“Clairvoyance.—Astonishing cures and great discoveries daily made byMrs. Hayes, that superior and wonderful clairvoyant. All diseases discovered and cured (if curable). Unerring advice given respecting persons in business, absent friends, &c. Satisfactory examinations given in all cases, or no charge made. Residence, 176 Grand St. N. Y.”
“Clairvoyance.—Astonishing cures and great discoveries daily made byMrs. Hayes, that superior and wonderful clairvoyant. All diseases discovered and cured (if curable). Unerring advice given respecting persons in business, absent friends, &c. Satisfactory examinations given in all cases, or no charge made. Residence, 176 Grand St. N. Y.”
Johannes, whose general health was excellent, andwhose internal apparatus was all right so far as heard from, had therefore no occasion to be astonishingly cured, or to have any great discoveries made in him by Mrs. Hayes; still he was desirous of a little “unerring advice about absent friends,” etc., from “that superior and wonderful clairvoyant.”
Besides, it was barely possible that in the person of the superior and wonderful Mrs. Hayes, he might find the bride for whom he pined. With hope slightly renewed within his speculative breast, he set off joyfully for the designated domicile, which he achieved in the due course of travel.
The house No. 176 Grand Street is a brick two-story dwelling, of a dingy drab color, as though it had been steeped in a Quaker atmosphere and had there imbibed its color, which had since been overlaid with “world’s people’s” dirt.
The door was opened by Mrs. Hayes in person, her body on this occasion being sent with her spirit to do a bit of drudgery.
She is a woman of the most abject and cringingmanner imaginable; a female counterpart of Uriah Heep, with an unknown multiplication of that vermicular gentleman’s writhings; she wore no hoops, she would have squirmed herself out of them in an instant; her dress was fastened securely on with numerous visible hooks and eyes, and pins, and strings, in spite of which precautions her visitor expected to see her worm out of it before she got up stairs, and would scarcely have been astonished to see her jerk her skeleton out of her skin, and complete her errand in her bones.
With a propitiating bow, whose intense servility would have become Mr. Sampson Brass in the day of his discomfiture, she asked her customer into the house, cringingly preceded him up stairs, deferentially placed a chair, and abjectly departed into an inner room, pausing at the door to execute an obsequious wriggle, and to once more humble herself in the dust (of which there was plenty) before her astonished visitor.
The reception-room to which she led him, is anapartment of moderate size, from the front windows of which the beholder may regale his eyes with a comprehensive view of Centre Market and its charming surroundings; Mott and Mulberry Streets lie just beyond, and the Tombs are visible in the dim distance. The room was furnished with a superfluity of gaudy furniture; and sofas, tables, chairs and pictures, crowded and elbowed each other, showing plainly that the upholstery of a couple, at least, of parlors had been there compressed into a bedroom.
From the inner room came a great sound, made up of so many household ingredients as to defy accurate analysis—but the crying of babies, the frizzling of cooking meat, the scraping of saucepans, and a sound of somebody scolding everybody else, predominated.
The voyager was unprepared for anyMisterHayes, having taken it for granted that theMrs.of the superior and wonderful clairvoyant did not imply a husband, but was merely assumed because it looks more dignified in the advertisement. But therewasaMr.Hayes, and presently the door opened and that worthyappeared; he was surrounded by an atmosphere of fried onions, and the fragrant and greasy perspiration in his face seemed to have been distilled from that favorite vegetable.
Mr. Hayes is a tall, fierce, sharp-spoken man, of manners so very rough and bearish that his wife and children quailed when he spoke as if they expected an instant blow. We don’t know that it ever will be possible for a man to garrote his guardian angel for the sake of her golden crown, but the idea occurred to Johannes that if that amiable feat is ever accomplished, it will be by such another man as this. He seemed as unable to speak a kind or gentle word as to pull his boots off over his ears. He is an Englishman, and speaks with the most intolerable cockney accent. Moderating his harsh tones until they were almost as pleasant as the threatenings of an ill-natured bull-dog, and addressing his auditor, he growled out the following specimen of delectable English:
“There is lots of folks goin’ round town pretendin’ to do clairvoyance, and to cure sick folks, and to tellfortunes, and business, and journeys, and stole property; but we ain’t none of them people. We only do this for the sake of doin’ good, and we don’t want to do nothin’ that will make any trouble. We used to tell things about stole property, and about family troubles, and so we sometimes used to get folks into musses, but we don’t do nothin’ of that kind now. If your business is about any kind of muss and trouble in your family we don’t want nothin’ to do with it. Sometimes folks that has quarrelled their wives away come to us and wants us to get them back again, but we don’t do nothing of that sort. We can tell ’em if their wives are well, or if they’re sick and all about what ails ’em, and so we can about any people that is gone off anywhere, and them’s what we call ‘absent friends.’ So if you’ve got any trouble with your wife we can’t do nothin’ for you.”
The love-lorn visitor had no wives, a fact known to the reader already, and when he does accumulate a help-meet, he sincerely trusts she may not be so unruly as to require the interference of outsiders to preserveharmony in the family. He expressed himself to that effect, and added that his business was to find out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his peace of mind.
Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady, who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.
While this curious process was going on, the Doctor had drawn down the window-shades, thus darkening the room, and now approached for the purpose ofunhooking from its earthly tabernacle the soul that was to step up to Minnesota and bring back word to his customer “how all the folks got along.” This he accomplished by a few mysterious mesmeric passes, and when the trance was induced, and the spirit had, so to speak, tucked its breeches into its boots ready for the muddy journey, he placed in the hand of Johannes that of the corpus which still remained in the armchair, and said to the disembodied spirit:
“Now, I want you to go with this gentleman to Brooklyn and take a fair start from there, and then go where he tells you to, and tell him what things there is there that you see.”
Having delivered this injunction in a tone so indescribably savage that he had better a thousand times have struck her in the face, this amiable animal retired to the Babel, taking with him the fried-onion atmosphere.
