Old Fags

an excerpt from the beginning of the story: THE boys called him "Old Fags," and the reason was not hard to seek. He occupied a room in a block of tenements off Lisson Grove, bearing the somewhat grandiloquent title of Bolingbroke Buildings and, conspicuous among the many doubtful callings that occupied his time, was one in which he issued forth with a deplorable old canvas sack, which, after a day's peregrination along the gutters, he would manage to partly fill with cigar and cigarette ends. The exact means by which he managed to convert this patiently gathered garbage into the wherewithal to support his disreputable body, nobody took the trouble to inquire; nor was there any further interest aroused by the disposal of the contents of the same sack when he returned with the gleanings of dustbins, distributed thoughtfully at intervals along certain thoroughfares by a maternal Borough Council. No one had ever penetrated to the inside of his room, but the general opinion in Bolingbroke Buildings was that he managed to live in a state of comfortable filth. And Mrs. Read, who lived in the room opposite Number 477 with her four children, was of opinion that "Old Fags 'ad 'oarded up a bit." He certainly was never behind with the payment of the weekly three and sixpence that entitled him to the sole enjoyment of Number 475; and when the door was opened, among the curious blend of odours that issued forth, that of onions and other luxuries of this sort was undeniable. Nevertheless, he was not a popular figure in the Buildings; many, in fact, looked upon him as a social blot on the Bolingbroke escutcheon. The inhabitants were mostly labourers and their wives, charwomen and lady helps, dressmakers' assistants, and mechanics. There was a vague, tentative effort among a great body of them to be a little respectable, and among some, even to be clean. No such uncomfortable considerations hampered the movements of " Old Fags." He was frankly and ostentatiously a social derelict. He had no pride and no shame. He shuffled out in the morning, his blotchy face covered with dirt and black hair, his threadbare green clothes tattered and in rags, the toes all too visible through his forlorn-looking boots. He was rather a large man with a fat, flabby person, and a shiny face that was over-affable and bleary through a too constant attention to the gin bottle.