They won't gi'
ye a drink o' water, they won't, much less tommy."

"There's mugs never go out of Kent," spoke a second voice, "they live
bloomin' fat all along."

"I come through Kent," went on the first voice, still more angrily, "an'
Gawd blimey if I see any tommy. An' I always notices as the blokes as
talks about 'ow much they can get, w'en they're in the spike can eat my
share o' skilly as well as their bleedin' own."

"There's chaps in London," said a man across the table from me, "that get
all the tommy they want, an' they never think o' goin' to the country.
Stay in London the year 'round. Nor do they think of lookin' for a kip
[place to sleep], till nine or ten o'clock at night."

A general chorus verified this statement

"But they're bloomin' clever, them chaps," said an admiring voice.

"Course they are," said another voice. "But it's not the likes of me an'
you can do it. You got to be born to it, I say. Them chaps 'ave ben
openin' cabs an' sellin' papers since the day they was born, an' their
fathers an' mothers before 'em. It's all in the trainin', I say, an' the
likes of me an' you 'ud starve at it."

This also was verified by the general chorus, and likewise the statement
that there were "mugs as lives the twelvemonth 'round in the spike an'
never get a blessed bit o' tommy other than spike skilly an' bread."

"I once got arf a crown in the Stratford spike," said a new voice.
Silence fell on the instant, and all listened to the wonderful tale.
"There was three of us breakin' stones. Winter-time, an' the cold was
cruel. T'other two said they'd be blessed if they do it, an' they
didn't; but I kept wearin' into mine to warm up, you know. An' then the
guardians come, an' t'other chaps got run in for fourteen days, an' the
guardians, w'en they see wot I'd been doin', gives me a tanner each, five
o' them, an' turns me up."

The majority of these men, nay, all of them, I found, do not like the
spike, and only come to it when driven in. After the "rest up" they are
good for two or three days and nights on the streets, when they are
driven in again for another rest. Of course, this continuous hardship
quickly breaks their constitutions, and they realise it, though only in a
vague way; while it is so much the common run of things that they do not
worry about it.

"On the doss," they call vagabondage here, which corresponds to "on the
road" in the United States. The agreement is that kipping,