Another belief is that beggars possess secret hoards. Because people in years of reading have seen two or three accounts of cases of this kind, they are under the impression that half the beggars that approach them are misers that would rather beg than buy. Now good beggars will still work on the public feeling with three or four shillings' worth of coppers in their pockets, but you could search the first thousand you met and be very unlikely to find gold. The most persistent beggars will often beg hard until they have saved a few shillings, after which they feel justified in taking a much-deserved rest, and are often to be seen idling for a couple of days in a town that is no good for begging, but where the accommodation of the lodging-house is excellent. Another fallacy is that they are eager to molest women and children. It is a mystery how these charges can be made against them, for few cases of the kind get into the papers. The only way to account for this belief is that all undiscovered violence and petty crime is put down to be the work of tramps, and the papers are only too eager to take such a view. When a man fell from his bicycle, trying to avoid running over an old deaf tramp, the local press thought it would make better copy to say that the man was knocked off his bicycle by a vicious tramp, much to the surprise of the man himself. Again, a tramp does not like to meet a woman in a lonely place, and he often whistles loudly so as to encourage her not to faint, and he never forgets to give her plenty of room to pass, and nothing annoys him more than to see timid children run into their houses at his approach. A tramp likes to have women answer the door to him, when they have the confidence of being surrounded by neighbours; but when it comes to the open air, women are a nuisance to him, and he would be glad if no women walked abroad. He can approach his own sex and speak, but he is afraid of being within ten feet of a woman's nerves. Then there is the fallacy that he is spending money on drink, because he is seen going in or out of a public-house. People do not know that he enters as a beggar, not as a customer, and that he often gets tipsy because beer is often easier to beg than bread or pennies. I have seen hundreds of beggars drunk who had not spent one penny on drink. On a Saturday night, almost every man in a common lodging-house is drunk, and often against his wish. All beggars know that they can do almost as well on a Saturday night by telling their tales in public-houses, as they can by calling at private houses all through the week; and in doing so they get drunk on free drinks, without having spent one of the many pennies they have received from customers.