Bob put his hand in his pocket, and gave her sixpence.
"We shall never get on at this rate," said Tom; "and I find I must again advise you not to believe all you hear and see.

These little ragged run-abouts are taught by their Parents a species of imposition or deception of which you are not aware, and while perhaps you congratulate yourself with 'the thought of having done a good act, you are only contributing to the idleness and dissipation of a set of hardened beings, who are laughing at your credulity; and I suspect this is a case in point--do you see that woman on the opposite side of the way, and the child giving her the money ?" "I do," said Tallyho; "that, I suppose, is her mother ?" "Probably," continued Dashall--"now mark what will follow." They stopped a short time, and observed that the Child very soon disposed of her last bunch of matches, as she had termed them, gave the money to the woman, who supplied her in return with another last bunch, to be disposed of in a similar way.
"Is it possible ?" said Bob.
"Not only possible, but you see it is actual; it is not however the only species of deceit practised with success in London in a similar way; indeed the trade of match-making has latterly been a good one among those who have been willing to engage in it.

Many persons of decent appearance, representing themselves to be tradesmen and mechanics out of employ, have placed themselves at the corners of our streets, and canvassed the outskirts of the town, with green bags, carrying matches, which, by telling a pityful tale, they induce housekeepers and others, who commiserate their situation, to purchase; and, in the evening, are able to figure away in silk stockings with the produce of their labours.
There is one man, well known in town, who makes a very good livelihood by bawling in a stentorian voice, "Whow whow, will you buy my good matches, Whow whow, will you buy my good matches, Buy my good matches, come buy'em of me." ~279~~ He is usually dressed in something like an old military great coat, wears spectacles, and walks with a stick." "And is a match for any body, match him who can,", cried Frank Harry; "But, bless your heart, that's nothing to another set of gentry, who have infested our streets in clean apparel, with a broom in their hands, holding at the same time a hat to receive the contributions of the passengers, whose benevolent donations are drawn forth without inquiry by the appearance of the applicant." "It must," said Tallyho, "arise from the distresses of the times." "There may be something in that," said Tom; "but in many instances it has arisen from the depravity of the times--to work upon the well-known benevolent feelings of John Bull; for those who ambulate the public streets of this overgrown and still increasing Metropolis and its principal avenues, are continually pestered with impudent impostors, of both sexes, soliciting charity--men and women, young and old, who get more by their pretended distresses in one day than many industrious and painstaking tradesmen or mechanics do in a week.

All the miseries, all the pains of life, with tears that ought to be their honest and invariable signals, can be and are counterfeited--limbs, which enjoy the fair proportion of nature, are distorted, to work upon humanity--fits are feigned and wounds manufactured--rags, and other appearances of the most squalid and abject poverty, are assumed, as the best engines of deceit, to procure riches to the idle and debaucheries to the infamous.
Ideal objects of commiseration are undoubtedly to be met with, though rarely to be found.

It requires a being hackneyed in the ways of men, or having at least some knowledge of the town, to be able to discriminate the party deserving of benevolence; but "A begging they will go will go, And a begging they will go." The chief cause assigned by some for the innumerable classes of mendicants that infest our streets, is a sort of innate principle of independence and love of liberty.