Why these panderers to depravity in all its most hideous forms are
permitted to continue their depredations among every rank of society
without attracting the attention of "reformers" or the grand jury is
something beyond the ken of human knowledge. And as a block is a small
cityful in some parts of the town, the reading of palms, the casting
of horoscopes and the looking into seeds of time through the backs
of a greasy pack of thumb-marked, tear-stained cards is a profitable
calling. Perhaps it should be explained that the tears are not shed
by the prophets of the tenements, but by the patrons who go to the
oracle to learn if they are to be dispossessed next month or if their
ambitious children will sometime learn a little Yiddish, so that they
may talk with their own parents in their own homes, are sources of
information for the settlement workers and others who try to learn the
hopes and fears and ambitions, the real life of such places. But the
fortune tellers are the real custodians of the Ghetto's secrets. In
their little back rooms, some of which are cluttered with the trash
that suggests the occult to the believer, some as bare as the room
of a lodger who has pawned the last stick of furniture, they hear
confessions that court interpreters never have a chance to translate,
and listen to tales of hard luck that are never told to the rabbis.
[Illustration: Chair with open back stuffed with disguises]
[Illustration: (Drawing of costumes)]
[Illustration: Supposed "Medium" Sitting in the Chair.]