"Yes," continued the witch, "I know'd 'twas.You can't deceive Jupiter, me, nor any other planick.You may swim same as Leander did, but you can't deceive the planicks.Give me your hand! Times ain't so easy as they has been.So--so--but 'tis temp'ry.'Twon't last long.Times will be easy soon.You may be tramped on to onct or twict, but you'll rekiver.You have talenk, me child.You kin make a Congresser if sich you likes to be.[We said we would be excused, if it was all the same to her.] You kin be a lawyer.[We thanked her, but said we would rather retain our present good moral character.] You kin be a soldier.You have courage enough to go to the Hostrian wars and kill the French.[We informed her that we had already murdered some "English."] You won't have much money till you're thirty-three years of old.Then you will have large sums--forty thousand dollars, perhaps.Look out for it! [We promised we would.] You have traveled some, and you will travel more, which will make your travels more extensiver than they has been.You will go to Californy by way of Pike's Pick.[Same route taken by Horace Greeley.] If nothin happens onto you, you won't meet with no accidents and will get through pleasant, which you otherwise will not do under all circumstances however, which doth happen to all, both great and small, likewise to the rich as also the poor.
Hearken to me! There has been deaths in your family, and there will be more! But Reserve your constitution and you will live to be seventy years of old.Me child, HER hair will be black--black as the Raving's wing.Likewise black will also be her eyes, and she'll be as different from which you air as night and day.Look out for the darkish man! He's yer rival! Beware of the darkish man! [We promised that we'd introduce a funeral into the "darkish man's"family the moment we encountered him.] Me child, there's more sunshine than clouds for ye, and send all your friends up here.
"A word before you goes.Expose not yourself.Your eyes is saller, which is on accounts of bile on your systim.Some don't have bile on to their systims which their eyes is not saller.This bile ascends down on to you from many generations which is in their graves, and peace to their ashes."MADAME CROMPTON.
We then proceeded directly to Madame Crompton, the other fortune-teller.
Below is her bill:--
MADAME R.CROMPTON, The World-Renowned Fortune-Teller and Astrologist.
Madame Crompton begs leave to inform the citizens of Cleveland and vicinity that she has taken rooms at the FARMERS' ST CLAIR HOUSE, Corner of St Clair and Water Streets, Where she may be consulted on all matters pertaining to Past and Future Events.
Also giving Information of Absent friends, whether Living or Dead.
P.S.--Persons having lost or having property stolen of any kind, will do well to give her a call, as she will describe the person or persons with such accuracy as will astonish the most devout critic.
Terms Reasonable.
She has rooms at the Farmers' Hotel, as stated in the bill above.
She was driving an extensive business, and we were forced to wait half an hour or so for a chance to see her.Madame Crompton is of the English persuasion, and has evidently searched many long years in vain for her H.She is small in stature, but considerably inclined to corpulency, and her red round face is continually wreathed in smiles, reminding one of a new tin pan basking in the noonday sun.She took a greasy pack of common playing cards, and requested us to "cut them in three," which we did.She spread them out before her on the table, and said:--"Sir to you which I speaks.You 'av been terrible crossed in love, and your 'art 'as been much panged.But you'll get over it and marry a light complected gale with rayther reddish 'air.Before some time you'll have a legercy fall down on to you, mostly in solick Jold.There may be a lawsuit about it, and you may be sup-prisoned as a witnesses, but you'll git it--mostly in solick Jold, which you will keep in chists, and you must look out for them.
[We said we would keep a skinned optic on "them chists."] You 'as a enemy, and he's a lightish man.He wants to defraud you out of your 'onesty.He is tellink lies about you now in the 'opes of crushin yourself.[A weak invention of "the opposition."] You never did nothin bad.Your 'art is right.You 'ave a great taste for hosses and like to stay with 'em.Mister to you I sez: Gard aginst the lightish man and all will be well."The supernatural being then took an oval-shaped chunk of glass (which she called a stone) and requested us to "hang on to it." She looked into it and said:
"If you're not keerful when you git your money, you'll lose it, but which otherwise you will not, and fifty cents is as cheap as I kin afford to tell anybody's fortune, and no great shakes made then."1.46.FROM A HOMELY MAN.
Dear Plain Dealer,--I am a plain man, and there is a melancholy fitness in my unbosoming my sufferings to the "Plain" Dealer.Plain as you may be in your dealings, however, I am convinced you never before had to DEAL with a correspondent so hopelessly plain as I.
Yet plain don't half express my looks.Indeed I doubt very much whether any word in the English language could be found to convey an adequate idea on my absolute and utter homeliness.The dates in the old family Bible show that I am in the decline of life, but I cannot recall a period in my existence when I felt really young.My very infancy, those brief months when babes prattle joyously and know nothing of care, was darkened by a shadowy presentiment of what Iwas to endure through life, and my youth was rendered dismal by continued repetitions of a fact painfully evident "on the face of it," that the boy was growing homelier and homelier every day.
