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Aviation History
1917
1917 - 0034.PDF
JANUARY II, IT is not surprising that one of the side-lines in the business of gaining a living—and a good one at that— even when trade is bad) has received an enormous fillip as a result of the war. Crystal-gazing, palmistry, black mirror seeing, the supposed converse with spirits called up to order like servants, and all the hundred - and - one things rolled into one and called " fortune telling " by the police, is having a remark- able run, and its exponents brought to book as oppor- tunity offers. Even in peace-time there are quite enough of the credulous in the number required to make the popu- lation of London, to pro- vide these soothsayers with a fat living and a bit over towards inevitable trouble when the man in blue arrives. In such a time as we \ are passing through thousands of anxious relatives will try anything and everything before giving up hope of ever gaining news of their lost ones, wherefore the money extracted assumes colossal proportions. Colossal that is, having regard to the skill (?) required and the initial outlay for stock-in-trade, or fittings, or Hapjack or whatever you care to call it. Stock-in-trade, of course, there is none. Nothing is sold except bunkum, and the cash received represents ••• loo per cent.fproiit, less the rent, of two rooms. Plenty of black velvet, deep ruby and gold hang- ings, an Oriental tableland carpet, a pack of cards, a crystal, a mirror that looks like a sheet of " Buffalo- plate," used to glaze photographic prints on, and there you are. There you are. If you are a woman you must have a foreign voice, natural or acquired, plenty of cheek, no pity, and dress in kimonos and fallals till you look like everything on earth. Ditto, ditto, if you are a man, until you look like nothing on earth. The difficulty surround- ing the whole swindling business is that these charlatans have a certain modicum of the voice of scientific support on their side, thus making their detection and consequent punishment very hard to bring about, except by the use of decoy birds by which to trap them. F there is something in palmistry, something in To Order, so-called spirit impressions, something in crystal- gazing. To gaze into a crystal sphere and pretend to see there actual physical happenings of the past, present or future, is the acme of foolishness, but if so be you are of the light temperament there are pictures to be seen. I've seen them, and will admit that I am rather fond of the experiment. " How," you will ask, " is it possible to see pictures—and changing pictures at that—in a simple globe of pure white glass ? " My answer is, Have you never sat in a darkened room and seen pictures, changing pictures, in the glowing embers of the firelight ? There you have the whole thing. If you have the temperament, or perception, or building power, or, if you like, imagination, to see pictures in the fire, you may see them in the crystal. If you have not this ability then you are the poorer by one of the most comforting and soothing old-world pastimes ever handed down through the generations. There is no hidden mysterious power in the crystal ; it is simply a convenient object into which to gaze. I can think of no other material in any shape or form that is so convenient. It is bright and it is dark. It has wonderful surface re- flecting powers, and it has unfathomable depths of lustre, girt about by dark- some caverns wherein fancy may find just what it seeks to find. One cannot see pictures in an old to- bacco pouch or a coal- scuttle. The human brain is a funny contraption, and I get no commission on the sale of crystal globes, so you need not try if you don't want to. But many a weary traveller, hundreds of miles from the nearest civilisation, has seen, over a pipe of tobacco, the pictures you may deny, in the camp fire. Strange-, as a matter of fact I set out to write about something entirely different to crystal-gazing. It was about a letter I have to-day received from an old colleague now serving his country right away up on the frontier of Northern India. He mentioned gazing into the future, and that and the present energetic routing out of the swindling " seer" in London connected themselves up in my brain and led me off into a long tirade on something I know very little about. This journalistic friend of mine amuses himself in his leisure time, and keeps his hand in against the time when he will return, by writing me letters which I wish I could reproduce here in full for my readers' benefit. Unfortunately the price of paper is different here to what it appears to be there, judging by the length of his impressionable communications, and so it 'Tinned Envelopes 34
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