Page 189 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

semi-military discipline is the same in all of them. They are
certainly cheap, but they are too like workhouses for my
taste. In some of them there is even a compulsory religious
service once or twice a week, which the lodgers must at-
tend or leave the house. The fact is that the Salvation Army
are so in the habit of thinking themselves a charitable body
that they cannot even run a lodging-house without making
it stink of charity.
At ten I went to B.’s office and asked him to lend me a
pound. He gave me two pounds and told me to come again
when necessary, so that Paddy and I were free of money
troubles for a week at least. We loitered the day in Trafalgar
Square, looking for a friend of Paddy’s who never turned up,
and at night went to a lodging-house in a back alley near the
Strand. The charge was elevenpence, but it was a dark, evil-
smelling place, and a notorious haunt of the ‘nancy boys’.
Downstairs, in the murky kitchen, three ambiguous-look-
ing youths in smartish blue suits were sitting on a bench
apart, ignored by the other lodgers. I suppose they were
‘nancy boys’. They looked the same type as the apache boys
one sees in Paris, except that they wore no side-whiskers. In
front of the fire a fully dressed man and a stark-naked man
were bargaining. They were newspaper sellers. The dressed
man was selling his clothes to the naked man. He said:
‘’Ere y’are, the best rig-out you ever ‘ad. A tosheroon
[half a crown] for the coat, two ‘ogs for the trousers, one
and a tanner for the boots, and a ‘og for the cap and scarf.
That’s seven bob.’
‘You got a ‘ope! I’ll give yer one and a tanner for the coat,

1 Down and Out in Paris and London