Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/77

Rh by means of a most ill-written poem, the stanzas of which have served as a kind of pegs upon which to hang the notes. The consequence has been, that new and yet unpractised methods are daily resorted to, of which we will apprise our readers by and by, whereby to come at the money of the unsuspecting stranger. We think the poet has no more rhyme than we have sense; we know more than he does of the things he describes; and some things of which he appears to know nothing. We allude to "the Greeks," a poem.

What signifies his telling the public about the two sevens (77) in Jermyn Street, or the same quaint description of the feverish do. (77) in Pall Mall? the so-called subscription houses! Or indeed, any house or person, if he describes not the mode in which the novice in town is done out of his money? Names and places have changed in nine months, wonderfully. To be sure, those remain; they remain known; whereas they were antecedently known only to a few (the chosen few) black legs. But a question arises in our minds—why did he suppress every mention of the three houses next the palace gate? or the tree at the opposite corner, which, like a will-o'-the-wisp, is now up, now down, now in, now out? He is shrewdly suspected by many of