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Good wages, aint they? said the man. First-rate, said I; bonneting is more profitable than reviewing. Anan? said the man. Or translating; I dont think the Armenian would have paid me at that rate for translating his Esop. Who is he? said the man. Esop? No, I know what that is, Esops cant for a hunchback; but tother? You should know, said I. Never saw the man in all my life. Yes, you have, said I, and felt him too; dont you remember the individual from whom you took the pocket- book? Oh, that was he; well, the less said about that matter the better; I have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better. Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that pocket-book; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which had I remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been already imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards, though I was hard up, not having a penny in the world. And wisely resolved, said I; it was a bad and dangerous trade, I wonder you should ever have embraced it. It is all very well talking, said the man, but there is a reason for everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer - and then the man told me his story. I shall not repeat the mans story, it was a poor one, a vile one; at last he observed, So that affair which you know of determined me to leave the filching trade, and take up with a more honest and safe one; so at last I thought of the pea and thimble, but I wanted funds, especially to pay for lessons at the hands of a master, for I knew little about it. Well, said I, how did you get over that difficulty? Why, said the man, I thought I should never have got over it. What funds could I raise? I had nothing to sell; the few clothes I had I wanted, for we of the thimble must always appear decent, or nobody would come near us. I was at my wits ends; at last I got over my difficulty in the strangest way in the world. What was that? By an old thing which I had picked up some time before - a book. A book? said I. Yes, which I had taken out of your lordships pocket one day as you were walking the streets in a great hurry. I thought it was a pocket-book at first, full of bank-notes, perhaps, continued he, laughing. It was well for me, however, that it was not, for I should have soon spent the notes; as it was, I had flung the old thing down with an oath, as soon as I brought it home. When I was so hard up, however, after the affair with that friend of yours, I took it up one day, and thought I might make something by it to support myself a day with. Chance or something else led me into a grand shop; there was a man there who seemed to be the master, talking to a jolly, portly old gentleman, who seemed to be a country squire. Well, I went up to the first, and offered it for sale; he took the book, opened it at the title-page, and then |
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