It would puzzle a philologer to give an exact definition of the
‘sell.’ Nearly related to the hoax, it differs from it in being more
innocent in its inception and less mischievous in its consequences.
Some little ingenuity is required to concoct a happy ‘sell;’ but any
one may perpetrate a hoax who is equal to ‘lending a lie the confidence
of truth.’ The latter is a deliberately planned deception, oftenest
attaining its end by personation or forgery or something closely akin
to it; whereas a sell needs no such playing with edged tools, and may
not only be unpremeditated, but even unintentional.
The Irishman who undertook to shew an exciseman a private still, and
introduced him to his brother, who had been twelve years in the army
and was a private still, sold the guardian of the revenue very neatly;
although it is possible the victim of the joke did not see the fun
of the thing, any more than the official of the North London Railway
Company did, when, overhearing a third-class passenger aver that any
one could travel from Broad Street to Dalston Junction without a
ticket, as he had done only the day before, he interviewed him when he
alighted. The traveller not proving communicative, the zealous railway
servant conveyed a coin into his hand, and then asked: ‘How did you
go from Broad Street to Dalston Junction yesterday without a ticket?’
‘Oh,’ was the unwelcome reply, ‘I walked!’
As readily trapped was the amateur musician who responded to the
advertisement: ‘Wanted, a trombone-player for Barnum’s Balcony Band,’
by waiting upon the famous showman without delay.
‘You want a trombone-player?’ inquired he.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Barnum.
‘What is the place worth?’ asked the applicant.
‘Oh, about twenty-five dollars a week, I suppose.’
‘Very well, I should like it.’
‘All right,’ said Mr Barnum; and the trombone did frightful execution
through the week. Saturday came, and with it Mr Green for his salary,
instead of drawing which, he received a paper on which was written: ‘Mr
Green to Mr P. T. Barnum.—To playing the trombone on his Balcony one
week, twenty-five dollars.’ The recipient smiled.
‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ asked Mr Barnum.
‘Why,’ said the musician, ‘you’ve made an odd mistake: you’ve made me
the debtor instead of you.’
‘No mistake at all,’ said Barnum. ‘You see, this is how it is. There
are a good many gentlemen in this city fond of practising on brass
instruments; but they cannot do so at home because of their neighbours’
objections. So I find them room on my Balcony during so many hours a
day, where the street is so noisy that it does no harm; and they give
me so much a week for my trouble in keeping the organisation complete.
You don’t think me such a fool as to pay such a wretched lot of players
surely? However, as you seem to have been honestly mistaken, you can
pay me ten dollars this week; but hereafter I can make no reduction.’
There was a vacancy in the Balcony Band the following Monday.
We take it that the shrewd showman was not quite so much astonished
at the way his advertisement was misconstrued, as one A. B., who,
recognising a long-lost friend in the stalls of the theatre, but
unable to catch his eye, notified in the ‘agony’ column of the
_Times_: ‘If the gentleman who was in the stalls at the —— Theatre
on the evening of the 5th inst. will write to the following address,
he will hear from the Box above;’ and received nearly a score of
replies. The first he opened, ran: ‘MY DEAR MADAM—I cannot express
to you how delighted I felt this morning on taking up the _Times_
and reading your advertisement. How exceedingly kind and thoughtful
of you to communicate with me in this way. Pray, let me know as
quickly as possible when and where I may see you. I am burning with
impatience to speak to you. Can we meet this evening? Do send me a
note, or better still, a telegram, here, on receipt of this.—Yours
Most Affectionately.’ The second letter, commencing ‘Mia Carissima,’
suggested a meeting at the Duke of York’s Column, and ended: ‘Good-bye,
pet. Yours ever and a day—The Gentleman in the Stalls.’ A third
deluded mortal declared he had not slept a wink after seeing A. B.
at the theatre. ‘You know Who’ informed the ‘Dearest Being,’ whose
himage he still saw before him, that his passion was much too much for
ordinary words to tell; that after wandering all his life, mixing in
revolutions, &c., he should like to stop at last, and finished somewhat
prosaically with: ‘It’s just four o’clock. All are in bed and fast
asleap. Good-night. I’m not married.’ And so on with a batch of other
aspirants, who evidently deemed the anonymous occupant of the Box
nothing short of an heiress.
