The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1912. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 105, 19 September 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 1912. THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY.

A cablegram from London- states that the police have forbidden the advertising of palmistry, crystal-gazing and clairvoyancy. This reform has been a long time coming, and it is of interest to us because our country, which is progressive enough in many ways, is slow to move in the matter of repressing the harpies who prey upon the ignorant and credulous by offering, like Raliab, for purely commercial reasons, to draw aside the veil of the future and tell Mary Ann exactly the height of the blond husband that she is going to secure, the extent of his fortune, and the strength of his first lower bicuspid. When Browning drew liis graphic and picturesque sketch of "Dr. Sludge, the Medium," he was aiming with his pitiless sarcasm at "a. somewhat more refined form of charlatanism than that which pertains to the ordinary everyday cheap and nasty reading of palms for a shilling, or forecasting the future for half-a-erown by 1 means of a greasy pack of cards. the methods of Dr. Sludge were exactly identical, except for the draperies, course. Fortune-telling is supposed to be illegal in New Zealand, but the supposition is more honored in the breach than in the observance. The larger towns of the Dominion are simply honeycombed with frowsy and bedraggled 'Madames," whose specious and catchpenny advertisements lure their hardlywon pence from ignorance girls and no less ignorant men, and very often their premises are little better than a cloak for even worse establishments. The average working girl "dearly loves u Duke," but if there is' one thing she loves more it is the prospect of a rich husband, and a motor-car, and a palace of indolence and everything that poor humanity hankers for outside the stern realities of life. Hope springs eternal in the human breast, and as long as she can secure this largesse of good luck on the promissory note of some irresponsil)' ■ harpy she is satisfied fo turn her last winter's frock and spend her poor savings upon a futile and pitiable attempt to score off Fate's bowling. Even some of our Dominion newspapers, to their everlasting discredit, run "Grapliology" and '"Astrological" columns, and while they continue this reprehensible practice it is hardly likely that they will decline to accept advertisements from quacks who are simply pursuing the s,ime policy. The evil is not a very pronounced one in our immediate midst, except in so far as it is conducted by correspondence, but in the larger cities it has developed into a form of "graft" that is a distinct menace to the community. It is quite time that the Legislature took more effective steps to stop the growth of this insidious form of

cheap robbery, and this can be most effectively done by following the English innovation of forbidding the publication of the cunning advertisements of these alleged guides to the undiscovered, country.