Page 166 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

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n the morning after paying for the usual tea-and-two-slic-
Ies and buying half an ounce of tobacco, I had a halfpenny
left. I did not care to ask B. for more money yet, so there was
nothing for it but to go to a casual ward. I had very little
idea how to set about this, but I knew that there was a casual
ward at Romton, so I walked out there, arriving at three or
four in the afternoon. Leaning against the pigpens in Rom-
ton market-place was a wizened old Irishman, obviously a
tramp. I went and leaned beside him, and presently offered
him my tobacco-box. He opened the box and looked at the
tobacco in astonishment:
‘By God,’ he said, ‘dere’s sixpennorth o’ good baccy here!
Where de hell d’you get hold o’ dat? YOU ain’t been on de
road long.’
‘What, don’t you have tobacco on the road?’ I said.
‘Oh, we HAS it. Look.’
He produced a rusty tin which had once held Oxo Cubes.
In it were twenty or thirty cigarette ends, picked up from
the pavement. The Irishman said that he rarely got any oth-
er tobacco; he added that, with care, one could collect two
ounces of tobacco a day on the London pavements.
‘D’you come out o’ one o’ de London spikes [casual
wards], eh?’ he asked me.
I said yes, thinking this would make him accept me as a

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