Identifier: newyorkbysunligh00mcca_1 (find matches)
Title: New York by sunlight and gaslight : a work descriptive of the great American metropolis ; its high and low life; its splendors and miseries; its virtu
Year: 1882 (1880s)
Authors: McCabe, James D., 1842-1883.
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Union Publishing House
Contributing Library: Columbia University Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: The Durst Organization

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Billiard rooms andMasonic lodges abound, boot-black stands decorateevery corner, and dry goods are exhibited in themodest thread and needle shops as well as in palatialwarehouses that cost half a million of dollars. Trot-ting stables and theatres are near neighbors, and someof the finest residences in the city have been turnedinto flats for milliners, dentists, and barbers. Forsome reason the theatres in Twenty-third street havealways had but a shaky existence. Two of them willlive in local history; one as the scene of a monumentaldramatic failure, the other as the place where financialgiants fought for supremacy in one of the great rail-roads of the world. Twenty-third and Fourteenth street constitute the THE beggars paradise. 271 Beggars Paradise, the former by day and the latterby night. The same cripples, hand-organ men, Italianmen and women, and professional boy beggars whoinfest Twenty-third street by day change their quartersto Fourteenth street, when the darkness settles down
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PLEASE GIVE ME A PENNY. over the cit), and the blaze of the electric lights burstsforth over the latter thoroughfare. These beggars constitute an intolerable nuisance,and some of them are characters in their way. It isnoticeable that nearly all the professional beggars 272 NEW YORK. have watchers and guardians near them. One veryold man, with a head as bald as a billiard ball, takeshis stand every day, hat in hand, near the residence ofa prominent city official on Twenty-third street, whilehe challenges every passer by with the most piteouslooks. On the opposite side of the street, and gen-erally in the calm retreat of a church, stands his pal.If business is good, the two now and then adjourn toa cheap beer saloon in Sixth avenue, and lay out apart of the receipts in drink. Another is a hideouslooking fellow with St. Vitus dance, and a terriblyscarred face and mutilated hand. He pays more at-tention to ladies than to men. As one approaches hebegins to bow. Fastening his evil eyes upon

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