Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1884-05-23

offered fabulous sums, finds his con.
science sinking into ruins. Mrs. Sens
tor Y. will never know of the fraud
which he is tempted to perpetraGe. uA-
less he tells her; so he yields and fur
nishes her an imitation so artful. so
good, that it dims the radiance of tn ~
QUESTION in which, Mrs. General X. was
beginning to revel. gentleman sends
to the Figaro a letter announcing that
he was one evening in one of the curl
osity shops in the Rue de Lafayette
when the postman came in and handed
the merchant a letter. He read it and
laughed. 1t was q proposition that the
dealer in curios should take stock in q
company organized expressly ''for the
manufacture of Old Rouen ware" aud
this company was to start with q capt.
tai of 1000, 900 francs, dividedinto 200
shares of 500 francs each.
This knavery is not new. Many such
companies have been formed and run
with marked success for the last ten
years. The sums made in spurious
Rouen, Strasbourg and Nevers faience
since 1860 can never be accurately es-
timated, but certainly amount to a
great many millions OF francs. There
is one porcelain factory in France
whose managers have thrown aside
every atom of caution. They issue
price-lists to general dealers conceived
in this wise: ''First quality, extra, mer.
chandise made old, so much" A few
years ago every. dealer who had an inn
portant position made a speciality of the
works Of Palsy. Every old horror,
which. had anything in common with
the epoch in which the great potter
lived was attributed to him; and when a
rage for his productions had been
created, hundreds upon hundreds Of
limitations were launched upon the mar
ket. By-and-by this fraud broke down,
but the dealers, who had meantime dis
covered that the public is eminently
gullible, We're ready with others. They
had the marks of time and hard usage
adroitly placed upon new ware by a
variety of ingenious processes, and
could produce at a moments notice an
Old Rouen which seemed to be a verit-
able trouVaSUe. 1t was some time be-
fore they dared to begin the forging OF
signatures, but when they would enter
upon it theydid it wholesale. A clever
amateur "a take a common white
plate, worth fifteen cents. decorate it in
imitation of old fond de cuir Rouen fai-
ence, put a tiny Cupid with his culver
in the midst of an old and rather an
g.alar blue, yellow, and black ornamen-
talon, and can give this to a dealer,
who will in time sell it to some rich,
and possibly cultivated, American, En-
llshman, Russian, or native of Rouen
for $500 or 5000 francs. Is it a won
der that the dealers got rich?
One of the tricks which the mer-
chants practice is very acute. A man
who is in the movement will go into
some large provincial town-such as
Rouen, or Tours, or Ales, or Avignon
which is much frequented by tour
lists, and will arrange for owners of a
certain house or a half a dozen houses
to have plaques OF porcelain,
beautifully gotten up in imitation Of
the ancient, placed in re csses above the
doors Or gateways of their mansions.
When this is done he enters into another
arrangement with the local guides or
couriers to take the tourists to see these
porcelains, to detail their great age and
value, and finally hint that they might
be purchased. If an unlucky traveller
snaps ut the bait and inquiries OF the
family whether the porcelain can be had
he meets with a rebuff which merely
serves to heighten his desire. The fam
lily pretend to be offended, and the cour-
Ter intimates that the way to get the
coveted object will be to apply to the
great Paris dealer, MI. So-and-s 80, who
always succeeds in whatever he under
takes. In due time, and after delayr and
%"unheard-of diificult.es" the swindled
party gets the porcelain and pays zoe
or 800 times what it is worth, besides
gratefully handing over a commission to
the individual who ''put up the job"
AS the result of the universal swind.
ling now practiced in the sale of objects
of an artistic nature anewrace of men
who may be called the buyers guides
is @@springing up. These men are spe.
cially endowed with power to tell. by
sight, smell, and sound, whether or not
a ''Rouen or Strasbourg faience" is
genuine; and buyers will soon be en-
tire,y dependent on them.
1t remains to be said that many ofthe
initial 'ons are quite as beautiful as the
originals. The public needs now to Sc
cure them at a reasonable price, and to
have them in 40 way confused with the
older ones. But the dealers will make
a sharp fight before they will submit to
this.-PdrIS Cor. N. Y. Eyeninq Post,