From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
On the cobblestoned rue de Bourg, where the burghers of Lausanne, Switzerland, shop, a little man in a bowler shuffles along in oversize shoes, a bamboo cane swinging from his arm. Enchanted, an elderly woman cries out, "Look, it's the Little Tramp."

Indeed it is—or rather his reincarnation. Although Charlie Chaplin died in 1977 and is buried in nearby Vevey, his most famous creation walks the streets in search of tips in the diminutive person of David Lee Parsons, a 52-year-old American. "David's impersonation," says Michael Chaplin, 53, Charlie's son, "catches the character's spirit with grace and beauty."

A native of Wilmington, Del., Parsons was a college dropout who didn't find his place in the world until he was 35. He worked in an eyeglass factory, published a zine, even sold hot dogs. Then in 1982, he saw Chaplin's classic Modern Times. "I realized the Little Tramp's life eerily resembled my own," he says. "Every time he tried to accomplish something, someone pulled the rug from under him. I had finally found my destiny." Hours and hours of watching Little Tramp movies allowed Parsons to get the mannerisms down pat. After an Italian TV crew caught his act on Bourbon Street, he went to Europe. During a stopover in Lausanne, a restaurateur offered him money and a meal just to show up every night at his place—in character, of course. Soon Parsons became a local fixture.

Now married to Pascale, a 34-year-old Swiss woman who is the mother of their 23-month-old daughter Ami Lou, Parsons makes as much as $700 a week working the streets. "Sure, it puts food on the table," he says, "but above all else, it's a passion. By imitating someone else, I found my own true self."