The age-herald., 1900-10-21
SKETCHES FROM q.
 EVERY DAY LIFE
BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM

and craek-loo again absorbed his attention as well as his money. Finding that gam bling hourished better in the seaports than business he left there and moved inland He opened a fruit stand in a town where he had no rivals. Here his luck changed again, and he made money, or rather he stole it. Apples worth a cent he would sell for five; grapes worth twenty cents he would sell for forty; twenty-five cent pFne- apples for a dollar and so on. It was mo- nopoly and highway robbery at the same time. He loved to cheat. It was a great joke to him to sell some fine-lookfng straw berries. and while wrapping them up sub stitute an inferior article. He enjoyed the slight of hand. He took as much pride In it as Hermann in his tricks. The strange thing about it all was that people would continue to trade with him. Truly, there must be fascination in being cheated, or there may have been some idea of a con- test between the sellers wits and the buy CTS. The buyer as a rule was always out classed by Joe. He would cheat you and tell you so at the time, and enjoy it all as a huge joke. It was not so funny to the one cheated. It was funny to others. It got to be habit among some who knew him well to stand by and watch him fill pint measure with bad plums and secretly cov- the top with good ones. Then he would place the pint measure in a basket of good pums and wait like spider for some fly to come along and buy. The fly always came; Joe would sell him the plums, and the fly would go away, while Joe and his friends would chuckle over his coming dis appointment. Nothing abashed him. To call him cheat was unction to his soul A failure in all things else, he a sue cess as a robber.
 Joe's prosperity in this town brought oth- CT Greeks. Opposition sprang up. As prof its dwinded Joe gambled the more His favorite game was crack-loo He would get some Greek whom he could bully and take him in the rear of his store and toss dol lars at a crack in the floor. It was a case of heads I win. and tails you lose. If Joe's dollar came nearest the crack he took the stakes as a matter of course; if not, then it was always a matter of dispute The distance must be measured to see whose dollar was nearest the line. Joe always did the measuring, and in doing it could al- ways manage to slide his dollar a little nearer the line than the other. The cheat was quite apparent. The otner Greek WOulu exclaim, He cheata me!'' and give up tho dollar. There was some wonderful fasci- nation about being cheated by Joe. He swindled everybody; yet they would come back and be cheated again. It was kind of voluntary tax or tribute that every one paid to his genius.
 .ff. Yet with all his cheating he lost money. As long as he kept to crack-loo, where the stakes were one dollar toss, he won mon- ey. But those he played with would grow tired of crack-loo and suggest poker. If crack-loo was his Austerlitz, poker was his Waterloo. He could not always cheat at poker and he would lose money. This he could not stand. When he lost money he lost his head, and would bet heavily and wildly.
 Thus his business was again interrupted by the sheriff. He is now in Birmingham preparing to open fruit store. So if you intend to buy fruit, look out.
 F. H. M.