There is one man who though he does not strictly belong to the class I have been discussing, yet as his life is spent on the street in his endeavour to make a living, I shall attempt to describe, and that is the fortune-teller. He is to be found in a niche on some great thoroughfare, where the crowds are passing incessantly the livelong day, and where he is just out of the crush of the living tide that surges just outside of him. His stock-in-trade is about a dozen bamboo slips with enigmatic sentences carved on each of them, that to the mind of the man who can read into the mysteries of the unknown land contain the clues to the story of each one that applies to him to have their future revealed to him or her. He has also a Java sparrow enclosed within a diminutive cage, that is believed to be the interpreter of the spirits in helping to unfold in some slight measure the secrets they hold about the men on earth. Here is a man, for example, who comes out of the crowd with an anxious-looking face and a deep shadow resting upon it that has driven all the sunlight and joy out of it. The fortune-teller is at once all attention, whilst the sparrow from interested motives of its own cocks up its head and takes a kind of knowing glance at the customer. The man, evidently distressed at the subject that is occupying his mind, pours forth in voluble and vivid language the story of his woes. It seems that he and a neighbour are having a lawsuit about the house in which he is now living. This man he declares to be a thoroughly unprincipled one, who has no conscience and does not know what the fear of Heaven means. He has claimed the house as his own, though he has not the slightest particle of right to it; but as he belongs to a powerful clan and has plenty of money at his command, he is afraid that might will prevail and he will lose his property, and thus be deprived of his home. He explains that the case has gone before the local mandarin, but as he has not the means to bribe him and the smaller officials under him, whilst his opponent is making lavish presents to them all, he is fearful that when the matter comes to be tried the decision of the judge will be in favour of his enemy. What he would like to know now is, is there any likelihood of his gaining his case. If the fortune-teller could only give him any light on that subject that would relieve his mind he would be infinitely obliged to him. These fortune-tellers are keen judges of human nature, and they know that men like to have pleasant answers to their requests, and so they manipulate them so that, like the Delphic Oracles, they can be interpreted either favourably or the reverse according as they eventually turn out. This man listens with the utmost attention, with a keen look on his face, and as the story becomes more intense, he sways his head from side to side as though he were deeply moved at its recital.