FORTUNE-TELLING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 257, 17 February 1877, Page 2

FORTUNE-TELLING.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate, All but the page prescribed—their present state — --S^l From brutes what men, from men what c^j^ know, v I Or who could suffer being here below ? So sang Pope, as all our readers are aware. Everyone, if the question were put to him, would acknowledge that certainty as to the future is as impossible to arrive at as it would probably be painful if it could be gained. Nevertheless, there is in all our natures a hankering after the knowledge of the unknowable, and a desire to pry, by foul means if we cannot manage fair ones, into the secrets of futurity. The march of intellect and the advancement of education are supposed to be doing much to drive out from among us those remnants of superstition which are here and there left. But every now and then we are startled by finding that sapeiv stition lurks even in places where its existence is least suspected. Of course, we are all familiar with the belief in fortunetelling by gipsies, and occasionally we are startled by accounts of villagers who have felt themselves impelled to assaults on poor, helpless old women, because they must " draw blood " from one by whom they believe themselves to have been hewitched. There are still places where little children are made to wear silver brooches of a peculiar f cZi&, iu order chat they may be protected from the power o/E fairies ; and belief in the restoration to her original shape of a witch who had taken th_e form of a hare, and had been shot with a crooked sis-pence, Avould be found existent at the present day, if looked for in the right place, in our own islands. All persons with any pretensions to education, or to going along with the age, would layiigh at such things if recounted, or would, greivo over them, or would be properly shocked, if the occasion seemed one as to which polite horror was the proper feeling to be exhibited. Nevertheless, there mu,st, among our " middle and upper classes," be remaining a very large leaven of •. that foolish desire to pry into che future, and that superstitious belief in the efficacy erf talismans, to w.-i*>n we have Otherwise, how comes it

the circumstances atthe conviction and imprisonment ** Jtrht* Major, an illiterate tailor," sent to prison asa" rogue and we had to publish a«> curious of the correspondence found in his house f There were several large boxes full of letters from "clients," probably 7»W*> letters altogether; these were chiefly from persona of the middle and upper classesSeventy thousand tetters I a targe number truly to have been found in the possession of a rogue and a vagabond of the fortunetelling kind. But tetters did not constitute this man's only accumulation; he had also managed to make for himself an income of between itfOO and £">«<> a y»r. This John Major was an alvertisiug for-tune-teller; who revealed your fortune, seven years, six stamps ; complete, oO stamps r love talisman, to stamps ; state age, sex, Ac." lie sent lithographed tetters in reply, and talismans, which were bits of parchment bearing a circle and some rough marks." Some of the tetters found were doubtless sent for fun, some out of a weak curiosity. But who shall say how many out of the TO.OOO tetter-writers rally believed that, for their certain number of stamps. they would get tidings as to the uncertain future / White John Majors exist among as, arid flourish by the contributions of the middle and upper ctasses," let us view with Itss supercilious contempt the superstitions of the tower classes, and let us desire the extension of education wherever it is needed. —77 - Q'><<>«)l.