Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/105

Rh Most private distillers keep pigs; for this reason, that they not only eat up the residue of the materials, but are also a good cloak in brirging in and carrying out whatever may be necessary. The pigs go to Smithtield, fat, and store pigs are brought back in a little cart. A large basket containing bladders goes forward and backward, and the business is now effected with more safety than ever, as I myself have witnessed. Being out upon a drinking spree with four or five others in the autumn of 1817, near Chelsea, I saw one of these carts stop at the door, the driver calling for a pint of beer, as he descended with a small market basket in his hand. As he did not come into the room where we were, but went backwards into a dark kitchen-looking place, my curiosity was raised, so I watched him through the glass as I sat on the table: he stooped down, as if concealing something, and went away in a short time without speaking to any one; as the landlord never stirred out of our company, and the pot boy who served him with the beer had been ordered out by his master to get in the pots. What was my surprise upon sneaking backwards, to find he had not drank half of his beer! which I then recollected he did not pay for, so far as I could see. He had placed two bladders of