Page:Mexico as it was and as it is.djvu/90

 Go where you will in this city, you are haunted by beggars. Beggary is a profession; but it is not carried to quite the extent that it is in some of the Italian States, and especially the Sicilian dominions.

The capital employed in this business is blindness, a sore leg, a decrepit father or mother, or a helpless child; in the latter case, a stout hearty boy usually straps the feeble one on his back, and runs after every passer beseeching succor. With such a stock in trade, and a good sunny corner, or wall of a church door, the petitioner is set up for life. Placed in so eligible a situation, their cry is incessant from morning to night: "Señores amigos, por el amor de dios;" "for the love of the blessed Virgin!" "by the precious blood of Christ!" "by the holy mystery of the Trinity!" repeated with many variations between their eternal scratchings, winking of lids over sightless balls, and the display of maimed limbs and every species of personal deformity. There is no "poor-house" in Mexico, to which such vagrant wretches are forced to go.

One blind beggar, remarkably well dressed, and a person who has evidently enjoyed better fortunes, takes up his place on the seat around the chief fountain of the Alameda, every day at noon, and is attended by a couple of servants; his respectful demeanor is, doubtless, a valuable capital.

Another beggar has a burly porter to carry him seated in a chair on his back.

Then there are silent beggars—"poveri vergognosi,"—as you see in Italy; men who make no oral demand for charity, but crook their bodies, and bow their concealed faces, in such a shape of interrogative supplication, that the heart must be hard that could resist them. One of this species particularly arrested my notice. I never met him by daylight, and he may not have been what he appeared to be; but often at midnight, when returning from the theatre, I have encountered him, cold and shivering under the portales. He seemed to be at least 80 years of age; was bent almost double, had a shocking bad cough, and squeaked out in the most piping treble you ever heard, that "he was just waiting for some one to lake him home" He had been waiting thus for many a year!

They all have different voices according to the length of time they have been employed. There are your old sturdy beggars who bellow out their ritual; then the modest novice; then an old fellow who never utters a distinct word, but rolls on the ground and howls, as if with pain; the while his eyes glance from right to left to see how it operates! Near my dwelling, at a church door, always sat a gray-headed blind man, who was as much a fixture as one of the pillars of the edifice. The oldest neighbors could not remember when he first came there. He usually arrived about noon, as soon as the shadow of the church fell over his wonted seat and afforded shade. He begged stoutly for an hour or so, when a daughter brought him an excellent warm dinner. This dispatched, he went to work again with the "por el amor de dios," until he literally sang himself into a siesta. Yet the ruling passion never deserted him even in sleep. His