The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 94: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

76 REYNOLDS’ WORKS idolatry is purely egotistical, and who ministers not as a high priest to lead others in the track of the same devotion, as well as toward the same object, and to cherish the hope of possessing the same idol. Mr. Pollard was a man well stricken in years, tall, lean, and lank, with shrivelled limbs, a cadaverous skin, a sinister expression of countenance, and an eye ever restless in the suspicious glances it was continuously flinging roundabout. Though so greedy of gain, Pollard was a just man after his own fashion: that is to say, he would scruple not, by means of all the engines of usury, to grind his victims down to the very dust, ay, or even reduce them to beggary, so long as he obtained his own profit, but on the other hand he would re- ligiously fulfil whatsoever obligation he undertook, and whatsoever trust was confided to him. Thus was it that throughout all his dealings in respect to Mrs. Raynor, his conduct was marked by the strictest probity, and it is there- fore to be presumed that her father, ere his death, had se- : lected him as a trustee from a knowledge of the illimitable - confidence that might be reposed in him. Of late years Mr. ’ Pollard had grown so mistrustful of every one about him that he had almost completely given up his practice as a solicitor, so as to avoid the necessity of keeping clerks and of absenting himself for hours together from his home. Besides, he found money-lending a far more lucrative avocation, and one « - le ~ ¢ = ad a Ws gn Tn oe which he could manage entirely by himself. Thus, at the oT period when we now introduce him to the reader, he had no i | clerks in his employment, and his growing habits of parsi- ig mony had led him to diminish his domestic establishment, 4 limiting it at length to a housekeeper and a drab of a servant- girl, The housekeeper who was now in his service had been with him barely three weeks, but on applying for the situa- tion, she had produced such excellent testimonials, signed by ladies of rank with whom she represented herself to have lived, that Mr. Pollard had unhesitatingly engaged her. Besides, she came from London, and this was an additional recommendation in her favour, because the old man had found, or fancied that he had found the Liverpool servants so extravagant and dishonest, he had made a vow never to take another housekeeper from amongst them. There- fore, when Mrs. Webber — which was the name of the new superintendent of the miser’s household — had presented GOmMmiGdoOoks. corr