10690	----	A DESPERATE CHANCE: OR THE WIZARD TRAMP'S REVELATION, A Thrilling Narrative. By OLD SLEUTH. [Illustration: "He Placed the Ladder of Saplings Across the Abyss."] 1897 CHAPTER I. THE CAMPFIRE IN THE GULCH--AN ALARM--THE SOLITARY FIGURE--UNDER COVER--A WHITE MAN--"HAIL, FRIEND!"--A CORDIAL MEETING--A SECOND STRANGE CHARACTER. "Well, Desmond, we've taken a desperate chance, and so far appear to be losers." The circumstances under which the words above quoted were spoken were weird and strange. A man and a mere youth were sitting by a campfire that was blazing and crackling in a narrow gulch far away in the Rocky Mountains, days and days travel from civilization. The circumstances that had brought them there were also very strange and unusual. Desmond Dare was the son of a widow who owned a small farm in New York State. There had been a mortgage on this farm which was about to be foreclosed when Desmond, a brave, vigorous lad, sold his only possession, a valuable colt, and determined to enter a walking match for the prize. He was on his way to the city where the match was to take place when in a belt of woods he heard a cry for help. He ran in the direction whence the cry came and found three tramps assailing a fourth man. The vigorous youth sprang to the rescue and drove the three tramps off, and was later persuaded by the man he had rescued to go with him to a rock cavern. There the lad beheld a very beautiful girl of about fourteen whose history was enveloped in a dark mystery; he also learned that the man he had rescued was known as the wizard tramp. The latter was a very strange and peculiar character, a victim of the rum habit, which had brought him away down until he became a tramp of the most pronounced type. This man, however, was really a very shrewd fellow, well educated, not only in book learning, but in the ways of the world, and seeing that Desmond had resolved to take a desperate chance, the tramp volunteered to land him a winner; he succeeded in so doing. The champion of the walking match carried his money to his mother, the tramp went upon an extended spree and spent his share. Afterward the tramp and Desmond Dare started on the road together. The girl had been placed with Mrs. Dare on the farm, and the man and boy proceeded West afoot, determined to locate a gold mine. The former discovered each day some new quality, and held forth to Desmond that some day he would make a very startling revelation. The youth had no idea as to the character of the revelation, but knowing that the tramp, named Brooks, was a very remarkable man, he anticipated a very startling denouement. After many very strange and exciting adventures Brooks, the tramp, and Desmond Dare arrived in the Rockies, and in due time started in to find their gold mine. The previous history of these two remarkable characters can be read in Nos. 90 and 91 of "OLD SLEUTH'S OWN." At the time we introduce the tramp and Desmond Dare to our readers in this narrative, they had been knocking around the mountains in search of their mine and had met with failures on every side, and at length one night they camped in the gulch as described in our opening paragraphs, and Brooks spoke the words with which we open our narrative. They were sitting beside their fire; both were partly attired as hunters and mountaineers, and both were well armed. Brooks, who had practically been a bloat had lived a temperate life, had enjoyed plenty of exercise in the open air, and had experienced to a certain extent a return of his original physical strength and vigor. At the time the whilom tramp made the disconsolate remark quoted, Desmond asked: "What do you propose to do--give it up?" "I don't know just what to do, lad." "We've scraped together a little gold dust; possibly we may have money enough to engage in some legitimate business, and what we can't get by the discovery of a mine, we may acquire in time in speculation. You are shrewd and level-headed." "That would be a good scheme for you, lad, but not for me. I am too far advanced in life to earn money by slow labor now. What I propose is that you go back, take all the gold we have, and enter into trade; you are bright and energetic and may succeed." "And what will you do?" "I shall continue my search for a mine, and some day I may strike it." Brooks was a college graduate, a civil engineer, and a mineralogist, and believed he had great advantages in searching for a mine, but, as has been indicated, thus far their tramp and search had been a dead failure. "I'll stick with you," said Desmond. "No, lad, you must go back." "I swear I will not; I like this life, and remember, we have gathered some wash dust and we may gather more. I don't know the value of what we have gathered from the bottom of that stream we struck, but I do know that it would take a long time to accumulate as much money in trade. Remember, we have been in the mountains only six weeks." "That is all right, but we might stay here six years and not make a find." At that instant there came a sound which caused Brooks and Desmond to bend their ears and listen. Some of the Indians were on the warpath; a band of bucks had been making a raid and had been pursued by the United States cavalry into the mountains. Indians, as a rule, do not take to the mountains, but sometimes when pursued hotly they will separate into small bands and scatter through the hills; these fellows are dangerous. They would have murdered any white men they might meet for their arms alone, without considering the spirit of wantonness or revenge that might animate them. Brooks and Desmond rose from their seats beside the fire and moved slowly away. At any moment an arrow or even a rifle shot might come and end the life of one or both. Desmond had become a very expert woodsman; he and Brooks had been chased by Indians several times and had exchanged shots with one band. They knew a cover in a crevice in the wall of rock which ran up abruptly each side of the gulch; from this spot they could survey and also make a good fight in an emergency. They had good weapons, plenty of ammunition, and what was more, coolness, skill, and courage. Desmond, especially, was a very cool-headed chap in times of danger; the use of firearms was not new to him, nor was the woodsman life altogether a novelty, for he had been raised in a very wild and desolate mountain region. Quickly they stole to cover, although they believed it possible that they might have been seen, for they had absolute proof, well known to woodsmen, that if there were foes in the vicinity they had been discovered. Once in their covert they lay low, and a few moments passed, when they beheld a solitary figure advancing slowly and very cautiously up the gulch, and as the figure came in the light of the fire Desmond, whose eyesight was very keen, said: "It's a white man; he looks like a hunter; we will wait a moment or two, but I guess it is all right." The figure, meantime, with rifle poised, advanced very slowly and finally stood fully revealed close to the fire, and indeed he was a white man of strong and vigorous frame. "I'll go and meet him," said Desmond; "you lay low here, rifle in hand ready to shoot in case he proves an enemy." "All right, lad, go ahead." Desmond stepped from his hiding-place and advanced toward the fire. The stranger saw him, still held his position ready for offense or defense, and permitted Desmond to approach, and soon he discerned that the lad was a white man and he called: "Hail, friend!" "Hail, to you," replied the lad. The two men approached and shook hands. The hunter was a splendid specimen of physical manhood, and his face indicated honesty and good-nature. "Are you alone here, lad?" "No." "Where's your comrade?" Desmond made a sign, and Brooks stepped forth from the crevice and approached the fire. "Hail, friend," said the stranger hunter. Brooks answered the salutation, the two men shook hands and the stranger said; "What may be your business out here?" "We'll talk of that later on; but, stranger, you took great chances." "I did?" "Yes." "How?" "In approaching the fire you were exposed; suppose the fire had been kindled by Indians?" The woodsman laughed, and said: "I knew it was not an Indian's fire." "You did?" "Yes." "How is that?" "They don't create such a big blaze. I knew white men were around, and men whom I need not fear, but I was on my guard all the same." "We could have dropped you off." "Well, yes, but out here we have to take chances, and it was necessary for me to do so." "It was?" "Yes." "How so?" "I need food; I have not struck any game lately. The fact is, I've been up in the peaks where there is no game. I hope you have a cold snack here, my friends, and some tobacco, for I have not had a regular tobacco smoke or chew for over a month." "We were just about to prepare some coffee and make a meal." "Good enough; did you say coffee? Well, I have struck Elysium; I haven't tasted a cup of coffee in a year. You see I was snowbound away up in the mountains; fortunately I had plenty of dried meat, and I was compelled to wait until I was thawed out." Brooks commenced making the coffee, and while doing so the woodsman asked: "Are you regular hunters?" "No." "Ever in the mountains before?" "Never." "You've been taking great chances." "We have?" "Yes." "How so?" "The mountains are full of bad Indian fugitives, and they are very ugly. Some are parts of a raiding gang of bucks, and others are rascals who have made a kick out at the reservation. I've met twenty of them in the last ten days; they are in squads of twos and threes, and they are full of fight." "We have met some of them." "And you managed to escape?" "We had a fight with one party." "You did?" "Yes." "How did you come out?" "Ahead, I reckon, or we would not be here." The conversation was between the woodsman and Desmond. "What brought you into the mountains--are you tourists?" "No." "On business?" "Yes." "Surveyors?" "No." "I thought not; no use to survey out this way. I suppose you are looking for a lost mine." "Well, we might take in a lost mine or find a new one, it don't matter." "Ah! I see; well, so far you've been lucky, but you've been taking desperate chances." "Oh! that's a way we have." CHAPTER II. A RECOGNITION--THE WOODSMAN'S DISCLOSURES--A CHANCE AFTER ALL--THE BIVOUAC--DESMOND'S DISCOVERY--SAVAGES GALORE. The coffee was soon prepared and Brooks produced some dried meat and a few crackers, and the three men, so strangely met, sat down to enjoy their meal. The woodsman was offered the first cup of coffee, and as he drank it down, all hot and steaming, he smacked his lips and exclaimed: "Well, that was good; that cup of coffee makes us friends. I may do you a good turn." "Good enough; we are ready for a good turn. We've had rather hard luck so far." "So you are after a mine, eh?" "Yes." "You are regular prospectors?" "Yes." "You have to strike a surface ledge to make any money. Don't think a claim would amount to much out here unless you found a nest of them so as to attract a crowd, and a town, and a mill, and all that. According to my idea the mines out here all need capital to work 'em in case you should strike one." Regardless of possibilities, as the night was a little chilly, Brooks had created quite a blaze, and by the light of the fire he had a fair chance to study the woodsman's face, and finally he asked abruptly: "Stranger, what is your name?" The woodsman laughed, and said: "I thought you'd ask that question." "You did?" "Yes." "Why?" "Well, it's natural that you should, but that ain't the reason I thought so." "It is not?" "No." "Well, why did you think so?" "I was going to ask your name." "Certainly; my