Page 192 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

is full o’ thieves. In some houses dere’s nothin’ safe but to
sleep wid all yer clo’es on. I seen ‘em steal a wooden leg off a
cripple before now. Once I see a man—fourteen-stone man
he was—come into a lodgin’-house wid four pound ten. He
puts it under his mattress. ‘Now,’ he says, ‘any—dat touches
dat money does it over my body,’ he says. But dey done him
all de same. In de mornin’ he woke up on de floor. Four fell-
ers had took his mattress by de corners an’ lifted him off as
light as a feather. He never saw his four pound ten again.’

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