A CHURCH FAIR | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 20, 1893

A CHURCH FAIR.

An Eastern contemporary of recent date contains a lengthy and interesting communication from a subscriber, who details, with great particularity, how he was, as he expressed it, "taken in" at a church fair. Having been invited to this entertainment, he concluded, although a man of limited means, that he could afford to go, the twenty-five cents admission fee seeming, in his untutored opinion, to cover the entire expense of the entertainment. He dressed himself in his best, paid the fee at the door, and went in. Immediately after his entrance he was approached by a young lady with a number of tickets in her hands, and he was solicited to "take a chance" in a raffle for a cabinet organ, the chances being $1.00 each.

As the young lady was a personal acquaintance, belonging to the same church as himself, he felt, he said, ashamed to refuse, although he would gladly have declined, scarcely feeling able to make the expenditure. The chance was taken and paid for, and a moment later a couple of girls carrying a flower basket importuned him to buy a buttonhole boquet. Again was he coerced, and fifty cents was extracted from his unwilling pocket for an article which he declared he felt ashamed to wear. Escaping from the flower girls he ran into the arms, metaphorically speaking, of course, of two young ladies, who hinted that refreshments were in order.

He went with them, and, duly "refreshed," then tendered the cashier, in payment of a seventy-five cent check, a $2.00 bill. The lady placed the bill in a drawer, and turned her attention to the next customer, whereupon he ventured to remind her that she had forgotten the change. "We give no change," was the cool rejoinder, and the unfortunate youth, with such comfort as this bit of information afforded, retired. At this point he would fain have gotten out, but this was only the beginning. He seems to have been recognized as a good subject, and passed from one set of schemers to another, only to find that each was intent solely on extracting from his pocketbook the last possible cent. He finally did escape, but only after expending, as he says, the sum of $16.25, or a little over half of the monthly salary which he had that day received.

It is safe to say that this much-be-leaguered young man will not soon again darken the doors of a church festival, and his experience may serve as a warning to more than one of his acquaintances who might possibly be tempted to give encouragement, under the name of charity, to similar enterprises.—Selected.