Page:Irish In America.djvu/216

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THE IRISH IN AMERICA.

fell into the hands of an honest man at any rate for, Lord bless us ! there are so many rogues to be met with iiow-a-days. 1 An instance of ready reckoning, most favourable to the ingenious arithmetician, is recorded in the evidence taken in 184.7. Pat had but a poor chance against such a master of finance. The writer says, I was in a boarding-house in Cherry Street ; a man came up to pay his bill, which the landlord made out 18 dollars. " Why," says the man, " did not you agree to board me for sixpence a meal, and threepence for a bed ? " " Yes," says the landlord, " and that makes just 75 cents per day ; you have been here eight days, and that makes just 18 dollars." At three- quarters of a dollar per day, the bill should have been six dollars ; so the ready reckoner made twelve dollars by nis genius for multiplication. Among the most fruitful means of fraud was the sale of tickets. These tickets were of various kinds tickets sold at exorbitant prices, but good for the journey ; tickets which carried the passenger only a portion of his journey, though sold for the entire route ; and tickets utterly worthless, issued by companies that had long before been bankrupt, or by companies that existed only in imagina tion. These latter are called bogus tickets ; and these were sold in Europe as well as in America in village and country town, as in city and in seaport ; and not rarely were they palmed off on the confiding passenger, as a great bargain, by a sympathising, good-natured fellow- passenger, who, by the merest luck, had bought them cheap from a family he knew at home, that had changed their minds, and wouldn t cross over, being afeard of the say. In 1848 the Commissioners of Emigration issued a circular, in which these passages occur : As may be supposed, there are many people engaged in the busi ness of forwarding .these emigrants, and the individuals or companies