did not know I
was alive. Do they, I wonder?

Yes, the newspaper came to me like a breath of foul city air. Very
much in the same way I was affected by a remark made to me by my
friend the Mate. "Where I live," said he, "one child won't play with
another if its father gets five shillings a week more'n t'other's
father." We were talking Socialism, if I remember rightly, and that
was his argument against its feasibility. I did not notice the
argument; I fell to thinking how odd it must be to live in such an
atmosphere. How is it we never have it in Chelsea? I have never been
the less welcome because my host or hostess has as many pounds a week
as I have a year. My old friend of my 'prentice days--dear old Tom,
the foreman, and Jack Williams, the slinger, they get no colder
welcome from us because they live in Hammersmith or Whitechapel. Have
we ourselves not seen in our rooms rich and poor, artist and mechanic,
writer and labourer? Nay, have we not had German clerk and Chinese
aristocrat, German baron and Russian nihilist? What is it that permits
us to dispense with that snobbery which seems almost a necessary of
life to the people where the old Mate lives! I think it is lack of
imagination in our women-folk, and the fetish of the home. For surely
the utter antithesis of "home" is that same "dangerous life." These
young men who economise and grow stingy in their desperate endeavour
to establish a "home nest," some "Acacia Villa" in Wood Green or
Croydon--what can they know of living dangerously? Their whole
existence is a fleeing from danger. Safe callings, safe investments,
safe drainage, safe transit, safe morality, safe in the arms of Jesus.
_Is_ it lack of imagination?

XVI

So we, who foregathered yesterday afternoon in the shipping office,
are lashed together for another four months. A motley group, my
friend. Outside I stood, note-book in hand, trying to find a spare
fireman who wanted a job. A mob of touts, sharks, and pimps crowded
round me, hustling each other, and then turning away from my call,
"Any firemen here?" In despair I go over to the "Federation Office,"
where all seamen are registered in the books of life insurance, where
they pay their premiums, and await possible engineers. I consult with
the grave, elderly man in the office, and he asks for firemen in the
bare, cold waiting-room. One man comes up, a pale, nervous chap,
clean-shaven and quiet. I take his "Continuous Discharge" book, fli