At eight o'clock we went down into a cellar under the Infirmary, where tea was brought to us, and the hospital scraps.These were heaped high on a huge platter in an indescribable mess- pieces of bread, chunks of grease and fat pork, the burnt skin from the outside of roasted joints, bones, in short, all the leavings from the fingers and mouths of the sick ones suffering from all manner of diseases.Into this mess the men plunged their hands, digging, pawing, turning over, examining, rejecting, and scrambling for.It wasn't pretty.Pigs couldn't have done worse.But the poor devils were hungry, and they ate ravenously of the swill, and when they could eat no more they bundled what was left into their handkerchiefs and thrust it inside their shirts.
'Once, w'en I was 'ere before, wot did I find out there but a 'ole lot of pork-ribs,' said Ginger to me.By 'out there' he meant the place where the corruption was dumped and sprinkled with strong disinfectant.'They was a prime lot, no end o' meat on 'em, an' I'ad 'em into my arms an' was out the gate an' down the street, a-lookin' for some 'un to gi' 'em to.Couldn't see a soul, an' I was runnin' 'round clean crazy, the bloke runnin' after me an' thinkin'
I was 'slingin' my 'ook' [running away].But jest before 'e got me, I got a ole woman an' poked 'em into 'er apron.'
O Charity, O Philanthropy, descend to the spike and take a lesson from Ginger.At the bottom of the Abyss he performed as purely an altruistic act as was ever performed outside the Abyss.It was fine of Ginger, and if the old woman caught some contagion from the 'no end o'