THE
SHARPER DETECTED AND EXPOSED.
[AN ANECDOTE BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION.]
A DANGEROUS PROFESSOR.
Whatever, dear reader, may be the value you attach to the knowledge of the knaveries I am about to reveal to you, you will assuredly never pay so dearly for them as I have.
You will easily understand, that the tricks and impostures exposed in this work, are not the inventions of my own brain. I have collected them, one by one, from sharpers, or have been obliged to find them out as best I could.
My researches have been both difficult and dangerous. Sharpers do not willingly part with the arts on which they depend for their livelihood; and, moreover, you are driven, by your investigations, into a society which may often expose you to serious personal risk.
When I was but a novice in the art of legerdemain, I often went, as I have mentioned in my "Confessions," to the house of a manufacturer of articles used for jugglery, named Père Roujol, hoping to meet there some lover of magic, or professor of the art of legerdemain.
The kind Père Roujol had taken a great fancy to me; he knew my passion for what he termed "natural philosophy rendered amusing," and took pleasure in giving me these opportunities of obtaining useful hints on the subject.
He spoke to me one day, of a man named Elias Hausheer, whom he had met at a "café."
"This man," said he to me, "appears very clever, but from a few words he let fall, it strikes me that he makes more use of his dexterity in winning at play, than for the harmless amusement of the public."