"I wish I did," said the man; "I would give ten pounds and more to know the language of the Rommany Chals. There's some of it in the language of the pea and thimble; how it came there I don't know, but so it is. I wish I knew it, but it is difficult. You'll make a capital bonnet; shall we close?" "What would the wages be?" I demanded. "Why, to a first-rate bonnet, as I think you would prove, I could afford to give from forty to fifty shillings a week." "Is it possible?" said I. "Good wages, a'n't they?" said the man. "First-rate," said I; "bonneting is more profitable than reviewing." "Anan?" said the man. "Or translating; I don't think the Armenian would have paid me at that rate for translating his Esop." "Who is he?" said the man. "Esop?" "No, I know what that is, Esop's cant for a hunchback; but t'other?" "You should know," said I. "Never saw the man in all my life." "Yes, you have," said I, "and felt him too; don't you remember the individual from whom you took the pocket-book?" "Oh, that was he? Well, the less said about that matter the better; I have left off that trade, and taken to this, which is a much better. Between ourselves, I am not sorry that I did not carry off that pocket- book; if I had, it might have encouraged me in the trade, in which, had I remained, I might have been lagged, sent abroad, as I had been already imprisoned; so I determined to leave it off at all hazards, though I was hard up, not having a penny in the world." "And wisely resolved," said I; "it was a bad and dangerous trade; I wonder you should ever have embraced it." "It is all very well talking," said the man, "but there is a reason for everything; I am the son of a Jewess, by a military officer,"--and then the man told me his story. I shall not repeat the man's story, it was a poor one, a vile one; at last he observed, "So that affair which you know of determined me to leave the filching trade, and take up with a more honest and safe one; so at last I thought of the pea and thimble, but I wanted funds, especially to pay for lessons at the hands of a master, for I knew little about it." "Well," said I, "how did you get over that difficulty?" "Why," said the man, "I thought I should never have got over it. What funds could I raise? I had nothing to sell; the few clothes I had I wanted, for we of the thimble must always appear decent, or nobody would come near us. I was at my wits' end; at last I got over my difficulty in the strangest way in the world." "What was that?" "By an old thing which I had picked up some time before--a book." "A book?" said I.