, allowing these ministers a certain
proportion of the profits accruing from their industry and skill, and reserving
the greatest share for the benefit of the common stock, which was chargeable
with the expence of fitting out individuals in their various pursuits, as well
as with the loss sustained in the course of their adventures. Some, whose
persons and qualifications are by the company judged adequate to the task, exert
their talents in making love to ladies of fortune, being accommodated with money
and accoutrements for that purpose, after having given their bonds payable to
one or other of the directors, on the day of marriage, for certain sums,
proportioned to the dowries they are to receive. Others, versed in the doctrine
of chances, and certain secret expedients, frequent all those places where games
of hazard are allowed; and such as are masters in the arts of billiards, tennis
and bowls, are continually lying in wait, in all the scenes of these diversions,
for the ignorant and unwary. A fourth class attend horse-races, being skilled in
those mysterious practices, by which the knowing-ones are taken in. Nor is this
community unfurnished with those who lay wanton wives and old rich widows under
contribution, and extort money, by prostituting themselves to the embraces of
their own sex, and then threatening their admirers with prosecution. But their
most important returns are made by that body of their undertakers who exercise
their understandings in the innumerable stratagems of the card table, at which
no sharper can be too infamous to be received, and even caressed by persons of
the highest rank and distinction. Among other articles of intelligence, our
young gentleman learn'd, that those agents, by whom their guest was broke, and
expelled from Bath, had constituted a bank against all sporters, and monopolized
the advantage in all sorts of play. He then told Gauntlet, that if he would put
himself under his direction, he would return with them, and lay such a scheme,
as would infallibly ruin the whole society at billiards, as he knew that Godfrey
excelled them all in his knowledge of that game.
    The soldier excused himself from engaging in any party of that kind; and
after dinner the travellers parted; but, as the conversation between the two
friends turned upon the information they had received, Peregrine projected a
plan for punishing those villanous pests of society, who prey upon their fellow
creatures; and it was put in execution by Gauntlet, in this manner.
 

                                 Chapter LXXIV

Godfrey executes a Scheme at Bath, by which a whole Company of Sharpers is
ruined
 
On the evening after their arrival at Bath,
