The woman sat with her arms clasped across the breast, holding tightly, her body in constant play--now dropping forward till it seemed its balance would be overcome and she would fall to the pavement; now inclining to the left, sideways, till her head rested on the man's shoulder; and now to the right, stretched and strained, till the pain of it awoke her and she sat bolt upright.
Whereupon the dropping forward would begin again and go through its cycle till she was aroused by the strain and stretch.
Every little while boys and young men stopped long enough to go behind the bench and give vent to sudden and fiendish shouts.

This always jerked the man and woman abruptly from their sleep; and at sight of the startled woe upon their faces the crowd would roar with laughter as it flooded past.
This was the most striking thing, the general heartlessness exhibited on every hand.

It is a commonplace, the homeless on the benches, the poor miserable folk who may be teased and are harmless.

Fifty thousand people must have passed the bench while I sat upon it, and not one, on such a jubilee occasion as the crowning of the King, felt his heart-strings touched sufficiently to come up and say to the woman: "Here's sixpence; go and get a bed." But the women, especially the young women, made witty remarks upon the woman nodding, and invariably set their companions laughing.
To use a Briticism, it was "cruel"; the corresponding Americanism was more appropriate--it was "fierce." I confess I began to grow incensed at this happy crowd streaming by, and to extract a sort of satisfaction from the London statistics which demonstrate that one in every four adults is destined to die on public charity, either in the workhouse, the infirmary, or the asylum.
I talked with the man.

He was fifty-four and a broken-down docker.