The practice of fortune telling is condemned as heathenish, and abuse is hurled at both the gypsy who pretends to read the future and the superstitious person who is imposed upon. The lopsidedness of the public in the matter would be amusing were it not for the very different way the gypsy has of looking at these things. I do not for a moment advocate a return to the old order which allowed swindlers to victimize right and left, but from the gypsy standpoint it appears to be scarcely playing the “game” for an announcement to be allowed to appear on the bills of a church bazaar that “a real gypsy prophetess” or a palmist has been engaged, who will read the future, etc., at sixpence, half a crown, or what not, per person, for the benefit of the fund, which results in the improvised tent or cavern of the gypsy having quite a stream of visitors who “don’t believe in this sort of thing, but it’s for such a good object, you know, dear,” and the fund eventually benefits by a substantial amount, to the gratification of the reverend principal, who may be also a magistrate and dispenser of justice, and it is quite possible that he may on the day following feel it to be his duty to assist in putting down the fortune telling imposture and may send a gypsy to prison for doing—with a better excuse for it—the self-same thing that he countenanced, and he will, moreover, probably deliver a homily to Mary Jane, who had been foolish enough to put silver into the hand of the gypsy with the hope of learning something of a future that is veiled from priest and parlourmaid alike. [Illustration: “DŌSHA.”] Although fortune telling is now illegal in this country it is still practised _sub rosa_. Until comparatively recently, however, it was quite a lucrative profession to adepts, and more than one third-rate exponent has mournfully confessed to me that in the good old times “we used to make a tidy bit o’ money dukkerin.”