Bill Nye's Horrorscope

"Ring tlie boíl and the door will open," ia the remark made by a small label over a bell handlo in Tliird avonue, near Eighteenth street, where Mme. La Foy reads the past, present and future at so mucli per read. Love, marriage, divorce, business, speculation and sickness are there handled with the utmost impunity by "Mme. LaFoy, tne (amous scientiflc astrologist," who has monkeyed with the planeta for twenty yeara, and if she wanted any information has "read it in the Btars." I rang the belt the other day to see if the door vvould open. It did so af ter considerable delay, and a pimply boy in kneo pants showed me upstairs into the waiting room. "Mme. La Foy De Graw," said I, bowing with the easy grace of a gentleman of the old Bchool, "would you mind peering into the future for me about a half dollar's worth, not necessarily for publication, et cetera." "Certainly not. What svould you like to know?" "Why, I want to know all I can for the money," I said in a bantering tone. "Of courso I do not wish to know what I already know. It is what I do not know that I desire to know. Teil me what I do not know, Madame. I will detain you but a moment." "You cati teil me what year and on what day of what month you were born," said Mme. La Foy, "and I will outlino your life to you. I generally require a lock of the liair, but in your case we will dispense with it. " I told when 1 was born and the circumstances as well as I could recall them. "This brings you under Venus, Mercury and Mars. These three planets were in conjunction at the time of your birth. You were born when the sign was wrong and you have had more or less trouble ever since. Had you been born when the sign was in the head or the heart, instead of the feet, you would not have spread out over the ground so niuch. "Your health is very good, as is the health of those generally who are born under the same auspices that you were. People who ars born under the reign of the crab are apt to be cancerous. You, however, have great lung power and wonderful gastric possibilities. Yet, at times, you would be easily up set. A strong cyclone that would unroof a court house or tip over a through train would also upset you, in spite of your broad, flrm feet, if the wind got behind one of your ears. "You will be married eariy and you will be very happy, though your wife will not enjoy herseïf very niuch. Your wife wili be rnuoh happier during her second marriage. "You will prosper better in business mattere without forming auy partnerships. Do not go into partnership with a small, dark man who has neuralgia and a flne yacht. He has abundant means, but he will go throtigh you like an eleotric shoek. "Tuesdays and Saturdays will be your most fortúnate days on which to borrow money of men with light hair. Mondays and Thursdays will be your best days for approaching dark men. "Look out for a lowsot man accompanied by an office cat, both of whom are engaged in the newspaper busines. He is crafty and bald headed on his father's side. He prints the only paper that contains the full text of his speeches at testimoniáis and dinners given to other people. Do not loan him money on any account. "You would succeed well as a musician or an inventor, but you would not do well as a poet. You have all the keen sensibility and Btrong passion of a poet, but you haven't the hair. Do not try poosy. "In the future I see you very prosperous. You are on the lecture platform speaking. Large crowds of people are jostling each other at the box office and trying to get their money back. "Then I see you ridinLc behind a flexible horse that must have cost a large sum of money. You are smoking a cigar that has never been in use before. Then Venus bisects the orbit of Mars and I see you going home with your head tied up in the lap robe, you and your spirited horse in the same ambulance." "But do you see anything for me in the future, Mme. La Foyer?" Í asked, taking my feet off the table, the better to watch her features; "anything that would seem to indícate political preferment, a reward for past services to my country, as it vyero?" "No, not clearly. But wait a moment. Tour horóscopo begins to get a little more intelligent. I see you at the door of the senate chamber. You are counting out your money and looking sadly at a schedule of prices. Then you turn sorrowfully away and decide to buy a seat in the house instead. Many years after I see you in the senate. You are there day after day attending to your duties. You are there early, before any one else, and I see you pacing back and forth, up and down the aisle, sweeping out the senate chamber and dusting off the seats and rejuvenating the cuspidors." "Would itbe etiquette in dancing a quadrille to swing a young person of the opposite Bex twice around at a select party when you are but slightly acquainted, but feel quite confident that her partner is unarmed?" "Yes." "Does your horóscopo teil a person what to do with raspberry jelly that will not jell?" "No, not at the present prices." "So you predict an early marriage, with threatening weather and strong prevailing easterly winds along the gulf statesi" "Yes, sir." "And is tbere no way that this early marriage may be evaded?" "No, not unless you put it off till later in life." "Thank you," I said, rising and looking out the window over a broad sweep of undulating alley and wind swept roofing, "and nonr, how much are j'ou out on this!" "Sir!" "What's the damage?" "Oh, one dollar." "But don't you advertise to read the past, present and future for fifty cents?'1 "Well, that is whore a person has had other information before in his Ufe and has some knowledge to begin with ; but where I fill up a Vacant mimi entirely and store it with facts of all kinds and stock it up so that it can do business for itself, I charge a dollar. I cannot thoroughly refit and refurnish a mental tenenient f rom the ground up for fifty cents." I do not thiuk we have as good "Astrologists" now as we used to have. Astrologista cannot crawl under the tent and pry into the future as thoy could 3,O0U or 4,000 years ago.