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Updated: June 20, 2025
Give money to-day in recognition of a begging-letter, no matter how unlike a common begging-letter, and for the next fortnight you will have a rush of such communications. Steadily refuse to give; and the begging-letters become Angels' visits, until the Society is from some cause or other in a dull way of business, and may as well try you as anybody else.
I have been poor myself, and what must that young couple think of my never answering their touching letter, put in my hands as I first crossed this threshold? Any begging-letter impostor would have written as good a one. It's all humbug, Susan. Mrs. Charles would like to see you whipped, if I know women. Here are our visitors from town.
Now and again a piteous begging-letter would come from one or the other, which she railed at and scolded over, and bade Maude answer. Her eldest son, Lord Kirton, had married some four or five years ago, and since then the countess-dowager's lines had been harder than ever.
The best begging-letter writers depend upon the element of surprise as a valuable means to their end. I knew a benevolent old lady who, in 1885, was asked to subscribe to a fund for the purchase of "moderate luxuries" for the French soldiers in Madagascar. "What did you do?" I asked, when informed of the incident. "I sent the money," was the placid reply.
It is of little use inquiring into the Begging-Letter Writer's circumstances. It is naturally an incident of his dissipated and dishonest life. That the calling is a successful one, and that large sums of money are gained by it, must be evident to anybody who reads the Police Reports of such cases. But, prosecutions are of rare occurrence, relatively to the extent to which the trade is carried on.
He is a begging-letter writer, and moves from lodging-house to lodging-house; he writes letters for any of the inmates who have some particular tale of woe to unfold, or some urgent appeal to make, and he receives the major part of the resultant charity.
He said it was for "some one at the castle," and I offered to take charge of it here it is, and he produced a square-shaped envelope of common coarse-looking paper, sealed with red wax, and a shamrock for impress. 'A begging-letter, I should say, from the outside, said Dick.
Sir John Rooby, the ex-Lord Mayor, appeared in apoplectic importance; Lady Glendower, who had expended a fortune on the conversion of the Siamese, also waited with acute curiosity; every name on every card there was known more or less to Secretaries, to Missionary Societies, to begging-letter writers to all the people who run on the track of wealth.
"It was in the interest of science," he said, ultimately. "There was a costermonger family on the floor below, a begging-letter writer in the room behind mine, and two flower-women were upstairs. Perhaps it was a bit thoughtless. But possibly some of them were out. "When I came back the thing was just where I left it, among the white-hot coals. The explosive hadn't burst the case.
He owed money for his lodging, and was on the very eve of being sent to prison, when it occurred to him to write to Burke. It was the moment when the final struggle with Lord North was at its fiercest, and Burke might have been absolved if, in the stress of conflict, he had neglected a begging-letter. As it was, the manliness and simplicity of Crabbe's application touched him.
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