WOODEN HABEAS. A man who dies in prison is said to go out on a wooden habeas; that is, in his coffin.
WORM. To obtain knowledge by craft and cunning.
YELPER. A fellow who cries before he is hurt.
"Ho! there, my rum-bluffer; send me a nipperkin of white velvet."
"Make it two," said a woman, seating herself on a skinner's knee; "and if Jim don't post the cole, I will."
"Why, Bell, is it yourself? Tip us your daddle, my bene mort. May I dance at my death, and grin in a glass-case, if I didn't think you had been put to bed with a shovel--you've been so long away from the cock and hen club."
"No, Jim, I only piked into Deuceaville with a dimber-damber, who couldn't pad the hoof for a single darkman's without his bloss to keep him from getting pogy."
"Oh! I'm fly. You mean Jumping Jack, who was done last week, for heaving a peter from a drag. But you talked of padding the hoof. Why, sure, Jack had a rattler and a prad?"
"Yes, but they were spotted by the harmans, and so we walked Spanish."
"Well, Bell, here's the bingo--sluice your gob! But who was the cull that peached?"
"A slubber de gullion named Harry Long, who wanted to pass for an out-and-out cracksman, though he was merely a diver."
"Whew! I know the kiddy like a copper, and saved him once from lumping the lighter by putting in buck. Why, he scarcely knows a jimmy from a round robin, and Jack deserved the tippet for making a lay with him, as all coves of his kidney blow the gab. But how did you hare it to Romeville, Bell, for I suppose the jets cleaned you out?"
"I kidded a swell in a snoozing-ken, and shook him of his dummy and thimble."
"Ah! Bell! you were always the blowen for a rum bing."
"It was no great quids, Jim--only six flimseys and three beans. But I'm flush of the balsam now, for I dance balum-rancum for the bens."
Bell here produced a rum bing, which at once made her popular, and the nucleus of a host of admirers; for, as it respects money, it is with rogues and their doxeys as with all the rest of the world. Bell truly justified the adage, that "What's got over the devil's back, goes under the devil's belly;" for she gave a general order to the rum-bluffer, to supply all the lush that was called for by the company, at her expense; and thereon there was a demand for max, oil of barby, red tape, blue ruin, white velvet, and so forth, that kept all the tapsters in the establishment in a state of restless activity for the next half-hour.