the
"Astrological" announcements of the newspapers, and have turned
up their critical noses at the ungrammatical style thereof, and
indulged the while in a sort of innocent wonder as to whether
these transparent nets ever catch any gulls. These matter-of-fact
individuals have no doubt often queried in a vague, purposeless
way, if there really can be in enlightened New York any
considerable number of persons who have faith in charms and
love-powders, and who put their trust in the prophetic infallibility
of a pack of greasy playing-cards. It may open the eyes of these
innocent querists to the popularity of modern witchcraft to learn
that the nineteen she-prophets who advertise in the daily
journals of this city are visited every week by an average of
_sixteen hundred people_, or at the rate of more than a dozen
customers a day for each one; and of this immense number
probably two-thirds place implicit confidence in the miserable
stuff they hear and pay for.

It is also true that although a part of these visitors are
ignorant servants, unfortunate girls of the town, or uneducated
overgrown boys, still there are among them not a few men engaged
in respectable and influential professions, and many merchants of
good credit and repute, who periodically consult these women, and
are actually governed by their advice in business affairs of
great moment.

Carriages, attended by liveried servants, not unfrequently stop
at the nearest respectable corner adjoining the abode of a
notorious Fortune-Teller, while some richly-dressed but
closely-veiled woman stealthily glides into the habitation of the
Witch. Many ladies of wealth and social position, led by
curiosity, or other motives, enter these places for the purpose
of hearing their "fortunes told." When these ladies are informed
of the true character of the houses they have thus entered, and
the real business of many of these women whose fortune-telling is
but a screen to intercept the public gaze from it, it is not
likely that any one of them will ever compromise her reputation
by another visit.

People who do not know anything about the subject will perhaps be
surprised to hear that most of these humbug sorceresses are now,
or have been in more youthful and attractive days, women of the
town, and that several of their present dens are vile assignation
houses; and that a number of them are professed abortionists, who
do as much perhaps in the way of child-murder as others