The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-02-14

said one of the party who >d1d not trust the stranger But when the race had been won he appeared with their win nigs and distributed them. Just before the Grand Pr1x he asked his hotel ac- quaintances to back the English horse for him.
 T only want to put on hundred francs, " he said But he could find noth- ing smaller than a 1,000-franc note. Tt is nuisance" said he, T want to get back to Paris without waiting for the race. And after all, I don't know you, do I, to the tune of G4?'
 The Englishman laughed and gave him 90 francs change. They never saw him again. and both the 1,0OO-franc note and the smaller notes in which he had paid them their former winnings proved to be sham ones.
 But the clerevest swindle of all of winch I have heard this season was worked by an Englishman. A well known theatrical manager of my ac- quaintance, on visit to Paris was as- tonished to see man whom he knew well by sight and recognized as a mem Der of the "swell mob talking to a woman and her daughter, people in so- ciety. He took an early opportunity of warning them against the man, but they laughed.
 Captain Thomson" they said (this was the name adopted by the swindler). lis a man of means. We have known him for some time. He occupies one of the best suites in the. hotel and far from getting money from us, he has brought us money" Little by little the theatrical manager discovered what Captain Thomson" was doing.
 He had made the wonen's acquain- tanec and had actually proposed to the younger one. Every now and then, on his return from the races, he brought them small sums of money which he had taken the liberty of winning for them." He recouped himself by ganb- ling with the womens friends and in the course of few weeks he had made i several thousand pounds out of two or three men whom they knew we'll m three men who, having been introduced to him by women whom they knew well had no suspicion that they were in the hands of a sharper.
 But thieves and sharpers are by no means the only pitfalls awaiting the unwary visitor to Paris. A tremendous trade is done here in bogue theater tickets, and it is very unsafe to take tickets for theatre or a music hall anywhere except at the official box off, flee Outside every theater in Paris are men with tickets for sale, and even if the tickets they sell be, as they often are, perfectly genuine ones, the unof- ficial vendors exact enormous prices for them, basing the price asked upon the gulllbility of the buyer
 As for bad money that, in the sum mer season is almost unavoidable. Numbers of walters in the cafes fre- quented by foreigners keep stores of Peruvian f1ve-franog pieces and other unnegotiable coins to be avoided shrd trnnegotiable coins in special pocket, and plant them on their customers. I could fill this column with a list of the coins to be avoided, but a good gen. eral rule is to refuse anything that is not French, and that is not coin either of the Third Republic or of the Second Empire. You should be careful that all the heads of Napoiean III. have their laurel wreaths upoHsAhem. Others will not pass.
 And now for one last word of warn ing. Avoid the so-called guides who of fer their services on fthe boulevards and around about their neighborhood I will not go so far as to say that there are no honest men among them but there are certainly not very many, and the best of them all can show you nothing that you cannot find for pouself. All the shows in Paris advertise in the newspapers and on the round columns on the boulevards. And you can get all necessary information as to where to go from five Paris cabmen out of six.
 Even if the guide does not rob You by picking you rpocket (and this he does comparatively rarelyl he is of no real value to you And, as he is known in every place to which he takes you, the expenses of your trip around are in- creased by about 100 per cent. so that the guide may be given his heavy com mission on everything for winch you pay.-Parls correspondence London Ex- press