The McCord case stood out like a cabalistic sign upon a gate-post
telling all the rascals who passed that way that the city was full of
honest folk waiting to be turned into rogues and "trimmed."
"And presently we did pass a narrow lane, and at the mouth espied a
written stone, telling beggars by a word like a wee pitchfork to go
that way."
The tip went abroad that the city was "good graft" for everybody, and in
the train of the "wire-tappers" thronged the "flimflammer," "confidence
man," "booster," "capper" and every sort of affiliated crook, recalling
Charles Reade's account in "The Cloister and the Hearth" of Gerard in
Lorraine among their kin of another period:
With them and all they had, 'twas lightly come and lightly go; and
when we left them my master said to me, "This is thy first lesson,
but to-night we shall be at Hansburgh. Come with me to the 'rotboss'
there, and I'll show thee all our folk and their lays, and
especially 'the lossners,' 'the dutzers,' 'the schleppers,' 'the
gickisses,' 'the schwanfelders,' whom in England we call 'shivering
Jemmies,' 'the suentregers,' 'the schwiegers,' 'the joners,' 'the
sessel-degers,' 'the gennscherers,' in France 'marcandiers a
rifodes,' 'the veranerins,' 'the stabulers,' with a few foreigners
like ourselves, such as 'pietres,' 'francmitoux,' 'polissons,'
'malingreux,' 'traters,' 'rufflers,' 'whipjacks,' 'dommerars,'
'glymmerars,' 'jarkmen,' 'patricos,' 'swadders,' 'autem morts,'
'walking morts,'--" "Enow!" cried I, stopping him, "art as gleesome
as the evil one a counting of his imps.
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