"Many days and many nights I had no food to eat, nor no place to sleep. I did not like to beg, not because I thought it wrong, but because I was afraid. I saw boys carrying packages along the street, found out how they got it to do, and imitated them, earning occasionally a few pennies. I saved up enough with these pennies to buy a stock of London papers. By saving these pennies and eating little food, I was able to buy a larger stock of these papers each day. I had good luck, and by economy I managed to live and save. In a few days I was able to pay thru'pence a night for a lodging. One night when I made a big venture in spending all my money on a big stock of papers, I had an accident in which they were all spoiled. I dropped them in a pool of water—and I was penniless again! That night, late, I went up the white stone steps of a big house in Westminster and went to sleep. I had saved a few of the driest papers and used them as a pillow.
"'Hi, little cove!' a policeman said, as he poked his baton under my armpit next morning. 'What are you doing here?' I began to whimper, and he took pity on me and showed me the way to Dr. Barnardo's Home; but when I got out of his sight, I went off in another direction, for I had heard that many boys got whipped down there. I got among a lot of boys on the banks of the river. They were diving for pennies. I thought it was a very hard way to earn money, but I did it too, and got about as much as the rest. I did not stay long on the river bank. The boys were sharper than I was and could cheat me out of my pennies.
"One night I slept under an arch. Next morning I heard the loud sound of factory whistles. Everybody was aroused. Some of the people lying around were going to work there; and I thought I might get a job also, so I followed them. On the way we came to a coffee stall, and as I was nearly fainting with hunger, I stood in front of it to get the smell of the coffee and fresh bread, for that does a fellow a heap of good when he's got nothing in his stomach. A man with a square paper hat on looked at me, and said:
"'What's up, little 'un?'
"I said nothing was up except that I was hungry. Then he stepped up to the coffee-man and gave him some money, and I got a bun and a mug of coffee. It seemed to me that I had never been so happy in all my life as with the feeling I got from that bun and coffee—but then, I had been a good many days without food.
"There was no work to be had at the factory near the bridge, so I went back to the docks. At night I slept with a lot of other fellows under a big canvas cover that kept the rain from some goods lying at the docks ready to be shipped. I think there must have been as many fellows under that big cover as there were piles of goods. It was while there that I thought for the first time very seriously about my mother, and I began to cry. The other fellows heard me and kicked me from under the cover; but that did not help my crying, however. I smothered a good deal of it and walked up and down by the side of the river all night. My eyes were swollen, and I was feeling very badly when a sailor noticed me. He had been to sea and had just returned home. He talked a lot about life on a ship—said if he were a boy, he would not hang around the docks; he would go to sea.
"'Where's yer folks?' he said to me.
"'Ain't got none,' I said.
"'Where d'ye live, then?'
"'I don't live nowheres.'