Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/87

Rh dirt (from which he endeavours to extract it) than the young urchin, who holds the string, draws it up suddenly, and the finder has nothing but dirty fingers for his pains. This is the least guilty trick we shall have to record. The

Have more cunning to display in turning their wares into money; the pretending to find a ring being the lowest and least profitable exercise of their ingenuity.

It makes a part of the ring-droppers art to find things much more valuabla than those: the favourite articles are jewellery, such as broaches, earrings, necklaces and the like, made up in a paper parcel, sometimes in a small box, in which is stuck a bill of parcels with high flown descriptions and heavy charges. Proceeding with the dupe nearly as before, the sharper proposes, that as he is not in cash, he will willingly relinquish his share for a small proportion of the amount set down in the fictitious bill of parcels; and if you pay him one pound in ten of that amount, you are done. The diamonds are paste, the pearls are the eyes of fish, the gold is polished brass, gilt.

This mode, however, and that of picking up a gold ring, close at the feet of a young servant