 | Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches |  |
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 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 stood in my doorway,
silent and patient, intimating her presence, if my
attention were preoccupied, by a slight cough from
her baby, whom I shall always believe had its part
to play in this little pantomime, and generally
obeyed a secret signal from the maternal hand. It
was useless for me to refuse alms, to plead business,
or affect inattention. She never moved; her position
was always taken with an appearance of latent
capabilities of endurance and experience in waiting
which never failed to impress me with awe and the
futility of any hope of escape. There was also something
in the reproachful expression of her eye which
on with your mock sentimentalities and simulated
pathos; portray the imaginary sufferings of your
bodiless creations, spread your thin web of philosophy,
but look you, sir, here is real misery! Here
is genuine suffering!” I confess that this artful
suggestion usually brought me down. In three
minutes after she had thus invested the citadel I
usually surrendered at discretion, without a gun
having been fired on either side. She received my
offering and retired as mutely and mysteriously as
she had appeared. Perhaps it was well for me
that she did not know her strength. I might have
been forced, had this terrible woman been conscious
of her real power, to have borrowed money
which I could not pay, or have forged a check to
purchase immunity from her awful presence. I
hardly know if I make myself understood, and yet
I am unable to define my meaning more clearly
when I say that there was something in her glance
which suggested to the person appealed to, when
in the presence of others, a certain idea of some
individual responsibility for her sufferings, which,
while it never failed to affect him with a mingled
sense of ludicrousness and terror, always made an
impression of unqualified gravity on the minds of
the bystanders. As she has disappeared within
the last month, I imagine that she has found a
home at the San Francisco Benevolent Association.
however guarded by wholesome checks or sharp-eyed
almoners, that could resist that mute apparition.
I should like to go there and inquire about
her, and also learn if the baby was convalescent or
dead, but I am satisfied that she would rise up, a
mute and reproachful appeal, so personal in its
artful suggestions, that it would end in the Association
instantly transferring her to my hands.
My next familiar mendicant was a vender of
printed ballads. These effusions were so stale,
atrocious, and unsalable in their character, that it
was easy to detect that hypocrisy, which — in
imitation of more ambitious beggary — veiled the
real eleemosynary appeal under the thin pretext
of offering an equivalent. This beggar — an aged
female in a rusty bonnet — I unconsciously precipitated
upon myself in an evil moment. On our
first meeting, while distractedly turning over the
ballads, I came upon a certain production entitled,
I think, “The Fire Zouave,” and was struck with
the truly patriotic and American manner in which
“Zouave” was made to rhyme in different stanzas
with “grave, brave, save, and glaive.” As I purchased
it at once, with a gratified expression of
countenance, it soon became evident that the act
was misconstrued by my poor friend, who from
that moment never ceased to haunt me. Perhaps
in the whole course of her precarious existence
purchase evidently made me, in her eyes, a customer,
and in a measure exalted her vocation; so
thereafter she regularly used to look in at my
door, with a chirping, confident air, and the question,
“Any more songs to-day?” as though it were
some necessary article of daily consumption. I
never took any more of her songs, although that
circumstance did not shake her faith in my literary
taste; my abstinence from this exciting mental
pabulum being probably ascribed to charitable
motives. She was finally absorbed by the S. F.
B. A., who have probably made a proper disposition
of her effects. She was a little old woman,
of Celtic origin, predisposed to melancholy, and
looking as if she had read most of her ballads.
My next reminiscence takes the shape of a very
seedy individual, who had, for three or four years,
been vainly attempting to get back to his relatives
in Illinois, where sympathizing friends and a comfortable
almshouse awaited him. Only a few dollars,
he informed me, — the uncontributed remainder
of the amount necessary to purchase a steerage
ticket, — stood in his way. These last few dollars
seem to have been most difficult to get, and he
had wandered about, a sort of antithetical Flying
Dutchman, forever putting to sea, yet never getting
away from shore. He was a “49-er,” and had recently
been blown up in a tunnel, or had fallen
obliged him to use large quantities of whiskey as
a liniment, which, he informed me, occasioned
the mild fragrance which his garments exhaled.
Though belonging to the same class, he was not to
be confounded with the unfortunate miner who
could not get back to his claim without pecuniary
assistance, or the desolate Italian, who hopelessly
handed you a document in a foreign language, very
much bethumbed and illegible, — which, in your
ignorance of the tongue, you could n't help suspiciously
feeling might have been a price current,
but which you could see was proffered as an excuse
for alms. Indeed, whenever any stranger handed
me, without speaking, an open document, which
bore the marks of having been carried in the greasy
lining of a hat, I always felt safe in giving him a
quarter and dismissing him without further questioning.
I always noticed that these circular letters,
when written in the vernacular, were remarkable
for their beautiful caligraphy and grammatical inaccuracy,
and that they all seem to have been written
by the same hand. Perhaps indigence exercises
a peculiar and equal effect upon the handwriting.
I recall a few occasional mendicants whose faces
were less familiar. One afternoon a most extraordinary
Irishman, with a black eye, a bruised hat,
and other traces of past enjoyment, waited upon
and concluded by requesting the usual trifle. I
replied, with some severity, that if I gave him a
dime he would probably spend it for drink. “Be
Gorra! but you 're roight — I wad that!” he answered
promptly. I was so much taken aback by
this unexpected exhibition of frankness that I instantly
handed over the dime. It seems that Truth
had survived the wreck of his other virtues; he
did get drunk, and, impelled by a like conscientious
sense of duty, exhibited himself to me in that
state a few hours after, to show that my bounty
had not been misapplied.
In spite of the peculiar characters of these reminiscences,
I cannot help feeling a certain regret
at the decay of Professional Mendicancy. Perhaps
it may be owing to a lingering trace of that youthful
superstition which saw in all beggars a possible
prince or fairy, and invested their calling with a
mysterious awe. Perhaps it may be from a belief
that there is something in the old-fashioned almsgivings
and actual contact with misery that is
wholesome for both donor and recipient, and that
any system which interposes a third party between
them is only putting on a thick glove, which, while
it preserves us from contagion, absorbs and deadens
the kindly pressure of our hand. It is a very
pleasant thing to purchase relief from the annoyance
and trouble of having to weigh the claims of
tickets, which the courtesy of the San Francisco
Benevolent Association has — by a slight stretch
of the imagination in supposing that any sane
unfortunate might rashly seek relief from a newspaper
office — conveyed to these editorial hands, I
cannot help wondering whether, when in our last
extremity we come to draw upon the Immeasurable
Bounty, it will be necessary to present a ticket.
| Mrs. Skaggs's husbands, and other sketches | |