 associate made his
appearance in another convocation of fashionable people, where he soon had the
pleasure of hearing the conjurer brought upon the carpet by an elderly
gentlewoman, remarkable for her inquisitive disposition, who addressing herself
to Cadwallader, asked, by the help of the finger-alphabet, if he knew any thing
of the magician that made such a noise in town? The Misanthrope answered as
usual, in a surly tone, »By your question you must either take me for a pimp or
an ideot. What, in the name of nonsense, should I know of such a rascal, unless
I were to court his acquaintance with a view to feast my own spleen, in seeing
him fool the whole nation out of their money? Tho', I suppose, his chief profits
arise from his practice, in quality of pander. All fortune-tellers are bawds,
and for that reason are so much followed by people of fashion. This fellow (I
warrant) has got sundry convenient apartments for the benefit of procreation;
for it is not to be supposed that those who visit him on the pretence of
consulting his supernatural art, can be such fools, such drivelers, as to
believe that he can actually prognosticate future events.«
    The company, according to his expectation, imputed his remarks to the
rancour of his disposition, which could not bear to think that any person upon
earth was wiser than himself; and his ears were regaled with a thousand
instances of the conjurer's wonderful prescience, for which he was altogether
indebted to fiction. Some of these specimens being communicated to him, by way
of appeal to his opinion, »They are (said he) meer phantoms of ignorance and
credulity, swelled up in the repetition, like those unsubstantial bubbles which
the boys blow up in soap-suds with a tobacco pipe. And this will ever be the
case in the propagation of all extraordinary intelligence: the imagination
naturally magnifies every object that falls under its cognizance, especially
those that concern the passions of fear and admiration; and when the occurrence
comes to be rehearsed, the vanity of the relater exaggerates every circumstance,
in order to inhance the importance of the communication. Thus an incident which
is but barely uncommon, often gains such accession in its progress thro' the
fancies and mouths of those who represent it, that the original fact cannot
possibly be distinguished. This observation might be proved and illustrated by a
thousand undeniable examples, out of which I shall only select one instance, for
the entertainment and edification of the company: A very honest gentleman,
remarkable for the gravity of his deportment,
