Should you rest upon a
bench, and your tired eyes close, depend upon it the policeman would
rouse you and gruffly order you to "move on." You may rest upon the
bench, and benches are few and far between; but if rest means sleep, on
you must go, dragging your tired body through the endless streets. Should
you, in desperate slyness, seek some forlorn alley or dark passageway and
lie down, the omnipresent policeman will rout you out just the same. It
is his business to rout you out. It is a law of the powers that be that
you shall be routed out.
But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to
refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your
adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a mighty
story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a
Homer.
Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse with me.
And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in London Town
this night. Please don't remember it as you go to bed; if you are as
soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for old
men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood,
to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad
search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again,
and to do this five nights and days--O dear, soft people, full of meat
and blood, how can you ever understand?
I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter.
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