Although the belief in witchcraft has nearly passed away, the civilized world is yet full of necromancers and fortune tellers. The mystic science of "palmistry" is still practised by many a haggard and muttering vagrant.
The most celebrated fortune teller, perhaps, that ever lived, resided in Lynn, Mass. The character of "Moll Pitcher" is familiarly known in all parts of the commercial world. She died in 1813. Her place of abode was beneath the projecting and elevated summit of High Rock, in Lynn, and commanded a view of the wild and indented coast of Marblehead, of the extended and resounding beaches of Lynn and Chelsea, of Nahant Rocks, of the vessels and islands, of Boston's beautiful bay, and of its remote southern shore. She derived her mysterious gifts by inheritance, her grandfather having practised them before, in Marblehead. Sailors, merchants, and adventurers of every kind visited her residence, and placed great confidence in her predictions. People came from great distances to learn the fate of missing friends or recover the possession of lost goods. The young, of both sexes, impatient at the tardy pace of time, and burning with curiosity to discern their future lot, especially as it regarded matters of wedlock, availed themselves of every opportunity to visit her lowly dwelling, and hear from her prophetic lips the revelations of these most tender incidents and important events of their coming lives. She read the future, and traced what, to mere mortal eyes, were the mysteries of the present or the past, in the arrangement and aspect of the grounds or settlings of a cup of tea or coffee. Her name has every where become the generic title of fortune tellers, and occupies a conspicuous place in the legends and ballads of popular superstition.
A man was suddenly missed by his friends from a certain town in this commonwealth. The church immediately sent a member to consult the far-famed fortune-telling Molly Pitcher. After making the necessary inquiries, she intimated that the absent person had been murdered by a family of negroes, and his body sunk in the deep waters behind their dwelling. Upon this evidence, the accused were forthwith imprisoned, and the pond raked in vain, from shore to shore. A few days previous to the trial, the missing man returned to his friends, safe and sound; thus proving that the fortune teller, instead of having received from Satan certain information of distant and unknown events, actually played off a piece of the grossest deception upon her credulous visitors.