Pictures from Life. WHY THE MAGSMAN SMILED.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1872, 5 July 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Pictures from Life. WHY THE MAGSMAN SMILED.

Seated at a table near the window of a Bleeker-street restaurant not far from Mulberry street, a daintily dressed magsman wag sipping a cup of coffee yesterday morning, On the opposite side of the street was a young man with a heavy trunk. The young man alternately rolled and dragged the trunk laboriously aloi q toward the Bowery. " Makes hard woik of it," said an acquaintance near by, who was also watching the young man and the trunk. The magsman's face grew grave at once. " Yes," he said, " but I wouldn't laugh at his misfortune. The trunk made me think of a game we often work with cheering success. My father always taught me to cultivate a cheerful disposition. He probably would not have advised me to take my present profession as a means to that end, but there is nothing like it for real pleasant reminiscences. It has been many years since the trunk game was imported from Paris. To work it some money is needed for postaae, some printed letter paper and envelopes, and a list of rural addresses. The letter paper should have the cut of a large hotel, and a neat heading printed on it. Envelopes should be similarly printed. Then to each address a letter is written like this : Office of the Commercial Eesort, ) New York, 1884. i Mr. John Smith, Smithville — Dear Sir: Your brother Henry, who has been stopping with us for g. few days, died suddenly in his room last night. The house surgeon says he died of heart disease. He was writing you a letter at the time, the writing portion of which we enclose. His body is now with Hopkinson &Hopkinson, undertakers, 1187 Seventh Avenue, awaitirfg your orders. His effects, consisting of a large trunk full of wearing apparel, a heavy repeating gold watch with gold neck-chain, a diamond pin, and a new revolver, will be forwarded to you by express on receipt of twenty dollars, the amount of his board bill due us. Permit us to express our regrets that you should suffer this loss. Respectfully yours, J. Plant ujenet Brown , Proprietor. N.B. — You can send a twenty-dollar bill loose in a well-sealed envelope. " The unfinished letter reads thus : New York, , 1884. Henry Smith, Esq., Smithville. — Dear Brother : Although not f " Thi3 is written in a different hand entirely, and the last two words are jumbled up." " Yes ; but any one who got that letter would know that he had no brother Henry in New York," said the mag's acquaintance. "Certainly he would. That makes me laugh. He thinks he will get a gold repeater, and a diamond pin, and a gold neck-chain, and a new revolver, for twenty dollars. He may wonder how it happened that che deceased was writing to him, but in his desire to get portable property he does not reason much. Why, we've even had them come on to see us, we've coralled them in one or two hotels where Menus Jive, and we've taken in the sequins every time. The last time* l worked that racket I got in nearly seven hundred dollars in thiee weeks." — The Argonaut.