SHREWD BEGGAR GRAFT.
Pretend to be Deaf, Dumb and Blind, Playing on Sympathy—How Philanthropy is Humbugged—Begging for Money to Reach Home—An Army of Frauds and Vagabonds—Mastering the Deaf Mute Language for Swindling Purposes—The Public Should be Careful in Disbursing Alms.
Speech is so common, eyesight so precious, that he who would appeal for charity needs no better warrant than that he is dumb or blind. In an age when words are multiplied and golden silence is seldom found, the very fact that lips can give no utterance is so unusual that their mute assertion of misfortune is seldom questioned. There is nothing so pitiful in all the world as an asylum for the blind. There is nothing which so draws one to share the burdens of another as the appeal of him in whom the wells of speech are all dried up. We sympathize with illness, we grieve at the misfortune which visits our friends, we mourn with them when bereavement comes, but all these things are in the course of nature. They are sad, but they may be expected. But then a figure in health rises and asks for charity in the hushed language of the mute, philanthropy halts and humanity gives alms. But if the dumb can evoke assistance, assuring of sincerity and disarming doubt, how hushed is the questioning when the blind apply! How much stronger than speech or silence are the sightless eyes that stare unblinking at a darkened world! How sad is the fate of that man who was buried by demons when God cried out, "Let there be light"!
But not every man is mute who stretches out his hand in silence. Laziness is such an awfully demoralizing vice that some who choose to beg a living and decline work are even base enough to feign a misfortune they ought to fear. Fellows who find the winter pinching and the ranks of vagabonds full to repletion arm themselves with a slate and pencil and haunt the public with appeals for help on the untrue claim that they are dumb. One of the most persistent beggars of this kind makes the rounds of residence districts with a printed card on which is stated the bearer's desire to reach his home in some distant city—the destination varies from time to time—together with a long-primer endorsement by a group of names which no one knows. The fraud always asks for some slight money offering—nothing can be too small—with which to assist him in the purchase of a ticket.
Usually his paper shows that he needs but a very little more, and he asks one, by a series of pantomimic signs, to enroll his name, together with the sum advanced, in regular order on a blank list which he tenders with his touching appeal. He is so well drilled as never to be surprised into speech, and looks with such straight, honest eyes into the faces of the women, who form much the larger number of his victims, that they cannot question him and usually give up a dime or a quarter without a struggle. The beggar can readily collect a good day's wages in this manner, and it is a matter of surprise if he does not receive an invitation to partake of food three or four times a day. He never lets his list get full. However small a margin he may lack of having raised the sum needed to buy his ticket to his home, he never gets quite enough, for nothing is easier than to stop in some secluded spot and erase the names of his latest donors, thus proving to those on whom he shall presently call that their help is not only needed, but will so nearly end the necessity for continued appeals. This class of beggar never looks like a dissipated man, is always polite, and bears refusal in so noble a way that nine times out of ten the flinty-hearted women who refused him at the back door hurry through to the front and give the more generously that they have harbored suspicion.
Another set of leeches have mastered the deaf mute language, and always ask with a pleading, painful face which meets you as your eyes lift from his written questions, if anyone in the house can talk with him. He supplements the penciled question and the eloquent glance of eyes trained by long use in the art with a few rapid passes of his hands, a few dexterous wavings of the fingers, in a language you have heard of and read about, but cannot understand. If the unexpected happens and a person be present who can converse with him, your beggar is sure of some entertainment, and the usual scene of one you know to be honest talking to one who may be equally so, and certainly seems needy, will almost infallibly wring from you the coveted assistance. It is like two minstrels at a Saxon court. You know your own has seen the holy land, though you have not, and as he tells you, this thread-bare guest talks familiarly and correctly of distant realms. That is all any one can know to a certainty, but you give him the benefit of the chance that he may be honest, and help him with such loose change as comes to hand. Time and again the pretended mutes have been detected in their imposture by men who pitied a misfortune and gave money at their homes in the morning to see it spent for drink by an arguing, contentious fellow in the evening.
Some beggars even assume the appearance of blindness, and haunt the homes of comfortable people, led by a little girl and asking alms in the name of an affliction that is always eloquent of need. He will sometimes carry a small basket full of pencils, or other little trinkets, and glazes over his evident beggary with the appearance of sales. But he does not hesitate, once the money is in his hands, to ask his patron to give back the pencils, as he cannot afford to buy any more. These people can sometimes see as well as the child that seems to lead them, and yet their eyes, when they choose to assume their professional attitude, seem covered with a film through which no light can penetrate.
