Apart from tea leaves and apple dunking etc, another way of reading the future was done with lead. One melted the lead and then when it was hot it was poured into cold water at which point it became solid, and it was supposed that the "reader" could foresee the future through the patterns in the lead.
One young woman got her "lead done" and sent a friend to take it to the reader, as it was a long way for that time. When her friend got there the reader took one look at the lead and said: "Is that yours?" The girl answered untruthfully that it was, but the reader asked her again. Again she told him it was, at which point he said: "You have contracted a terrible sickness. You must go to the doctor or you will die." The girl went home and told her friend. However the friends mother went to get the medicine for her daughter, fearing that if some one heard her daughter was ill she would not find a husband. Of course the doctor gave her the wrong cure...The girl died, just as it had been foretold.