ase; and, in the evening, are
able to figure away in silk stockings with the produce of their labours.
There is one man, well known in town, who makes a very good livelihood
by bawling in a stentorian voice,

"Whow whow, will you buy my good matches,
Whow whow, will you buy my good matches,
Buy my good matches, come buy'em of me."

~279~~ He is usually dressed in something like an old military great
coat, wears spectacles, and walks with a stick."

"And is a match for any body, match him who can,", cried Frank Harry;
"But, bless your heart, that's nothing to another set of gentry, who
have infested our streets in clean apparel, with a broom in their hands,
holding at the same time a hat to receive the contributions of the
passengers, whose benevolent donations are drawn forth without inquiry
by the appearance of the applicant."

"It must," said Tallyho, "arise from the distresses of the times."

"There may be something in that," said Tom; "but in many instances it
has arisen from the depravity of the times--to work upon the well-known
benevolent feelings of John Bull; for those who ambulate the public
streets of this overgrown and still increasing Metropolis and its
principal avenues, are continually pestered with impudent impostors, of
both sexes, soliciting charity--men and women, young and old, who get
more by their pretended distresses in one day than many industrious and
painstaking tradesmen or mechanics do in a week. All the miseries,
all the pains of life, with tears that ought to be their honest and
invariable signals, can be and are counterfeited--limbs, which enjoy the
fair proportion of nature, are distorted, to work upon humanity--fits
are feigned and wounds manufactured--rags, and other appearances of the
most squalid and abject poverty, are assumed, as the best engines of
deceit, to procure riches to the idle and debaucheries to the infamous.
Ideal objects of commiseration are undoubtedly to be met with, though
rarely to be found. It requires a being hackneyed in the ways of men, or
having at least some knowledge of the town, to be able to discriminate
the party deserving of benevolence; but

"A begging they will go will go,
And a begging they will go."

The chief cause assigned by some for the innumerable classes of
mendicants that infest our streets, is a sort of innate principle of
independence and love of liberty. However, it must be apparent t