On relating the adventure to my friends, we came to the conclusion that the man was an impostor, and had purposely dropped the ring and stooped to pick it up immediately in front and for the sole edification of myself, evidently hoping that I should purchase it—probably a sham one—from him.
Two years after the above had occurred, my business—I had abandoned the idea of the Civil service—led me one evening along that wondrous thoroughfare the Strand. Proceeding westwards, about midway between the Temple Bar memorial and Charing Cross, I collided somewhat violently with a man immediately in front of me, who had stooped with the evident intention of picking up something off the ground. He turned round sharply and exclaimed: ‘Did you see that?’ at the same time showing me a gold diamond ring, which he stated he had found on the pavement, and on which he had nearly trodden.
I will not weary the reader with a verbatim account of the conversation which then ensued. Suffice it for me to say that I had recognised in the man before me the pock-marked and squinting hero of the Euston Road of two years before. In order, however, further to convince myself that my impressions as to this were correct, I, apparently taking interest in what he had found, allowed him to do and say, act for act and word for word, all that he did and said on the first occasion of my meeting him. He tested the diamond by cutting glass; said he was a poor messenger earning a pound a week; was even then on one of his errands; thought that the discovery of such a ring in his possession would excite suspicion; and—— Well, I neither need, nor will I, rewrite the whole of the first portion of this narration, for what now took place was its precise counterpart.
I taxed the swindler with having played the same rôle at Euston Station, two years previously.
He replied, in the most naïve manner: ‘Ah, then I was in Liverpool.’ But he was, I suspect, somewhat astonished to find out that I knew him. Again did he ask me to drink with him and to part friends.
It is almost needless to add, that though I might have done the latter, I certainly did not do the former, he being evidently a swindler. And so we separated for the second time, he disappearing up one of the tributary streets of the Strand, I proceeding about my business.
It struck me as being very wonderful that this man, whose profession it doubtless was to entrap people—young and unsuspecting—in the manner I have described, should have on two separate occasions, between which there was an interval of two years, singled out myself as an intended victim to his fraud, since I am but one of tens of thousands of the youth daily to be remarked walking in the London streets. The remarkable blunder of the impostor proves how correct is the well-known proverb, ‘A liar should have a good memory;’ and the facts here narrated may perhaps serve to put others on their guard against the wiles of London street swindlers.
OCCASIONAL NOTES.
INVESTIGATIONS ON LIGHTS AND LIGHTHOUSES.
For some time past a series of observations and experiments have been carried on under the auspices of a Committee of the Elder Brethren of the Trinity House, at the South Foreland, chiefly relating to the measurement of lights by means of a photometer—the invention of Mr Vernon Harcourt—the standard light of which burns with wonderful regularity and uniformity. The Committee are now engaged on a still more interesting series of observations, which are made from the sea, and which will more nearly concern sailors. These experiments and observations for testing the capabilities of various lights will be peculiarly remarkable, as craft of almost all descriptions will be enlisted in this work: the mail-packets, the Peninsular and Oriental liners, pilot vessels of different nationalities, trading-ships, and French cruisers. The electric light, of course, is immensely superior to either gas or paraffine oil; but even this, from its whiteness and dazzling brilliancy, has not been found to be so very much better, in thick hazy weather, than either oil or gas, the reddish-yellow of the latter perhaps showing better through the haze of a sea-fog than the white glare of the former. All these points will, however, be carefully gone into, and every sort of test applied to discover the best and safest light to direct mariners to and by our coasts; and when all is completed, the Committee will record their useful labours in a full Report to the Board of Trade, a document which will possess peculiar interest for all who have at heart the welfare of ships and sailors.