and Betty, or Martha, or her
mistress can consult them by themselves according to the established
method--without exposing themselves to the extortionate cunning of the
wandering gipsies or the permanent crone of the city or village.
They may just as well believe what comes out according to their own
manipulation as by that of the heartless cheats in question. Your
ordinary fortune-tellers are not over-particular, being only anxious to
tell you exactly what you want to know. So if a black court card gets
in juxta-position with and looking towards a red court card, the
fair consulter's representative, then it is evident that some 'dark
gentleman' is 'after her;' and vice versa; and if a wife, suspecting
her husband's fidelity, consults the cards, the probability is that her
SUSPICIONS will receive 'confirmation strong' from the fact that 'some
dark woman,' that is, a black queen, 'is after her husband;' or vice
versa, if a husband consults the card-woman respecting the suspicions
he may have reason to entertain with regard to his 'weaker rib' or his
'intended.'

It need scarcely be observed that fortune-tellers in any place are
'posted up' in all information or gossip in the neighbourhood; and
therefore they readily turn their knowledge to account in the answers
they give to anxious inquirers.

Apart from this, however, the interpretations are so elaborately
comprehensive that 'something' MUST come true in the revelations; and
we all know that in such matters that something coming to pass will far
outweigh the non-fulfilment of other fatal ordinations. Of course no
professional fortune-teller would inform an old man that some dark or
fair man was 'after' his old woman; but nothing is more probable than
the converse, and much family distraction has frequently resulted from
such perverse revelation of 'the cards.' In like manner your clever
fortune-teller will never promise half-a-dozen children to 'an old
lady,' but she will very probably hold forth that pleasant prospect--if
such it be--to a buxom lass of seventeen or eighteen--especially in
those counties of England where the ladies are remarkable for such
profuse bounty to their husbands.

As a general proposition, it matters very little what may be the means
of vaticination or prediction--whether cards, the tea-grounds in the
cup, &c.,--all POSSIBLE events have a degree of probability of coming to
pass, which may vary from 20 to 1 down to a perfect equality of cha