How the “Individual” sees a Clairvoyant—How he pays a Dollar, and what he gets for his money. Not all the sorcery of all the sorcerers; not all the necromancy of all the necromancers; not all the conjurations of all masculine conjurers; not all the magic of all male magicians; not all the charming of all the charmers, charm they never so wisely, could have induced Johannes to ever more place the slightest trust in a wizard, or repose in any wonderworker of the bearded sex the merest trifle of faith, even the most infinitesimal trituration of the homœopathicest grain. The single dose he had received from the renowned Doctor Wilson was quite enough, and had satisfied all his longings for wisdom of that sort. Besides, his coming events cast such peculiar and very unpleasant shadows before, that he preferred to keep out of the grim presence of such shady men, and for all after time to bask him only in the sunshine of smiling women. “_Pizon his first wife_,” would he? Well, he could have taken that “pizon” with tolerable composure from the lips of lovely woman, but to receive it from the mumbling mouth of a skinny old man, was too much to accept without divers rebellious grins. A peach-cheeked witch, a cherry-lipped conjuress; a Circe, with only enough charms to make a respectable photograph, might with impunity have called him a counterfeiter, or a horse-thief, or even a thimble-rigger; or might have told him that he would, upon opportunity, garotte his grandmother for the small price of seventy cents and her snuff-box; or that he was in the habit of attending funerals to pick the pockets of the mourners, and of going to church that he might steal the pennies from the poor-box, all this would he have borne uncomplainingly from a woman; but these unpalatable statements from one of the masculine gender would be “most tolerable and not to be endured.” He felt that if he had not rushed incontinently from the presence of that underground star-gazer Dr. Wilson, he must either have punched that respected person’s venerated head, or have laughed in his honored face. In either case he would, of course, have roused the extensive ire of that potent worthy, and have been at once exposed to a fire of supernatural influences that would have been probably unpleasant, to say the least. The unmusical Johannes looks upon accordeons as cruel instruments of refined torture, and detests them as the vilest of all created or invented things, and he had been very careful to offend none of the magic community, lest he should, by some high-pressure power of their enchanted spells, be transformed into an accordeon, and be condemned to eternally have shrieking music pulled out of his bowels by unrelenting boys.