"My mother believed in spirits.

When I was a kid she was always seeing them and talking with them and getting advice from them.

But she never come across with any goods from them.

The spirits couldn't tell her where the old man could nail a job or find a gold-mine or mark an eight-spot in Chinese lottery.

Not on your life.
The bunk they told her was that the old man's uncle had had a goitre, or that the old man's grandfather had died of galloping consumption, or that we were going to move house inside four months, which last was dead easy, seeing as we moved on an average of six times a year." I think, had Oppenheimer had the opportunity for thorough education, he would have made a Marinetti or a Haeckel.