Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/182

 You can have a clean meal, take off your shirt and wash it, and wash yourself―if there's water enough―and feel fresh and clean. You can whistle and sing by the camp fire, and make poetry, and breathe fresh air, and watch the everlasting stars that keep the mateless traveller from going mad as he lies in his lonely camp on the plains. Your privacy is even more perfect than if you had a suite of rooms at the Australia; you are at the mercy of no policeman; there's no one to watch you but God―and He won't move you on. God watches the 'dossers-out,' too, in the city, but He doesn't keep them from being moved on or run in.

With the city unemployed the case is entirely different. The city outcast cannot light a fire and boil a billy―even if he has one―he'd be run in at once for attempting to commit arson, or create a riot, or on suspicion of being a person of unsound mind. If he took off his shirt to wash it, or went in for a swim, he'd be had up for indecently exposing his bones―and perhaps he'd get flogged. He cannot whistle or sing on his pavement bed at night, for, if he did, he'd be violently arrested by two great policemen for riotous conduct. He doesn't see many stars, and he's generally too hungry to make poetry. He only sleeps on the pavement on sufferance, and when the policeman finds the small hours hang heavily on him, he can root up the unemployed with his big foot and move him on―or arrest him for being around with the intention to commit a felony; and, when the wretched 'dosser' rises in the morning, he cannot shoulder his swag and take the track―he must cadge a breakfast