which hits him on the head, and awakens him to the stern reality that he
is now and forever--a Boys' Dog.
CHARITABLE REMINISCENCES
As the new Benevolent Association has had the effect of withdrawing
beggars from the streets, and as Professional Mendicancy bids fair to
be presently ranked with the Lost Arts, to preserve some records of this
noble branch of industry, I have endeavored to recall certain traits and
peculiarities of individual members of the order whom I have known,
and whose forms I now miss from their accustomed haunts. In so doing,
I confess to feeling a certain regret at this decay of Professional
Begging, for I hold the theory that mankind are bettered by the
occasional spectacle of misery, whether simulated or not, on the same
principle that our sympathies are enlarged by the fictitious woes of
the Drama, though we know that the actors are insincere. Perhaps I
am indiscreet in saying that I have rewarded the artfully dressed and
well-acted performance of the begging impostor through the same impulse
that impelled me to expend a dollar in witnessing the counterfeited
sorrows of poor "Triplet," as represented by Charles Wheatleigh. I did
not quarrel with deceit in either case. My coin was given in recognition
of the sentiment; the moral responsibility rested with the performer.
The principal figure that I now mourn over as lost forever is one
that may have been familiar to many of my readers. It was that of a
dark-complexioned, black-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who supported
in her arms a sickly baby. As a pathological phenomenon the baby was
especially interesting, having presented the Hippocratic face and other
symptoms of immediate dissolution, without change, for the past three
years. The woman never verbally solicited alms. Her appearance was
always mute, mysterious, and sudden. She made no other appeal than
that which the dramatic tableau of herself and baby suggested, with an
outstretched hand and deprecating eye sometimes superadded. She usually
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