"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: