They are to be met with everywhere, standing on curbs and corners, and staring into vacancy.

Watch one of them.

He will stand there, motionless, for hours, and when you go away you will leave him still staring into vacancy.

It is most absorbing.

He has no money for beer, and his lair is only for sleeping purposes, so what else remains for him to do?
He has already solved the mysteries of girl's love, and wife's love, and child's love, and found them delusions and shams, vain and fleeting as dew-drops, quick-vanishing before the ferocious facts of life.
As I say, the young are high-strung, nervous, excitable; the middle-aged are empty-headed, stolid, and stupid.