The Baltimore County union., 1882-12-09

addressing the crowd, this is your mon.
ey, is II p yes said a dozen. 'And
you give it up freely for the rings?' yes,
came again in chorus. Very well,
here's 20 cents for you. sir, and 20 cents
for you, sir, and so on around the
crowd. They commenced to wonder
what in the world | meant; said I was
crazy, and lot OF other things, but !
only told them was advertising goods
for my house, and had plenty more
things to give away. Next took up
some Of my handsome diamond studs,
which explained were Lake George
diamonds, equal to any on earth, etc, ,
and that was going to sell them from
IS cents up, the more one paid the bet
ter il would be, of course, for him.
Twenty studs were soon out, and the
same speech made. Then | made the
crowd hold up the diamonds, and each
man got so cents back who had bought.
"The thing began to get very inter-
esting, and the crowd numbered goo or
400. Then l got out some beautiful
gold-plated sleeve-buttons, which ex
planned could not be bought for less
than sIs. These proposed to sell for
fifty cents each, giving to all who bought
dollar additional rs before each time
doubling the money gift The buttons
soon went Off, rs had the other things,
and Twas ready for the final "btc" at the
crowd. The twenty pairs Of slccve-but
tons had been sold for half n dollar,
and had given back twenty silver dol
lars. "rhc fellows n darned fool" 4"
! heard all around me, but replied to
this by saying that las, week, in Macon,
| had given away SI,5oo, and that |
was ready to do i, again.
"lhc crowd was perfectly crazy to
see what come next. II was watch
chains. The chains was to sell at any
price from So. so to anything above that
one wanted TO give, | telling them the
while that the more they paid the bet
ter it would be for them. hnted that
the watches would come next, and this
let them off like lot of madmen. The
trick now was to sell as many chains as
possible at s2.5o. ! had devil OF a
lot of chains, and so | sent them on;
right and left. The dollars came rush.
ing blindly at me, and raked them in
like chad. Then got out OF chains.
previously had prepared two big
red silk handkerchiefs, exactly alike, and
as soon As the chains were all sold took
the money, and, in the presence OF the
crowd, tied it ali up together, and, after
making speech, proposed TO throw the
bundle into the crowd for the best man
to take. While talking purposely
dropped the bundle into my box by my
side, in which had the other handker-
chief. In this was $40 in silver and
some paper to make it stand out and
look like the one had dropped. All
this had been arranged beforehand, OF
course. With awhoop swung the bag
around my head after STOPPING to pick
it up where l first dropped il, and up it
went into the air. Great heavens you
should have seen the mob never saw
anything like it. They fought like III
gers over the handkerchief, while took
occasion TO leave the spot. | had also
arranged to bring the thing to 4 climax
about the time the Albany train left, so
! was driven At once to the depot.
was just s,So ahead. But / got very
weak in the knees while waiting at the
depot. was little too soon, and about
a dozen young men ran up, raising the
very mischief of noise, which thought
was for me, and it proved to be true
They saw me and came around me,
laughing and knocking each other like
crazy men. Ididn't know what on earth
was the matter, until they finally told
me it was the bes, joke that had ever
been played on Brunswick, and although
they had been vic,imized. they wanted
to assure me it was all right.
al had sold the chains to nearly all
the best men in Brunswick, some of them
paying me rs high As IS for them. l
was satisfied to leave, and had my re
vcnge. You may pu, it down for fact
that any average American crowd can
be humbugged the same way every day
in the year"