The Times has an account of a very clever swindle
indeed. A New York tobacconist sends out circulars marked " confidential " to many persons in England, offering them counterfeit sovereigns anade of aluminium found in the Rocky Mountains, at £2 for 20 -or 150 for 500. They are so good, the circular says, in appear- ance, colour, and weight—a physical impossibility—that experts are taken in, but nobody must have more than 500. Persons desiring such sovereigns must send the money and their orders in the form of orders for smoking tobacco at prices enclosed. They would then get the tobacco, find it worthless, and be ashamed to com- plain, while, in the face of their own orders, they would have no legal remedy. A coiner can be punished, but not a man who -offers to sell coins if an order is sent for tobacco, and does not sell them. That is a civil breach of contract. Fisk should buy that tobacconist, and make him Chairman of the Erie.
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