Then the woman in the chair began to speak, in a style the most disagreeable and affected that anybody ever listened to. It was more like that sickening gibberishthat nurses call “baby-talk,” than anything else in the world. She spoke with a detestable whine, and pronounced each syllable of every word separately, as if she feared a two-syllable word might choke her. Sick at the stomach as was her visitor at the whole babyish performance, he so far controlled his qualms as to note down the words hereunder written.
Whoever has heard this woman in a professional way can testify to the verbatim truth of this sketch.
“There is wa-ter that we must cross, we must go in a boat musn’t we? Now we’re in the boat, and O I see so many put-ty things, men, and dogs, and ships and things going up and down; such beau-ti-ful things I have never seened before. Now we are a-cross the riv-er, and now we must get on the car, musn’t we? What car must we get on? O I see it now, the yellow car. Now we are going a-long and I can see—O what a pret-ty dress in that store. O what real nice can-dy that is. I wish I had some don’t you? Now we’re at the house. Is it the one on the cor-ner, orthe next one to it, or is it the brick house with the green blinds? No, the wood one with green blinds; so it is, but I didn’t be here be-fore ev-er in my life. Now we will go in-to the house; I see a car-pet there and some chairs and some—O what a pret-ty pic-ture, and what a nice fire. I see a la-dy of ver-y pret-ty ap-pear-ance. She is a young la-dy; she has got blue eyes, she is stand-ing sideways so I can’t see noth-ing of her but one side of her face. There is al-so an el-der-ly la-dy, but I can’t see much of her. They appear to be go-ing on a jour-ney, shall I go with them? Yes, well I will. Now we are on the wa-ter and—O what a pret-ty boat—now we are get-ting off of the boat—I didn’t nev-er be here be-fore. Now we are on a rail-road, I nev-er seened this rail-road be-fore but—O what a pret-ty ba-by. Now we go along, along, along, along, and now we are at the de-pot. I didn’t ev-er be here ei-ther—there is a riv-er here, and a mill and a—O what a pret-ty cow—somebody is go-ing to milk the cow. There is a town here—it seems as if I did be here before—yes I amsure—O what a pret-ty lit-tle car-riage, and what a pret-ty dog. Yes I am sure I seened this town be-fore, but these rail-roads didn’t be here then.”
By this time the travellers were supposed to have reached St. Paul, and the reliable clairvoyant then proceeded to describe that interesting young city; and in the course of her speech made more improvements there than will be accomplished in reality in less than a year or two certainly.
Among other things, Mrs. Hayes described as at present existing in St. Paul, two Colleges, a City Hall built of white marble, a locomotive factory, and a place where they were building seven ocean steamers.
She then, when she arrived at the house, in the course of her mesmeric journey, where the people concerning whom Johannes had inquired were supposed to be at that present domiciled, proceeded to give descriptions of those whom she saw there, of the looks of the country and of the house.
Andsuchdescriptions, as much like the truth as a ton of “T” rail is like a boiled custard.
By asking leading questions the seeker after clairvoyant knowledge got some very original information. He only began this course after he found that she, if left to herself, could describe nothing, and could utter no speech more coherent or sensible than that already set down as coming from her illustrious lips.
In fact, the policy of the clairvoyant-witch in every case, is to wait for leading questions from the anxious inquirer, so that the answers may be framed to suit the exigencies of the case. Johannes was not slow to perceive this, and by way of testing the science, or rather, art of clairvoyance, he put a series of questions which established the following interesting facts, all of which were positively averred to be true by Mrs. Hayes, “that superior and wonderful clairvoyant.”
Minnesota Territory is a small town situated 911 miles south-east of the mouth of the Mississippi River—its officers are a chief cook and 23 high privates, besides the younger brother of Shakspeare, who is the Mayor of the Territory, and whose principal business it is to keep the American flag at half-mast, upside down.
When this last important information had been elicited, Johannes, who thought he had got the worth of his money, recalled Dr. Hayes, who reappeared, surrounded by the same old atmosphere of the same old onions; to him the customer resigned the hand of the twaddling adult baby who had held his hand for an hour and a half, paid his dollar, and then prepared to depart.
The soul of the woman then returned from its long journey, and was locked up in its squirmy body by the Doctor, ready to serve future customers at one dollar a head.
She didn’t seem glad to get her soul back again, there probably not being enough to give her any great joy, after she had got it.
Johannes turned moodily away, feeling that the conjuress, his future bride, the renovator of his broken fortunes, and the ready relief to his present necessities, was as far distant as ever.
Thiswoman is at the same time one of the most pretentious and most clever of the clairvoyants, and she does a very large business. Most of her customers come for medical advice, although, in accordance with her printed announcement, she is willing to talk about “absent friends,” and whatever other business the client may choose to pay for.
One branch of the clairvoyant trade which formerly brought as much money to their pockets as any other department of their business, was the finding lost or stolen property, and giving directions for the detection of the thieves. This specialty has however been pretty much abandoned of late by nearly all of them, in consequenceof law-proceedings against certain ones of the sisterhood, which have in three or four instances been commenced by parties who have been wrongfully accused of theft, through the agency of the clairvoyant impostors. Several suits have been instituted against them for defamation of character, and they have been made to smart so severely that they are now all very careful about accusing persons of crimes.
As an evidence of the implicit faith put in these people by their dupes, it may be mentioned that many applications have been made to Judge Welsh, of this city, and to the other judges, for warrants of arrest against respectable persons, for theft, the only grounds of suspicion against them being, that some clairvoyant had said that the property had been stolen by a person of such and such a height, with hair and eyes of this or that color, and that the suspected person happened to answer the description. Of course, all such applications for legal process have been refused by the magistrates, and the applicants dismissed with a severe rebuke.
Mrs. Seymour was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cunningham, of the Burdell-murder notoriety, and was a witness in that memorable trial.
