But there is a great many
people in London, besides this man, famous for playing odd tricks, and
yet no conjurers neither. This man would have made a great figure in the
law, as he is so dexterous a conveyancer. But the law is a profession
that does not want any jugglers. Nor do we need any longer to load our
heads with the weight of learning, or pore {39} for years over arts
and sciences, when a few months' practice with these pasteboard
pages [_takes the cards_] can make any man's fortune, without his
understanding a single letter of the alphabet, provided he can but slip
the cards, snap his fingers, and utter the unintelligible jargon of
'presto, passa, largo, mento, cocolorum, yaw' like this Jonas. The
moment he comes into company, and takes up a pack of cards, he begins,
"I am no common slight-of hand man; the common slight-of-hand men, they
turn up the things up their sleeves, and make you believe their fingers
deceive your eyes. Now, sir, you shall draw one card, two cards, three
cards, four cards, five cards, half a dozen cards; you look at the card
at this side, you look at the card at that side, and I say blow the
blast; the blast is blown, the card is flown, yaw, yaw: and now, sir, I
will do it once more over again, to see whether my fingers can once more
deceive your eyes. I'll give any man ten thousand pounds if he do the
like. You look at the card of this side, you look at the card on that
side; when I say blow the blast, the blast is blown, the card is
shown, yaw, yaw." But this conjurer, at length discovering that most
practitioners on cards, now-a-days, know as many tricks as himself,
{40}and finding his slights of hand turned to little or no account, now
practises on notes of hand by discount, and is to be found every morning
at twelve in Duke's-place, up to his knuckles in dirt, and at two at
the Bank coffee-house, up to his elbows in money, where these locusts
of society, over a dish of coffee and the book of interest, supply the
temporary wants of necessitous men, and are sure to out-wit 'em, had
they even the cunning of a... Fox!

Here is the head of another Fashionable Foreigner [_shews the head_], a
very simple machine; for he goes upon one spring, self-interest. This
head may be compared to a _disoblezeance_; for there is but one seat in
it, and that is not the seat {41}of understanding: yet it is wonderful
how much more rapidly this will move in the high road of preferment than
one of your thi