even an idea;
but "dossing out" in the city and "camping" in the bush are two very
different things. In the bush you can light a fire, boil your billy,
and make some tea--if you have any; also fry a chop (there are no sheep
running round in the city). 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
at some back gate or restaurant, and then sit in the park or walk round
and round, the same old hopeless round, all day. There's no prison like
the city for a poor man.

Nearly every man the traveller meets in the bush is about as dirty and
ragged as himself, and just about as hard up; but in the city nearly
every man the poor unemployed meets is a dude, or at least, well
dressed, and the unemployed _feels_ dirty and mean and degraded by the
contrast--and despised.

And he can't help feeling like a criminal. It may be imagination, but
every policeman seems to regard him with suspicio