eholders,
as a means of gaining money. No imagination can conceive more shocking
and disgusting spectacles than those which the police of Naples allow to
be brought up right before every lady or gentleman who attempts to take
a walk in the streets. These sights meet you at every turn. Even if you
take a carriage, you do not escape from them; for the beggars crowd
around the carriage when you get into it, at the door of the hotel, and
watch for it there when you come back. And when you stop on the way to
go into a shop, all that are in that street at the time gather up and
wait at the door till you come out; and while you are getting into the
carriage, and the coachman is shutting the door and mounting upon his
box, they implore, and moan, and beg, and entreat you to give them a
little money. They are so wretched, they say, they are dying of hunger.

A great many of these people are really poor, no doubt; but they have no
right thus to force their poverty and their diseases upon the attention
of the public, when other modes, and far better modes, are provided for
their relief. A great many of them, however, are impostors. Indeed, one
of the greatest objections to the system of allowing the poor to get
their living by begging in the streets, is the direct tendency of it to
encourage and train impostors. No one can possibly know from hearing the
complaint of a poor person by the wayside, or from the appearance which
he presents, either how much he needs help, or how much help he may have
already received; and of course, by this mode of dispensing charity, the
best possible facilities are afforded for every species of deceit and
imposture.

Mrs. Gray understood all this, and she saw that if every body would
firmly and perseveringly refuse to give money to applicants in the
public streets, the system of making an ostentatious parade of misery,
real and counterfeited, that now prevails in Naples, would soon come to
an end. She accordingly never gave any thing, neither did Mr. George or
Rollo. Indeed Rollo and Josie were seldom molested when they were
walking by themselves, for the beggars--considering them as only two
boys--did not expect to get any thing from them.

"The only beggar that I ever gave any thing to in Naples," said Rollo,
"was a poor black dog. I gave him half of a fried cake that I bought at
a stall. He swallowed it in an instant. I call him a beggar because he
looked up into my face so piteously, though he