The Cash Customer had an interview with this woman, which he thus describes:
If a man be desirous of knowing what sort of a moral character he bears in the spirit-world, and what style of society his disembodied soul will circulate in, or if he desires to know the particulars of the after-death behavior of any of his acquaintances, of course he will find it to his interest to marry a “medium” of average respectability, and in good practice, and so save the expense of frequent consultations. The “rapping” and “table-tipping” communications from the spirit-world are hardly satisfactory. It is, very likely, pleasant for a man to be on speaking terms with his bedroom furniture, to spend an agreeable hour occasionally in conversation withhis washhand-stand, to enjoy a spirited argument with his bedstead and rocking-chair, or to receive now and then a confidential communication from his bootjack, but on the whole, these upholstery dialogues do not satisfy the “yearnings of the soul after the infinite.” The powers of speech of a washhand-stand are circumscribed, bedsteads and rocking-chairs are seldom equal to a sustained conversation, and the most talkative bootjack has not a sufficient command of language to make itself agreeable for any great length of time. The logic of a poker may sometimes be convincing, but it is not generally agreeable; and the rhetoric of uneducated coal-scuttles is hardly elegant enough to pass the criticism of a refined taste. It is therefore much more satisfactory as well as economical, for a person who desires to enjoy his daily chat with the Spirits, to get a “speaking medium” to translate the eloquence of all parties and make the thing pleasant. Even then, confidential communications must be very guarded, and on this account the person who invents some means by which every mancan be his own medium, will win an equal immortality with the author of that invaluable book, “Every Man his own Washerwoman.”
Johannes had been thinking over the spiritual subject, of course with a view to profitable matrimony, for he thought he could manage to turn an intimacy with the spirits to good pecuniary account, and inveigle those incorporeal gentlemen into doing something for those of their friends who are yet bothered with bodies.
He knew that there are in New York, plenty of spiritualists in such constant communication with their acquaintances on the “other side of Jordan,” that they know the bill of fare with which those seventh-heaveners are served every day, and whenever their jolly ghostships sit down to a pleasant game of whist, they send word to their earthly relatives by “medium” every fresh deal, what the new trump is, who hold the honors, and how the game stands generally.
So close a familiarity with superior beings as this, could be easily turned to practical account and made to pay handsomely, by a Spiritualist with a utilitarianturn of mind. If he could but get his spirits into proper subjection how useful would they not be in the patent medicine business, in the way of inventing new remedies; how invaluable would they be to an editor; in fact, how particularly useful in almost any kind of business.
But his great plan was to train a corps of light-footed and gentle ghosts to carry news; they would of course beat locomotives, carrier pigeons, and electric telegraphs out of sight; seas, mountains, and such trifling obstacles would be no hindrance to them, and the Associated Press, to say nothing of the Board of Brokers, would pay handsomely for their services. Of course a ghost with any pretensions to speed would bring us detailed news from London in half-an-hour or so, without putting himself out of breath in the least, thus beating the telegraph by a length. And so Johannes, fully determined on this promising scheme, began to cast about him for a medium who was acquainted in the spirit sphere, to introduce him to some of the eligible ghosts.
He knew that most of the clairvoyant women are “mediums,” and thought very naturally that women who already earned their living by clairvoyance, would be the very ones to enter heart and soul with him into his spiritualistic scheme.
Yes, he would marry a medium, and if she was a professional clairvoyant, so much the better, his bow would have another string.
In his search for a witch-wife he would not have been justified in interfering at all with the clairvoyants had it not been for the fact that they mix a little witchcraft with their regular business. Their ostensible trade is to diagnose and prescribe for different varieties of internal disease, and so this particular branch of humbug would not have come within the scope of the voyager’s investigations, were it not that several of these practitioners advertise to “tell the past, present, and future, describe the future husband or wife, mark out correctly the exact course of future life, give unerring advice about business, absent friends, etc.”
All this had too strong a savor of witchcraft to beignored, and accordingly Johannes set forth on his journey to visit another of these mysteriously clear-sighted persons, keeping in view all the time the probabilities of her being an A 1 spiritual medium, and the very person whose aid would be invaluable in his new journalistic enterprise.
Mrs. Seymour, of No. 110 Spring Street, was the person towards whose house the Cash Customer bent his steps, after reading the subjoined advertisement of her powers and capabilities.
“Clairvoyance.—Mrs. Seymour, 110 Spring Street, a few doors west of Broadway, the most successful medical and business Clairvoyant in America. All diseases discovered and cured, if curable; unerring advice on business, absent friends, &c., and satisfaction in all cases, or no charge made.”
“Clairvoyance.—Mrs. Seymour, 110 Spring Street, a few doors west of Broadway, the most successful medical and business Clairvoyant in America. All diseases discovered and cured, if curable; unerring advice on business, absent friends, &c., and satisfaction in all cases, or no charge made.”
The clairvoyant branch of the fortune-telling business seems to require a certain amount of respectability in its practices, and they sneer at the grosser deceptions of the more vulgar of the necromantic trade. They keep aloof from the greasier sisters of the profession, and they feel it due to thedignity of their station to reject the cards, the magic mirrors, the Bibles and keys, the mysterious pebbles and the other tricks which do well enough for twenty-five cent customers; to sojourn in reputable streets, in respectable houses, and to have clean faces when visitors come in. There are, it is true, clairvoyants in the city who live wretchedly in miserable cellars, whose garments and very hair are populated with various specimens of animated nature, and whose bodies are so filthy that the beholder wonders why the spirits, which are so often disconnected from them and sent on far-off missions, do not avail themselves of the leave of absence to desert for ever such unsavory corporeal habitations. But the majority of these persons prefer parlors to basements, and make up the difference in expenses by double-charging their customers. Many of them, as before stated, combine a little spiritualism of the other sort with the clairvoyance, and they can all go into a trance on short notice and rhapsodize with all the fervor if not the eloquence of Mrs. Cora Hatch; they can all do the table-tippingtrick, and are up to more rappings than the Rochester Fox girls ever thought of. For these several reasons therefore Mrs. Seymour would be a wife worth having, or at least so thought Johannes as he pondered these truths, and arranged in his mind his plan of attack on the affections of that susceptible lady.
