THE UNTEACHABLE PIGEON.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 110, 10 May 1923, Page 4

THE UNTEACHABLE PIGEON.

'Few people will nave any sympathy for the Englishman -who ie alleged to hare been swindled out of £23,000 by a gentleman who is described as "the super-confidence trickster of the world." It will be the general opinion that a man Tvho risks his money in such transactions cannot complain if he loses. The case, however, is typical of the ease with which a fool is often parted from his money, and of the melancholy fact that the supply of fools ready to fall into old traps never fails. The meeting between the trickster and his victim at Nice, the mention of diamond mines, the introduction. of confederates, the victim's win in a betting deal, and the ■way in which the dupers got him. to advance money—how childishly innocent he seems to have been —it is all an old lind of device. The curious thing ia that in epite of repeated exposures, in. epite of the spread of education and the universality of newspapers, such devices are successful year after year. It-' is positively amazing how old confidence tricks go on succeeding. Commenting on such a case last year, the "Manchester Guardian" remarked that nothing could be more venerable than the methods used. "The casual acquaintance, the still more casual arrival of the accomplice, the desire to distribute to the poor a portion of some vast and recently inherited wealth, the exchange of guarantees of good faith between the two rogues and their pigeon—could any arrangement have proceeded more thoroughly 'according to plan?' And yet it was good enough to relieve an American citizen of most of his portable belongings, including 2550 dollars in American notes, £15 in British, a gold watch and fountain pen, and a g«>ld pen-knife. . . Evidently the conspirators could have had the victim's boots and hat into the bargain if they had cared to ask for them." Our old friend, "the Spanish Prisoner," is still alive; only the venue has been transferred to Smyrna, with a Greek merchant dispossessed by Turks as the -entral figure. We may join the OUardian in wondering whether it was Necessary to make the change; the original "prisoner" might have gone on raking in the money till t/he end of time, ine American calculation that a sucker" as born every minute seems to be correct.