STEALING.
71
get ripe ; milk the cattle ; pick the cocoa-nuts ; and, in a word, take all they can get. . / The merchants suffer from their depredations in various ways. They not only take up goods they never intend to pay for, but they steal whatever they can lay their hands upon. Nothing comes amiss to them ; and be you as clever and cunning as you may, they will be sure to outwit you, in one way or the other. Should you be the owner of a small craft, which you man with a few black sailors, and which you employ in trading between the different islands, you are sure to lose something in every voyage. Your rope and canvas is gone—nobody knows how ; a cask of salt-fish is opened and robbed of its contents—nobody touched it. If dry goods form your cargo, pieces of shirting, bales of cotton, or something of the kind, generally take their departure— nobody saw them. If you employ a carpenter, your nails and lumber are sure to commit suicide or something of the sort, I suppose, for they are gone, and nobody used them. A mason steals your lime ; a cooper steals your staves and hoops ; a painter steals your oil, your turpentine, and paint; and domestic servants steal all they can. Some negroes employ themselves in walking about from store to store, selecting various dresses, handkerchiefs, ribbons, gentlemen's coats and vests, or any similar article, which they carry, they say, to shew Mrs. this or Mr. that ; but, somehow or other, these persons are generally very much afflicted with that malady, want of memory, and they forget to return the goods in question. The shopkeepers have suffered so much from this infirmity, that now they will not deliver anything to be looked at, unless the messenger brings a written order. But this resolution does not at all intimidate these clever thieves ; they get a scrap of paper written in a lady's or gentleman's name, and unless some errors in orthography, or a particular specimen of bad writing, leads to a suspicion of their authenticity, they often succeed in getting a “ pretty considerable deal of goods," as the Americans say.