He has reduced his business to a fine system, and all the questions
that anybody could possibly think of are set down in a book with
numbers opposite them. And these books, printed in Yiddish, English
and German, anticipate all the hopes and fears of the tenements. The
questions, all of a strong local flavor, are all answered by the
fortune teller off-hand for $1, notwithstanding the fact that they
present some of the toughest problems that the philanthropists who
support the Educational Alliance and the settlement houses have been
trying for years to solve. To illustrate, take this group of questions
under the general classifications "Home and Children":
"Can I learn English?"
"Can I make my son or daughter learn Yiddish?"
"Shall my children play with Christians?"
The book printed in Yiddish shows the most wear. It is divided under
these heads: "Travel and Letters," "Love and Marriage," "Home and
Children," "Business," "Work," "Luck and Losses."
Some of the questions make interesting reading and supplementary to
the reports and papers of the various Hebrew charity organizations.
One of the more recent of these reports gave statistics of desertions
of wives, and "other women" was put down as the cause in a large
number of cases.