The Windows Of The Parlor Next To My
Sleeping-Room Open Upon A Rather Low Balcony Over The Street Door, And
They Are Unprovided With Any Fastenings, Which In New York We Should Think
A Great Piece Of Negligence.
Indeed, I am told that these night robberies
are no longer practiced, except when the thief is assisted by an accessary
in the house.
All classes of the people appear to be satisfied with the
new police. The officers are men of respectable appearance and respectable
manners. If I lose my way, or stand in need of any local information, I
apply to a person in the uniform of a police officer. They are sometimes
more stupid in regard to these matters than there is any occasion for,
but it is one of the duties of their office to assist strangers with local
information.
Begging is repressed by the new police regulations, and want skulks in
holes and corners, and prefers its petitions where it can not be overheard
by men armed with the authority of the law. "There is a great deal of
famine in London," said a friend to me the other day, "but the police
regulations drive it out of sight." I was going through Oxford-street
lately, when I saw an elderly man of small stature, poorly dressed, with a
mahogany complexion, walking slowly before me. As I passed him he said in
my ear, with a hollow voice, "I am starving to death with hunger," and
these words and that hollow voice sounded in my ear all day.
Walking in Hampstead Heath a day or two since, with an English friend, we
were accosted by two laborers, who were sitting on a bank, and who said
that they had came to that neighborhood in search of employment in
hay-making, but had not been able to get either work or food. My friend
appeared to distrust their story. But in the evening, as we were walking
home, we passed a company of some four or five laborers in frocks, with
bludgeons in their hands, who asked us for something to eat. "You see how
it is, gentlemen," said one of them, "we are hungry; we have come for
work, and nobody will hire us; we have had nothing to eat all day." Their
tone was dissatisfied, almost menacing; and the Englishman who was with
us, referred to it several times afterward, with an expression of anxiety
and alarm.
I hear it often remarked here, that the difference of condition between
the poorer and the richer classes becomes greater every day, and what the
end will be the wisest pretend not to foresee.
Letter XXII.
Edinburgh.
Edinburgh, _July_ 17, 1845.
I Had been often told, since I arrived in England, that in Edinburgh, I
should see the finest city I ever saw. I confess that I did not feel quite
sure of this, but it required scarcely more than a single look to show me
that it was perfectly true.
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