The public should be chary in bestowing charity, and especially to able-bodied men who appear blind, deaf and dumb, or are still claiming to be victims of some recent disaster. Most any one who has charity to bestow can easily think of some deserving and honest unfortunate in their own neighborhood.
Paralytic a Bad Actor.
The most transparent fraud on the streets of the great cities is the pseudo-paralytic. At almost any street corner can be seen what purports to be a trembling wreck of a man. His legs are twisted into horrible shapes. The hand which he stretches forth for alms is a mere claw, seemingly twisted by pain into all sorts of distorted shapes, trembling and wavering. The arms move back and forth in pathetic twistings as if the pains were shooting up and down the ligaments with all the force of sciatica.
The head bobs from side to side as if it were impossible to keep it still. And the words which come from the half-paralyzed mouth are a mere mumble of inarticulate sounds, as if the tongue, too, were suffering torture.
A more pitiable sight than this could not be conjured up. And the extended hat of the victim of what seems to be a complication of St. Vitus dance, paralysis, sciatic rheumatism, and the delirium tremens, is always a ready receptacle for the pennies, nickels and dimes of the thoughtless. This is one side of the picture; now look on the other.
It is dusk. Just that time of day when the lights are not yet brightening the streets, and when the sun has made the great tunnels between the sky-scrapers, ways of darkness. Detective Wooldridge is watching. He has been watching two of the deplorable fraternity for two hours. As the dusk deepens he sees them both arise, dart swiftly across the street and board a car. By no mere chance is it that they are both on the same car. The detective follows. Before a low saloon on the West Side the victims of innumerable diseases descend from the car, walking upright as six-year soldiers on parade. They enter the saloon. They seat themselves at a table behind an angle in the back which conceals them from the street. The detective loiters down to the end of the bar and watches. From every pocket, even from the hat rim, pours a pile of coins.
The two sort out the quarters, the nickels, the pennies. The heaps are very evenly divided over two or three cheap whiskies or a couple of bottles of five-cent beer.
Then the real finale comes. Detective Wooldridge gets busy, and a goodly portion of the spoil finds its way out of the hands of the sharpers in the way of a fine.
But for every one of these paralytic frauds caught there are dozens, even scores, who get away unscathed. It is the estimate of the best detectives that not one in a thousand of these paralytic beggars is genuine. It is one of the most bare-faced cases of deception of the public which comes under the notice of the police.
Easy Money From Kind Hearts.
Charity covers a multitude of sins, almost as many backs, and quite a bit of graft.
Thoughtless giving is almost a crime. It serve to encourage idleness, and idleness is at the bottom of more crime than any other one thing, unless it is poverty.
Here is a story, given in the words of the man himself, which shows how the charity graft is worked in a number of ways. It covers several fields, and is so dramatic that it is given as the best example of all-round charity grafting:
"In experience in charitable work last summer I discovered some of these truths. It was the first time in all my life that I ever engaged in any charitable enterprise, and the needy that I sought to relieve was myself.
"Any one will beg, borrow, or steal in the name of charity. They may be as personally honest as a trust magnate—and they would be horrified at the idea of begging or stealing for themselves, but charity makes them respectable. At least this is the theory I worked on.
"I was broke and far from home. I decided that I would starve or steal rather than beg. Then a fellow I met accidentally put me on to a way of making a living.
For the Benefit of the Heathen.
"He had a lot of literature either really from a big church, charitable organization, or fraudulently printed, and he explained to me that I was to sell these 25 cents a copy for the benefit of the heathen somewhere, or home missions. I was to get 25 per cent of the money resulting from such sales.
"About a week later, when I had received $12 besides a little expense money from him. I discovered that he was keeping all the money. I took the rest of the literature and destroyed it. Three days later, when I was hungry, I rather regretted destroying it.
"I joined a circus that was moving toward my home town in Western Iowa, intending to leave it there and quit being a tramp. I was then down in Eastern Pennsylvania. I was a canvas hand. We went west by a tortuous route, and I never could accumulate enough coin to pay my way home, so was forced to stick to the place for many weeks.
"The second week one of the canvas hands came to me and asked me to circulate a subscription paper among the men for the benefit of one Will Turner, a member of the band, who, he said, had dropped off the train while running over from the last stop, and badly injured himself.
Gave the Money to Canvas Boss.
