It is but natural that there should be "something in" gypsy fortune-telling. If the reader were to tell ten fortunes a day for twenty years it would be very remarkable indeed if in that time he had not learned some things which would seem wonderful to the world. He would detect at a glance the credulous, timid, bold, doubtful, refined or vulgar nature, just as a lawyer learns to detect character by cross-examination. Many experiments of late years have gone very far to establish the existence of a power of divining or reading thought; how this is really done I know not; perhaps the experts in it are as ignorant as I am, but it is very certain that certain minds, in some (as yet) marvellous way, betray their secrets to the master. That there are really gypsies who have a very highly cultivated faculty of reading the mind by the eye is certainly true. Sometimes they seem to be themselves uncertain, and see as through a glass darkly, and will reveal remarkable facts doubtfully. I remember a curious illustration of this. Once I was walking near Bath, and meeting a tinker asked him if there were any gypsies in the vicinity. He gave me the address of a woman who lived in a cottage at no great distance. I found it with some trouble, and was astonished on entering at the abominably miserable, reckless, squalid appearance of everything. There was a half or quarter-bred gypsy woman, ragged, dirty, and drunk, a swarm of miserable children, and a few articles of furniture misplaced or upset as if the inmates had really no idea of how a room should be lived in. I addressed the woman civilly, but she was too vulgar and degraded to be capable of sensible or civil conversation with a superior. Such people actually exist among the worst class of vagabonds. But as I, disgusted, was about to leave, and gave her a small gratuity, she offered to tell my fortune, which I declined, whereupon she cried, "You shall see that I know something;" and certainly told me something which astonished me, of an event which had taken place two years before at a great distance. To test her I coolly denied it all, at which she seemed astonished and bewildered, saying, "Can I have made a mistake? You are certainly the person." All of this may be explained by causes which I shall set forth. But it cannot be too earnestly insisted on to people who habitually doubt, that because a thing can be explained in a certain way (i.e., by humbug) that it necessarily follows that that is the only explanation of it. Yet this is at the present day actually and positively the popular method, and it obtains very largely indeed with the small critics of the "safe school." Mrs. Million has diamonds; she may have stolen them--a great many people have stolen diamonds--therefore she is probably a thief. The Icelandic sagas describe journies to America; but the writers of the sagas were often mythical, exaggerative, and inaccurate--therefore all they narrate as regards America must be, of course, untrue.