LONDON'S WASTRELS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8101, 29 August 1904, Page 2

LONDON'S WASTRELS.

In the small hours a silent and dismal procession may be seen, in the Strand and iin Fleet Street, London. At the southern entrance to Drury Lane the procession grows. It is made up of hopeless -was. trels, with an occasional honest workmen down on his luck. Follow the procession, and a couple of hundred yards from Stanhope Street you will find the end of an ever-lengthening queue. The men — there are no women amongst them — stand; silently. They do not joke, though here and there on« haa a pipe and something to put in it. Soon after two the line begins to move. As you pass along the smell of soup reaches the nostrils; kindly policemen guide tho dim crowd, and Salvation Army officers hand out a basin of soup and a chunk of hread to each comer. London presents no sadder sight than this crowd, which one morning recently numbered over a thousand. You must remember that not a single one of these men had been to bed or would go to bed tlhat night. Not a j single one had a home or anything at all but what he wore or carried in his potiets — a thousand men in a. single street of Lon- ' don with nothing between one day and the next but a basin of soup, a chunk of bread, and the hope of a friendly doorstep and a blind policeman!