Port Said: July 3
We call for the mails at Taranto and then nothing happens till we get to Port Said—except that the stewards who had never been to sea before have recovered from seasickness, and the passengers are all well enough now to organise games and competitions in order to break the monotony, or to mar the peace (whichever you like), of the voyage.
At Port Said we coal. Black men do it, singing the whole time. When one has seen the black men coal at Port Said one realizes how the Egyptian pyramids were built. I don’t mean how the engineering was done, but the kind of way in which the people who had to make bricks without straw set about it; for in the East nothing changes.
Conjurers and fortune-tellers come on board. I have my fortune told. I am amazed by the accurate description of my character and the probability of the foretold fortune, until a friend of mine has his fortune told, and on comparing notes, we find the man told us word for word the same thing about our characteristics and fortune, past, present, and future. On reflection, I see that the way to tell people’s character is to have one list of characteristics and to use it for every one without the slightest variation. It is bound to succeed. For instance, supposing Falstaff and Hamlet had their fortunes told by this Nubian, I imagine he would have told Hamlet’s character as follows (I assume Hamlet and Falstaff to be on board incognito):—
You are not so fortunate as you seem. You have a great deal of sense, but more sense than knowledge. You can give admirable advice to other people. Your judgment is excellent as regards others, but bad as regards yourself. You never take your own good advice. You are fond of your friends. You prefer talk to action. You suffer from indecision. You are fond of the stage. You are susceptible to female beauty. You are witty, amiable, and well educated, but you have a weakness for coarse jokes. You are superstitious and believe in ghosts. You can make people laugh; you often pretend to be more foolish than you are. At other times you will surprise people by your power of apt repartee. Your bane will be an inclination to fat which will hamper you in fighting. You are unsuccessful as a soldier, but unrivalled as a companion and philosopher. You will mix in high society, and have friends at Court. You will come off badly in personal encounter, and your final enemy will be a king.”
Now, imagine him saying exactly the same thing to Falstaff. Doesn’t it fit him just as well? Can’t you imagine Falstaff saying, “He has hit me off to a T,” and Hamlet murmuring, “My prophetic soul”? In fact, I believe the profession of a fortune-teller, after that of a hair-specialist, to be the finest profession in the world, and the easiest. In the first place it is almost impossible to prevent the patient from telling you the whole of his past and present of his own accord; and even if he doesn’t do this, a little deft cross-examination involved in a mass of vague generalization will extract a good deal.
This particular Nubian in the course of the process asked me my age, my profession, whether I was married, what my financial prospects were, and whether I had any children. However, I refused to answer questions; but I very nearly did once or twice, so insinuatingly were the questions put. I further tested the process by having my fortune and character told by a second seer, and he said exactly the same things as the first had said, and I afterwards found out that he also had said exactly the same thing to some one else.