Now it is an axiom, which centuries of experience have shown to be as
sound as those of Euclid himself, that the moment the taint of money
enters into the business of reading the Future the accuracy and credit
of the Fortune told disappears. The Fortune-teller no longer possesses
the singleness of mind or purpose necessary to a clear reading of
the symbols he or she consults. The amount of the fee is the first
consideration, and this alone is sufficient to obscure the mental vision
and to bias the judgment. This applies to the very highest and most
conscientious of Fortune-tellers--persons really adept at foreseeing the
future when no taint of monetary reward intervenes. The greater number,
however, of so-called Fortune-tellers are but charlatans, with the
merest smattering of partly-assimilated knowledge of some form of
divination or 'character-reading'; whether by the cards, coins, dice,
dominoes, hands, crystal, or in any other pretended way. With these, the
taint of the money they hope to receive clouds such mind or intuition
as they may possess, and it follows that their judgments and
prognostications have precisely the same value as the nostrums of the
quack medicine-vendor. They are very different from the Highlander who,
coming to the door of his cottage or bothie at dawn, regards steadfastly
the signs and omens he notes in the appearance of the sky, the actions
of animals, the flight of birds, and so forth, and derives there from
a foresight into the coming events of the opening day. They differ also
from the 'spae-wife,' who, manipulating the cup from which she has taken
her morning draught of tea, looks at the various forms and shapes the
leaves and dregs have taken, and deduces thence such simple horary
prognostications as the name of the person from whom 'postie' will
presently bring up the glen a letter or a parcel or a remittance of
money; or as to whether she is likely to go a journey, or to hear news
from across the sea, or to obtain a good price for the hose she has
knitted or for the chickens or eggs she is sending to the store-keeper.