Читать книгу The Color of a Great City онлайн

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But here in the great city I have always thought them a little strange and out of place. They consort so poorly with the pushing, eager, seeking throngs. And arrayed as they are, and as unkempt and unwashed, not even the low-priced lodging houses of the Bowery would receive them, and most certainly they would not pay the price of fifteen or twenty cents which would be required to house them, even if they had it. They are not of that kidney. And as for applying to a police station at any time, it were better that they did not. In bitter weather an ordinary citizen might do so with safety and be taken care of, but these, never. They would be driven out or sent to the Island, as the work-house here is called. Their principal lodging resource in times of wintry stress appears to be some grating covering a shaft leading to an engine room of some plant operative the night through, from which warm air pours; or some hallway in a public building, or the ultra-liberal and charitable lodging house of some religious mission. Quite often on an icy night I have seen not a few of them lying over the gratings of the subway at Fourteenth Street and at other less conspicuous points, where, along with better men than themselves, they were trusting to the semi-dry warm air that poured up through to prevent death from freezing. But the freeze being over, they would go their ways, I am sure, and never mend them from any fear of a like experience.