A SMART TRICK.

Evening Star, Issue 3380, 19 December 1873, Page 3

A SMART TRICK.

A clever and rather novel mode of employing telegraphic forms is thus described by Snyder, in the Auckland “ Herald - It was very artful, and he gloried in it; he thought it was rather smart. So it was. It wasn’t bacon, nor it wasn’t ham, but it was something in that line of business. It was an article scarce in the Auckland market. It was scarce pretty generally throughout the Colony. A trader in it says to a customer, “ The article is uncommon scarce. I’m going to hold at pi esent for a stiff price, and I’m just going down to the telegraph office.” Well, you know how careless people are when they are writing out telegrams from a copy they prepared. They forget and leave the copy behind them on the telegraph desk. Well, the trader I refer to went down to the telegraph office to tell his agents to hold on for a very stiff price, when what should stand between him and his gaze but the rough copy of a telegram left carelessly and unthinkingly among the telegraph forms. It read this way: “I have 25,000 bushels afloat. Will be a drug in the market in a fortnight. Sell all you can at any figure." Then the trader was taken aback, and instead of telling his agents to hold, he told them to realise at any figure. And they realised, and the agents of tnat man who had so forgetfully left the telegraph message on the telegraph office desk bought the whole stock, and cleared the matter of three hundred pounds. There was no 25,000 bushels afloat. Ihe article was scarce ;it is scarce now. But it is too late now for the trader to tell his agents to hold, after ho had told them to let go—and they let go. But he won’t act, upon any fnture occasion, upon information loft outside the window of a telegraph office. Fcr that telegraph message was a “ plant.” No copy of it was ever sent. It was a smart trick, wasn’t it ? but not a clean cne.