Note 3 — Chapter XI · GYPSY WITCHCRAFT.—THE MAGICAL POWER WHICH IS INNATE IN ALL MEN AND WOMEN—HOW IT MAY BE CULTIVATED AND DEVELOPED—THE PRINCIPLES OF FORTUNE-TELLING.
Reading edition
The reader has often seen in London Italian women who have small birds, generally parrakeets, or paraquitos, which will for a penny pick out for her or for him slips of paper on which is printed a “fortune.” If he will invest his pence in these he will in most instances find that they “fit his case” exactly, because they are framed on these or other rules, which are of very general application. There was, in 1882, an Italian named Toricelli. Whether he was a descendant of the great natural philosopher of the same name who discovered the law of the vacuum I do not know, but he certainly exhibited—generally in Piccadilly—an ingenious application of it. He had a long glass cylinder, filled with water, in which there was a blown glass image of an imp. By pressing his hand on the top of the cover of the tube the folletto or diavoletto was made to rise or fall—from which the prediction was drawn. It will hardly be believed, but the unfortunate Toricelli was actually arrested by the police and punished for “fortune-telling.”3 After this he took to trained canaries or parrakeets, which picked out printed fortunes, for a living. Whether the stern arm of British justice descended on him for this latter form of sorcery and crime I do not know.