CHAPTEE XXIX.

THE SPIDER AND THE FLY —MOCK AUCTIONS, BOGUS HORSE
SALES AND OTHER TRAPS FOR THE UNWARY — PERSONAL
EXPERIENCES.

Ingenious Lawyers — S-windling Advertisements — Mock Auctions — My Own
Experience — Mr. Barmore's Purchases—Socks "By the Dozen" — A
Stool-Pigeon — The Merchant from Trenton — I am Trapped —A Sudden
Cessation of Business — Putting it do-wn to Experience — Perennial Buyers

— What '' By the Dozen " Means — A Mean Swindle — Easily Taken in —
Base Counterfeits — Bogus Horse-Dealers — The Gentleman " Just Going
to Europe" — A "Private Stable"—A Considerate Horse-Owner — Busi-
ness-Like Methods—A Breathless Stranger Arrives on the Scene—"An¬
derson of New Haven " — A Chance to Make Fifty Dollars in Five Minutes

— A Warm Discussion — A " Doctored " Horse — A Trusty Groom— A
Critical Inspection — Arrival of Mr. Wakeman—"Dr. Bryan's" Office —
"Just Around the Corner" — Looking for the Doctor—Where He Was
Found—A Muddy PHght — Tears and Smiles.

LEGISLAT0E8 have for a long time sought to put an end
to a form of swindling carried on under the pretence of
selling goods at auction. Lawyers have exhausted their inge¬
nuity in framing measures for the suppression of the mock-auc¬
tion fraud, but every time they secure the passage of a bill Y'ith
that object in view, somebody equally shrewd wfll discover a
loop-hole in it. The snake has been scotched but not killed;
some of the mock auctions have been broken up, whfle others
continue to flourish.

The heaviest blow was struck when the law required that
auctions should be advertised in the daily papers with the list
of the articles to be sold. This put an end to the establishments
along Park Eow and Chatham Street, Y'here the swindling was
very thinly disguised, but it did not strike some of the "dry-
goods auctions " on Broadway. All that was necessary to do
to evade the law was to keep a standing advertisement in an

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