To his father’s business our Dick Farden in course of time succeeded, but being of a wild and roving turn of mind, he paid little or no attention to the pigs, and as he said, “he went it so fast that he wasn’t long in going through ‘Farden’s magic grease,’” so that in a very little time, the sheriff walked into the shop, and seized the two bears in the kitchen, together with all the wigs, scalps, and moustachios he had on the premises. But this, he said, he thought he might have got over, had he not unfortunately distrained upon several ladies’ fronts which he had been intrusted with to bake, and which he regretted to say, being taken for the benefit of the creditors, obliged him to fly the neighbourhood, and seek a living elsewhere. After this sad affair, things went very crooked with him, and he said that often and often he had been so put to it, that he would have given anything for a mouthful of the crackling of the fine young bears that he used once to turn his nose up at; and he said he must have tried, what he called “no end of dodges,” to earn an honest living, but all to no good, until one day he fell in with a gentleman over his pipe at the “White Hart,” who persuaded him to join him in the British smuggling line; for as the gentleman, who seemed to be a perfect man of the world and to have a wonderfully fine knowledge of the female portion of human nature, expressed it: “You had only to make the ladies believe that you had got several extraordinary bargains, in the shape of cambrics, gloves, or lace, which you could let them have at fifty per cent. under prime cost, and they would buy cart-loads, whether they wanted them or not, and never trouble their dear heads as to whether they were honestly come by.” In fact, he knew scores and scores of enterprising linendrapers, who had made large fortunes by ruining themselves regularly once a twelvemonth, and selling off the whole of their stock, by order of the assignees, for the benefit of the creditors in general, and ladies in particular. For he said it was well known among the gentlemen in the haberdashery line, that the ladies would never enter a linendraper’s shop so long as he asked only a fair profit on his wares, whereas, if he would only make them believe that he was going to the dogs, and that he was selling off his goods for full half less than they were ever made for, down they would come in swarms, as fast as their legs, cabs, and carriages would carry them, and pay whatever prices the spirited proprietor might please to ask. For the idea of “ANOTHER EXTENSIVE FAILURE” seemed to have such a charm to the women, that the only way by which a linendraper could keep himself solvent, was by declaring himself bankrupt, especially as the darling creatures evidently looked upon it as a religious duty to attend every “AWFUL SACRIFICE,” for nothing seemed to them to be so noble as the notion of a man’s immolating himself at the shrine of Basinghall-street for the love of the fair sex.