His new friends had plenty
of advice for him, and some of them would have been glad to furnish
him with employment; but none of them were so well satisfied with the
sincerity of his conversion as to trust him far. It was not to be
wondered, after his exploits on the day of his failure, that there
should be a reasonable shyness on the part of those who had money which
they could not afford or did not choose to give away. It was quite
remarkable to see the change produced when the subject was introduced.
Faces, that a few minutes before had shone with tearful joy or rapturous
aspirations, full of brotherly affection, would suddenly cool, and
contract, and grow severe, when Sandford broached the one topic that was
nearest to him. He found that there was no way of escaping from the
law of compensation by appropriating the results of other men's
labors,--that religion (very much to his disappointment) gave him no
warrant to live in idleness; therefore he was fain to do what he could
for himself. He tried to act as a curb-stone broker, as an insurance
agent, as an adjuster of marine losses and averages, as an itinerant
solicitor for a life-insurance company, as an accountant, and in various
other situations. All in vain. He was shunned like an escaped convict;
the motley suit itself would hardly have added to his disgrace. No one
put faith in him or gave him employment,--save in a few instances, for
charity's sake. Few men can brave a city; and Sandford, certainly, was
not the man to do it. The scowling, or suspicious, or contemptuous,
pitying glances he encountered smote him as with fiery swords. He
quailed; he cowered; he dropped his eyes; he acquired a stooping,
shambling gait. The man who _feels_ that he is looked down upon grows
more diminutive in his own estimation, until he shrinks into the place
which the world assigns him. So Sandford shrunk, until he crept through
the streets where once he had walked erect, and earned a support as
meagre and precarious as the more brazen-faced and ragged of the great
family of mendicants, to which he was gravitating.

Mendicants,--an exceeding great army! They do not all knock at
area-doors for old clothes and broken victual, nor hold out hats at
street-crossings, nor expose sharp-faced babies to win pity, nor send
their infant tatterdemalions to torture the ears of the wealthy with
scratchy fiddles and wheezing accordions. No, these plagues of society
are only the extreme left wing