The love-lorn visitor had no wives, a fact known to the reader already, and when he does acc.u.mulate a help-meet, he sincerely trusts she may not be so unruly as to require the interference of outsiders to preserve harmony in the family. He expressed himself to that effect, and added that his business was to find out about the well-being of some friends in Minnesota, and to ascertain particulars about some other trifles necessary to his peace of mind.
Hereupon Mr. Hayes, with a growl like a sulky rhinoceros, opened the door which cut off the pot-and-kettle Babel of the other room, and commanded his wife to come, and that estimable lady, who is evidently in a state of excellent subordination, instantly writhed herself into the room. She sat down in an armchair, and began to evolve a most remarkable series of inane smiles, each one of which began somewhere down her throat, rose to her mouth by jerks, and finally faded away at the top of her head and the tips of her ears. It was a purely spasmodic thing of disagreeable habit, without a particle of geniality or feeling about it.
While this curious process was going on, the Doctor had drawn down the window-shades, thus darkening the room, and now approached for the purpose of unhooking from its earthly tabernacle the soul that was to step up to Minnesota and bring back word to his customer "how all the folks got along." This he accomplished by a few mysterious mesmeric pa.s.ses, and when the trance was induced, and the spirit had, so to speak, tucked its breeches into its boots ready for the muddy journey, he placed in the hand of Johannes that of the corpus which still remained in the armchair, and said to the disembodied spirit:
"Now, I want you to go with this gentleman to Brooklyn and take a fair start from there, and then go where he tells you to, and tell him what things there is there that you see."
Having delivered this injunction in a tone so indescribably savage that he had better a thousand times have struck her in the face, this amiable animal retired to the Babel, taking with him the fried-onion atmosphere.
Then the woman in the chair began to speak, in a style the most disagreeable and affected that anybody ever listened to. It was more like that sickening gibberish that nurses call "_baby-talk_,"
than anything else in the world. She spoke with a detestable whine, and p.r.o.nounced each syllable of every word separately, as if she feared a two-syllable word might choke her. Sick at the stomach as was her visitor at the whole babyish performance, he so far controlled his qualms as to note down the words hereunder written.
Whoever has heard this woman in a professional way can testify to the verbatim truth of this sketch.
"There is wa-ter that we must cross, we must go in a boat musn"t we? Now we"re in the boat, and O I see so many put-ty things, men, and dogs, and ships and things going up and down; such beau-ti-ful things I have never seened before. Now we are a-cross the riv-er, and now we must get on the car, musn"t we? What car must we get on? O I see it now, the yellow car. Now we are going a-long and I can see-O what a pret-ty dress in that store. O what real nice can-dy that is. I wish I had some don"t you? Now we"re at the house. Is it the one on the cor-ner, or the next one to it, or is it the brick house with the green blinds? No, the wood one with green blinds; so it is, but I didn"t be here be-fore ev-er in my life. Now we will go in-to the house; I see a car-pet there and some chairs and some-O what a pret-ty pic-ture, and what a nice fire. I see a la-dy of ver-y pret-ty ap-pear-ance.
She is a young la-dy; she has got blue eyes, she is stand-ing sideways so I can"t see noth-ing of her but one side of her face.
There is al-so an el-der-ly la-dy, but I can"t see much of her.
They appear to be go-ing on a jour-ney, shall I go with them?
Yes, well I will. Now we are on the wa-ter and-O what a pret-ty boat-now we are get-ting off of the boat-I didn"t nev-er be here be-fore. Now we are on a rail-road, I nev-er seened this rail-road be-fore but-O what a pret-ty ba-by. Now we go along, along, along, along, and now we are at the de-pot. I didn"t ev-er be here ei-ther-there is a riv-er here, and a mill and a-O what a pret-ty cow-somebody is go-ing to milk the cow. There is a town here-it seems as if I did be here before-yes I am sure-O what a pret-ty lit-tle car-riage, and what a pret-ty dog. Yes I am sure I seened this town be-fore, but these rail-roads didn"t be here then."
By this time the travellers were supposed to have reached St.
Paul, and the reliable clairvoyant then proceeded to describe that interesting young city; and in the course of her speech made more improvements there than will be accomplished in reality in less than a year or two certainly.
Among other things, Mrs. Hayes described as at present existing in St. Paul, two Colleges, a City Hall built of white marble, a locomotive factory, and a place where they were building seven ocean steamers.
She then, when she arrived at the house, in the course of her mesmeric journey, where the people concerning whom Johannes had inquired were supposed to be at that present domiciled, proceeded to give descriptions of those whom she saw there, of the looks of the country and of the house.
