The Gift of the Sailor: The String of Pearls & Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street — page 32: what you’re looking at

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

| “Proof! proof! proof!” now resounded from one end of the room to the other. “My friends,” said Sweeney Todd, rising up, and advancing to the table, and thrusting his hand into his bosom, and drawing out the string of twenty-four pearls, “I challenge you or any one to make a set of artificial pearls equal to these: they are my make, and I'll stand to it in any reasonable sum that you cannot bring a man who shall beat me in my calling.” “Just hand them to me,” said the man who had made himself interrogator. Sweeney Todd threw the pearls on the table carelessly, and then said— “There, look at them well, they’ ll bear it, and I reckon, though there may be some good judges amongst you, that you cannot any of you tell them from real pearls, if you had not been told so.” “Oh, yes, we know pretty well,” said the man, “what these things are: we have now and then a good string in our possession, and that helps us to judge of them. Well, this is certainly a good imitation.” “Let me see it,” said a fat man: “I was bred a jeweller, and I might say born, only I couldn’t stick to it; nobody likes working for years upon little pay, and no fun with the gals. I say, hand it here!” “Well,” said Todd, “if you or anybody ever produced as good an imitation, I?ll swallow the whole string; and, knowing there’s poison in the composition, it would certainly not be a comfortable thing to think of.” “Certainly not,” said the big man, “certainly not; but hand them over, and I’ II tell you all about it.” The pearls were given into his hands; and Sweeney Todd felt some misgivings about his precious charge, and yet he showed it not, for he turned to the man, who sat beside him, saying,— “Tf he can tell true pearls from them, he knows more than I think he does, for I am a maker, and have often had the true pearl in my hand.” “And I suppose,” said the man, “you have tried your hand at putting the one for the other, and so doing your confiding customers.” “Yes, yes, that is the dodge, I can see very well,” said another man, winking at the first; “and a good one too, I have known them do so with diamonds.” “Yes, but never with pearls; however, there are some trades that it is desirable to know.” “You’re right.” The fat man now carefully examined the pearls, and set them down on the table, and looked hard at them. “There now, I told you I could bother you. You are not so good a judge that you would not have known, if you had not been told they were sham pearls, but what they were real.” “T must say, you have produced the best imitations I have ever seen. Why, you ought to make your fortune in a few years—a handsome fortune.” “So I should, but for one thing.” “And what is that?” “The difficulty,” said Todd, “of getting rid of them; if you ask anything below their value, you are suspected, and you run the chance of being stopped and losing them at the least, and perhaps entail a prosecution.” “Very true; but there is risk in everything; we all run risks; but then the harvest!” “That may be,” said Todd, “but this is peculiarly dangerous. I have not the means of getting introductions to the nobility themselves, and if I had I should be doubted, for they would say a workman cannot come honestly by such valuable things, and then I must concoct a tale to escape the Mayor of London.” * “Ha!—ha!—ha!” “Well, then, you can take them to a goldsmith.” “There are not many of them who would do so; they would not deal in them; and, moreover, I have been to one or two of them; as for a lapidary, why, he is not so easily cheated.” “Have you tried?” “T did, and had to make the best of my way out, pursued as quickly as they could run, and I thought at one time I must have been stopped, but a few lucky turns brought me clear, when I was told to turn up this court, and I came in here.” “Well,” said one man, who had been examining the pearls, “and did the lapidary find out they were not real?” “Yes, he did; and he wanted to stop me and the string altogether, for trying to impose upon him; however I made a rush at the door, which he tried to shut, but I was the stronger man, and here I am.” “Tt has been a close chance for you,” said one. “Yes, it just has,” replied Sweeney, taking up the string of pearls, which he replaced in his clothes, and continued to converse with some of those around him. Things now subsided into their general course; and little notice was taken of Sweeney. There was some drink on the board, of which all partook. Sweeney had some, too, and took the precaution of emptying his pockets before them all, and them gave a share of his money to pay their footing.® This was policy, and they all drank to his success, and were very good companions. Sweeney, however, was desirous of getting out as soon as he could, and more than once cast his eyes towards the door; but he saw there were eyes upon him, and dared not excite suspicion, for he might undo all that he had done. To lose the precious treasure he possessed would be maddening; he had succeeded to admiration in inducing the belief that what he showed them was merely a counterfeit; but he knew so well that they were real, and that a latent feeling that they were CORniclooo S CO)