The second sort of soldier-beggar is one of the most dangerous and violent of mendicants. Untamable even by regimental discipline, insubordinate by nature, he has been thrust out from the army to prey upon society. He begs but seldom, and is dangerous to meet with after dark upon a lonely road, or in a sequestered lane. Indeed, though he has every right to be classed among those who will not work, he is not thoroughly a beggar, but will be met with again, and receive fuller justice at our hands, in the, to him, more congenial catalogue of thieves.
The third sort of street campaigner is a perfect impostor, who being endowed, either by accident or art, with a broken limb or damaged feature, puts on an old military coat, as he would assume the dress of a frozen-out gardener, distressed dock-yard labourer, burnt-out tradesman, or scalded mechanic. He is imitative, and in his time plays many parts. He “gets up” his costume with the same attention to detail as the turnpike sailor. In crowded busy streets he “stands pad,” that is, with a written statement of his hard case slung round his neck, like a label round a decanter. His bearing is most military; he keeps his neck straight, his chin in, and his thumbs to the outside seams of his trousers; he is stiff as an embalmed preparation, for which, but for the motion of his eyes, you might mistake him. In quiet streets and in the country he discards his “pad” and begs “on the blob,” that is, he “patters” to the passers-by, and invites their sympathy by word of mouth. He is an ingenious and fertile liar, and seizes occasions such as the late war in the Crimea and the mutiny in India as good distant grounds on which to build his fictions.
I was walking in a high-road, when I was accosted by a fellow dressed in an old military tunic, a forage-cap like a charity boy’s, and tattered trousers, who limped along barefoot by the aid of a stick. His right sleeve was empty, and tied up to a button-hole at his breast, à la Nelson.
“Please your honour,” he began, in a doleful exhausted voice, “bestow your charity on a poor soldier which lost his right arm at the glorious battle of Inkermann.”
I looked at him, and having considerable experience in this kind of imposition, could at once detect that he was “acting.”
“To what regiment did you belong?” I asked.
“The Thirty —, sir.”
I looked at his button and read Thirty —
“I haven’t tasted bit o’ food, sir, since yesterday at half-past four, and then a lady give me a cruster bread,” he continued.
“The Thirty —!” I repeated. “I knew the Thirty —. Let me see—who was the colonel?”