Victorian San Francisco Stories Read Online Free

prerogatives as the mistress of the household at every turn. No, it was time for us to move. Our rooms here are just perfect. With Herman off traveling more days than he is home, I would feel so lonely rattling around in some hotel surrounded by strangers. Besides, Mrs. O’Rourke is one of the best cooks in San Francisco.”
    Annie smiled, remembering with what relish both Steins enjoyed Beatrice’s pies, and knew that at least in that last statement Esther was telling the truth. But she worried that her motherly friend might be pressuring her husband to loan Annie money, which was why she was nervous about revealing to him the thinness of her profit margin. However, instead of offering to help her, Herman Stein had pulled out a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle and placed his finger smack dab in the middle of the front page. She’d leaned over and seen that he was pointing to the section headed “Special Notices” that listed the numerous advertisements by people professing to be clairvoyants of one stripe or the other.
    When she realized that he was suggesting she do something similar, you could have knocked her over with a feather! But Mr. Stein was quite persuasive, and after a good deal of discussion, Annie finally agreed that it was worth giving his idea a try. She was adamant that she would not pretend to be communing with the spirit word but would build on the knowledge she had already gotten when living with Lottie on how to read palms and cast horoscopes. Mr. Stein had eviden tly given the matter some thought, because he already had crafted a draft of the ad he thought she should put into the paper. He recommended that she charge $2 a session, which was higher than any of the other mediums, arguing that this would winnow out the riffraff. He also suggested she schedule appointments, which would give her time to do the necessary research that went into her financial advice.
    Annie thought this was an excellent idea, and it would also make it easier for her to keep her identities as Mrs. Fuller and Madam Sibyl separate. At the last moment, she decided to include wording that implied she would be giving more than business advice. She thought the years she’d spent observing and catering to the complex personalities among the Fuller clan should count for something. The resulting advertisement read: Clairvoyant, specializing in business and domestic advice, consultations by appointment only, fee $2, with the boarding house address listed as the contact.
    What followed was a frantic two weeks of preparation. Deciding on a costume, buying the wig, and locating a copy of the English translation of Rothmann’s Chiromantia Theorica Practica and several books on astrology that she had found in a used bookstore off Market Street. Rothmann’s sixteenth-century treatise on palmistry argued that the mounts and lines of the hand were ruled by the planets so that by looking at a person’s hands you could determine their birth chart and vice versa. This conjunction of the two philosophies was useful for her purposes. Not believing in either palmistry or astrology, she didn’t care if his analysis was correct or if contemporary practitioners accepted his argument. All she cared about was getting the terminology that would make her pronouncements sound reasonable to someone who believed in either discipline.
    Two days ago, she finally put the advertisement in the Morning Call and the Chronicle . While she hadn’t yet gotten any response from these notices, Mr. Stein had drummed up a few clients for her from among his business associates, and the first was due to arrive any moment.
    The loud peel of the front door bell sent Annie’s pulse racing, and she walked quickly to the table and sat down, clasping her hands in front of her to keep them from trembling. After a m oment, she heard the sound of voices in the hallway. Kathleen, bless her soul, must have been hovering near the front hallway in anticipation of the