And _such_ descriptions, as much like the truth as a ton of "T"
rail is like a boiled custard.
By asking leading questions the seeker after clairvoyant knowledge got some very original information. He only began this course after he found that she, if left to herself, could describe nothing, and could utter no speech more coherent or sensible than that already set down as coming from her ill.u.s.trious lips.
In fact, the policy of the clairvoyant-witch in every case, is to wait for leading questions from the anxious inquirer, so that the answers may be framed to suit the exigencies of the case.
Johannes was not slow to perceive this, and by way of testing the science, or rather, art of clairvoyance, he put a series of questions which established the following interesting facts, all of which were positively averred to be true by Mrs. Hayes, "that superior and wonderful clairvoyant."
Minnesota Territory is a small town situated 911 miles south-east of the mouth of the Mississippi River-its officers are a chief cook and 23 high privates, besides the younger brother of Shakspeare, who is the Mayor of the Territory, and whose princ.i.p.al business it is to keep the American flag at half-mast, upside down.
When this last important information had been elicited, Johannes, who thought he had got the worth of his money, recalled Dr.
Hayes, who reappeared, surrounded by the same old atmosphere of the same old onions; to him the customer resigned the hand of the twaddling adult baby who had held his hand for an hour and a half, paid his dollar, and then prepared to depart.
The soul of the woman then returned from its long journey, and was locked up in its squirmy body by the Doctor, ready to serve future customers at one dollar a head.
She didn"t seem glad to get her soul back again, there probably not being enough to give her any great joy, after she had got it.
Johannes turned moodily away, feeling that the conjuress, his future bride, the renovator of his broken fortunes, and the ready relief to his present necessities, was as far distant as ever.
CHAPTER IX.
Tells all about Mrs. Seymour, the Clairvoyant, of No. 110 Spring Street, and what she had to say.
CHAPTER IX.
MRS. SEYMOUR, CLAIRVOYANT, No. 110 SPRING STREET.
This woman is at the same time one of the most pretentious and most clever of the clairvoyants, and she does a very large business. Most of her customers come for medical advice, although, in accordance with her printed announcement, she is willing to talk about "absent friends," and whatever other business the client may choose to pay for.
One branch of the clairvoyant trade which formerly brought as much money to their pockets as any other department of their business, was the finding lost or stolen property, and giving directions for the detection of the thieves. This specialty has however been pretty much abandoned of late by nearly all of them, in consequence of law-proceedings against certain ones of the sisterhood, which have in three or four instances been commenced by parties who have been wrongfully accused of theft, through the agency of the clairvoyant impostors. Several suits have been inst.i.tuted against them for defamation of character, and they have been made to smart so severely that they are now all very careful about accusing persons of crimes.
As an evidence of the implicit faith put in these people by their dupes, it may be mentioned that many applications have been made to Judge Welsh, of this city, and to the other judges, for warrants of arrest against respectable persons, for theft, the only grounds of suspicion against them being, that some clairvoyant had said that the property had been stolen by a person of such and such a height, with hair and eyes of this or that color, and that the suspected person happened to answer the description. Of course, all such applications for legal process have been refused by the magistrates, and the applicants dismissed with a severe rebuke.
Mrs. Seymour was an intimate friend of Mrs. Cunningham, of the Burdell-murder notoriety, and was a witness in that memorable trial.
The Cash Customer had an interview with this woman, which he thus describes:
Another Clairvoyant, who is not much in particular.
If a man be desirous of knowing what sort of a moral character he bears in the spirit-world, and what style of society his disembodied soul will circulate in, or if he desires to know the particulars of the after-death behavior of any of his acquaintances, of course he will find it to his interest to marry a "medium" of average respectability, and in good practice, and so save the expense of frequent consultations. The "rapping" and "table-tipping"
communications from the spirit-world are hardly satisfactory. It is, very likely, pleasant for a man to be on speaking terms with his bedroom furniture, to spend an agreeable hour occasionally in conversation with his washhand-stand, to enjoy a spirited argument with his bedstead and rocking-chair, or to receive now and then a confidential communication from his bootjack, but on the whole, these upholstery dialogues do not satisfy the "yearnings of the soul after the infinite." The powers of speech of a washhand-stand are circ.u.mscribed, bedsteads and rocking-chairs are seldom equal to a sustained conversation, and the most talkative bootjack has not a sufficient command of language to make itself agreeable for any great length of time. The logic of a poker may sometimes be convincing, but it is not generally agreeable; and the rhetoric of uneducated coal-scuttles is hardly elegant enough to pa.s.s the criticism of a refined taste. It is therefore much more satisfactory as well as economical, for a person who desires to enjoy his daily chat with the Spirits, to get a "speaking medium" to translate the eloquence of all parties and make the thing pleasant. Even then, confidential communications must be very guarded, and on this account the person who invents some means by which every man can be his own medium, will win an equal immortality with the author of that invaluable book, "Every Man his own Washerwoman."
