“There’s a place where you may get put up somewhere near Southwark, in the neighbourhood of Union Street, I think.”

It was a cross-country journey, which you could not break by omnibus or tram; but I did not mind, for by this time the fascination of the streets had got me. There are two or three processes which you go through when you are homeless. At first when you have walked about for two or three hours you get very tired. Your head aches and your limbs are like lead; the fact that you have no fixed objective is like a pall on your spirits⁠—you urge yourself forward on mere will. But if you keep on for another hour, or two, or three, your pains vanish⁠—in some strange way you forget cold, hunger and thirst. Your brain is light, your feet move on air. The noises of the street form a monotonous accompaniment which gradually merges into silence; you see little, hear less, feel not at all. Trouble and regret fall from you⁠—it is as though you were doped. You have no sense of distance or time, and gradually your movements become automatic. Instinctively you adopt the slouch of the tramp; you feel yourself one with the streets; you have lost your entity.