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Feuerstein's six weeks in Hoboken it is enough to say that they were weeks of storm and stress wretched lodgments in low boarding-houses, odd jobs at giving recitations in beer halls, undignified ejectments for drunkenness and failure to pay, borrowings which were removed from frank street-begging only in his imagination.

For stealing $25 worth of anything the penalty was three years in prison at hard labor. The unfortunate was usually put in the convict chain-gang and forced to work along the roads. Street-begging was prohibited by drastic laws; poverty was substantially a crime.

Doubtless there must be poverty and wretchedness existing here, but it certainly is not obvious to the stranger. There is no street-begging, and no half-clad, half-starved women or children obstruct the way as is so often the case in London or Naples.

Among the many peculiar tastes which distinguished Mr. Francis Webber was an extraordinary fancy for street-begging. He had, over and over, won large sums upon his success in that difficult walk; and so perfect were his disguises, both of dress, voice, and manner, that he actually at one time succeeded in obtaining charity from his very opponent in the wager.