“I want to go,” I said to a couple of waking men near me.

“Got ter sty fer the service,” was the answer.

“Do you want to stay?” I asked.

They shook their heads.

“Then let us go and tell them we want to get out,” I continued. “Come on.”

But the poor creatures were aghast. So I left them to their fate, and went up to the nearest Salvation Army man.

“I want to go,” I said. “I came here for breakfast in order that I might be in shape to look for work. I didn’t think it would take so long to get breakfast. I think I have a chance for work in Stepney, and the sooner I start, the better chance I’ll have of getting it.”

He was really a good fellow, though he was startled by my request. “Wy,” he said, “we’re goin’ to ’old services, and you’d better sty.”

“But that will spoil my chances for work,” I urged. “And work is the most important thing for me just now.”

As he was only a private, he referred me to the adjutant, and to the adjutant I repeated my reasons for wishing to go, and politely requested that he let me go.

“But it cawn’t be done,” he said, waxing virtuously indignant at such ingratitude. “The idea!” he snorted. “The idea!”

“Do you mean to say that I can’t get out of here?” I demanded. “That you will keep me here against my will?”

“Yes,” he snorted.

I do not know what might have happened, for I was waxing indignant myself; but the “congregation” had “piped” the situation, and he drew me over to a corner of the room, and then into another room. Here he again demanded my reasons for wishing to go.

“I want to go,” I said, “because I wish to look for work over in Stepney, and every hour lessens my chance of finding work. It is now twenty-five minutes to twelve. I did not think when I came in that it would take so long to get a breakfast.”

“You ’ave business, eh?” he sneered. “A man of business you are, eh? Then wot did you come ’ere for?”

“I was out all night, and I needed a breakfast in order to strengthen me to find work. That is why I came here.”

“A nice thing to do,” he went on in the same sneering manner. “A man with business shouldn’t come ’ere. You’ve tyken some poor man’s breakfast ’ere this morning, that’s wot you’ve done.”

Which was a lie, for every mother’s son of us had come in.

Now I submit, was this Christian-like, or even honest?—after I had plainly stated that I was homeless and hungry, and that I wished to look for work, for him to call my looking for work “business,” to call me therefore a business man, and to draw the corollary that a man of business, and well off, did not require a charity breakfast, and that by taking a charity breakfast I had robbed some hungry waif who was not a man of business.

I kept my temper, but I went over the facts again, and clearly and concisely demonstrated to him how unjust he was and how he had perverted the facts. As I manifested no signs of backing down (and I am sure my eyes were beginning to snap), he led me to the rear of the building where, in an open court, stood a tent. In the same sneering tone he informed a couple of privates standing there that “’ere is a fellow that ’as business an’ ’e wants to go before services.”

Jack London, The People of the Abyss. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1688/pg1688-images.html#chap11