Many an unpremeditated sell has been perpetrated from inability to
resist sudden temptation. One of the judges of the Supreme Court of New
York state, visiting the Centennial Exhibition, sat down in a quiet
corner apart from the others, to listen to a great cornet-player, and
as was his wont in court, drew his gray coat about his head and ears
as a protection against possible draughts. His motionless figure soon
attracted attention; and the whisper ran that it was the statue of some
wonderful character. The judge’s sister wickedly told those near her
that they were gazing at the effigy of an Aztec priest from Mexico. The
information passed from mouth to mouth, and some hundreds of people
were drawn to the spot, to disperse somewhat sheepishly when the object
of their curiosity, having had enough of the cornet, readjusted his
coat and rose to go.
A good story is told of one Boggs, whose impertinent curiosity
was proverbial throughout the country that owned him. He was on
one occasion travelling on the Little Miami Railroad alongside a
solemn-looking man, who persisted in looking out of window and took
no heed of Boggs’ endeavours to enliven the journey with a little
conversation. At last the brakeman or guard came round with some water,
and the unsociable traveller turned round to take a drink. Seizing the
chance, Boggs asked: ‘Going as far east as New York?’
‘No,’ grunted the man.
‘Ah!’ said Boggs, ‘New York is dull this time of year; mebbee you’re
striking for Philadelphia?’
The surly one shook his head.
‘P’raps Cleveland’s your destination?’ insinuated Mr Boggs. ‘No? Can’t
be going this roundabout way to Chicago?’
No reply was vouchsafed.
‘Well,’ cried Boggs despairingly, ‘I s’pose you’ve no objection to
telling where you _are_ going?’
‘Well sir,’ exclaimed the man, ‘I’m going for seven years!’
Then the deputy-sheriff said he would rather not have folks talking to
his prisoners, and Boggs gave in.
This puts us in mind of Mark Twain’s anecdote of Artemus Ward and a
travelling bore, between whom the following amusing colloquy took
place: ‘Did you hear that last thing of Horace Greeley’s?’
‘Greeley, Greeley, Horace Greeley; who is he?’ said Artemus.
Five minutes elapsed, then came: ‘George Francis Train is making a good
deal of disturbance over in England; do you think they will put him in
prison?’
‘Train, Train, George Francis Train,’ said Artemus solemnly; ‘I never
heard of him.’
The tormentor tried another tack; he said: ‘What do you think about
Grant’s chance for the Presidency?’
‘Grant, Grant?—Why man!’ said Artemus, ‘you seem to know more strangers
than any one I ever saw.’
The man took a walk up the car; coming back, he said: ‘Well, you
ignoramus, did you ever hear of Adam?’
The humorist looked up and said: ‘Adam? What was his other name?’
The journey henceforth was made in peace.
Very nicely sold were a couple of tramps who waylaid a wealthy
farmer in Louisa County, Iowa, and demanded his money or his life.
Disinclined to part with either, he took to his heels. They chased
him half a mile down the roughest of lanes, dashed after him through
a brier-hedge, and went panting across an old corn-field. Then the
chased one struck for the woods, and went wheezing up a steep hill; his
pursuers pressing closely behind with blood-shot eyes and shortened
breath. The farmer dashed across a forty-acre stubble-field, across a
frozen creek, through a blackberry patch, down a ravine, over another
hill, across a stump-field, to be run down on the road by the tramps.
They overhauled him thoroughly, searched him from top to toe, to
find he had not a solitary cent wherewith to reward them for their
perseverance.
Our concluding example relates to an affecting romance told by the
_Detroit Free Press_. It was the second time that the hero of the story
had accompanied the young lady home from one of those little social
parties which are got up to bring fond hearts a step nearer to each
other. When they reached the gate, she asked him if he wouldn’t come
in. He said he would. Sarah took his hat, told him to sit down, and
left the room to remove her things. She was hardly gone before her
mother came in, smiled sweetly, and, dropping down beside the young
man, said: ‘I always did say that if a poor but respectable young man
fell in love with Sarah, he should have my consent. Some mothers would
sacrifice their daughters’ happiness for riches, but I am not of that
sort.’
The young man started with alarm; he didn’t know whether he liked Sarah
or not; he hadn’t dreamed of marriage.
‘She has acknowledged to me that she loves you,’ continued the mother;
‘and whatever is for her happiness is for mine.’