scovery, by this time. If he
does not, any American can tell him--any American to whom he will show
his anecdotes. It was "put up" on him, as we say. It was a jest--to be
plain, it was a series of frauds. To my mind it was a poor sort of jest,
witless and contemptible. The players of it have their reward, such as
it is; they have exhibited the fact that whatever they may be they are
not ladies. M. Bourget did not discover a type of coquette; he merely
discovered a type of practical joker. One may say the type of practical
joker, for these people are exactly alike all over the world. Their
equipment is always the same: a vulgar mind, a puerile wit, a cruel
disposition as a rule, and always the spirit of treachery.

In his Chapter IV. M. Bourget has two or three columns gravely devoted
to the collating and examining and psychologizing of these sorry
little frauds. One is not moved to laugh. There is nothing funny in
the situation; it is only pathetic. The stranger gave those people his
confidence, and they dishonorably treated him in return.

But one must be allowed to suspect that M. Bourget was a little to blame
himself. Even a practical joker has some little judgment. He has to
exercise some degree of sagacity in selecting his prey if he would save
himself from getting into trouble. In my time I have seldom seen such
daring things marketed at any price as these conscienceless folk have
worked off at par on this confiding observer. It compels the conviction
that there was something about him that bred in those speculators a
quite unusual sense of safety, and encouraged them to strain their
powers in his behalf. They seem to have satisfied themselves that all
he wanted was "significant" facts, and that he was not accustomed to
examine the source whence they proceeded. It is plain that there was a
sort of conspiracy against him almost from the start--a conspiracy to
freight him up with all the strange extravagances those people's decayed
brains could invent.

The lengths to which they went are next to incredible. They told him
things which surely would have excited any one else's suspicion, but
they did not excite his. Consider this:

"There is not in all the United States an entirely nude
statue."

If an angel should come down and say such a thing about heaven, a
reasonably cautious observer would take that angel's number and inquire
a little further before he added it to his catch. What does the