But to return to the type of person who came here to lodge. Where did they all come from? one was compelled to ask oneself. How did it happen that they were so varied as to age, vigor or the lack of it and the like? For not all were old or sick or poorly dressed. Some quite the contrary. And yet how did some of them manage to subsist, even with the aid of such a place as this? What was before them? These thoughts, somehow, would intrude themselves whether one would or no. For some of them were so utterly hopeless looking. And others (I told myself) were the natural idlers of the world, or what was left of them, men too feeble, too vagrom in thought, or too indifferent to make an earnest effort in any direction. At least there was the possibility of many such being here. Again, there were those of better mood and substance, like myself, say, who were here because of stress, and who were temporarily driven to this form of economy, wretched as it was. Others were obviously criminals or drug fiends, or those suffering from some incurable or wasting disease, who probably had little money and no strength, or very little, and who were seeking to hide themselves away here, to rest and content themselves as obscurely and as cheaply as possible. (The maximum charges for a room and a free bath in the public bathroom, the same including towels and soap, ranged from twenty-five to forty cents a day. A meal in the hotel dining-room, such as it was, was fifteen cents. I ate several there.) Pick-pockets and thugs from other cities drifted in here, and it was not difficult to pick out an occasional detective studying those who chose to stay here. For the rest, they were of the flotsam and jetsam of all metropolitan life--the old, the young, the middle-aged, the former and the latter having in the main passed the period of success without achieving anything, the others waiting and drifting, perhaps until they should come upon something better. Some of them looked to me to be men who had put up a good fight, but in vain. Life had worsted them. Others looked as though they had not put up any fight at all.