Joshed All Nations

Tick Lowndes, the ex-king of the fakirs, having become rich, left off traveling on his fiftieth birthday, married a young wife and settled down in Philadelphia, "because I was bom there," be says in explanation of this strange (hing, "and I believe a man onght to give the town he was born in a show." For nearlySO yearsLowndes, circumnavigating the globe 11 times, beamed upon the world's population through his Moses P. Handy whiskers, and, in his own words, "joshed 'em all, white, black, red, brown and yellow, "into providing for his luxurious existence and for his eventual wealth. He got his nickname of Tick froin the solid gold watches he tised to sell to countrymen for the nominal sum of two bits. "Maybe yon think they won't go, " he wonld bawl, holding up one of his watches when purehasers were backward. "That's where you're 'way off. Listen to this one tick." And he would imitate the ticking of a wateh with his month so that the sound conld be easily heard by those on the outer limits of the crowd aronnd his torch illuminated carriage. Success and seniority gave "him the title king of the fakirs, by which he was kuown until his retirement. "I of ten hear no account chaps talking abont how hard it is to get along in this world, " said Lowndes when he was here. "They make me weary. The world is easy - easy" - snapping his fingers as if the subject was too silly to talk about. "When I was a small boy, playing marbles and shiuny and peg top, I looked about me and saw all hands breaking their necks trying to sarn a living - struggling, sweating, worrying, working like the devil, every one of 'em. "It was positively paiuful for rae to watch 'em, althougb I was only in knee breeohes. I made up iny miiid right then that I had a heap too big a capacity for fun to wear ruyself out working, and I deterruined to maketbeworld my oyster. Well, I've been nibbling on the oyster ever since, and the ónly work you could cal! work that I ever did was four days of coal heaving dowu in the stokehole of a Japanese steamer ou which I was a stowaway. How's that for a record - only four days' work in 30years! Don 't I look it?" Tick did look it. He was a perambulating jeweler's shop. Diamonds glittered all over him - uot the sort of diamonds he used to put into his Pandora enveïopes. It was acknovdedged that he looked prosperous all right. "Now you'll be astonished, but the worst jays I ever struck anywhere in the world are the Russians. I think I sold abont flve tons of axle grease corn salve for a ruble au onnce box on one trip through southern Russia. All the men in Rnssia have corns. They all wear heavy cowhide boots - the ordinary folks, I mean - which I suppose accounts for it. I feit almost ashamed the way those Russian folks feil over each other to bny my ordinary axle grease of commerce for their corns, and the worst of it was that in the larger towns, where I staid for three or four days, the yaps that had bought the stuff on the first day of my arrival carne to me before I left and told me gratefully that the grease bad entirely cured their corns. Why, I was regarded as a public benefactor thronghout the whole Rnssian empire. I round the French pretty easy ones, too, especially in the smaller towns. The first time I hit France I was selling West Indian perfumea beans. They were the ordinary American beans that they don't know how to cook in Boston, despite all this talk of Boston as the town of beaus. I dyed the beans blue and soaked 'em over night in cologne. I used a Mexican vaquero's make up on this trip and sold the beans a dozen for a franc, with a long spellbind about the perfume lasting for 1,000 years, and so on. It was like finding money, this bean fake in France. "All of the South Americans, from Panama to Patagonia, are pretty easy to gold brick. All over South America I sold thousand8 of gallons of whitening tonic to make the half breeds white. I made it of nights as I went along out of any old thing that wasn't harmful - dandelion roots, wild cherry bark and such stuff. The governments got after me finally for it, though, and that'a the reason the half breeds of South America are still reddish in color. Their governments wouldn 't let 'em buy enough of my whiteuiug stuff, you see. "The Mexicana '11 buy anything. Yon may not believe it, bnt I sold thonsands of dollars' worth of common bar soap íor removing grease spots on one trip down there, notwitnstanding the fact that the duds worn by the people who bonght the soap were as much on the G string order as the law of the land would permit. I sold 'em safety razors that cost me a quarter each wbolesale for $3, which was about as low down as ever I played it, as any man who ever used a safety razor will admit. "I wonld have made a million out of the natives of the Fiji islands if the jealous white residente down there had not choked me off. As it was, I cleaned up a good bit of money on the scheme. I traded off blue spectacles with the Fijis for cochineal. Cochineal at that time was about worth its weight in silver. The Fijis went crazy over my stock of goggles, and I had several of the islanders gathering cochineal for me until the consuls hunted me out. "I was cooking up a scheme to sell the Kaffirs some stuff to straighten their kinky wool and make it look like the white man 's hair, but the white people down there wouldn't stand it, although