The house No. 110 Spring Street, occupied by Mrs. Seymour for business purposes, is not more seedy in appearance than the majority of half-way decent tenant houses, which all have a decrepit look after they are four or five years old, as though youthful dissipations had made them weak in the joints. From appearances, Mrs. Seymour’s house had been more than commonly rakish in its juvenility, but it still had that look of better days departed, which, in the human kind, is peculiar to decayed ministers of the gospel. It is a house where a man on a small salary would apply for cheap board. Hither the inquirer repaired, and shamefacedly knocked at the door, and was admitted by a frowzy, coarse, plump, semi-respectable girl, who would have been the better for a washing.She opened the door and the customer entered the reception-room, and had ample time before the appearance of the mistress to take an observation.
The parlor was neatly, though rather scantily furnished, with a rigid economy in the article of chairs. The apartment communicated by folding-doors with another room, whence could be heard an iron noise as of some one scraping a saucepan with a kitchen-spoon. The frowzy girl disappeared into this retired spot, and in about the space of time that would be occupied by an enterprising woman in rolling down her sleeves, taking off her apron, and washing her hands, the door opened, and Mrs. Seymour presented herself.
She was a frigid-looking woman, of about 35 years of age, with dark hair and eyes, projecting lips and heavy chin, and was of medium height and size. Her appearance was perhaps lady-like, her movements slow and well considered. She was perfectly self-possessed and calculating, and appeared to cherish no dissatisfaction with herself. Her demeanor, on the whole, was repelling and chilly, and impressed hervisitor very much as if some one had slipped a lump of ice down his back and made him sit on it till it melted.
She regarded him with a look of professional suspicion, cast her eye round the room with a quick glance, which instantly inventoried everything therein contained, as though to assure herself of the safety of any small articles which might be scattered about, and then seated herself with an air of preparedness, as if she was perfectly on guard and not to be taken by surprise by anything that might occur. She volunteered a frozen remark or two about the state of the weather, and then subsided into silence, evidently waiting to hear the object of the visit.
Her appearance and demeanor had instantly frozen out of the voyager’s mind all thoughts of marriage; he would as soon have wedded an iceberg, or have taken to his heart of hearts a thermometer with its mercury frozen solid. All he could do was to buy a dollar’s worth of her clairvoyance and then get out.
As soon therefore as the first chill had passed off,and he had thawed out a few words for immediate use he asked for a little of that commodity.
When as he announced that he desired to know about the present well or ill of some absent friends, and that clairvoyance was the branch of her business which would on this occasion be called into requisition, she rose from her seat, walked to the door, never taking her eyes from the hands and pockets of her customer, and called to some one to come in. In obedience to the summons, the frowzy girl entered; this latter individual, since her first appearance, had taken off her apron and pinned some kind of a collar around her neck, but had not yet found time to comb her hair, which was exceedingly demonstrative, and forced itself upon attention.
Mrs. Seymour seated herself in a rocking-chair and closed her eyes; the plump girl stood behind her and pressed her thumbs firmly upon the temples of Mrs. S. for about two minutes, during which time this latter lady lost every instant something of life and animation, until at last she froze up entirely. Then thefrowzy girl made one or two mysterious mesmeric passes over the sleeping beauty from her head to her feet, to fix her in the iceberg state; then placing the hand of Mrs. S. in the palm of the customer, she left the room.
The worst of it was that Mrs. Seymour’s hand is not an agreeable one to hold; it is cold and flabby, and not suggestive of vitality. Her face, too, had become pallid and corpse-like, and her thin blue lips were not pleasant to regard. Johannes was puzzled; he didn’t know what to do with the flabby hand, and how he was to get any information about absent friends from a fast-asleep woman he did not, as yet, exactly comprehend. At this juncture, the lips asked, “Where am I to go to?” The sitter suppressed a sulphurous reply, and substituted, “To Minnesota.” Thereupon, without any more definite direction as to what part of that rather extensive territory she was expected to visit, she sent her spirit off, and immediately uttered these words:
“I see two old people, twoveryold people—one isa man and one is a woman; one of them has been very sick of bilious fever, but is now better, and will soon be quite well again. I can’t tell exactly how these people look except that they are very old and both are very grey. They may be husband and wife. I think they are. They are both sitting down now. I also see two young people—one of them is a male and the other a female. The male I do not perceive very plainly, and I cannot make out much about him; he seems to be standing up and looking very sad, but I can’t tell you a great deal about him. The female I can see much better, and can make out more about. She is tall, and has dark hair. She appears to be connected in some way to the old people, but I do not think she is related to the young man, though I cannot exactly make out. She is a very agreeable-looking female, rather pretty, I should say, if not positively handsome. She has straight hair and does not wear curls. She is standing up now, and appears to be talking to the young man, who has his back partly turned toward her. I don’t quite make out what theyare saying. She has had a very severe attack of sickness, but has nearly or quite recovered. She is not, however, what I should call a healthy female, and she will soon have another fit of sickness, which will be worse than the first, and will bring her very low indeed—very near to death. But she will not die then, though she is not what I should call a long-lived person. She will certainly die in six or eight years. What disease she will die of I can’t just make out, but it will not be of a lingering character: it will carry her off suddenly. These people are all very anxious about you, as if you was one of their family. They have not heard from you lately, and are looking daily for intelligence from you. They have written to you twice within three months. One of the letters got to this city—a man took it out of the mail. I don’t know where he took it out, and I can’t exactly describe the man, but a man took it out of the mail. These people are not satisfied to live where they are now; they are discontented with the country, and will return here in the Spring. They are talkingabout it now. They would like to come back this Winter, but circumstances are so that they cannot. You may be sure, however, that you will see them here in the Spring. There is no doubt of it; they will come here in the Spring. The other letter that I told you of that they had written has got here safe, and is now in the Post-Office. You will find it there if you inquire; you will be sure to get it as soon as you go down to the office.”
