Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/152

136 expands the wings of a butterfly, and transfixes its body against its last receptacle in his museum.

Observing these precautions, my reader will merely be done out of a little money, and probably a small portion of that laughing hygeia with which he entered London. He will then have conquered the most alluring species of destruction that environs our rougher sex; since here are collected all the most accomplished and fascinating outsides of the female form about town, together with the well-practised tongue, and every other art and blandishment to stir up and carry away captive the senses of youth.

At the tavern, there sits in the bar the fascinating lure of a pretty bar-maid, or a handsome landlady; sometimes both. Men in their cups, pass a word or two with these, and feel gratified; this ripens into longer conversations, an invitation to walk into that sanctum sanctorum of all groggishness follows, where the women as well as the men take their drops of eye-water. With one or the other (or both) of these, you are inveigled into an intimacy, an ogling, and then you are treated with