The incongruity is the fascination of it all. In New York, the most modern of all large cities, the very embodiment of twentieth-century youth, thrives superstition, gray with countless centuries of age. Where thick-packed multitudes mass, many a charm is said over the sick, many a spell is mystically woven. There are, in this city, beliefs and weird practices which were old when the earliest scribe began to write on rock.

Down on Mott Street, where gleaming lanterns swing from balconies, where joss sticks burn and the smell of incense is in the air, there is unquestioned belief in…