A Phrenological Test

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 424, 30 November 1889, Page 6

A Phrenological Test

BELiEVJb.K'S in phrenology (writes a London conespondent) are nob likely to have their faith shaken by any untoward incident, but a curious episode which occurred a day or two ago is calculated to afford them food for thought. An fiddly gentleman, accompanied by a younger lady, waited upon one of the best-known.phrenologists in the kingdom with a request for his examination of two male photographs, so as to give advice as to which the lady should choose as her husbaud. The utmost attention was p\id to the wish, and in the result the phienologist declared that, while both were worthy, one was so distinctly possessed of the greater virtues and capacity for making a woman's life happy that, although, the other piomised from his face and head to be a divine of a high order, the former would prove the better choice. There the business ended as far as the professional delineation of character was concerned, but the edge was taken oft the laudation given when it became known that the - one who was so cordially recommended was a congenital idiot, who is now undergoing a life incarceration in another part of the world for a most atrocious assault upon a woman, while the promising divine has just been hanged for murder. The lady., however, is not inconsolable, for she is already wedded to the gentleman who displayed the photographs, and who wished to learn for himself how far character could be read by such means. But, just as Lavatcr declared that his theories upon phye-iognomy could bear the rude shock of being compared with the bust of Socrates, so belie\ers in phrenology may claim that photographs do not supply a sufficiently fair test of Spuvzheim's system.