name is Brooks." "I thought so." "You did?" "Yes." "What made you think my name was Brooks?" "Can't you guess?" "No." "Why did you ask my name?" "As you said, it was a natural question." "That ain't the reason you asked it." "It is not?" "No." "Well, you may tell me the true reason." "You've been studying my face." "I have." "You think you've seen me before somewhere?" "Well, you did see me before." "I did?" "Yes." "When and where?" "Just look sharp and see if you can't place me." "I can't." "It was a great many years ago." "It must have been; but to tell the truth, there is something very familiar in your face." "Yes, and you discovered it at the start, but you don't place me; I placed you. I didn't until you mentioned your name." "You now recall?" "I do." "Where have we met?" "Try to remember." "Tell me your name." "Oh, certainly, by and by; but in the meantime pay me the compliment of remembering who I am." "You have the advantage." "How?" "I told you my name." "I will tell you mine in good time, but try to remember." "I give it up." "You do?" "I do." The woodsman laughed, and said: "We slept together one night." "We did?" "Yes." "When and where?" "And now you can't recall?" "I cannot." "You are a square man, but there has come a change over you." "Did we meet often?" "No." "Were we intimate?" "Well, yes, for the time being." "I give it up." "You don't place me?" "No." Again the woodsman laughed and said: "Do you remember about fifteen years ago a young fellow, tired, wet, and hungry, tried to find shelter in a freight car?" "Hello! you are not Henry Creedon?" "Yes, I am, and this is the second time you've fed me. You appear to be my good angel; I may prove your good angel." "So you are Henry Creedon?" "I am," and turning to Desmond, Creedon said: "Your friend there one night made a fight for me, fed me and found shelter for me. He was a tramp then; I was footing it out West here." "Henry," said Brooks, "what have you been doing all these years?" "Mine hunting." "Mine hunting for fifteen years?" "Yes." "And have you found a mine yet?" The woodsman laughed, and Brooks said: "Desmond, we did indeed take desperate chances, and we've been making a fool's chase, I reckon. Here is a man who has been mine hunting for fifteen years and has not found one yet. Where do we come in?" "I'll tell you," said Creedon; "it's luck when you find a mine. More are found by chance than are discovered by experts, but I think I've found one; I can't tell. You see, I was raised in a factory town, I've had no education and I can't tell its value. I know where the find is located, however, and some of these days I'll strike a prospecting party who will have an engineer with them, and then I will know the value of my find." "If you take a party in with you they will demand a share." "Certainly." "Do you intend to share with them?" "I can't do otherwise." "Yes, that is so; suppose I find an engineer for you?" "I suppose you will want a rake in." "Certainly." "Well, Brooks, I'll tell you, I don't want to start in on a divide with everyone, but I've made up my mind to take you in with me. I know you are a kind-hearted and honest man, even though you are a tramp, a whisky-loving tramp, and that I remember you emptied my canister that night." "Yes, but I am not drinking now; I've reformed." "You have?" "Yes." "So much the better for you." "I've something to tell you." "Go it." "I am just the man to establish the value of your mine." "You are?" "Yes, I am." "How is that, eh? Have you become an expert after being in the mountains six weeks? and I am not in one way, and I've been here for fifteen years." "I was an expert before I came to the mountains." "You were?" "Yes." "How is that?" "I am a civil engineer by profession." "What's that?" "I am a civil engineer by profession." "You don't tell me!" "That's what I tell you, and I tell you the truth." "Then you are just the man I want." "I said I was; I am more than an engineer, I am a mineralogist and a geologist." "Hold on, don't overcome a fellow out here in the mountains; if you are a civil engineer that is enough for me. Hang your mineralogy and geology; what I want is a man who can estimate. No doubt about the ledge I've struck; the question is, how much will it cost to mine it; how much is there of it? You see I've had some experience here in the mountains, and sometimes we strike what is called a pocket; we might find gold for a few feet one way and another, and then strike dead rock and no gold. I ain't a mineralogist or geologist or a civil engineer, and I am afraid my find won't amount to much, but it is worth investigation, and as you are able to estimate we will make a start. To-morrow I will take you to my ledge and then we will know whether we are millionaires or tramps--eh? mountain tramps--but I am grateful for this food and coffee, and now if you'll give me a little tobacco I'll be the most contented man in the mountains, whether my mine turns out a hit or a misthrow." So tobacco was produced; Brooks himself was an inveterate smoker, and since being in the mountains Desmond had taken to the weed, and there was promise that some day he might become an inveterate. The three men had a jolly time, but in a quiet way. Creedon was a good story teller; he had had many weird experiences in the mountains. He had acted as guide to a great many parties, he had engaged in about fifty fights with Indians during his residence in the great West, and had met a great many very notable characters. When the men concluded to lie down to sleep for the night they extinguished their fire, and each man found a crevice into which he crept, and only those who have slept in the open air in a pure climate can tell of the exhilarating effects that follow a slumber under the conditions described. Desmond was the first to awake, and he peeped forth from his crevice and glanced down toward the point where the fire had been, when he beheld a sight that caused his blood to run cold. Five fierce-looking savages were grouped around the spot where the campfire had been, and he had a chance to study a scene he had never before witnessed. He beheld five savages in full war paint; they were dressed in a most grotesque manner, part of their attire being fragments of United States uniforms, showing that the red men had been in a skirmish, and possibly had come out victorious, and had had an opportunity to strip the bodies of the dead. A great deal has been written about the shrewdness of redmen. They are shrewd when their qualities are once fully aroused and they are on the scent, but they are given to assumptions, the same as white men. Of course Creedon was practically to be credited when he said that the Indians assumed there had been a camp there and that the campers had departed, but had they made as close observations as when on a trail they would have made discoveries that would have suggested the near presence of the late campers. Creedon had as far as possible destroyed all signs when raking out the fire of a recent encampment, but an experienced and alert eye can detect the truth despite these little tricks. Desmond saw the Indians: they were a hard-looking lot, the worst specimens he had ever beheld, and they were assassins at sight, as he determined. He was secure from observation, but it was necessary to warn his comrades, who were in different crevices, and at that moment Creedon actually snored. He was in the crevice adjoining the one where Desmond had taken refuge. The Indians were too far away to overhear the snore, but it was possible the man might awake and step forth; then, as Desmond feared, the fight would commence. He did not desire a fight; he might think the chances would be with his party, as only two of the Indians had rifles, but then if even one of their own party were kicked over it would be a sad disaster. The lad meditated some little time and studied the conditions. He crawled into his crevice, and, lo, he saw a lateral breakaway. He might gain Creedon's berth, as he called it, without chancing an outside steal. Fortune favored him; Creedon's crevice was one of several rents in the rock, and he managed to reach the sleeper's foot, and he cautiously touched it, fearing at the moment that Creedon in his surprise might make an outcry or an inquiry in a loud tone, but here he learned a lesson in woodcraft. Creedon did not make an outcry; he awoke and cautiously investigated, and soon discovered that Desmond had touched him and was seeking to communicate with him. He demanded in a whisper: "What is it, lad?" "There are Indians in the gulch." "Aha! where?" "Down where we were camped last night." "You keep low and I will take a peep." Desmond could afford to let Creedon take a peep. The woodsman did peep and took in the situation, and he said: "You are smaller than I am; does the rent where you are run to the berth where Brooks is sleeping?" "It may; I will find out and go slow; we don't want a fight if we can help it, but we've got the dead bulge on those redskins if we have to fight." CHAPTER III. CREEDON'S KNOWLEDGE OF WOODCRAFT--THE REDMEN'S DEPARTURE--A LONG TRAIL--ON THE TRAMP--THE STRANGEST REFUGE IN THE WORLD--A BRIDGE OF RISKS. Desmond crawled forward beyond the rent where Creedon had lodged, and he found the space much wider as he progressed, and soon gained the opening where the rent terminated in which Brooks had lain all night. Desmond glanced in, and, lo, Brooks was inside awake, and had already discovered the presence of the Indians, and so far they were all right. "Have you been able to notify Creedon?" asked Brooks. "Yes." "What does he say?" "He bade me arouse you." "I discovered the rascals as soon as I awoke." "All right; lay low and I will learn what Creedon advises." Desmond crawled back and said: "Brooks is awake and wants to know what we shall do." "There is only one thing to do: we will lay low, and if the rascals do not discover us all right; if they do discover us it will be bad for them and all right with us again, that's all. And now you and Brooks just keep out of sight and let me run the show." Word was passed to Brooks, and Desmond with the tramp lay low. As it proved there was not much of a show to run, as the Indians moved away after a little, but Creedon did not permit his friends to go forth. He said: "You can never tell about these redskins; they might suspect we are around, and their going away may be a little trick; they are up to these tricks." Hours passed, and Creedon still kept his friends in hiding, and it was near evening when he stole forth, saying he would take an observation. After a little he returned and said: "It's all right; come out." Creedon said he had discovered evidence that the redskins had really gone away. "Why couldn't you have found that out sooner?" The woodsman laughed and said: "They might have found me out then; as it was, according to the tales you and Brooks tell, I took a desperate chance." "Shall we get to work and have a meal?" "Not much, young man, you will have to control your appetite for awhile. Remember, I am captain of this squadron. I'll lead you to a place, however, where we can build a fire and camp and eat without fear. I am posted around here; I know the safe places." The party started on the march, and Desmond felt quite irritated; he had gone nearly twenty-four hours without eating, and he said: "I am ready to even fight for a meal." Creedon laughed and said in reply: "You may have a stomach full of fighting yet before we find the mine." "I thought you had located it?" "Yes, but it's a week's tramp from where we are at present, and we may have some lively times before we arrive at the place." It was nine