Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/222

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206
GENERAL DEALERS—ALL-TRADES-

men at hand, whom they recommend you to make purchases of; these put their heads together, the one to impress you with a good idea of the goods and the vender, and the latter to put on extra profits, the better to divide with the sycophant, a decent sum at your expense. Another set are actually in trade at the moment, if that can be called a trade, which consists of a shop of all sorts; these are called "general dealers," and partake much of the character of the jobbers; only that the latter for a shop, keep a "warehouse," upstairs in a garret; or their lodging room at the public house serves the purpose of a warehouse! I have known one of these, at the same time a dealer in cutlery, coffins, pictures, paper, hose, books, bandanas, and other heterogeneous articles; while he could recommend you "to the best brandy merchant in town,"—"a capital good woollen-draper"—"the man that makes the best boots you ever wore"—and "the tightest fit for a pair of breeches, ever heard of." With the whole of these, he has "dealt largely for years; and all his friends who have bought of them were perfectly satisfied."

Such is the exact portraiture of a man whom we have particularly noticed; and we know as certainly that the same genus of traders abound,