CHAPTER II.
ONE YEAR LATER.
Being patient and obliging, said a young lady, has cheated me out of my rights so many times. I was to have a reading that night at the home of Mrs. M. C. for I served with hopes and glad expectations into each dainty cup of aromatic coffee that I poured, yet, as usual, did not get my reading. Never have. I had either palm reading, cup or solar biology forecast, though promised each. Oh, I was so disappointed, for it was my desire to learn your special, catchy methods, and to note the sensations cast upon me as under the magic spell. I cannot formulate the things you do, though my friends praise me unstintingly.
You shall not be longer denied, said the adept. Get a cup of coffee or tea, if not too coarse in leaves, after we lunch. I will read them, as we can be alone with our atmospheric thought advisers and our higher selves. I know that your life and labors will abound in good. Many excellent things await your efforts, yet do not now think that my auto thoughts will be my full guides.
Oh, thank you. How nice the conditions are to be alone with one's future expectations. No one can then pervert what is promised. I am now most expectant, am glad I have waited for this propitious time. I love this little room with its dainty furnishings.
FIRST READING.
You possess fine spiritual gifts; are morally high-toned; you build many castles--just see the mountains and balloons, the tower in the distance. You could study palmistry and occult laws to fine advantage. It has become so respectable, too, you know. Yet few do excel, though many attempts are made. Try it, you are very susceptible to every personality; you have a very retentive memory with large formative powers. Just the requisites with your mentality for doing good to poor humanity. As a wise teacher you could excel.
SECOND CUP.
Flurries of wind and storms--confusion in your home and heart--crooked lines with a crude cross and a sodden log, out of which will rise a broken anchor--lost hopes or wishes. Now, an ugly thing is discerned. See the spitting of cats and the angry dog. That is some disagreeable quarrel between friends of yours. A gentleman will pass through cruel loss and change. Nothing good is yet promised to present wishes. Serpents are lying low in the grass--see their heads, you will suffer thereby--your head now lays low in some severe illness. Fate is silent and sad for a time, as in mourning for the sorrows of the good and true. See you the shaft, draped like a funeral pall across the cup? You are also to bury a friend, a worthy minister. The people mourn. Now let us invoke the kindly powers to a solution of the many evils cast by contending conditions of jealousies and spite. Let your soul be possessed and purified, for now I know that you are truly one of the chosen few who are tried by the fierce fires and floods of life. This is a retrospective day for your soul--growth beyond your realization of [sentence is unfinished].