Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/185

Rh was told. Thus much I have gone out of the straight path to say, in the way of corroboration of the anvil story, which the printer's devil told me "no one would be so soft as to take in not at any price."

To return to the shop-lifting system of robbery: a most barefaced attack upon a shop took place within a few Saturdays of the last mentioned one. At the top of Bishopsgate Street and Norton Falgate, six or seven thieves were making a bubbery, as they always do thereabouts on Saturday and Sunday evenings;—two of them went into a hosier's shop, and exchanged a word or two of no moment with the master; they were followed to the door by their companions, one of whom handed down a parcel of stockings, and passing through the others, walked off with it. I had enough of them; and not choosing to run any risk by following up, I left them to the dangerous means they had adopted to come at the property of others, and walked doun Worship Street. A sight of the police-office there brought me to think what could have become of their patrol! for it was past eleven o'clock.

Stealing prayer-books and bibles from churches, was carried on to a great extent four to six years ago, by a tall man about thirty years