The effect of these announcements is reputed to be excellent. In numerous instances they prevent professionals from revealing their chronic wants; in others, they abash fellows who had made up their minds to arrange for a loan; and in others again, they cripple the hopes formed of a successful swindle.
I have been told, by a person who tried the experiment, that these manifestoes have saved them thousands of dollars a year, and an infinite amount of annoyance besides. Such placards certainly have a fine extinguishing effect upon the flaming ardor of the social highwaymen so superabundant in Gotham.
The length of time that a borrower (outside of business) has been plying his vocation may be determined by the amount he asks for. When he is rather new to the trade, he wishes usually to be accommodated with a loan of five hundred dollars, and, if that sum be inconvenient, he thinks he can get along with something less. He has been known to accept thirty or forty cents on the dollar of his original proposition, and generally it is not safe to offer him any sort of compromise.
After a year or two of genteel swindling, the borrower fixes his demand at from one hundred to fifty dollars, but can be induced to take twenty-five dollars as a sort of instalment on the obligation, which he fancies the community has, in some mysterious manner, incurred.
Ten-dollar swindlers have, for the most part, seen much dishonorable service, and are among the most numerous of their nefarious guild. They are to be found everywhere,—in the street, at the hotels, at the theatres, at the races, even at private parties sometimes,—where they make the stereotyped excuse that they have left their porte-monnaie in another coat, and that they would be profoundly obliged for a trivial loan until the day following.
PETTY IMPOSTORS.
The petty impostors, who solicit loans from five dollars to fifty cents, have usually met with so many rebuffs that they make their approaches with a diffidence that usually undoes them. They mention five dollars with an infirmity of voice, evincing that they have no expectation of obtaining it, and drop down to three, two, or one with a precipitancy revealing their familiarity with disappointment. As a last resort, they inquire dolefully for postal currency representing half a dollar; and it is seldom they fail to get it, through sheer commiseration, from the person besought.
One of the most transparent and impudent orders of swindlers are those who tell you they are in a certain strait, and could be easily helped if they would apply to their father, brother, or some other near relative. But they are too proud, they take pains to inform you, to demean themselves in that fashion, and therefore they have recourse to a stranger on whom they have not the slightest claim. This mode of borrowing, an insult to the lowest intelligence, deserves to be answered with the boot; and yet, as it involves a certain sort of flattery, it frequently meets with a practical response.
It is estimated that, independent of all regular or mercantile transactions, the denizens of New York lose from five to six million dollars annually by swindlers claiming to be philanthropists, reformers, scholars, business men, and gentlemen in temporary distress. These miscellaneous borrowers have pretexts of every kind, all of them appealing to the best part of our common nature, if they were only true.