The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-08-11

New. There is not clairvoyant that cam
not call roll of invalids made whole and
happy.
Credulity is almost as universal IS
avarice, lust. vanity and selhshness. 1t
fills the Golfers of the quack; makes q
market for the million bottles that prom
Use to perform the impossible; to cure the
incurable; it enriches the astroioger and
multiplies the Esprit" mudium. Gre
dulity is what adventures and swindlers
play upon; it is the life Of the ''bunco"
game everywhere, and your professional
impostor knows by experience that men OF
high intelligence in special lines OF action
and large experience are not seldom
credulous. Religious credulity, fortified
by tradition and priestly confirmation, is
not more remarkable than the spectacle OF
men of considerable intelligence asserting
to faith cures, consulting astrologers, ac-
cepting '.mind reading" as a scientific
fact, and doing business on the vague. fat
uIent, indefinite. absurd utterances of a
tramp clairvoyant.
From Count Cagliostro down to DR..
Slade the world has never lacked fellows
ready to feed human credulity to the top
of its bent, and Barnum was right when he
said mankind likes to be humbugged.
So long as patent medicines claiming to be
the elixir of life are swallowed by sane
and nominally sensible men; SO long as
spirit mediums grow fat on fraud; 80 long
as astrologers are consulted by nominally
educated" people; SO long as "faith" doc
tor can rob respectable physician of some
of his best patients; SO long as disreputa-
BILE clairvoyants direct the commercial &C
ton of reputable business men, what won
der that "faith" shrines flourish in Can
ada, Ireland and France.
Man Is naturally credulous, loves the
marvellous, the theatric, the sensational,
the mysterious. Does not every "fakir,"
every fool-catching and fool-killing doctor
of fools wear a luxuriant mustache, long
beard and flowing locks, the gift OF nature
or of art. Why? Because he knows that
a man who promises to do the extraordi-
nary, the exceptional. must not be plain
and commonplace, but unique, impressive,
picturesque in appearance; he must look
like a cross between Hebrew prophet and
a reformed pirate or bandit chief. The
average man wants to be amused or aston
ished; he wants wonder book. No book
sells so well as the sensational novel that
deals with the impossible, the improb able,
the unnatural, the lurid, the grotesque.
No actor takes so well with the people as
the fellow that violates nature; the fustian
fellow that fairly foams at the mouth rant
ing tragedy in the ears of the Bowery.
Man wants jest book when he is sad.
and wants nothing higher than fairy
book when he thinks he is serious.
Credulity is the crevice in the armor of
good men into which rogues shoot their
arrows with success; it has ever been the
opportunity of every cunning priest, of
every shrewd tyrant, of every adventurer
and confidence man. and men otherwise
able and sagacious are sometimes tainted
with it. Villains and impostors know
this and thus succeed in taking captive
men of all nations and all degrees of in
telligence, or as somebody said: ''There is
a streak of the fool in the wisest of men,
streak of incapacity in the most capable
man, and it grows most conspicuous when
he strays beyond his proper measure"