upon, and swindle the public. Their signs and advertisements disfigure the houses and the press, and their influence is consumptive and cancerous to the last degree. Consult one of these harpies on any subject you may like to, and the chances are ten to one that they make the astounding discovery that you are improperly married; that your wife or husband — as the case may be — is not adapted to you; that there's no affinity, in short, that you are — what perhaps you never before dreamed of — the most unhappy and miserable matron or benedict under the sun. Such devils have, under the specious guise of philanthropy, broken up thousands of theretofore comparatively happy families, — more than even rum itself. And poor, silly, weak wives too readily hearken to their villanous suggestions, thenceforth fancy themselves the most wretched of victims, and hades comes quickly. I have known of scores of families thus broken up; for hundreds of these people infest society, and their infamous work may be seen on all hands, — false pretenders to spiritual inspiration! Husbands consulting one of them are crammed with the same sort of stuff till they believe it, and thousands of desertions and divorce suits attest the result. These seers see too much. Nothing they say should be relied on. They talk to hear themselves, and set up sham claims to wisdom and unusual sagacity with the smallest imaginable capital. They excite ardent hopes, abnormal cravings, and wild desires in the minds of their deluded victims, which never can be reached; and when these victims realize this fact, misery beyond calculation results, happiness is gone forever, and a premature grave very often ends the dreadful tragedy. A proper punishment for these impostors would be to make them undergo the dreadful tortures they impose upon others.
In Boston I daily read the advertisements of several of that class, and desiring to get in the "ring" to find them out, I sought an opportunity and made the acquaintance of several. One of them set up the business of making "love powders" of a root called "dragon's blood," at a dollar a pinch; and she afterwards, finding that I was practising a branch of chemistry, solicited me to furnish an amative excitant for her to sell, informing me that theretofore she had dosed her dupes and victims with a deadly blistering compound at five dollars an ounce. Pretending to enter into her views, I soon learned that she made and sold
