“Can’t you see? I am trying to sleep?”
“Have you a railroad ticket?”
“No.”
“Well, you can’t stay here.”
“Have they a Free Municipal Emergency Home in this city?”
“Where would you have me go?”
“Some other place.”
Knowing too well the result to the homeless, destitute wage-earner of disobedience to the scion of the law, I quickly left. To be absolutely alone on the streets of a great, strange city at midnight, penniless, without a friend or acquaintance, was nothing to me, a strong, well man. But to the homeless woman or girl, or the frail sick man or boy, my homelessness held a great meaning. Going a short way up the street, I saw a man standing on a corner, and from his dejected mien, I knew that he, like myself, was a down-and-out.
“Hello,” I said.