NINETEENTH CENTURY CREDULITY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXV, Issue 150, 25 June 1894, Page 2

NINETEENTH CENTURY CREDULITY.

We colonisbs are cerbainly inclined to regard ourselves as among the enlightened of mankind, and believe ourselves remarkably free from tho influence of all narrow and superstitious ideas. Yeb for all that, there is nob the least doubt that bbc class who thrive upon the credulity of the people drive as brisk a trade here as they do among communities with which we would scorn to 6be compared. The peripatetic medicine man parades our streets to the discordant notes of trumpet and drum, and crowds flock around bis stand at the street corners as large and as credulous as similar turnouts attract among the ignorant peasantry ot France and Italy : professors of mysterious ar.B drive as lucrative trade in all our chief towns as their kin do among the vain, uneducated factory girls of an English manufacturing centre; the sharper with his throe-card trick, and the gamester with his loaded dice never fails of victims ; and the clumsiest of spiritualists does not lack an audience when ho announces his intention to raise up tho ghosts of the departed. Exposure in such cases seems to matter very little, there is always a vast army of weak people waiting eagerly to be fooled. Mr John Noville Maskelyne, whose entertainments in natural magic ab the Egyptian Hall in London are among the attractions of the great city, has just published a book which is a complete revelation of the secrets of cheating ab games of chance and skill. To those who have never studied this matter — and few except those who make their living by swindling have—the volume is indeed a revelation. Never could we have imagined tbat cheating bad been developed into such an art, or that there was such a trade in the implements of cheating. Ib appears that the manufacture and sale of appliances for cheating are chiefly carried on and advertised in the United States. Tho industry has its manufacturers, wholesale houses, canvassers and retail dealers. Its price lists, descriptive pamphlets, circulars, and advertisements are issued as methodically as those of bonafide merchants and traders, and its ramifications extend to overy quarter of the globe. A specimen catalogue issued by a San Francisco firm, and reproduced in Mr Maskelyne's chapter on " Sporting Houses," proves that a thriving trado in cheating utensils is carried on openly and unblushingly, and thab bhere is an enormous number of swindlers ab large, who make their living by unfair practices in connection with all forms of gambling.

We cannoo stay to describe some of these appliances, which are really very interesting, but we may just mention as an example the Hold-out. This is a contrivance to enable the card-sharper to conceal and keep in reserve ono or more cards until he requires to play them at some critical poinb of the game. Kepplintrer's Hold out, which ia described as "the finest hold-out the world has ever seen," is an elaborate machine worn with a special shirt having a double sloevei and a false cuff, and costs ono hundred dollars in San Francisco. Mr Maakelyne's- book, though ib has led us somewhat from our subject, reveals a depth of rascality which, as he points out, is only possible whore there is a corresponding depth of credulity on the part of thoso thab are deceived.