o'clock at night when the party arrived at one of the most peculiar natural retreats Desmond had ever seen. It was a cave, as we will call it, in the side wall of a cliff rising from a gulch even more wild and rugged than the one where the party had camped the previous night. Some mighty convulsion of the mountain had separated the whole front of the cliff from the main rock, so that a space of at least twenty feet intervened, and between yawned a dark abyss that led down to where no man had yet penetrated. Creedon led the way up along a ledge of ascent which lined the outer edge of the great mass of detached cliff. Once at the top he descended on the inner side. It was night, but he had taken advantage of a mask lantern which he carried with him, and which he said was the most useful article in his possession. He added: "These lanterns may belong to the profession of detectives and burglars, but I've found them the most useful articles a cliff-climber can own. They are different from other lamps and torches; you can control the one ray of light and indicate your path without any trouble whatever." This was true, as the guide demonstrated, and his party walked along the narrow ledge without any fear of being precipitated over; all it required was a good eye and a steady nerve, and they possessed these necessary qualifications. The guide at length came to a halt, and said: "You stand here and I'll get my bridge." He proceeded along alone, but soon returned with two saplings, which he had strung together, and of which he had made a rope ladder. Desmond was greatly interested, and watched the guide as he threw his ladder across the intervening abyss, and then he said: "It will take a little nerve to crawl over, but once over we are all safe, and I've got a storehouse over there. I prepared this place with a great deal of patience and labor. We can spend two or three days here. I know you will enjoy it, and we can take a good long rest. I will go over first and then hold the light so you two can follow." Desmond glanced at Brooks, and asked: "Will you risk it?" "Yes, I will, lad; I am not the fellow I was about six months ago; I can climb a steeple now." The guide went over, creeping across. The saplings bent under his weight and made a downward curve, so that when he attempted so ascend on the opposite side it was a climb up, but with the ropes made of woven prairie grass and sticks and boughs he easily ascended. He had carried his lantern with him, and he flashed its light across his bridge and asked, "Who will come next?" "You go," said Desmond to Brooks. The tramp did not hesitate, but started to crawl over the oddly constructed bridge, and he did so as well as the guide had done. Then Desmond crossed and the instant all hands were over the guide took up his bridge stowed it away, and said: "When we cross back it will be in the daytime, and much harder." "Much harder in the daytime?" "Yes." "I should think it would be easier." The guide laughed and said: "It might appear so, but in the daytime you will realize just what you are doing. You will see the dark abyss beneath you, and when the bridge sways downward your heart will be in your throat, I tell you. At night, however, you do not know just what you are doing." Desmond saw the truth of what the guide said, and observed that the man was quite a philosopher. "Now let me go in advance," said Creedon. He led the way and soon turned into what he called Creedon Street. It was a broad opening with a solid flooring, and walls of rock on either side--the most singular and remarkable rock conformation that either Brooks or Desmond had ever seen. The guide walked right ahead boldly; he evidently knew that there were no rents down which they might plunge. "Here is Creedon Hall," said the guide, as he turned into a broad opening and flashed his light around. The party were in a cave, and yet we can hardly call it a cave; it appeared to be merely a huge underline in the side of the cliff, as it was open, as the guide said, facing Creedon Street. "I will soon have Creedon Hall illuminated for you," said the guide. He secured some wood, and as Desmond followed him he saw that he had abundance of it, and the guide said: "This wood, some of it, has been stowed here for over ten years, and we can have a jolly fire in a few minutes, and no fear of attracting Indians or any one else. We are as safe here as though we were making a grate fire in a big hotel in New York." Creedon made good his word, and soon Creedon Hall was brilliantly illuminated, and Desmond was delighted. He exclaimed in his enthusiasm. "This is just immense!" "Well, it is." Brooks also was delighted; he set to work to make the coffee and prepare the meal, and Creedon lay down on his blanket and lit his pipe, while Desmond wandered around the cave, as he persisted in calling it. He discovered several outlets from Creedon Hall, and he made up his mind that as soon as his friends were asleep he would steal the mask lantern and go on an exploring expedition. It was a jolly party that sat down to coffee, cold dried meat, and crackers. Brooks had been very sparing of his crackers, and had at least five pounds of them at the time he and Desmond met the guide. "When did you discover this place?" asked Desmond. "I did not discover the place; it was revealed to me by an old hunter, a Mexican, and how he discovered it he would never tell. The old man had a great many secrets, and I have sometimes thought that there was gold hidden here somewhere. I've spent days searching for it, but never could find anything of the value of a red cent." "Where is the old Mexican now?" "That's hard to tell, lad; he died about five years ago, and his body was carried to the ruins of an old Spanish church and there buried as he had requested long before he died. He was a strange old man; he possessed many secrets, but they died with him. It is possible he meant to reveal them some day, but death caught him and he went out with his mouth closed as far as his secrets were concerned. He was a sort of miser in secrets. I did think that some day the old man would reveal something of value to me; he pretended to think a great deal of me. I saved his life at a critical moment; he was actually bound to the stake, and I shot the rascal who was about to light the fire. They intended to burn him alive, and the arrival of myself and party was just in time." "Do the Indians still burn their prisoners at the stake?" "These were not Indians--they were his own countrymen. They had tried to force a confession from him, and because he refused to reveal the whereabouts of the gold they thought he had stored away somewhere, they were set to murder him in anger and revenge." "And you saved him?" "I did." "And he never revealed his secrets to you?" "Only the secret of this cave. He often made strange remarks and hinted that some day I would receive my reward. We roomed here together all of one winter, but he died and never opened his mouth to reveal where his gold was, if it is true that he had any. I believe he did, but it will never do me any good, and I do want to make a fortune somehow, but I suppose I never will. Yes, lad, there are thousands of skeletons of gold-seekers hid away in caverns in these mountains, victims of the same ambition which is leading us to take such desperate chances." Desmond was very greatly interested in the story of the old Mexican, and he asked a number of questions. "You never got the least inkling as to where his gold was hidden?" "I don't know that he had any gold; it is only a suspicion on my part." "He lived in this cave?" "Yes." "Did you ever search here?" "Well, you bet I did." "And did you explore?" "You bet I did." "And you never found anything?" "I never did." "Nor secured any indication?" "Never." "Possibly you did not look in the right place." "That is dead certain," came the natural answer. CHAPTER IV. ON AN EXPLORING EXPEDITION--A FIND IN A CAVE--THE SEPULCHRAL VOICE--THE EXPLANATION--DESMOND GETS SQUARE ON A TRICK--STRANGE LONGINGS--THE FINDING OF A NUGGET. It was about midnight when the older men lay down on their blankets to sleep. Creedon had a big silver bull's-eye watch, and he said he always kept it going. Desmond pretended to lie down and go to sleep also, but his head was filled with visions of the Mexican's hidden gold. He had an idea that Creedon's investigations might have been very superficial; he determined to make a thorough and systematic search, and he actually believed he would find the hidden gold. Brooks and Creedon were good sleepers; both were very weary and they were soon in a sound slumber, and then Desmond arose, stole on tiptoe over beside Creedon and secured the mask lantern. A strange, weird scene was certainly presented. There had been a big fire; the embers were all aglow and illuminated the cave. There lay Brooks and Creedon, looking picturesque in their hunting garb, and there was Desmond stealing on tiptoe under the glare of the firelight to secure the mask lantern. Having secured the lantern the lad moved away and made for a crevice which promised the best results. He knew enough of rock conformations to go forward very carefully, always flashing his light ahead and studying the path in advance, and so slowly, carefully, and surely he moved along until he had traversed, as he calculated, a distance of two hundred and fifty feet, when suddenly his flashlight revealed a solid wall in front of him. "Here we are," he muttered, "and no mistake." Desmond saw that his explorations in that direction had ended. He retraced his steps and selected a second crevice along which he made his way, and at length he landed in a pretty good sized inner cave. "Well, I reckon we've got it here." The lad proceeded to search around with the care of a detective looking for clues. He did find evidences of some one having been in the cave; he found the handle of a dirk, a small bit of a deerskin hunting jacket, and finally a little bit of pure gold. He examined the latter under his lamp, satisfied himself that it was a nugget of real gold in its natural state, and his heart beat fast. "I've got it at last," he muttered; "yes, I thought I knew how to carry on this search. Creedon must have done it too hurriedly." Desmond felt quite proud of his success; he had struck it sure, as he believed, and he continued his search, and was intently engaged when suddenly he heard a sepulchral groan at the instant he had plunged into a sort of pocket and was feeling around; but when he heard that groan he started back into the cave and stood as white as a sheet gazing around in every direction, and there was a wild terror in his eyes. He stood for fully two minutes gazing and listening, and finally he said: "Great Scott! what was that I heard--a groan?" Desmond, although brave and vigorous, after all was but a lad of less than eighteen. He could have faced a grizzly bear, but when it came to the supernatural he was not equal to it. The fact was he was dead scared, and, then again he believed he had really struck the hidden recess where the old Mexican's gold was secreted. The young are more susceptible to superstitious fears, as a rule, than older people; they are not skeptical. Desmond listened a long time, and as he did not hear the noise again, and feeling an intense desire to find the hidden treasure, he again went to the rock pocket and plunged in, but immediately there came again the groan, clear, distinct, and unmistakable, and also a voice commanding: "Go away, go away; do not disturb my gold." The lad leaped out into the main cave again, and he trembled from head to foot. He had never received such a shock in