He drove a very lively team, for which I soon found there was a reason, and that he had the strength and the skill to control it. He always had half a dozen fakes on tap, and when the hour did not seem ripe for one he tried another. By this time I considered myself a pretty good workman, and was really the glibber talker, but he undertook and carried through schemes which I would hardly then have cared to tackle, though I have made money out of some of them since. His wagon was light running, easy riding, and built for his business. It must have cost him a very pretty penny to have it prepared, but he certainly made his profit out of it, in working various things, one of which being what, in conversation with me, he called “the battery scheme.” It was the most complicated fake I had up to that time ever met with, but it had its drawbacks, and I often wondered that Doctor Munson had never been shot. There is nothing that makes the average man madder than to be laughed at by a crowd for being fooled when he thinks he has a sure thing. Yet, the doctor simply made an offer without any explanations, and if the fools were silly enough to believe that he was going to give them all there was in sight, and took him up in the blind, they deserved to lose a little coin and much self-respect. The doctor had a small flight of stairs covered with copper, which could be placed so that it led into the carriage. In the carriage was a nice little copper-covered table, or stand, and the stairway and table would be connected with a galvanic battery at the bottom of the carriage. On the table would be displayed several stacks of coin, of different denominations, ranging from one to twenty dollars. While addressing the crowd the doctor would carelessly finger the money, showing that it was perfectly loose. He would close his remarks by saying that any man who would give him twenty-five cents would receive permission to come up into the wagon, and all the money he could scoop up in one grab would be his own. After that he would turn a button, which established the circuit with the battery, and wait for victims. With his persuasive tongue he was pretty certain to obtain them, but the moment that one tried to step from the stairway to the wagon he would form a connection for conducting the galvanic circuit through his body, and it operated so strongly that it would be impossible for the man to take anything; he was only too glad to get away alive. Of course, the circuit could be turned off by the doctor, without the action being seen by the crowd, and there were some places where the whole thing remained a totally unexplained mystery. Half of the audience would declare the poor, miserable victims were in collusion with the doctor, and could reach the money if they tried to, while the other half thought the fun of the thing was worth twenty-five cents, and would yell with laughter every time a man would step up the copper stairs.