2.8 KiB
CHAPTER THE FIRST. THE NEW SOURCE OF ENERGY
Section 7
And then the story tells, with an engaging simplicity, of his descent from this ecstatic vision of reality. 'Presently I found myself again, and I was beginning to feel cold and a little hungry.' He bethought himself of the John Burns Relief Offices which stood upon the Thames Embankment. He made hisway through the galleries of the booksellers and the National Gallery, which had been open continuously day andnight to all decently dressed people now for more than twelve years, and across the rose−gardens of TrafalgarSquare, and so by the hotel colonnade to the Embankment. He had long known of these admirable offices, whichhad swept the last beggars and matchsellers and all the casual indigent from the London streets, and he believedthat he would, as a matter of course, be able to procure a ticket for food and a night's lodgings and someindication of possible employment. But he had not reckoned upon the new labour troubles, and when he got to the Embankment he found the officeshopelessly congested and besieged by a large and rather unruly crowd. He hovered for a time on the outskirts ofthe waiting multitude, perplexed and dismayed, and then he became aware of a movement, a purposive tricklingaway of people, up through the arches of the great buildings that had arisen when all the railway stations wereremoved to the south side of the river, and so to the covered ways of the Strand. And here, in the open glare ofmidnight, he found unemployed men begging, and not only begging, but begging with astonishing assurance,from the people who were emerging from the small theatres and other such places of entertainment whichabounded in that thoroughfare. This was an altogether unexampled thing. There had been no begging in London streets for a quarter of a century.But that night the police were evidently unwilling or unable to cope with the destitute who were invading thosewell−kept quarters of the town. They had become stonily blind to anything but manifest disorder. Barnet walked through the crowd, unable to bring himself to ask; indeed his bearing must have been more valiantthan his circumstances, for twice he says that he was begged from. Near the Trafalgar Square gardens, a girl withreddened cheeks and blackened eyebrows, who was walking alone, spoke to him with a peculiar friendliness. 'I'm starving,' he said to her abruptly. 'Oh! poor dear!' she said; and with the impulsive generosity of her kind, glanced round and slipped a silver pieceinto his hand.... It was a gift that, in spite of the precedent of De Quincey, might under the repressive social legislation of thosetimes, have brought Barnet within reach of the prison lash. But he took it, he confesses, and thanked her as well ashe was able, and went off very gladly to get food.
The World Set Free
The World Set Free
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