One, for instance, has a common purse with four shillings. He places the four shillings in the purse, the country yokel sees them placed therein, and he chinks the purse. So far as the countrymen's eyes and ears go there can be no doubt as to the fact of the four shillings being in the purse. Then the fakir offers to sell the purse to the countryman for sixpence, which, were the shillings actually inside, would certainly be a bargain. The countryman pays the sixpence, and straightway opens the purse, but he does not find the sixpence therein. It is as empty as his head. He finds that he has paid sixpence for a purse dear at a penny, and he retires amid the jeers of the populace. As the clever juggler only finds a few victims each day, and as from each he makes only ten cents, I don't see how he expects to ever retire from business and live upon his hard earned capital. The skill, knowledge of human nature, and hard work necessary to the successful prosecution of this little swindle would make him rich, with half the wear and tear. But such men would rather work a day to swindle somebody out of sixpence than to earn a dollar by honest work in a quarter of the time. That is why I shall never go into the business of juggling with four shillings and a penny purse. It is disreputable, and then it doesn't pay. Couples of negro minstrels are a common sight on the streets, one armed with a banjo, and another with a concertina, that he plays with an atrocious disregard of time and tune, which under a despotism would consign him to a block. They roam from house to house and play, as they call it. The helpless family, worried to the very verge of madness, throw them sixpence, and they move on. They stand and play till they get their sixpence. The race is not as it was in Jem Bagg's day. He played the clarionet. "Ven the man tosses me a sixpence," was his remark, and says 'Now, my good man, move hon,' I gently says to him, says I, 'I never moves hon for a sixpence. I knows the vally of peace and quietness too much for that, and then, hif 'e doesn't throw me another sixpence, I tips him my corkscrew hovertoor, and that halways fetches 'im.'" In this degenerate day either the street musicians have forgotten their "corkscrew overtoors," or they are satisfied with less money. A sixpence moves them on now certainly, but woe be to you if you are short the sixpence. Next door to me lives a deaf man who is a bachelor. It is his delight to have the musicians come to this house. He sits in the doorway, and they play and play, and he assumes an ecstatic expression, and they wonder why he doesn't order them to "move on," but he doesn't. It amuses him, and they play, till, lost in amazement at his powerful endurance, they put up their instruments sadly and move on of their own accord. I get very little amusement out of him now. The majority of the fiends have found him out. [Illustration: THE MAN WHO WAS MUSIC PROOF.] CHAPTER VI. MADAME TUSSAUD.