My second attempt to break into the casual ward began more auspiciously.  I started in the middle of the afternoon, accompanied by the burning young socialist and another friend, and all I had in my pocket was thru’pence.  They piloted me to the Whitechapel Workhouse, at which I peered from around a friendly corner.  It was a few minutes past five in the afternoon but already a long and melancholy line was formed, which strung out around the corner of the building and out of sight.

It was a most woeful picture, men and women waiting in the cold grey end of the day for a pauper’s shelter from the night, and I confess it almost unnerved me.  Like the boy before the dentist’s door, I suddenly discovered a multitude of reasons for being elsewhere.  Some hints of the struggle going on within must have shown in my face, for one of my companions said, “Don’t funk; you can do it.”

Of course I could do it, but I became aware that even thru’pence in my pocket was too lordly a treasure for such a throng; and, in order that all invidious distinctions might be removed, I emptied out the coppers.  Then I bade good-bye to my friends, and with my heart going pit-a-pat, slouched down the street and took my place at the end of the line.  Woeful it looked, this line of poor folk tottering on the steep pitch to death; how woeful it was I did not dream.

Next to me stood a short, stout man.  Hale and hearty, though aged, strong-featured, with the tough and leathery skin produced by long years of sunbeat and weatherbeat, his was the unmistakable sea face and eyes; and at once there came to me a bit of Kipling’s “Galley Slave”:-

“By the brand upon my shoulder, by the gall of clinging steel;
By the welt the whips have le