Word: dowser
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...year-old man with a face like Robert Frost's, Gordon MacLean of South Portland, Me., looks exactly like what he is, one of the country's foremost practitioners of an ancient and mysterious art that science sneers at and country people swear by. He is a dowser. As people all over the back hills of Vermont will tell you, dowsers can find water in the ground when almost no one else can-literally at the drop of a forked branch or the twist of a metal rod. No one knows how dowsing works, if indeed it does...
...Most dowsers seem to like nothing better than to regale skeptics with their accomplishments. Clarence Hollett of Willow Shade, Ky., styles himself as "the Mr. Doodlebug." In the dowser lexicon, doodlebugs are a special breed - diviners for oil. Hollett, a rotund, barrel-chested man, says he has found wells that produce 1 ,000 bbl. a day and, if only he hadn't been swindled by so-called friends, he might be a millionaire. He also dabbles in healing and dowses for gold. "Don't believe me?" he asks, and promptly borrows a gold ring from a cynical listener...
Pointed at the suspect like a dowser's divining rod, the weapon works on two simple principles: speed and pressure. Before the offender can escape, or if he resists arrest, the sticks are clamped around his arm, wrist or hand. The cords act as a hinge. If he resists, the arresting officer merely squeezes the sticks, inducing severe, immobilizing pain. Either way, no permanent injury is usually inflicted because the pain will subdue the offender before any physical damage occurs...
Have you lost something? A dowser, with the help of a small pendulum and a map, will find it for you. Do you want happiness, success, power? Go see any of the voyants advertised in three astrological monthlies. Are you doubtful of your lover? Visit Professor E. L. Erus, who provides an "infallible life guide in the problems of the heart," and for 20 francs and a handwriting sample will reveal "knowledge of the loved one, his personality and his fidelity...
Engineer Riddick wastes little time on Henry's theory that water rises from great depths underground and distributes itself in veins (it actually comes from rain, streams, etc.), but he hopes that people will not put too much faith in shallow, dowser-found wells. Heavy pumping can drain them dry when most needed, he warns, and many are contaminated...