nearly turned my stomach. So tightly were we packed, that a number of
the men took advantage of the opportunity and went soundly asleep
standing up.

Now, about the Salvation Army in general I know nothing, and whatever
criticism I shall make here is of that particular portion of the
Salvation Army which does business on Blackfriars Road near the Surrey
Theatre. In the first place, this forcing of men who have been up all
night to stand on their feet for hours longer, is as cruel as it is
needless. We were weak, famished, and exhausted from our night's
hardship and lack of sleep, and yet there we stood, and stood, and stood,
without rhyme or reason.

Sailors were very plentiful in this crowd. It seemed to me that one man
in four was looking for a ship, and I found at least a dozen of them to
be American sailors. In accounting for their being "on the beach," I
received the same story from each and all, and from my knowledge of sea
affairs this story rang true. English ships sign their sailors for the
voyage, which means the round trip, sometimes lasting as long as three
years; and they cannot sign off and receive their discharges until they
reach the home port, which is England. Their wages are low, their food
is bad, and their treatment worse. Very often they are really forced by
their captains to desert in the New World or the colonies, leaving a
handsome sum of wages behind them--a distinct gain, either to the captain
or the owners, or to both. But whether for this reason alone or not, it
is a fact that large numbers of them desert. Then, for the home voyage,
the ship engages whatever sailors it can find on the beach. These men
are engaged at the somewhat higher wages that obtain in other portions of
the world, under the agreement that they shall sign off on reaching
England. The reason for this is obvious; for it would be poor business
policy to sign them for any longer time, since seamen's wages are low in
England, and England is always crowded with sailormen on the beach. So
this fully accounted for the American seamen at the Salvation Army
barracks. To get off the beach in other outlandish places they had come
to England, and gone on the beach in the most outlandish place of all.

There were fully a score of Americans in the crowd, the non-sailors being
"tramps royal," the men whose "mate is the wind that tramps the world."
They were all cheerful, facing things with the pluck which is their chief
c