all his life; he had never really believed in ghosts--never thought much about them indeed--but here he had at least evidence that the dead did watch their treasures. Still, the desire to secure the wealth was strong upon him; naturally he was, as our readers know, very nervy, and he determined to argue with the ghost. He reasoned that the hidden wealth could be of no benefit to the spirit where he was, and he thought he might talk him into keeping quiet. It was in a trembling voice that Desmond asked: "Is the spirit here?" The answer came: "I am here." A more experienced person than Desmond would have gotten on to the fact that it was very strange that the spirit should answer him in such good English, it being supposed to be the spirit of a Mexican, but spirits probably can talk any language. At any rate, Desmond did not stop to consider. "Do you own the gold?" "Yes." "Why can't I have it? I've found it." "You get away as quick as you can or I'll seize you." Well, well, this was a great state of affairs; Desmond did not ask any more questions. He seized his lamp and started to limp from the cave, and he was white and trembling. He made his way to Creedon Hall and beheld Brooks and Creedon standing over the fire. On the face of Brooks there was an amused look, and on Creedon's an expression of real jollity. "Great sakes! Desmond," demanded Brooks, "where have you been? I awoke and found you missing, and Creedon and I have been scared almost to death." Desmond tried to assume an indifferent air, and said: "I wasn't sleepy, so I thought I would go and explore a little." "You had better be careful how you explore around here." "Why?" "Well, that's all; I won't say any more, but be careful, or you may be suddenly missing." "What did you find, boy?" "I'll tell you all about it in the morning." The men retired to their blankets and Desmond also lay down, after having promised that he would not attempt to explore any more that night. He did not sleep, however; the phantom voice, the treasure, and his discovery kept him awake, and he lay thinking about ghosts and goblins, and he muttered; "Hang it! I never believed in ghosts;" then as he lay there, there came to his mind a recollection of the jolly look that had rested on the face of the guide, and there came to his mind a suspicion, and then a certainty, that he had been fooled. He was a wonderfully sharp lad, and he began to think the whole matter over, and he recalled the fact that the ghost had spoken good English. "Hang me!" he muttered, "if I don't believe I've been made a victim of a huge joke, and Brooks and Creedon are both guilty in aiding to give me a scare. All right, to-morrow we will see all about it; I'll get square." Desmond did fall asleep at length, and when he awoke Brooks and Creedon were eating their breakfast, and Creedon said as Desmond joined them: "So you were exploring last night?" "Yes." "What did you find?" "Gold." "You did?" "Yes." "Oh, come off." "I did." "You think you did." "I did, I'll swear I did." "Where did you find it?" "In a cave which one of those passages leads to." "You found gold?" "Yes." "You will have to be careful." "Careful?" "Yes." "Why?" "You'll strike the ghost." "The ghost?" "Yes." "What ghost?" "The ghost of the old Mexican." "I did think I heard a groan. Tell me about the old Mexican." "I've told you all I know about him, and I'll tell you that in my opinion it will be dangerous to meddle with his gold, even if you found it." "Could that old Mexican speak English?" "A little." "Only a little?" repeated Desmond. "Yes." "Then it's just as I suspected; I tell you I was scared at first, but when the old ghost answered me--" "When the ghost answered you?" demanded Creedon. "Yes." "Did you see the ghost?" "I heard him--that is, I thought I did--and I spoke to him, but he gave me back such good English I made up my mind that you didn't know how to play a joke. Next time stick to the broken English; you might have scared the life out of me then." Brooks and Creedon laughed, and the latter said: "Well, you are smart, you are; but, lad, let me tell you something: don't spend time looking for the Mexican's gold." "Why not?" "I've explored every nook and cranny in this mountain, and there is no treasure hidden here." "But I found some gold." "You did?" "Yes." Creedon and Brooks stared. "Are you in earnest?" "I am." "Where did you find it?" "Well, I am going to consider awhile before I tell." Brooks looked Desmond straight in the face, and asked: "Boy, honest, did you really find gold?" "Yes, I did." The matter began to assume a very serious aspect, for Desmond spoke seriously. "If you found any gold, lad, you've beat me." "I did find gold." "On your honor?" "Yes." "Well, here we are on shares; tell us all about it." Desmond laughed in turn; they had had their laugh and he had his laugh, as he said: "Here is what I found." The lad produced the little nugget he had picked up and then Creedon laughed, and said: "By George! that is the bit of gold I lost, and I had a good hunt for it." Our hero had been impressed by Creedon's statement that he had examined every nook and corner in the mountain, and yet he did feel a sort of hankering notion that he could find the gold, and he said: "I want to explore again." "All right; it can do no harm, but I will relinquish all claim now to any gold that you may find in this cave." "I'll take you at your word," said Desmond. Of course the youth had no real hope of ever finding any gold, but it is a known fact that such finds have been made, and sometimes the skeletons of the owners have been found bleaching beside their gold. CHAPTER V. BOY'S DETERMINATION--GOING THROUGH A CREVICE--THE MOVABLE ROCK--AID TO DISCOVER--UP THROUGH A HOLE--THE GOLDEN HEAP--DESMOND'S GREAT TRIUMPH--THE OLD MEXICAN'S SECRET EXPOSED. Desmond was somewhat impressed by the words of Creedon, but still insisted that he would like to conduct an exploration. "You will only go over the ground that I have already gone over." "I know that, but I propose to look around all the same." Desmond had been doing considerable thinking. He questioned Creedon again and again, and made out that the old Mexican had lived in the cave along with Creedon for months at a time, and as he learned, the old man had thrown out a great many hints. These hints meant something; and then again, if he had hidden his wealth in the cave he had done it so securely and well that he had no idea of its ever being discovered until such time as he saw fit to disclose the fact. Desmond knew how there were some strange conformations in the rocks; the very place they were in was a testimony to the strange freaks that nature in its upheavals can and does create. Brooks had nothing to say about the matter, and Creedon did remark finally: "Of course, as I've said, it can do no harm, but be careful you don't strike--" Desmond here interrupted, and said: "I ain't afraid of ghosts; I've met one and I've got used to them." "I don't mean a ghost, I mean a crevice; go very slow and carefully, or you may become a ghost yourself." Right here we wish to exchange a few words with our readers in regard to these rock conformations. Right in the State of New York, in Ulster County, and in what is called the Shawangunk Mountains, there are some of the most wonderful caves and crevices, and in some of these caves during the winter the snow drifts down, and in the spring becomes a solid mass of ice, and the writer remembers upon one occasion after a long and weary scramble over rocks under the face of a cliff which towers up and overlooks counties, being shown a rock cave where there was a solid mass of ice, which, in its contour resembled a ship. The ice must have been at least sixty feet in length, twenty feet broad, and fully forty feet high, and adjoining it were all manner of caves. These caves are within a few miles of several settlements, and possibly at the time of the visit of the writer had not been entered by over a dozen persons. In these mountains are some very remarkable rock conformations, and we merely mention this fact to the lads in the East, who may think that these stories of rock caverns are exaggerated. There are probably hundreds of caves in the Catskill and Shawangunk Mountains that have never been entered or explored since the days when the early settlers may have found them while bear hunting. Desmond had been raised, as we have stated, near the mountains, and probably had explored many rock caverns, and it is because of this fact probably that he was not surprised when led to the cave where he first beheld the girl Amy Brooks. That cave still exists and is well known to many of the people living in its vicinity, and in our description we adhered to almost absolute accuracy. Creedon was a rough and ready sort of man, but not, the fellow, as Desmond argued, who would apply himself to a critical study. It was a great thing to have learned the facts concerning the old Mexican, and the lad really believed that there was gold secreted somewhere in one of the little cavities in that perforated mountain. Creedon started in to relate to Brooks the facts about the mine he believed he had discovered, and Desmond, taking the mask lantern, started off to explore. "You will burn out all my oil, lad; that is the only harm you will do, and certainly little good. I cannot replenish the oil when it's burned out, and I've been very careful, holding it for only such occasions as when we came here across the chasm." Creedon explained that he had only carried with him one can of oil, which had lasted him to date. Desmond started off and went direct to the crevice he had first entered, and Creedon smiled as he saw him go in there, remarking to Brooks: "The lad will run up against a stone wall sure, but he is enthusiastic; it will be a lesson to him." "Can't tell about that lad," said Brooks, "there is method in his enthusiasm." "That's all right, but I was camped in here one whole winter, and as I told you, there is not a nook or cranny that I have not explored." "But there are others," said Brooks, with an odd smile on his face. Meantime, Desmond followed the crevice until he came to the stone wall. He knew about the same wall, but he was working on a certain theory. He was like the Captain Kidd treasure-seekers--the discouragement of others did not in any way discourage him, and we will here say that a similar persistence in any walk of life, as a rule, leads to great results. Desmond, as stated, arrived opposite the stone wall, and he commenced a calm, steady, determined examination. First appearances would have discouraged any man, being faced as he was by a solid, smooth face of rock. He stood contemplating the mass before him, and then with the ray of light from his lantern he ran all over the rock. "By ginger!" he muttered at last, "I reckon it's true. There does not appear a hole big enough in that rock for a spider to crawl through; but, hang me! I've got an impression." There appeared to be a break in the rock just where it joined with the roof of the cave. Desmond rolled a bowlder over against the rock and mounted, and ran his finger over the crack. It was not a large crack and offered no encouragement, but the lad was determined not to be satisfied until he had established facts beyond all dispute. He ran his finger, as stated, along the crack, and his knuckle pressed against the roof, and to his surprise there appeared to be a loosening. He examined it and he saw that there was a uniform crack running along the roof inclosing a space about two feet square. The lad instinctively pressed on the center between the cracks, and lo, there appeared to be a piece of the roof