It is a commonplace, the homeless on the benches, the poor
miserable folk who may be teased and are harmless. Fifty thousand people
must have passed the bench while I sat upon it, and not one, on such a
jubilee occasion as the crowning of the King, felt his heart-strings
touched sufficiently to come up and say to the woman: "Here's sixpence;
go and get a bed." But the women, especially the young women, made witty
remarks upon the woman nodding, and invariably set their companions
laughing.
To use a Briticism, it was "cruel"; the corresponding Americanism was
more appropriate--it was "fierce." I confess I began to grow incensed at
this happy crowd streaming by, and to extract a sort of satisfaction from
the London statistics which demonstrate that one in every four adults is
destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the
infirmary, or the asylum.
I talked with the man. He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker. He
could only find odd work when there was a large demand for labour, for
the younger and stronger men were preferred when times were slack. He
had spent a week, now, on the benches of the Embankment; but things
looked brighter for next week, and he might possibly get in a few days'
work and have a bed in some doss-house.
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