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cidents however, I made it a rule never to enter a second shop with any stolen property about me; for as soon as I quitted the first, I privately conveyed my booty to Bromley, who was attending my motions in the street, and herein I found him eminently useful. By this course of depredation I acquired on the average about ten pounds a week, though I sometimes neglected shopping for several days together. This was not, indeed, the only pursuit I followed, but was my principal morning's occupation; though if a favourable opportunity offered of getting a guinea by any other means, I never let it slip. In the evenings I generally attended one of the theatres, where I mixed with the best company in the boxes, and at the same time that I enjoyed the amusements of the place, I frequently conveyed pocket-books, snuff-boxes, and other portable articles, from the pockets of their proprietors into my own. Here I found the inconvenience of wanting a suitable companion, who might have received the articles I made prize of, in the same manner as Bromley did in the streets; but though I knew many of the light-fingered gentry, whose appearance fitted them for any company, yet, their faces being well known to the police-officers, who attend the Theatres, they would not have been suffered to enter the house: and herein I possessed an advantage which many of these gentry envied me; for being just arrived in England, and a new face
