Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/231

Rh, and says (or thinks) "you may keep it yourself" for aught he cares about you. The Swindler on the other hand defends himself, and his credit (creditableness) most pertinacoiusly; demands the grounds of refusal; offers more references as to character, and shows the cloven foot of his calling, by insolent insinuations against the vender.

This sort of reference for character is their favourite mode of bolstering up each other. It frequently happens, however, that the party referred to is not a whit better known, or of longer standing, than the referror; at times they open two or three such counting houses on purpose to carry on the farce of reference. But he must be a dolt indeed who is duped by ever so many such references, where the aspect of (no) business is so much akin to each other. The upshot of such undertakings is either the King's Bench, the London Gazette, or a voyage to America; the latter being of rarest occurrence, as it always is for deep game, or large consignments to that quarter; and the former of daily recurrence, being for numerous smaller debts, or in case wherein the effects are so completely swept away, that scarcely enough remains to pay for working