The Camden chronicle. (Camden, Tenn.) 1890-current, 1904-01-29
FORTUNE TELLERS' WAYS
YOU CAN PAY WHAT YOU LIKE,
FROM A NICKEL TO SIS.

The Goods Just the Same, Whatever
the Price-That Is What an Expert
saye-Thousht Reading by Ma
chinery.
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 working girls
chiefly.
AS for the goods, they seem to be
the same in both cases. Experience
has convinced the pr Aetass that her
customers come to her for one thing
only, to find out whether some parti-
cu!ar man cares for them; the man
being either an actual or possible
husband.
In 80 cases out Of a hundred, there
fore, she diagnoses the case correctly
and hands cut the desired remedy. In
lllS AulId4 Gull CI5C, WlACI lildJ va y
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 son who
has run away from home.
They tell their story without reser-
walton and with 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 ILL., and they want to know II
they will recover. 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 the 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 oil, muttering incantations or
charms over her the while, charge
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
business, for this sort of contraband
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 plies her
trade among the middle class apart
mentS.
She charges; IS cents fortune, and
confesses that she makes comfort
able living out of it. A trace Of super
stition was found in her too, for she
insisted that when she got sitting
at the first place where She called
in the morning she was sure to have
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 and compare results.
81 can't see as their fortunes are
any better than mine" she said;
"they don't come out any truer; amy
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 I'm
different classes of society declares
that the added Ingredient which en-
ables the uptown representative to
command better prices is shrewd
ability at character reading, which I'M
presses the average sitter as something
startling, and makes him credrlous as
to what follows.
These sArewd professionals do not
indulge in extensive or detailed fore
casts of the future. They eonfine
themselves in the main to good char
acter reading.
They are generally palmists, and the
palm, like handwriting, tells some
thing to the student. But they study
the face and the play of expression, as
much as they do the palm, and more.
they study the whole personality of