The Mysteries of the Court of London — page 141: what you’re looking at

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

120 THE COURT OF LONDON House; and then your Royal Highness told me that if I would help you and her ladyship in the scheme you had in hand to get rid of Mr. Dysart, you would give me a couple of hundred guineas. Of course I snapped at the bargain. Two hundred guineas wasn’t to be sneezed at; and then, too, you promised that the sheriff should be empowered to offer a free pardon to any man who would accept the office of Jack Ketch. All this suited me uncommon well, and on the day of execution I transmogrified myself into a black fellow, so as to mix unknown and unrecognized in the crowd. All went on right enough; the sheriff made the proclamation, and I volunteered. My eyes! what a shout the people gave! How frightened they was of being balked of the hanging-show! And I dare say they felt uncommon grateful to the blessed institutions of this country that always ensure them kings or prince regents or queens that are fond of sending their subjects to be tucked up like dogs.” ‘Spare your comments, fellow,” interrupted the prince, sternly, “ and proceed with what you have to say, though for the life of me I cannot understand why you are recapitu- lating all these incidents.”’ “Well, my lord, —I mean Royal Highness,” again re- sumed Coffin, not exactly heeding the last comment of the prince, “when once reinstated in my pleasant office of public executioner, I went into Dysart’s cell and helped yours and Lady Ernestina’s scheme most admirably. I plummed Dysart that I had seen the reprieve, heard it read, and had particularly marked the private instructions which directed that it was not to be produced until the very moment the drop was ready to fall. In fact, I did what you told me, — which was to buoy him up with hope until the very last, so as not to allow any suspicion to enter his mind or any misgiving to excite a vindictive feeling. So you may thank me, my lord, — I mean Royal Highness, — and Lady Ernestina too may thank me for amusing Dysart’s mind in such a way that he did not see through the trick at the very last and blurt forth to the sheriffs or the chaplain all about your Royal Highness’s amour with his wife and about the written document you so solemnly signed. For even if you had not told the Home Secretary, as I suppose you did, to write an official letter to the sheriff of London about preventing last dying speeches on the scaffold, I should CoOnnicloookxs (E(0)