This was delivered in a very jerky manner, with occasional twitchings of the face and violent claspings of the hand, which her visitor retained, although it gave him a cold sweat to do it. Johannes, who has friends in Minnesota, and whose questions were therefore all in good faith, tried to get the sleeping female to descend a little more to particulars, to describe individuals or localities minutely enough to be recognised if the descriptions approached the truth; but Mrs. Seymour was not to be caught in this manner. She invariably dodged the question, and dealt only in the most vague and uncertain generalities—giving nodescription of persons or things that might not have applied with equal accuracy to a hundred other persons or things in that or any other locality. Her assertions concerning the persons supposed to be her customer’s friends did not approach the truth in any one particular; nor was there the slightest shadow of even probability in any single statement she uttered. She is not, however, a woman to lack customers, so long as there remain in the world fools of either sex.
When the inquirer had concluded his questioning, he was somewhat at a loss how to awake the woman from her trance, but she solved that little difficulty herself by opening her eyes (as if she had been wide awake all the time) and calling for the beauteous maiden of the snarly hair, who accordingly appeared and made a few mysterious mesmeric passes lengthwise of her sleeping mistress, and awoke her to the necessity of dunning her visitor, which she did instantly and with a relish. He paid the demanded dollar and departed.
Theillustrious lady who is the subject of the present chapter, came to the city of New York in 1856, and at once took lodgings and began business in the fortune-telling way. She did well, pecuniarily speaking, for a time, but the details of a visit to her having been published at length in one of the daily journals, she at once retired from the business, and subsided into private life. She is not now extant as a witch, and it is not impossible that she is earning an honester living in other ways.
The newspaper article that convinced her of the error of her ways, and induced her to give up fortune-telling, is the subjoined chapter by the “Individual:”
Whether the budding beauties of maidenhood are inconsistent with the orgies of witchcraft; whether there be an irreconcilable antagonism between youth and loveliness, and the unknown mysteries of the black art, is a vexed question of some interest. Can’t a woman be supposed to indulge in a little devilment before her hair turns grey, and her teeth fall out? and is it impossible for her to have reliable and trustworthy dealings with Old Scratch until she is wrinkled and withered?
That’s what I want to know.
And I am very naturally urged to the inquiry by the observation that every professional witch in New York calls herself a “Madame.” There is not a “Miss” or a “Mademoiselle,” in the whole batch. They all make a pretence of being widows, or wives at the very least, as if a certain amount of matrimonial tribulation was indispensable to their accomplishment in the arts of sorcery and magic. The only exception to this rule isfound in the person of a female calling herself “The Gipsy Girl,” who is otherwheres mentioned, and inhercase the several agencies of nature, rum, and small-pox have made her so strikingly ugly that old age could not add a single other trait of repulsiveness to her excruciating features.
Now this is all a sad mistake. Let some young and undeniably pretty girl go into the business, and she’d soon get a run of exclusive customers who would stand any price and pay without grumbling. If the original Satan should refuse to recognise her eligibility, and should decline to furnish her with the requisite quantity of diabolic knowledge to set her up in business, she could easily find an opposition devil who would provide her stock in trade, and possibly at something less than the usual rates. I’ll be bound that Lucifer doesn’t monopolize the whole trade in witchcraft, and pocket all the profits himself; for if some of the numerous clerks in his employ haven’t yet learned the trick of stealing the stock and selling it at a reduced price, then the young gentlemen of our earthly mercantilehouses are a good deal up-to-snuffer than the virtuous demons of Mr. Satan’s establishment. This last-named dealer generally demands the soul of the contracting party in return for the powers and privileges conferred; and in very many cases he must get decidedly the worst of the bargain, for some of his precious adopted children never had soul enough to pay for the ink to sign it away with; but there is no doubt, in 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,noteeth, 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 thendunscame 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 ofMadame 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 otherbranches 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 places of residence seems to afford a supposition that they live nearer head-quarters, and are, therefore, most likely to receive information by the shortest routes.
By the time he arrived at the spot where the greatastrologist condescended to abide, he had, by this course of reasoning, convinced himself that he ought to place implicit confidence in any revelations of the future made by the mysterious woman who advertised herself and her calling, daily in the papers as follows:
“Madame Carzo, the gifted Brazilian Astrologist, tells the fate of every person who visits her with wonderful accuracy, about love, marriage, business, property, losses, things stolen, luck in lotteries, absent friends, at No. 151 Bowery, corner of Broome.”
“Madame Carzo, the gifted Brazilian Astrologist, tells the fate of every person who visits her with wonderful accuracy, about love, marriage, business, property, losses, things stolen, luck in lotteries, absent friends, at No. 151 Bowery, corner of Broome.”
The South American lady had located her mysterious self in a fragrant spot.
The corner of Bowery and Broome Street and vicinity seems to have some kind of a constitutional disorder, and it relieves itself by a cutaneous eruption of low rum shops and pustulous beer saloons, which always look as if they ought to be squeezed and rubbed with ointment of red lead. To an observing person it appears as if the city wanted to scratch itselfin that particular part to relieve the local irritation, and then ought, for the sake of its general health, to take a large dose of brimstone immediately afterward. The liquors sold at these places are those pure and healthful beverages, “warranted to kill at forty rods,” and are the very drinks with which a convivial, but revengeful man, would wish to regale his friend against whom he held a secret grudge. Why Madame Carzo had chosen this particular locality, does not appear; perhaps because the liquor was cheap and the rent low. Certain it is that there she sat, at a window overlooking the Bowery, in full view of all the pedestrians in the street and the passengers in the 4th Avenue Railroad.
