Suddenly, a young man came rushing up to me, with a face beaming with joy. “Good morning, Mr.—,” he exclaimed; “I am so glad we have met.” I intimated that I did not recollect him. “Oh!” said he, “we came over in the _Sarnia_ together.” Well, the story was not improbable. Of the 1,000 on board the _Sarnia_ I could not be expected to remember all. “My name is G.,” mentioning a well-known banker in London, and then he began to tell me of his travels, at what hotel he was staying, and finally added that he had been presented with a couple of Longfellow’s _Poems_, handsomely bound, as a prize, and that he would be glad if I would accept one. Well, as my copy of Longfellow was rather the worse for wear, I told him I would accept it with pleasure. But I must come with him for it. I did so, and while doing so learned from him that the prize had been given in connection with a lottery scheme for raising money to build a church down South. The idea seemed to me odd, but Brother Jonathan’s ways are not as ours, and I was rather pleased to find that I had thus a new chance of seeing religious life, and of having something fresh to write about. I am free to confess, as the great Brougham was wont to say, I jumped at the offer. In a few minutes we were inside a respectable-looking house, where a tall gentleman invited us to be seated, regretting that the copies of Longfellow had not come home from the binder’s, and promising that we should have them by noon. Next he unfolded what I thought was a plan of the proposed church, but which proved to be a chart with figures—with prizes, as it seemed to me, to all the figures. To my horror my friend took up the cards, and asked me to select them for him. This I did, and he won a thousand dollars, blessing me as he shook hands with me warmly, and saying that as I had won half I must have half. Well, as the ticket had certain conditions, and as I felt that it was rather hard on the church to take all that money, I continued the game for a few minutes, my young friend being eager that I should do so, till the truth dawned upon me that I had been drawn into a swindlers’ den, and that I and my friend were dupes, and I resolved to leave off playing, much to the regret of my friend, who gave the keeper of the table a cheque for £100, which he would pay for me, as I would not, and thus by another effort retrieve my loss. There was one spot only on the board marked blank, and that, of course, was his. Burning with indignation I got up to go, my friend following me, saying how much he regretted that he had led me into such a place, offering to pay me half my losses when he returned to town, and begging me not to say a word about the subject when I got back to London, as it might get him into a row. I must say, so great has been my experience of honour among men, and never having been in New York before, I believed in that young man till we parted, as I did not see how he could have gained all the knowledge he displayed of myself and movements unless he had travelled with me as he said, and had never heard of Bunkum men. I had not gone far, however, before I was again shaken by the hand by a gentlemanly young fellow, who claimed to have met me at Montreal, where he had been introduced to me as the son of Sir H— A—. He had been equally lucky—had got two books, and, as he was going back to Quebec that very afternoon, would give me one of them if I would ride with him as far as his lodgings. Innocently I told him my little tale. He advised me to say nothing about it, as I had been breaking the law and might get myself into trouble, and then suddenly recollecting he must get his ticket registered, and saying that he would overtake me directly, left me to go as far as the place of our appointed rendezvous alone. Then the truth flashed on me that both my pretended friends were rogues, and that I had been the victim of what, in New York, they call the Bunkum men, who got 300 dollars out of Oscar Wilde, and a good deal more out of Mr. Adams, formerly American Ambassador in England. I had never heard of them, I own, and both the rogues had evidently got so much of my history by heart that I might well fancy that they were what they described themselves to be. As to finding them out to make them regorge that was out of the question. Landlords and policemen seemed to take it quite as a matter of course that the stranger in New York is thus to be done. Since then I have hardly spoken to a Yankee, nor has a Yankee spoken to me. I now understand why the Yankees are so reserved, and never seem to speak to each other. They know each other too well. I now understand also how the men you meet look so thin and careworn, and can’t sleep at nights. We are not all saints in London.