[The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom Complete by Tobias Smollett]@TWC D-Link bookThe Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom Complete CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE 5/6
This being a true sketch of the British character, so far as I have been able to observe and learn, you will easily comprehend the profits that may be extracted from it, by virtue of those arts by which you so eminently excel;--the great, the unbounded prospect lies before me! Indeed, I look upon this opulent kingdom as a wide and fertile common, on which we adventurers may range for prey, without let or molestation.
For so jealous are the natives of their liberties, that they will not bear the restraint of necessary police, and an able artist may enrich himself with their spoils, without running any risk of attracting the magistrate, or incurring the least penalty of the law. "In a word, this metropolis is a vast masquerade, in which a man of stratagem may wear a thousand different disguises, without danger of detection.
There is a variety of shapes in which we the knights of industry make our appearance in London.
One glides into a nobleman's house in the capacity of a valet-de-chambre, and in a few months leads the whole family by the nose.
Another exhibits himself to the public, as an empiric or operator for the teeth; and by dint of assurance and affidavits, bearing testimony to wonderful cures that never were performed, whirls himself into his chariot, and lays the town under contribution.
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