A large part of the earnings of the bootblacks is spent for tobacco and drink. They are patrons of the Bowery theatres and concert halls, and their criticisms of the performances are frequently worth hearing. The "Children's Aid Society" makes them objects of its especial care, its great end and aim being "to induce the boys to emigrate to the West." The course of life which they pursue leads to miserable results. When a bootblack gets to be seventeen, he finds that his career is at an end-- it does not produce money enough--and he has acquired lazy, listless habits, which totally unfit him for any kind of work. He becomes a loafer, a vagrant, and perhaps worse. To save boys from this fate, the society labors most earnestly to induce them to go to the West; and it is stated that the desire of the boys to secure western homes increases year by year. Up to the present time about seven hundred have been sent out, and many of them are now filling respectable positions in society.
After living in New York for a few months, you cannot resist the conclusion that it is a City of Beggars. You meet them at every step, and they follow you into your residence and place of business. A few you know to be genuine, and you give them gladly, but cannot resist the conviction that the majority of those who accost you are simply impostors, as, indeed, they are. Begging is not allowed on the street- cars, in the stages, the ferry-boats, or at any place of amusement, but there is no law against the practice of it on the streets. Broadway is the favorite resort of this class, as it is the principal promenade of the city people, and Fourteenth, and Twenty-third streets, and Fifth Avenue are being made disagreeable in this way.
Besides these street beggars, there are numbers of genteel, and doubtless well-meaning persons who make it their business to beg for others. They intrude upon you at the most inconvenient times, and venture into your private apartments with a freedom and assurance which positively amaze you. Refuse them, and they are insulting.
Then there are those who approach you by means of letters. They send you the most pitiful appeals for aid, and assure you that nothing but the direst necessity induces them to send you such a letter, and that they would not do so under any circumstances, were not they aware of your well-known charitable disposition. Some persons of known wealth receive as many as a dozen letters of this kind each day. They are, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, from impostors, and are properly consigned to the waste-basket.