“I have a charm for securing good luck to whoever wears it; you
can wear it, and your most intimate friend would never suspect
it; my charge is one dollar for gentlemen; a great many have
bought it of me; many merchants who were on the point of failing
have come to me and possessed this charm, and been saved; you had
better possess it, for it will be sure to bring you good luck; if
you possess it, you will always be successful in business; Mr.
Lynch of Mott Street possessed it, and has been very lucky ever
since, besides a great number I could name; my advice to you is,
possess the charm.”
She then put her elbows on her knees after the manner of a Fulton
Market apple-pedler, in which classic attitude she awaited an
answer. The decision was not favorable to her hopes; for the
economical customer concluded not to invest in the charm,
although it had brought such excellent fortune to Mr. Lynch of
Mott Street. He departed, encountering again in his progress the
weak-eyed one, who met him with a smile, escorted him to the door
with a great laugh, and dismissed him with a joyous grin.
CHAPTER XVII.
Treats of the peculiarities of several Witches in a single
batch.
CHAPTER XVII.
A BATCH OF WITCHES.
The fortune-tellers so elaborately described in the foregoing
chapters are by no means the only ones in New York, engaged in
that lucrative occupation; there are several others who were
visited by the Individual, but who in their surroundings approach
so nearly to those already set down, that a detailed description
of each would necessarily be a somewhat monotonous repetition. So
the prophecy only of each one is here writ down, with a few words
suggestive of the character of the immediate neighborhood,
leaving the imaginative reader to fill up the blank himself, or
to turn back to some foregoing chapter for a picture of a similar
locality, if he prefers it ready-made to his hands.
MADAME DE BELLINI, No. 159 FORSYTH STREET.
For the benefit of those not familiar with the streets of New
York, it is perhaps well to mention that Forsyth Street is a
dirty thoroughfare, two streets east of the Bowery, and that it
is filled for the most part with small groceries, junk shops,
swill milk dispensaries, and stalls for the sale of diseased
vegetables and decaying fruit, and that the inhabitants are
mostly delegates from Africa, and from the Green Isle of the Sea.
Immediately adjoining the domicil of Madame de Bellini is a
filthy little vegetable store, and on the opposite corner is an
equally filthy Irish grocery, where are dispensed swill milk and
poisoned whiskey. The residence of the Madame is a low two-story
brick house, of rather better appearance than many of its
neighbors, which are principally wooden buildings with those
old-fashioned peculiar roofs, with little windows close under the
cornice, which make a house look as if it had had its hat knocked
over its eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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