One of my fave scenes in "The Sandman" is the scene where the various factions are trying to buy off the Key to Hell from Morpheus. I love the bit where the lord of Order is incarnate in the form of a resplendent cardboard box, and Shivering Jemmy, the lord of Chaos, is just that cool. As an order freak, I dig the cardboard box idea.

Anyway...for a game I'm working on, I'm reading "The Victorian Underworld," a book about crime and the streets of Dickensian England. This current section is about the many different types of begging. They had just finished describing a routine of the "Ashamed begger," who played the "fallen tradesman too proud to beg, barely able to meet the gaze of his benefactors, while barely stifling the cough that's slowly killing him, just look at his eyes, you."

..."The 'Shivering Dodge,' practiced by 'Shallow Coves', was an alternative to the dcough. old mornings, the lightly clad performer would stand shivering before warmly dressed pedestrians as they passed by, mutely or loudly imploring their charity. Yet the art of continued shivering had unwelcome consequences, as one begger remarked. '"Shaking Jemmy" went on with his shivering so long that he couldn't help it at last. He shivered like a jelly - like a calf's foot with the ague - on the hottest day in summer.'

Hmm. I love little finds like this, it makes reading Gaimen, Pratchett and Kevin Andrew Murphy all the more satisfying :)