I am now in the presence of the Lines that offer probably the greatest difficulties, of all to every Palmist - even the most experienced. As they are supposed by cursory readers of Chirologicat works to indicate marriage, their absence, their multiplicity, the order of their superposition, their malformations and, finally, the small vertical lines that come down upon them and are interpreted as Children Lines - all these indications are the objects of the most intense curiosity to young and old, and, but too often, the causes of bitter disappointment or unwarranted satisfaction. They certainly are puzzling at times, and if the standing of Palmistry as a science depended on their infallibly correct reading-, I am afraid it would not hold its own very long, at least among superficial or easily discouraged students. I think, however, that there is a simple, as well as a strictly honest way to reduce to their true value these apparent discrepancies between facts and Chirornantic indications as far as the Lines of Union, are concerned; and that is to give to these markings the very modest place in the study of the hand that really belongs to them, and to search elsewhere for such revelations as had been supposed, for too long a time, to be confined to that very narrow space along the Percussion of the Mount of Mercury.

Although Desbarrolles has already sisted upon the principle that Unions in the hand are not to be understood as meaning only legal Unions, i. e,, Marriages, it is to the better element of the British palmistic world that we owe the discovery of those Lines of Influence - from the Mount of the Moon generally - which indicate in connection with the Line of Fate - and sometimes the Line of the Sun - the most important among these Unions, be they marriages or not. I shall have occasion, in my very next chapter, to describe those Lines of Influence from the Mount of the Moon and to indicate their proper value in all such serious love affairs as affect one's existence.

Suffice it to say here, that the Lines of Union, on the Percussion of the Mount of Mercury, have been dethroned from their exclusive, prominent position as recorders of legal bonds, and are to he considered only as confirmations of what the Lines of Fate and the Sun and their Lines of Influence shall have previously revealed to us. As such they are decidedly useful, and I may add that, even by themselves, they are, by no means as error-breeding as it has become almost a fashion to believe them to be, especially if we are satisfied to read them as Lines of Attachment, not marriage.

However, in the following observa-tions, the student will find much valuable and reliable information concerning those Lines, somewhat based on the old principles; but let it be understood that the interpretation therein given applies exclusively to very clearly marked Lines of Union. In fact, I am bound to admit that a long and deep Line of Union, in an otherwise excellent hand, is entitled to a reading very similar to the old interpretation of Marriage. But remember, this must be, as far as possible, the confirmation of an event discovered elsewhere in the hand. And I add: this wilt be especially the case in women's hands In men's hands, the Lines of Union often constitute the sole indications of attachments that ready left their marks in the subject's brain - and consequently in his palm.