It is very pathetic on a Christmas morning to see seventy or eighty men in a lodging-house, and not six of them receive any greetings from the outside world. In one house, where the manager's charming little daughter received scores of letters and presents from school-friends and friends of her parents, there were not ten out of ninety lodgers who received a single letter--on a Christmas morning! It was when I saw this that it came on me in full force to know what an isolated plague spot a common lodging-house is. Men who have spent years in such places must feel deeply the loneliness of their lives at that season, when every person outside a lodging-house finds time to either visit friends and relatives, or write to them. XXVII Licensed Beggars With all the tricks and dodges of beggars, the man that owns a pedlar's certificate--which is known as "a brief"--is, taking it all the year round, the most successful. It matters not to him whether the police in a town are strict or not, and he is little interested when he hears street-singers or downright beggars approve or disapprove of the police in certain towns. Armed with this authority, he is a man of cool courage and impudence, and, when he produces his "brief," he makes the inquisitive constable that interferes with him, flush painfully. "Is that all the stock you have?" asks the constable sternly, glancing at the man's paltry few laces, and knowing well that he is using them for begging purposes--"Is that all the stock you carry?" "It is all I need," the other often answers impudently, shaking his laces in one hand, and his certificate in the other. All towns are not favourable to the street-singer, even though they may be good for the more silent beggar; and the downright beggar is apt at any moment to have the door answered by a policeman, and where is he then? But the licensed beggar is safe. Now it is often very difficult to get this pedlar's certificate, although the man has the five shillings to buy it; especially in London, where a man has to be a resident in one place for six months, and must also give reasons for his request, that he is physically unfit to follow his trade or to do rough labour. But beggars know of small towns in the provinces where they only have to show five shillings and tell a lie or two, and the certificate is theirs at once. And when a man has one, the difficulty is over for all time, for he can get it renewed at the most particular town, without trouble or question.