Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/644

608 with stagnant gutters and piles of garbage. Wisps of straw, old hats, and lumps of bed-ticking alternate in the windows with shivered panes of glass; the walls are dingy with soot; and doors are half-fallen from worm-eaten posts and broken hinges. It is here and in the neighboring streets that vagrants and thieves, scavengers and char-women, sharpers and prostitutes, make their homes and hold their nightly revels.

I once went through several courts of the Seven Dials on Monday. It was washing day. The natural gloom was deepened by every imaginable species of ragged napery hung upon lines stretched from window to window, story above story. The corners were thronged by men, driven out by the steaming suds, while dirty-faced, unkempt children rioted in the filthy thoroughfares. Passing an arched passage that led, after a few hundred feet, into a green "square" surrounded by houses of trades-people—for poverty and wealth are in fearful contiguity all over the great metropolis—I heard addressed to a lean, yellow-skinned boy just before me, the salutation,

"Halloo, Shanks! Got anything to eat?"

"No," replied the boy, qualifying the answer with an oath. "Give us something."

"I'm hard up meself," returned the first speaker; "ax Mother McFinn."

"She give me a dinner," says Shanks, "for cleaning out her cellar 'isterday, and 'taint like she's going to grub me every day."

"Give Brassy a chance, then."

"No, I shan't. Brassy sets his dog on me."

"The thief of the wurruld! But you had a raal dinner yesterday, thin?"

"You bet on that. And now I must wait, I s'pose, till I gets a job."

The speakers by this time had emerged from the alley, and were passing a little parlor window, when the sash flew up, and a white hand was thrust forth, holding a three-penny bit, and a woman's voice said,

"Go and buy bread, poor boy!"

Shanks snatched at the coin, pulled his acknowledgment at his thatch of hair, and saw the window down.

"Shanks," said the Irishman, "you're in for a buster this time, anyhow! Long life to the lady! Sure the gentle blood's the thing!"

Begging in England, although forbidden by statute, is followed as a trade in London more systematically than in any other European capital. The number of professional beggars considerably exceeds sixty thousand. Of course one meets them constantly and in every variety.

An American gentlemen, hurrying with a friend, also an American, to a dinner some years ago, passed through Belgrave square. A woman, decently clad in widow's weeds, sat weeping upon the door-steps of a palatial mansion. The friends had passed her, giving a glance only, when one said to the other, "Did you see that woman? She appeared respectable, and seemed to be in distress. It will take but a minute to inquire into the case. Let us go back."

They did so. The woman, though weeping bitterly, was reluctant to speak, and endeavored to get away. By kind words and an explanation of their motives, coupled with an apology for addressing her, she was induced to confess that she was indeed in great trouble—her husband had been dead two years, her resources were all spent, her landlord that afternoon had turned her and her three children into the street, and she had just found that Lady George Bentine,