' Whereupon Simms
threw all his booty into a hat, saying, 'For God's sake, take that or
anything else you please.' In all other respects he was a bully, with
the hesitancy of a coward, rather than the proper rival of Hind or
Duval. Apart from the exercise of his trade, he was a very Mohock for
brutality. He would ill-treat his victims, whenever their drunkenness
permitted the freedom, and he had no better gifts for the women who were
kind to him than cruelty and neglect. One of his many imprisonments was
the result of a monstrous ferocity. 'Unluckily in a quarrel,' he tells
you gravely, 'I ran a crab-stick into a woman's eye'; and well did he
deserve his sojourn in the New Prison. At another time he rewarded the
keeper of a coffee-house, who supported him for six months, by stealing
her watch; and, when she grumbled at his insolence, he reflected, with a
chuckle, that she could more easily bear the loss of her watch than the
loss of her lover. Even in his gaiety there was an unpleasant spice
of greed and truculence. Once, when he was still seen in fashionable
company, he went to a masquerade, dressed in a rich Spanish habit,
lent him by a Captain in the Guards, and he made so fine a show that
he captivated a young and beautiful Cyprian, whom, when she would have
treated him with generosity, he did but reward with the loss of all her
jewels.
Moreover, he had so small a regard for his craft, that he would spoil
his effects by drink or debauchery; and, though a highwayman, he cared
so little for style, that he would as lief trick a drunken gamester as
face his man on Bagshot Heath or beneath the shade of Epping Forest.
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