The life of a fakir is not easy sailing. He strikes many a stumbling block along the road, and is hampered by many a disadvantage. He can have no continuous abiding place. He must move with the tide, and shift his operations from day to day. The business of this week will be the reminiscence of next. New fields, new customers, new fakes; for these he must be constantly on the alert, and work them to the most extreme limit. While on the road he is practically a citizen without a country and a man without a home. This book is not launched upon the sea of public approval as a literary gem. It is merely an expose of the tricks and triumphs of twenty years of successful faking, and as such, without more words of explanation, allow me to present it. THE AUTHOR. [Illustration] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER I. STARTING OUT. BECOMING AMBITIOUS—LEAVING HOME—HOTEL PORTER—CARD BUSINESS—LIGHTNING ROD AGENT—THE ACCIDENT—TWELVE GLASSES OF WATER. I was born in the good old State of Illinois, my birthplace being on a farm just twenty miles out of Chicago. Here I lived until I was eighteen years of age. My father was fairly well fixed as a farmer and gave me as good an education, both classical and musical, as a country residence could afford. In those early days of my life the western half of the United States was virtually in its infancy, and all around me, in whatever direction the eye might turn, new enterprises were being launched with a view to development of the country. Reading of these created a desire on my part to see some of them, and perhaps take my humble part in the great work of building up the new side of the nation. One day I would read of a new railroad building here; another day of a new town starting there. Fresh sections of the country were being opened up, with hundreds of channels and opportunities for making money. The glowing description of a hundred new Meccas, given by their sanguine projectors, worked my curiosity to a very high tension, and the more I thought of them the stronger grew my desire to get out in the world and see, and before I fairly knew it my mind was made up. For eighteen long years (pleasant ones I must confess) I had lived on the farm, and had never so much as ridden on a railroad train. No wonder I thought it high time to get out and see with my own eyes what was going on in this great, round world, looking meantime for the niche in it which I was to fill.