"'Why, bless my soul!' the mild little man gasped. 'No, I don't need you. Good day! Good day!'
"He looked so shocked and I felt so desperate that I could not help adding, while I looked at him hard:
"'I was put in for manslaughter too—voluntary manslaughter!'
"There wasn't any clerk in the room at the time.
"Oh, oh, indeed!' he gulped out, rising and backing away, big-eyed and trembly. He almost got to the back window before I turned and left.
"Maybe I didn't feel bitter and like 'what's the use—what's the use of anything!' I don't know what would have happened—I guess I'd have starved to death or worse—if it hadn't been for the hoboes' hotel—Welcome Hall—'Headquarters for the Unemployed,' as it's advertised.
"You don't know about the place? Well, sir, it's a dandy!—at least, that's the way I think about it—and a good many others do too. The worst of the hoboes won't go there if they can help it—they'd rather bum a dime and get a bed for the night in one of those ten-cent places.
"This Welcome Hall is a sort of industrial kindling-splitting joint. You blow in there and saw and split kindling for a bed and meals—you give them six hours' work.
"You see, in that way you can live off six hours' work a day and have some time left to look for a job. It's a good thing, and it's been a moneymaker too; it's the only charity I know of that's not a charity but a moneymaking concern. Of course people had to give it a place and start it; but it more than pays expenses, and at the same time helps to build up a man instead of making him a pauper or a deadbeat bum.
"I certainly was glad to find some place where I could at least earn my lodging and meals. I rested up some there and was glad I could just stay somewhere. Though I looked about for work a little, nearly every day, I lived along there for three weeks on my six hours a day of work—still out of a job. At last I guess my fighting blood got up again, I determined I would get a job of some kind, even if it was cleaning vaults. I decided no honest work was beneath me when it all seemed so far above me as to be out of reach.