The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-03-26

' tion of the night workers, were l shuffling along with the air of | ghostly despair that makes man hunch his shoulders. sag at the knees. drag his feet; they were slid- Ing along the streets keeping eolse to the buildings in the shadows | That's one of the signs of despon- dency inseparable from the penniless. | They don't want to be seen. Every one of them is ashamed to let other men see how dirty and hungry and i crushed they are. In the midst of human civilization they were left to whatever savagery Of the moment their distorted minds might inspire. Spirit of Hope
 Even I, penniless, homeless, an 1 outeast like them, felt pity for them. You see l hadn't been on the dump | in the metropolis of the world but 24 hours; by comparison with them was still prosperous in the spirit of l hope. My first sense of fear. the 1 demon that burns a mans ambition out of him till there is nothing left l of his manhood but the charred mem ories of better days; came to me in l the morning about { o'clock; the | hour when they shovel on the coal in | hell l guess. l sat down on a park bench on the side of the river. There wasn't a soul in sight. A cold wind was blowing over the water and the first chiu of the heart gripped me 1 thought of everything; scraps of m -ory taunted me; my childhood | my school days, my graduation. my office mates. my buddies who lay asleep in Flanders fields; that trip on vacation. I hummed bits of operas and musical comedies I had 1 seen, and a longing for cup of coffee.
 My feet were sore and then | re- l membered there was a weak place in my left shoe, and feeling for it, found 1t had split. That was the most tragic fact of the moment. A man with broken shoes is not very likely to land job, at least not the kind of a job l could manage. There followed | the rest of that lonely reckoning the realization that I must join the line of unskilled labor, drop down in the l scale of social habits. look for job l among the roustabouts. So I said to my Pride, You're d pil1er; you are 1 no good. If you were you wouldn't have got me in this fix. you ought to have taken anything you could get, yesterday"
 battleship was anchored off in the stream and as the sun came up I saw that Flag. my flag. flying from the stern. and those lines of Sir Wal ter Scotts's came Co me:
 "Breathes there a man with soul
 So dead, who never to himself hath said,
 lhls IS my own, my native land.'"
 felt better. l was an American. I had fought for the flag and the country it represented and l was en- titled to the proud advantages of the laet that l was an American citizen. l wasn't bum after all, just an American out of luck Cold comfort you'll say maybe. but it started me off that morning tired. stiff, hungry, anu shabby as I was with a new hope of my fellow man.
 NOW the first thing a man thinks or when he goes to look for a job IS to look clean. That's quite a lob TOT the homeless man,--soap and water Is harder to find than food to ] the man who is without shelter. think It's more necessary Free wash rooms would be great help, for no man wants to be dirty. He gets so because there's nothing else for hin, to do, after a while he gets so far down in the hole that he can't get 1 oy an open door without being watched. If 1 could have got a bath that first morning after my initla- tion into the Land of Buns I might not be sitting on this park bench talking to you, out of work. I've read somewhere that the body is the house or the Spirit. Naturally if | you lot the house get dirty, every thlng in 1t goes to pieces. There's | something in that. If there were only some way of making people i understand that no man who's clean IS down and out. $50. the first thing did was to skirmish for soap and water, brush and comb and a clothes brush. l remembered a swell l notel where they had a sign telling their patrons that no tips were all lowed. l sneaked down into the Iav- atory' There were basins, water fau- cels, hqnld soap and paper towels: that helped out, but there was no brush and comb, no clothes brush.
 An attendant who looked like the creek bandit he was, eyed me seorn- | tuily. In his hip pocket there was prush and comb and in another hip pocket was a whisk broom; the only way 10 get them without tipping was to shoot him. Of course there was n mirror and as 1 saw myself in 1t understood the scornful eye of the attendant; My eyes were blood-shot from lack of sleep, my face looked | pale and peaked, and any one could l 9SV httuSu SudNes my coat was creased. my pants were not: my shoes were down at the heel and the crack Tn one of them looked as big as my foot. l combed my hair with my ringers, smoothed 1t, shook myself | like a dog and went out in search of job. l was conscious of that sticky feeling that soiled linen gives 1 you and 1t took the heart out of me all day. The park bench is the only 1 place where dirty man can rest his bones-l found that out.
 Gradual Slide Second Day
 The second day was a gradual slide for me, 1t was like sinking in a ] qufcksand. Up till noon l tried the offices, the department stores, and everywhere they wanted my address. That stumped me. A man without an address is Bum, there's no getting around that. l said I was moving. 1 when they asked that, and they said "Come back when you get settled"- Some of them just gave me the once over, saw the bursted shoe, and 1 looked away.
 | About lunch time ran into an old 1 acquaintance of mine when I was | prosperous man before the war. He 1 invited me to lunch with him. 1 didn't dare tell him I was looking for job; although he could see for himself I guess. When he left he asked where l was living, that was