Is there any man, still more, is there any
woman, who reads these words, who has not,
over and over again, been impressed painfully
by the misery of that large class the begging
children of London? The winter which we
have just passed through has been an unusually
severe one, and the detestable class of impostors
who make the misery of children their stock in
trade have, as they invariably do, availed
themselves of this bitter season to ply their business
with special energy. On the days when the
half-melted snow has been at its slushiest, and
when the east wind has been at its keenest, the
ill-looking ruffian with the miserable draggled
woman holding a baby, and the two or three
children, as the case may be, which go to make
up the inevitable group, have been there in
mid-street, as usual, making us all miserable as
we walk along; as we go home to our comfortable
rooms, to our firesides, and our dinners.
What a group that is! The man—generally
an undersized ill-developed creature, with a
countenance on which intemperance, vice, and
cruelty, are written in nature's most clearly
defined characters—walks slowly at the head
of the squalid procession, holding a bundle of
ballads in his hand, or oftener leading the
biggest of the accompanying children by the
hand, and singing some hymn, or other piece
of devotional poetry. He turns from time to
time, as he makes his slow progress from one
end of the street to the other, and, like the
leader of an orchestra, passes his poor band of
performers in review, regarding any one of
them, who—perhaps because its childish
attention has been caught by some passing trifle, or
perhaps out of sheer fatigue and misery—may
be failing to do duty as a chorus-singer, with a
threatening frown. We have all noted how
suddenly and how shrilly the small culprit will
burst forth into song under the exhilarating
influence of such a glance, and how meek the
villain from whom it emanated will look the
moment after, as he glances round about him
to see what effect the little company of tragedians
which he commands is making upon the
passers-by, and upon such of the residents in
the street as may happen to be at their windows.
That an effect is made there can be no doubt.
That thinly-clad woman in a tattered cotton
garment, and with a scanty rag of a shawl
dravvn across her skinny shoulders, with a
wretched baby, which is either crying with the
cold, or drugged into insensibility, in her arms;
the small child which holds on to this woman's
dress, and the elder infant who has been taught
already, not without many kicks and cuffs, to
"keep a sharp look-out" for halfpence—this is
a company of performers of which it may be
said that at least they succeed in attracting
attention, and that the attention so attracted is
of the most serious kind. The "get up" of
every member of that group is a separate study.
The rags in which they are clothed are not even
warm rags. They are not portions of such
articles of clothing as have once been warm.
The thinnest and flimsiest scraps of cotton are
patched together to make up these garments,
such as they are, and everything of a warm, or
woolly nature, which might give one any notion
of comfort, is banished from the wardrobe of
this miserable little company with the greatest
care. Nor is one even left free to hope that
these wretched children may have on
something warm in the shape of under-clothing;
for, in the first place, the bulk of each one of
them is too small to admit of any such possibility,
and, in the second place, there is generally
enough of raggedness, enough of "looped and
windowed wretchedness" in the outer garment,
whatever it is, to allow unmistakable evidences
to appear of what is—or rather what is not—
underneath.

But, perhaps, if one were to analyse closely
which of the numerous miseries endured by these
unhappy children causes the sympathetic looker-on
the fullest amount of distress, we should find
that in this respect the slipshod condition of
their feet bears away the palm. The ground is
covered with that peculiar mixture of snow
aud mud which has a special capability of
penetrating through the thickest, soles in the most
wonderfully short space of time. Warm woollen
stockings and thick boots do not set it at
defiance, and even cork soles and American
overshoes are pretty severely tried; yet these
children are in every case shod in the tattered
remains of what were once boots or shoes, but
are now mere fragments of leather, so full of
holes, that the wonder is that they should hold
together at all. You get glimpses of the little
frozen feet showing through the holes in those
tattered "uppers;" you remember that the
feet in question are dabbling in that cold slush
all the day long; you have some knowledge of
the proneness of children's feet to develop
chilblains; and so it comes to pass that your
sense of pity is most powerfully appealed to,
and very likely you are induced—being perhaps
gifted with more of compassionateness than
logic—to bestow an alms upon a case of such
extreme distress; perhaps in the plenitude of
your weakness giving your coin into the hands
of one of the children themselves—rather than
the elders who accompany them—as if that
made any difference.

And this is just what is intended. It has
been found, as a matter of experience, that the
spectacle presented by that family, moving
slowly through the snow and mud on a wet
cold day in January or March, does excite the
compassion of most human beings, or, at any
rate, of a sufficient proportion of them to make
it worth while to go on with the thing. There
are enough warm-hearted illogical people in the
world to make the starving-family business a
remunerative business on the whole, as no one
knows better than our friend at the head of the
group which we have described. That ill-looking
individual well knows that, out of a certain
number of passengers in a crowded thoroughfare,
there is sure to be a percentage of soft-
hearted people, on whom the sight of his little
company will have a powerful effect. With