Apropos of the organ-grinder, I may tell you, dearest, that today I experienced a double misfortune. As I was looking at the grinder, certain thoughts entered my head and I stood wrapped in a reverie. Some cabmen also had halted at the spot, as well as a young girl, with a yet smaller girl who was dressed in rags and tatters. These people had halted there to listen to the organ-grinder, who was playing in front of someone’s windows. Next, I caught sight of a little urchin of about ten⁠—a boy who would have been good-looking but for the fact that his face was pinched and sickly. Almost barefooted, and clad only in a shirt, he was standing agape to listen to the music⁠—a pitiful childish figure. Nearer to the grinder a few more urchins were dancing, but in the case of this lad his hands and feet looked numbed, and he kept biting the end of his sleeve and shivering. Also, I noticed that in his hands he had a paper of some sort. Presently a gentleman came by, and tossed the grinder a small coin, which fell straight into a box adorned with a representation of a Frenchman and some ladies.

this

lad’s mother also was a feckless old woman, and devoid of character? Or perhaps she had no one to work for her, but was forced to sit with her legs crossed⁠—a veritable invalid? Or perhaps she was just an old rogue who was in the habit of sending out pinched and hungry boys to deceive the public? What would such a boy learn from begging letters? His heart would soon be rendered callous, for, as he ran about begging, people would pass him by and give him nothing. Yes, their hearts would be as stone, and their replies rough and harsh. “Away with you!” they would say. “You are seeking but to trick us.” He would hear that from everyone, and his heart would grow hard, and he would shiver in vain with the cold, like some poor little fledgling that has fallen out of the nest. His hands and feet would be freezing, and his breath coming with difficulty; until, look you, he would begin to cough, and disease, like an unclean parasite, would worm its way into his breast until death itself had overtaken him⁠—overtaken him in some foetid corner whence there was no chance of escape. Yes, that is what his life would become. There are many such cases. Ah, Barbara, it is hard to hear “For Christ’s sake!” and yet pass the suppliant by and give nothing, or say merely: “May the Lord give unto you!” Of course,

some supplications mean nothing (for supplications differ greatly in character). Occasionally supplications are long, drawn-out and drawling, stereotyped and mechanical⁠—they are purely begging supplications. Requests of this kind it is less hard to refuse, for they are purely professional and of long standing. “The beggar is overdoing it,” one thinks to oneself. “He knows the trick too well.” But there are other supplications which voice a strange, hoarse, unaccustomed note, like that today when I took the poor boy’s paper. He had been standing by the kerbstone without speaking to anybody⁠—save that at last to myself he said, “For the love of Christ give me a groat!” in a voice so hoarse and broken that I started, and felt a queer sensation in my heart, although I did not give him a groat. Indeed, I had not a groat on me. Rich folk dislike hearing poor people complain of their poverty. “They disturb us,” they say, “and are impertinent as well. Why should poverty be so impertinent? Why should its hungry moans prevent us from sleeping?”