It would puzzle a philologer to give an exact definition of the ‘sell.’ Nearly related to the hoax, it differs from it in being more innocent in its inception and less mischievous in its consequences. Some little ingenuity is required to concoct a happy ‘sell;’ but any one may perpetrate a hoax who is equal to ‘lending a lie the confidence of truth.’ The latter is a deliberately planned deception, oftenest attaining its end by personation or forgery or something closely akin to it; whereas a sell needs no such playing with edged tools, and may not only be unpremeditated, but even unintentional.

The Irishman who undertook to shew an exciseman a private still, and introduced him to his brother, who had been twelve years in the army and was a private still, sold the guardian of the revenue very neatly; although it is possible the victim of the joke did not see the fun of the thing, any more than the official of the North London Railway Company did, when, overhearing a third-class passenger aver that any one could travel from Broad Street to Dalston Junction without a ticket, as he had done only the day before, he interviewed him when he alighted. The traveller not proving communicative, the zealous railway servant conveyed a coin into his hand, and then asked: ‘How did you go from Broad Street to Dalston Junction yesterday without a ticket?’ ‘Oh,’ was the unwelcome reply, ‘I walked!’

As readily trapped was the amateur musician who responded to the advertisement: ‘Wanted, a trombone-player for Barnum’s Balcony Band,’ by waiting upon the famous showman without delay.

‘You want a trombone-player?’ inquired he.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Barnum.

‘What is the place worth?’ asked the applicant.

‘Oh, about twenty-five dollars a week, I suppose.’

‘Very well, I should like it.’

‘All right,’ said Mr Barnum; and the trombone did frightful execution through the week. Saturday came, and with it Mr Green for his salary, instead of drawing which, he received a paper on which was written: ‘Mr Green to Mr P. T. Barnum.—To playing the trombone on his Balcony one week, twenty-five dollars.’ The recipient smiled.

‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ asked Mr Barnum.

‘Why,’ said the musician, ‘you’ve made an odd mistake: you’ve made me the debtor instead of you.’

‘No mistake at all,’ said Barnum. ‘You see, this is how it is. There are a good many gentlemen in this city fond of practising on brass instruments; but they cannot do so at home because of their neighbours’ objections. So I find them room on my Balcony during so many hours a day, where the street is so noisy that it does no harm; and they give me so much a week for my trouble in keeping the organisation complete. You don’t think me such a fool as to pay such a wretched lot of players surely? However, as you seem to have been honestly mistaken, you can pay me ten dollars this week; but hereafter I can make no reduction.’ There was a vacancy in the Balcony Band the following Monday.

We take it that the shrewd showman was not quite so much astonished at the way his advertisement was misconstrued, as one A. B., who, recognising a long-lost friend in the stalls of the theatre, but unable to catch his eye, notified in the ‘agony’ column of the Times: ‘If the gentleman who was in the stalls at the —— Theatre on the evening of the 5th inst. will write to the following address, he will hear from the Box above;’ and received nearly a score of replies. The first he opened, ran: ‘My dear Madam—I cannot express to you how delighted I felt this morning on taking up the Times and reading your advertisement. How exceedingly kind and thoughtful of you to communicate with me in this way. Pray, let me know as quickly as possible when and where I may see you. I am burning with impatience to speak to you. Can we meet this evening? Do send me a note, or better still, a telegram, here, on receipt of this.—Yours Most Affectionately.’ The second letter, commencing ‘Mia Carissima,’ suggested a meeting at the Duke of York’s Column, and ended: ‘Good-bye, pet. Yours ever and a day—The Gentleman in the Stalls.’ A third deluded mortal declared he had not slept a wink after seeing A. B. at the theatre. ‘You know Who’ informed the ‘Dearest Being,’ whose himage he still saw before him, that his passion was much too much for ordinary words to tell; that after wandering all his life, mixing in revolutions, &c., he should like to stop at last, and finished somewhat prosaically with: ‘It’s just four o’clock. All are in bed and fast asleap. Good-night. I’m not married.’ And so on with a batch of other aspirants, who evidently deemed the anonymous occupant of the Box nothing short of an heiress.

Many an unpremeditated sell has been perpetrated from inability to resist sudden temptation. One of the judges of the Supreme Court of New York state, visiting the Centennial Exhibition, sat down in a quiet corner apart from the others, to listen to a great cornet-player, and as was his wont in court, drew his gray coat about his head and ears as a protection against possible draughts. His motionless figure soon attracted attention; and the whisper ran that it was the statue of some wonderful character. The judge’s sister wickedly told those near her that they were gazing at the effigy of an Aztec priest from Mexico. The information passed from mouth to mouth, and some hundreds of people were drawn to the spot, to disperse somewhat sheepishly when the object of their curiosity, having had enough of the cornet, readjusted his coat and rose to go.

