wed HIS
attention on high and low; but in the shape of blows: he would fight the
strongest and kick the smallest, and was always at work with one or the
other. At thirteen, when he was removed from the establishment whither
he had been sent, he was the cock of the school out of doors, and the
very last boy in. He used to let the little boys and new-comers pass him
by, and laugh; but he always belaboured them unmercifully afterwards;
and then it was, he said, HIS turn to laugh. With such a pugnacious
turn, Tom Billings ought to have been made a soldier, and might have
died a marshal; but, by an unlucky ordinance of fate, he was made a
tailor, and died a--never mind what for the present; suffice it to say,
that he was suddenly cut off, at a very early period of his existence,
by a disease which has exercised considerable ravages among the British
youth.

By consulting the authority above mentioned, we find that Hayes did
not confine himself to the profession of a carpenter, or remain long
established in the country; but was induced, by the eager spirit of Mrs.
Catherine most probably, to try his fortune in the metropolis; where he
lived, flourished, and died. Oxford Road, Saint Giles's, and Tottenham
Court were, at various periods of his residence in town, inhabited
by him. At one place he carried on the business of greengrocer and
small-coalman; in another, he was carpenter, undertaker, and lender of
money to the poor; finally, he was a lodging-house keeper in the Oxford
or Tyburn Road; but continued to exercise the last-named charitable
profession.

Lending as he did upon pledges, and carrying on a pretty large trade,
it was not for him, of course, to inquire into the pedigree of all
the pieces of plate, the bales of cloth, swords, watches, wigs,
shoe-buckles, etc. that were confided by his friends to his keeping; but
it is clear that his friends had the requisite confidence in him, and
that he enjoyed the esteem of a class of characters who still live in
history, and are admired unto this very day. The mind loves to think
that, perhaps, in Mr. Hayes's back parlour the gallant Turpin might
have hob-and-nobbed with Mrs. Catherine; that here, perhaps, the noble
Sheppard might have cracked his joke, or quaffed his pint of rum. Who
knows but that Macheath and Paul Clifford may have crossed legs under
Hayes's dinner-table? But why pause to speculate on things that might
have been? why desert reality for fond imagination, o