Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/194

178 church: he is perpetual president of the butcher-meeting at the corner of Newgate Market. Another of the ir-reverends is a dabster at backgammon, attached to ale, loves a good dinner, talks jolly, sings a (bad) song; and has been found upon the lay, for which he caught quod. He gambles deep and long, and is always down upon the countryman: I know not to what kidney he belongs; but hear, he has tried three sorts of belief or of discipline, from which I conclude he must be a Trinitarran. I shall not tell his name outright, for two reasons: 1. because he has stood the putter; 2. because he was always civil, and once very kind to me when I was misused, like him: it very much resembles a brisk wind blowing in the dark.

Great numbers of such as we have described pervade town; but our readers must not permit their reverence for the cloth, to sway their judgment into the slightest deference for the men.

About twenty years ago, (and less by eight or ten,) there was a kind of house of call for journeymen parsons, who met at the King's Head near St. Paul's every Saturday. There you might see the Reverend Mr. Jones, and the Reverend Mr. Styles settling a change of service for to-morrow: a dispute between Dr. Dn and Denis Lawler, the