers of early days the anxieties of private individuals
were as naught, and from the shekels of humble life they turned
them contemptuously away.

It is probably a thorough conviction of the necessity of eating
and drinking, and a constant contemplation from a Penitentiary
point of view of the consequences of so doing without paying
therefor, that induces our modern witches to charge a specific
sum for the exercise of their art, and to demand the inevitable
dollar in advance.

Whatever there is of Sorcery, Astrology, Necromancy, Prophecy,
Fortune-telling, and the Black Art generally, practised at this
time by the professional Witches of New York, is here honestly
set down.

Should any other individual become particularly interested in the
subject, and desire to go back of the present record and make his
exploration personally among the Fortune-tellers, he will find
their present addresses in the newspapers of the