Customs: In the Stars

Through the five boroughs of New York City last week prowled a dozen inspectors of the Department of Markets, their eyes peeled as usual for butchers with a thumb on the scales or too much fat in the hamburger. But they were snooping—perhaps uneasily—for a different kind of quarry: the soothsayers, crystal-gazers, palmists and tea-leaf readers who gull money by the barrelful for telling people what the future will bring, and thereby are liable to prosecution as "disorderly persons." More surprising than the seedy collection of fakers and phonies, love potions...

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