You may be sure I was acquainted with every wile and artifice of the trade. I had traveled all over the United States and Canada, visiting all the principal cities and interviewing the governor and other officers in each state and territory. I had crossed the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, thirty-two times. For years I seemed to have success without a break, and I dreaded no more of being “busted.” All the time my bank account was growing, and in one year of prosperity I banked twelve thousand dollars in clear cash while selling encyclopedias. How was that for a fakir? I will not say that I was tired of the life; but it began to look as though, like Alexander, I had no more worlds to conquer. Was it a wonder or was it not that I found I could go a step farther? The succeeding chapters will tell. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XIX. THE REAL ESTATE FAKE—BOOMING A TOWN—MAKING A FORTUNE—TRICKS OF OTHER PEOPLE—ALL THIS WORLD IS A FAKE AND EVERY PERSON IN IT A FAKIR—THE POLITICIAN AND THE WIDOW—A DIAMOND RING FOR TWO CENTS. “Almost twenty years in the faking and book business. How times flies; and yet I have gained enough experience in those twenty years to last a lifetime.” So I mused one day while tilted back in my chair in front of the “Ashland” hotel, the principal house in a western town, which perhaps you may recognize under the name of Buxton. I remember, as distinctly as though the time was yesterday, all the surroundings of that little town. The place was on the eve of a boom, and the best informed were in a fever of excitement over its prospects. I took out my bank book and looked over its pages. No. The past ten years of my life had not been wasted. Each succeeding page showed a record of profits and gains, even though it was only when I switched from street selling and the like to the handling of a general line of books, and a little later on to the exclusive traveling in the interests of the Banner encyclopedia, that fortune seemed really coming at my command. I had then what was a fair little fortune laid by. Of late years I had been always a winner, and felt sure that I could carry the “Banner” successfully for many years to come. Even in the little bits of speculation in which, more for the sake of diversion than profit, I had been engaged success had invariably crowned my efforts. Why should I not launch out more boldly? I believed I saw a chance to make thousands in the time I was taking to make hundreds, and without the possibility of any great loss. And if I did lose, what matter, since I had strength and experience through which I could soon recoup myself?