annuity ran through street and alley, and spread through the whole tribe of
Israel. The bounty acted directly as an encouragement to ply the profitable
trade, and "Old clothes! Old clothes!" was heard again punctually under my
window; and another and another Jew, each more hideous than the former,
succeeded in the walk. Jews I should not call them; though such they
appeared to be at the time: we afterwards discovered that they were good
Christian beggars, dressed up and daubed, for the purpose of looking as
frightful, and as like the traditionary representations and vulgar notions
of a malicious, revengeful, ominous looking Shylock as ever whetted his
knife. The figures were well got up; the tone, accent, and action, suited
to the parts to be played; the stage effect perfect, favoured as it was by
the distance at which I saw and wished ever to keep such personages; and as
money was given, by my mother's orders, to these people to send them away,
they came the more. If I went out with a servant to walk, a Jew followed
me; if I went in the carriage with my mother, a Jew was at the coach-door
when I got in, or when I got out: or if we stopped but five minutes at a
shop, while my mother went in, and I was left alone, a Jew's head was at
the carriage window, at the side next me; if I moved to the other side, it
was at the other side; if I pulled up the glass, which I never could do
fast enough, the Jew's head was there opposite to me, fixed as in a frame;
and if I called to the servants to drive it away, I was not much better
off, for at a few paces' distance the figure would stand with his eyes
fixed upon me; and, as if fascinated, though I hated to look at those eyes,
for the life of me I could not turn mine away. The manner in which I was
thus haunted and pursued wherever I went, seemed to my mother something
"really extraordinary;" to myself, something magical and supernatural. The
systematic roguery of beggars, their combinations, meetings, signals,
disguises, transformations, and all the secret tricks of their trade of
deception, were not at this time, as they have in modern days, been
revealed to public view, and attested by indisputable evidence. Ignorance