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known thief, the professional vagrant, or the unfortunate
outcast. The housebreaker and pickpocket
receive shelter, countenanoe, and advice; the vagrant
and thief are frequently combined in the same person,
so that the support supplied by so called charity is
turned to the uses of immorality, fraud, and crimie,
reaching occasionally to murder. There is in this
kingdom a guild of vagrancy in which there are
professors, masters, and apprentioes. The professor
is he who can put on more shams than Mathews ever
dreamt of; he will represent the country clergyman,
the well-to-do [farmer, the day labourer out of work,
the ruined artizan with a delicate wife and small
family,' the shipwrecked sailor, or any of the thousand
and one personal fictions daily receiving pay from
those who give readily, and, as a consequence, give
foolishly. But the professor can act in tragedy as
well as in comedy, and cap use a p|ick-lock, a bracebit,
a crow-bar, a life-preserver, a musket, or a pistol.
The common lodging-house, the gaol, and the gallows
are the scenes of three acts in one tragedy. Before
a robbery the whining vagrant frequently reconnoitres
the premises which the housebreaker enters, so that
mistaken charity leads to retributive crime. In this
guild of iniquity there is a sort of blackguards'
literature, and the initiated understand each other by
slang terms, by pantomimic signs, and by hieroglyphics.
The vagrant's mark may be seen in Woolwich on
corners of streets, on door posts, and on house steps.
Simple as these chalk lines appear, they inform the
succeeding vagrants of all they require to know;
and a fiew white scratches may say 'be importunate'
or ' pass on;' "