Madame Carzo was, doubtless, deeply attached to her old Brazilian home, and loved to surround herself with circumstances and things that would constantly and vividly recall pleasant memories of her southern country. Cherishing, probably, kindly and regretful remembrances of the harmless reptiles of her own Brazilian forests, she had taken up her abodein the very thick of the Bowery bar-rooms, as the only things afforded by our frigid climate, at all approaching in life-destroying malignity the speedier venoms to which she had been accustomed in her delightful southern home. First-rate facilities for drugging a man into a state of crazy madness are offered at the bar across the way; he may swill himself into a condition of beastly stupidity with lager beer from next door below; he may be pleasantly poisoned by degrees with the drugged alcohol, in various forms, which is sold next door above; or he may be more speedily disposed of with a couple of doses of “doctored” whiskey from the festering den just round the corner. Lucrezia Borgia was a novice, a mere babe in toxicology. New York wholesale liquor dealers could teach her the alphabet in the fine art of slow poisoning. She would no longer need the subtle chemistry of the Borgias; she could learn of them to poison wholesale and to do the work by labor-saving machinery.
Johannes, resolved that if he should marry theastrologist he would move out of the neighborhood, and take a house in a cleaner part of the city, for he felt that if he had to do even the courting here, he would have to fumigate himself after every visit to his lady-love as though he had just come out of a yellow-fever ship. He knew that if he should chance to meet the Health Officer in the street after a two hours’ stay in that locality, that trusty official would, from the unhealthy smell of his coat, quarantine him for forty days, and put him up to his neck in a barrel of chloride of lime every morning.
But a full-fledged Cupid is a plucky animal, and not easily killed by anything no more tangible than smell, and the particular Cupid that had possession of the voyager’s heart came of a long-suffering breed, and was equal to almost any emergency. So as Johannes did not feel his ardent passion die, or even turn sick at the stomach, he thought he could manage to get through. If he couldn’t get along any other way, he could fill his pockets with brimstone matches, and his boots full of blue vitriol. Or hecould carry a bunch of Chinese fire-crackers in his hat, and touch them off on the sly whenever he felt himself in need of a healthy smell. Then he could wash himself all over in lime-water, and drink a quart or so of some liquid disinfectant every time he came away. So he went ahead.
Madame Carzo, the Brazilian interpreter of Yankee fate and fortunes, lives in the third story of the house No. 151 Bowery, with her sister, a girl of about fifteen years of age. The two occupy themselves with plain sewing, except when the Madame is overhauling the future and taking a look at the hereafter of some anxious inquirer, who pays her as much for the reliable information she imparts in three minutes, as she would charge him for making three shirts. The inquirer gave his customary modest ring at the door, and was admitted with as little question as if he had been the taxes, the Croton water, or the gas. Up the two flights of stairs walked the gentleman in the pursuit of witchcraft, gave a bashful knock at the door, at the side of which was painted, on a small bitof pasteboard, “Madame Carzo”—repented of his temerity before the echo of the knock had died away, but was admitted into the room before his repentance had time to develop itself into running away.
A shabby-looking girl, with her hair in as much confusion as if the city had contracted to keep it straight, with one ear-ring in her ear, and the other on the table, with her shoes down at the heel, her dress unhooked behind, and her breast-pin wrong side up, was the model young woman who had answered the knock. She had evidently been engaged in an animated single combat with another young woman, of about the same quality and age, who was seated on a low stool in the corner, for she instantly renewed hostilities by stabbing her antagonist in the arm with a needle, tapping her on the head with a thimble, and kicking her pin-cushion under the table, so she could not recover it without crawling on her hands and knees.
On a small sofa or lounge at the side of the room was a quantity of what ladies call “work,” throwndown in a great hurry, with the needle yet sticking in it, and the scissors, and the beeswax, and the measuring tape, and the bodkin half-concealed inside, as if the knock at the door had startled the needle-woman, and she had flown to parts unknown. It was undoubtedly Madame Carzo herself who had so unceremoniously deserted her colors and her weapons, and Johannes looked at the needle with veneration, viewed the thimble with respect, and regarded the beeswax and the bodkin with concentrated awe.
A small cooking-stove was in the side of the room, and immediately over it was a picture of St. Andrew in such a position that he could smell all the dinners; a number of other pictures of Roman Catholic subjects were neatly framed and hanging against the wall. St. Somebody taking his ease on an X-shaped cross, St. Somebody Else comfortably cooking on a gridiron, and St. Somebody, different from either of these, impaled on a spear like a bug in an Entomological Museum. There was also an atrocious colored print labelled “Millard Fillmore,” which, if it at allresembled that venerated gentleman, must have been taken when he had the measles, complicated with the mumps and toothache, and was attired in a sky-blue coat, a red cravat, yellow vest, and butternut-colored pantaloons.
The room was neatly furnished with carpet, table, chairs, cheap mirror, and a lounge. While the visitor was taking this observation, the two young ladies before mentioned had continued to spar after a feminine fashion, and had finished about three rounds; the model, who had answered the bell, had got the other one, who was black-haired and vicious, under the table, and was following up her advantage by sticking a bodkin into the tender places on her feet and ancles. When the model had at length thoroughly subjugated and subdued the black-haired one, and reduced her to a state of passive misery, she turned to her visitor with an amiable smile, and asked him if he desired to see the Madame. Receiving an affirmative reply, she gave a sly kick to her fallen foe, stepped on her toes under pretence of moving away achair, and then disappeared into another room to inform Madame Carzo that visitors and dollars were awaiting her respectful consideration in the anteroom.
The “gifted Brazilian astrologist” regarded the suggestion with a favorable eye, for the model soon reappeared and showed the searcher after hidden knowledge into a bedroom nearly dark, wherein were several dresses hanging on the wall, a bed, two chairs, a table, and Madame Carzo. The light was so arranged as to fall directly in the face of the stranger, while the countenance of the Madame was, to a certain extent, hidden in shadow.