that yielded. He pressed harder and satisfied himself that the piece of rock between the cracks in the roof was movable. The discovery caused his heart to stand still, and he muttered: "Great Scott! but I've found it." He flashed the light on the crack and thought he could discern where there had been some chiseling. He made every effort to shift the rock out of its place, but it was too much for him, owing to the fact that he could just about reach it. He did not have purchase enough to exert his full strength. He stepped down on the floor again and commenced to consider, and then he determined to return to the main cave and solicit Brooks and Creedon to go to his aid. When he re-entered the main cavern Creedon with a laugh said: "Well, lad, did you run up against a stone wall?" "I did." "I told you it was of no use to search these crevices. I've explored every inch." "You have?" "Yes." "I think not." Brooks knew Desmond so well he discerned that the lad had really made a discovery, but he said nothing. "You think not, eh?" "I do." "That would hint that you had found something." "I have." "What have you found?" "I don't know yet, but I am certain I have found a cranny or nook that you never explored." "You have?" "I have." "What have you found?" "Oh, it may be that it's 'tellings,' as the boys say." Creedon looked at the lad in a curious way. "It cannot be possible," he said, "that you have found anything?" "Yes, I have." "What have you found?" "Guess." "It's no time to guess; what have you found?" "I'll show you what I've found; I want your help." The lad found a piece of sapling about seven feet in length, and said: "You gentlemen come with me; I'll show you something." Animated by great interest and curiosity, Brooks and Creedon followed Desmond. He led them to the little rock cave where the crevice abutted on the solid wall of rock, and he said: "Now what do you see?" "We see the rock." "Is that all?" "Yes." "Look sharp; there is something you have not discovered before." "What is it?" "Look." "I've looked." "I reckon when you did look upon the occasion of your former visits you did as you are doing now--only _looked_, but you did not search." "Have you searched?" "Yes, I have." "And you've found something?" "Yes, I have." "What?" "Oh, look." "I'm done looking." "Then let me show you." Desmond took the strong piece of sapling he had brought with him and jammed one end with great force against the square piece of roofing, and the piece of rock moved. Creedon gazed aghast and exclaimed: "By all that's strange and wonderful, but I believe you have unfolded the Mexican's secret." "I think so; and now lend me your strength, both of you, and let's see if we can move that loose piece of rock. I'll bet there is an opening there." "You are right--yes, lad, you have indeed raked into the old Mexican's treasure den; I can recall now some words he once spoke." "Don't spend any more time recalling; let's shove that rock aside if we can." The two men lent their aid to Desmond, and sure enough they did raise the piece of rock, and by hoisting it they managed to move it aside a trifle, enough to reveal the fact that there was a chamber above, and that the opening was through the piece of rock. It was a reward of Desmond's persistence, but after all it was accident that had revealed to him the opening. By hard work the men finally succeeded in moving the rock aside, and there was disclosed the opening, and Desmond said: "Now let me stand on our shoulders with the light and I will tell you what it is we have found. There is something there to reveal, I am dead sure." The two men assisted Desmond to their shoulders. He took the lantern and shoved his head through the opening, and then flashed the light around, and with a joyful shout exclaimed: "We've got it!" "This beats me dead," said Creedon. Both men were greatly excited, for it did appear that they had made a great find of hidden treasure. Meantime, Desmond managed to force himself up and disappeared in the cave. He glanced around and beheld a sight that filled him with varying emotions. The chamber was not more than four feet square, but on the floor in one corner was a shining heap. It shone under the ray of his lantern as he flashed the light upon it. He took a handful of the shining stuff and passed it down to Creedon, handing him the lantern at the same time, and he said: "You are a good judge; tell me what that is?" "It's gold dust," cried Creedon; "how much is there of it?" "Oh, barrels full, I should say." "Great ginger! lad, you've struck it." "Well, it won't run away, I reckon, but give me your hat and I'll fill it." "Is that to be my share?" "No, we're only giving you the first whack at it, that's all." Desmond filled Creedon's hat with the dust and then descended, and the whole party made their way to the outer cavern. CHAPTER VI. DISCUSSING THE FIND--A NEW RESOLUTION--GOING TO CREEDON MINE--A DISAPPOINTMENT--BETTER INDICATIONS--A NEW MOVE. Once in the outer cavern, Desmond said: "It's now a matter of business." "Well?" "How shall we divide?" "You are the finder," replied Creedon; "you are to decide." "You leave it to me?" "Yes." "I'll make it an even divide all round." "Boy, it's a great discovery." "What do you think of its value?" "It depends upon the weight, but from your description I should say we had a ten-thousand-dollar find." Desmond's eyes opened wide, and after a moment he asked: "Does it really belong to us?" "It does certainly; I am really the appointed heir of the old Mexican, but anyway treasure-trove goes to the finder who can establish a right to it." "We can," said Brooks. "You bet we can, and it is ours, but it's strange how the old Mexican's secret has been opened up. Here I've had five years to search for this gold and failed to find it, and this lad gets on to it in one day." "It was a mere chance." "Well, yes, to a certain extent; but if you had not been so persistent you would not have developed the chance and made the find possible." "How did the old man accumulate this gold?" "It's plain enough; he has known some stream and has washed it, and possibly it took him ten years to gather the heap you found there; but how well he did it!" "He did, sure." "How shall we make a divide?" "Easy enough if you will let me make a suggestion." "Certainly." "We will carry it all out here; we run no risk, no one will ever penetrate to this retreat; then when we have it all carted out here we will divide it, a coffee cup full at time." "Good enough; that suits me." "But wait; I've a better proposition if you will accept it." "Go ahead." "Let's leave it where it is, go on to my mine, and if it amounts to anything we will have the capital to work it ourselves." Desmond glanced at Brooks, and the man said: "That is a good proposition." Brooks was less suspicious than Desmond, but the lad determined to accede to the proposition, and it was decided that on the following morning they would start for Creedon's mine, and the guide said: "We will start before daylight." "Why?" "We had better cross the chasm in the dark; I am afraid you would hardly recross it if you were to behold once what would be underneath you." It was so decided. The party made all their preparations and on the following morning, before daylight, with the aid of Creedon's ladder the party crossed the chasm and proceeded on their way toward the place where Creedon's mine was located. They managed to secure enough game which they cooked and had for food, and commenced their long march, and it was a long march. They had been five days on the tramp, and stopped one night to camp, when Creedon said: "In the morning we will be on the ground." The place where they were camped was a mountain glen, and our young friend Desmond, being in splendid health, was exceedingly happy. The life thus far had been one of constant excitement, and therefore at his age one of continuous enjoyment, and besides, to crown all, he was comparatively rich. As intimated, Creedon had valued the dust at ten thousand dollars, and when it should be turned into money Desmond could indeed clear his mother's farm and go to school, and then to college, and it was his highest ambition to obtain a fine education. He was an ambitious lad. Creedon was restless and excited all the evening; for him a great decision was to be rendered. He had come to know that Brooks was indeed an expert, and should the latter decide that his claim was of value it meant that for which he had been struggling a long time, as he had said, for fifteen years. Creedon did not sleep; much danger would not have kept him awake, but the possibilities of the dawning day did cause exceeding restlessness. Desmond noticed that the woodsman did not sleep and went over and sat near him. "What's the matter, lad; why don't you sleep?" "Why don't you sleep?" "To tell the truth, I can't." "Neither can I." "I don't see what keeps you awake." "The possibilities of the coming day." Creedon was in a thoughtful mood, and Desmond asked: "Why are you so anxious to get rich?" "Lad, I'll tell you: I am thirty-three years old; I started from home when I was less than eighteen; my father was a poor man. Living in our town was a rich man who had a lovely daughter; she was just fifteen. I had known her from the time we were wee little tots, and we fell in love with each other, although she was fifteen and I but a little past seventeen, but her father was rich; he despised low people, and that girl and I agreed that I was to leave home, go into the world and earn a fortune, and go back and claim her. We made a solemn agreement, pledged ourselves under the stars, she was to wait for me even if I did not return until I was a gray-haired man. Boy, she is waiting yet; she is a handsome woman now--I have her photograph--and once a year I receive a letter from her. She has urged me to return; her father is dead and she has a competency in her own right, but I am not willing to go home, marry her and live on her money; and besides, I want to get rich--real rich. I wish to buy her the finest house in our native town, give her horses and carriages; I'll die before I will return poor. The people in the town have often and often hurt her feelings by their deridings, telling her that I had forgotten her, that if I did succeed in winning a fortune I would never return to her, but would marry some one else. They told her I was a thriftless vagrant, never would get rich, and through all this she has remained true to me, and every time I receive a letter from her she urges me to return. I don't know; if my mine turns out all right I will return, if it don't I will not return, and here I am just about to learn what the chances are. It means to me life, love, and happiness, or a return to the endless longing that has inspired me for the last fifteen years; but, boy, I will never return unless I have a fortune." "No wonder you are restless, and I am now as much interested in our success on your account as I am on my own." "I have high hopes, lad--yes, high hopes." On the morning following the dialogue related, all hands were up bright and early and they started for the mine, and in two hours were on the ground. Creedon was pale as a pictured ghost while pointing out to Brooks the indications, and Brooks also was excited as he made his study. We will not bore our readers with an account of the investigations made by Brooks, but will state that at the end of the second day he was compelled to announce that the mine was valueless. Desmond thought he had never seen a more disconsolate look on any man's face than the one that settled over the face of Creedon when the announcement was made. "Your mine