"I circulated the paper. The man told me he already had collected from the band on another subscription paper, so I needn't go to them. The man subscribed over $40 to help Turner, and I gave the money and the paper to the canvas boss who asked me to make the collection.
"He took it, and remarked gratefully that he would make it all right with me. I didn't catch the significance of the remark then. About a week after that the same canvas boss came again with another subscription paper for the benefit of John Kane, who, he said, was a gasoline lamp tender and had been horribly burned and taken to the hospital. He told me a graphic story of the accident that aroused all my sympathy. I took the paper and worked hard on it during the afternoon and evening performances, and, as it was the day after pay day, I collected nearly $100.
Worked the Game Once a Month.
"I got a shock when I took the money to the canvas boss. He gave me $50 and said:
"'That's your share. We'll work it again next pay day.'
"Then I went at him, and we had quite a fight. We were both arrested, and at the hearing next morning I learned that he had been working the game with that same circus about once a month. There were so many with the outfit and so few of them knew each other by name, and accidents were so numerous, that no one suspected him. He had grown afraid to work it for himself and used me for a tool.
"The show had pulled out and the boss and two others who had been arrested with us took the first train back to it. I used the $50 to pay my fine and get home, where I found work and honesty—and, as soon as possible, I sent to the chief horseman with the show $50, to be added to the fund for the benefit of the next person really hurt, telling him the entire story. He wrote that he had been among those who helped kick the canvas boss out of the car after he read my letter."
In Name of Charity.
There are probably more "touches" perpetrated in Chicago by professionals in the name of charity than under any other guise. In this matter, more of the protection of honest charities than for the protection of the public, the police have taken a hand and done a great deal to weed out and punish the solicitors for fake charities. An imaginary home for epileptics was one of the favorite plans. There was a home for this class of unfortunates that was honestly run, and the peculiar sympathy enlisted by the mention of the word epilepsy was seized upon by dishonest schemers. Professional women solicitors were garbed as "nurses" and sent forth. They were mostly austere-looking women and silent. Their work of nursing epileptics was supposed to produce this austere silence. This supposed charity appealed with uncommon strength to most people because these "nurses" were supposed to be performing the most unpleasant work imaginable amidst the most grewsome surroundings. Large sums were collected in this way, the promoter keeping everything above the liberal commission paid to solicitors.
RACHEL GORMAN
This One Made Fortune.
Rachel Gorman was the originator of the "nurse for epileptics" graft, and raked in thousands of dollars before she finally was rounded up by the police. Not one cent of all the money collected by her and her garbed and hired solicitors ever got past their pockets. In this case the most shining marks were selected. William Jennings Bryan was touched for $100. as was the Governor of Illinois, and many others. This money for imaginary epileptics came so easily that the Gorman woman confessed that it was almost a shame to take it.
There is little excuse, however, for Chicago men and women allowing themselves to be talked out of money for charity. In no great city are the charity working forces better organized or better known. For virtually every form and case of need there is in Chicago a distinct form of honest, well-organized charity. This condition grew out of necessity, and promiscuous giving to "touchers" who plead as qualification charity cases is dying out as the public comes to know more of the comprehensive systems for the help of the worthy and unfortunate.
It took the hotel detectives years to check the "toucher" with the fake bank account that operated largely in the hotel lobbies. Now he works in other places. He carries a bank book that has all the superficial marks of genuineness. He engages you in conversation, and at what he considers the right psychological moment, he drops a feeler like this:
"It's h—— to be without money when you've got plenty, isn't it?"
If you have met this type of "toucher" before, you instantly see it coming and chase off to a most important engagement. If not, you only can agree. Being without money when you have none is bad; being broke when you have money is worse.
"Look here," says the "toucher," "here is my bank book. Look at this balance?"
Often Worth the Price.
A glance seems to show that the bank owes your new acquaintance many thousands. He then tells how it happened, how he came to be without a cent when he was so far to the good with his banker. It's a complicated tale, too long to tell here. There are lost letters, the cashing of checks for friends and, confidentially, a touch of the pace that flattens bank accounts. By this time you see your finish. When you seek to escape you find yourself backed up to the wall with no chance to sidestep. The best you can do is to scale the original touch from $1 to 50 cents, thereby making 50 cents for yourself and 50 cents for the "toucher."
To "stand for" all the "touches" that are made in Chicago one would require an income far in excess of that enjoyed by most. Those that are responded to are those in cases where the donor generously thinks that the "toucher" really needs the money. Probably in the vast majority of cases there is no delusion as to the fiction woven in order to drag forth the nickel, the dime, the quarter or the dollar. Often it is worth the price to hear the fiction.
