The Birmingham age-herald., 1903-04-19
OLD GAMBLERS SCHEME THAT WORKED VERY WELL
From the New York snn.

 rieh-quick schemes. nowadays" said the old-time gambler and reckon from what l hear. that likely there's a good many more of 'em in operation than ever there was before. but I can't see that there's anything new in any of 'em.
 T reckon people have always put up jobs of one sort or another to get other folkss money. ever since there was any such thing as money in use. In the old Bible stories that l used to hear when I was a kid there were things that led me to think they weren't so slow as they might have been even before the mail order business was started and before the Wall street syndicates were thought of. If l remember right, Joseph engineer ed the first corner in wheat, and he came by his talents honestly enough for his father came to be a cattle baron in a way that would shame the meat trust to- day.
 Pm not throwing these things up against the old patriarchs They only go to show that the main thing always has been to get the other fellows money, and there always have been get-rieh-quick schemes, just as there always will be.
 And they're good things, too. The only
 
 careful about is to get on the right end. | If you're the man that handles the money. you're all right but if you're the man that puts 1t in you're left.
 I've seen good many games of one kind and another played in my day and | l won't say but what I've had a good deal to do with some of em. Being a gambler all my life, I've always been out for the money, and whenever I've found a man that was after mine I've always felt that l had a right to his if l could get it.
 "If he was smarter than me and could 1 get away with the stuff I never squealed. and if l got away with 1t l never felt any compunctions. l never stole dollar and l never broke my word if l made prom ise. but if l could get the best of the man that was trying to get the best of me I always looked on 1t as part of the game.
 'As I said I've seen a good many tricks | turned one way or another, but l think l the one that was altogether the slckest of any was a combination l made once with fellow in Denver that lasted about a month. Say, l made more easy money that month than l ever made before or since, and if the combination hadn't | busted as it did, he and l would have | been multi milionaires inside of five years. It was simply great, and as near as l could figure it there wasn't any way to beat our little game that anybody was likely to tumble to.
 "This man-Pm not going to tell you his real name, so I'll call him smth-came to Denver along In the S0s when Colo l rado was on the boom, and gave a little | bum show of his own in a small hall there that I went to see out of curiosity. He was a queer, long-haired, wld-eyed man about 40, that had a great gift of gab, and Q much greater gift of what was called mesmerism in those days The word | hypnotism wasn't so well known then as it is now, and they hadn't started in to give new names to the old game so Smith simply called himself a mesmerist. Well, the show was about as poor a one as you'd want to see and yet it fas cinated me right from the jump. The l trouble was that Smith hadn't the first notion of how to put up his game so as to interest the people that came in.
 ''1n the first place he was like the parrot in the story. He talked too much. Then, he didn't seem to know which of his queer performances were really in teresting and valuable, and which were simply queer without being valuable.
 And he put the whole business out in a. hodge-podge fashion that was tiresome to the average man, talking all the time in a way that couldn't possibly interest anybody tha- had ordinary intelligence. He was a mesmerist all right, but a snowman, he wasn't one, two six.
 He had a couple of dope fends with him that he used for some of his eXpcri- ments. Horses, tLey call em in the show business, and he put them through the usual performances sticking pins in them and making them eat raw potatoes and smoke, or try to smoke sticks and all that foolishness which was all well enough, perhaps, for it wasn't such an old story then as it is now but it seem ed poor stuff to me, for l mad seen it done much better by other men,
 But there were some other experi- ments or performances which he went through, that interested me a lot, and l watched him carefully to make sure they were not frauds. He would get somebody in the audience to think of something he had in his pocket and then he would tell what the man was thinking about.
 That is, he would do 1t sometimes and sometimes he wouldn't. .fe explained that it was a thing he didn't altogether un- derstand himself, although he tried to give a sort of an explanation of it. As nobody else could understand the eX- planation, and he didn't appear to un- derstand it himself, it didn't help matters much. But the trick itself gave me an idea.
 ''I looked around the room carefully to see If shere was anybody there who knew me, and when l found there was not I took q sneak. l knew that Smith stopped at the same hotel that l did, and l made it my business to find out what room he had. without asking anybody. My first business was to get a little private talk with him, without any one else knowing about it.
 That proved easy enough. It was late when he went to his room, and l fol- lowed him without attracting notice. He was little uneasy at first, but l told him l wanted to talk business that would mean a lot of money for him and he listened.
 First l questioned him about this power that he had or seemed to have. of read ing what some other man had in his mind. Thought transference they call 1t now. l believe
 He said he had 1t in some cases. That is, he could tell what some people were thinking if he fixed his own mind on 1t carefully, but he couldn't do 1t at all with other people.
 Then l asked him to test me. and find out if he could read my thoughts, and to my great delight l found he could to some extent. He could tell what par ticuar thing I had in mind if l fixed my thoughts on it. and he could read figures and amounts that I thought of.
 "I tried him over and over, and I satis- fled myself that there was no question about it. l don't pretend to understand it any better than he did but I'm sure Smith could do just that thing, for I've proved it over and over again. And then