The boy travellers in the Far East : adventures of two youths ... - Library

380 Till': B(JY TRAVELLERS.
Hient. The case is not iiimsnal uf a man losing everjtliina; lie possesses,
even to his wife and children, and then being thrown naked into the
sti-eets by the proprietor of the place where he has lost his money.
"We stopped to look at some fortune-tellers, who were evidently doing
a good business, as they had crowds around them, and M-ere taking in
small sums of money every few minutes. One
FOr.TnSli-TELLING EY JIKASS OF A
BIRD AND SLIPS OF PAPER.
of them had a little bird in a cage, and he
had a table which he folded and carried on
his back when he was moving from one place
to another. When he opened business, lie
spread his table, and then laid out some slips
of paper which were folded, so that nobody
conld see what there was inside. Xest lie let
the bird out of the cage, which immediately
went forward and picked up one of the slips
and carried it to his master. The man then
opened the paper and read what was written
on it, and from this paper he made a predic-
tion about the fortune of the person who had
engaged him.
" There was another fortune-teller who
did his work by writing on a plate. lie had
several sheets of paper folded up, and from
these he asked his customer to select one.
When the selection was made, he dissected the
writing, and showed its meaning to be something so profound that the cus-
tomer was bewildered and thought he had nothing but good-fortune cijiii-
ing to him. We tried to get these men to tell oui- fortunes, but they
preferred to stick to their own counti-ymen, probably through fear that
the}' would lose popularity if they showed themselves too friendly with
the strangers.
"The Chinese are great believers in fortune-telling, and even the most
intelligent of them are often calling upon the necromancers to do some-
thing for them. They rarely undertake any business without first ascer-
taining if the signs are favorable ;
and if they are not, they will decline to
have anything to do with it. When a merchant has a cargo of goods on
its way, he is very likely to ask a fortune-teller how the thing is to turn
out; and if the latter says it is all right, he gets liberally paid for his in-
formation. But in spite of their superstition, the Chinese are very shrewd
merchants, and can calculate their profits with great accuracy.