Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/200

184 information against a coal merchant in Durham yard: they were almost ruined upon that occasion. For some years Mr. B. went by the name of Brown (and Colonel Brown) of Leicester square; old B*****d, of Gresse Street, being his nominal informer; that is to say, he whose name was inserted in the writ "Quæré clausum fregit," their favourite mode of proceeding. His companions never mention his real name, or, indeed, any other, contenting themselves invariably with the initials only, in the same way we have used it above. This did not arise from any dislike to naming the instrument with which house-maids excite the fire to burn, but merely to throw dust into the eyes of by-standers, and to avoid the painful recollections of Blandfoid, and of his lordship's emphatical conclusion, "henceforth let the name of Bs be infamous, for its present possessor has rendered it so."

Some real lawyers sit about at low public houses, (and as high ones as they can attain to) in order to obtain customers, fomenting differences, and setting friends by the ears.

We know a score or more of them, whose