Now he was standing in line at the spike.
For the past two years, he told me, he had been working as a cook.

His hours had been from 7 a.m.to 10.30 p.m., and on Saturday to 12.30 p.m .-- ninety-five hours per week, for which he had received twenty shillings, or five dollars.
"But the work and the long hours was killing me," he said, "and I had to chuck the job.

I had a little money saved, but I spent it living and looking for another place." This was his first night in the spike, and he had come in only to get rested.

As soon as he emerged, he intended to start for Bristol, a one- hundred-and-ten-mile walk, where he thought he would eventually get a ship for the States.
But the men in the line were not all of this calibre.

Some were poor, wretched beasts, inarticulate and callous, but for all of that, in many ways very human.