Here the taint of a money-payment is altogether absent; and no Highland
'spae-wife' or seer would dream of taking a fee for looking into the
future on behalf of another person.

It follows, therefore, that provided he or she is equipped with the
requisite knowledge and some skill and intuition, the persons most
fitted to tell correctly their own fortune are themselves; because they
cannot pay themselves for their own prognostications, and the absence of
a monetary taint consequently leaves the judgment unbiased. Undoubtedly
one of the simplest, most inexpensive and, as the experience of nearly
three centuries has proved, most reliable forms of divination within its
own proper limits, is that of reading fortunes in tea-cups. Although it
cannot be of the greatest antiquity, seeing that tea was not introduced
into Britain until the middle of the seventeenth century, and for many
years thereafter was too rare and costly to be used by the great bulk
of the population, the practice of reading the tea-leaves doubtless
descends from the somewhat similar form of divination known to the
Greeks as "_κοταβος_" by which fortune in love was discovered
by the particular splash made by wine thrown out of a cup into a metal
basin. A few spae-wives still practise this method by throwing out the
tea-leaves into the saucer, but the reading of the symbols as they are
originally formed in the cup is undoubtedly the better method.

Any person after a study of this book and by carefully following the
principles here laid down may with practice quickly learn to read the
horary fortunes that the tea-leaves foretell. It should be distinctly
understood, however, that tea-cup fortunes are only horary, or dealing
with the events of the hour or the succeeding twenty-four hours at
furthest. The immediately forthcoming events are those which cast their
shadows, so to speak, within the circle of the cup. In this way the