A JEALOUS HUSBAND AND SPIRIT-RAPPERS.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 111, 24 March 1870, Page 7

A JEALOUS HUSBAND AND SPIRIT-RAPPERS.

Sensible people would be astonished to learn the number of persons who consult somnambulists or spirit-rap-pers in the various contingencies of life. The following account of a recent occurrence in Paris may show to what edifying results the indulgence of this practice may sometimes lead. A French husband, who was cast in the same mould ps Othello, the jealous Moore, wished to find out for certain whether his wife was faithful to him. Very likely he had reason to doubt it, for he could find no peace until he had tried to settle the point by appealing to a somnambulist. The somnambulist, however, refused to commit herself to any statement unless she was put in possession of a lock of the lady's hair, so that the husband was obliged to wait until he had found means to cut off a mesh of his consort's tresses whilst she was asleep. Once provided with this means of invoking the oracle, he returned to the prophetess, who received her fee, went to sleep, and a few minutes later made the husband's hair stand bolt upright by declaring that the owner of" the lock of hair was a profligate beyond expression. During five minutes the husband listened in ghastly horror to the somnambulist's denunciations ; but at last he could stand it no longer, jumped off his chair, bounded down the staircase, and flew homewards through the streets, rushing finally into his wife's presjnve, with his eyeballs starting, and his tongue evoking all the powers celestial and infernal to punish her heartless treachery. The lady listened with great patience to the anathemas, and it was only when her husband's rage had pretty nigh worn him out that she ventured to ask what was the matter, and to request an explanation. " Explanation !" roared the marital victim ; " Way, haven't I explained that the somnambulist has revealed me everything ? Ah, madam, there's no hiding one's actions from a somnambulist. Unhappy woman, I £aye her a lock of your hair." "O V replied the lady quietly, "ia that it?" Then rising with great solemnity, she raised her hands to her hair, and, in loss time than it takes to write, removed the whole fabric of curls, tresses, and chignon, revealing to the astonished husband a head perfectly bald and smooth as a billiard ball. "There," she exclaimed, " a,re you satisfied now ? If you had suffered me to do so, I should have allowed you to remain ignorant of the fact that I was bald ; but since you oblige me to speak in self-defence, I have to say that I lost all my hair when I was a child, and that I have never had any since. This lock you took to a somnambulist ia a false one." This said, Dcsdemona put on her chignon again, and left Othello to his reflections — not pleasant ones, if we may believe his friends, for they pretend that, since this adventure Ofchello has become taciturn, and carefully avoids all allusions to somnambulists.