342 City Sketches. 



pelled to do things that were not seen to be fit. Besides, those 

 weekly relaxations at the " White Conduit" were, to say the least of 

 them, expensive ; that day at Epsom Hookem himself declared to be 

 a regular mull, and the week at Gravesend was ruinous. 



I could wish, at this point in the life of Mr. Hookem, that I might 

 introduce something:, if only for the sake of variety and contrast, 

 that might be considered a new feature* But truth compels me to 

 state that, by a strange coincidence, the very calamity that had be- 

 fallen Storks lighted on the head of Hookem. A conspiracy was got 

 up against him also. It is to be feared that some skulking scoundrel, 

 reputed honest, abstracted those various odd sums of money which 

 Hookem, with unfeeling abruptness, was charged with purloining. 

 No evidence of guilt betrayed itself upon the face of that much- 

 injured man as he manfully denied the charge arid offered to swear 

 to the truth of his allegation. His sceptical employers, however, 

 not for a moment reflecting how extremely improbable it was that 

 any gentleman could voluntarily perjure himself in a case of mere 

 paltry money, dismissed him from their business" and sent him about 

 his own. Thenceforward Mr. Hookem conceived a rooted hatred 

 of the retail business, abandoned all thought of returning to it, and 

 was never known to refer any individual to his late employers for a 

 character; which, had he done so, they might, he thought, be base 

 enough to withhold. 



It is a hard thing when a high-minded man is under the necessity 

 of prowling about a vast metropolis like this with his hand*, and no- 

 thing else, in his pockets; and if, under these untoward circumstances, 

 Mr. Hookem did consent to undertake the office of decoy to a gaming- 

 house in the Quadrant, let us charitably suppose that he was insti- 

 gated thereto by a benevolent desire to exhibit to inexperienced 

 youth the follies, the vices, and dangers that beset them, to the end 

 that in their maturer years they might eschew such foibles. 



It was by the merest chance that Mr. Hookem, while engaged in 

 this employment, became possessed of a small capital. A too- 

 troublesome police will sometimes make themselves impertinently 

 curious respecting the domestic avocations of free-born Englishmen. 

 These functionaries committed a burglary in the gaming-house one 

 night, and suddenly burst into a spacious room where several gen- 

 tlemen were invoking the aid, cursing the blindness, or deploring 

 the instability, of Fortune. It may appear unaccountable that the 

 partners in the concern, and the parties concerned, should have made 

 so precipitate a retreat as they undoubtedly felt themselves under 

 the necessity of doing. Mr. Hookem, however, with a presence of 

 mind that cannot be sufficiently commended, succeeded in securing 

 the bank and effecting his escape ; and it is somewhat remarkable 

 that he was never afterwards so fortunate as to be able to meet the 

 owners, that he might have the pleasure of restoring the property. 



Having thus afforded a brief sketch of the moral requisites of 

 Messrs. Storks and Hookem, let me now proceed to narrate how the 

 Jirm was called into existence; how for awhile it flourished; and 

 how, at length, it was liquidated. 



It was in a Ramsgate steamer on her voyage to London that Mr. 

 Storks, for the first time in hi,s life, directed his visual rays towards 

 the open countenance and imposing person of Mr. Hookem, and that 



