Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/183

Rh —ohmucli confusion in his goods and negligence in shewing them."

If small articles are liable to be thus purloined, no less so are the most ponderous; only these do not occur so often possibly as the former. What will the unknowing reader think of a man running away with a smith's anvil of three hundred weight? He may stare! but it is not a whit the more untrue, because he happens never to have heard of such a thing. I saw it myself, in open day, not in a remote corner of the town, but at the corner of Greek Street and King Street, Soho. The owners names were Jackson and Hartlett; and the anvil stood just inside the door, either to show that they were ironmongers, or to perform odd jobs upon. The facetiousness of the last named gentleman induced him to follow, and compel the thief to walk back with his load! assuring him, ironically, that he was going the wrong way, nnd promising him something for the extra trouble he was giving to him; and he performed his promise: it was no other than a jolly good kick in the which he had for his pains.

What is it to me, or to you, reader! that this happened long ago? Have you not got names for the fact? and the date is a dozen years back at