Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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It is impossible they could have been all murdered.

It is astonishing the number of persons who are missing annually, and who are never heard of more.

Take city life in prosperous times—​what lots of new undertakings are daily set on foot, which utterly fail and languish in bad years.

What becomes of the “runners” who, in times of commercial infliction, are so well known in every office?

Individuals who are agents for the sale of all manner of speculative securities, who invite you to realise a swift and easy fortune by purchasing a lead mine in the antipodes, or a coal field at the North Pole, or by taking shares in a projected company for journeying in balloons to the moon.

At seasons of commercial depression these individuals disappear as completely as the summer grasshoppers vanish at the approach of winter.

Places disappear in an equal degree—​the old landmarks are passing rapidly away from London. Holborn-hill has gone, Temple-bar has vanished—​or the last remains of it will in a few days—​Vauxhall-gardens, Cremorne, are things of the past, and the once famous Argyll-rooms have received a knock-down blow.