Philander Doesticks - The Witches of New York

Before he suffered his eyes to rest upon the peerless beauty who, he was convinced, stood before him, he took a survey of the regal apartment.

An unpainted pine table stood in the corner, a gaudily colored shade was at the window, and an iron single bedstead upon which the clothes had been hastily “spread up,” and two chairs, on one of which sat the enchantress, completed the list.

The Princess was attired in deep black, and a thick black veil, reaching from her head to her waist, entirely concealed her features from the beholders who still devoutly believed in her royal birth and cruel misfortunes – nor was this belief dissipated until she spoke; but when she called “Pete” to the double-barrelled youth with the eye, and gave him a “blowing up” in the most emphatic kind of English for not bringing her pocket-handkerchief, then the beautiful Princess of his imagination vanished into the thinnest kind of air, and there remained only the unromantic reality of a very vulgar woman, in a very dirty dress, and who had a very bad cold in her head. There was still a hope that she might be pretty, and her would-be admirer fervently trusted that she might be compelled to lift her veil to blow her nose, but she didn’t do it. Then he offered her his hand, not in marriage, but for her to read his fortune in, and stood, no longer trembling with expectation, but with stony indifference, for as he approached her, a strong odor of an onion-laden breath from beneath the veil, gave the death-blow to the fair creature of his imagination, and convinced him that he had got the wrong – Princess by the fist. She looked at him closely for a couple of minutes, and then spoke these words – the peculiar pronunciation being probably induced by the cold in her head.

“You are a badd who has saw a great beddy chadges add it seebs here as if you was goidg to be bore settled in the future – it seebs here like as if you had sobetibes in your life beed very buch cast dowd, but it seebs here like as if you had always got up agaid. – It seebs here like as if you had saw id your past life sobe lady what you liked very buch add had beed disappointed – it seebs here like as if there was two barriages for you, wud id a very short tibe – wud lady seebs here to stadd very dear to you, add you two bay be barried or you bay dot – if you are dot already barried you will be very sood – it seebs here as if you woulddt have a very large fabily – five childred will be all that you will have – you will have a good deal of buddy (money) id your life – sobe of your relatives what you dever have saw will sood die add leave you sobe property – but you will dot be expectidg it add it seebs here as if you would have trouble id getting it, for there will sobe wud else try to get it away frob you – it seebs as if the lady you will barry will dot be too dark cobplexiod, dor yet too light – dot too tall, dor yet very short, dot too large, dor too thid – she thidks a great deal of you, bore thad you do of her, – you have already saw her id the course of your life, and she loves you very buch. There are people about you id your busidess who are dot so buch your friends as they preted to be – you are goidg to bake sub chadge id your busidess, it will be a good thidg for you add will cub out buch better thad you expect.”

Here she stopped and intimated that she would answer any questions that her customer desired to ask, and in reply to his interrogatories the following important information was elicited:

“You will be lodg lived, add you will have two wives, add will live beddy years with your first wife.”

The “Individual” proclaimed himself satisfied, and paid his money, whereupon Madame Bruce instantly yelled “Pete,” when the Eye-Boy reappeared to show the door, and the Cash Customer departed, leaving the Mysterious Veiled Lady shivering on her stool, and exceedingly desirous of an opportunity to use her pocket-handkerchief.

And this is all there was of the Persian Princess. As the seeker after wisdom went away he made one single audible remark by way of consoling himself for his crushed hopes and blighted anonymous love. It was to this effect. “I believe she squints, and I know she’s got bad teeth.”

Madame Widger came from Albany to this city about four years ago, and at once set up as an “Astrologer.” She has been a “witch” for a great many years, and has, directly and indirectly, done about as much mischief as it is possible for one person to accomplish in the same length of time. She was a woman of great repute in and about Albany, as a fortune-teller, and was supposed to be conversant with practices more criminal. She at last became so well known as a bad woman, that she found it advisable to leave Albany, after she had settled certain lawsuits in which she had become entangled.

Among other speculations of hers, in that place, she once sued the city to recover indemnifying moneys for certain imaginary damages, alleged to have been done to her property by the unbidden entrance of the river into her private apartments, during one of the periodical inundations with which Albany is favored. By the shrewd management of certain of her lawyer friends with whom she had business dealings, she at last got a judgment against the city, but, owing to some other awkward law complications, it became expedient to change her place of residence before she had collected her money, and the amount remains unpaid to this day.

She then came to this city, and set up in the Sorceress way, and, by dint of advertising, she soon got a good many customers. She now has as much to do as she can easily manage to get along with, is making a good deal of money by “Astrology,” and by other more unscrupulous means; and she is probably worth some considerable property. She is a bold, brazen, ignorant, unscrupulous, dangerous woman. She has some peculiar ways of her own in telling the fortunes of her visitors, and is the only person in the city who professes to read the future through a magic stone, or “second-sight pebble.” Her manner of using this wonderful geological specimen is fully described hereafter.

The “Individual” Visits a Grim Witch, who reads his Future through a Moderate-Sized Paving-Stone.

Disappointed in his fond hope of discovering, in the person of Madame Bruce, an eligible partner, who should bridal him and lead him coyly to the altar, that bourne from which no bachelor returns, the Cash Customer was for many days downcast in his demeanor and neglectful of his person. When he eventually recovered from his strong attack of Madame Bruce, he was not by any means cured of his romantic desire to procure a witch wife. He had carefully figured up the conveniences of such an article, and the sum total was an irresistible argument.

If he could win a witch of the right sort, perhaps she could teach him the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, and the Elixir of Life, and show him the locality of the Fountain of Youth, so that he could take the wrinkles out of himself and his friends, at the cost of only a short journey by rail-road. A barrel or so of that wonderful water, peddled out by the bottle, would meet a readier sale and pay a larger profit than any Paphian Lotion that was ever advertised on the rocks of Jersey. All this, to say nothing of a family of young wizards and sorcerers, who could, by virtue of the maternal magic, swallow swords from the day of their birth, do mighty feats of legerdemain, such as cutting off the heads of innumerable pigs and chickens, and producing the decapitated animals alive again from the coat-tails of the bystanders, to the astonishment of the crowd and the great emolument of their proud dad. Even if these profitable babies should not be natural necromancers, with the power of second sight, and any quantity of “natural gifts,” they must surely be spirit-rappers of the most lucrative “sphere,” capable of organizing “circles,” and instructing “mediums,” and otherwise bringing into the family fund large piles of that circulating medium so much to be desired. Or, even failing this popular gift, they must all be born with some strong instincts of money-making vagabondism. If the girls failed in fortune-telling they would certainly have a genius for the tight-rope, or a decided talent for the female circus and negro-minstrel business; and the boys would be brought into the world with the power of throwing a miraculous number of consecutive flip-flaps – of putting cocked hats on their juvenile heads while turning somersets over long rows of Arab steeds of the desert – of poising their infant bodies on pyramids of bottles, and drinking glasses of molasses and water, under the contemptible subterfuge of wine, to the health of the terror-stricken beholders – or of climbing to the tops of very tall poles without soiling their spangled dresses, and there displaying their anatomy for the admiration of the gazing multitude, in divers attitudes, for the most part extraordinarily wrong side up with very particular care – or, at least, they would be born with the astounding gift of tying their young legs in double bow-knots across the backs of their adolescent necks, and while in that graceful position kissing their little fingers to the bewildered audience.