One thing is always very remarkable in _victims_, namely, their extraordinary frankness and politeness. A _victim_ might have been an absolute bear in his better days; but hunger, it is said, will tame a lion, and it seems to have the same effect in subduing the asperities of a _victim_. Meet a _victim_ where you will—that is, before he has become altogether deplorable—and you are amazed at the bland, confidential air which he has assumed; so different, perhaps, from what he sported in better days. His manner, in fact, is most insinuating—into your pocket; and if you do not get alarmed at the symptoms, and break off in time, you are brought down for half a crown as sure as you live. _Victims_ keep up a kind of constant _civil_ war with shops. They mark those which have been recently opened, and where they see only young men behind the counter. They try to establish a kind of credit of face, by now and then dropping in and asking, in a genteel manner, for a sight of a Directory, or for a bit of twine, or for “the _least_ slip of paper,” occasionally even spending a halfpenny or a penny in a candid, honourable way, with all the air of a person wishing to befriend the shop. In the course of these “transactions,” they endeavour to excite a little conversation, beginning with the weather, gradually expanding to a remark upon the state of business; and, perhaps, ending with a sympathising inquiry as to the prospects which the worthy shopkeeper himself may have of succeeding in his present situation. At length, having laid down what painters call a _priming_, they come in some day, in a hurried fiddle-faddle kind of way, and hastily and confidentially ask across the counter, “Mr——[victims are always particular in saying _Master_], have you got such a thing as fourpence in ha’pence? I just want to pay a porter, and happen to have no change.” The specification of “fourpence in ha’pence,” though in reality nonsense, carries the day; it gives a plausibility and credit-worthiness to the demand that could not otherwise be obtained. The unfortunate shopkeeper, carried away by the contagious bustle of the _victim_, plunges his hand, quick as thought, into the till, and before he knows where he is, he is minus a groat, and the _victim_ has vanished from before him—and the whole transaction, reflected upon three minutes afterwards, seems as if it had been a dream.