barred domicile tenanted.

At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my
politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house
they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they
looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little
boy aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the
tramp who wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house.

It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor
for my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the
hungry tramp. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never
turn away the hungry. Time and again, all over the United States, have
I been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I
received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with
its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken
with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the
poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from
their excess. They have no excess. They give, and they withhold never,
from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they
cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity
is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the
dog.

There was one house in particular where I was turned down that
evening. The porch windows opened on the dining room, and through them
I saw a man eating pie--a big meat-pie. I stood in the open door, and
while he talked with me, he went on eating. He was prosperous, and out
of his prosperity had been bred resentment against his less fortunate
brothers.