From the church we pass to the theatre, and from the Book of all Books to that which nearest follows it in the sublimity of its wisdom--Shakspeare. No one doubts "Hamlet" much more than the First Book of Samuel, and yet the play is altogether a falsehood if there is no revelation made to the Prince of the guilt of his Uncle; and the spiritual character of the revelation is not at all affected by the question whether Hamlet saw or _thought he saw_ the ghost of his murdered father. Again comes "Macbeth," and though we may allow Banquo's ghost to be altogether a diseased fancy of the guilty man's brain, yet the whole story of the temptation is destroyed unless the witches on the blasted heath really make him true prophecies for false purposes. These sublime fancies appeal to our eyes, and through the eyes to our beliefs, night after night and year after year; and if they do not create a superstition in any mind previously clear of the influence, they at least prevent the disabuse of many a mind and preserve from ridicule what would else be contemptible.
It was with reference to fortune-telling especially that this discussion of our predominant superstitions commenced; and this indefensibly episodical chapter must close with a mere suggestion as to the extent to which that imposition is practised in our leading cities. Very few, it may be suspected, know how prevalent is this superstition among us--quite equivalent to the gipsy palmistry of the European countries. Of very late years it has principally become "spiritualism" and the fortune-tellers are oftener known as "mediums" than by the older appellation; and scarcely one of the impostors but pretends to physic the body as well as cure the soul; but the old leaven runs through all, and all classes have some share in the speculation. Sooty negresses, up dingy stairs, are consulted by ragged specimens of their own color, as to the truth of the allegation that too much familiarity has been exercised by an unauthorized "culled pusson" towards a certain wife or husband,--or as to the availability of a certain combination of numbers in a fifty cent investment at that exciting game known as "policies" or "4-11-44," erewhile the peculiar province of that Honorable gentleman who (more or less) wrote "Fort Lafayette." And, _per contra_, more pretentious witches (the women have monopolized the trade almost altogether, of late years) are consulted by fair girls who come in their own carriages, as to the truth or availability of a lover or the possibility of recovering lost affections or stolen property. How many of those seeresses are "mediums" for the worst of communications, or how many per centum of the habitues of such places go to eventual ruin, it is not the purpose of this chapter to inquire.