WHERE FORTUNE-TELINC PAYS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 81899, 10 December 1906, Page 3

WHERE FORTUNE-TELINC PAYS.

Over two thousand persons make an cxcelknt living in Paris by telling fortunes by cards. But there are oihcr varieties of fortune tellers galore; those who predict- the future from a handful of pins thrown at hazard at a kind of chessboaid, or from the shapes assumed by the dregs of collee in the bottom of a saucer, those who resort- to mesmerism and somnambulism, the chirographists, the dra'.vers of horoscopes, and many others. The cartomancists, however, are m the majority. The methods of all of them are identical, but ihoir prices vary greatly. Their stock-in-trade, apart from some liitlc impudence, consists sjlely of the tarot, a, specially prepared pack of cards, which are as a rule clumsily hand-painted, and pasted on to squaies of cardboard. Actresses, with scarcely an exception, believe in the tales of the cartomancists, and many of them go week after week o the same "wise' women, and swallow, withj ineomprehensive docility., the contradictory revelations elaborated for their benefit.

The cheaper fortune-tellers "are seldom consulted by men; but, curiously enough, the cartomancists, whose charges are high, often have men amongst their customers. Not a few members of the soothsaying corporation ultimately get into troublwith the police by declining to be content with what must be called "legitimate'' profits of their profession. Owing to the hold they obtain over their victims, and the knowledge they acquire of their they are tempted not infrequently 10 launch out into blackmailing, and othed disreputable transactions, >.vhich sometimes land them in the criminal dock. Indeed, an account of what goes on in connection with these for-tune-telling dens would make a very curious chapter in a description of Ui« seamy side of Parisian life.