Page 235 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

the washing up, and told me to throw away the food that
remained. The wastage was astonishing and, in the circum-
stances, appalling. Half-eateh joints of meat, and bucketfuls
of broken bread and vegetables, were pitched away like so
much rubbish and then defiled with tea-leaves. I filled five
dustbins to overflowing with quite eatable food. And while
I did so fifty tramps were sitting in the spike with their bel-
lies half filled by the spike dinner of bread and cheese, and
perhaps two cold boiled potatoes each in honour of Sunday.
According to the paupers, the food was thrown away from
deliberate policy, rather than that it should be given to the
tramps.
At three I went back to the spike. The tramps had been
sitting there since eight, with hardly room to move an el-
bow, and they were now half mad with boredom. Even
smoking was at an end, for a tramp’s tobacco is picked-up
cigarette ends, and he starves if he is more than a few hours
away from the pavement. Most of the men were too bored
even to talk; they just sat packed on the benches, staring
at nothing, their scrubby faces split in two by enormous
yawns. The room stank of ENNUI.
Paddy, his backside aching from the hard bench, was in a
whimpering mood, and to pass the time away I talked with
a rather superior tramp, a young carpenter who wore a col-
lar and tie and was on the road, he said, for lack of a set of
tools. He kept a little aloof from the other tramps, and held
himself more like a free man than a casual. He had literary
tastes, too, and carried a copy of QUENTIN DURWARD in
his pocket. He told me that he never went into a spike unless

Down and Out in Paris and London