A Legion Of
Women Surrounded Me, Imploring Alms, Begging My Honor To Bestow My
Charity On Them For The Love
Of the Virgin, using the most holy
names in their adjurations for half-pence, clinging to me with that
half-
Joking, half-lachrymose air of importunity which an Irish
beggar has assumed as peculiarly her own. There were men, too, who
begged as well as women. And the women were sturdy and fat, and,
not knowing me as well as I knew them, seemed resolved that their
importunities should be successful. After all, I had an old world
liking for them in their rags. They were endeared to me by certain
memories and associations which I cannot define. But then what
would those Americans think of them - of them and of the country
which produced them? That was the reflection which troubled me. A
legion of women in rags clamorous for bread, protesting to heaven
that they are starving, importunate with voices and with hands,
surrounding the stranger when he puts his foot on the soil, so that
he cannot escape, does not afford to the cynical American who then
first visits us - and they all are cynical when they visit us - a bad
opportunity for his sarcasm. He can at any rate boast that he sees
nothing of that at home. I myself am fond of Irish beggars. It is
an acquired taste, which comes upon one as does that for smoked
whisky or Limerick tobacco. But I certainly did wish that there
were not so many of them at Queenstown.
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