Arizona weekly enterprise., 1888-10-13
THE BEGGARS OF PARIS.
A LIVELY DESCRIPTION OF THEIR
 HAUNTS AND HABITS.

Taking Census of the Mendicants of | Paris-Peculiar Characteristics of the
 Bcggars' Special Ouarter-In Bygone
 Times-Heavy Penalties.
 To take census of beggars-an opera tion which more probably for the fftieth than for the first time, has just been per formed by the Paris prefecture of police must in many respects be regarded as task about as thankless. if not as useless, as that of weaving a rope of sand. To ascertain the aggregate of professional mendicancy in a great metropolis like Paris is by no means trustworthy crite- rion of the amount of poverty existing. As in London, the vast majority of tho beggars in Lutetia are the professional ones-that is to say rank impostors-and their numbers will probably show ten dency to increase rather than to diminish with the improvement in trade and the augmentation of affluence among the classes who are begged from but do not beg.
 Our Paris correspondent tells us, in- deed, that the "gueuX. or habitual beg gars, are at present in an exceptionally thriving condition, and are making money more easily in consequence of the moro largely developed liberality of the aims giving public It is even stated that these professional paupers have two di rectories of their own, in which the names and addresses of Good Samaritans with plenty of money are duly entered, to- gether with description of the strata gems which experience has shown to be most etiicacious in extracting cash from the unwary The first directory is called the Guide of the Grand Jeu," or Big Game" and costs no less than six francs. | There is a smaller Guide of the Petit i Jeu." which only costs half the money, II and gives the addresses of more middle class philanthropists. These red boks for rogues contain full instructions to the "gueux" as to what shall be their de- meanor in the presence of people who are likely to unloose their purse strings when Q pitiful tale is told.
 Whatever may be the statistical worth of the census of vagrancy just compiled, there can be little doubt that the returns obtained by the patient enumerators of the prefecture of police have considerable social value, inasmuch as they denote changes in national manners and prove that, although the Parisian beggars are numerically still formidable folk, they have almost ceased to be picturesque. The "Cour des Miracles" which Victor Hugo has immortalized in "Notre Dame de Paris" still nominally exists in peaceable passage near the Rue Monitor gueil; but it is vastly different place from the filthy area. surrounded by tum- ble down tenements, which throughout the Middle Ages was at once the St. Giles and the Alsatia of the French capital. The beggars' special quarter enjoyed the privilege of sanctuary, and was ruled over by all elective king who was as- sisted by a council including sundry dukes of Egypt" and nobles of the em- pire of Galilee-all beggars.
 One of the peculiar characteristics of the place was it's utter silence and aban- donment in the day time; not even the lame, the halt or the blind fingered in it's precincts. They were all abroad cadging. The paralytics, beds and all, had been re- moved and laid down at the street cor ners. there to excite the pity of the passers by. The dogs, of course, were engaged on business leading the blind
 men about the streets; the very babies had been taken out begging. But at night this mute and deserted Cour des Miracles became Gehenna, a carnival of noise. drunkenness and profigacy; and it l was seldom that the carousals of the ''francsmitous, or beggars. and the 'frefodes," or tramps. terminated without , bloodshed
 The beggars of bygone times in France may not have had their directories, which, , even had they possessed them, would have been occasionally beneficial, inas- , much as the bulk of the vagabond com 3 munity were unable to read or write. 3 Nevertheless, 1t Is worthy of rer1arlx that
 so long ago as 1561. when kind of paupel t census was taken, by order of Henry II the impostors therein unmasked answered l almost exactly to the character of tho S professional mendicants who in modern 1 times have infested, and who continue t( 1 infest society, not only in Paris but il I London. ShiverinG beggars and epileptic - beggars-so far as epilepsy can be simu lated by chewing soap-varlets who pre- tended to be dropsical or who exhibited sores, bogus cripples and spurious hunch backs-in fact, nearly all the unworthy n recipients of aims whose malpractices ar, a exposed in the periodical reports of oul ' Mepdicity society-may be found in tn, q roll of rapscollion drawn up in Paris nor,
 than threo hundred years ago
 It may be said that ever since the de
 struction of the Cour des Miracles ther
 has been one protracted and almost in
 cessant militant effort of successive gov
 ernments in France to redress, if not t,
 punish, professional mendicity. Owe
 and over again the blind, the cripples ana
 the sufferers from incurable ailments
 have been forbidden, under heavy penal
 ties. to beg in the public thoroughfares
 and the police have often made raids upol
 the beggars en masse. and, without sub
 iecting them to any form of trial, hay
 consigned them to criminal prisons or de pots.-London Telegraph.