Down and Out in Paris and London

by George Orwell

“Ah, l’amour, l’amour! Ah, que les femmes m’ont tué! Alas, messieurs et dames, women have been my ruin, beyond all hope my ruin. At twenty-two I am utterly worn out and finished. But what things I have learned, what abysses of wisdom have I not plumbed! How great a thing it is to have acquired the true wisdom, to have become in the highest sense of the word a civilised man, to have become raffiné, vicieux,” etc. etc. “Messieurs et dames, I perceive that you are sad. Ah, mais la vie est belle—you must not be sad. Be more gay, I beseech you!

I am not saying, of course, that most tramps are ideal

characters; I am only saying that they are ordinary human beings, and that if they are worse than other people it is the result and not the cause of their way of life.