t of the
artist, the lover and artificer of words; that of the maker, the seeer,
the lover and forger of experience. If the one had a daughter and the
other had a son, and these married, might not some illustrious writer
count descent from the beggar-soldier and the needy knife-grinder?

III

Every one lives by selling something, whatever be his right to it. The
burglar sells at the same time his own skill and courage and my silver
plate (the whole at the most moderate figure) to a Jew receiver. The
bandit sells the traveller an article of prime necessity: that
traveller's life. And as for the old soldier, who stands for central
mark to my capricious figures of eight, he dealt in a specialty; for he
was the only beggar in the world who ever gave me pleasure for my money.
He had learned a school of manners in the barracks and had the sense to
cling to it, accosting strangers with a regimental freedom, thanking
patrons with a merely regimental difference, sparing you at once the
tragedy of his position and the embarrassment of yours. There was not
one hint about him of the beggar's emphasis, the outburst of revolting
gratitude, the rant and cant, the "God bless you, Kind, Kind gentleman,"
which insults the smallness of your alms by disproportionate vehemence,
which is so notably false, which would be so unbearable if it were true.
I am sometimes tempted to suppose this reading of the beggar's part a
survival of the old days when Shakespeare was intoned upon the stage and
mourners keened beside the death-bed; to think that we cannot now accept
these strong emotions unless they be uttered in the just note of life;
nor (save in the pulpit) endure these gross conventions. They wound us,
I am tempted to say, like mockery; the high voice of keening (as it yet
lingers on) strikes in the face of sorrow like a buffet; and the rant
and cant of the staled beggar stirs in us a shudder of disgust. But the
fact disproves these amateur opinions. The beggar lives by his knowledge
of the average man. He knows what he is about when he bandages his head,
and hires and drugs a babe, and poisons life with "Poor Mary Ann" or
"Long, long ago"; he knows what he is about when he loads the critical
ear and sickens the nice conscience with intolerable thanks; they know
what they are about, he and his crew, when they pervade the slums of
cities, ghastly parodies of suffering, hateful parodies of gratitude.
This trade can scarce be called an imp