Fortunes and Misfortunes.

Unlike the flounder, some people try to flounder into the future, reducing the incomprehensible to the reprehensible. This is called fortune-telling, or fortune-hunting, when it is perpetrated with one eye on the future and the other on the present, and unfortunately is the only form of vocality banned by law.

But everyone has an aunt who, with no thought of reward except the satisfaction of making everyone unhappy, can see sea trips in tea cups, marriage and other misfortunes in cards, and one's future in one's face. No wonder some futures are too awful to contemplate. The worst feature of the burst future is that, according to auntie, nothing you do can undo the hoodoo auntie puts on you. With a twist of the wrist she purports to nip the veil from the face of the future. It is bad enough to have a past, but when you have a past pursuing you and a future waiting for you, you might as well admit everything and take what's coming to you.

Auntie first glances into your cup hopefully, and then into your mug hopelessly. All you can discern in your cup is the currant you missed from your bun and some fragments of broken pekoe which have been broken away from the main body. The general aspect resembles “The Morning after the Storm,” or “Seaweed hung out to Dry,” painted by Accident. But to auntie it is laughter and tears, sunshine and rain, destiny and debt, and the future all set out with the frankness of a butcher's interior decorations.

Mystery is as necessary to our comfort as any other sort of ignorance. If we knew to-day yesterday, and to-morrow to-day, the only way to enjoy peace would be to be born with white whiskers and end our days in Plunketry.

So let's always keep Mystery in train and entrain with Mystery on the Mystery Train.