SMALL BEGGAR
Graciliano Ramos' first writing

He was eight years old!
The child's little poor without father nor mother, that he wandered
for the streets of the city begging to the charitable pedestrians,
He was eight years old.
Oh! Not to have a mother breast to drown the weeping that
exists in his/her heart!
Small poor beggar!
How many nights He had not passed sleeping for the sidewalks
exposed to the cold and the rain, without the shelter of the roof!
How many shames he had not passed , when extending the
little hand, only received the indifference and the mockery!
Oh! They are many rude and insensitive hearts!
It is Sunday.
The small is to the door of the church, asking, with the heart
embittered, that give him an alms for God's sake.
Several individuals stay to deposit a small coin in the hand that if it is them extended.
Finished the mass, it returns almost cheerful, because He knows that
on that day it won't starve.
Then they see the days, the months, the years, it grows and raisin
the life, finally, without swallowing other bread to not to be the black kneaded bread
with the bile of the fake charity.



GRACILIANO RAMOS
DILÚCULO - Viçosa, June 24, 1904

This small story is one of GRACILIANO RAMOS's first moments in the world of the literature. He was twelve years old and it already demonstrated literary sense. DILÚNCULO was a small newspaper edited in Viçosa, city of the state of Alagoas.
In spite of the tenuous age, psychological shades can be felt already. "bile of the fake charity", in that sentence noticed clearly that Graciliano Ramos "felt" already, same being still very young, problems of human personality, felt usually by adult people. His destiny as writer was drawn.