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I made a point of commencing every day in a certain street and went regularly through it on both sides the way. My practice was to enter a shop and request to look at gold seals, chains, broaches, rings, or any other small articles of value; and while examining them, and looking the shopkeeper in the face, I contrived by slight of hand to conceal two or three (sometimes more) in the sleeve of my coat, which was purposely made wide. On some occasions I purchased a trifling article to save appearances; at other times I took a card of the shop, promising to call again; and as I generally saw the remaining goods returned to the window, or place from whence they were taken, before I left the shop, there was hardly a probability of my being suspected, or of the property being missed. In the course of my career I was never once detected in the fact, though on two or three occasions, so much suspicion arose, that I was obliged to exert all my effrontery, and to use very high language, in order, as the cant phrase is, to bounce the tradesman out of it; and my fashionable appearance, and affected anger at his insinuations, had always the effect of convincing him that he was mistaken, and inducing him to apologize for the affront put upon me. I have even sometimes carried away the spoil notwithstanding what had passed, and I have often gone a second and third time to the same shop, with as good success as at the first. To prevent ac-
