how to tell it from barefaced imposture, is perplexing
and harassing to a charitably disposed person. Nine out of ten street
beggars in New York are unworthy objects, and to give to them is simply
to encourage vagrancy; and yet to know how to discriminate. That would
be valuable knowledge to many people in the great city.

In the fall of 1870, a middle aged woman committed suicide in New York.
For some months she had pursued a singular career in the great city, and
had literally lived by her wits. While her main object was to live
comfortably at other people's expense, she also devoted herself to an
attempt to acquire property without paying for it. She arrived in New
York in the spring of 1868, and took lodgings at an up-town hotel. She
brought no baggage, but assured the clerk that her trunks had been
unjustly detained by a boarding house keeper in Boston with whom she had
had a difficulty. She succeeded in winning the confidence of the clerk,
and told him that she had just come into possession of a fortune of one
million dollars, left her by a rich relative, and that she had come to
New York to purchase a home. She completely deceived the clerk, who
vouched for her respectability and responsibility, and thus satisfied the
proprietor of the hotel. She made the acquaintance of nearly all the
resident guests of the house, and so won their sympathy and confidence
that she was able to borrow from them considerable sums of money. In
this way she lived from house to house, making payments on account only
when obliged to do so, and when she could no longer remain at the hotels,
she took up her quarters at a private boarding house, passing thence to
another, and so on. She spent two years in this way, borrowing money
continually, and paying very little for her board.

In pursuance of her plan to acquire real estate without paying for it,
she made her appearance in the market as a purchaser. In the summer of
1870, she obtained permits of one of the leading real estate agents of
the city to examine property in his hands for sale, and finally selected
a house on Madison avenue. The price asked was $100,000, but she coolly
declared her readiness to pay the full amount in cash as soon as the
necessary deeds could be prepared. The real estate dealer was completely
deceived by her seeming frankness, and assured her that he would give his
personal attention to the details of the transaction, so that her
interests would n