ht have made a meal. But my hunger was satisfied; I had no need of
anything more, and, as I thought of it, a strange feeling of surprise, a
sort of bewilderment, came upon me. What! Could it be that I had eaten,
and eaten sufficiently, _without paying_? It struck me as an
extraordinary thing. At that time, my ceaseless preoccupation was how to
obtain money to keep myself alive. Many a day I had suffered hunger
because I durst not spend the few coins I possessed; the food I could buy
was in any case unsatisfactory, unvaried. But here Nature had given me a
feast, which seemed delicious, and I had eaten all I wanted. The wonder
held me for a long time, and to this day I can recall it, understand it.

I think there could be no better illustration of what it means to be very
poor in a great town. And I am glad to have been through it. To those
days of misery I owe much of the contentment which I now enjoy; not by
mere force of contrast, but because I have been better taught than most
men the facts which condition our day to day existence. To the ordinary
educated person, freedom from anxiety as to how he shall merely be fed
and clothed is a matter of course; questioned, he would admit it to be an
agreeable state of things, but it is no more a source of conscious joy to
him than physical health to the thoroughly sound man. For me, were I to
live another fifty years, this security would be a delightful surprise
renewed with every renewal of day. I know, as only one with my
experience can, all that is involved in the possession of means to live.
The average educated man has never stood alone, utterly alone, just clad
and nothing more than that, with the problem before him of wresting his
next meal from a world that cares not whether he live or die. There is
no such school of political economy. Go through that course of lectures,
and you will never again become confused as to the meaning of elementary
terms in that sorry science.

I understand, far better than most men, what I owe to the labour of
others. This money which I "draw" at the four quarters of the year, in a
sense falls to me from heaven; but I know very well that every drachm is
sweated from human pores. Not, thank goodness, with the declared tyranny
of basest capitalism; I mean only that it is the product of human labour;
perhaps wholesome, but none the less compulsory. Look far enough, and it
means muscular toil, that swinking of the ruder man whic