firetongs

-- A pair of firetongs indicates anxiety and disturbance in the home.

Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves Cicely Kent

At that moment the black slave girl returned, bearing two little cups of coffee, while two other girls, exactly like the first, followed with two lighted chibouques, a mangál filled with coals, two small brass dishes upon which the bowls of the pipes were to rest, so as not to burn the carpet, and a little pair of steel firetongs inlaid with gold.

Paul Patoff 1881