y's early part, with its quaint phrases and sly
observations (all the time sticking strictly close to business), it has
a literary character, as well as me occult, that is quite its own.

Fortune-telling with cards and belief in fortune-telling with cards--
like a hundred greater and lesser follies of the mind--were straws
floating along the current of British life, intellectual and social,
during the reign of George the Second. This was the case, in spite
of the enlightening influences of religion, science, and philosophy.
Modish society was addicted to matters over which argument was
hardly worth while--in which respect we find modish society the
same in all epochs. Our ancestresses particularly were often
charming women, and almost as often sensible women; but, like
the men of Athens, they were too superstitious. Often were they
such in a fond and amusing degree. Lady Betty or Lady Selina--for
that matter, even Sir Tompkin and my lord Puce--might be spirited
men and women of the world. But they did not repudiate the idea
of ghosts. They abhorred a mirror's breakage. They disliked a
Friday's errand. They shuddered over a seven-times sneeze or at a
howling dog at midnight. And the gentle sex, especially, would
and did tell fortunes almost as jealously as play quadrille and
piquet. Let us be courteous to them. Let us remember that Esoteric
Buddhism, Faith Healing, and Psychic Phenomena were not yet
enjoying systematic cultivation and solemn propagandism; and
that relatively few dying folk were allowed to "go on with their
dying" as part of a process of healing which excludes medicine
and insists on the conviction that the invalids are not ill!

But to our "Square of Sevens"--with which even a Gallio may
deign to be diverted--especially if in using it the air is found to be
full of coincidences. The story of the book is already alluded to, as
odd. The inquisitive reader may be referred to "certain copies
only." Therein, "inserted by Afterthought on the Author's part"
(and therefore in a mere fraction of whatever represented the
extremely small edition of the work), may be sought the "Prefatory
Explication, made for the Benefit of My Friends, Male and
Female." In recounting the origin of the manual, its author is
candid, but at the same time too long-winded for quoting entire.
Enough to say, as the substitute for a lengthy tale of facts, that
prior to the year 1731 the author of "The Square of Sevens," Mr.
Robert Antro