urchasing the tickets and outfits, but,
once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard ship he
is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not
truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely
graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching
England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe
arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being
that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who
pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage
attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms
on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he
expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_
sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending
religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do
as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the
band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous
youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in
France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the
judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on
his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the
threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled
novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

* * * * *

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to
find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of
pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift
concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn
fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total
swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble assurances
that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to
be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real
blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain
inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the
drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be
telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to
Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that
agents may trust