But after all one feels refreshed when a frank but hoarse and trembling hobo says:
"Say, Mister, me t'roat is baked and me coppers sizzlin'. Gimme de price of a drink. Did you ever feel like jumpin' from de bridge fur lack of a stingy little dime fur booze?"
Here, you feel, is no misrepresentation. Here you may invest a dime without feeling that you have been stung.
Raffles Bank Robbery.
One of the most annoying of small grafts is the raffle, as conducted for gain. It is bad enough to be held up for 25 cents or 50 cents for a ticket which entitles you to a chance on a rug or a clock when you reasonably are sure that the proceeds will go to charity, but no man likes to be fooled out of his small change by a cheap grafter, even if the grafter happens to need the money.
A story is told of two printers who lived for a month on a cheap silver watch which they raffled off almost daily until they had "worked" nearly all the printing offices of any size in town. These typographical grafters are unworthy of the noble craft to which they belong. They pretended to be jobless on account of last year's strike, and unable to live with their families on the money furnished by the union.
How Skin Raffle is Worked.
During the noon hour, or about closing or opening time, one of the men would saunter into a composing room and put up a hard luck story. He had an old silverine watch that he wanted to raffle off, if he could sell twenty tickets at 25 cents each. He usually managed to sell the tickets.
About the time the drawing was to take place the confederate entered and cheerfully took a chance and won the watch without any difficulty. Thus, they had the watch and the $5 also. They would split the money, and on the first convenient occasion the raffle would be repeated at another place, and by some trick known to themselves the drawing was manipulated so that the confederate always won the watch.
A South Side woman recently had 500 raffle tickets printed, to be sold at 10 cents each, the drawing to be on Thanksgiving day, for a "grand parlor clock," the proceeds to be for the benefit of a "poor widow." As the woman herself happens to be a grass widow, and as the place of the drawing could not be learned, neither could there be obtained a sight of the clock, it is not difficult to guess the final destination of $50 for which the tickets were sold.
Popular Game in Saloons.
At many saloons and cigar stores there is a continuous raffle in progress for a "fine gold watch." It is well for those who buy chances to inspect the time piece with a critical eye. One of these watches was submitted to a jeweler by the man who won it. "It's what we call an auction watch," said the expert. "It is worth about 87 cents wholesale. The case is gilded, and the works are of less value than the movement of a 69-cent alarm clock. It was keep time until the brass begins to show through the plate, and it may not."
One of the attractive forms of the raffle ticket game is valuing the tickets at from 1 cent up to as high as desired. The man who buys a chance draws a little envelope containing his number. If he is lucky and draws a small number he is encouraged to try again. This is a sort of double gamble, and many men cannot resist the temptation to speculate upon the chances, simply in order to have the fun of drawing the little envelopes.
Of course, many of the raffles are for cases of genuine charity, and it is an easy way to raise a fund for some worthy object. Many a person would not accept an outright gift, even in case of sickness or death, will permit friends to raffle off a piano or a bicycle for a good round price in order to obtain a fund to tide him over an emergency. To buy tickets for this kind of a raffle is praiseworthy.
Raffle is Lottery by Law.
But sharpers are not above getting money by the same means. If a strange man, or a doubtful looking woman, wants to sell you a chance for the benefit of "an old soldier," or a "little orphan girl," or a "striker out of work," it might pay you to investigate.
But here is where the easy money comes in for the sharper. It is too much trouble to investigate, and the tender-hearted person would sooner give up the 10, 25 or 50 cents to an unworthy grafter than to take chances of refusing to aid a case of genuine need.
Then, too, there is what might be called a sort of legitimate raffle business. Of course, the raffle is a lottery under the law, and, therefore, is a criminal transaction. But in many cases goods of known value, but slow sale, are disposed of through raffles, and the drawings conducted honestly. A North Side man disposed of an automobile in this way. It had been a good wagon in its day, though the type was old. He wanted to get a new one, and as the makers would not allow him anything in exchange for the old. He sold raffle tickets to the amount of $500, and the winner got a real bargain—the losers paying the bill.
Raffles That Are Steals.
A group of young men who wanted to build themselves a little club house in the Fox Lake region, resorted to a raffle that was almost a downright steal. They had the printer make them tickets, and each one went among his friends and organized a "suit club," selling chances for a $30 tailor-made suit. Of course those who invested understood that the suit probably would be worth about $18, but they were satisfied to help build the club house on that basis, and besides they thought they had a fair chance to get the suit.
