Indeed, the angels of women appeared to be the very reverse of those ungrateful brutes of rats, and instead of leaving a house just as it’s about to tumble to pieces, they seemed to be more like owls, and love to haunt “ruins,” or rather, he might say, they were the very image of Cornwall wreckers, and would, in answer to the very first placard that was hung out as a signal of distress by the stranded linendraper, rush down in hundreds to see what remnants they could pick up, or get out of the wreck, before the whole concern went to pieces. Mr. Dick Farden then informed me, that upon this advice he had devoted his labours entirely to the fair sex, and immediately embarked in the “bargain line.” Knowing that the ladies had a natural aversion to parting with their money, and preferred exchanging their dear husbands’ left-off wearing apparel, he made a feeble endeavour to convert old clothes into the current coin of the realm, by carrying about on his arm a beautiful little love of a tame squirrel, which he offered to the passers-by, at the low price of a worn out surtout, and a wonderful piping bullfinch for the exceedingly small charge of a castoff pair of trousers and a waistcoat. In the winter, however, he carried with him a basket of Derbyshire Spa chimney ornaments, with a few glasses and jugs and basins hanging round it. With these, he said, he managed very well, for he could furnish a sweet pretty mantelpiece very elegantly for a lady, with a great coat in the middle and an umbrella on one side, and a mackintosh on the other, while he believed that through his humble means, several husbands had often washed their faces in their old hats, and sipped their gin and water out of their worn-out boots. By these means he raised money enough to purchase a cargo of contraband goods in the Minories, and succeeded in running them safe into a public-house in the neighbourhood of Regent-street, the sale of which goods occupied his afternoon; while, he added, with a stupid grin on his face, he was proud to say his mornings were devoted to the polishing of our boots and shoes, and knives; for, thank goodness, he continued, there was no pride in him, and he was always willing to pick up a sixpence any day, any how, so that now he could look any of his creditors in the face, and had no need to be, as he so repeatedly was after his father’s death, _non est inwentus_, though, for the matter of that, Mr. Carstairs, who was one of the most beautiful writers of the day, very truly said--“A _nonest_ man’s the noblest work of Natur.”