The Opelousas courier., 1904-01-16
ORTUNETELLERS WAYS
YOU CAN PAY WHAT YOU LIKE
FROM A NICKEL TO S..

YOU GAN PAY "HAl wv @F>@'
FROM A NICKEL TO S..
The Goods Just the Same, Whatever
the Price-That Is What an Expert
says-Thouaht Reading by Ma
chjnery.
The Italian quarter of New YORK
City, says the Sun, is full OF fortune
tellers. Their prices are not high, vary
ing from five cents On Baxter street
to 10 in the more ~aristocratic pre-
cincts of Grand. But the smallness
Of the fees is compensated for by the
number of misunderstanding girls
chiefly.
AS for the goods, they seem to be
the same in both cases. Experience
has convinced the prophecies that her
customers come to her for one thlng
only, to find out whether some partl-
cular man cares for them; the mar
being either an actual OK a possible
husband.
In 80 cases out of a hundred, there
fore, she diagnoses the case correctly
and hands out the desired remedy. In
the hundredth case, which may vary
from the accepted model, she is wrong.
But this never troubles her.
There are sad little stories Swallowed
forth in the fortune teller's room. Pa
tient, bareheaded women sit there
with babies in their arms seeking in
formation of a husband who has de-
serted them, Or perhaps of a son who
has run away from home.
They tell their story without reser-
walton and with a wealth of dramatic
infection, and peer at the cards with
pathetic eagerness. Sometimes their
husbands are under arrest and they
want to find out their chances Of es-
cape, or i'll, and they want to know II
they will O. Women have been
known to spend the last nickel they
had in the world in thus trying to
learn the future.
Illness in the Italian colony brings
out another class of professionals
whom TIE women call witch doctors.
Their treatment seems to consist OF a
mixture of massage and mystery.
They rub the sick woman with some
kind of ell, muttering lamentations or
charms over her the while, charge a
fee ranging from so cents to 81 and go
away, strictly charging the patient to
say nothing of the visit to any regular
practitioner. This is. necessary in their
I,,cinacc P0~ %hi1 cNr4 nF nnnfro hand
traffic" is calculated to rouse the ire
of physicians and nurses.
There are also peripatetic fortune
tellers who go from house to house in
the tenement districts with their packs
of cards in a little handbag, asking
'the lady Of the house" if she would
like to have her fortune told. A stout
blonde Swede has been pursuing this
occupation for some years. Occasion
ally she slips past the janitor in
houses of a better class, and pses her
trade among the middle class apart
ments.
She charges Is cents a fortune, and
confesses that she makes a comfort
able living out Of it. A trace Of super
stition vas found in her too, for she
insisted that when she got a sitting
at the first place where she called
in the morning she was sure to have
a good day, while the opposite was
likewise dismally true.
She manifested a laudable ambi-
ton to be up to date in her profess
sion. She confessed to having visited
the high priced professionals uptown,
those charging one two Or even five
dollars a sitting, in order to study
their methods AMI compare results.
II can't see as their fortunes are
any better than NINE" she said;
"they don't come out any truer, any
way"
This is probably quite true, but the
people who can charge these prices
must be able to incorporate something
in their wares which will attract peo-
pie Of more education and knowledge
of the world. A person who has made
a study of fortune telling methods in
different classes Of society declares
that the added ingredient which en-
ables the uptown representative to
command better prices is a shrewd
ability at character reading, which inn
presses the average sitter al something
startling, ana makes him credulous as
to what follows.
These shrewd professionals do not
indulge in extensive or detailed fore
casts of the future. They conins
themselves in the main to, good char
acter reading.
They are generally palnists, and the
palm, Ike handwriting, tells some
thing to the student. But they study
the face and the play of expression, as
much ashley do the palm, and more,
they study the whole personality Of
their visitors.
They become experts In a rapid and
correct sizing UP Of the sitter. They
can place a business woman, an &C.
tress, q domestic woman, each in her