ter days a coffee-sack, and
wooden shoes upon his feet. A short pipe, sometimes alight, but more
often empty, is in a corner of his mouth. No one needs to be told who
he is or what his calling. In the argot of the blousards he is known
as the Chevalier of the Hook.

The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I have read
of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors I have found him
in by personal observation and inquiry concerning his ways of life. He
has been somewhat idealized in print, I find. Victor Hugo has
presented him in a light not unlike that of Cooper's noble
savage--with large difference of color and pose, of course. The
average Frenchman knows Cooper's noble savage as well as we know
Hugo's romantic ragpicker, and he knows nothing of the American Indian
besides. (It is a curious fact, which I may note in passing, that the
only American author whose writings appear to be really well known in
Paris to-day is Fenimore Cooper. Next to him stands Edgar
Poe--_Poaye_, as the French call him, pronouncing both the vowels.)
There is a street in the crowded quarter of Paris back of the Pantheon
which has the, reputation of being the especial haunt of the
ragpickers. It is called the Rue Mouffetard, and includes many of this
class of blousards among its population; but as there are over twenty
thousand ragpickers in Paris, it needs little argument to show that
they are not _all_ hived in the Rue Mouffetard. Great numbers live in
the Brise Miche quarter, behind the church of St. Mery; at Montmartre,
along the Canal de Bievre; in the purlieus of Belleville; out beyond
the Bastile; in fact, wherever there is dirt enough to suit their
tastes. For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said that
the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever met in the
guise of a human being. I have met Digger Indians, too, in California.
There is something to be said in defence of the bestiality of a
Digger: he has not been exposed to the refining influences of
surrounding civilization; he was reared in darkness and ignorance; so
were his fathers before him for many generations; the white man and
his ways have just dawned upon the poor Digger's consciousness; and so
on. These things cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris. He is
almost equally dirty with the Digger, and he lives in the gayest
capital of the world. He is also almost equally ignorant with the
Digger: neither can read or write; nei