A good story is told of one Boggs, whose impertinent curiosity was proverbial throughout the country that owned him. He was on one occasion travelling on the Little Miami Railroad alongside a solemn-looking man, who persisted in looking out of window and took no heed of Boggs’ endeavours to enliven the journey with a little conversation. At last the brakeman or guard came round with some water, and the unsociable traveller turned round to take a drink. Seizing the chance, Boggs asked: ‘Going as far east as New York?’

‘No,’ grunted the man.

‘Ah!’ said Boggs, ‘New York is dull this time of year; mebbee you’re striking for Philadelphia?’

The surly one shook his head.

‘P’raps Cleveland’s your destination?’ insinuated Mr Boggs. ‘No? Can’t be going this roundabout way to Chicago?’

No reply was vouchsafed.

‘Well,’ cried Boggs despairingly, ‘I s’pose you’ve no objection to telling where you are going?’

‘Well sir,’ exclaimed the man, ‘I’m going for seven years!’

Then the deputy-sheriff said he would rather not have folks talking to his prisoners, and Boggs gave in.

This puts us in mind of Mark Twain’s anecdote of Artemus Ward and a travelling bore, between whom the following amusing colloquy took place: ‘Did you hear that last thing of Horace Greeley’s?’

‘Greeley, Greeley, Horace Greeley; who is he?’ said Artemus.

Five minutes elapsed, then came: ‘George Francis Train is making a good deal of disturbance over in England; do you think they will put him in prison?’

‘Train, Train, George Francis Train,’ said Artemus solemnly; ‘I never heard of him.’

The tormentor tried another tack; he said: ‘What do you think about Grant’s chance for the Presidency?’

‘Grant, Grant?—Why man!’ said Artemus, ‘you seem to know more strangers than any one I ever saw.’

The man took a walk up the car; coming back, he said: ‘Well, you ignoramus, did you ever hear of Adam?’

The humorist looked up and said: ‘Adam? What was his other name?’

The journey henceforth was made in peace.

Very nicely sold were a couple of tramps who waylaid a wealthy farmer in Louisa County, Iowa, and demanded his money or his life. Disinclined to part with either, he took to his heels. They chased him half a mile down the roughest of lanes, dashed after him through a brier-hedge, and went panting across an old corn-field. Then the chased one struck for the woods, and went wheezing up a steep hill; his pursuers pressing closely behind with blood-shot eyes and shortened breath. The farmer dashed across a forty-acre stubble-field, across a frozen creek, through a blackberry patch, down a ravine, over another hill, across a stump-field, to be run down on the road by the tramps. They overhauled him thoroughly, searched him from top to toe, to find he had not a solitary cent wherewith to reward them for their perseverance.

Our concluding example relates to an affecting romance told by the Detroit Free Press. It was the second time that the hero of the story had accompanied the young lady home from one of those little social parties which are got up to bring fond hearts a step nearer to each other. When they reached the gate, she asked him if he wouldn’t come in. He said he would. Sarah took his hat, told him to sit down, and left the room to remove her things. She was hardly gone before her mother came in, smiled sweetly, and, dropping down beside the young man, said: ‘I always did say that if a poor but respectable young man fell in love with Sarah, he should have my consent. Some mothers would sacrifice their daughters’ happiness for riches, but I am not of that sort.’

The young man started with alarm; he didn’t know whether he liked Sarah or not; he hadn’t dreamed of marriage.

‘She has acknowledged to me that she loves you,’ continued the mother; ‘and whatever is for her happiness is for mine.’

The young man stammered out: ‘I—I haven’t’——

‘Oh, never mind! Make no apology. I know you haven’t much money, but of course you’ll live with me. We’ll take in boarders, and I’ll be bound that we’ll get along all right.’

It was a bad situation. He hadn’t even looked love at Sarah. ‘I had no idea of’—— he began; when she held up her hands saying: ‘I know you hadn’t; but it’s all right. With your wages and what the boarders bring in, we shall get along as snug as possible. All I ask is that you be good to her; Sarah has a tender heart, and if you should be cross and ugly, it would break her down in a week.’

The young man’s eyes stood out like cocoa-nuts in a shop-window, and he rose up and tried to say something.

‘Never mind about the thanks,’ she cried; ‘I don’t believe in long courtships. The eleventh of January is my birthday, and it would be nice for you to be married on that day.’

‘But—but—but’—— he gasped.

‘There, there! I don’t expect any speech in reply,’ she laughed. ‘You and Sarah settle it to-night, and I’ll advertise for twelve boarders straight away, I’ll try to be a model mother-in-law. I believe I’m good-tempered and kind-hearted, though I did once follow a young man two hundred miles and shoot off the top of his head for agreeing to marry my daughter and then quitting the county.’ She patted him on the head and sailed out. And now the young man wants advice. He wants to know whether he had better get in the way of a locomotive or slide off the wharf. If ever a young bachelor was ‘sold,’ Sarah’s young man was in that predicament.