Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/22

6 of sight, he bolts off in quick time; next takes to his heels, and making a double turn or two round the corners, he eludes pursuit, much less detection.

Coachmen and guards, belonging to the mails and stage coaches, are mostly honest men, as the times go; many of them are of high character, and some become proprietors, and defy the world. But the practices of "shouldering" passengers, on their own account—doing the natives out of articles of life, which they bring to town to dispose of—the dealing in contraband goods, and a number of other out-of-the-way methods,—to say nothing of the wish to appear over-cunning,—bring them to "take care of things," for which there is no immediate owner. The feelings once blunted by one improper pursuit, leave their owner open to the fascinations of another, till at length the quality of the crime is no longer an object of solicitude.

This remark is more pointedly applicable to short stage and hackney coachmen; the latter of whom are mostly "turned-off characters"—a few are "returned lags;" of course neither the one or the other are to be trusted out of sight,—nor yet scarcely in your sight.

If gloves, a handkerchief, a shawl, or other