Conversation was slack at first, standing there, till the man on one side of me and the man on the other side of me discovered that they had been in the smallpox hospital at the same time, though a full house of sixteen hundred patients had prevented their becoming acquainted.  But they made up for it, discussing and comparing the more loathsome features of their disease in the most cold-blooded, matter-of-fact way.  I learned that the average mortality was one in six, that one of them had been in three months and the other three months and a half, and that they had been “rotten wi’ it.”  Whereat my flesh began to creep and crawl, and I asked them how long they had been out.  One had been out two weeks, and the other three weeks.  Their faces were badly pitted (though each assured the other that this was not so), and further, they showed me in their hands and under the nails the smallpox “seeds” still working out.  Nay, one of them worked a seed out for my edification, and pop it went, right out of his flesh into the air.  I tried to shrink up smaller inside my clothes, and I registered a fervent though silent hope that it had not popped on me.

In both instances, I found that the smallpox was the cause of their being “on the doss,” which means on the tramp.  Both had been working when smitten by the disease, and both had emerged from the hospital “broke,” with the gloomy task before them of hunting for work.  So far, they had not found any, and they had come to the spike for a “rest up” after three days and nights on the street.

It seems that not only the man who becomes old is punished for his involuntary misfortune, but likewise the man who is struck by disease or accident.  Later on, I talked with another man—­“Ginger” we called him—­who stood at the head of the line—­a sure indication that he had been waiting since one o’clock.  A year before, one day, while in the employ of a fish dealer, he was carrying a heavy box of fish which was too much for him.  Result:  “something broke,” and there was the box on the ground, and he on the ground beside it.

At the first hospital, whither he was immediately carried, they said it was a rupture, reduced the swelling, gave him some vaseline to rub on it, kept him four hours, and told him to get along.  But he was not on the streets more than two or three hours when he was down on his back again.  This time he went to another hospital and was patched up.  But the point is, the employer did nothing, positively nothing, for the man injured in his employment, and even refused him “a light job now and again,” when he came out.  As far as Ginger is concerned, he is a broken man.  His only chance to earn a living was by heavy work.  He is now incapable of performing heavy work, and from now until he dies, the spike, the peg, and the streets are all he can look forward to in the way of food and shelter.  The thing happened—­that is all.  He put his back under too great a load of fish, and his chance for happiness in life was crossed off the books.