Page 165 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

There were six beds in the dormitory, and the sheets,
marked in huge letters ‘Stolen from No.—Road’, smelt
loathsome. In the next bed to me lay a very old man, a pave-
ment artist, with some extraordinary curvature of the spine
that made him stick right out of bed, with his back a foot
or two from my face. It was bare, and marked with curi-
ous swirls of dirt, like a marble table-top. During the night
a man came in drunk and was sick on the floor, close to
my bed. There were bugs too—not so bad as in Paris, but
enough to keep one awake. It was a filthy place. Yet the dep-
uty and his wife were friendly people, and ready to make
one a cup of tea at any hour of the day or night.

1 Down and Out in Paris and London