and are the chief causes of disorders; they form the ancient class of Mexican leperos; from their bosom the ranks of petty thieves and pickpockets are recruited, and they are the industrious plotters of important crimes. They are insensible to moral suffering, and physical suffering pains them but little, and pleasures give them little joy. Venereal disease and abortion render the women of the group refractory to motherhood; paternity is impossible on account of the promiscuity in which they live; these two natural springs of altruism destroyed, they are indifferent to humane sentiments and egoistic in the animal fashion.
Everywhere they may be seen, the repulsive feature of our streets. In speaking they reveal a dwarfed intelligence, as sadly ruined by their life as is their body. Their ideas are rudimentary notions derived from the common talk of the streets, comments on public events—the escape of one criminal, the sentence of another, the deportation of their companions, the capture of some “crook.” They are godless, with feeble superstition regarding the saints depicted on their scapulars or the medal of the rosary, which they wear beneath their filthy shirt. Their number is enormous; they constitute the dregs of the laboring classes, and their presence betrays the vortices of vice, where the outcasts of civilization are dragged down.