Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick
district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished
room to furnished room, tran-sients forever--transients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They
sing "Home, Sweet Home" in ragtime; they carry their lares et penates in a bandbox; their vine is
entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.