en therefore hastily cased up in an
inferior kind of human frame as a sort of make-shift for men and
women.

Your professional clairvoyant is always, both as to soul and
body, a botched-up job that nature ought to be ashamed of, and
probably is, if she'd own up.

The senior partner of the clairvoyant fortune-telling firm, the
strong-minded one, according to their professions, has the
arbitrary control of the cast-off souls that animate these refuse
bodies. By what spiritual hocus-pocus this is managed is not
known to those outside the trade. He uses their half-baked
spirits at his will, and makes his living by farming them out to
do dirty jobs for the paying public. He disconnects them from
their mortal vehicles, and sends them on errands in the
spirit-land in behalf of his customers, looking up their "absent
friends," both in and out of the body--telling of their health and
prosperity if they are still alive, and picking up little bits of
scandal about their angels if they are dead. The senior partner
also sends his abject two-and-sixpenny souls to explore the
bodies of his sick customers and examine their internal
machinery, point out any little defects or disarrangements, and
suggest the proper remedies therefor, and in short, to do
whatever other dirty work the customer may choose to pay for.

The senior partner of course pockets all the money, merely
keeping the mortal tenement in which the working partner dwells
in a good state of repair, in consideration of services rendered.

Such a partnership is the one of Mr. and Mrs. Hayes, whose place
of business is advertised every day in the morning papers in the
words following:

"CLAIRVOYANCE.--Astonishing cures and great discoveries
daily made by MRS. HAYES, that superior and wonderful
clairvoyant. All diseases discovered and cured (if
curable). Unerring advice given respecting persons in
business, absent friends, &c. Satisfactory examinations
given in all cases, or no charge made. Residence, 176
Grand St. N. Y."

Johannes, whose general health was excellent, and whose internal
apparatus was all right so far as heard from, had therefore no
occasion to be astonishingly cured, or to have any great
discoveries made in him by Mrs. Hayes; still he was desirous of a
little "unerring advice about absent friends," etc., from "that
superior and wonderful clairvoyant."

Besides, it was barely possible that in the person of the
supe