The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1869-11-06
StatiOn-H0 L0dgers.

In the more recently constructed station
houses, especial provision has been made
for this class. The cells here occupy the
ground-floor of a rear building, and the
second-fl floor is divided into two rooms of
about twenty feet square each. Separate
apartments as thus obtained for the &C
commodation of male and female dodgers.
In equipment these rooms are essentially
primitive. Not chair, or stool, or bench,
or other appliance of civilized life adorns
them, except that they contain an immense
| stove standing in the centre, and large
bunk placed slightly inclined against one of
the walls. The stove gives the coveted
date about twenty; and the laggard dodgers
coming in late must be content with an
exactly horizontal bed upon the stone floor.
But it is not much of a worm that the
early bird manages to secure. He can
merely assert his choice between the in
clined and horizontal, and decide upon the
relative softness of stone and wood. There
are no mattresses to quarrel over, and no
bed-clothing to be a vexation. In one re-
spect the rooms are luxuriously accoutred.
BY dint of constant attention they are kept
scrupuously clean. The floors and bunk
are daily washed out with a hose, and the
walls are kept fresh and glaring by fire.
quent whitewashing. Any thing less pala-
tial than the New York lodgings for va
grants can not be imagined; but there is
not cold night but men and women are
turned away from nearly every station
house, because the accommodations are al
ready overtasked.
Every such night, as soon as darkness
sets in, the dodgers begin to arrive. They
come singly, in pairs, and sometimes in
groups. They are of both sexes, all ages,
nationalities, and, it might almost be said,
of all conditions. Very few are actually
and obtrusively ragged, but are dressed in
clothes that evidently had seen long service
before they reached the last wearers. The
men generally are devoid of shirts and
socks, with the glazed and threadbare coat
fastened tightly across the breast, and the
nude ankles, blue with cold, showing
have the faded remnant of a cheap shawl
wrapped about the shoulders, and single
skirt and thin calico dress the only pro-
tections of the lower limbs. The children
are the saddest sights of all. They have
not learned the art of securing the cast-off
vestments of their betters; and little girls
sometimes enter the station-houses with no
apparel save the remnant of summer
dress, and so nearly frozen that they can
not express their requests for lodgings in
words. But all of the corners are not of
the abject class. Decayed gentility very
frequently pushes back the swinging doors;
and during the past winter it often hap
pened that gentility itself was an applicant
for relief Scores and scores of men then
walked Broadway with the outward SEM
blance of prosperity, but maintaining a
CHASTITY conflict with absolute restitution,
and sleeping in the station-houses. Very
often, too, among the applicants are per-
sons from the country who have fallen
among the thieves and been robbed of their
all; and it not unfrequently happens that
men hobbe in Oh crutches or dangling an
empty sleeve who have given their country
an arm or leg, and have received in return
the cold charity of the streets.
Harper's Magazine