The shed was crowded. They lolled on boxes, and broken chairs, and in the sand, which was boarded up like loose grain in one-half of the place. A large, round stove was splashed cherry red with the heat.  The warmth in the room melted the snow on the roof, and the water dropped through a small space above and fell with a monotonous clatter on a piece of tar-paper in a corner of the sand bin. Coffee boiled in a granite vessel on top of the stove. Some battered cooking utensils were in a store-box which also contained many varieties of food. There were some small lunches wrapped in paper, which the hoboes called “lumps” and “handouts.” These lunches had been given to them by kind-hearted people at houses where they had begged. . . . Just then the door opened wide and a policeman stood framed in it. His flash-light shone clearly above the blurred light that glimmered through the smudgy globe of the kerosene lantern. The hoboes in the shed were momentarily alarmed, while I was badly scared, as it was my first contact with the law. The officer looked about the room, as if in search of a certain individual. “He ain’t here, I guess,” he said, half aloud to himself, as he held the light in the faces of the group. “That’s all right, men,” he continued. “Flop here till mornin’—she’s colder’n Billy-be-damned outside.”  
— Jim Tully, excerpt from Beggars of Life, 1924 (New York: Albert & Charles Boni)