s to ask for it, and
which gave an account of the contents, the box being full of linen, and
the hamper full of glass ware. I read the letter, and took care to see
the name, and the marks, the name of the person that sent the goods,
the name of the person that they were sent to; then I bade the
messenger come in the morning, for that the warehouse-keeper would not
be there any more that night.

Away went I, and getting materials in a public house, I wrote a letter
from Mr. John Richardson of Newcastle to his dear cousin Jemmy Cole, in
London, with an account that he sent by such a vessel (for I remembered
all the particulars to a title), so many pieces of huckaback linen, so
many ells of Dutch holland and the like, in a box, and a hamper of
flint glasses from Mr. Henzill's glasshouse; and that the box was
marked I. C. No. 1, and the hamper was directed by a label on the
cording.

About an hour after, I came to the warehouse, found the
warehouse-keeper, and had the goods delivered me without any scruple;
the value of the linen being about #22.

I could fill up this whole discourse with the variety of such
adventures, which daily invention directed to, and which I managed with
the utmost dexterity, and always with success.

At length--as when does the pitcher come safe home that goes so very
often to the well?--I fell into some small broils, which though they
could not affect me fatally, yet made me known, which was the worst
thing next to being found guilty that could befall me.

I had taken up the disguise of a widow's dress; it was without any real
design in view, but only waiting for anything that might offer, as I
often did. It happened that while I was going along the street in
Covent Garden, there was a great cry of 'Stop thief! Stop thief!' some
artists had, it seems, put a trick upon a shopkeeper, and being
pursued, some of them fled one way, and some another; and one of them
was, they said, dressed up in widow's weeds, upon which the mob
gathered about me, and some said I was the person, others said no.
Immediately came the mercer's journeyman, and he swore aloud I was the
person, and so seized on me. However, when I was brought back by the
mob to the mercer's shop, the master of the house said freely that I
was not the woman that was in his shop, and would have let me go
immediately; but another fellow said gravely, 'Pray stay till Mr. ----'
(meaning the journeyman) 'comes back, for he knows her.' So