Another adventurer would put up at the most fashionable hotels, and when requested to pay his bills would feign madness. He would rave, and sing, and dance, call himself Nebuchadnezzar, or George Washington, or some such personage, and completely baffle the detectives, who were for a long time inclined to believe him a _bona fide_ madman. In this way he ran up a bill of one hundred and seventy-one dollars at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, which he never paid. Others do not seek to obtain lodgings at the hotels, but confine their efforts to securing meals without paying for them. They get into the dining-rooms along with the crowd at the meal hour, and once in and seated at the table are generally safe. Some two years ago as many as thirty-four of this class were detected at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in a single month. These men as they leave the dining-room generally manage to secure a better hat than that they deposited on the stand in entering. Under the regime of the Lelands, the Metropolitan Hotel had a colored man stationed at the door of its dining-room, who proved more than a match for the most expert thief. All first class hotels keep private detectives and watchmen on duty at all hours. The business of these men is to keep guard over the upper part of the house, to prevent thieves from entering and robbing the rooms of the guests. Suspicious persons are at once apprehended, and required to give an account of themselves. Some queer mishaps often befall guests of the house who are not known to the detectives. Bold robberies are often effected at the hotels of the city. Some time ago a thief was captured at the St. Nicholas, and upon being searched a gold watch and chain, and five different parcels of money were found upon him, all of which were identified by guests as their property. XVIII. IMPOSTORS. There is no city in the Union in which impostors of all kinds flourish so well as in New York. The immense size of the city, the heterogeneous character of its population, and the great variety of the interests and pursuits of the people, are all so many advantages to the cheat and swindler. It would require a volume to detail the tricks of these people, and some of their adventures would equal anything to be found in the annals of romance. All manner of tricks are practised upon the unsuspecting, and generally the perpetrator escapes without punishment. They come here from all parts of the country, and indeed from all parts of the world, in the hope of reaping a rich harvest, and the majority end by eking out a miserable existence in a manner which even the police who watch them so closely are sometimes unable to understand.