Waterbury Democrat., 1902-07-03
The CIairvoyant
 Found a Way <
nY THE time Freddie Lawrence has

nY THE time Freddie Lawrence has
 n made another million or two it would not be surprising if he endowed a school for the advancement of clairvoy- ance. Yet six months ago you couldn't have found a greater scoffer at all forms of mysticism. The change came about in this way:
 Six years ago Freddie was one of some 40 young men who wanted to marry certain young woman. All of Freddie's rivals seemed to have hope less advantages inherited or acquired over him and Freddie grew so dejected that he became even less attractive than usual. Then the young woman married him, though Freddie has been unable wholly to believe it ever since.
 No one ever accused Freddie of be- ing brilliant, but he stepped into his fathers shoes and did even better at business than he had at football For four years Freddie gazed across his dining table at his wife, like a man astray in fairly tale. That she looked back at him with a certain light in her eyes was to Freddie one of earth's mysteries.
 But one day something happened, or rather something didn't happen, which was the same thing. At first it was a fleeting, half-realized twinge of dis comfort in one corner of Freddie's brain. Then a sense of unrest, now here, now gone, that made Freddie fear he was bilious. Then with a sort of dumb instinct he went and bought his wife a diamond and ruby necklace that was worth maharajah's ransom. But the unrest grew and sat on his chest. Something had been changed or lost, Freddie knew, but he groped along blindly. Then all of a sudden, one day, the truth went through him like half dozen double-edged swords. His wife wasn't looking at him the way she used to look!
 After that the descent into Hades was easy. Freddie's wife. not only didn't look at him the way she used to look, but she didn't laugh at his stories the way she used to laugh. In the midst of one she tried to conceal yawn.
 When she took his arm her hand rested on it like bird-but former ly it was a bird about to build nest; now the bird was restless for flight. One night she asked him if he was go- ing to the club, and when he replied that he would rather stay at home if he might sit and look at her, she looked bored.
 Freddie's wife came to dance and talk and laugh with other men and accept Freddie with resignation These other men were clever, most of them, or otherwise favored of for tune, like the 39 rivals who had once driven Freddie to the brink of despair
 Freddie would have thought sooner of suicide than of finding fault with her. The only wonder he had was that she hadn't found him out before. He went from 190 pounds to 174 smoked black cigars to excess, spent 13 hours a day atfhis desk, and had protracted fits of abstraction when time was worth thousand dollars minute to him.
 Also he struggled for awhile against fate. The constancy and delicacy of his attentions might have won princess.
 Then he complained to her reminis- gently, and she did not understand and was annoyed. Then he tried simple dignity Then mute pathos. At the end he was seeing her about twice week at dinner.
 One afternoon Freddie slammed his desk to and left his office in the mid de of the afternoon because he felt if he didn't go out and walk around he would have apoplexy. He tramped about the streets for ten miles or so, hearing nothing and seeing nothing and nobody until he ran into or over them.
 For a man whom nobody had ever accused of being sentimental or imag- inative, Freddie was thinking queer He was wondering if he should do some heroic deed-save a little child or an old man or half dozen people-and was mangled or crushed (fatally perhaps) in the opera tion; whether when he was brought home by. an admiring policeman and ambulance surgeon, his wife would brush back his hair from his forehead as she used to do. The picture was so pathetic that Freddie almost wept
 He might have wept, had his eye not been arrested at that moment by gorgeous black and gold sign on the ground floor of flat house which he was passing. This was the sign: :: The Only Greatest {: YELLED LADY ISIS, 7: !: Psychic. Palmist, Cleirvoyant. ':