MADAME HARRIS, No. 80 WEST 19th STREET, NEAR SIXTH AVENUE.
Madame Harris is one of the most ignorant and filthy of all the witches of New York. She does not depend entirely on her “astrology” for her subsistence, but relies on it merely to bring in a few dollars in the spare hours not occupied in the practice of the other dirty trades by which she picks up a dishonest living. She has a good many customers, and in one way and another she contrives to get a good deal of money from the gullible public. She has been engaged in business a number of years, and has thriven much better than she probably would, had she been employed in an honester avocation.
The “Individual” paid her a visit, and carefully noted down all her valuable communications; he has told the whole story in the words following:
We all believe in Aladdin, and have as much faith in his uncle as in our own; but we don’t know the pattern of his lamp, we have no photograph of the genii that obeyed it, and we can make no correct computation of the market value of the two hundred slaves with jars of jewels on their heads. The customer, who is determined that posterity shall be able to make no such complaint of him or of his history, here solemnly undertakes, upon the faith of his salary, to relate the unadorned truth, and to indulge in no ad libitum variations—imagining, while he writes, that he sees in the distance the critical public, like a many-headed Gradgrind, singing out lustily for “Facts, sir, facts.”
The next fact, then, to be investigated and sworn to, is this Madame Harris, a very dirty female fact indeed, residing in the upper part of the city, and advertising as follows:
“Madame Harris.—This mysterious Lady is a wonder to all—her predictions are so true. She can tell all the events of life. Office, No. 80 West 19th-st., near 6th-av. Hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ladies 25 cts.; Gentlemen 50 cts. She causes speedy marriages; charge extra.”
Wearily the inquirer plodded his way on foot to West 19th Street, fearing to trust himself to a stage or car, lest the careless conversation of the unthinking, and the reprehensible jocularity of the little boys who hang about the corners of the streets which intersect the Sixth Avenue, and pelt unwary passengers with paving-stones, should divert his mind from the importance and great moral responsibility of his mission.
After encountering a large assortment of the dangers and discomforts incident to pedestrianism in New York in muddy weather, he achieved West 19th street, and stood in sight of the mysterious domicile of Madame Harris.
It is a tenement house, shabby-genteel even in its first pretentious newness; but it has now lost its former appearance even of semi-respectability, and has degenerated to a state of dirt only conceivable by those unhappy families who live two in a house, and are in a constant state of pot-and-kettle war, and of mutual refusing to clean out the common hall.
A little mountain of potato skins, and bones, and other kitchen refuse, round which he was forced to make a detour, plainly said to the traveller that the population of the house No. 80 were in the habit of depositing garbage in the gutters, under cover of the night, and in violation of the city ordinance. A highly-perfumed atmosphere surrounds this delightful abode, for the first floor thereof is occupied as a livery stable, which constantly exhales those sweet and pungent odors peculiar to equine habitations.
Pulling the sticky bell-handle with as dainty a touch as possible, the Individual was admitted by a slatternly weak-eyed girl of about eighteen, with her hair and dress as tumbled as though she had just been run through a corn-shelling machine, and who was so unnecessarily dirty that even her face had not been washed. She was further distinguished by a wart on her nose of such shape and dimensions that it gave her face the appearance of being fortified by a many-sided fort, which commanded the whole countenance.
This interesting young female welcomed her visitor with a clammy “Come in,” and led the way up stairs, he following, in due dread of being for ever extinguished by an avalanche of unwashed keelers and kettles, which were unsteadily piled up on the landing, and which an incautious touch would have toppled over, and deluged the stairs with unknown sweet-smelling compounds, whose legitimate destination was the sewer. On the second floor, directly, judging from the noise, over the stall of the balkiest horse in the stable below, is the room of the Madame.
The customer took an observation:
The furnishings of the apartment showed an attempt to keep up a show, which was by far too miserably transparent to hide the slovenliness which peeped out everywhere through the tawdry gilding. There were so many oil paintings on the walls, in such gaudy frames, that it seemed as if the room had been dipped into a bath of cheap auction pictures, and hadn’t been wiped dry, or had been out in a shower of them, and hadn’t come in until it had got very wet. A broad gilt window cornice stood leaning in the corner of the room, instead of being in its legitimate place; a pair of lace curtains were wadded up and thrown in a chair, while the windows were covered with the commonest painted muslin shades; a piano-stool stood in the middle of the room, but there was no piano.
These were the indications of “better days;” these were the shallow traps set to inveigle the beholder into a belief in the opulence of the occupants of this charming residence.
But the little cooking-stove, on which two smoothing irons were heating, the scraps of different patterned carpets which hid the floor, and made it appear as if covered with some kind of variegated woollen chowder, the second-hand, conciliating please-buy-me look of the three chairs, and the dirt and greasy grime which gave a character to the place, told at once the true state of facts.
On one side of the room was a little door, evidently communicating with a closet or small bedroom; on this door was a slip of tin, on which was painted
Office.—Madam Harris, Astrologist.
and into this “office” the weak-eyed girl disappeared, with a shame-faced look, as if she had tried to steal her visitor’s pocket-book, and hadn’t succeeded. Presently there came from the closet a sound of half-suppressed merriment, as if a constant succession of laughs were born there, full grown and boisterous, but were instantly garroted by some unknown power, until each one expired in a kind of choky giggle. There was also a noise of the making of a bed, the hustling of chairs, the putting away of toilet articles out of sight, and over all was heard the chiding voice of Madame Harris, who was evidently dressing herself, superintending these other various operations, and scolding the weak-eyed maiden all at once.
