This week, in one carriage of the New York City subway, there were seven homeless people taking shelter on an icy winter’s day. They were swathed in various worn-out coats, hats, scarves, blankets, knapsacks, and plastic carry bags; none showed their faces from behind their layers of urban swaddling.

In other carriages of that subway, and the many others I’ve been riding, there are many more of these human ‘mounds of misery’.