One important specimen of the kind, nine years old, and weighing, perhaps, fifty pounds, saw a former member of the fraternity, who had seceded, passing with packages to deliver, neatly dressed, and with a general air of being well cared for, and comfortably fed and housed. [Sidenote: THE SECEDING GAMIN.] The ragamuffin looked upon him with an expression of contempt never equalled off the stage, and he called the attention of a score of his ragged comrades to the seceder:-- "Look at him! just look at him! He has got to be a baker's boy! Poor devil! Poor devil! He has clothes, he has a cap on his head, and shoes on his feet. He sits at a table with the maid, and eats three times a day, and has a bed to sleep in! He will never more be one of us! He is ruined! Poor devil! Why can't everybody have spirit? Bah! A bed to sleep in, and regular meals!" And the mob of ragamuffins jeered and hooted at him as he passed, and the boy himself looked as though he had been a traitor to his class, and as if he had half a mind to confiscate the bread he was carrying and return to his former fellows. The young bundle of rags felt all that he said. To him this desertion from a life of vagabondage was a betrayal, as it were, and he felt, actually, a supreme pity for the gamin who could be anything else for so small a consideration as a comfortable life. To him the liberty of the streets was better than any house that required regularity. He would not have dined at the Grand Hotel if it required his coming at regular hours. And after venting his opinion he went out in search of something to eat, and if he found that something he was happy--if not it was a shrug of the shoulders, and to sleep an hour or two sooner. They have a trick of making a dinner upon an hour or two of sleep, and an enjoyable breakfast by not waking up till dinner time. It is an economical way of living, but not conducive to increase of flesh. How long they can stand it has never been determined, for, not regarding the interests of science, they always manage to find a crust, or a bone, or something, just as the experiment is getting to be interesting. None of them have ever been willing to die in the interest of science. They are largely devoted to themselves. The gamin of Paris is deserving of more credit than the gamin of New York, for he has nothing especially cheerful before him. When he ceases to be a vagabond boy he becomes a vagabond man, except in the rare cases I have mentioned, and ends his career, as vagabond men do, the world over.