acts about her
are best set forth in the words of the anxious seeker after
hidden lore, who paid her a visit one pleasant afternoon in
August.

The "Individual" visits Madame Bruce and has a
Conference with that Mysterious Veiled Personage.

A man of strong nerves can recover from the effects of a
professional interview with the ponderous Prewster in about a
week; delicately organized persons, particularly susceptible to
supernatural influences, might be so overpowered by the
manifestations of her cabalistic lore as to affect their
appetites for a whole lunar month, and have bad dreams till the
moon changed; but the daring traveller of this veracious history
was convalescent in ten days. It is true, that, even after that
time, he, in his dreams, would imagine himself engaged in
protracted single combats with the heroine of the rolling-pin,
and once or twice awoke in an agony of fear, under the impression
that he had been worsted in the fight, and that the conquering
fair one was about to cook him in a steamer, or stew him into
charity soup, and season him strong with red pepper; or broil him
on a gridiron and serve him up on toast to Madame Prewster, like
a huge woodcock. In one gastronomic nightmare of a dream he even
fancied that the triumphant maiden had tied him, hand and foot,
with links of sausages, then tapped his head with an auger,
screwed a brass faucet into his helpless skull, and was preparing
to draw off his brains in small quantities to suit cannibalic
retail customers.

But he eventually recovered his equanimity, his nocturnal visions
of the warlike servant became less terrible, and he gradually
ceased to think of her, except with a dim sort of half-way
remembrance, as of some fearful danger, from which many years
before he had been miraculously preserved.

When he had reached this state of mind, he was ready to proceed
with his inquiries into the mysteries of the cheap and nasty
necromancy of the day, and to encounter the rest of the
fifty-cent Sybils with an unperturbed spirit. Accordingly, he
girded up his loins, and prepared the necessary amount of one
dollar bills; for, with a most politic and necessary carefulness,
he always made his own change.

[Note of caution to the future observer of these Modern Witches:
Never let one of them "break" a large bank-bill for you, and give
you small notes in exchange, lest the small bills be much more
badly broken than the large one. Not that t