Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/515

Rh from school and sheltered among some gipsies. He contracted such a love for their vagrant life, and such satisfaction from the applause he got for thefts that manifested low cunning, that nothing would induce him to abandon their mode of life and return to civilization. Here is the description of the hero, as sent forth into the world with Mr. Carew's sanction:— "The Stature of our Hero is tall and majestic, his Limbs strong and well proportioned, his Features regular, his Countenance open and ingenuous, bearing all those characteristical Marks which Physiognomists assert denote an honest and good-natured Mind; and tho' Hardships, and even Age itself (he being now sixty) have made some Alterations in his Features, yet we venture to compare his Countenance with Mr. Thomas Jones's, tho' the Author of that Gentleman's Life asserts he is the finest Figure he ever beheld." He was an adept at all sorts of disguises. Sometimes he postured as a shipwrecked seaman and begged for relief, sometimes he was a householder whose dwelling had been destroyed by fire, sometimes, dressed in little more than a blanket, he acted the madman. Then he was a Kent farmer, whose lands had been overflowed by the tide. The only trade he acquired was that of rat-catching. In this, "our Hero, by his close Application, soon attained so considerable a Knowledge in his Profession, that he practised it with Success and Applause, to the great Advantage of the Public in general, not confining the good Effects of his Knowledge to his own Community only, but extending them universally to all Sorts of People wheresoever they were wanted; for though the Mendicants are in a constant State of Hostility with all other People, and Mr. Carew was as alert as any one in laying all Manner of Schemes and Stratagems to carry off a Booty from