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That Brahmana who is destitute of pride or sin, who is not given to dry disputation, or who subsists upon alms obtained in his rounds of mendicancy from house to house deserves, O king, to be invited to sacrifices.

There are heroes in respect of obedience to mothers, and heroes in the matter of the life of mendicancy they lead. There are heroes in the matter of hospitality to guests, whether living as householders. All these heroes attain to very superior regions of felicity which are, of course, acquired by them as the rewards of their own acts.

And this spirit has passed down the ranks until it pervades the whole of society in India, with the consequence that manual labour is universally regarded as degrading, and with the further natural result that a horde of five and a half millions of lazy, wretched, immoral, able-bodied, religious beggars are burdening this land. And thus mendicancy is made honourable at the expense of honest toil.

Thus early, while their houses were the nurseries of dishonest mendicancy, they had surrendered to lay compassion, those who ought to have been their especial care. I shall unhappily have occasion hereafter to illustrate these matters in detail. I mention them in this place only in order to dissipate at once a foolish dream.

Being no longer stupified and besotted by liquor, into a state partly apathetic, partly drunken, and wholly shameless, he could not bear the notion of resuming his habits of mendicancy.

A certain osprey, by altogether abstaining from meat obtained felicity. To build a house for one's own self is productive of sorrow and not of happiness. The snake, taking up his residence in another creature's abode, lives in felicity. The ascetics live happily, betaking themselves to mendicancy, without being injured by any creature, like bees in the forest.

His dear spouse beheld him deprived of wealth, installed in the observance of the vow of mendicancy, resolved to abstain from inflicting any kind of injury on others, free from vanity of every kind, and prepared to subsist upon a handful of barley fallen off from the stalk and to be got by picking the grains from crevices in the field.

They have lately appointed a standing committee of mendicancy. They are contriving at once a vigorous police on this subject, and, for the first time, the imposition of a tax to maintain the poor, for whoso present relief great sums appear on the face of the public accounts of the year.

Mendicancy flies from the workhouse and the stone-yard to entrench itself against Guardians and relieving-officers among the soup-kitchens and the coal-tickets of feminine almsgiving. The parson, after a faint protest of common sense, surrenders at discretion, and flings all experience to the winds. One wife turns her husband into a fount of begging letters.

Mark is not the best place for studying, for some of the most characteristic phases of it are absolutely banished thence. The strolling musician or singer, who may be heard every night in other parts of the city, never plies his trade on the piazza. Mendicancy, which is more rife at Venice, I am sorry to say, than in any other Italian city, except perhaps Naples, is not tolerated on the piazza.