The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I have read of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors I have found him in by personal observation and inquiry concerning his ways of life.  He has been somewhat idealized in print, I find.  Victor Hugo has presented him in a light not unlike that of Cooper’s noble savage—­with large difference of color and pose, of course.  The average Frenchman knows Cooper’s noble savage as well as we know Hugo’s romantic ragpicker, and he knows nothing of the American Indian besides. (It is a curious fact, which I may note in passing, that the only American author whose writings appear to be really well known in Paris to-day is Fenimore Cooper.  Next to him stands Edgar Poe—­Poaye, as the French call him, pronouncing both the vowels.) There is a street in the crowded quarter of Paris back of the Pantheon which has the, reputation of being the especial haunt of the ragpickers.  It is called the Rue Mouffetard, and includes many of this class of blousards among its population; but as there are over twenty thousand ragpickers in Paris, it needs little argument to show that they are not all hived in the Rue Mouffetard.  Great numbers live in the Brise Miche quarter, behind the church of St. Mery; at Montmartre, along the Canal de Bievre; in the purlieus of Belleville; out beyond the Bastile; in fact, wherever there is dirt enough to suit their tastes.  For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said that the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever met in the guise of a human being.  I have met Digger Indians, too, in California.  There is something to be said in defence of the bestiality of a Digger:  he has not been exposed to the refining influences of surrounding civilization; he was reared in darkness and ignorance; so were his fathers before him for many generations; the white man and his ways have just dawned upon the poor Digger’s consciousness; and so on.  These things cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris.  He is almost equally dirty with the Digger, and he lives in the gayest capital of the world.  He is also almost equally ignorant with the Digger:  neither can read or write; neither has any idea whether the world is round or flat; neither is aware, save dimly, that there are other lands and other peoples than his own; but the ragpicker is in a city full of books and newspapers (and, oddly enough, is a principal purveyor for the mills that make paper for printing); and the Digger has the advantage in the comparison.  The Digger lives in vicious sexual relations, but in this particular point the comparison leaves the Indian far in advance of his rival, for the ragpicker’s customs in this regard are worse by far than those of even the most degraded Indians of America.  There is nothing in any savage country more horrible, more astounding and incredible than the practices of the ragpickers of Paris in respect of the relations between the sexes.  They are so atrociously vile that it is difficult to state the truth in cleanly words.