'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 lordship's 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 all of a sudden
his eyes glistened, and he showed it to the fat, jolly gentleman, and his
eyes glistened too, and I heard him say "How singular!" and then the two
talked together in a speech I didn't understand--I rather thought it was
French, at any rate it wasn't cant; and presently the first asked me what
I would take for the book. Now I am not altogether a fool, nor am I
blind, and I had narrowly marked all that passed, and it came into my
head that now was the time for making a man of myself, at any rate I
could lose nothing by a little confidence; so I looked the man boldly in
the face, and said, "I will have five guineas for that book, there ain't
such another in the whole world." "Nonsense," said the first man, "there
are plenty of them, there have been nearly fifty editions, to my
knowledge; I will give you five shillings." "No," sai