Many years ago when P. T. Barnum was exhibiting a sacred white elephant, which was nothing more nor less than a small Indian elephant covered with whitewash, and the good folks were breaking their necks to pay their hard-earned coin to see it, the great showman remarked that " the American people love to be humbugged." And they do. Now palmistry is a kind of mild humbuggery on a small scale and for an evening of fun and bunkum-squint you can't find anything to beat it.

First of all there are three words that are con-

Fig. 124A. The Parts Of The Hand Named According To Science

stantly used in the art which you must know how to pronounce correctly or you will surely show your ignorance. The first is palm, pronounced pom; the second is palmist, pronounced pol'-mist, and the third is palmistry, which is pronounced pol'-mis-try ; now be sure to say them right.

While nearly every one believes in palmistry there is nothing in it in-so-far as it is possible to read a person's character or to divine one's future by means of it; but there are some things you can tell from the hand you are reading and these are if its owner is or is not in good health and whether the brain that goes with it is mechanically inclined or is of an artistic temperament.

Fig. 124B. The Parts Of The Hand Named According To Palmistry

Further you can gather - not from the hand but from the face, stature, carriage, and mannerisms of the boy or girl or the man or woman whose hand you are supposed to be reading - a good deal about his or her temper and temperament and also about her or his foibles and peculiarities. In fact the palmistry of the palmists is simply a study in deduction, very much a la Sherlock Holmes, of the person as a whole, and it is by no means limited to an investigation of the hand alone.