MUSTACHIOS.—These _were_ pretty things for the profession; but I grieve to say it, lawyers’ clerks, linen-drapers’ apprentices, players out of place, and even pedestrian vendors of lucifer matches, have detracted from their exclusive importance; hence, I would counsel the youthful, sanguine swindler to eschew what indeed vulgar usage has rendered a very questionable advantage, and to swindle with clean lips. It is enough to break the heart of a rabbi to see how one of “Heaven’s best gifts,” the human beard, is in these hirsute days cut and notched according to the impudence or ignorance of the wearer. It is said of the French that they have a thousand ways of cooking an egg: let it be our boast that we have as many modes of dressing the chin. I have, I hope, a love of the picturesque, as the world will one day know from a work of mine still, unhappily, in manuscript.[15] I, therefore, am a passionate admirer of the beard of patriarchal growth; but for your nasty, stunted, straggly, ragged, edgy things—now like the skin of a dog with the mange, now like the end of a skein of whitey-brown thread, now as if culled from chopped hay, and now as if cut from a singed blanket—pah!—were I caliph for a day—but no matter, let me not wander to legislation, but stick to my higher subject—Swindling. I say, then, to my disciple, eschew mustachios. At best they are a doubtful good. If, however, you are determined to wear them, let me hope that their hue is black as death. If, on the contrary, Heaven has awarded you a pair of pale gold or deep carrot colour, tamper not with them, but shave. Never, like Richard, think to stand “the hazard of the _die_”; if so, your case is desperate. I knew three promising young fellows, all of whom laid their ruin at the door of Mr Rowland. But—for I like to anticipate—it may be asked, Do you always, Captain Whitefeather, walk abroad with unrazored lips? To this I boldly answer that—for I was justified in the vanity—I did wear an adorned mouth; more, that a lady, who shall be nameless, was in hysterics (of course at intervals) for three days, when my mustachios fell; but no, I could not condescend to wear them when I saw—yes, I confess it—even a better pair than my own upon the face of a fellow in the Surrey gallery, selling play-bills, Spanish nuts, and ginger beer. What the revolution of society may in time produce it would of course be impudence in me, who am not a Paternoster Row astrologer, to declare; but, for the next five-and-twenty years, mustachios will, I think, be a dangerous decoration for the swindler. So much business has been done with them that suspicion will have scarcely subsided under at least another quarter of a century. The horse-tails of Ibrahim Pacha have not been more triumphant; but victory will not always perch upon the same banner. Footnote 15: _The Handbook of Ratcliffe Highway_, an inestimable work (when printed) for the stranger in London.—[JOHN JACKDAW, Ed.]