A very good diddle is this.  A housekeeper in want of a sofa, for instance, is seen to go in and out of several cabinet warehouses.  At length she arrives at one offering an excellent variety.  She is accosted, and invited to enter, by a polite and voluble individual at the door.  She finds a sofa well adapted to her views, and upon inquiring the price, is surprised and delighted to hear a sum named at least twenty per cent. lower than her expectations.  She hastens to make the purchase, gets a bill and receipt, leaves her address, with a request that the article be sent home as speedily as possible, and retires amid a profusion of bows from the shopkeeper.  The night arrives and no sofa.  A servant is sent to make inquiry about the delay.  The whole transaction is denied.  No sofa has been sold —­ no money received —­ except by the diddler, who played shop-keeper for the nonce.

Our cabinet warehouses are left entirely unattended, and thus afford every facility for a trick of this kind.  Visiters enter, look at furniture, and depart unheeded and unseen.  Should any one wish to purchase, or to inquire the price of an article, a bell is at hand, and this is considered amply sufficient.

Again, quite a respectable diddle is this.  A well-dressed individual enters a shop, makes a purchase to the value of a dollar; finds, much to his vexation, that he has left his pocket-book in another coat pocket; and so says to the shopkeeper-

“My dear sir, never mind; just oblige me, will you, by sending the bundle home?  But stay!  I really believe that I have nothing less than a five dollar bill, even there.  However, you can send four dollars in change with the bundle, you know.”

“Very good, sir,” replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at once, a lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer.  “I know fellows,” he says to himself, “who would just have put the goods under their arm, and walked off with a promise to call and pay the dollar as they came by in the afternoon.”

A boy is sent with the parcel and change.  On the route, quite accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims: 

“Ah!  This is my bundle, I see —­ I thought you had been home with it, long ago.  Well, go on!  My wife, Mrs. Trotter, will give you the five dollars —­ I left instructions with her to that effect.  The change you might as well give to me —­ I shall want some silver for the Post Office.  Very good!  One, two, is this a good quarter?- three, four —­ quite right!  Say to Mrs. Trotter that you met me, and be sure now and do not loiter on the way.”

The boy doesn’t loiter at all —­ but he is a very long time in getting back from his errand —­ for no lady of the precise name of Mrs. Trotter is to be discovered.  He consoles himself, however, that he has not been such a fool as to leave the goods without the money, and re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air, feels sensibly hurt and indignant when his master asks him what has become of the change.