Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 March 1891 — Thin Beggar Had Indigestion. [ARTICLE]

Thin Beggar Had Indigestion.

“Beggars nowadays know that the old stories common to their profession won’t go down with the average NewYorker who reads the papers and keeps up with the times,” said a young broker at the Hoffman House the other evening. “Being aware of the fact, they are ever on the lookout for some new method of approaching passers-by so they may be reasonably sure of getting a moment’s attention and incidentally a quarter, or at least a dime. Sometimes they size a man up from his appearance. and walking up to him they say boldly: ‘Mister, I am suffering awfully for a drink, and if you’d give me the price you’d save me a lot of suffering.’ “In making this appeal the mendicant knows that if the man to whom he appeals is ‘a man about town’ he will have known what it is to have been suffering for a drink himself and readily give up a dime to aid a man in the same plight. “The hungry man, the newsboy who hasn’t sold his papers, the stranger who wants a lodging over night, and the old woman who asks for her fare back to Harlem are all familiar figures to the New-Yorker, but I really met a man with an original idea yesterday,” continued the broker. “He approached me as usual, and I said: ‘Yes, I know, you are hungry and all that, but I can’t do anything for you.’ “To my surprise, however, he replied: ‘No, I ain’t hungry, boss. I just ate a big dinner and I’m suffering from indigestion. Can’t you give me something to buy medicine with V “He got a quarter.”— New York Herald.