Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/237

Rh Devolve into blacker crimes, for which they undergo charges of various hue, from petty larceny up to capital.

Not many years ago, a gang of miscreants, who rented a house in Hatton Garden, for the purpose of reference, and were connected with one or two other establishments of the same nature in the city, were found to have locked a man in the cellar, and decamped. When the cries of the poor fellew brought assistance, he turned out to be a banker's clerk, who calling with a bill for payment, they seized and bound him, taking away all the money and assets which he had in charge. They were never discovered.

A clergyman (of the thump craw kidney) who was F. R. S. (i. e. Fellow Remarkably Sharp,) and who was over fond of learning, had a call. This was not the call from above, but one from below, and inappropriately he put it in experience upon Parsons of Fleet Street. Here he looked out as many books as filled a bag, with which the boy was to accompany him to a house, he should direct; "it was only in New Bridge Street." When the pair arrived at the door of an empty house, our clergy knocked at it, and ordered the boy to fetch a certain other book: As nobody answered his application at the empty