It was learned afterward by accident that there were twenty "series" of tickets sold by these young men, and instead of each series standing for a suit, only one drawing was held, and only a single suit made for the entire twenty series of tickets. In other words, they sold $500 worth of tickets for a $30 suit of clothes. They built their club house, however, and laughed at the man who kicked because he thought he did not get a square deal for the half dozen tickets he bought. They thought it was a good joke.
Graft of Train Butcher Easy.
In these days if anything gets past the up-to-date train butcher it isn't because the public knows any more than it did in Barnum's time. We get a customer every minute by the birth records.
For a genuine, all-round, dyed-in-the-wool separator of coin from its proud possessor, the train butcher is the limit. Here is a word for word story by a train "butch" of how the thing is done. He excuses his tactics much the same way that the little rogue does who points out that the giant malefactors are doing the same thing, but "getting away with it." Enter Mr. Butch.
"I got back yesterday from a two days' trip—out and in. I had $29.65 to the good, and the company satisfied, and nary a kick from the railroad. At one little place down the line, though, a railroad detective got aboard and tried to detect.
"'Say, young feller,' he said to me, 'I saw you go through here yesterday lookin' pretty spruce, and I thought I'd better take a look through yer grips as you came back. What yer got in there?'
"He kicked my grip, and I opened her up on the minute. He went through it like an old goat through a cracker barrel, but he didn't find anything—see? If he'd looked under the cushion of a seat in the smoker he might have found a whole lot of stuff that didn't look like a prayer meeting layout.
What Was Hidden Under Seat.
"Say, I bet I had fourteen $2 gold watches, twenty gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me 15 cents apiece, one dozen books, tightly sealed in wrappers, that looked mighty interesting to the jay who couldn't see into the books, and yet who had to do it finally at $2 apiece, and, as a topper of it all, my three-book monte game. Did you ever see the game?
"I've got a line of wild west books about two inches thick, each, and costing me 40 cents a volume. They've got some great pictures on the cloth covers, and maybe there's some hot stuff inside—I don't know. But here's my unparalleled offer: I pick out my man and lay these three volumes across his knees in the car seat and go after him with some of the warmest kind of air about their interest, the binding, and the illustrations.
"You pay me for the set," I explain, "but in doing it I give you a chance to get the books for nothing and at the same time double your investment.
How Three Book Monte Is Played.
"I take out three small, thin spelling books, cloth bound, all alike as the bindery and the presses can make them. Then, careless like, I take a $10 bill out of my pocket, fold it across in a sort of V-shape and slip it into the middle of one of the spelling books, so that just one corner will stick out, probably a quarter of an inch. Of course, I haven't seen it! Sometimes the man on the cars will try to say something about it, but I cut in and drown him out with easy talk till he gets the idea that he might as well have that ten and the books for five, and let it go at that.
"But one corner all the time is torn off that bill, and about a quarter of an inch of that bill is sticking out of the center of one of the other books. Of course the jay hasn't seen that!
Shows Corner of Bill.
"Well, I begin and shuffle the books on the payment of the $5. As they are shuffled the corner of the bill that is still attached gets turned around next to me, while the corner that is torn off gets around next to the passenger, whom I have cornered in the seat in a way that he can't see everything that he really ought to see in order to save his money. When I hold out the three books for the drawing I am in a position where I couldn't possibly see the corner that sticks out, while he is where he can't see anything else.
"And he draws the book with the corner sticking out!
"I take it from him instantly, and hold it up with the bill corner at the bottom, flipping the leaves through from front to back and forward again. In the act the corner of the bill drops out on the floor, where he doesn't see. 'Not here,' I says. 'You made a bad draw. Here's the bill,' I says, taking up the book that holds it and turning to the $10 bill, just where it lies. He doesn't know how it all happened, but I console him that he has the three wild west books for his library when he gets home.
All Suckers Not in Day Coaches.
"I don't find all these suckers in the day coaches—not on your life. I found two pretty boys in the smoking room of a sleeping car a week ago, and I had $7.50 from one of them and $5 from the other, and they didn't know a line about it till they got together after I had gone.
"Friends of mine have kicked because I get $2, or $3, or $4 apiece for gold-rimmed spectacles that cost me $1.80 a dozen. But where is the kick. I know men who have paid $10 or $15 for glasses from an oculist when the glass was cut out of a broken window pane. I save such people money, don't I?
