He tried to charge me two hundred
seventy-five dollars for a steel engraving, and said I could keep the
plate and have others made from it. Then I saw through him. He never
wanted my history of the township. He just wanted to swindle me into
buying a lot of copies to give away, and he wanted most to bamboozle me
into having a picture made, not half so good as I can get for a few
dollars a dozen at any good photographer's, and pay him the price of a
good team of horses for it. He thought he could gull old Jake Vandemark!
If I would pay for it, I could get printed in the book a few of my
remarks on the history of the township, and my
two-hundred-and-seventy-five-dollar picture. Others would write about
something else, and get their pictures in. In that way this smooth
scoundrel would make thousands of dollars out of people's vanity--and he
expected me to be one of them! If I can put him in jail I'll do it--or
I would if it were not for posting myself as a fool.
"Look here," I said, after he had told me what a splendid thing it would
be to have my picture in the book so future generations could see what a
big man I was. "Do you want what I know about the history of Vandemark
Township in your book, or are you just out after my money?"
"Well," he said, "if, after you've written twenty or thirty pages, and
haven't got any nearer Vandemark Township than a canal-boat, somewhere
east of Syracuse, New York, in 1850, I'll need some money if I print the
whole story--judging of its length by that.
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