Thus employed, he became acquainted with the famous Cyprians of Covent Garden, who, loving him for his handsome face and sprightly gesture, seduced him to desert his cab for an easier profession.  So long as the sky was fair, he lived under their amiable protection; but the summer having chased the smarter gentry from town, the ladies could afford him no more than would purchase a horse and a pair of pistols, so that Harry was compelled to challenge fortune on the high road.  His first journey was triumphantly successful.  A post-chaise and a couple of coaches emptied their wealth into his hands, and, riding for London, he was able to return the favours lavished upon him by Covent Garden.  At the first touch of gold he was transformed to a finished blade.  He purchased himself a silver-hilted sword, which he dangled over a discreet suit of black velvet; a prodigious run of luck at the gaming-tables kept his purse well lined; and he made so brilliant an appearance in his familiar haunts that he speedily gained the name of ‘Gentleman Harry.’  But the money, lightly won, was lightly spent.  The tables took back more than they gave, and before long Simms was astride his horse again, flourishing his irons, and crying:  ‘Stand and deliver’! upon every road in England.

Epping Forest was his general hunting-ground, but his enterprise took him far afield, and if one night he galloped by starlight across Bagshot Heath, another he was holding up the York stage with unbridled insolence.  He robbed, he roared, he blustered with praiseworthy industry; and good luck coming to the aid of caution, he escaped for a while the necessary punishment of his crimes.  It was on Stockbridge Downs that he met his first check.

He had stopped a chariot, and came off with a hatful of gold, but the victims, impatient of disaster, raised the county, and Gentleman Harry was laid by the heels.  Never at a loss, he condescended to a cringing hypocrisy:  he whined, he whimpered, he babbled of reform, he plied his prosecutors with letters so packed with penitence, that they abandoned their case, and in a couple of days Simms had eased a collector at Eversey Bank of three hundred pounds.  For this enterprise two others climbed the gallows, and the robber’s pride in his capture was miserably lessened by the shedding of innocent blood.

But he forgot his remorse as speedily as he dissipated his money, and sentimentality neither damped his enjoyment nor restrained his energy.  Even his brief visits to London were turned to the best account; and, though he would have the world believe him a mere voluptuary, his eye was bent sternly upon business.  If he did lose his money in a gambling hell, he knew who won it, and spoke with his opponent on the homeward way.  In his eyes a fuddled rake was always fair game, and the stern windows of St. Clement’s Church looked down upon many a profitable adventure.  His most distinguished journey was to Ireland, whither he set forth to find a market for his stolen treasure.  But he determined that the road should bear its own charges, and he reached Dublin a richer man than he left London.  In three months he was penniless, but he did not begin trade again until he had recrossed the Channel, and, having got to work near Chester, he returned to the Piazza fat with bank-notes.