A Book Fiend.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume V, Issue 671, 13 October 1891, Page 3

A Book Fiend.

Th«t have an airy reporter down South. It is hard to distinguish between the characters of the writer of this sketch and the hero of the sketch himself While on the subject of book fiends and their ways, it would be almost a pity to neglect a reference of some kind to one of tbe gentlemen employed as a canvasser by the "Picturesque Atlas” Company, He was allowed to be the most resourceful of the company’s entire staff, which means correctly interpreted, that he was a most audacious as well as a most plausible liar, and this, curiously enough, is about the highest recommendation one of his class can have with his employer. In all employments over which my experience or observation can take me, a man who was known to be unscrupulous, a stranger to the truth, and full as an egg of trick and rascally stratagem wouldn’t be considered worthy of encouragement. But in the book vending business the case is en tirely different, and hence it is that the art of lying and deception is brought tp such a pitch of perfection by the members of that profession. But the gentleman I refer to is said to have had no equal in his line He had graduated in the States, and was specially imported to work the colonies in the interests of the company. In Dunedin he was told off to •• work ” all those who bad proved Unmanageable from tbs other fiends, and in every case he was successful, There was only one place in the city that defied bis richness Of resource. He couldn’t though he tried many stratagems, get in to operate on the jail warders. He had tried often but he wouldn’t be listened to, and was always out abort in the middle of an artfully-concocted tale, and peremptorily ordered off. One evening, however, he was brought in with a batch of prisoners from the Police Court on a sentence of three days’ imprisonment. He Sts run in for assaulting a professional other; and, as he refused to pay the fine, they were compelled to let him into the establishment which he wanted to “ work,” whether they would or no. Once inside he made such good use of his time that at the end of the three days he had them all, from the Governor down to the junior warder, safely on bis list.