It may be mentioned here, however, as a curious fact, that although all the “witches” profess to be able to “tell lucky numbers,” and will at any time give a paying customer the exact figures which they are willing to prophesy will draw the capital prize in any given lottery, their skill invariably fails them when they undertake to do anything in the wheel-of-fortune way on their own individual behalf. No one of the professional fortune-tellers was ever known to draw a rich prize in a lottery, or to make a particularly lucky “hit” on a policy number, notwithstanding the fact that most of them make large investments in those uncertain financial speculations. Madame Bruce is no exception to this general rule, and the propinquity of the “lottery agency” and the “policy-shop,” just round the corner, must be accepted in explanation of the fact that this gifted lady has no balance in her favor at the banker’s. The quality of her magic and other interesting facts about her are best set forth in the words of the anxious seeker after hidden lore, who paid her a visit one pleasant afternoon in August. The “Individual” visits Madame Bruce and has a Conference with that Mysterious Veiled Personage. A man of strong nerves can recover from the effects of a professional interview with the ponderous Prewster in about a week; delicately organized persons, particularly susceptible to supernatural influences, might be so overpowered by the manifestations of her cabalistic lore as to affect their appetites for a whole lunar month, and have bad dreams till the moon changed; but the daring traveller of this veracious history was convalescent in ten days. It is true, that, even after that time, he, in his dreams, would imagine himself engaged in protracted single combats with the heroine of the rolling-pin, and once or twice awoke in an agony of fear, under the impression that he had been worsted in the fight, and that the conquering fair one was about to cook him in a steamer, or stew him into charity soup, and season him strong with red pepper; or broil him on a gridiron and serve him up on toast to Madame Prewster, like a huge woodcock. In one gastronomic nightmare of a dream he even fancied that the triumphant maiden had tied him, hand and foot, with links of sausages, then tapped his head with an auger, screwed a brass faucet into his helpless skull, and was preparing to draw off his brains in small quantities to suit cannibalic retail customers. But he eventually recovered his equanimity, his nocturnal visions of the warlike servant became less terrible, and he gradually ceased to think of her, except with a dim sort of half-way remembrance, as of some fearful danger, from which many years before he had been miraculously preserved.