purchase of an annuity at this office, which paid her no less than six-
and-thirty pounds a year, when no other company in London would give her
more than twenty-four. The chairman of the directors was the great Mr.
Brough, of the house of Brough and Hoff, Crutched Friars, Turkey
Merchants. It was a new house, but did a tremendous business in the fig
and sponge way, and more in the Zante currant line than any other firm in
the City.

Brough was a great man among the Dissenting connection, and you saw his
name for hundreds at the head of every charitable society patronised by
those good people. He had nine clerks residing at his office in Crutched
Friars; he would not take one without a certificate from the schoolmaster
and clergyman of his native place, strongly vouching for his morals and
doctrine; and the places were so run after, that he got a premium of four
or five hundred pounds with each young gent, whom he made to slave for
ten hours a day, and to whom in compensation he taught all the mysteries
of the Turkish business. He was a great man on 'Change, too; and our
young chaps used to hear from the stockbrokers' clerks (we commonly dined
together at the "Cock and Woolpack," a respectable house, where you get a
capital cut of meat, bread, vegetables, cheese, half a pint of porter,
and a penny to the waiter, for a shilling)--the young stockbrokers used
to tell us of immense bargains in Spanish, Greek, and Columbians, that
Brough made. Hoff had nothing to do with them, but stopped at home
minding exclusively the business of the house. He was a young chap, very
quiet and steady, of the Quaker persuasion, and had been taken into
partnership by Brough for a matter of thirty thousand pounds: and a very
good bargain too. I was told in the strictest confidence that the house
one year with another divided a good seven thousand pounds: of which
Brough had half, Hoff two-sixths, and the other sixth went to old Tudlow,
who had been Mr. Brough's clerk before the new partnership began. Tudlow