she said—My dears, she cannot tell your fortunes. I have been a professed fortune-teller, and have deceived hundreds. She succeeded in persuading them to go home.
At a meeting of Gipsies held at a gentleman’s house, Jan. 1830, the youngest child of this woman said to her mother, Mammy, who be all these folks? The mother replied, They are Gipsies. Was I ever like ’em? asked the child. Yes, said the mother, you was once a poor little Gipsy without stockings and shoes, and glad to beg a halfpenny of any body. It is a circumstance not to be lamented, that the condition even of a little child, has been so much bettered by the exertions of the Committee.
In addition to the encouragement afforded us by this woman, giving up with so much decision the practice of fortune-telling, the author must not forget to mention an instance of her forbearance of temper under provocation and outrage. She had, when a vagrant, a quarrel with some of her ignorant people of another tribe. Meeting with them after her reformation, she was severely beaten by them, and had her ear-drops torn from her ears, while they contemptuously called her Methodist. When asked, why she did not bring her persecutors to justice, she replied, How can I be forgiven, if I do not forgive? That is what my Testament tells me.
The young widow we have before mentioned, continued to tell fortunes for some time after we had taken her children; but it pleased the Holy Spirit to awaken
her conscience, and to shew her the wickedness of such crimes, by which she was led to true repentance and reformation of character.
After the death of both the children of this interesting individual, she went into the service of a kind and pious lady in London. For this situation she was prepared by one of equal benevolence in Southampton, who had her for some time in her own house for that purpose. She continued in this situation till the lady’s death, and has since been in other service, where she has conducted herself so well as to prove she is become a sincere servant of Christ.
CHAP. X. Some Remarks on the Sin of Fortune-telling.
The author will be pardoned, he is willing to hope, by the kind reader, if he digress in one or two paragraphs in this part of his work, purposely to expose the great wickedness of prognostication and fortune-telling; as the whole is not only unsound, foolish, absurd and false, but is most peremptorily forbidden in the Scriptures.
In the law of Moses it is commanded, that there should not be found among the people, any that used divination, or that was an observer of the times, or that was an enchanter: Deut. xiii. 10. In the prophecies of Malachi, the Lord has declared—Thou shalt have no more soothsayers: Mal. v. 12. Balaam and Balak were cursed of the Lord of Hosts; the former for using enchantments, and the latter for employing Balaam in this wicked work. Woe to them that devise iniquity: Micah, ii. 1. Those who employ unhappy Gipsy women, should think on the portion of the liar; Rev. xxi. 8: for the person who tempts another to utter falsehood by offering rewards, is equally guilty before God. A companion of fools shall be destroyed: Prov.
xiii. 20. Though hand join in hand, in sin, the wicked shall not go unpunished: Prov. xvi. 5. The destruction of the transgressors and the sinners shall be together: Isai. i. 28. It may be safely affirmed that the sin of those persons, who trifle with Gipsy women in having their fortunes told by them, nearly resembles that of the first king of Israel; who, by consulting, in his trouble, a wicked woman, who pretended to supernatural power, filled up the measure of those sins, by which he lost the protection of heaven, his crown, and his life, and by which he involved his family in the most ruinous calamity.