Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen Read Online Free PDF Page A

all in need of soap, is that what you’re saying, young fella?” The older man finally looked at him. A cake of soap in each hand, Smith paused in stacking them atop his salesman’s display case balanced on a tripod.
    â€œWe all, sir, could use a good soaping now and again.” He kept his gaze on the man’s face. His comment had the desired effect—the older man’s eyebrows arched and Smith thought he detected a faint smile there. Might be he’d have to watch this old fellow. He was shrewd. Too much so? Time would tell.

    But then he had little time for further speculation on the point, as the curious began to gather. He knew from experience that if there were no folks sniffing out the possibility of getting something for nothing, he may as well call it quits, pack up, and find another street corner. But this spot had all the earmarks of a prime location. He’d been eyeing it for a week and knew this was the corner for him.
    As people stopped on their way by, more followed suit. The young man reached into an inside coat pocket and slipped out his long leather wallet. From it he produced a stack of paper currency of varying denominations.
    As he worked, he nodded toward the soap. “That soap, my friends, may look like ordinary soap, and in many ways it behaves like ordinary soap. But having been a purveyor of fine soaps for a good many years, I can tell you without reservation that this Magical Bar Soap and Cleanse-All is a one-of-a-kind product that will leave the user cleaner and feeling better than he or she has any earthly right to feel. It is truly that good. How does it attain such lofty heights, you may well ask? Especially for something that looks so . . . let’s face it, ordinary.”
    As he spoke he carefully wrapped the paper cash around a half-dozen bars of the soap, one at a time, using a dollar bill here, a ten there, on up to a single $100 bill that drew the crowd to a hush as he held it up. The higher the denomination, the more intent the gazes of the amassing crowd grew. This was something they wanted to see. Cash! Yes, something wild and exciting was about to take place, and they might have the chance to be part of it.
    Smith first wrapped the cash around a selection of bars, then carefully wrapped each bar of soap in brown paper. What the rapt attendees saw was precisely what Smith wanted them to see—which is the same thing they wanted to see—valuable currency wrapped around bars of soap. What they didn’t notice, however, was Smith’s adroit hand-play. He carefully swapped the larger-denomination bills for $1 bills. Others he hid. Then, he mixed the bars supposedly containing cash in with paper-wrapped bars containing nothing but soap, and proceeded to sell the bars of soap for $1 per bar—far more than the poor-quality soap was worth.
    The sight of the cash-wrapped soap bars elicited the reactions Smith had grown to expect. He fought the urge to exchange the knitted-brow look of serious concern and gravity on his long face with a big grin. Would people never learn that nothing in life was free? Oh, he hoped not.
    He was, after all, about to take their money. Lots and lots of it. And not lose any of his own in the process. Again, the urge to grin had to be pushed down—until later.
    As he worked the bars, he wrapped them in plain brown paper to both conceal the money and to give all the bars a uniform look once again. “You’ll notice, ladies and gentlemen, that I have wrapped various of these bars of soap in paper currency with denominations ranging from $1 to $100. To prevent anyone from acting fraudulently, that is to say to keep us all honest—” He let that hang in the air, and within a second it elicited a crowd-wide laugh, as he’d hoped it would. “I have wrapped the remainder of this stack in plain brown paper, then mixed all the bars together. Now, this fine product should not really require such