Johannes, nevertheless, in spite of this disadvantage, by careful observation, is enabled to give a tolerably accurate description of Madame Carzo, as follows: She is a tall, comely-looking woman, with unusually large black eyes, clear complexion, dark hair wornà la Jenny Lind, a small hand, clean, and with the nails trimmed, and she has a low sweet voice. Her dress was lady-like, being a neat half-mourningplaid, with a plain linen collar at the neck, turned smoothly over; altogether, Madame Carzo, the Brazilian astrologist, who speaks without a symptom of foreign accent, impressed her customer as being a transplanted Yankee school ma’am, with shrewdness enough to see that while civilization and enlightenment would only pay her twenty dollars a month, and superstition and ignorance would give her twice that sum in a week, she couldn’t, of course, afford to live in a civilized and enlightened neighborhood, and depend exclusively on civilization and enlightenment for a living.
And Johannes was smitten, he had found her, and if his fortune was propitious he would yet win and wed the Brazilian astrologist, and she should have the honor of paying his debt, and earning his bread and butter. But he would make no advances yet for fear of accidents; he would not commit himself until he had called upon the rest of the witches on his list, to see, if perchance, he might not find one more eligible. If not, then by all means Madame Carzoshould be the chosen one. The first thing evidently was to ascertain her proficiency in the magic arts.
The sorceress and the anxious inquirer seated themselves face to face, and the following dialogue ensued: “Do you wish to consult me, Sir?” “Yes.”
“My terms are a dollar for gentlemen.”
The expected dollar was handed over, when the ’cute Yankeeism of the Brazilian lady blazed out brilliantly, for she instantly produced a “Thompson’s Bank-note Detector” from under a pillow, and a one dollar note, issued by the President and Directors of the “Quinnipiack Bank” of Connecticut, underwent a severe scrutiny. At last the genuineness of the bill and the solvency of the bank were certified to the Madame’s satisfaction, in his oracular pamphlet, by Thompson with a “p,” and Madame Carzo was evidently satisfied that her customer didn’t mean to swindle her, but was good for small debts not exceeding one dollar each. Accordingly she took his left hand, regarded it for some time, apparently delightedwith its model symmetry, but at last so far conquered her silent admiration as to speak and say:
“You were born under two planets, Moon and Mars, Moon brings you a great deal of trouble in the early part of your life. Moon has occasioned a great deal of anxiety to your parents on your account. Moon made you liable to accidents and misfortunes while you was a boy, and Moon will give you great trouble until you arrive at middle age. You were born, I should say, across the water, and you will die across the water in a city, but not a great city. You are, I should say, now far away from that city, and from your home, and parents, and friends, who are, I should say, all now far across the water. You will be sure, however, I should say, for to see them all before you die, and to die in the city that I told you of. Your line of life runs to 60; you will, I should say, live to be 60, but not much after. Moon will cause you much trouble for many years, but you will be certain for to succeed well in the end, I should say. You will be certain for to have final successand to conquer every obstacle, in spite of Moon, I should say.”
Incensed as was Johannes at Moon for thus unjustifiably interfering with his prospects and meddling with his private affairs, he still admired the more the profitable science of the wonderful lady whose acquirements in magic had given her so intimate an acquaintance with Moon, as to enable her to tell so exactly the plans and intentions of that unruly and adverse planet.
He mastered his indignation and listened attentively to the sequel.
On the small stand were two packs of cards of different sizes, and a volume of Byron. Madame Carzo took up one pack of the cards, presented them to the young man, waited for them to be cut three times, after which she said:
“You face up a good fortune I should say, you have had trouble but can now, I should say, see the end of it—you face up money, which is coming to you from over the water, I should say, and you will besure for to get it before a great while. You will never have much money from relations or friends, though you will, I should say, perhaps have some—but though you will handle a great deal of money in your lifetime you will make the most of it yourself, I should say—you will not, however, I should say, ever be able for to become very rich, for you will never be able for to keep money, although you will have the handling of a great deal in your life. No, I am certain that you will never be rich.”
Here Johannes remembered the malicious influence of Moon upon his fortunes, and as he clinched his fists, felt as if he would like to get at the man who resides in that ill-conditioned planet, and have a back-hold wrestle with him on stony ground.
But the astrologist continued thus: “You face up a letter; you also face up good news which is to come speedily I should say; you don’t face up a sick bed, or a coffin, or a funeral, or any kind of immediate bad luck that I am able to see. You face up two men, one dark and one light complexioned. You mustbeware of the dark-complexioned man, for I should say he will do you an injury if you allow him for to have a chance. You like to study: the kind of business you would do best in isdoctor. You face up a light-complexioned lady; you will, I should say, be able to marry this lady, though a dark-complexioned man stands in the way. You must, I should say, be particularly careful to beware of the dark-complexioned man. You will be married twice; your first wife will die, but your last wife, I should say, will be likely for to outlive you. You will have three children, which will be all, I should say, that you will be likely for to have.”
And this was all for the present, except that she told her visitor that he might draw thirteen cards, and make a wish, which he did, and she, on carefully examining the cards, told him that he would certainly have his wish.
Cheered by this last grateful promise, and bidding a mental defiance to Moon, the traveller left the room. In the reception chamber he found the model and theblack-eyed one just coming to time for what he should judge was the twenty-seventh round, both much damaged in the hair, but plucky to the last.
Johannes walked briskly away, feeling that his matrimonial prospects were brighter now than for many a day, and fully determined that if, on going further he fared worse, he would certainly retrace his steps and wed Madame Carzo off-hand.
