These were men in all degrees of raggedness; men
with one eye, or lame, or crippled--tramps, in fact, beggars for supper
and a night's lodging. They sat there to the number of twenty, half
naked many of them, and not a bit ashamed; with carpet-bags or without;
with clean or dirty faces and clothes as it might happen; but all
hungry, as I presently saw, when a table was drawn out, about which they
gathered, giving their names to be taken down on a register, while to
them came a Harmonist brother with a huge tray full of tins filled with
coffee, and another with a still bigger tray of bread.
Thereupon these wanderers fell to, and having eaten as much bread and
coffee as they could hold, they were consigned to a house a few doors
away, peeping in at whose windows by and by, I saw a large, cheerful
coal fire, and beds for the whole company. "You see, after you have
eaten, the table must be cleared, and then _we_ eat; and then come
these people, who have also to be fed, so that, unless we hurry, the
women are belated with their work," explained the landlord of this
curious inn to me.
"Is this, then, a constant occurrence?" I asked in some amazement; and
was told that they feed here daily from fifteen to twenty-five such
tramps, asking no questions, except that the person shall not have been
a regular beggar from the society.
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