Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 26, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 July 1883 — Parisian Beggars. [ARTICLE]

Parisian Beggars.

There is not a block in any street nor a court-yard, square or carrefour in Paris that is not the property of beggars, writes a correspondent from Paris. Some will come every day before the rising of the sun to occupy the same relation, and there to remain until night and gaslight comes to give an artificial life to the city. Then they fill the principal boulevards until after the theaters and operas are closed—that is to say, until after midn ght. Others have their days, even their hours, to visit certain streets, and they are cunning enough not to interfere with each other in making these unwelcome calls to the nobility and bourgeoise of Paris. To be a successful' beggar, one must have some visible infirmity or impediment to gaining a living; consequently, all Paris beggars are either crippled, blind, maimed or suffering from hideous sore or cancer affliction, which is not infrequently assumed or imitated with no small degree of skill and to our special loathing. A good many of those whose infirmities are not of the most repulsive character do not beg outright. They pretend to sell pencils, pins, knives, flowers; they play on handorgans and other musical instruments invented to torture the public, go from house to house singing—heaven help me, but I should have sa d howling!— some sort of an air which those Johnny Orapeaus call musical. Each beggar has his (or her) traditions, his especial manner of exhibiting bis claims on charity—in fact, the usual mise-en-scene of the profession. For instance, the blind—by far the most numerous, important and wealthy corporation among the beggars —almost invariably maintain a rigid immovability, a petrification which extends even tp the dog or the little child that may accompany them. Another distinguished feature of this blind nuisance is that he rarely addresses any verbal appeal to the passer-by, but he is very careful that his-placaid shall speak for him, and on this signboard he sometimes takes flights into the realms of poesy that are really startling. Often this card appeals to the reader’s sympathy by mentioning the name of the department or province from which ’the beggar has come.