Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/314

304 something heavy always hangs about us, I know not what it is, that we are never easy till we are half drunk among our whores and companions; nor sleep sound unless we drink longer than we can stand. If we go abroad in the day, a wise man would easily find us to be rogues by our faces, we have such a suspicious, fearful, and constrained countenance; often turning back, and slinking through narrow lanes and alleys. I have never failed of knowing a brother thief by his looks, though I never saw him before. Every man among us keeps his particular whore, who is however common to us all when we have a mind to change. When we have got a booty, if it be in money, we divide it equally among our companions, and soon squander it away on our vices in those houses that receive us; for the master and mistress, and the very tapster, go snacks: and besides make us pay triple reckonings. If our plunder be plate, watches, rings, snuffboxes, and the like; we have customers in all quarters of the town to take them off. I have seen a tankard worth fifteen pounds sold to a fellow in street for twenty shillings; and a gold watch for thirty. I have set down his name, and that of several others in the paper already mentioned. We have setters watching in corners, and by dead wails, to give us notice when a gentleman goes by; especially, if he be any thing in drink. I believe in my conscience, that if an account were made of a thousand pounds in stolen goods; considering the low rates we sell them at, the bribes we must give for concealment, the extortions of alehouse reckonings, and other necessary charges, there would not remain fifty pounds clear to be divided among the robbers. And out of this we must find clothes for our whores, beside ing