don't amount to anything in itself," said Brooks, "but it carries a suggestion; it is a compass that points to where a valuable mine may be found. We are not in it yet; to-morrow I will make a survey and I may get indications that will carry us to the ledge where the gold ores extend in paying quantities--yes, I think I can read the indications as plainly as though the road were mapped out." Brooks spent two days, and then said: "It's all right; there is a mine somewhere, but I must have the proper instruments and testing utensils. I will leave you and Desmond here in the mountains and proceed to the nearest settlement and secure what I need. Creedon, I can almost promise you that we will find a rich digging, and it will be more accessible than this one." "I have a better plan," said Creedon. "What is your plan?" "We will go and get the dust that the lad found; we will carry that to the town, dispose of it, get our money, make our deposits in the bank, and then start in on the search. Possessing the knowledge that you do, we will find a mine. I am not discouraged yet." It was so agreed, and the party made their way back to where they had their store of dust. Creedon had made some deerskin bags so that the burden would not fall upon one person. The dust was all secured and they made a start for the town. On the night when they made their last halt before ending their trip in the town, Brooks, the wizard tramp, took advantage of an opportunity to talk to Desmond alone. He said: "Lad, to-morrow we will be in the town and we will have money. I have a proposition. It will take a year or two to develop matters in case I do locate the mine; you cannot afford at your time of life to spend a year. I do not need you with me now. I am a man again, thanks to you, and I will make a confidant of Creedon. He is a manly, honest fellow, and will watch over me. Our joint interest will make him a splendid sentinel. I feel that we are sure to win, if not in one direction in another. With my scientific knowledge and his practical knowledge we will win, but it may be two or three years. This is a fascinating life for you, but you cannot afford to lose this valuable time." "What is it you are about to propose?" "I can send you home with five thousand dollars and I will still have money enough to carry on our purpose. You can clear off the farm and go to school; you are ambitious, and in less than a year you will be prepared to stand an examination for college, and you can go with a cheerful heart, for if my life is spared I will win a fortune for you. I have no use for a fortune myself; I am working for you and Amy." "But suppose something should happen to you? Do you remember you have not made your revelation?" "I propose to provide for that; I will confide to you a document. It is not to be opened until you are assured of my death, so living or dead you shall in good time learn the great secret that I have held all these years." "I must think this matter over," said Desmond. "There must be no thinking. I have decided as to what you must do." "And you do not want me to go back at all?" "No, I want you to go home to the State of New York; I want you to go to clear off the farm and go to school, and I will attend to your affairs out here." "I will decide in the morning." That night Desmond thought over the whole matter. He had become fascinated with the life in the mountains, but when he revolved the whole matter in his mind he saw that it was indeed wiser for him to return to his home; and under what joyful circumstances he would return! He could clear the farm and have money in the bank; he could go to school and go to college, and devote his whole attention to study without any worry or fear, and in the morning he greeted Brooks with the announcement: "I have decided to obey you." CHAPTER VII. A SAD PARTING--PROPHETIC WORDS--ON THE TRAIN--A SENATOR'S SON--LEADING UP TO A TRICK--GENUINE FUN AHEAD. There came a sad look to the face of Brooks, and he said: "I shall miss you, Desmond, but I feel it is for the best. You are a youth of great promise. I do not mean to flatter you, I am speaking the truth, and it is in your interest that I so warmly advocate your return to the East. I desire that you become an educated man, a graduate of college; I wish you to secure your degree. And let me tell you now there was fate in our meeting, and very remarkable consequences may follow our acquaintance begun and maintained under such strange circumstances." Desmond had never beheld his strange friend, the wizard tramp, under a similar mood. There appeared to be a prophetic spell prompting the words of the strange man. "I hope you do not wish to get rid of me." "No, I am speaking in your interest alone, lad; my life has been a wasted one, yours is just commencing. You can be of some use in the world, I have been a nuisance. I have a strange tale to tell--yes, Desmond, like many others I have encountered a romance in life. I deliberately threw myself away, but where I failed you can win; there is a chance for you to become a useful man; great honor may await you because you possess the qualities that win success. You are brave, firm, and persistent, also enterprising; with these qualities, in this land, any young man can win a success against the great throng of unambitious and careless men like myself." "Can you trust yourself?" "I can." "You are certain?" "I am." "You do not need me?" "I do not." "Remember, your weakness upon several occasions permitted you to fall." "I have considered everything; I have an object in life now and a prospect." "A prospect?" "Yes." "Is there anything you are concealing from me?" "I am considering your interests alone," was the reply. "But your revelation?" "It is not necessary for me to tell you once again that I have provided for you to learn the secret of my life in case anything should happen to me." Desmond at once began his arrangements for a return to the East. He had been away for many months; he had plenty of money; his return would be in great triumph in every way. He purchased fine clothes, which he was able to do even in the far Western town where he was stopping, and when he arrayed himself in his good clothes even Brooks was surprised at the wonderful transformation well-fitting attire made in the youth. Desmond was indeed a fine-looking fellow, well educated comparatively, and as is not unusually the case, he was naturally capable of adapting himself to changed conditions. He did not seem awkward in his good clothes, but appeared as though he had worn fine attire all his life. At length the hour came when Desmond and Brooks were to part company. The wizard tramp had a sad look upon his face, although he tried to be cheerful and jovial The attempt, however, was a failure. He said: "I will not go with you to the train, Desmond, we will part here, and you can address your letters to me here; I will arrange to have them forwarded to me in case I go prospecting again." "You will go prospecting, I suppose, of course." "I cannot tell; but remember, if anything happens to me I have arranged for you to be communicated with." There came a look of concern to our hero's face, and the discerning Brooks said: "You have something to say." "I have an idea." "Well?" "There is great peril in the wilderness." "Yes." "There have been cases where men have lost their lives and their deaths have not become known until many years afterward." "That is true, lad, and I have calculated for that." "You have?" "Yes." "How?" "You will know if such an event should occur. In the meantime let me tell you if a year should pass and you do not hear from me you will know that I am dead." "And then?" "Tell Amy." "And then?" "She may make a disclosure to you. Remember, I have taken every precaution." "I do not know why you should withhold from me your life secret. No harm could come of an immediate revelation, but of course you have your own reasons for withholding your story." "Yes, that is it, I have reasons; no harm might come of an immediate revelation, but I have reasons of a very satisfactory character to myself. You will understand and appreciate them when they are made known to you. Desmond, I am a changed man; you need have no fear concerning me now; time has righted a wrong. I am strong now--that is, normally strong--all will go well, I believe, if not with me at least with you." A little later and our hero was on his way across the country to the town where he was to take the train, and a better equipped lad for adventure never boarded a train, and lo, he encountered several very thrilling adventures ere he arrived at the valley farm where kind hearts beat to greet him. Desmond had been on the train but a few minutes really when he observed a tall, country-looking young fellow, who fixed his eyes on him. As has been demonstrated all through our narrative, Desmond was a very quick, discerning chap; in the language of the day, he was "up to snuff," and the instant he caught the eye of the country-looking fellow he knew that something was up, and he discerned more which will be disclosed as our narrative advances. Desmond had not boarded a through train; he was to go to a large town where he would meet a through express. The train he had entered was a way train, and he seated himself by the window. No one was in the seat with him at first, but soon the country-looking chap took a seat beside him. The latter appeared to be a jolly, innocent sort of chap, and he addressed the young adventurer with the words: "Hello!" There came a merry gleam in Desmond's eyes, as he asked: "Do you take me for a telephone?" The stranger arched his eyebrows, and demanded: "A telephone?" "Yes." "What makes you ask that question?" "Because you yelled 'hello' in my ear." "I've heard about telephones, but I never saw one." "You never did?" "No; what are they like?" The question was asked seemingly in the most innocent manner, but the keen-witted Desmond's suspicions were at once aroused, and on the instant he made a curious discovery. The fellow was a make-up, under a disguise, and consequently under immediate suspicion also. "So you never saw a telephone?" "Never." "You _tell_ me that?" "Yes." Our hero knew he had a long journey before him; he was naturally very fond of a joke and excitement, and besides he had instinctive hatred for designing men. Our hero was aware that the trains, as a rule, are infested with sharps, and the efforts of the railroad companies to squelch these nuisances are not altogether successful. Our adventurer determined to have a little amusement, and if his suspicions were fully verified he was resolved to teach at least one sharp a good lesson. We will repeat, Desmond did not look like an athlete or a youth who had seen the rough side of life; he could easily be mistaken for an ordinarily bright youth who had much to learn. "So you really never saw a telephone?" "Never," repeated the man. Desmond, having determined upon his course of action, assumed a most serious air, and with the greatest earnestness graphically described a telephone, and the stranger appeared to be all interest and attention, and expressed his surprise by innocent ejaculations, as our hero related the wonderful possibilities of the telephone. It was an amusing scene, or would have been to one who was under the rose and understood that a game was being played. When Desmond's description apparently, as stated, told in the most earnest manner the sharp, as we shall call him, said: "Well that beats me, it beats anything I ever heard. See here, stranger, you are making a fool of me with a big fish story because I am a green Western man, born and raised on the