Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/224

208 with whom the sponge is the chief negociator next morning.

Should you ask for a song, appoint a meeting, or applaud any thing he has said or done, the Sponge will turn round sharply and ask for the loan of a few shillings. He will pimp for you, while talking of his independence; he will brush your coat, or carry your umbrella, while boasting of his connections, and exult that "he enjoys a moderate competency, in which he feels more real happiness, than with the comparative splendour of former days, accompanied by the shackles of his relations' narrow prejudices." Lest this should not give you sufficient confidence in his exalted origin, he pulls off his hat to the carriages of nobility and gentry as they pass along, of the owners of which he knows no more than you do.

One of these gentry walking up the Haymarket with his new-found companion, was carrying the umbrella of the latter as well as his own, whilst the countryman was buttoning his great coat, the better to resist a threatening storm: Our Sponge called out, as a carriage drove past, "I'll die if I shall not hear of this again! Lady T will wonder what I am a doing with two umbrellas at once. But I shall give her as good as she