CHAPTER  XLI.

FRAUDS EXPOSED — ACCOMPLISHED ADVENTURERS AND
FASHIONABLE ADVENTURESSES — PEOPLE WHO LIVE BY
THEIR WITS —GETTING A LIVING BY HOOK OR BY CROOK.

Human Harpies—Confiding Boarders — Relieving a Pretty Woman's Em¬
barrassment — The Tables Turned — A Fashionable and Accomplished
Adventuress — Swindlers in Society — Ingenious Money-Making Schemes
— "Engineering Beggars" — Plying a Miserable Trade—"Hushing it
up for His Family's Sake" — Literary Blackmail—Practising upon
Human Vanity — Matrimonial Advertising — A Matrimonial Bureau and
its Victims — Bogus Detectives — A Mean and Contemptible Lot — Run¬
ning with the Hare and Hunting with the Hounds — Getting a Living
by Hook or by Crook — Shyster Lawyers—Quack Doctors Who "Cure
All Diseases " — The Heraldic Swiudler —How Cigar Stumps are Made
Over into Fragrant Havanas — Free-Lunchers and Floaters — Fortune-
Tellers and Clairvoyants — Transparent Stratagems.

ODD and many are the ways of earning a living that are
resorted to by numerous adventurers and adventuresses
in the metropolis ; for society in its varied and complex phases
affords a profltable field for a large army of wily men and
women who live by their wits. There are hundreds of in¬
genious money-making schemes which though by no means
legitimate cannot be dealt with as precisely criminal; and there
is therefore a certain class who, though not professional crimi¬
nals, nevertheless like them obtain a living by preying upon
their fellow-creatures.

I recall the case of a lady, middle-aged but still pretty,
who kept many boarding-houses one after another, all of them
popular and well patronized while they lasted. She was a
woman of education and refinement, of gentle disposition and
confiding nature, and she easily inspired unbounded confidence
in all who knew her. She always managed to interest some
rich old bachelor or widower in her business affairs, with the

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