The use of his own native language is of great advantage to him, in exciting the pity and fixing the attention of the passenger; and is, besides, a great inducement to many to extend their charity to this apparently distressed stranger. Indeed he exercises every art, and leaves no method untried, to work upon the various dispositions of those he supplicates. Very often he will preach to the spectators gathered round him, presuming frequently to make mention of the name of Jesus; and, sometimes, he will amuse another sort of auditors with a song; and _when begging_, he always appears bent double, as if with excessive pain and fatigue. But here again is another deception and trick of a very shallow manufacture: for in the same day we have seen him, when outward-bound, in the morning, so bent double as with a _fixed_ affliction; but on his return home in the evening, after the business of the day is closed, this black Toby reverses his position, lays aside all his restraints, walks upright, and with as firm a step as the nature of his loss will allow, begins talking English, and ceases preaching. To all appearance, a daily and universal miracle appears to be wrought; for scarcely are he and his jovial companions assembled together in one place and with one accord; or rather scarcely has liquor appeared upon the table, than the blind can see--the dumb speak--the deaf hear--and the lame walk! Here, indeed, as Pope has said, one might "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing:" Or, as he has neatly said upon a more solemn occasion, "Hear the dumb sing; the lame his crutch forego, "And leap, exulting, like the bounding roe." To descend from the imitations of these poetic strains, we add, that to such assemblies[1] as those just described, Toby is a visiting member, and is frequently called upon from the chair to amuse the company; and as a beggar's life is avowedly made up of extremes, from these midnight revels, he adjourns to a miserable two-penny lodging, where, with the regular return of the morning, as a carpenter putteth on his apron, or as a trowel is taken into the hand of a bricklayer; even so Black Toby, laying aside all the freaks of the evening, again sallies forth in quest of those objects of credulity, that will ever be found in a population so extensive as that of this metropolis. [1] From some such meetings as these, we suppose the following circular club letter to have been issued: