Thomas Piers Healey

“ The indecision he evidently felt involved too little flattery to me to bear imitation on my side, unless I meant to risk the unsatisfactory bail two heels sometimes put in to suits like ours. Foregoing, therefore, the pleasure of playing with my captive, I was not above avowing my honest calling, and making him the subject of her Majesty’s process, by a gentle touch on the shoulder, backed by the production of the warrant.
Wonderful surely that touch! More wonderful than the subtle breath which reaches the landscape to-night that—bud, blossom, and fruit,—is to-morrow all a canker! ”

“ Watch as I have done the marvels which await that touch from the suspension of active life—its first result—to the vice, the beggary, the harlot-life, the felon-doom that spread from it through a whole family for a generation, and pray what were the wand-carrying magicians of Egypt to us, with our mysterious slips of parchment, touching once and blighting for ever? ”

“ Here our chairman of the evening, a weather-beaten old stager, known among us as “sly Mat,” from the clever way in which he accomplished his captures, broke in upon the laughter, of which this tickling of the club’s vanity had made me the object, and stretching out his right hand, accompanied by a sibilant “hish,” shouted:
“Gentlemen, I’ve a conundrum. Horder, you gentlemen in the kitchen, down there! Ven does a jay turn into a hen! Vy, ven a Jailer turns Nailer, to be sure!” ”

“ I don’t know that there’s much use to society in laying bare its sores, but I will give you as a sample my “First Ca. Sa.” [1]
I am one of those who, in their time, have played many parts, and as I had just got through two whole yearn as turnkey at White Cross Street [2] —a berth as prosy as it was cozy—the unconquerable desire I have always had of changing an old beat in life for a new one, made me but too ready to snap at the overture of becoming a sheriff’s officer. ”

“ File my petition and schedule to-morrow, come out on bail on Saturday—in three weeks have my hearing—and then—why then we’ll begin again with all the old scores rubbed off—that’s all! A glass of wine, old fellow, just to gulp down this little contre-danse I think you fine people call it?”
“If it’s the same thing to you, Mr. Chessells, I’d prefer it at the Peacock, our house opposite the Cross, you know.”
“Good—the last thing, eh?—a sort of viaticum just to console one for that parting which must happen to friends fond even as we are, eh?” ”

“ The establishment, in short, belonged to one of those men of genius who, having to live on credit, find that their dependence is in the inverse ratio of their capital, or, what is worse, their celebrity ”

“ He’s de cutest old fox in de beat. If I’ve ‘hater ’im once, I espose I ‘af fifty times. Ees’ like nuffing ‘sep de shidow vich foller you ven you ‘if been vawking. Ee’s halways deere, but you niver come hup vi’ ’im. I vince as neer kitched ’im as could be vid a Middlesex writ. ‘Ee vos comin’ down ‘Obo'n, but ven he sees me he toes no more but skip over to de Seety on te oder side, and ven he sees as ‘ow I ‘vis a-lookin’ arter ’im, I sawr ’im gip a penny to a leettle poy to go over to me, and vat you tink it vos to say? ”