Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/66

50 Payment must be talked off; if that will not do, - quarrelled off; if that won't do, - fought off.

Such is a tolerably fair account of many men, some of respectable occupations in life, but who are nevertheless Sharpers in the fullest sense of the word,—who will even boast of the money they win at laying quirkish bets. The intention is, to take in the unwary, and is not a bit better than picking of pockets or purloining in a dwelling-house. What appears the most galling part of the business to me is, that those men brag of their honesty, and look down upon their poorer, but more upright neighbour, with disdain. They are called upon juries to try their fellow (criminals?) creatures, and many among us think them competent judges of what is a proper verdict in all cases but their own.

For a great number of years that a friend of mine frequented the coffee-houses, so called, round Covent Garden, he witnessed a nightly and daily struggle to take money out of each others' pockets by dint of this deep laid trickery. At one of them, where the most doltish set m the world meet, a couple of Welchmen from the city, came in to see what could be done in their own way. One of them eggs on the other to