of the finger-alphabet, if he knew
anything of the magician that made such a noise in town. The misanthrope
answered, as usual, in a surly tone: "By your question you must either
take me for a pimp or an idiot. What, in the name of nonsense, should
I know of such a rascal, unless I were to court his acquaintance with a
view to feast my own spleen, in seeing him fool the whole nation out
of their money? Though, I suppose, his chief profits arise from his
practice, in quality of pander. All fortune-tellers are bawds, and, for
that reason, are so much followed by people of fashion. This fellow,
I warrant, has got sundry convenient apartments for the benefit of
procreation; for it is not to be supposed that those who visit him on
the pretence of consulting his supernatural art, can be such fools,
such drivellers, as to believe that he can actually prognosticate future
events."

The company, according to his expectation, imputed his remarks to the
rancour of his disposition, which could not bear to think that any
person upon earth was wiser than himself; and his ears were regaled with
a thousand instances of the conjurer's wonderful prescience, for which
he was altogether indebted to fiction. Some of these specimens being
communicated to him by way of appeal to his opinion, "They are,"
said he, "mere phantoms of ignorance and credulity, swelled up in the
repetition, like those unsubstantial bubbles which the boys blow up in
soap-suds with a tobacco-pipe. And this will ever be the case in the
propagation of all extraordinary intelligence. The imagination naturally
magnifies every object that falls under its cognizance, especially
those that concern the passions of fear and admiration; and when the
occurrence comes to be rehearsed, the vanity of the relater exaggerates
every circumstance in order to enhance the importance of the
communication. Thus an incident, which is but barely uncommon, often
gains such accession in its progress through the fancies and mouths
of those who represent it, that the original fact cannot possibly be
distinguished. This observation might be proved and illustrated by
a thousand undeniable examples, out of which I shall only select one
instance, for the entertainment and edification of the company." A very
honest gentleman, remarkable for the gravity of his deportment, was one
day in a certain coffee-house accosted by one of his particular friends,
who, taking him by the hand, expressed uncommon s