believe; and when
our own wishes are served up unto us on nice brown pieces of the
well-buttered toast of flattery, it is not hard to induce us to devour
them.

It is written that when Ashmedai, or Asmodeus, the chief of all the
devils of mischief, was being led a captive to Solomon, he did several
mysterious things while on the way, among others bursting into
extravagant laughter, when he saw a magician conjuring and predicting.
On being questioned by Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, why he had seemed so
much amused, Ashmedai answered that it was because the seer was at the
very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his
magic and promising fortune to others, know this. Yet, if this had been
told to all the world, the conjurer's business would not have suffered.
Not a bit of it. _Entre Jean_, _passe Jeannot_: one comes and goes,
another takes his place, and the poor will disappear from this world
before the too credulous shall have departed.

It was on the afternoon of the following day that I, by chance, met the
gypsy with a female friend, each with a basket, by the roadside, in a
lonely, furzy place, beyond Walton.

"You are a nice fortune-teller, aren't you now?" I said to her. "After
getting a tip, which made it all as clear as day, you walk straight into
the dark. And here you promise a lady two husbands, and she married
already; but you never promised me two wives, that I might make merry
withal. And then to tell a widow that she would never be married again!
You're a _bori chovihani_ [a great witch],--indeed, you aren't."

"_Rye_," said the gypsy, with a droll smile and a shrug,--I think I can
see it now,--"the _dukkerin_ [prediction] was all right, but I pet the
right _dukkerins_ on the wrong ladies."

And the Master said, "I write letters, but I am not the messenger." His
orders, like the gypsy's, had been all right, but they had gone to the
wrong shop. Thus, in all ages, those who affect superior wisdom and
foreknowledge absolute have found that a great practical part of the real
business consisted in the plausible explanation of failures. The great
Canadian weather prophet is said to keep two clerks busy, one in
recording his predictions, the other in explaining their failures; which
is much the case with the rain-doctors in Africa, who are as ingenious
and fortunate in explaining a miss as a hit, as, indeed, they need be,
since they must, in case of error, submit to be devo