At last this latter individual got so far the better of her jocularity that she was able to deport herself with outward seriousness when she emerged from the mysterious closet, and said to the Individual, “Walk in.” At this time she was under so great a head of laugh that she would inevitably have exploded, had she not, the instant her visitor turned his back, let go her safety-valve, and relieved herself by a guffaw which would have been an honor and a credit to any one of the horses on the first floor.
The room in which Madame Harris was waiting to receive her customer was so dark that he stumbled over a chair, and fell across a bed before he could see where he was. Then he recovered himself, and took an observation.
The room was a very small one—so diminutive, indeed, that the bed, which occupied one side of it, reduced the available space more than two-thirds. It was partitioned off from the rest of the room by a dirty patch-work bed-quilt, with more holes than patches. The walls were scrawled over with pencil-marks, evidently drawings made by young children, who had the usual childish notions of proportion and perspective; and on one side of the wall, near the head of the bed, a bit of pasteboard persisted in this startling announcement—
tERms CasH
A narrow strip of rag carpet was on the floor; a small stand and a chair completed the furnishing of the room, and a single smoky pewter lamp exhausted itself in a dismal combat with the gloom, which constantly got the better of it.
When the Cash Inquirer stumbled, and took an involuntary leap into the middle of the bed, an awful voice came out of the dreariness, saying, “There is a chair right there behind you.” This information proved to be correct, and the discomfited delegate subsided into it, and gazed stolidly at the Madame. If Madame Harris were worth as much by the pound as beef, her market-price would be about twenty-five dollars. She was attired in a loose morning-gown, of an exceedingly flashy pattern, open before, disclosing a skirt meant to be white, but whose cleanliness was merely traditional. Of her countenance her visitor cannot speak, for it was carefully hidden from his inquiring gaze, and its unknown beauties are left to the imagination of the reader. Perched mysteriously on the back of her head, where it was retained by some feminine hocus-pocus, which has ever been a sealed mystery to mankind, was a little black bonnet, marvellous in pattern and design; from this depended a long black veil, covering her countenance, and disguising her as effectually as if she had washed her face and put on a clean dress.
She proceeded at once to business, and opened conversation with this appropriate remark: “My terms is fifty cents for gentlemen, and the pay is always in advance.”
Here followed a disbursement on the part of the anxious seeker after knowledge, and an approving chuckle was heard under the veil.
Taking up a pack of cards so overlaid with dirt that it was a work of time and study to tell a queen from a nine spot, or distinguish the knaves from the aces, she presented them with the imperative remark: “Cut them once.”
Then ensued the following wonderful predictions uttered by a dubious and uncertain voice under the veil—which voice seemed one minute to come from the mouth, then it issued from the throat, then it sprawled out of the stomach, then it was heard from the back of the head under the bonnet, and in the course of a few minutes it came from so many places, that the puzzled hearer was dubious as to its exact whereabouts—these curious effects being, doubtless, attributable to the thick covering over the face. But its various communications, when gathered together, were found to sum up as follows:
“You face back misfortune and trouble, of which you have had much, but they are now behind you, and you have no more to fear. You will henceforth be successful in business, you will have a great deal of money. Your affection card faces up a young woman with dark eyes and dark hair, about twenty-three years old; she is older than she has led you to believe; there is a dark-complexioned man whom you will see in two days, who is your enemy; you may not know it, but you had better beware of him, for he will do you an injury, if he can; you will see him and speak with him the night of day-after-to-morrow. Your marriage card faces up this dark woman, as I said before. I don’t see a great deal of money layin’ round her, but there is plenty of money layin’ round you in the future. Somebody will die and leave you money within nine weeks, not counting this week. You was born under the planet Mars, which gives you two lucky days in every week—Mondays and Thursdays; anything you begin on those days will surely succeed.”
Here she handed the cards to be cut again, which operation disclosed a new feature in the Individual’s matrimonial future, for she went on to say:
“There is another woman who faces your love-card, who has light hair and light eyes; she favors your love-card and will be your first wife; you will have five children—four girls and one boy; look out for the dark-complexioned man, for he favors your first wife, and, though she does not favor him very much, he will try to get her away from you. Your line of life is long; you will live to be sixty-eight years old, but you will die very suddenly, for your line of death crosses your line of life very suddenly, which always brings sudden death.”
Having given this cheering promise, she again held out the cards to be cut, and said, “Cut them again now, and make a wish at the same time, and I will tell you if you will have your wish.”
When the required ceremony had been solemnly performed, she continued: “You will have your wish, but not right away; don’t expect to get it before week after next, but then you will be sure to have it, for there is no disappointment in the cards for you.” She then informed her customer that she always answered unerringly two questions, which he was now at liberty to propound. He made a couple of inquiries relative to his future business prospects, and received in reply the promise of most gratifying results.
Having then, as he supposed, got his money’s worth, he was about to take his leave, when she interrupted him thus:
“I have a charm for securing good luck to whoever wears it; you can wear it, and your most intimate friend would never suspect it; my charge is one dollar for gentlemen; a great many have bought it of me; many merchants who were on the point of failing have come to me and possessed this charm, and been saved; you had better possess it, for it will be sure to bring you good luck; if you possess it, you will always be successful in business; Mr. Lynch of Mott Street possessed it, and has been very lucky ever since, besides a great number I could name; my advice to you is, possess the charm.”
She then put her elbows on her knees after the manner of a Fulton Market apple-pedler, in which classic attitude she awaited an answer. The decision was not favorable to her hopes; for the economical customer concluded not to invest in the charm, although it had brought such excellent fortune to Mr. Lynch of Mott Street. He departed, encountering again in his progress the weak-eyed one, who met him with a smile, escorted him to the door with a great laugh, and dismissed him with a joyous grin.