“Yes, yes, yes! You are one of those men that our customs breed. You had no business to be born--or at any rate you should have seen to it that you were born in the upper classes. What right had you to imagine you could ever tackle the working-man’s existence--up to the mark all day and every day? You, a man with a soft spot? You knew, or your parents ought to have known, that you couldn’t stand more than a certain pressure from life. You are diseased, if not physically, then in your disposition. Am I to excuse you because of that? Most probably I should be the same if life pressed hard enough. Am I to excuse myself because of that? Never--until it happens! Being what you are you chose deliberately--or was it chosen for you--to run the risks of being born; and now you complain of the consequences, and come to me for help? To me--who may myself at some time be in need, if not of physical, of moral bread? Is it right, or reasonable?” “I am a lost dog.” “You are getting on my nerves! Your chin is weak--I can see that through your beard; your eyes are wistful, not like the professional beggar’s pebbly eyes; you have a shuffling walk, due perhaps a little to the nature of your boots; yes, there are all the marks of amiability about you. Can you look me in the face and say it would be the slightest use to put you on your legs and thrust you again, equipped, into the ranks of battle? Can you now? Ah! if you could only get some food in you, and some clothes on you, and some work to do! But don’t you know that, three weeks hence, that work would be lost, those clothes in pawn, and you be on the drink? Why should I waste my charity on _you_--‘the deserving’ are so many! There’s ‘something against you’ too? Oh! nothing much--you’re not the sort that makes a criminal; if you were you would not be in such a state. You would be glad enough to do your fellows a good turn if ever you could do a good turn to yourself; and you are not ungrateful, you would attach yourself to any one who showed you kindness. But you are hopeless, hopeless, hopeless--aren’t you now?” “I am a lost dog.” “You know our methods with lost dogs? Have you never heard of the lethal chamber? A real tramp, living from hand to mouth in sun and rain and dirt and rags, enjoys his life. But _you_ don’t enjoy the state you’re in. You’re afraid of the days when you’ve nothing to eat, afraid of the nights when you’ve nowhere to sleep, afraid of crime, afraid even of this begging; twice since we’ve been standing here I’ve seen you looking round. If you knew you’d be afraid like this, what made you first desert ‘the narrow path’? Something came over you? How could you let it come like that? It still comes over you? You were tired, you wanted something new--something a little new. We all want that something, friend, and get it if we can; but we can’t recognise that _your_ sort of human creature is entitled, for you see what’s come of it?” “I am a lost dog.”