The Carter was hard put to keep the pace at which we walked (he told me that he had eaten nothing that day), but the Carpenter, lean and hungry, his grey and ragged overcoat flapping mournfully in the breeze, swung on in a long and tireless stride which reminded me strongly of the plains wolf or coyote.  Both kept their eyes upon the pavement as they walked and talked, and every now and then one or the other would stoop and pick something up, never missing the stride the while.  I thought it was cigar and cigarette stumps they were collecting, and for some time took no notice.  Then I did notice.

From the slimy, spittle-drenched, sidewalk, they were picking up bits of orange peel, apple skin, and grape stems, and, they were eating them.  The pits of greengage plums they cracked between their teeth for the kernels inside.  They picked up stray bits of bread the size of peas, apple cores so black and dirty one would not take them to be apple cores, and these things these two men took into their mouths, and chewed them, and swallowed them; and this, between six and seven o’clock in the evening of August 20, year of our Lord 1902, in the heart of the greatest, wealthiest, and most powerful empire the world has ever seen.

These two men talked.  They were not fools, they were merely old.  And, naturally, their guts a-reek with pavement offal, they talked of bloody revolution.  They talked as anarchists, fanatics, and madmen would talk.  And who shall blame them?  In spite of my three good meals that day, and the snug bed I could occupy if I wished, and my social philosophy, and my evolutionary belief in the slow development and metamorphosis of things—­in spite of all this, I say, I felt impelled to talk rot with them or hold my tongue.  Poor fools!  Not of their sort are revolutions bred.  And when they are dead and dust, which will be shortly, other fools will talk bloody revolution as they gather offal from the spittle-drenched sidewalk along Mile End Road to Poplar Workhouse.

Being a foreigner, and a young man, the Carter and the Carpenter explained things to me and advised me.  Their advice, by the way, was brief, and to the point; it was to get out of the country.  “As fast as God’ll let me,” I assured them; “I’ll hit only the high places, till you won’t be able to see my trail for smoke.”  They felt the force of my figures, rather than understood them, and they nodded their heads approvingly.

“Actually make a man a criminal against ’is will,” said the Carpenter.  “‘Ere I am, old, younger men takin’ my place, my clothes gettin’ shabbier an’ shabbier, an’ makin’ it ’arder every day to get a job.  I go to the casual ward for a bed.  Must be there by two or three in the afternoon or I won’t get in.  You saw what happened to-day.  What chance does that give me to look for work?  S’pose I do get into the casual ward?  Keep me in all day to-morrow, let me out mornin’ o’ next