experience!

The "confidence" swindlers are mostly Americans,--so that, the
pickpockets being mostly English, you may see some national character
in crime, aside from the tendency of races. The Englishman is
conservative,--sticks to traditions,--picks and plods in the same old
way in which ages have picked and plodded before him. Exactly like the
thief of ancient Athens, he

"walks
The street, and picks your pocket as he talks
On some pretence with you";

at the same time, with courage and self-reliance admirably English,
risking his liberty on his skill. The American illuminates his practice
with an intellectual element, faces his man, "bidding a gay defiance to
mischance," and gains his end easily by some acute device that merely
transfers to himself, with the knowledge and consent of the owner, the
subtile principle of property.

This "confidence" game is a thing of which the ancients appear to have
known nothing. The French have practised it with great success, and may
have invented it. It appears particularly French in some of its
phases,--in the manner that is necessary for its practice, in its wit
and finesse. The affair of the Diamond Necklace, with which all the
world is familiar, is the most magnificent instance of it on record. A
lesser case, involving one of the same names, and playing excellently
upon woman's vanity, illustrates the French practice.

One evening, as Marie Antoinette sat quietly in her _loge_ at the