y a workman, like
another, earning his living, and that nothing can be accomplished save
by ceaseless industry and untiring toil. Like many another hero, Langdon
W. Moore was born in New England, and was brought up at Newburyport,
a quiet seaport town. The only sign of greatness to be detected in
his early life was an assault upon a schoolmaster, and he made ample
atonement for this by years of hard work upon a farm. He was for a while
a typical hayseed, an expert reaper, ready to match himself against all
comers. He reached his zenith when he was offered fifty dollars in gold
for six weeks' toil, and he records with a justified pleasure that
"no man had ever been paid such high wages as that." But his energetic
spirit soon wearied of retirement, and he found his way to New York,
not to be fleeced, like the hayseed of the daily press, but to fleece
others. The gambling hells knew him; he became an adept at poker and
faro; and he soon learned how to correct or to compel fortune. His first
experiment was made upon one Charley White, who dealt faro bank every
Saturday night; and it is thus that Moore describes the effect of an
ingenious discovery:

He kept his box and cards in a closet adjoining his room. One night
during his absence I fitted a key to his closet, took out his cards, and
sand-papered the face of eight cards in each deck. I then removed the
top of his faro-box, bulged out the centre of the front plate at the
mouth, and filed the plate on the inside at both corners to a bevel. I
then replaced the top, put in a deck of cards, and made a deal. I found
the cards not sanded would follow up and fill the mouth of the box after
each turn was made; and if the mouth remained dark and the edge of the
top card could not be seen, one of the sand-papered cards was next, and
a loser. This would give me several "dead" turns in each deal.

By this means the great man, still despised as a Boston bean-eater, was
able to bring his adversary to ruin. The adversary at last discovered
the artifice, and "for the next five years," to quote Moore's own words,
"we met as strangers."

It will be seen that from his earliest days Moore possessed a scientific
ingenuity, which the hard experience of life rapidly improved. And
it was not long before a definite direction was given to his talent.
Arrested in 1856, as he thought unjustly, he determined "to do no more
work until obliged to do it for the State." He therefore turned his
skill