Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/220

204 of your dish; at least, if they do not put the question, their gentle hints it is impossible to mistake.

Of all qualities and all pretensions, they are to be found at every public house, tavern, and dining-house; where, if you tell ever so inane a story, they are the first to commend, and they laugh at what is meant for a joke, although it should be egregious nonsense. Make a display of your purse, and these fellows will lick the dust from your feet; though you mistake so palpable a matter as the hour of the day, they are ready to swear you are right; their politeness is fulsome, their panegyrics nauseate. Sam. Ireland's definition of them was a good one: he termed them "toad-eaters," who would swallow any one's poison.

Are you in doubt what road to take, or how to fashion your taste for vertu? The sycophant can direct you better, according to his own shewing, than any one alive. They are to be found plying at the hotel, as well as the watering-house; and although I am not admitted at either the Blenheim or Long's, yet I have seen them at places standing equally high with those fashionable houses. I have met with them at the Old Bailey Eating houses, at the Chick-lane soup