Man Begs for Food with $83 In Pocket

1920

Claims He's a House Cleaner — "He Sure Is," Says Cop.

KANSAS CITY, Missouri. — Four pocketbooks and $83 were found on Steve Crumply by David Kepler, a Wyandotte County deputy sheriff, after Mrs. Kepler had responded to Steven's backdoor plea for food.

Crumpley explained the pocketbooks and cash by telling the dubious deputy sheriff that he was a house cleaner.

"House cleaner is right! Come with me," commanded Kepler. He led the man from the Kepler home to police headquarters.

Crumpley told Judge A. J. Herrod in the police court that he lived at the Helping Hand Institute. He refused, even tho he had $83, to pay a $50 fine, so he was locked up.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 5.

Not to Be Reached

1895

The people of the extreme south of France, in the neighborhood of the Pyrenees, have a hard shift to live. Some of them gain a livelihood by taming bears.

Many others take to begging, which becomes a trade by itself, reasonably remunerative and not exactly dishonorable. Baron Haussmann, in his "Memoires," cites the case of one of these professional beggars who amassed a good property and finally became mayor of a large commune.

Even then he continued to ply his trade, especially in the bathing season, when many tourists visited the country. One of these outsiders was so taken aback at the sight of the mayor begging on the street that he remonstrated with the mendicant.

"I should think you would be ashamed," said the stranger, "you, a man holding so honorable an office."

"Office," said the mayor, "my office! Why, man, this is how I gained it." — Youth's Companion.

Easy to Talk Too Much

1919

One Must Admit There Is Much Truth in These Sage Reflections

"It is my opinion," said Mr. Goslington, "that beggars talk too much. For instance, this morning I met a man who asked me for a nickel with which to buy a cup of coffee. As I was reaching for the nickel he kept right on talking, telling me among other things that he hadn't had anything to eat for three days, which I knew of course was false, and which detracted very much from my pleasure in giving.

"I am an easy mark. Perhaps as I grow older I shall grow harder, but as I fell about it now I would rather give to a dozen frauds than take a chance of missing one man who was hungry. Still I don't like the fraud to be too obvious; and I am sure there must be many prospective givers who, when the beggar keeps on with that surplus talk, rescind their original determination to give and keep their money in their pocket. Surely you would think the beggar would learn wisdom and talk less, wouldn't you?

"But the beggar is not the only man. How often do we hear it said of some banquet speaker that he is a good talker but he talks too much? This may seem a harsh way of putting it, but that's what people say. This speaker starts engagingly and talks for a time to the pleasure of everybody, wandering on then interminably to the complete obliteration of the first favorable impression. Here the only result is the tiring of the speaker's hearers; but talking too much might have a far more serious result in the case of, say, a man applying for a job.

"Many a man has talked himself out of a prospective job. He goes to the employer with what he wants to say clearly laid out in his mind, he says this clearly and simply, and the employer has practically made up his mind to take him; but then the applicant keeps on talking, to his own undoing. As he talks he reveals himself in a light less favorable; he discloses perhaps some peculiarity that may not really be a detriment but that strikes the employer not agreeably; and so this job that at first the applicant had felt perfectly sure of slips away from him entirely and without his realizing just how it all came about.

"The beggar is far from being alone in over-talking. There are many men in many walks who lack the fine gift of knowing when to stop."

Modesty of Slit Skirts Debated; New Fashions Give Sight to Blind

1913

Daughters' Dress Care of Mothers

Denver Pedagogue Says Parents Can Check X-ray Gowns and Slit Skirts on Girls

DENVER, Aug. 30. — Superintendent of Schools William H. Miley expressed the utmost satisfaction today at the stand the Mothers' congress has taken against transparent and slit skirts for school girls. He felt so sure the mothers can accomplish more than the school department officials in the direction of discouraging immodesty of dress on their daughter's part, he said, that he does not even consider it necessary for the school heads to issue any orders on the subject.

Some well known Denver women were not so sure, however, that the wearing of the new styles of skirts can be prevented by the means adopted and one or two went so far as to hint that the new skirts critics are inclined to be old fogyish.

"How can children be disposed to moderation in dress unless their mothers display it?" asked Mrs. Henry Hershey, a prominent member of the Mothers' congress. "I hope, too, that the congress will move with delicacy and tact. There is an idea that old styles are more moral than new simply because they have been worn for a long time."

"It isn't the display or concealment of the body that constitutes modesty or immodesty," said Mrs. Dora Phelps Buell, also a leading member of the congress. "And I am sorry to see the mothers beginning in the wrong way. The moment a woman or a girl wears a gown shows her figure there is a howl that the effect is immoral. The world has gone mad over externals."

—The La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, WI, Aug. 30, 1913, p. 6.


Slit Skirt Makes "Blind" Man See

KANSAS CITY, Mo., Aug. 30. — M. J. McCarty, "fake" blind man, who was sentenced to serve 100 days on the municipal farm because he gazed for thirty seconds on the aperture in a slit skirt, was not at all downcast today.

"Believe me," said McCarty, "believe me, it was worth it."

McCarty was wearing a "Help the Blind" sign around his neck when a pretty brunette, with a skirt slit to the knee, passed and dropped a dime in his cup. J. W. West, a clerk, saw McCarty turn and stare after the girl. West stared too, and then he called a policeman.

—The La Crosse Tribune, La Crosse, WI, Aug. 30, 1913, p. 10.

Wicked Humor — A Great Satire On The Ways of Tramps

1878

A Sarcastic Mendicant

"I'm very hungry," said a haggard tramp, with very red eyes, as he stood obsequiously at the side entrance of a Court street house. "Won't you please, ma'am, be so good as to give me a little something to eat? Anything will do — odds and ends — cold or warm — it don't matter, for I'm not one of them high-toned fellers."

"My husband has forbidden me to encourage idleness by giving away any more provisions," replied the lady of the house. " He says you fellows have a sort of Free Masonry way of letting others know every house at which you have been fed, and it is sure to bring a troop of lazy vagabonds upon us who would starve before they'd lift a hand to work. So you will have to move on and get your breakfast some place else."

"But I'm not a vagabond, ma'am; I'm a hard-working, industrious man. I came up on a boat from Memphis to see my sick mother who lives out near Camden, and isn't expected to live. I was robbed on the boat of every cent I had and all my clothes, while I was in bed. The captain gave me these old things. I don't like to beg, but Camden is a good stretch from here, and I can't walk it on an empty stomach. Think of the outstretched arms of a poor sick mother toward her absent child, and put wings on my feet with a few cold potatoes. I'm just at that point where I can eat 'em without salt."

"I can't do it. They all have a story about like that. The last man I fed had to go to Columbus inside of twenty-four hours to save an innocent man from hanging, but two days afterward I saw him down town so drunk he couldn't hold his mouth shut."

"Well, I never drink. If I hadn't been robbed I could show you my Murphy ribbon that I've worn till it's raveled into strings. Long years ago I swore at my mother's bended knee — the same one who moans on her couch of pain because I'm not with her — that I would never touch the blighting cup, and I hain't, from that time up to this minute. Can't you help me to get there in time to comfort her declining hours with the joyful tidings that I have been steadfast through all temptation, by giving me the cold grub you had intended to dump into the garbage box? I'm awful hungry."

"I can't help it. I must obey my husband — his orders were positive," said the woman, snappishly.

"Well, you're the most extraordinary woman I ever saw if you do. But say, can't you give me the paper the beefsteak was brought home in, to chew as I go along. It may fool my stomach for awhile and make it brace up by thinking something better will be along presently. You'll do that much toward easing a fond parent's anxious heart, won't you?"

"No, I won't."

"Well, then give me a newspaper and let me sit by the fire and read the advertisement of a meat market, and show me the place where it tells all about provisions. Even that would give me a feast — for the imagination — which has been about the extent of my living lately. You won't believe it, maybe, but it's a fact, that all the nourishment I've had for two days is the bill of fare painted on the outside of the Fifth-street restaurant. Can you think of that and keep your stale bread on the inside of your cupboard?"

"Yes, I can; and I want you to make yourself scarce without any more palaver, or I shall send my boy to call a policeman," exclaimed the indignant woman.

"Even the photograph of a chicken would be some comfort," said the man, by way of banter, as he moved off, "and if you don't use soap in your dishwater a few potatoes sliced up in it would be regular barbecue for me." — Cincinnati Breakfast Table.

Dwarf Darnell Flim-Flams Little Blind Girl

Atlanta, 1902

MONROE DARNELL, MIDGET, FLIM-FLAMS BLIND GIRL

The climax of eccentricities in flim-flamming was reached yesterday, when a little dwarf was caught trying to flim-flam a blind girl out of 10 cents.

Monroe Darnell, the well-known midget, was the flim-flammer, and his victim was a little blind girl who stands at the street corners patiently waiting for good-hearted people to drop money into a tin cup which she holds in her hand.

Darnell tried to swipe a 10-cent piece which he saw in the cup, and in its stead placed a copper.

The police are constantly meeting up with flim-flam games and new ones are always coming to light. It takes novelty to make a flim-flam go, and the crooks are ever trying to invent some new scheme by which they can get hold of coin without working for it. But it took Dwarf Darnell to present the most unique flim-flam that has come before the police in many a day.

Yesterday the little blind girl was standing at the corner of Decatur and Ivy streets. Some one had dropped a 10-cent silver coin into her tin cup. Across the street Monroe Darnell, who is himself no slouch when it comes to begging money, was standing, and when he saw a coin fall into the blind girl's cup he strolled over her way and peered into the receptacle. Having ascertained that the coin was a dime, he took a 1-cent piece from his pocket, and squinting his eyes around to see if he was unobserved, he quickly swiped the dime from the cup and left the copper in its place. He might have swiped the dime and left nothing in its place, but his leaving the copper showed that his conscience was not entirely dead.

He was not unobserved, however, for a citizen saw the flim-flam and reported the matter to an officer. Darnell was caught with the dime in his hand. He admitted having exchanged a copper for it, but stoutly maintained that he did not mean to steal it.

"Now, look here," said he in his squeaky voice, "yer all knows how I like a joke. All the boys will tell yer that poor little Monroe is always full of his fun. I just meant to play a joke on the blind girl, seeing as how she couldn't see. Then I meant to teach her a lesson about being too careless with her money. I was just going to say to her: 'Baby mine, I have slipped away your dime and put a copper in its place. You mustn't leave your money in your cup so long. You must take it out as fast as you hear it drop, or some fine day a sure enough rogue will swipe your money, and he won't be as honest as poor little Monroe.' You see, I make my money by the same sort of hard licks as the blind girl, and I want her to learn how to take better care of the stuff."

The dwarf was made to restore the dime, and he generously let her also have his copper. If he had not been caught, however, the flim-flam would have been a very serious joke to the little blind girl.

–The Atlanta Constitution, Atlanta, Nov. 23, 1902, p. 5.

He Thought He Was Shot, While Training Dogs

Wisconsin, 1907

HE THOUGHT HE WAS SHOT

Jos. Milcharek Goes Out to Train His Dogs to Hunt and Narrowly Escapes a Serious Wound.

While training two of his dogs to hunt near the river on the plat of ground near Messer's slough, Sunday afternoon at about 12:30 o'clock, John Milcharek accidentally fired the contents of a 32 calibre cartridge from a revolver into his right foot and barely escaped permanent injuries.

The dogs had gone ahead with his two sons, and when several rods ahead of him, he fired his revolver into the ground. The dogs howled and appeared to be alarmed, and thereupon he hastily fired again, the second pulling of the trigger being done carelessly while looking across the river. As he fired the second shot, he felt a peculiar sensation coming over him, but suffered no pain in his leg.

A warm perspiration came over him suddenly, and he grew weak, but walked on until he felt a numbness in his foot. Stooping down and examining it, he found a hole pierced in his trousers, and closer investigation showed that his stocking was torn and the leather of his shoe cut. At this point, Milcharek fainted and fell to the ground.

His children ran home for assistance, but meanwhile he recovered and called on the Drs. von Neupert. His wounds were examined and except for a sudden swelling near the ankle, the flesh was not pierced by the bullet, it having taken a diagonal course and glanced into the ground from his shoe.

—The Gazette, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, May 29, 1907, page 1.


Miss, Mrs. and Mistress.

"Miss" is an abbreviation of "mistress," which, as an English law dictionary explains, is the property style of the wife of an esquire or a gentleman.

By Dr. Johnson's time it had become "the term of honor to a young girl." In the earliest part of the eighteenth century, however, it was used respectfully of girls below the age of ten alone. After that age "miss" was rude, implying giddiness of behavior. In Smollett's writings an unmarried woman of mature years and her maid are both "Mrs." It is certain that "miss" has grown older, so to speak, while "master" has become confined to boys.


Good Idea.

First Beggar — How is it that you always manage to get something from both of those women on the ground floor of that apartment house? Second Beggar — Dead easy. I ring both bells at the same time. Both women come to the doors at the same time and each one wants to outdo the other. — Fliegende Blatter.

Fake Exposed By Telephone

1903

Young Woman, Pretending to Be a Mute, Foiled in Her Game

A Poughkeepsie (N. Y.) telegram to the Philadelphia Inquirer says that a young woman giving her name as Delia Flynn called on several of the pastors in the city, posing as a mute and describing her pitiable condition with pen and pencil.

Chief of Police McCabe at that moment came in and began to express sympathy for the woman. Suddenly he stepped to the telephone and began an imaginary conversation.

"We have a woman here," he said, "who says she comes from Albany. We must know all about her history, as she cannot talk, or she must be sent to the penitentiary."

The woman, hearing this, made a dash for the door, and fought desperately to get out of the station. Chief McCabe took her into his office and questioned her.

The woman said that she had feigned dumbness in Albany, Troy, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn. She declared that she was compelled to beg for a one-armed man, Edward Burnett of Brooklyn, with whom she eloped from her home in Philadelphia when she was 16 years old. She is now 22.

Have Confidence in Yourself and You Will Succeed

1920

TWO ONE-LEGGED MEN
By Napoleon Hill

In the town of Wichita Falls, Texas, I saw a one-legged man sitting on the side-walk begging for alms.

A few questions brought out the fact that he had a fair education. He said he was begging because no one would give him work. "The world is against me and I have lost confidence in myself," he said.

Ah, there was the rub!

"I have lost confidence in myself."

Across the hall from my office is another one-legged man. I have known him for several years and I know that his schooling was slight. He has less training than the one-legged beggar.

But he is earning a thousand dollars a month. As Sales Manager of a manufacturing concern he is directing the efforts of fifty men.

The beggar displayed the stump of his amputated leg as evidence that he needed alms. The other one legged man covered up the stump of his lost leg so it would not attract attention.

The difference between the two men exists merely in viewpoint. One believes in himself and the other does not! The one who believes in himself could give up the other leg and both arms and still earn a thousand dollars a month. He could even give up both eyes, to boot, and still earn the money.

The world never defeats you until you defeat yourself. Milo C. Jones, of "Little Pig Sausage" fame, became a wealthy man out of the sausage business after paralysis had stricken him down and taken away the use of nearly every muscle in his body. He couldn't turn over in bed without aid.

As long as you have faith in yourself and that wonderful mind of yours continues to function properly, YOU CANNOT BE DEFEATED IN ANY LEGITIMATE UNDERTAKING. This statement is made without qualifications, because it is true.

—The Ada Evening News, Ada, Oklahoma, February 13, 1920, page 6.

Note: $1,000 a month in 1920 was a tremendous amount. It meant doing really really well.