The older women, not of the prostitute class, who frequent lodging houses are semi-permanents. These semi-permanents have regular, if poorly paid work. They are office cleaners, jobbing laundresses, daily cooks at cheap restaurants. The money they pay per week for their bed would rent a room in a poor locality, but even if such accommodation were available, and they could collect the necessary furniture, there is one overwhelming obstacle to such a mode of life. For the single woman well on to middle age, to live alone is to court a desolation of spirit that saps vitality. The loneliness of such an existence is intolerable. Few of these odd women have friends, or even acquaintances; they sustain their hold on life through the younger women whom they meet at the lodging house. They feed their emotions on the emotions of these others, gaining a spurious excitement from their tragedies and amusements.