In America, under the expert advice of “Brum,” the young novice learnt the valuable secrets of the trade. On entering any town, look out for a church steeple with a cross, which denotes a Catholic church and therefore a Catholic community. “If I fail in that portion of the town I shall certainly not succeed elsewhere.” Fat women are the best to beg from. “How can you expect these skinny creatures to sympathise with another,” is the unanswerable argument, “when they half-starve their own bodies?” In begging in England, avoid every town that has not either a mill, a factory, or a brewery. But in America the gold mines are the watering-places and haunts of the idle rich: perhaps because they recognise natural allies in the other class of Anarchist, perhaps because they satisfy a slumbering responsibility and compassion in a careless scattering of uncalculated charity. Amongst the New York watering-places “the people catered for us as though we were the only tramps in the whole world, and as if they considered it providential that we should call at their houses for assistance.” In such providential plenty the standards are well maintained: otherwise this inverted world might right itself and become normal once again. The travellers are received with disfavour by a stranger, who later is smitten with remorse. “Excuse me, boys, for not giving you a more hearty welcome,” is the apology; “but really, I thought you were working men, but I see you are true beggars.” In a cottage an aged labourer, who had amassed a modest fortune after a life of toil, hangs on the wall the shovel which he had used in early days. To these wanderers the vision is as distasteful as an image of a saint to a Covenanting assembly: a symbol of false gods.