CHAPTEE XXX.

THE BEGGARS OP NEW YORK —TRAMPS, CHEATS, HUMBUGS,
AND FRAUDS—INTERESTING PERSONAL EXPERIENCES —
VICTIMS PROM THE COUNTRY.

The Incomes of Professional Beggars — Resorts of Tramps — Plausible Tales

— A Scotch Fraud — My Adventure -with him—A Plaintive Appeal —
A Transparent Yarn — A Disconcerted Swindler — Claiming Relationship

— An Embarrassing Position — Starting to Walk to Boston — A Stricken
Conscience — Helping my Poor Relation — Thanks an Inch Thick — Fe¬
male Frauds—"Gentlemen Tramps" — A Famishing Man — Eating
Crusts out of the Gutter — A Tale of Woe — A Fraud with a Crushed Leg
and a Starving Family — A Distressing Case — The Biter Bitten — The
Californian with a Wooden Leg—The Rattle-Snake Dodge—"Old
Aunty " and her Methods — '' God Bless You, Deary " — Blind Frauds and
Humbugs —How Countrymen are Fleeced — Bunco-Steerers — Easily
Taken in — My Experience with a Bunco-Steerer.

IT is estimated that nearly six thousand beggars live and
thrive in New York city. It is not strange, therefore, that
ainong this vast number of professional loafers there should be
found some whose methods of extorting money are unique.
Some of them make from twenty-flve to sixty dollars a Y'eek,
and not a few of them are so well known as to furnish a topic
of conversation among those who talk over the strange life to
be seen in city streets. The Charity Organization Society re¬
cently issued a circular warning the public against professional
beggars, adventurers, and other undeserving persons who
obtain money by imposing upon the credulity of the charitable.
Even ordinary street begging is apparently more profitable
than honest labor.

The great city is a home for a good (or bad) number of
" tramps " and an occasional refuge for many more. With the
advent of summer the tramp who has passed the Y'inter in the
city hies to the rural regions.   He is iu search of occupation

(584)