AN INGENIOUS BEGGAR.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue LXIV, 13 September 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN INGENIOUS BEGGAR.

A Paris subscriber to the Encyclopaedia Britannica found a use for that colossal work, which its promoters (The Tune? proprietors) could scarcely have foreseen. The story came out through his finding himself in gaol before he had completed , his subscription. - From that retreat he M'rote nsking the promoters to let him keep his set. " 1 nui," he snid, "a beirgin^-letter writer by profession, and at pieseut, though I owe you £12, I only have £7 in the world. I'll give you six of them, and pay up the rest of the amount us quickly us I can. But I must keep the volumes, which are invaluable to me." It seems Hut his most successful begging letter was « one in which he made himself out to be a potter, who had been chemical^ poisoned, and rendered unfit for work. From his Britannica ho obtained all the technical terms he required, and they made his case look so genuine that money poured in on him. The sequel to tho story, which is quoted by the Academy from an article in the Matin by M. de Blowitz, is that the payments for the Britannica set. were duly completed.