"I am not out after the old farmer with hayseed in his hair and leaf tobacco in his mouth, chewing. There are a lot of gay chaps traveling these days who think they've got the bulge on the train butcher by a sort of birthright or something. They are after me, sometimes, till I can't go to sleep after I come in from a run. For instance, the other day a chap got into the train out of a little country town, intending to go to another little town twenty miles away without change of cars. He had $2 cash and a guitar when he got on the train, but I had both when he got off. He wasn't mad at all; he just didn't understand it. For that reason I'll see him again one of these days, and he will buck the game harder than he did the first time. The trouble is he wants to vindicate himself; he's one of these smart alecs that you couldn't down with a crowbar—he don't think!
Country Town "Sport" Easiest Mark.
"Just give me the dead-game sport as he comes from the country and the country town. He's as good as I want. It's a sort of charity to take his money away from him before he gets into real trouble with it. One of them thought he had me the other day when I tried to sell him a pair of my famous $4 glasses with the gold rims. His had silver, only, but he told me mine wouldn't show a full moon after dark.
"I asked him to let me see his specs and he handed them over. I had a bit of wax out of my ear on the tip of my little finger. I touched each of the glasses with the wax, smearing them a little with it. That fixed his glasses for good, and don't forget it. You can't get ear wax off a pair of spectacles with anything yet invented; it's got a sort of acid that eats into the glass and won't ever clear up again. The fellow got hot about it, but I didn't know anything, of course, and finally sold him a pair of my $1.80 a dozen glasses for $1.50 cash, net.
"O, some people are almost too easy—I get ashamed of my calling!"
Women Victims of Old Coupon Scheme.
There is another moss-grown swindle, which, like hope, seems to "spring perennial" in the greater cities.
This is the old-time coupon swindle. A suave young man appears at the door, inserts his foot in the crack, if you try to slam it in his face, and rapidly begins to explain that he has something to offer you for nothing. The housewife sighs with resignation, and admits the suave young man, thinking that she might as well get it over. But let the housewife herself talk. Here is the story of a good woman who was caught by one of these pettifogging grafters:
"Since my husband died I have partly earned my living by renting furnished rooms. This seems to be the first thing a woman thinks of doing when she is left unprovided for, but it isn't a business of large profits, and few of us ever cut 'melons.' My furniture, of course, represented my 'plant,' and it was growing shabby.
"That is, perhaps, why the glib agent got a hearing from me. He had a lovely proposition. Opening a catalogue he showed me pictures of beautiful pieces of furniture, made from expensive materials, just the kind that would make my rooms attractive and easy to rent.
"'Now,' said he, 'I am soliciting subscriptions for a weekly paper. This paper will cost you 10 cents a number, and with each number you get a coupon. When you have accumulated sixty-eight coupons you can bring them to our wareroom and select any one of these elegant pieces of furniture.'
"'Why,' said I, 'if these articles are as represented, I couldn't buy them at any store in town for three times what sixty-eight coupons would cost me—$6.80.'
The Old "Wareroom" Tale.
"'Call at our wareroom, lady, before you sign the contract, and you will see they are just as described.'
"Well, I saw the articles, and they were all they were said to be. They explained that they were practically giving them away in order to build up the circulation of the paper. Everything appeared to be all right, and I signed a contract. So did my widowed sister; so did some of my neighbors.
"The paper was worthless, but I didn't care. Sometimes I would buy several copies of one issue so as to make haste toward getting my sixty-eight coupons. The time came when I went around to select my furniture. I selected it, all right—a handsome chiffonier.
"'This chiffonier calls for 360 coupons,' said the man.
"'Why, your agent told me I could have any of these pieces when I had accumulated sixty-eight coupons,' said I, dismayed.
"'He couldn't have told you that,' said the man. 'Read your contract. You will see it says that when you have sixty-eight coupons you may select any one of these articles, but that means we will then hold the article for you until you have paid the rest. Why, we have goods here that call for 600 and 700 coupons.'
"I saw how I had been swindled, and was furious. I told him what I thought of him and his business, and he offered to tear up my contract (which, it turned out, bound me to more than I had dreamed of), if I would pay him an additional $2.50. I refused. He said he would sue me if I didn't. I told him to go ahead.
"Shortly afterward a constable served a summons on me to appear at a justice court at the other end of creation. I didn't go; and I don't know whether the concern got a judgment against me or not.
"But I do know I haven't anything to show for the money I paid for those coupons."