The Witches of New York. Q. K. Philander Doesticks

remembrance, as of some fearful danger, from which many years before he had been miraculously preserved.

      When he had reached this state of mind, he was ready to proceed with his inquiries into the mysteries of the cheap and nasty necromancy of the day, and to encounter the rest of the fifty-cent Sybils with an unperturbed spirit. Accordingly, he girded up his loins, and prepared the necessary amount of one dollar bills; for, with a most politic and necessary carefulness, he always made his own change.

      [Note of caution to the future observer of these Modern Witches: Never let one of them “break” a large bank-bill for you, and give you small notes in exchange, lest the small bills be much more badly broken than the large one. Not that the witches’ money, like the fairies’ gold, will be likely to turn into chips and pebbles in your pocket, but all these fortune-tellers are expert passers of counterfeit and broken bank-notes and bogus coin; and they never lose an opportunity thus to victimize a customer.]

      Fortified with dinner, dessert, and cigars, the cash customer departed on his voyage of discovery in search of “Madame Bruce, The Mysterious Veiled Lady,” who carries on all the business she can get by the subjoined advertisement: