In the Street!

A small beggar on the sidewalk of the street. What should our attitude toward him be? Do we slip five piasters into his hand?.. What do the educators say about that?

"God keep you.. God prosper you" — a phrase that rings in her ears even now and pursues her, so that before her rises the pale, abject face, the two small hands raised toward her; and there comes back to her memory the figure of the little one who followed her in the street yesterday morning, the tattered garment covering his body, and then the two small feet, cracked from going barefoot..

She looked at him, asking him a word, and he did not answer her, but went on in his mechanical way with his set phrase and the ring of his monotonous voice. No one speaks to him — why should he trouble himself with an answer?.. Indeed, why should he learn anything but this "precious" phrase which he launches into the ear of every passerby?

She stopped and asked him with concern about his mother, and he answered that she was crouching over there in the other corner of the street, begging too.. She reached her hand into her bag to take out a coin, then looked at the two innocent eyes: a child not yet past his fourth year, a hoarse voice, and a hard piece of money, and her heart splitting with pity and running over with pain — what was she to do? Should she cast poison, the poison of dependence, into his mouth? But others might do so without a thought, in the name of mercy and charity; what could she do, alone, in the face of such a thing?

She took courage, returned the coin to her bag without the little one noticing, and went on her way...

She felt no pang of conscience — or does she feel it after all, and see it in the small face and the echo of the voice that pursues her, so long as the corners of the streets hold sellers of chewing gum and speakers of the phrases of abjection and servility!

This incident is not woven of imagination, unfortunately; it is more than real — it is a fact, and how bitter facts sometimes are.

Beggars multiply and their kinds vary; they appear in guise after guise, as sellers of chewing gum and lottery tickets. And what fortune comes to them from all that? Toward what fate are they driven, after they graduate from the school of the street? What kind of soul grows in their breasts, and what do they know of life?

And the girls with their loose-hanging hair, pacing the streets barefoot, in worn-out clothes; at every corner, at every turning, they stand waiting for the customer who will be generous with the five piasters to buy the chewing gum...

Who, one wonders, is responsible first and last for this state of things in our country — and in the capital of our country above all? Shall we lay the blame, all the blame, on the shoulders of these little ones? Their tender bodies are too weak to bear it, and their soft souls need affection, need tenderness — say rather, a natural life in the care of parents, or of whatever may stand in their place, until the down grows firm in their wings and they become able to fly and soar.

Shall we lay the blame on the government? It is responsible, without doubt; but it is not alone, and there is not in all the world a single government that can shoulder every responsibility and burden by itself, without the help of the people...

Shall we blame the parents? They, in my view, are the first to be blamed. They are criminals against their own children, throwing them into the mouth of fire and misery so that their own brows need not run with the sweat of toil and labor; they prefer laziness and ease to the care of the pieces of their own hearts. Then comes the environment — yes, for the scholars of education have affirmed that environment is the greatest of the influences on the child's growth and the shaping of his inner life... All blame slides off the shoulders of the little ones, for they are blank pages awaiting filling, and it makes no difference whether they are filled in blue or in black — or in the color of blood.

No nation can boast of its progress so long as there are wretched souls in its streets. Where are our associations? Where is unity in the ranks of these associations — to demand, to join hands, and then to advance at least one step in earnest for this cause, which has come to be a palpable danger to the soundness of this structure, the structure of society, and which wakes in strength today, in the season of the opening of the schools? Where is the cutting sword, to strike off the head of this poisonous plague... the plague of begging, of abjection, and of degradation?..