Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/128

112 of its contents. The Long alley lads fed well that day; and no doubt some part of the contents fetched money as there is a butcher in the next alley, who has seen foreign countries.

Some of them wear an apron, or carry one in their hands, rolled up; sometimes it is a bag—the better to cover smaller articles. They turn their hands to any thing, in which they are occasionally assisted by their women. Shopkeepers who expose their goods for sale at the doors are always open to their robberies. The men practise it in this way: having marked out an article to be boned, they place their bag upon it, and go on to look at something else; which, whilst they are replacing, with one hand, occasions no small trouble, and the exertions necessary to accomplish this, keeps the other hand at work in filling the bag—with which he walks off. Books at stalls are fair game.

Their women go to linen-draper's shops, where the goods hang up at the door, and one standing behind the other, draws under the arm of the front one, whatever she may have fixed her mind upon: if it does not slide off readily, she cuts as much as she can reach. For those sufferers there is very little commiseration: they expose their fascinating lure, and have no legitimate