But I took no further interest in the proceedings. In Western parlance, I had been “done brown.” The men were confederates, and all that was left for me to do was to swallow my medicine without grimacing. So I smiled blandly, congratulated them on their acting, and left them to marvel at man’s credulity.
It all sounds very foolish and easy, set down in black and white, but the San Franciscan “confidence man,” by long and unhampered practice, has reduced his methods to a fine art; and although it is hardly likely that any respectable, level-headed reader of The Wide World would fall a victim to his wiles, such a thing has been known to occur to others, and if the foregoing personal experience helps to put these on their guard, the purpose of its recounting will be served.
II.—A SHARP LESSON.
By R. L. C. Morrison.
In November of the year 1885, when I had reached the mature age of seventeen, I found myself in Glasgow, my native city, in the service of an uncle of mine named Mr. James Thomson, who was a merchant tailor and Colonial outfitter in Hope Street.
One afternoon towards the end of the month my uncle gave me instructions to call at the offices of a well-known firm in the neighbourhood of Jamaica Street.
I was to collect an account, whose total represented a substantial sum, and give a receipt for the money. There would, I was told, be no difficulty about drawing what was due, as the firm in question had duly intimated to my uncle that if he would present the account on a certain date payment would be made then and there.
It was close upon three o’clock when I put in an appearance at the counting-house of the firm, taking up my position in a somewhat extended queue of clerks and others who had arrived on the same errand as myself.
The queue was arranged in single file along a passage of considerable length on the second storey, to reach which a flight of something like a score of steps had to be ascended.
Right away at the far end of this passage was what had all the appearance of a railway station booking office, where, behind a square aperture of limited dimensions, stood the sharp-witted cashier.