a document in a foreign language, very much bethumbed and
illegible,--which, in your ignorance of the tongue, you couldn'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 me with a pitiful
story of destitution and want, 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