THE MOTHER OF THE GAMIN IN THE SERE AND YELLOW LEAF.
Somehow she managed to make the little den they existed in rather pleasant, and he had a tolerably happy life. Only the mother was compelled to leave him very much alone, for there was the black bread to earn, and no matter how miserable their apartment, there was something to pay for rent. He was left, always, with a score of others just like him, with an old woman who had once gone through the same experience, and who, unable now to do other work, earned her few sous a day caring for children that were short a father, and whose mothers were skirmishing on the outside borders of existence for enough to keep body and soul together. This was all very well till the little legs were strong enough to walk, and the old woman could no longer control him. Armed with the
THE AGED PICKER-UP OF CIGAR STUMPS.
THE GAMIN AND HIS MOTHER.
preternatural sharpness that always accompanies poverty, he took to the streets, and, in the old times when begging was permitted, he was a beggar. Now he is anything. He scorns regular work, he is a hawk, who picks up his living here, there and everywhere. He may be on the boulevards, and a handkerchief may be dropped; the apple-women, sharp as they are, find in him a most competent brigand. There are cigar-stumps to be picked up, and they are worth something an ounce to be worked over into smoking tobacco. Everywhere in the great city there are unconsidered trifles, but an unconsidered trifle is everything to a boy who has no use for clothing, and to whom a crust of bread is enough for a day.