The persistency with which women will take up and practice the cruelest of religious customs is evidenced by the manner in which a Chicago girl tortured and starved herself to death in an effort to obtain salvation through the mortification of the flesh. She was not of an ignorant type, either, as might be imagined, but fairly well educated and extremely intelligent, with running to intellectuality. But the thrall of a new religion got her in its power, and, believing she was sinful, she strove to cast out her sins and died in the attempt. It is seldom that pernicious practices of religion fakers carry persons to this extreme, but deranged mentalities, wrecked homes and depleted pocketbooks are of such frequent occurrence as to merit a wholesale crusade against this type of fraud, even without raising the question of religious scruples. PAWN TICKETS ON DIAMONDS. Another instance: Some working man or washing woman, having saved up a little money for a rainy day, reads an alluring advertisement in a newspaper that a party was looking for a small loan on valuable family jewelry and diamonds. The interest offered is much higher than that allowed by any savings bank. Diamonds, as everybody knows, are just as good as money and offer perfect security. In hopes of profiting a little more on their savings, such prospective victims respond to the advertisement. The party looking for the loan appears to be a well-dressed, smoothly-talking man, who represents himself to be the scion of a wealthy or aristocratic family temporarily in hard luck. He produces a pawn shop ticket, on the face of which appears that some pawn broker had advanced on certain diamonds a large sum of money, say $500. [Illustration: Two minds with but a single thought; Two heads that beat us all. ] Now, it is a matter of common knowledge that pawn brokers know their business, and that no pawn broker would advance more than one-third, or, at the highest, one-half of the actual value of the articles pledged. It is that common belief which the swindler makes, as it were, the psychic basis for his operations. The victim having once jumped at the conclusion that the diamonds offered as security must be worth at least $1,000 or thereabouts, the rest becomes easy. VICTIM ANXIOUS FOR INTEREST. The victim naturally considers a further loan on such diamonds of $200 or $250 a desirable risk. The offer of 10 per cent or more interest on the loan is another allurement which makes the transaction still more desirable. The pawn broker recognizes his ticket, and the diamonds, when redeemed, turn out to be worth considerably less than the amount which the broker was supposed to have advanced on them. The victim loses some more by redeeming the diamonds.