One other incursion into the World of Magic lingers in my memory as having taken place in a seaside town that shall be nameless. While there passing a holiday with some friends, I frequently observed large yellow handbills, and even posters, setting forth that a lady, who from her name appeared to be of Oriental antecedents, was prepared to cast horoscopes, read palms, and arrange all kinds of personally conducted tours into the future at fees which could only be described as ridiculous. It so happened that among the members of the party was a young lady who was then in the throes of her last love-affair. Naturally anxious to learn its future course, she, it appears, consulted the seeress, whom I will call, though it was not her name, Madame Fatimah. So remarkable did the results appear that the convert felt it her duty to acquaint the rest of us therewith. The fame of Madame Fatimah was not long in penetrating to my ears, and the day came when I found myself waiting upon the witch's doorstep. She was lodged in a back street some little distance from the centre of the town, in one of those lodging-houses which make a point of advertising that they possess a fine sea view, as indeed they may if you ascend to the roof or extend your body out of window at an acute angle. Certainly no less promising hunting-ground for the witch-finder could be imagined. Madame occupied the first floor, and delivered her prognostications amid an Early-Victorian atmosphere of horsehair and antimacassars that was not altogether unimpressive, though speaking of the past rather than of the future. She was middle-aged, of comfortable rotundity, and dressed in a black silk dress, over which was thrown a Japanese kimono embroidered with wild geese. Doubtless from the long residence in the Orient, to which she took an early opportunity of referring, and where she had studied her art at the fountain-head from the lips of a native gentleman very well known in magic circles, and very likely to the Evil One himself, judging from Madame Fatimah's account of his prowess, but whose name I can only vaguely remember as sounding something like Yogi Chandra Dass--doubtless owing, I say, to her long absence from England, for I understood that she was originally of British birth, though married early in life to a Turkish or Indian magician of some note, she had acquired a habit of either leaving out her aspirates altogether or putting them in the wrong place. She was as businesslike as she was affable, and detailed the various methods by which I could be made acquainted with my past and future, at charges ranging from 2s. 6d. to 10s., with a crisp incisiveness. Having chosen what Madame described as "the crystal" at 5s., she at once seized both my hands in hers and gazed narrowly into my face, giving me the opportunity of myself reading her past nearly enough to know that onions had been included in the ingredients of her lunch. Satisfied, I trust, of my respectability,