Let us for a moment consider the comprehensiveness of the subject. Other handbooks have their merits and their uses: far be it from the editor to detract one iota from their claims upon a thoughtful people; yet it must be conceded that their different subjects apply rather to the wants of sections of the public than to the public in its integrity. For instance, how few rejoice in the masculine exercise of skittles! Toasted cheese, albeit the favourite diet of many of Cyclopean digestion, is sedulously shunned by dyspeptic hundreds of thousands. The class of the eel-skinning public is indeed most limited; nutmeg is never dreamt of by at least a million of our fellow-subjects; a million more, it is our cheerful hope, know not the visitation of corns; whilst, could a census be taken of the number of kittens annually sacrificed by drowning, it would possibly be discovered that not one British subject out of five hundred is ever called upon to perform that painful, yet necessary and most domestic operation. It must then be acknowledged that all handbooks hitherto published are more or less limited in their application; but for “The Handbook of Swindling,”—why, it is a national work; a _vade mecum_ for a whole people! It was the intention of the editor to dedicate this work to some illustrious individual worthy of the distinction. But so many candidates—all equally deserving of the honour—with claims so nicely balanced, rose before him, that the editor, considering it would be invidious to many to select one alone, dedicates the book to the nation at large. Yes, he gives it to his country; but too well repaid if he shall be the means of calling from the working day road of life one simple traveller to the pleasant “primrose path” made easier and laid more open to him by this golden volume. BREAKNECK STEPS, OLD BAILEY. CHAPTER I THE READER IS INTRODUCED TO CAPTAIN WHITEFEATHER’S RELATIONS IT was a favourite conviction of my late respected uncle and godfather, Barabbas Whitefeather—he fell in the very flower of his age, at only forty-five, a premature victim to the insalubrity of Bermuda, where he was stationed in a very public capacity by the British Government—it was, I say, a pet belief of the sagacious Barabbas that every man had within him what I think heathen philosophers have called a particle of divine gold; but which my uncle, in the fine simplicity of his nature, and at the same time humanely accommodating his language to the lowest understanding of his species, denominated “a bit of the swindler.” Discriminating reader, Barabbas Whitefeather was a man of homespun wit, who chewed not his words until they had lost all their original form and vigour; no, he flung them from him with the air of a man who knows he is laying down a guinea of the best mint gold, and not timidly and sneakingly, like a passer of gilt copper. “Every man has within him a bit of the swindler!”