No tramp, for instance, is so clever at the begging-letter "racket," and this means a good deal. To be able to write a letter to a perfect stranger and make money out of it requires a skilled hand, and a man educated in many lines. The public has become somewhat used to this trick, and will not be deceived every time; only men of an original turn of mind can do much with it. It is this originality that is the main talent of the room-beggar. He concocts stories which would do credit to a literary man, and sometimes makes nearly as much money as the daring thief. Women are also found in this class, and do very well at times. In the city of Berlin, Germany, there lived a "lady" of this sort. She had two homes. One was a cellar in a poor quarter of the town, and the other was an aristocratic _étage_ in the West End. She sent letters to well-to-do people of all sorts, in which she claimed to be _eine hochwohlgeborene Dame_ in distress. She invited likely philanthropists to visit her in her cellar in order that they might see how unfortunate her position really was. People went, were shocked, and, as a result, she had her apartment in the West End. For about ten months this woman and her two daughters lived in real luxury, and one of the "young ladies" was to marry in "high society" about the time that the ruse was made public. This is by no means a new trick, and yet people are being continually swindled. Why? Simply because the beggars who undertake it are cleverer than the people fooled by it. That is the only reason. If charitable people would only commit charity to skilled hands it would be much easier to handle beggars. The tramp is a specialist; so why not leave specialists to deal with him? The whole trouble comes of our willingness to be more unpractical in our philanthropy than in our business. There is one more city tramp that I must catalogue. It is the "sponger." His duty in life consists, he thinks, in simply living off the visiting knights of the road. He is a parasite fed by parasites, and hated by all self-respecting beggars. He is found wherever the traveling hoboes congregate, and there is no town in any country that I have visited where he does not flourish. In the Bowery his name is legion, and a hobo can scarcely visit a saloon there without meeting him. The wandering vagabond considers him the "bunco-man" of the beggars' world, and that is a good name. He will do anything to get money from a hobo, but I doubt very much whether he ever begs on his own hook. Exactly how he comes to exist no one knows, but I fancy that he is a discouraged tramp; he has found that he is not a born beggar, and has concluded that the next best thing is to live off men who are. If there were no beggars in the world, he would probably have to work for his living, for he could not steal successfully.