Page 234 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

sired by Cockney out of Glasgow, was tobaccoless, his tin
of cigarette ends having fallen out of his boot during the
search and been impounded. I stood him the makings of
a cigarette. We smoked furtively, thrusting our cigarettes
into our pockets, like schoolboys, when we heard the Tramp
Major coming.
Most of the tramps spent ten continuous hours in this
comfortless, soulless room. Heaven knows how they put up
with it. I was luckier than the others, for at ten o’clock the
Tramp Major told off a few men for odd jobs, and he picked
me out to help in the workhouse kitchen, the most coveted
job of all. This, like the clean towel, was a charm worked by
the word ‘gentleman’.
There was no work to do in the kitchen, and I sneaked
off into a small shed used for storing potatoes, where some
workhouse paupers were skulking to avoid the Sunday
morning service. There were comfortable packing-cases to
sit on, and some back numbers of the FAMILY HERALD,
and even a copy of RAFFLES from the workhouse library.
The paupers talked interestingly about workhouse life. They
told me, among other things, that the thing really hated in
the workhouse, as a stigma of charity, is the uniform; if the
men could wear their own clothes, or even their own caps
and scarves, they would not mind being paupers. I had my
dinner from the workhouse table, and it was a meal fit for a
boa-constrictor—the largest meal I had eaten since my first
day at the Hotel X. The paupers said that they habitually
gorged to the bursting-point on Sunday and were under-
fed the rest of the week. After dinner the cook set me to do