But grant it done. Say that the last proof—the ten millionth sheet—lies before you, the smooth-faced devil waiting at your garret door to carry off the corrected matter for the press. Say that it is printed, published, and the whole five hundred volumes folio scrupulously conned, as they doubtless would be, by the critics—alack! alack!—what a melancholy book hath the press groaned with—what a ghastly chronicle, what a blood-dyed, tear-stained record!
“A complete body of swindling!” Let us turn a few of the leaves. They creak like dungeon hinges! Are not the pictures terrible? Whole generations of men, thin-chapped, hollow-eyed, scourged and in bonds; fainting in midday; stark with the dews of night. Tens of thousands, living carcasses, in mines—thousands and thousands writhing in blood and agony upon the field—with the vassals of glory, a cloud of vultures, hovering to pick their bones. Next let us peep through prison bars, and—no; close the book—it is too shocking—one’s marrow freezes, and the brain reels at it.
“Methinks,” says the reader, “the Captain takes a too comprehensive view of his subject.”
Right, sagacious reader; and yet, were the history of swindling in all its ramifications to be duly chronicled, the work would be no less voluminous, no jot less tragical. The present is, after all, not an auspicious age for folios; neither is it the best of all possible eras for the publication of disagreeable truths. Lazarus himself, to touch worldly sympathy, should in these days be a Lazarus in superfine cloth—the best cambric and the glossiest beaver; nay, he would be something the gainer by a waistcoat of gold-smeared velvet, and, at least, a chain of silver. To make iniquity or sorrow bearable, it is highly necessary that it should be properly dressed. Hence, reader, I, Barabbas Whitefeather, instructed by the better spirit of the age, forego my first Utopian purpose, and leaving the full history of swindling to be written by a future college of sages, shall confine myself more immediately to the existing wants of the world—shall attend to the crying necessities of the present generation. Controlled by my better genius, I renounce folios.
After all, the world has not, as I at first superficially believed, so keen a want of a complete history of swindling: for how many books have been written which, although not professedly treating of the theme, are, by their very subject, works of reference and authority in the matter! What, for instance, is much of Ancient History? What The Lives of the Roman Emperors? What The History of Conquests? What The History of Discovery—from the first finding of Mesopotamia to the last providential flight upon New Zealand? If men will read not with their eyes alone, but with understanding hearts, how much is there in all these works, in all these narratives, that is indeed no other than materials for a complete body of swindling? Loose pearls that need stringing—scattered lights to be brought to one point? Indeed, to a contemplative mind, to a reader properly prepared for the perusal of history and biography, it is almost impossible for him to open a volume from which he should not gather knowledge of a swindling kind. It is often the very staple of a book, though to the shame of many writers, I grieve to say it, the subject is most ungenerously disguised under foreign trappings—passed off under a false name. Hence, reflecting that if men will look round them, they are not wholly destitute of works containing the philosophy of swindling on a grand historical scale—on an enlarged and transcendental plan—I shall endeavour to prevail upon myself to become merely useful, leaving it to the poorly ambitious to glitter and to soar. Let other men make pedestals to themselves of unopened folios; they have their veneration—they are talked of, never read. I—I will descend among the crowd—will mix with my fellow-creatures—will right and left scatter among the children of innocence a “Handbook”—a veritable tome to be carried between the thumbs and fingers of men in their paths by day, and like a guardian and protecting genius to nestle in their bosoms at night. Yes, it shall be no large carcass of a book; no literary mammoth of a bygone time; a load for a shelf; but a light and dainty fairy for the palm. A “Handbook!”—Yes, there is a freshness, a beauty, a truthfulness in the name; it shall be “The Handbook of Swindling!” Uncut folios, avaunt! and, thick as humming-birds in tropic groves, “Handbooks,” in green and gold, trim your glowing winglets and flutter among men.[[11]]
[11]. The reader will perceive from the self-complacency with which the author talks of “Handbook,” that he would pass the compound as purely one of his own invention. The editor, however, conceives it to be a part of his stern duty to state that a book printed at Baden-Baden, where the Captain was wont to retire in autumn for the benefit of the waters and other benefits—a book entitled (we give the English) “The Handbook of Cogging,” was found among the Captain’s other literary effects. He had, doubtless, forgotten that Handbook was from Handbuch.—[John Jackdaw, Ed.]
Having resolved upon the mode in which I shall benefit humanity, having come to the determination to contract myself into the smallest possible size, that I may the more deftly make my way among the crowd, it is but due to myself—it is but just to my readers—to make known in a few words the extent and range of my purpose. That purpose is, I am proud to feel it, of the best wisdom, of the noblest benevolence; it is to make every man—at least every thinking, reasonable man, for I write not to blockheads—a Swindler. Yes; it is my aim to render him, at all points, armed for the contest of life—to prepare him for the cutting and thrusting and picking and stealing of this eventful passage. It is my purpose to make known a few golden rules—the result of a long and various experience—by which the attentive and quick-witted student may learn to play with men as he would play with pieces of chess, by which every move on the board of life may be his own, to the utter discomfiture of a plodding and merely painstaking opponent. And in all this there shall be nothing legally forbidden; nothing that shall suddenly shock your delicate nostrils, reader, with the smell of hemp: no, no; though turnkeys and the hangman walk about you, if you are an apt scholar, you shall snap your fingers at them, and swindle securely.
“And now,” thinks the reader,—for I know his thoughts as well as I know my own whiskers,—“now the book begins to open; now the work warms up.” Be not impatient.
Impressed as I am with the purpose of this inestimable little work, it befits the dignity of that purpose that there should be no unseemly haste, no helter-skelter in the communication of ideas. Were I writing the “Handbook of Egg-Sucking,” or any such domestic treatise, I might jump into my subject; but “Swindling” is not to be approached irreverently.
Its influence on the happiness of society is to be duly considered, that the maxims by which it is the hope of the author to recommend it may have their due weight upon the disciple; who, when he shall learn that swindling is, indeed, synonymous with self-preservation, will brush up his hair, take breath, and then, unless he have no more sensibility than a stock or stone, lapse into a state of the profoundest and most admiring attention. Yes; I was right—the pupil is now all ears.