But when the dawn came, the nightmare over, you would hale you home to
refresh yourself, and until you died you would tell the story of your
adventure to groups of admiring friends. It would grow into a mighty
story. Your little eight-hour night would become an Odyssey and you a
Homer.

Not so with these homeless ones who walked to Poplar Workhouse with me.
And there are thirty-five thousand of them, men and women, in London Town
this night. Please don't remember it as you go to bed; if you are as
soft as you ought to be you may not rest so well as usual. But for old
men of sixty, seventy, and eighty, ill-fed, with neither meat nor blood,
to greet the dawn unrefreshed, and to stagger through the day in mad
search for crusts, with relentless night rushing down upon them again,
and to do this five nights and days--O dear, soft people, full of meat
and blood, how can you ever understand?

I walked up Mile End Road between the Carter and the Carpenter. Mile End
Road is a wide thoroughfare, cutting the heart of East London, and there
were tens of thousands of people abroad on it. I tell you this so that
you may fully appreciate what I shall describe in the next paragraph. As
I say, we walked along, and when they grew bitter and cursed the land, I
cursed with them, cursed as an American waif would curse, stranded in a
strange and terrible land. And, as I tried to lead them to believe, and
succeeded in making them believe, they took me for a "seafaring man," who
had spent his money in riotous living, lost his clothes (no unusual
occurrence with seafaring men ashore), and was temporarily broke while
looking for a ship. This accounted for my ignorance of English ways in
general and casual wards in particular, and my curiosity concerning the
same.