Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 54.djvu/724

702 have told fortunes from the hand for pay; and, though one styled himself "professor" and the other was a "madame" and not a common wayside gypsy, they were both held guilty of common juggling and were punished accordingly. The public prosecutor said that he did not lay any stress on the fact that pay had been taken; he asked for a conviction simply on the ground that fortune-telling was against the law, and he carried his point. The judge observed that similar proceedings might be taken against young ladies who tell fortunes at church and charity bazaars; and the prosecutor admitted that such was very likely the case. These young ladies, he said, would have to look out for themselves.

We must say that this action on the part of the Canadian authorities strikes us very favorably, and we should be greatly pleased if we could see similar proceedings taken nearer home. It is a lamentable fact that hundreds of persons who ought to know better amuse themselves by lending their countenance to the practitioners of all kinds of silly and dishonest arts, and so far assist them in practicing their frauds upon a more ignorant and helpless class. We are all familiar with the stories which pass current in private circles of the extraordinary revelations and predictions made by ladies and gentlemen who go off iu trances and see the past and future unrolled before their upturned eyes with all the distinctness of an actual panorama. But there is one thing which these interesting and highly gifted individuals do not like, and that is to get into the courts, or anywhere where they can be called upon to give a succinct and definite account of their doings and pretensions. They are not ambitious of going into a trance before the magistrate, and giving an exhibition of the powers to

which they lay claim in their advertisements, much as that might be expected to help their reputation and their business. For that very reason it would be an excellent thing to bring them where the light of common day could be thrown upon their performances; and. if there is no law under which this could be clone, our legislators, who make so many needless laws, might very well pass one, the general effect of which would be to enforce the responsibility of all persons publicly pretending to the possession of any kind of supernatural power. It would tend to cool the faith of even the most benighted dupes to see their favorite seer cutting a foolish figure before a judge who simply wanted to know what it really was for which he charged money. In the Canadian cases both operators, when they got into court, showed a great disposition to minimize their claims to any power of foretelling events by palmistry or otherwise, and so it would be in every similar case. It is one thing to deal with a gullible maiden who wants to know the color of her future husband's hair, and quite another to converse with the officers of the law.

Most of the frauds which have any continued success owe it. in part at least, to an undue faith in the personal integrity of the practitioner. It seems a rude as well as an unkind thing to suppose that So and-so, whose demeanor is so modest and frank and simple, whose sentiments are so elevated, whose whole personality seems calculated to inspire confidence, is really an outrageous deceiver. In many cases people have said in effect that, if they had to choose between believing a miracle and doubting the veracity of this or that engaging individual, they would believe the miracle. Yet time and again the engaging individual