Page:The humbugs of the world - An account of humbugs, delusions, impositions, quackeries, deceits and deceivers generally, in all ages (IA humbugsworld00barnrich).djvu/404

 oracle at Charæ, the priest took a dream, and in the morning told you what he chose. In the cave of Trophonius, after various terrifying performances, they pulled you through a hole the wrong way of the feathers, and then back again, and then stuck you upon a seat, and made you write down your own oracle, being what you had seen, which would, I imagine, usually be “the elephant.”

And so-forth, and so on. Humbug ad libitum!

Like some of the more celebrated modern fortune-tellers, the managers of the oracles were frequently shrewd fellows, and could often pick up the materials of a very smart and judicious answer from the appearance of the customer and his question. Very often the answer was sheer nonsense. It was, in fact, believed by many that as a rule you couldn’t tell what the response meant until after it was fulfilled, when you were expected to see it. In many cases the answers were ingeniously arranged, so as to mean either a good or evil result, one of which was pretty likely.

Thus, one of the oracles answered a general who asked after the fate of his campaign as follows: (the ancients, remember, using no punctuation marks) “Thou shalt go thou shalt return never in war shalt thou perish.” The point becomes visible when you first make a pause before “never,” and then after it.

On a similar occasion, the Delphic oracle told Crœsus that if he crossed the River Halys he would overthrow a great empire. This empire he chose to understand as that of Cyrus, whom he was going to fight. It came out the other way, and it was his own empire