The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1850-10-22 00:00:00

and which she sometimes let out tc

evil hour I sent for it. That treacheroUs bed and its
clean white coverlet, will never be forgotten by me. I
laid down upon it, and in one minute was fast asleep ;
the next I started up a perfect Marsyas. Never until
that day had I any idea of what fleas could do. So si-
multaneous and well-conducted was their attack, that 1
was bitten all over, from top to toe, at the first assault.
They evidently were delighted at the unexpected o:Lange
of diet from a grim, skinny old woman to a well-fed
traveller, fresh from the table of the embassy. I ex-

amined the white coverlet ; it was actually brown ai;h
fleas. I threw away my clothes, and, taking desperate
measures to, get rid of some myriads of my assailants, I

fever of my blood. I half expected to see the fleas open
the door and march in after me, as the rats did after
Bishop Hatto, on his island in the Rhine; but, fortu-

nately the villains did not venture so far from home.
The mattress was, I am inclined to believe, entirely
stuffed with fleas. How so large a party could be pro-
vided with regular meals it is difficult to conjecture.
They could not have had board as well as lodging in the

old lady's house, or she would have been eaten up long
ago. Whatever their diet usually was, the sharpness of
their appetites proved that they were in excellent health.
There I sat, fanning myself in the night air, and bathing
face and limbs in water, till the sun rose, when, with a

. . doleful countenance, I asked my way to a bath. , I found
one, and went into the hot inner room, with nothing on
but a towel round my waist and one on my head, as the
custom is. There was no one else there, and when the

thought I had got the most deadly kind of plague, which
breaks out in an eruption, and carries off the patient in a
few hours. When it was explained to him how I had
fallen into the clutches of these Lemnian fleas, he pro-
ceeded to rub me and soap me according to the Turkish
fashion, and wonderfully soothing and comforting it was.
—Curwen's Visits to Monasteries in the Levant.
A DEN OF THIEVES ON THE FLEET DITCH, LONDON.
—One of the last glimpses to be caught of this nauseous
stream was a few years since, at the destruction of some
old houses in West-street, at the south end of Saffron-
hill, which had been the hiding-place and stronghold of
thieves, and an asylum for the most depraved of both
sexes, from the reign of Queen Anne to our own times.
Here, qccording to tradition, the notorious Jonathan Wild
carried on his crafty and nefarious traffic of plunder and
human blood. The black and disgusting-looking stream
flowed through a deep and narrow channel, encased on
each side with brick, and overhung with miserable-looking
dwelling-houses, the abode of poverty and crime. The
stronghold of the thieves consisted of separate habita-
tions, one on each side of the ditch, which were inge-
niously contrived with the means of escape, in the event
of their being invaded by' the myrmidons of the law. On
each side of the ditch also was a small aperture in the
brick-work, of sufficient size to afford egress for the human
body : and, accordingly, a plank might readily be thrown
from one aperture to the other, and as readily withdrawn
in the event of pursuit; or, in the last extremity, the
culprit could plunge into the ditch, and pursue his course
down the murky stream, till either some fan.iliar outlet,
or the habitation of some friendly companion in crime,
afforded him the means of crime. The principal build-
ing, to which we have alluded, was unquestionably of
great antiquity. In the reign of George the First it was
known as the Red Lion Tavern. Its dark closets, its
trap-doors, its sliding panels, and its secret recesses and
hiding places, rendered it no less secure for purposes of
robbery and murder, than as a refuge for those who were
under the ban of the law. In this house, about twelve
years ago, a sailor was robbed, and afterwards flung na-
ked, through one of the apertures which we have de-
scribed, into the Fleet ditch—a crime for which two men
and a woman were subsequently convicted and transported
for fourteen years. About the same time, although the
premises were surrounded by the police, a thief made his
escape by means of its communications with the neigh-
bouring houses, the inhabitants of which were almost
universally either subsistent upon, or friendly to pillage
and crime. At the demolition of these premises, there
were found in the cellars, among other mysterious evi-
dences of the dark deeds which had been perpetrated
within their walls, numerous human bones. which, there
can be little doubt, were those of persons who had met
with an untimely end.—Jesse's London and its Celebrities.