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is Washington, D.C. The latter fair city is the limit. I spent two weeks there trying to beg a pair ofshoes, and then had to go on to Jersey City before I got them.But to return to Ottawa. At eight sharp in the morning I started out after clothes. I workedenergetically all day. I swear I walked forty miles. I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes.I did not even knock off work for dinner. And at six in the afternoon, after ten hours of unremittingand depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt, while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire wastight and, moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disintegration.At six I quit work and headed for the railroad yards, expecting to pick up something to eat on theway. But my hard luck was still with me. I was refused food at house after house. Then I got a hand-out. My spirits soared, for it was the largest hand-out I had ever seen in a long and variedexperience. It was a parcel wrapped in newspapers and as big as a mature suit-case. I hurried to avacant lot and opened it. First, I saw cake, then more cake, all kinds and makes of cake, and thensome. It was all cake. No bread and butter with thick firm slices of meat between-nothing butcake; and I who of all things abhorred cake most! In another age and clime they sat down by thewaters of Babylon and wept. And in a vacant lot in Canada's proud capital, I, too, sat down and wept... over a mountain of cake. As one looks upon the face of his dead son, so looked I upon thatmultitudinous pastry. I suppose I was an ungrateful tramp, for I refused to partake of thebounteousness of the house that had had a party the night before. Evidently the guests hadn't likedcake either.That cake marked the crisis in my fortunes. Than it nothing could be worse; therefore things mustbegin to mend. And they did. At the very next house I was given a set-down. Now a set-down isthe height of bliss. One is taken inside, very often is given a chance to wash, and is then set-down at a table. Tramps love to throw their legs under a table. The house was large and comfortable, inthe midst of spacious grounds and fine trees, and sat well back from the street. They had justfinished eating, and I was taken right into the dining room-in itself a most unusual happening, forthe tramp who is lucky enough to win a set-down usually receives it in the kitchen. A grizzled andgracious Englishman, his matronly wife, and a beautiful young Frenchwoman talked with me while Iate.

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