DECEPTION
John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers, talking about unfair methods in use at the mines for weighing coal, said:
This method is most unfair. The fist-and-pound method, in fact, was scarcely worse. The fist-and-pound method originated, they say, in Scranton. A simple-minded old lady ran a grocery store there. A man came in one day and asked for a pound of bacon. The old lady cut off a generous chunk of bacon, and then, going to weigh it, found that she had mislaid her pound weight. “Dear me,” she said, “I can’t find my pound-weight anywhere.” The man, seeing that there was about two pounds in the chunk cut off, said hastily: “Never mind. My fist weighs a pound.” And he put the bacon on one side of the scales and his fist on the other. The two, of course, just balanced. “It looks kind o’ large for a pound, don’t it?” asked the old lady as she wrapt the bacon up. “It does look large,” said the man, as he tucked the meat under his arm. “Still—” But just then the old lady found her pound-weight. “Ah,” she said in a relieved voice, “now we can prove this business. Put it on here again.” But the man wisely refrained from putting the bacon on the scales to be tested. He put on his fist again instead. And his fist, you may be sure, just balanced the pound-weight. The old lady was much pleased. “Well done,” she said, “and here’s a couple o’ red herrin’ for yer skill and honesty.” (Text.)—New York Sun.
(701)
One evening, as Vincent de Paul, the distinguished French priest, was returning from a mission, he found a beggar lying against the wall. The wretch was engaged in maiming an infant, in order to excite more compassion from the public when he went to beg. Vincent, horror-struck at the sight, cried, “Ah, you savage! you have deceived me. At a distance I mistook you for a man.” Then he took the little victim in his arms and carried him to the crèche, where foundlings were kept.—Edward Gilliat, “Heroes of Modern Crusades.”
(702)
See [Sampling].
DECEPTION EXPOSED
“Don’t try to make musicians out of all children indiscriminately and thus you will avoid such household conversations as one I overheard the other day,” said Baron Kaneko of Japan, who has been spending the summer in the Maine woods.