"This is our wardrobe," he said. "Our first principle is to give a homeless person food and then whatever clothes we can. You can't expect to hear the truth on an empty stomach."
"Are you often deceived by people who drift in here out of the night?"
"Now and then. It's nothing compared with the friends we make, the delightful characters we discover when the ache and pain of hardship have worn off. We divide men into three groups: Those who have been to prison and have a grudge against the world; those who went to the war as boys and came back men with boys' minds; and those who simply will not work and can't run straight. We have heard every fairy tale in the world, and we know a scrounger at sight!"
* * *
I tip-toed back through the white crypt. The pale girl was still awake. The grey-haired woman still slept—old, worn-out, uncared-for, and life gone by. Men slept and stirred uneasily as if afraid of the dawn that was stealing on to draw them again into the battle. How many would rise gloriously; how many fall? We talk of human nature in the rough, heartbeats, life. Here it is in the middle of London every night, each sleeper a real drama of struggle, each man and woman midway in that Valley of the Shadow through which all lives, spiritually or materially, must pass.
"We don't care what they are," said the young man. "If they are in trouble, that is enough."
I hardly heard him, for I was thinking that in this white place is the Spirit of Christ.
A Bit of Bagdad
The only place where you could sell an elephant, a were-wolf, or your second best aunt without attracting the slightest curiosity is Club Row, a Sunday market famous throughout the eastern regions of London. Turn out of Shoreditch along the Bethnal Green Road and presently you see a large cloth-capped crowd. You approach.