Nashville patriot. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1858-1860, 1858-11-10

An industrious and philosophical class are
the rag pickers of New Orleans. With early
dawn. their dirty bags across their shoulders
flung, they emerge from the quarters that had
given them shelter, and with eye intent on
cutters and streets. commence to CLEAN what
Others had thrown away as worthless. For
dirt they seem to have liking. Settling
pools and fresh piles of offal are as eagerly
sought as richer placers by other delivers
after wealth. and as much satisfaction is felt
by the rag picker. in upturning an unusual
store of cast off linen or scraps of cotton, as
the gold digger experiences in gaining pos
session of a rich nugget
The rag picker is your real aristocrat. He
moves through the streets with most serene
indifference to beauty or gay equipage, or the
insignia of wealth. He pays no respect, in
his peregrinations, TO persons. He offers no
regard to those clothed with official station.
He has no familarities with the crowd.
Neither excitements of markets or panics
affect him. Undisturbed by what moves all
the rest of the Babel through which be sto-
ically moves, he adds rag after rag to his
store, and when the day declines, converts
his day hoard into the current coin of the
realm.
There are classes and grades among rag
pickers as well as in other employments-the
minor or apprentice. the experienced laborer
who adds to his harvest gleanings stray waits
surreptitiously acquired, and those who buy
the stores of rags gathered throughout the
city. Does the reader look with contempt
and pity on the employment? Such in "a natu-
raj feeling after witnessing the dirty. tattered
raiment. the unshorn beard, and unkempt
hair, of the New Orleans professional chit
fOniers.
But even ont of this employment the
means. not simply of good living, have been
obtained, but the foundation of competence
has been laid. In Jefferson City, modest
mansion, embowered in trees that cast a well
come shade, and scatter doors from their Sea-
sonable blossoms. belongs to professional
rag picker. Twenty-Five years ago he COM
menced, unknown and friendless, with bag
on his shoulder to pick, piece by piece, his
present competence out of the CUTTERS OF the
city. He no longer follows this branch of
the business, but buys the boards of those
among whom the different districts of the
city are divided. He has his agents in New
York, and furnishes yearly large stock for
the consumption of the neighboring paper
manufactures.
Periodically the rag pickers assemble at
his residence, and right merry times are seen
among the shrubbery of his luxurious garden.
The stolid, Indifferent beings who move
among us, yet not of us. there melt into mirth
and crack their dry jokes and toss off their
wine in response to professional sentiment as
well as men of other empiOyments. Our rag
pickers are a class by themselves: industri-
Gus. but will bear watching; apparently
anxious only to gather with their muck
rakes what all Others despise, yet never
neglecting chance for a windfall from other
sources. From among them, in this repGbli-
can country, now and then, spring as in the
case of the retired JefftrsOnian, sciOns who
enter the charmed circle of society-N. o.
Picayllne.