e was
found sitting on the sidewalk every morning, at the corner of the
Calzada de la Reina, just opposite the market, and he elicited a
trifle from us now and again. One morning a couple of roses and a
sprig of lemon verbena were added to his small gratuity. The effect
upon that sightless countenance was electrical, and the poor
mendicant, having only pantomime with which to express his delight,
seemed half frantic. The money fell to the ground, but the flowers
were pressed passionately to his breast.

Did it remind him, we thought, of perfumes which had once delighted
his youthful senses in far-off Asia, before he had been decoyed to a
foreign land and into semi-slavery, to be deprived of health, liberty,
sight, hope, everything?

The Cuban beggars have a dash of originality in their ideas as to the
successful prosecution of their calling; we mean those "native and to
the manor born." Some of them possess two and even three cadaverous
dogs, taught to follow closely at their heels, as they wander about,
and having the same shriveled-up, half-starved aspect as their
masters. One beggar, who was quite a cripple, had his daily seat in a
sort of wheelbarrow, at the corner of Paseo Street, opposite the Plaza
de Isabella. This man was always accompanied by a parrot of gaudy
plumage, perched familiarly on his shoulder. Now and then the cripple
put some favorite bird-food between his own lips, which the parrot
extracted and appropriated with such promptness as to indicate a good
appetite. Another solicitor of alms, quite old and bent, had an
amusing companion in a little gray squirrel, with a collar and string
attached, the animal being as mischievous as a monkey, now and then
hiding in one of the mendicant's several pockets, sometimes coming
forth to crack and eat a nut upon his owner's shoulder. A blind
beggar, of Creole nationality, sat all day long in the hot sun, on the
Alameda de Paula near the Hotel San Carlos, whose companion was a
chimpanzee monkey. The little half-human creature held out its hand
with a piteous expression to every passer-by, and deposited whatever
he received in his master's pocket. These pets serve to attract
attention, if not commiseration, and we observed that the men did not
beg in vain.

The acme of originality, however, was certainly reached in the case of
a remarkable Creole beggar whose regular post is on the west corner of
the Central Market. This man is perhaps thirty-five or forty year