honest silver, and pocketed the counterfeit gravely.

What a queer consciousness that must be which accompanies such a man in
his sleeping, in his waking, in his walk through life, by his fireside
with his children round him! "For what we are going to receive," &c.--he
says grace before his dinner. "My dears! Shall I help you to some
mutton? I robbed the butcher of the meat. I don't intend to pay him.
Johnson my boy, a glass of champagne? Very good, isn't it? Not too
sweet. Forty-six. I get it from So-and-so, whom I intend to cheat." As
eagles go forth and bring home to their eaglets the lamb or the pavid
kid, I say there are men who live and victual their nests by plunder.
We all know highway robbers in white neck-cloths, domestic bandits,
marauders, passers of bad coin. What was yonder cheque which Major
Delamere proposed I should cash but a piece of bad money? What was Jack
Thriftless's promise to pay? Having got his booty, I fancy Jack or the
Major returning home, and wife and children gathering round about him.
Poor wife and children! They respect papa very likely. They don't know
he is false coin. Maybe the wife has a dreadful inkling of the truth,
and, sickening, tries to hide it from the daughters and sons. Maybe she
is an accomplice: herself a brazen forgery. If Turpin and Jack Sheppard
were married, very likely Mesdames Sheppard and Turpin did not know, at
first, what their husbands' real profession was, and fancied, when the
men left home in the morning, they only went away to follow some regular
and honorable business. Then a suspicion of the truth may have come:
then a dreadful revelation; and presently we have the guilty pair
robbing together, or passing forged money each on his own account. You
know Doctor Dodd? I wonder whether his wife knows that he is a forger,
and scoundrel? Has she had any of the plunder, think you, and were the
darling children's new dresses bought with it? The Doctor's sermon
last Sunday was certainly charming, and we all cried. Ah, my poor Dodd!
Whilst he is preaching most beautifully, pocket-handkerchief in hand, he
is peering over the pulpit cushions, looking out piteously for Messrs.
Peachum and Lockit from the police-office. By Doctor Dodd you understand
I would typify the rogue of respectable exterior, not committed to gaol
yet, but not undiscovered. We all know one or two such. This very sermon
perhaps will be read by some, or more likely--for, depend upon it, your
solemn hy