FORTUNE-TELLING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7294, 6 January 1902, Page 2

FORTUNE-TELLING.

GUESSES THAI CAME TRUE. Lord Roberts makes no secret of the fact that years ago his great march from Kabul to Kandahar was foretold to him by a " fortune-teller," and that lie* was so impressed at the time that he had full faith in the prophecy. Mme. Modjeska, the Countess Bozenta, when she was a girl of fifteen, accidentally encountered a gipsy woman in the Ring Theatre,. Vienna, who told her that one day site would wear a coronet. Two years later the actress married her guardian, M. Modjeska, and they laughed the prophecy to scorn. Nevertheless, it came true, for after four years of married life M. Modjeska died, and three years after Mme. Modjeska became the wife of the Count Bozenta Chlopowski. The late Sir Henry Parkes was the son of a. farm labourer in Warwickshire, and, like many of his class, more than ordinarily superstitious. One day, at a county fair, a gipsy fortune-teller fold him that he would find great honour and wealth " on the other side of the world." Parkes selected Australia as the place where the promised fortune^ay, and landed at Sydney in 1839, 'with a wife and baby and three shillings. Fifteen years later he entered the Parliament of New South. Wales, and ultimately became Premier of the colony. Even Queen Victoria confessed to a certain amount of belief in fortune-telling, based on the faict that when a girl, at Broad^tairs, she had foretold to her a number of events which were fulfilled in a remarkable manner. Among oth«r things she was told of her marriage with Prince Albert, and, furtfher, that one of her immediate descendants was to "reign over a great European Empire Aot then created." This has come true, as her grandson, the Kaiser, now reigns over the German Empire, which did not then exist. The utterer of these prophecies was a certain "Mother Maddern," a once well-known character at East Coast watering-places.