第13章 THE HOMELESS(4)

Finds it hard,certainly.Used to care once,and get down-hearted,but that's no good;don't trouble now.Had a bit of bread and butter and cup of coffee to-day.Health is awful bad,not half the size he was;exposure and want of food is the cause;got wet last night,and is very stiff in consequence.Has been walking about since it was light,that is 3a.m.Was so cold and wet and weak,scarcely knew what to do.

Walked to Hyde Park,and got a little sleep there on a dry seat as soon as the park opened.

These are fairly typical cases of the men who are now wandering homeless through the streets.That is the way in which the nomads of civilization are constantly being recruited from above.

Such are the stories gathered at random one Midsummer night this year under the shade of the plane trees of the Embankment.A month later,when one of my staff took the census of the sleepers out of doors along the line of the Thames from Blackfriars to Westminster,he found three hundred and sixty-eight persons sleeping in the open air.Of these,two hundred and seventy were on the Embankment proper,and ninety-eight in and about Covent Garden Market,while the recesses of Waterloo and Blackfriars Bridges were full of human misery.

This,be it remembered,was not during a season of bad trade.

The revival of business has been attested on all hands,notably by the barometer of strong drink.England is prosperous enough to drink rum in quantities which appall the Chancellor of the Exchequer but she is not prosperous enough to provide other shelter than the midnight sky for these poor outcasts on the Embankment.

To very many even of those who live in London it may be news that there are so many hundreds who sleep out of doors every night.There are comparatively few people stirring after midnight,and when we are snugly tucked into our own beds we are apt to forget the multitude outside in the rain and the storm who are shivering the long hours through on the hard stone seats in the open or under the arches of the railway.These homeless,hungry people are,however there,but being broken-spirited folk for the most part they seldom make their voices audible in the ears of their neighbours.Now and again,however,a harsh cry from the depths is heard for a moment,jarring rudely upon the ear and then all is still.The inarticulate classes speak as seldom as Balaam's ass.But they sometimes find a voice.Here for instance is one such case which impressed me much.It was reported in one of the Liverpool papers some time back.The speaker was haranguing a small knot of twenty or thirty men:--"My lads,"he commenced,with one hand in the breast of his ragged vest,and the other,as usual,plucking nervously at his beard,"This kind o'work can't last for ever."(Deep and earnest exclamations,"It can't!It shan't")"Well,boys,"continued the speaker,"Somebody'll have to find a road out o'this.What we want is work,not work'us bounty,though the parish has been busy enough amongst us lately,God knows!What we want is honest work,(Hear,hear.)Now,what I propose is that each of you gets fifty mates to join you;that'll make about 1,200starving chaps--And then?"asked several very gaunt and hungry-looking men excitedly.

"Why,then,"continued the leader."Why,then,"interrupted a cadaverous-looking man from the farther and darkest end of the cellar,"of course we'll make a--London job of it,eh?""No,no,"hastily interposed my friend,and holding up his hands deprecatingly,"we'll go peaceably about it chaps;we'll go in a body to the Town Hall,and show our poverty,and ask for work.We'll take the women and children with us too."("Too ragged!Too starved!They can't walk it!")"The women's rags is no disgrace,the staggerin'children 'll show what we come to.

Let's go a thousand strong,and ask for work and bread!"Three years ago,in London,there were some such processions.Church parades to the Abbey and St.Paul's,bivouacs in Trafalgar Square,etc.

But Lazarus showed his rags and his sores too conspicuously for the convenience of Dives,and was summarily dealt with in the name of law and order.But as we have Lord Mayor's Days,when all the well-fed fur-clad City Fathers go in State Coaches through the town,why should we not have a Lazarus Day,in which the starving Out-of-Works,and the sweated half-starved "in-works"of London should crawl in their tattered raggedness,with their gaunt,hungry faces,and emaciated Wives and children,a Procession of Despair through the main thoroughfares past the massive houses and princely palaces of luxurious London?

For these men are gradually,but surely,being sucked down into the quicksand of modern life.They stretch out their grimy hands to us in vain appeal,not for charity,but for work.

Work,work!it is always work that they ask.The Divine curse is to them the most blessed of benedictions."In the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread,"but alas for these forlorn sons of Adam,they fail to find the bread to eat,for Society has no work for them to do.

They have not even leave to sweat.As well as discussing how these poor wanderers should in the second Adam "all be made alive,"ought we not to put forth some effort to effect their restoration to that share in the heritage of lab our which is theirs by right of descent from the first Adam?