prairie." "No, I've told you the truth." "Well, well, you come from the city?" "No, I am going to the city." "New York?" "Yes." "Is that your home?" "Well, _New York lies near where_ I live." "Dear me, what wonderful sights you have seen!" "Yes, sir." "That New York is a wonderful place." "You bet it is." "I am going there some day--yes, I've said I'd see New York some day and I will. It must make a man blind for a few days to go around there." "Well, yes, it is rather dazzling," said Desmond. So the conversation continued for quite a time and finally the stranger rose and went away, saying he would return immediately. Quite a respectable-looking man took the vacated seat beside Desmond, and the last neighbor asked: "Do you know that green-looking chap who was just talking to you?" "No, sir, I never saw him before." "Then you don't know who he is?" "No, sir." "That is a son of Senator F----, the richest mine owner out in this section; he looks like a countryman. You see he was raised in the West, but he is one of the most honest and good-hearted fellows in the world, liberal to a fault, fond of fun, but a good and true friend to any one." Desmond studied the man who was giving him this unsolicited information, and he concluded that the nice-looking man was sharp number two; he was up to this sort of business and perceived the whole game. "Yes, he appears like a good, honest fellow," said Desmond. "Honest? why, you could trust him with all you had in the world." "Yes, he looks that." "He is one of the kindest-hearted fellows in the world. I tell you if you get into trouble he is the man to aid you. He is the best pistol shot and rifle shot in the land. Why, that fellow has fought off a whole tribe of Indians. The redskins fear him as a white man fears the devil, and his father is one of the richest men out in this section, as I told you." "Yes. He don't look like a millionaire's son." "No, but he is all the same, and he appears to have taken a great fancy to you. I was watching him while he talked to you; I tell you no one will interfere with you anywhere in this land if they know that he is your friend." "That's good." "Yes. He is a splendid fellow." The man who had volunteered all this information walked into a forward car, and a few moments later the senator's son, so-called, returned, and as frequently occurs in far Western trains, the particular car in which Desmond was riding was deserted. Our hero and the countryman had the car all to themselves, and after a little further talk the senator's son said: "I wish some greeny would come in here, we'd have some fun." "How?" "I'll tell you, I am a regular juggler; I know all the tricks of gamblers and I'd fool a fellow." "Do you know all the tricks of gamblers?" "Yes, and sometimes I beat the game just for fun. You see I am down on gamblers, I just like to beat them. Generally there are one or two of those rascals on this train, but they know me; I don't get a chance at them any more, so I sometimes amuse myself by astonishing greenhorns. By ginger! but it's funny I've never been in New York; I am half a mind to go right on to the great city with you." "Yes, come along," said Desmond, a merry twinkle in his eyes. CHAPTER VIII. PLAYING TO CATCH A WEASEL--A SHARP'S SCHOLAR--OPENING UP OF THE GAME--TWO BIG HANDS--A CRISIS. "I can't go, but I'd like to; but you give me your address, and some day you will see me in York. I feel like the man who said, 'See Venice and die;' I want to see New York. Say, they tell me there are a great many sharpers in that wonderful city." "Yes, it's full of them." "Well, wouldn't I have fun beating those fellows, especially on the race track, eh? They tell me these sharps are as thick as mosquitoes in August down on the race tracks." "Yes, they hover around there." "I like you, young fellow." "Thank you." "Yes, I do." "So you said." "You're honest; I like an honest young fellow every time. Are you an orphan?" "A half orphan." "Your mother dead?" "No, my father." "Well, I am just the other way--my mother is dead and my dad, he is away up. They say he is a great man. I reckon he is, but I am no shakes; you see I care more for fun than lands. Now, see here; I'll teach you some tricks. Would you like to learn?" "Yes, I would." "Good enough, and when you get back to York you can punish some of those sharps there, for my occupation is gone out here; they won't let me play against them or I'd beat them every time--yes, I beat their game and then give the money away to some poor person who needs it; but they don't know you, and before we get to the end of the route some of those fellows may get aboard, and as I said, they don't know you, and we'll have some great fun; you can beat the game." "I'd like to do that." "You would?" "Yes." "Why?" "I was beaten once." "You were?" "Yes." "At what game?" "Three card monte." "Well, well! and did they ever come the thimblerig on you?" "Yes, I had a taste of that also." "Then you've been through the mill?" "Yes." "Well, now, see here; I'll teach you the game, and you are the only one I ever will teach it to; you are honest. But if I were to teach the game to some fellows who claim to be honest they would start in as gamblers right away." "I never will." "No, I can see that in your eye; you've got an honest face; I like you clean through." "Thank you again." "Yes, and I am going to learn you a trick or two." "I'll be glad to learn." The man produced his cards and said: "I always carry an outfit with me just for fun." "Is that so?" "Yes." "That's fine." We cannot in words describe the peculiar tones of our hero or the singular expression upon his face, but he was playing for great fun. He held in reserve a great surprise for the senator's son, a grand climax and tableau was to close the scene, or rather, as Desmond classed it in his mind, grand comedy. He did not know just how the fellow intended to work his game; he believed the method would be a novel one, but he was ready--yes, permitting himself to be led on to the grand climax. The wizard tramp was an expert gambler and he had taught Desmond a great many tricks in order to put the youth on his guard, and also for amusement during their lonely hours together. All there was to learn about the trick Desmond already knew, but he pretended ignorance, and let the sharp go ahead. He proved an apt scholar, however, for the senator's son said: "Jiminy! I don't know but I am doing wrong." "Doing wrong?" "Yes." "You learn so quick you appear to be a natural gambler." "I am pretty quick at learning points, I will admit." "You are great." Our hero had just about mastered the intricacies of the game when, lo, three men entered the car, and the sharp whispered to the lad: "Great Scott! here are a lot of 'gambs' as sure as you are alive. I wonder if they will give me a chance at them; if they do I'll show you some fun, if they don't you are up to the trick, you are my pupil, and you can show me the fun." "That's so." "Lay low, my friend, don't go too fast or these fellows will become suspicious. I want to catch them good, and we will if you play it right." Desmond was on to the trick; he saw how the game was to be played, and he appreciated that it was indeed a neat little trick. They were working to fleece him differently from any little game he had ever seen or had read about. The "gambs," as the sharp had called the newcomers in the car, did not betray their game at once. They took a seat a little distance off and commenced playing among themselves "only for fun," as they said loud enough to be overheard. "We'll catch them," whispered the sharp. "I don't know; they do not appear disposed to let us into their game; maybe they are acquainted with you." "Never mind, they will go for you. Let me see, I'll go out of the car, see! and then they will make your acquaintance. I'll be at hand in case there is a row." "Yes, I see." "We must catch these fellows and teach them a lesson." "We will." "We will have to blind them. Let me see; have you any money to make a bluff on?" "Yes, plenty." "Make believe you are making a bet with me and show a roll, then we will bait them and they will go for you; and, oh, won't we give 'em a lesson? You bet we will; we'll just clean them out and give the money to some needy person--that is, you can--and you'll meet many a poor cuss before you get to New York." "You can meet them anywhere." "Have you got a roll?" "Yes." "A good sized one? for we want to give them a good bait." Desmond was playing his part of the game well--very well--his whole manner was right up to the mark--indeed, he did a fine piece of acting. He pulled out a roll of bills, pretended to dispute with the sharp, and suddenly exclaimed: "I'll bet you a hundred." "No, no, young fellow, I don't bet," said the sharp. "I know I am right, I'd only be robbing you." "I won't let you rob me; I am up to what I say." The youth put an emphasis on his words which the sharp did not notice; he thought he had such a sure thing, he was not looking for a false "steer." Desmond saw the glitter, however, in the sharp's eyes at the sight of the roll, for it looked like a big pile of money, and the sharp appeared to feel, as indicated in his face, that the pile was already his own. "By ginger!" he said, "you are a dandy; you can play this game right up, but don't be too anxious or you will scare those fellows off; just take it easy, let them lead you on." "Oh, I know how to work; don't you forget I am a Yorker." "Yes, I see you Yorkers are smart fellows. You know a heap, I can see that; but I did learn you some?" "Yes, and when we get through here, I'll teach you a trick." The sharp shot a keen glance at Desmond, and the lad saw that he had been a little premature, but it was only a fuse that flashed, and the sharp said, speaking in a very low tone: "I'll go in the next car, but I'll be on hand at the right moment. I want to enjoy the laugh when you catch these fellows. You are sure you are on to the trick?" "I am." "You must keep your eyes well open." "You bet I will." The sharp left the car, and after a moment one of the confederates came over and took a seat alongside of Desmond, and in a jolly, familiar tone, he said: "You bucked the senator's son down, didn't you?" "Well, yes." "It takes a good man to buck him down; He's got lots of stuff and sand too, but you bucked him." "Yes, I did." "We're having a little game here to pass the time--it's awful dreary these long rides. You see, we are salesmen and we've had some of these fellows out here trying to rope us in, and we are trying to learn the game." "Don't you know the game?" "No; do you?" "Well, I know a little about it." "Come along and show us what you know." The party got together; Desmond appeared hale-fellow-well-met with the rogues, and the game was played amid a great deal of laughter, until one of the party said: "By Jove! boys, I am on to this thing." "You are?" "Yes, I am." "You daren't bet for fair." "Yes, I dare." "Oh, come off." "I'll bet for fair; I'll give every one of you a chance." "You will?" "Yes, I will." "Come off." "I am in earnest; who'll go first and bet me?" "I will," said one man. "All right." The cards were thrown and a bet made, and the dealer was beat and lost apparently a ten-dollar bill. "All right; I was beat that time. Who'll take a second hack at it? I've got it all right, and I'll catch some of you fellows." "Will you?" "I will, by thunder." The trick was being played in the most bungling manner, simply because when properly played the exposure would have shown the game. The second man bet and won, and the dealer said: "I give it up, let's play a little game we know something about." "What will it be?" "I'll