Cooper's Clarksburg register. [volume] (Clarksburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1851-1861, 1853-10-05

-undreds to reap the harvest of certain
mount OF beneyslence which is known
characterize the lower orders OF the
London working popuIace, the majority /
Of whom. il should be remembered, are
nut Londoners born, but country bred
artisans who have come hither in pursuits |
Of employment.
These miscreants display wonderful
ingenuity in the connection of their stra.
tagetns and diguises. Ii the weather be
dry and fine, as on the present occasion,
they resort to some irreparable calamity
on their stock in trade, such as total blind
ness or semi paralysis. If however, it
rain, hail. and blew tempest, and the
roads are running with streams OF liquid
mud. then the domestic misery sham is
most profitable, and in the place of one
paralytic subject jabbering on crutches,
you will see pyramid of motherless chill
dren, all with clean faces, and clean white
aprons, standing barehead in the rain,
and headed by decent respectable-look
ing man. who intones doleful tale about
his want of work, his long solourn in the
hospital, and the death of his wife who
has left him with six helpless babes for
whose hapless sake he is compelled to,
appeal 10 your compassion, as sickness
prevents him from working in their be-
half In some instances such appeals may
be genuine, but the probability is that he
has hired the children of their beggarly
mothers, at sixpence head for the night,
and there is no doubt but he will make
guod speculation of it before the night is
over, and in all probability get drunk with
the proceeds.
Another very renumeratiye deception
is % the poor gentleman" A young fell
of ire-and-twenty, with a pale, sallow,
and woe begone complexion, stands with
his back against gas-lamp or the WALL
He is clad in an undeniable gentlemanly
garb of refined black cloth, threadbare
and shabby by constant wear with the
jaundice hue of his sickly couutenance !;
and snow white Wristbands of unspotted
cleanliness, but fringed and Jagged at the
edges to denote his poverty and the hard
ness of his struggle to maintain a genteel
appearance, half concealed his shelton
fingers, in which he grasps single box
of lucifer matches. Around his brow
there is fllet of white linen, and he
wears a green shade over his eyes. His
tout ensemble, as he hangs his head in an
angle Indicative of broken-hearted deiec-
ton, presents spectacle of melancholy
reverse of fortune and unmerited degra-
dation. against which the hearts of poor
men and their wives are not proof, and
you may see them, with half expressed
sympathetic moan, dropping into his open
hand u share of their hard-won gains,
which the unprincipled fellow will dissi-
pate before the dawn in the nocturnal or
Of nf no hi
among whom he is renowned as univer-
sal genius.
Blind men. with pair of''excellent eyes
under bandage, chant their lying dit
ties. Men, who could walk six miles an
hour, if anything were to be got by it,
hobbIe about on wooden legs, bawlng
ballads for sale by the yard. and begging
your custom for an old tar, famed for life
in cruise against the slave ships off the
African coast. Wretched women, with
half.clad infants at the breast-borrowed
babes, which will have to be returned in
an hour or two-unite their squalled vol
ces to the general hubbud. Fictitious
cripples. proof against any quantity of Ii
Quor. aud stepped in falsehood to their
lips. are chanting pious hymns to psalm
tunes, and turning their bleared eyes to
heaven as though they had hidden fare
well to hope on earth. Even children OF
tender age, trained to these atrocious de-
ceptious, exhibit themselves upon the curb
stones. crying and moaning with anguish.
in the character of desolate orphans with
out food to eat or shelter for the night
These villianous receptions all originate
in the fact universally known, that the
poor are ever ready to help the distress
sed, and it is true beyond doubt. that
the unsuspecting benevolence of the low
er and laboring ranks has given rise to
IA thousand devices of unblushing fraud,
which makes Il prey of their charitable
tendencies.