Ninth Post

In my last post, I told the story of J.D.’s first swindle: under-paying two kids to do all his chores. His parents had told him to just be himself and not to try and swindle people. So then John reforms after his brief career as a con-artist. Later, his father invites a guest, as usual for Sunday dinner. He rarely remembers to tell his wife who he is inviting, but it is so regular that she always sets an extra place at the table. This time he invites a drifter, who is an old friend, but they haven’t seen each other in ten years. This friend is also a sort of con-artist himself, though it isn’t what you would expect. When she learns this person is coming, she is irritated with her husband, but holds her tongue for the rest of the night. When John and his father go into the study, where Thomas’s friend has a handful of cigars in his breast pocket as well as one in his mouth. When they are catching up and talking about the guest’s business, J.D. discovers that the man is a trader. Let’s say he has a mule, he would trade it to someone in need of a mule for something of more value, and then he would repeat this process until he was satisfied with his profit. J.D. tries it out and with a list of all the toys his friends want, emulates his father’s friend. He begins with an old Indian costume of his brother’s, and after a few days work gets to the last person on the list, but that person doesn’t have anything he wants. So J.D. ends up with a pig, and when his mother wont let him keep it, he is forced to pay the previous owner to take care of it. The moral in this story is to never get in over your head, and to not trade for something unless you really want it and are allowed to have it.