I could find it in my heart to pity him, as he lies there through the
long summer afternoon, enjoying brief intervals of tranquillity and
rest which he surreptitiously snatches from a stranger's doorstep. For
a shrill whistle is heard in the streets, the boys are coming home from
school, and he is startled from his dreams by a deftly thrown potato,
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