nd. The other part
of the song I quickly forgot, but these words have stuck to me ever
since. On purpose to try to find out what fortune-telling was, when in
my teens I used to walk after working hours from Tunstall to Fenton, a
distance of six miles, to see "old Elijah Cotton," a well-known character
in the Potteries, who got his living by it, to ask him all sorts of
questions. Sometimes he would look at my hands, at other times he would
put my hand into his, and hold it while he was reading out of the Bible,
and burning something like brimstone-looking powder--the forefinger of
the other hand had to rest upon a particular passage or verse; at other
times he would give me some of this yellow-looking stuff in a small paper
to wear against my left breast, and some I had to burn exactly as the
clock struck twelve at night, under the strictest secrecy. The stories
this fortune-teller used to relate to me as to his wonderful power over
the spirits of the other world were very amusing, aye, and over "the men
and women of this generation." He was frequently telling me that he had
"fetched men from Manchester in the dead of the night flying through the
air in the course of an hour;" and this kind of rubbish he used to relate
to those who paid him their shillings and half-crowns to have their
fortunes told. My visits lasted for a little time till he told me that
he could do nothing more, as I was "not one of his sort." Like Thomas
called Didymus, "hard of belief." Except an occasional glance at the
Gipsies as I have passed them on the road-side, the subject has been
allowed to rest until the commencement of last year, when I mentioned the
matter to my friends, who, in reply, said I should find it a difficult
task; this had the effect of causing a little hesitation to come over my
sensibilities, and in this way, between hesitation and doubt, matters
went on till one day in July last year, when the voice of Providence and
the wretched condition of the Gipsy children seemed to speak to me in
language that I thought it would be perilous to disregard. On my return
home one evening I found a lot of Gipsies in the streets; it struck me
very forcibly that the time for action had now arrived, and with this
view in mind I asked Moses Holland--for that was his name, and he was the
leader of the gang--to call into my house for some knives which required
grinding, and while his mate was grinding the knives, for which I had to
pay two