Humour? Tongue in cheek? Do you associate these with Edgar Allan Poe? You might when you read this one. The short entry is an essay on "diddling," a word which has gone out of style. Yet it seems to us that it would still serve a very useful purpose today. What is a diddle? The best way to describe it can be found in the Cambridge English Dictionary: "to get money from someone in a way that is not honest." They use examples of, "He diddled me! He said that there were six [items] in a bag, but there were only five." Or, "I checked the bill and realized the restaurant had diddled me out of £5." Poe is writing about a type of commercial fraud, smaller and more personal in nature than defrauding a bank on a large land deal for example. Poe sets out the characteristics of diddling and diddlers: minuteness, (self)-interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grinning. He then proceeds to outline numerous examples of diddling in the 1840s. Different times, but with the same objective, to part you from your money. Librarian's note: this entry is for the story, "Diddling." Collections of short stories by the author can be found elsewhere on Goodreads.