'Questions Answered.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 24, 13 June 1901, Page 19

'Questions Answered.'

The other day there oame to White Island a lady with an unpronouDcable surname, preoeded by the word 'Madame.' She engaged a somewhat musty shop in the same street as Bartle Dooley's Hotel, decorated the front window thereof with a pair of two-and-elevenpenny real lace curtains, behind which she placed a small round table supporting a vase of freshly-cut paper roses and a placard bearing the strange device : ' Questions Answered.' Being a plain, simple citizen of the world, I did not at first know what all this portended. But soon I noticed all the women-folk of the Island flocking to the Madame's shop ; andithen it dawned upon my darkened intellect that the stranger was a fortune-teller. She was an Egyptian — a real Egyptian, I think, because her accent was not nearly so Scotch as that of some other Egyptian ' futurists ' whose burred cadences had fallen on my ear. She was a woman, not with a hoe, but with a rake ; and with it she was able to rake up a good many things in your past life that all your neighbors knew about — particularly the things that you were doing your level best to live down. She could even rake up events in your personal history that never happened at all, and was altogether a great success at the game. With regard to the future, she could read it like Sanskrit, and was soon doing a humming trade, especially when she began to lavish (in the near future) fair-haired young men with dark ' mustivies ' on the ' unclaimed blessings' of the Island at the reasonable rate of a shilling a head.

Ll-natured or jealons-minded neighbors have often told me over their back fences and in discussions on the tariff that I am a fool. And when I stood for the White Island Borough Council the whole male population, men and boys and hobbledehoys, assembled and told me the »ame. There may be something in it — my wife says there's a good deal in it. But I successfully retort that the world is composed of people who are ' mostly fools,' and have pasted in my hat for readiness of reference Pudd'nhead Wilson's motto :

Let us be thankful for the fools ; but for them the rest of the world couldn't suooeed.' I thought at first that^it would be the act of a triple-tiered fool to consult the Egyptian. But, somehow, I finally conoluded that I might as well get a shilling's worth of fortune, as it waa being distributed at such a ridiculously low price. But I didn't want my neighbors to kuow about it. I, therefore, hang about until the Btreet, was quite deserted. Then I made a dash for the door. I met the wife of my bosom coming out, and quailed.