There is no sight in the world so hard for lonely, homeless people to see, as the sight of the lighted windows of houses after nightfall.

Why houses should look so much more homelike, so much more suggestive of shelter and cheer and companionship and love, when the curtains are snug-drawn and the doors shut, and nobody can look in, though the lights of fires and lamps shine out, than they do in broad daylight, with open windows and people coming and going through open doors, and a general air of comradeship and busy living, it is hard to see.

But there is not a lonely vagabond in the world who does not know that they do.

One may see on a dark night many a wistful face of lonely man or lonely woman, hurrying resolutely past, and looking away from, the illumined houses which mean nothing to them except the keen reminder of what they are without.

Oh, the homeless people there are in this world! Did anybody ever think to count up the thousands there are in every great city, who live in lodgings and not in homes; from the luxurious lodger who lodges in the costliest rooms of the costliest hotel, down to the most poverty-stricken lodger who lodges in a corner of the poorest tenement-house?
Homeless all of them; their common vagabondage is only a matter of degrees of decency.
All honor to the bravery of those who are homeless because they must be, and who make the best of it.