space a placard saying that I was by nature too lazy to work, too
fond of life to starve, too poor to live, and too honest to steal, and
would be placed in affluence if every man and woman who saw that sign
would send me ten cents a week in two-cent postage-stamps for five weeks
running, I should receive enough money to enable me to live at the most
expensive hotel in town during that period. By living at that hotel and
paying my bills regularly I could get credit enough to set myself up in
business, and with credit there is practically no limit to the
possibilities of fortune. It is simply honest nerve that counts. The
beggar who asks you on the street for five cents to keep his family from
starving is rebuffed. You don't believe his story, and you know that
five cents wouldn't keep a family from starving very long. But the
fellow who accosts you frankly for a dime because he is thirsty, and
hasn't had a drink for two hours, in nine cases out of ten properly
selected ones will get a quarter for his nerve."

"You ought to write a _Manual for Beggars_," said the Bibliomaniac. "I
have no doubt that the Idiot Publishing Company would publish it."

"Yes," said Mr. Pedagog. "A sort of beggar's _Don't_, for instance. It
would be a benefit to all men, as well as a boon to the beggars. That
mendicancy is a profession to-day there is no denying, and anything
which could make of it a polite calling would be of inestimable value."

"I have had it in mind for some time," said the Idiot, blandly. "I
intended to call it _Mendicancy Made Easy_, or _the Beggar's Don't: With
Two Chapters on Etiquette for Tramps_."

"The chief trouble with such a book I should think," said the Poet,
"would be that your beggars and tramps could not afford to buy it."

"That wouldn't interfere with its circulation," returned the Idiot.
"It's a poor tramp who can't steal. Every suburban resident in creation
would buy a copy of the book out of sheer curiosity. I'd get my
royalties from them; the tramps could get the books by helping
themselves to the suburbanites' copies as they do to chickens,
fire-wood, and pies put out to cool. As for the beggars, I'd have it put
into their hands by the people they beg from. When a man comes up to a
wayfarer, for instance, and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but could you spare
a nickel to a hungry man?' I'd have the wayfarer say, 'Excuse _me_, sir,
but unfortunately I have left my nickels in my other vest; but here is a
copy