ANOTHER SOCIAL SORE. Shall it be Rooted Out?

Free Lance, Volume III, Issue 159, 18 July 1903, Page 8

ANOTHER SOCIAL SORE. Shall it be Rooted Out?

IF you desire to know who stole your great grandfather's gold watch, what is going to win the Melbourne Cup, or what particular calling that brilliant boy of yours is out out for, you must go to a clairvoyant. If you want to find a clairvoyant, or a mental healer, in the near future, you must go elsewhere, for it is increasingly evident that the people who thrive on the credulity of the many are beginning to be regarded in this enlightened country as a. public nuisance. *. -t *■ The daily papers of New Zealand teem with notifications from mesmerists, psychometrists, clairvoyants, fortune-tellers, and seers of various sorts. They flourish like the green bay tree They acre as successful as the "cheap-jack" who sells sovereigns for half -a- crown. "You may win undying friendships by paying me os, and listening to my patter. I can diagnose disease by looking at a lock of a distant patient's hair. I can predict the winner of the Caulfield Cup. Ido not, however, put my hard-earned wages on the prediction, because predictions at half-a-crown a time are better investments." * -h ¥■ Some of these clairvoyants and fortune - tellers have driven weakminded persons to suicide or madness ; they have been responsible for crimes by suggestion , and have been able, by a judicious us© of musty curtains, and an air of mystery, to bring about them a large clientele. They do not stay long m one place. Madame de Looney, here to-day, is at Masterton to-morrow. Her Wellington reputation gets her many clients in her new sphere. She gravitates to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, the Islands, and still Carlyle's "mostly fools" swallow, with avidity, the foolishness she prophesies, and pay their money. * » * Recent reports show that many of this particular class of social vampire are "resting" in the place made and provided for frauds of all kinds. Wellington is not without these gentry. They are transitory truly, but behind the little dirty green curtains you may see anxious but asinine youths, finding out for 2s 6d the colour of their future wives' hair, while for the same price the future will be made an open book for a tittering girl of sixteen. It is an insult to the alleged intelligence of the youth of this country that such persons should be permitted to drive trade of this kind even for a day. They are as noxious as ragwort, and it is essential that, like that weed, they should be rooted out.