Johannes had been thinking over the spiritual subject, of course with a view to profitable matrimony, for he thought he could manage to turn an intimacy with the spirits to good pecuniary account, and inveigle those incorporeal gentlemen into doing something for those of their friends who are yet bothered with bodies.
He knew that there are in New York, plenty of spiritualists in such constant communication with their acquaintances on the "other side of Jordan," that they know the bill of fare with which those seventh-heaveners are served every day, and whenever their jolly ghostships sit down to a pleasant game of whist, they send word to their earthly relatives by "medium" every fresh deal, what the new trump is, who hold the honors, and how the game stands generally.
So close a familiarity with superior beings as this, could be easily turned to practical account and made to pay handsomely, by a Spiritualist with a utilitarian turn of mind. If he could but get his spirits into proper subjection how useful would they not be in the patent medicine business, in the way of inventing new remedies; how invaluable would they be to an editor; in fact, how particularly useful in almost any kind of business.
But his great plan was to train a corps of light-footed and gentle ghosts to carry news; they would of course beat locomotives, carrier pigeons, and electric telegraphs out of sight; seas, mountains, and such trifling obstacles would be no hindrance to them, and the a.s.sociated Press, to say nothing of the Board of Brokers, would pay handsomely for their services. Of course a ghost with any pretensions to speed would bring us detailed news from London in half-an-hour or so, without putting himself out of breath in the least, thus beating the telegraph by a length. And so Johannes, fully determined on this promising scheme, began to cast about him for a medium who was acquainted in the spirit sphere, to introduce him to some of the eligible ghosts.
He knew that most of the clairvoyant women are "mediums," and thought very naturally that women who already earned their living by clairvoyance, would be the very ones to enter heart and soul with him into his spiritualistic scheme.
Yes, he would marry a medium, and if she was a professional clairvoyant, so much the better, his bow would have another string.
In his search for a witch-wife he would not have been justified in interfering at all with the clairvoyants had it not been for the fact that they mix a little witchcraft with their regular business. Their ostensible trade is to diagnose and prescribe for different varieties of internal disease, and so this particular branch of humbug would not have come within the scope of the voyager"s investigations, were it not that several of these pract.i.tioners advertise to "tell the past, present, and future, describe the future husband or wife, mark out correctly the exact course of future life, give unerring advice about business, absent friends, etc."
All this had too strong a savor of witchcraft to be ignored, and accordingly Johannes set forth on his journey to visit another of these mysteriously clear-sighted persons, keeping in view all the time the probabilities of her being an A 1 spiritual medium, and the very person whose aid would be invaluable in his new journalistic enterprise.
Mrs. Seymour, of No. 110 Spring Street, was the person towards whose house the Cash Customer bent his steps, after reading the subjoined advertis.e.m.e.nt of her powers and capabilities.
"CLAIRVOYANCE.-MRS. SEYMOUR, 110 Spring Street, a few doors west of Broadway, the most successful medical and business Clairvoyant in America. All diseases discovered and cured, if curable; unerring advice on business, absent friends, &c., and satisfaction in all cases, or no charge made."
The clairvoyant branch of the fortune-telling business seems to require a certain amount of respectability in its practices, and they sneer at the grosser deceptions of the more vulgar of the necromantic trade. They keep aloof from the greasier sisters of the profession, and they feel it due to the dignity of their station to reject the cards, the magic mirrors, the Bibles and keys, the mysterious pebbles and the other tricks which do well enough for twenty-five cent customers; to sojourn in reputable streets, in respectable houses, and to have clean faces when visitors come in. There are, it is true, clairvoyants in the city who live wretchedly in miserable cellars, whose garments and very hair are populated with various specimens of animated nature, and whose bodies are so filthy that the beholder wonders why the spirits, which are so often disconnected from them and sent on far-off missions, do not avail themselves of the leave of absence to desert for ever such unsavory corporeal habitations. But the majority of these persons prefer parlors to bas.e.m.e.nts, and make up the difference in expenses by double-charging their customers.