n case a brisk competition should arise for customers, that some
of his cashiers and head-clerks would contrive to under-sell him
even at this price.

The person who is so very anxious to effect this desirable
consummation, and to bring on a crop of young and pretty witches
to supersede the grizzled ones of this present generation was
Johannes, who had of late been getting rather sick of the
"Madames," and would prefer, if possible, to have the rest of his
fortunes told by ladies of tenderer age, and greater inexperience
in the ways of the world.

However, he was not the man to be deterred, in his pursuit of
wisdom, by the age and ugliness, grey hairs, wrinkles, false
teeth, _no_ teeth, dirt, ignorance, and imbecility he had
encountered, and he was determined to go on to the very end and
see if these are the sum total of modern witchcraft.

And then _duns_ came o'er the spirit of his dream, and fond
visions of sundry small debts, paid by magic and a wife, as soon
as he should succeed in finding the wife who had the magic,
floated across his hard-up brain, and encouraged him to
perseverance in his matrimonial quest. And when he had won that
invaluable lady, he would stuff his mattress with receipted
bills, and cram his pillow with cancelled notes, lie down to
pleasant dreams, and awake to ready cash.

Sweet thought!

So he made ready to visit the humble abode of MADAME CARZO, THE
BRAZILIAN ASTROLOGIST, _No. 151 Bowery_.

To say that he discovered, in this lady, the ideal of his search,
that he found her handsome, intelligent, learned in the stars and
thoroughly posted in the other branches of her trade, would be
to anticipate. Suffice to say that boa-constrictors, half-naked
savages, dye-woods, Jesuit's bark, cockatoos, scorpions and
ring-tailed monkeys, are not, as he had hitherto supposed, the
only contributions to the happiness of mankind afforded by South
America, for the Province of Brazil grows fortune-tellers of a
very superior quality as to respectability and neatness of
appearance. A Brazilian witch was something new, and without
stopping to inquire how she had strayed so far away from home, he
immediately argued that that single fact was decidedly in her
favor. Thus ran the logic:

If there be any diabolism in modern witchcraft, the practisers
thereof who have received their education in tropical latitudes
ought to be the most worthy of credence and belief, inasmuch as
the temperature of their place