Page 237 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

sociated himself from ‘these here tramps’. He had been on
the road six months, but in the sight of God, he seemed to
imply, he was not a tramp. I imagine there are quite a lot of
tramps who thank God they are not tramps. They are like
the trippers who say such cutting things about trippers.
Three hours dragged by. At six supper arrived, and
turned out to be quite uneatable; the bread, tough enough
in the morning (it had been cut into slices on Saturday
night), was now as hard as ship’s biscuit. Luckily it was
spread with dripping, and we scraped the dripping off and
ate that alone, which was better than nothing. At a quarter
past six we were sent to bed. New tramps were arriving, and
in order not to mix the tramps of different days (for fear of
infectious diseases) the new men were put in the cells and
we in dormitories. Our dormitory was a barn-like room
with thirty beds close together, and a tub to serve as a com-
mon chamber-pot. It stank abominably, and the older men
coughed and got up all night. But being so many together
kept the room warm, and we had some sleep.
We dispersed at ten in the morning, after a fresh medical
inspection, with a hunk of bread and cheese for our mid-
day dinner. William and Fred, strong in the possession of
a shilling, impaled their bread on the spike railings—as a
protest, they said. This was the second spike in Kent that
they had made too hot to hold them, and they thought it a
great joke. They were cheerful souls, for tramps. The imbe-
cile (there is an imbecile in every collection of tramps) said
that he was too tired to walk and clung to the railings, until
the Tramp Major had to dislodge him and start him with

Down and Out in Paris and London