The character of his surroundings is noted in the following description, and his oracular communication is given, word for word.
An Hour with a Wizard.—The Cash Customer is to “Pizon” his First Wife, and then get Another. Hooray!
“I am like a vagabond pig with no family ties, who has no lady pig to welcome him home o’nights, and with no tender sucklings to call him ‘papa,’ in that prattling porcine language that must fall so sweetly on the ears of all parents of innocent porklings. Like Othello, I have no wife, and really I can see little hope in the future.”
Thus moralized the “Individual,” the morning after his experiment with the women’s gear, and his failure to learn, at a single lesson, the whole art of catching a wife. Then he bethought him that perhaps the art could not be learned without a master; and then came the other thought that no one could tell so well how to win a witch-wife as one who had himself been successful in that risky experiment.
To find a man with a fortune-telling wife is no easy matter, for most of the marriages contracted by these ladies are by no means of a permanent character, and the male parties to the temporary partnerships are always kept in the background. But if he could discover up a wizard, a masculine master of the Black Art, there were strong probabilities that such an individual could put him in the way of winning a miracle-working spouse, at the very least possible trouble and expense. He would seek that man as a preliminary to winning that woman. The daily newspapers showed him that in the person of a learned doctor, surnamed Wilson, he would probably find the man he wanted. He searched out that wonderful man, and the results of his visit are given in this identical chapter.
Old dreamy Sol Gills, of coffee-colored memory, has been admiringly recommended to the good opinion of the world by his friend, Capt. Ed’ard Cuttle, mariner of England, as a man “chock full of science.” From the same eminent authority we also learn that Jack Bunsby was an individual of learning so vast, and experience so varied and comprehensive, that he never opened his oracular mouth but out fell “solid chunks of wisdom.” That the person now dwells in our city who combines the scientific attainments of Gills with the intuitive wisdom of Bunsby, we have the solemn word of Johannes. The science is a trifle more dreamy and misty even than of old, and the wisdom is solider and chunkier, but both are as undeniable, as convincing, as “stunning,” as in the best days of the Little Wooden Midshipman. The fortunate possessor of this inestimable wealth of knowledge secludes himself from the curious public in the basement of the house No. 172 Delancey street, like an underground hermit. However, this unselfish and generous sage, not wishing to hide entirely the light of his great learning from a benighted world, kindly condescends, in the advertisement herewith given, to retail his wisdom to anxious inquirers at a dollar a chunk:
“Astrology.—Dr. Wilson, 172 Delancey street, gives the most scientific and reliable information to be found on all concerns of life, past, present, and future. Terms—ladies, 50 cents; gentlemen, $1. Birth required.”
The last sentence is slightly obscure, and it was not quite clear to Johannes that he would not have to be “born again” on the premises. But at all events there was something refreshing in the novelty of consulting a “learned pundit” in pantaloons, after all the tough conjurers of the other sex that he had undergone of late.
So he repaired to Delancey street in a joyous mood, nothing daunted by the requirements of the advertisement.