That man in the blue coat, reaching nearly to his knees, is a notable example. He is
THIN AND HAGGARD,
and his ghost-like aspect is heightened by the sleeves pinned up at the shoulders of his dilapidated garment. If you ask him, he will tell you he has not six inches of arms to his whole body. He was knocked down by an engine some months ago while he was intoxicated. He fell length-wise, with an arm extended over each rail. To him the pleasure of an occasional pipe is perhaps enhanced by the difficulty which attends the obtaining of it. It is quite a little study to watch how the poor devil goes about the process. Some kindly patient, acceding to his request for a match, places one between his lips. The maimed man hops joyfully off to a second, whom he has noticed to be the possessor of a fine T. &. B. plug, almost intact. Somebody fishes the suppliant’s pipe out of his pocket, fills it with the crumbled ’baccy, and, less fastidious than most readers would care to be, places the dirty stem in his own mouth, and with a few sturdy puffs, sets the contents glowing bravely. And now the armless man, his cutty fairly inserted in his lips, stalks off to an adjacent seat, secure of happiness for at least one sunny half-hour. Perhaps, mutilated as he is, and past sharing in what most men deem the active enjoyments of life, his mind is more at ease now than it has been for many a day. His eye has lost the old
FURTIVE LOOK OF THE TRAMP,
who never dared to strengthen his supplications by a straightforward gaze; he is no longer a wanderer and homeless vagrant on the face of an earth whose spring-time blossoms had no message for him or his kind. He has forgotten already the cold nights passed in the streets or in the parks; the questionable benefit of a troubled sleep in some frowsy ten-cent lodging-house; the pitiful struggle, reversed day after day, to obtain enough food to keep soul and body together. For the rest of his life he doubtless counts on being beyond the reach of actual want. He will be cared for by some of our benevolent societies and received into some charitable institution where the balance of his chequered life will be quietly spent, undisturbed by thoughts of a past which had nothing in it worthy of regret.
That man on the veranda is an old soldier. Like most of his class, he delights in nothing so much as to gather around him a little crowd of patient and interested listeners. He still cherishes a fine
CONTEMPT FOR CIVILIANS,
slightly modified by the present exigencies of his condition, which involves certain obligations to the despised class, in the way of tobacco and such like minor accommodations. He has been in India, Afghanistan, Abyssinia, Zululand, and last, but not least, the Curragh of Kildare. Curiously enough, it is of this last that his reminiscences are most lively, and its recollections are evidently cherished more lovingly than those of foreign lands. If he tells you anything about these last, you need not hope to hear much of unfamiliar customs, of strange sights, of hair-breadth ’scapes; your old soldier is seldom a great observer or a graphic reciter of stirring events. Barrack-room pranks, guard-room escapades, and long dialogues with officers, in which the narrator invariably comes out ahead, are the staple of his talk. His wooden leg does not seem to cause him a moment’s trouble, and he tilts it up on an adjacent chair as jauntily as if it were a souvenir of Isandhula, instead of a legacy from a drunken brawl in front of a Lombard street shanty. It is to be feared that this ancient warrior is a bit of a fraud; but he is such a light-hearted, garrulous, transparently mendacious old party that one is not inclined to be too hard on his shortcomings.
This old man whom you saw move into a chair a minute ago is suffering from no specific disease. Behind the tightly drawn skin can be plainly discerned the lineaments of the fleshless skull. As he sits his eyes are the only features that save the face from being a perfect likeness of that of a corpse. When he moved to this seat his movements reminded you of a very jerky automaton, so stiff were his limbs and so wooden his body. I do not know one fact about the history of this old fellow in his shabby garments, but certain I am that if it were skilfully treated there would be