The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1888-10-05

ninth card from 1t. After the general
fortune is completed, separate
manipulation of the cards is made. to
learn If the client will obtain his or hel
wish, and from the position in the
pack of the nine of hearts, which is the
"wish card" the required answer il
adduced. Sometimes the wish card il
made to represent the person of the in.
dividual consulting the oracle, and
whatever fortune is cut and dealt Out
to this is regarded as the same as hav.
ing been dealt to the suit of the indi.
| vidual.
So much for the system of fortune
telling by cards. 1t is all humbug
from beginning to end. There is
no law against it, and if there was il
is extremely doubtful if the practice
could ever be suppressed. The world
is full of dupes, they bristle upon every
corner. and it is much to be believed
that man is never SO perfectly happy
as when he is being fooled the most.
What says the old song?
Su3ck, quac n, uOtuinS ike Qudckery.
Quacking my friend of the day is the order, "
and we have it practised in our very
midst to the fullest extent.
The following anecdote is related OF
a fortune teller of the past century:
Isaac Tarrat was a man of some liter
airy attainments. in London, and was a
contributor to the LADIES' Diary and
the Genteman's Magazine. He was
originally linen draper. and a thriv-
ing one, but from various causes he
proved unfortunate, and in his seven
tieth year knew not where to turn in
order to provide his bread. In this
extremity he was reduced to be-
come a fortune teller. In a mean
street near the Middlesex Hospi-
tai there was an obscure shop
kept by an elderly woman who had
long made a livelihood by means of
oracle maintained on the premises. 1t
now became the Office of Mr.. Tarrat to sit
in the upper room in a fur cap. white
beard and a flowing worsted damask
nightgown, and by the cards tell the
fortunes of all who might apply, re-
ceiving for his labors a shilling a day
and his meals. The woman sat in the
front shop and received the company
and their money. Tarrat admitted
that his mistress treated him kindly,
always giving him small bowl of
punch after supper; there was no great
discomfort in his situation, beyond the
constant distress of mind he suffered
from rejecting upon the infamous
character of his occupation. He had
occasion to remark with surprise that
many of the customers were of less
mean and illiterate appearance than
might have been expected. At length,
after having scraped together a sutfi-
Gent amount of cash, Tarrat gave up
the place, and, as it appears, just in
the nick of time, as his successor had
not been a month in office when he was
taken up as an impostor. Tarrat
found retreat in the Charter house,
where he lived till his eighty-eighth
year, dying in 1889.
Cup reading does not obtain to the
extent of divination by cards, and
from inquiries made by the writer the
only Information he has been enabled
to obtain leads him to believe that it
is .practised only to a limited extent.
But where two or three old crones are
gathered together for the purpose of
taking tea, be sure that one of them at
least will endeavor to steal look into
futurity by aid of the grounds left in
her teacup. An old writer says: "Oh,
the bright conceit, that our horoscope
should be revealed to us in cup. and
our fate be prefigured in the HERO
glyphical writings of coffee grounds
and tea leaves. or shufled out to us in
the oracular demonstrations of the
four suits. The practice of paganism
long survived its belief, so has
that of divination, unless we
are to suppose that the young
persons of the fair sex, and the old
women of both, are serious proselytes
to its efficacy. when they interpret the
cabalistic writing of coffee or tea
grounds in a cup. or determine their
destiny by the casual upturnins of the
cards" Perhaps all of us are more
or less tinctured by superstition, and a
faith in divination will never want
converts so long as it affords us a
scapegoat for our follies, and it may
be, our crimes. II we meet with sue
cess in our undertakings we assign the
merit of that success to our own pru-
dence and forethoaght, and if we fail,
our bad luck bears all the blame of our
failure. King Lear says: This is the
excellent foppery of the world. that |
when We are sick in fortune, often the |
surfeits of our own. behavior, we make |
guilty of our disasters the sun, moon |
and stars, as il we were villains on
necessity, liars by divine thrusting on,
adulterers and drunkards by an en-
forced obedience to planetary infu-
ence."
Lord. what fools these mortals be-"
Fortune-teiling is all a humbug, but
perhaps an excuse may be found for it |
On the principle set down in these
There is one sense in which,
the inspiration of prophecy or
he charge of imposture, one may rea-
'onably and beneficially venture to in
lulge in the mystery of fortune telling.
Knowing that, in the established sue
session of human affairs certain causes
will produce corresponding effects, one
nay read the future in the past. and