persons or firms. Prior to the enactment of this law, the most
wholesale and barefaced operations were conducted by professional
cheats, mainly through the facilities afforded by the mails, with
almost absolute impunity. Letters addressed to bogus firms were
indeed forwarded from the offices of delivery to the department as
"fictitious" and "undeliverable," and many colluding postmasters
were decapitated. Such petty measures of warfare served merely to
annoy the vampires and to whet their diabolical ingenuity for the
contrivance of new devices. Since the law of 1872 went into
effect, however, the scoundrels have been compelled to travel a
thorny road. Scores of arrests have been made, and in many cases
the criminals have been sentenced to the penitentiary.

It would exceed our limits even to enumerate the devices which have
been tried by different swindlers with greater or less success.
Gift enterprises of various kinds are the most common and
notorious, constituting a distinct branch of the business; but the
pretenses on which human credulity is invited to part with actual
cash for imaginary benefits are innumerable. A few specimens are
given as illustrations.



AN OLD GAME REVIVED


On the 18th of September, 1875, a fellow was arrested in West
Virginia who sent the victims whom he proposed to bleed letters
whereof the following is a copy:--