hich he was kind enough to term my own triumphs in the field
of letters, and claiming to have largely contributed to them by his
unbought notices in the public journals. England is full of such people,
and a hundred other varieties of peripatetic tricksters, higher than
these, and lower, who act their parts tolerably well, but seldom with an
absolutely illusive effect. I knew at once, raw Yankee as I was, that they
were humbugs, almost without an exception,--rats that nibble at the honest
bread and cheese of the community, and grow fat by their petty
pilferings,--yet often gave them what they asked, and privately owned
myself a simpleton. There is a decorum which restrains you (unless you
happen to be a police-constable) from breaking through a crust of
plausible respectability, even when you are certain that there is a knave
beneath it.

* * * * *

After making myself as familiar as I decently could with the poor streets,
I became curious to see what kind of a home was provided for the
inhabitants at the public expense, fearing that it must needs be a most
comfortless one, or else their choice (if choice it were) of so miserable
a life outside was truly difficult to account for. Accordingly, I visited
a great almshouse, and was glad to observe how unexceptionably all the
parts of the establishment were carried on, and what an orderly life,
full-fed, sufficiently reposeful, and undisturbed by the arbitrary
exercise of authority, seemed to be led there. Possibly, indeed, it was
that very orderliness, and the cruel necessity of being neat and clean,
and even the comfort resulting from these and other Christian-like
restraints and regulations, that constituted the principal grievance on
the part of the poor, shiftless inmates, accustomed to a life-long luxury
of dirt and harum-scarumness. The wild life of the streets has perhaps as
unforgettable a charm, to those who have once thoroughly imbibed it, as
the life of the forest or the prairie. But I conceive rather that there
must be insuperable difficulties, for the majority of the poor, in the way
of getting admittance to the almshouse, than that a merely aesthetic
preference for the street would incline the pauper-class to fare scantily
and precariously, and expose their raggedness to the rain and snow, when
such a hospitable door stood wide-open for their entrance. It might be
that the roughest and darkest side of the matter was not shown me