I havebefore suggested, in as plain terms as the peculiar nature of the subject will allow, that these fortune-telling women, having most of them been prostitutes in their younger days, in their withered age become professional procuresses, and make a trade of the betrayal of innocence into the power of Lust and Lechery. This assertion is so eminently probable that few will be inclined to dispute it, but I wish to be understood that this is no matter of mere surmise with me—it is a proven fact. And the evidences of its truth have been gathered, not alone from the formal and hurried records of the police courts, but from the lips of certain inmates of various Magdalen Asylums who have beenreclaimed from their former homes of shame; and from the mouths of other repentant women, who, under circumstances where there was no object to deceive, and at times when their hearts were full of grateful love for those who had interposed to save them from utter despair, have in all simple truthfulness and honor, related their life-histories. It is impossible to give even a plausible guess at the aggregate number of young women, in this great city, who compromise their honorable reputations in the course of a single year; but of those whose shame becomes publicly known, and especially of those who eventually enter houses of ill-repute, the percentage whose fall was accomplished through the instrumentality, more or less direct, of the professional fortune-tellers, is astounding. And a curious fact connected with this subject is, that of these unfortunates who thus wander astray, not one in ten but has ever after the most superstitious and implicit faith in the supernatural powers of the witch. Each one sees in her own case certain things that have been foretold to her by thefortune-teller with such circumstantiality of time and place, and which have afterwards “come to pass,” so exactly in accordance with the prophecy, that she can only account for it by ascribing supernatural prescience to the prophetess.
The true solution of the matter is, of course, that the wonderful fulfilments are achieved by means of confederacy and collusion with parties with whom the dupe is never brought in contact; a commonmodus operandiof this sort is elsewhere described.
Nor are the fortune-tellers and the brothel-keepers by any means content with playing into each other’s hands in a general sort of way; there are, in New York, severalfirms, consisting each of a fortune-teller and a mistress of a bawdy-house, who have entered into a perfectly organized business partnership, and who ply their fearful trade with as much zeal and enthusiasm as is ever exhibited in the active competition between rival commercial houses engaged in legitimate trade.
Although this fact is one that cannot be substantiatedby the production of any sworn documents, it is as well proven by the observations of keen-eyed detectives attached to the police department, and to some of the charitable institutions of this city, as though attested articles of co-partnership could be exhibited with the signatures of the contracting parties attached thereto. A gentleman of this city, in whose word I have the most perfect confidence, tells me that he once, by a curious accident, overheard a business consultation between the two members of such a firm; and that such partnershipsdoexist, and that by their means hundreds of ignorant young women, of the lower classes, are every year betrayed to their moral ruin, I no more doubt than I doubt the rotundity of the earth.
If the illustrious woman who is the subject of the present chapter should ever surmise that the foregoing observations are intended to have a personal application to herself, the author will give her much more credit for sagacity and discernment than he did for supernatural wisdom.
Madame Leander Lent is one of the most shrewd, unscrupulous, and dirty of all the goodly sisterhood of New York witches. She has so great a run of customers that her doors are often besieged by anxious inquirers as early as eight o’clock in the morning, and the servant is frequently puzzled to find room and chairs to accommodate the shame-faced throng, till her ladyship sees fit to get out of bed and begin the labors of the day. She is then impartial in the distribution of her favors; the audiences are governed by barber-shop rules, and the visitors are admitted to the presence in the order of their coming, and any one going out forfeits his or her “turn” and on returning must take position at the tail end of the queue.
The Fates show no favoritism.
The quarter in which Madame Lent has domiciled herself and her familiars, is by no means in the most aristocratic part of the city. “Mulberry,” is the pomological name of the street, and it has never been celebrated for its cleanliness or for its eligibility as asite for princely mansions. In fact it has been, on the whole, rather neglected by that class of society who generally indulge in palatial luxuries.
Hercules, in his capacity of an amateur scavenger, once attempted the cleaning of the Augean stables, or some such trifle, and his success was trumpeted throughout the neighborhood as a triumph of ingenuity and perseverance. If Hercules would come to Gotham and try his hand at the purgation of Mulberry Street, our word for it, he would, in less than a week, knock out his brains with his own club in utter despair.
There never yet were swine with stomachs strong enough to feed upon the garbage of its gutters, or with instincts so perverted as to wallow in its filth. Dogs, lean and wild-eyed, the outcasts of the canine world, sometimes, driven by sore stress of hunger, sneak here with drooping tails and shame-faced looks, to search for bones, and then, wounded in their self-respect by the very act, they drag their osseous provender to a distance, and upon some sunny mud-heap,dine in dainty neatness. The very pavement is broken into countless hillocks and ruts like waves, as if, in utter disgust at the place and its associations, the street was trying to roll itself away in stony billows. The shattered wrecks of worn-out drays and carts stand forsaken in the street, keeping each other dismal company, while an occasional shackly wheelbarrow makes the place look as though, after some monstrous fashion, it were a lying-in hospital for poverty-stricken vehicles, and the wheelbarrows were the new-born children, decrepit even in their babyhood. The houses in this pleasant vale have a disheartened tumble-down look, and give the impression of having been originally built by apprentices out of second-hand material. They lean maliciously over the narrow sidewalks, and keep up a constant threatening of a sudden collapse and a general smash of passers-by. If the houses are not dirtier than the street, it is only because every possible element of filth enters into the latter; if they are not dirtier inside than outside, it is because superlatives have no superlative.
Pawnbrokers’ shops are plentiful, kept always by sharp-featured restless Jews, who watch for unwary passers-by like unclean beasts crouching in noisome, dangerous lairs; while bar-rooms yawn in frequent cellars to devour bodily the victims the Jews only rob.
In this, one of the dirtiest streets in this dirty metropolis, directly opposite the English Lutheran Church of St. James, in one of the dirtiest tenant-houses in the street, abideth Madame Leander Lent, the prophetess. Why the mysterious powers didn’t select an earthly representative with a more reputable dwelling-place is a mystery; but there seems to be an inseparable congeniality between prophetic knowledge and concentrated nastiness, utterly beyond all power of explanation. The Madame advises the public of her business in the terms following: