The Con Man and the Widow
A crafty imposter poses as a weary veteran to swindle a charitable widow out of her supplies.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A poor soldier exclaimed a loud 'Oh!' in Snohomish, Washington, as a battered veteran in blue appeared at her door, and meekly asked for a cup of water. 'Poor soldier! I know in truth that you are tired and thirsty, and that you will be powerful glad to get a drink of water, not to speak of a little stimulant to mix with it.' 'Thank you, mum; but I belong to the Daughters of Temperance, and can’t drink, unless it is a little in the way of medicine.' The good old lady brought out a bottle, from which the veteran poured a teaspoonful into a glass of water, and took a vigorous pull at the bottle when her back was turned. Then she placed before him a substantial supper. After, as the last rays of the setting sun lighted up the face of the battered veteran, he walked up the mud until he was joined by several more veteran soldiers. 'Have you got it, boys?' asked the veteran to whom the Bible had been presented. 'All right, my covey. Ten gallons of peach brandy, a keg of apple-jack, and ten or twelve bottles of blackberry wine. The old gal was well fixed.' They went off to divide the loot.
“The old gal was well fixed.”
This 19th-century confidence game mirrors modern 'porch pirate' scams and charity frauds, where perpetrators exploit local kindness. The story highlights the tension between the era's temperance moralizing and the reality of illicit liquor trade in early frontier towns.
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