Page:The London Guide and Stranger's Safeguard.djvu/206

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190
DELUSION—APPLIED TO

get the money, while the men unload, but never appears again.


REGISTER OFFICES[1]

For servants, increase in number as they decrease in respectability. The very sight of some of them carry conviction to the coarser senses of the object they have in view: viz. the pilfering of the unwary. Can any servant be so besotted as to suppose, that a master or mistress would enter the nasty holes at which they pretend to supply them with situations? Boards are put up with "situations" marked on them, and "wanted," followed by the vague notice of "maid of all work, in a small family;" "As footman, where a boy is kept," and other such addenda, to make the matter palatable by the idea of little to do,—to gull the idle, and to draw the simple of a few shillings.

In walking from Smithfield in a straight line to Finsbury Square, you will find three offices of

  1. The earliest establishment of this nature appears to have been situated opposite Cecil Street, Strand, about the year 1740, and called the Universal Register, partaking much of the nature of our modern "Echo Office," embracing every object of useful intelligence.