There was a comparing of notes among the ladies and much laughter, when it appeared that the priestess of the hidden spell, in her working, had mixed up the oracles. Jacob had manifestly got Esau’s blessing. It was agreed that the bonnes fortunes should be exchanged, that the shillings might not be regarded as lost, and all this was explained to the unmarried lady. She said nothing, but in due time was also dukkered or fortune-told. With the same mystery she was conducted
to the secluded corner of the hedge, and a very long, low-murmuring colloquy ensued. What it was we never knew, but the lady had evidently been greatly impressed and awed. All that she would tell was that she had heard things that were “very remarkable, which she was sure no person living could have known,” and in fact that she believed in the gypsy, and even the blunder as to the married lady and the widow, and all my assurances that chiromancy as popularly practiced was all humbug, made no impression. There was once “a disciple in Yabneh” who gave a hundred and fifty reasons to prove that a reptile was no more unclean than any other animal. But in those days people had not been converted to the law of turtle soup and the gospel of Saint Terrapin, so the people said it was a vain thing. And had I given a hundred and fifty reasons to this lady, they would have all been vain to her, for she wished to believe; and when our own wishes are served up unto us on nice brown pieces of the well-buttered toast of flattery, it is not hard to induce us to devour them.
It is written that when Ashmedai, or Asmodeus, the chief of all the devils of mischief, was being led a captive to Solomon, he did several mysterious things while on the way, among others bursting into extravagant laughter, when he saw a magician conjuring and predicting. On being questioned by Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, why he had seemed so much amused, Ashmedai answered that it was because the seer was at the very time sitting on a princely treasure, and he did not, with all his magic and promising fortune to others, know this. Yet, if this had been told to all the world, the conjurer’s business would
not have suffered. Not a bit of it. Entre Jean, passe Jeannot: one comes and goes, another takes his place, and the poor will disappear from this world before the too credulous shall have departed.
It was on the afternoon of the following day that I, by chance, met the gypsy with a female friend, each with a basket, by the roadside, in a lonely, furzy place, beyond Walton.
“You are a nice fortune-teller, aren’t you now?” I said to her. “After getting a tip, which made it all as clear as day, you walk straight into the dark. And here you promise a lady two husbands, and she married already; but you never promised me two wives, that I might make merry withal. And then to tell a widow that she would never be married again! You’re a bori chovihani “Rye,” said the gypsy, with a droll smile and a shrug,—I think I can see it now,—“the dukkerin [prediction] was all right, but I pet the right dukkerins on the wrong ladies.” And the Master said, “I write letters, but I am not the messenger.” His orders, like the gypsy’s, had been all right, but they had gone to the wrong shop. Thus, in all ages, those who affect superior wisdom and foreknowledge absolute have found that a great practical part of the real business consisted in the plausible explanation of failures. The great Canadian weather prophet is said to keep two clerks busy, one in recording his predictions, the other in explaining their failures; which is much the case with the rain-doctors in Africa, who are as ingenious and fortunate in explaining a miss as a hit, as, indeed, they need be, since they must, in case of error, submit to be devoured alive by ants,—insects which in Africa correspond in several respects to editors and critics, particularly the stinging kind. “Und ist man bei der Prophezeiung angestellt,” as Heine says; “when a man has a situation in a prophecy-office,” a great part of his business is to explain to the customers why it is that so many of them draw blanks, or why the trains of fate are never on time.V. HAMPTON RACES.