Page 218 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

few dozen of them, mostly stringy old women who remind-
ed one of boiling-fowls. We ranged ourselves in the gallery
pews and were given our tea; it was a one-pound jam-jar of
tea each, with six slices of bread and margarine. As soon as
tea was over, a dozen tramps who had stationed themselves
near the door bolted to avoid the service; the rest stayed,
less from gratitude than lacking the cheek to go.
The organ let out a few preliminary hoots and the service
began. And instantly, as though at a signal, the tramps be-
gan to misbehave in the most outrageous way. One would
not have thought such scenes possible in a church. All round
the gallery men lolled in their pews, laughed, chattered,
leaned over and flicked pellets of bread among the congre-
gation; I had to restrain the man next to me, more or less by
force, from lighting a cigarette. The tramps treated the ser-
vice as a purely comic spectacle. It was, indeed, a sufficiently
ludicrous service—the kind where there are sudden yells of
‘Hallelujah!’ and endless extempore prayers—but their be-
haviour passed all bounds. There was one old fellow in the
congregation —Brother Bootle or some such name—who
was often called on to lead us in prayer, and whenever he
stood up the tramps would begin stamping as though in a
theatre; they said that on a previous occasion he had kept
up an extempore prayer for twenty-five minutes, until the
minister had interrupted him. Once when Brother Bootle
stood up a tramp called out, ‘Two to one ‘e don’t beat seven
minutes!’ so loud that the whole church must hear. It was
not long before we were making far more noise than the
minister. Sometimes somebody below would send up an

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