we paid for our skilly and canvas, and I, for one,
know that I paid in full many times over.

Though we had most revolting tasks to perform,
our allotment was considered the best, and the other
men deemed themselves lucky in being chosen to
perform it.

"Don t touch it, mate, the nurse sez it s deadly,"
warned my working partner, as I held open a sack
into which he was emptying a garbage can.

It came from the sick wards, and I told him that
I purposed neither to touch it, nor to allow it to
touch me. Nevertheless, I had to carry the sack,
and other sacks, down five flights of stairs and
empty them in a receptacle where the corruption
was speedily sprinkled with strong disinfectant.

Perhaps there is a wise mercy in all this. These
men of the spike, the peg, and the street, are encum
brances. They are of no good or use to any one,
nor to themselves. They clutter the earth with
their presence, and are better out of the way.
Broken by hardship, ill fed, and worse nourished,
they are always the first to be struck down by
disease, as they are likewise the quickest to die.

They feel, themselves, that the forces of society
tend to hurl them out of existence. We were
sprinkling disinfectant by the mortuary, when the
dead wagon drove up and five bodies were packed
into it. The conversation turned to the white

[[109]]

p108 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p109w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p110

v?