oubted whether any
such is really in existence. Here, however, is a character of another
description:

Captain K---- is still a gay fellow, though I apprehend rather what we
call hard up just now. He has had the opportunity of expending a very
considerable property in seeing Life, but if report say true, it has
been chiefly exhausted among the fair sex, and coffee-house keepers.
Seldom much depressed in spirits, let the world wag as it will, he
sometimes gives good dinners and enjoys himself with a friend, though I
suspect that can, under present circumstances, only be done when he can
pitch the gammon to the wine merchant, and induce him to stand the
nonsense."

"And do wine merchants give credit to persons in confinement?" enquired
Bob.

"Certainly," was the reply, "for services done or promised to be done,
or upon the security of some friend, who perhaps intends soon after to
pay his engagements by a similar mode to that of the person whose debt
he pretends to secure. No place can be found where the study of ways and
means is more closely attended to than this. Of our prisons in general,
much the same may be said as of our gaming houses; very few get out of
them as they went in. A dupe is the general character of those who
first enter; but they seldom fail to acquire that of knave before their
departure. The air is infectious, the society fatal to morality and
to honesty; few pass through the ordeal with purity, and return
uncontaminated to the world; and yet, after all the frauds, tricks, and
speculations practised, it is well to be acquainted with them, in order
to guard against the recurrence, if a man can but have fortitude enough
to avoid practising them himself.~56~~

"Think not that the action of the place
Is all revealed upon this open space;
The darkest portion of the picture lies
Obscur'd and cover'd up from public eyes;
Here much you see, that bids you all mistrust,
Much that provokes aversion and disgust;
New friends, who coolly ask a one pound note,
Or borrow for an hour, then pawn, your coat.
Such stuff as this upon the surface swims;
He little sees who but the surface skims.
How much of fraud and finished wickedness,
How much of deep despair and keen distress,
Thought of by few, and seen by none, the while,
Is chamber'd in the niches of this pile!"

"Zoun