So far as the beggar woman is concerned, there was…

““So far as the beggar woman is concerned, there was certainly neither anything good nor anything bad in it, I was simply too distracted or too much preoccupied with one thing to act in any other way but according to vague memories. And one such memory says, for instance: 'Don't give too much to beggars, you'll regret it later.' Once as a very small boy I was given a Sechserl and felt a great urge to hand it to an old beggar woman who sat between the Grosse and the Kleine Ring. But the sum seemed to me enormous, a sum which probably never before had been given to a beggar, so I was ashamed in front of the beggar woman to do something so unheard-of, but give it to her I felt I must. I therefore changed the Sechserl into ten Kreuzers, gave one to the beggar woman, ran round the whole block of the Town Hall and the arcade near the Kleine Ring, arrived from the left as a completely new benefactor, gave the beggar woman another Kreuzer, started to run again and actually made this round ten times (or maybe not quite so many, for I believe the beggar woman lost her patience later and disappeared). In any case, toward the end I was so exhausted, morally as well, that I ran straight home and cried until my mother replaced the Sechserl. You see, I have bad luck with beggars, but I declare myself prepared to pay out my entire present and future fortune in the smallest Viennese bank notes to a beggar woman standing by the Opera, on condition that you're present and I may feel you close to me.””

— Franz Kafka