am sufficiently well acquainted with the city to know that the Astor House should be found on the corner of Barclay street, but I am ready to take my oath that on that particular occasion it plied as an opposition ferry-boat between Whitehall street and Hamilton avenue. The last thing I distinctly recollect is trying to pay the fare for three on this novel craft, with a single piece of money (which I now know to have been a Bungtown copper), and demanding two-and-sixpence change, which I didn't get.
In the morning I found myself in bed with my overcoat on, and afterwards discovered my boots under the pillow – my hat in the grate, with my pantaloons and hair-brush in it – my watch in the water-jug, and my latch-key in the bird-cage. I presume I had tried to write a letter to some one with my tooth-brush, as I found that article in my inkstand.
Now, if Croton water interferes with my susceptible system in this unaccountable manner, what shall I drink? I would resort to milk, but I fear our city edition of the lacteal contains sufficient of the aqueous enemy to again upset my too delicate nerves. I exclaim, like Cæsar, when he, too, was afflicted with superfluity of water, "Help me, Cassius, or I sink!"
What would be the effect of brandy and water without any water, and a little lemon?
IX
Modern Witchcraft
It has been asserted, that no humbug can be invented which is so improbable that it will find no believers. No theory is too ridiculous, no folly too great to turn the stomach of the modern wonder-seeking Public; it opens its staring eyes, perhaps, a little wider than usual at some transcendent tomfoolery, but its sapient optics have as yet discerned nothing in all the superfluous deceptions and jugglery of the age, too hugely nonsensical to be swallowed without even a single qualm.
Hence, all the "pathies" and "isms" of medical Empiricism, all the newly discovered charlatanry of the legal trade, and even the latest form of religious quackery, that new device of bashful, half-grown, bastard Infidelity, denominated Spiritualism, which would be impious if it was not idiotic, have all received from the wise ones of the nineteenth century belief and credence.
For at this time of triumphant and successful humbug – when indiscriminate puffery is freely used to boost into notice all kinds of sham, deception, and deceit, which thereupon grow fat and thrive – when vermin exterminators, lucifer matches, and patent blacking employ such high-flown language in commendation of their merits, that inventions of real merit and importance must resort to the basest bombast to keep pace with the foolery of their neighbors – when solid merit which would succeed, must vie in euphuistic phrase with brainless emptiness which will– when, in Literature, inane collections of stolen wit, diluted humor, and feeble fiction are spawned in scores from weak-brained fops and aspiring women, inflated by unsparing puffery into a transient notoriety, and palmed upon the public as works of sterling merit – when even these Doestick Letters are purchased and perused, it may easily be imagined that no impudent humbug, if properly managed, will turn the stomach of the enlightened Yankee Nation.
It is not astonishing, that, in a sort of gross imitation of the clairvoyants and spirit-seers, other persons not quite so intellectual perhaps, but fully as reliable should also profess to hold converse with invisible beings.
The fortune-tellers of the city are these, and they certainly deserve praise for attempting to apply their pretended knowledge to some practical use, instead of dealing entirely with abstractions. In New York these people are numerous, and they pick up as many coppers in quite as honest a way as their fellows in the art of table-tipping notoriety.
Having read the advertisement of a Grand street fortune-teller, who advertised herself the "seventh daughter of a seventh daughter," a lineal descendant from some one of the Egyptian magicians who couldn't kill the frogs – I straightway resolved to pay her a visit.
Since that memorable day my destiny is no longer a mystery. I know it all. I know what kind of a woman I'm to marry, how many children we're to have, how many will die of measles, and how many will be choked with the croup, and can calculate to a quart how much castor oil I shall have to lay in for family consumption. I've had my fortune told by a witch.
The witches of modern time do not frequent graves and gibbets at midnight – they hold no nocturnal orgies with dancing skeletons and corpses, brought by the black art back to temporary life – they now-a-days take no pains to conceal their trade, but advertise it in the daily papers.
Their believers are not now the great men and wise women of the earth alone, but chamber-maids and servant girls who want love-powders to win some noble swain – or some verdant countryman anxious to recover the pilfered eelskin which contained his treasured pennies. They easily satisfy these gullible customers, by promising the first no end of rich, handsome princes, who are to appear some day and carry off their brides in four-horse coaches; and the latter by an extemporaneous description of the thief, and a wish that he may suffer pains in his head, heart, liver, and all other important parts of his body, until the property is restored.
Witchcraft is rife in our midst, and we do not hang or burn the hags and beldames who practice it, or stick them full of needles, or duck them in the horse-ponds, as in the good old days of Salem – more's the pity.
In this day of railroads and three-cent stages, they have no occasion to perform their journeys upon broomsticks; and in our city, where cream is only traditionary, they cannot bewitch their neighbors' churnings, or throw their dire enchantments over the incipient cheese – so the protective horse-shoe is of no avail.
They have robbed the trade of all its mystery and romance; we hear no more of mighty magician, with hoary beard and flowing robe, with magic wand and attendant spirits; no more "weird sisters," with talon fingers and sunken eyes; not even romantic wandering gipsies – but ugly women, with unwashed hands, who can't spell.
The calling has degenerated, and the necromantic trade has passed into the hands of unworthy successors, who would steal their living, if cheating wasn't easier. And the trade thrives, and the swindling practisers thereof flaunt in silks, while honest virtue staves off destitution by making "hickory" shirts at eight cents a piece.
Went up town, found the house, rung the bell, and was shown into a shabby room by a stuttering girl, who informed me by instalments that her mistress would see me presently. Examined the furniture – rickety table, ditto chairs, bare floor with knot-holes in it, unctuous mirror, two hair trunks, a clothes basket, and a hat-box.
Enter mistress – minus youth, beauty, hair-pins and clean stockings.
She wore no flowing robe figured with cabalistic signs, she bore no sable wand of magic, but she was clad in a calico dress, and had a brass candlestick in her hand – she drew no mystic circle, she performed no inscrutable incantations, she spoke in no unknown tongue – but she put the candlestick on the rickety table, sat down in a cane-bottomed chair, and asked me what my name was, and what I wanted.
Told her I wanted to find out who I was going to marry, and wanted her to tell me a lucky number in the lottery, which should draw a prize big enough to support the family – also wanted a description of the man who stole my jack-knife, and a knowledge of the place where I could find the same.
Now she began to work – she did not consult the stars – she did not cast my horoscope – she did not even ask me where I was born, or what my father did for a living – she exhibited no strange paraphernalia of sorcery and conjuration – no obscure language, suggestive of a divination or enchantment, fell from her prophetic lips.
She only asked me if I had any moles on my person, and what I dreamed about last night – then plunging her hand through a slit in the side of her dress, she fished out from some unknown depth a pack of cards. Greasy were they, and well worn