deal you fellows a little faro; we might as well pass the time that way as any other." A game of faro commenced and Desmond went into the game, and in a little time the original sharp came in the car and wanted to take a hand, and it was then that the gamblers said: "No, we won't let you; you are a 'jack' player; we are only amateurs." The party played faro for a little while and then a regular game of poker was proposed. The latter was a game that all hands could play in for a trick; even the senator's son was permitted to enter the game, and winking in a knowing manner to our hero he did get in the game, and the four proceeded up to a crisis where, as usual, two men held hands of value, and as it chanced, the original sharp was the man who held a hand against Desmond, and he said: "Here, I'll only make a small bet; I don't want to win your money." "I'll bet you anything you want," said Desmond. "Hello! are you in earnest?" "Yes, I am." "Do you really want to get my money?" "Yes, I do." "Dead sure?" "Yes." "I've a big hand, I'll tell you that before you start in." "That's all right, I'm betting on my hand." "Now see here, young fellow, remember this is poker, and on principle I always claim when I win, so don't bet high on your hand." "I'll go as high as you choose." "And you know what you are doing?" "Yes." "I am in dead earnest." "So am I." "Everything is barred?" "Yes, everything," said Desmond. "All right; if you will have it so swing out your roll. I'm betting heavy on this hand, but I've warned you, remember." "Yes, but you can't bluff me," said Desmond. CHAPTER IX. ALMOST A BREAK--A NOVEL GAME TO ROB--OUR HERO'S ARTISTIC ACTING--A TABLEAU AND A GRAND SURPRISE. Again the sharp fixed his eyes upon our hero, but it was not a give-away; Desmond was playing his game too well. He appeared like an excited gambler, an amateur, who apparently believed he had a sure thing. "I'll warn you once more," said the sharp. "To the dogs with your warning, you daren't bet." "Oh, yes, I dare bet, but I like you; I've a dead sure hand, you can't beat me." "That's my lookout." "Then you know just what you are doing?" "Yes, I do." "These men can bear witness that I want to throw up my hand." "You needn't." "And you will really bet?" "Yes, I will." "With your eyes open?" "Dead sure." "All right; what is your raise?" Desmond gave a lift and the sharp raised back, and so the play went on until the stake was a thousand dollars on the two hands, and the sharp said: "See here, young follow, five hundred is enough for you to lose." "No, no, I am not losing." "You ain't?" "No." "Suppose you are mistaken." "I can stand it." "You can?" "I can." "All right; no use for me to attempt to stand against a young fellow like you. I begin to suspect you've been playing innocent, and I will teach you a lesson; I raise you a hundred." "I see it and go two hundred better." Each time a bet was made the money was laid on the table, and it was a very exciting scene and moment. The sharp looked puzzled; he had laid out for a dead sure thing, but there had come a complete change over Desmond, and it was the latter fact that scared the sharp. He hesitated, but at length, in a slow tone, said: "I'll see you a call," and he laid down his cards. He held four jacks, a great hand, but one that is often beaten, of course, and it was beaten on this occasion, for, strange to declare, Desmond held four kings. Right here let us offer an explanation. Our hero was playing against a false deal; the man who was leading him made the fatal mistake that he was working with a gudgeon on his hook, consequently he was not watchful. The wizard tramp had taught Desmond a great many tricks, and the lad's natural discernment and watchfulness had prepared him for the hand when the great trick was to be sprung, and unwatched he worked a bigger trick. He did not know what the hand was he was pitted against, but he had been let in to gamblers' tricks, that is, "snide" gamblers. These fellows in making a false deal do not win on the highest hands, for they always know the hand against them. The fellow who was seeking to rob Desmond thought he knew our hero's hand, but it was right there he was fooled. Our hero had worked his own trick, as stated--he stole a hand so deftly that the unwatchful robbers did not see him do it, and it was there he had them. He was really taking a slight chance, but only a slight one, and what followed? Well, it was a case of the biter bitten, and when Desmond exposed his hand there came a look upon the sharp's face that can never be described, but which might be photographed with a snap-shot machine. There fell a dead stillness in that car for a few seconds, and then the defeated sharp said: "Aha! you are a cheat." "Am I?" Desmond was perfectly cool. "Yes, you are, and that money is mine." "Is it?" "Oh, see here, young fellow, don't you attempt to bluff me, or I'll mark you." As intimated, there had come a great change over Desmond. He did not look like and he certainly did not act like the same person who a little time previously had been learning gambling tricks from the sharp. The gambler attempted to rake the money from the seat, and it was at that moment the real fun commenced. "You miserable rascal," cried Desmond, "lay a finger on a bill on that seat and I'll pin your hand to the car seat." Well, there was a scene of consternation around there just at that instant, and our hero said: "I've been carrying out your programme, amusing myself with a sneak thief, and now, Mr. Senator's Son, you have evidence that Yorkers do know a thing or two, and you get yourself together and get out of this car and off the train at the next station, or I'll make a horse-fly net of you. Is that plain English? Take your own money, I don't need it. You are under cover, but let me give you a pointer--you play the senator's son too well altogether to make a success of it." The group of gamblers stared in silence. They did not dare make a hostile move; there was something about Desmond in his transformed appearance that froze them--indeed, even his youth was a mystery to them, for he acted like a man who had had years of experience. "You started in, gentlemen, to play a big game of robbery, but ran up against a snag. I am letting you off easy--very easy--but you see we young fellows from York are not malicious." The gamblers had indeed gotten off easily, and we will here explain that they did not fear Desmond in a scrimage; but they would have feared any one who would have made a fight, as they did not wish to draw the attention of the train men to their scheme which had been exposed. Had they been winners they would have made a fight, but the game they were attempting was one of highway robbery, for they had been outwitted in the deal, and had no claim upon the money. The train arrived at a station and the gamblers started to alight. They felt bitter, and the self-styled senator's son said to Desmond: "The train will stop here fifteen minutes. You are a good fellow, I like you, I'd like to have you stop off a minute and have a cool drink with us." Desmond well knew the scoundrel's purpose, but being fond of adventure he determined to give the rascals a still greater surprise. He was in splendid condition, his muscles were developed up to the consistency of whit-leather, and with a smile he rose to follow the man who had invited him to alight for refreshment. The gambler stepped off the car ahead of Desmond; the latter followed, when the former suddenly swung round and made a vicious lunge at the youth who had so cleverly outwitted him, and once again the scamp was outwitted. A second time he ran up against a snag, for our hero dodged the blow that was meant for him and countered with a tremendous slugger which landed on his assailant's nose, and over the man fell with a swiftness that would have suggested the kick of a horse, and when he fell he lay there; but two of the other chaps had in the meantime made a rush for Desmond, and they received a rap successively--indeed, they had run in on our young walking champion where he was at home. He was a wonder in science, strength and agility; no two or three ordinary men would have had any show with him at all, and the fact was the assailants so determined, for the attack was not renewed, and our hero stepped aboard the train, the object of the wondering glances of twenty people who had witnessed the assault and its culmination. Desmond sat down in the car as coolly as though he had just gone out for a breath of fresh air. Our hero encountered several other adventures of a minor character, but in good time arrived in New York City. He had not announced his return to the farm, and consequently spent several days in the all-round greatest city in the world. There is no place like old New York; there is more life to be seen in the great American metropolis in one day than can be seen in any other great capital in two. It is a city peculiar to itself, unlike any other, in its situation between two rivers and its nose practically putting out to the sea; in its activities and general loveliness--indeed, it in a wonderful place, and Desmond enjoyed every minute during his sojourn, but at length he took a train up-country and in due time arrived at the station from which he was to team it to the old farm where his grandfather and father had lived and died. As stated, Desmond had not announced his return, and when within a mile of the farm he alighted from the wagon that had carried him over and started afoot. It was late in the afternoon when he arrived in sight of the old farm, and he was standing on a rise of ground looking over toward his old home, when he espied a girl sitting beneath a tree. One glance was sufficient; he recognized Amy, and he determined to steal upon her unawares. He managed to gain a clump of bushes located within twenty feet of where the girl sat, and he had an opportunity to study her unobserved. We will not describe his emotions, but it was a beautiful sight that fell under his delighted gaze. The life on the farm had been of great advantage to Amy in many ways, and in her white muslin dress she appeared so beautiful as to make it seem that she was out of place in that wild region. Her form was perfect in its grace, and her face--well, we will not go into a description, but let it suffice to say that there are few girls in all the world who surpass her in the exquisite loveliness of her face. Desmond studied the girl for a long time and he observed that she appeared to be perfectly contented and happy. She had her mandolin with her, and after quite a period of abstraction she took up her instrument, and soon her splendid voice sounded clear and melodious on the still air, for it was an afternoon when nature rested under a spell, as it were; not a breath of air appeared to float amid the leaves and flowers. A moment, and our hero made the most delightful discovery of his life. Amy was singing and improvising; she did it readily and charmingly, and her hidden auditor was indeed charmed. She was singing to an absent one, and she mingled the name of our hero in her song. It was a plea for the absent one to return, and the sweetness of the melody was not more entrancing than the verses. She appeared to be not only a singer but a poetess, possessed of rare talent. Desmond did not appear inclined to break the spell, but when he saw Amy making preparations to depart he stepped from his place of concealment. The girl uttered a cry; at the first glance she did not recognize the farmer boy, transformed as he was into a gentleman in dress, but when she caught sight of his face and heard his merry laugh and pleasant salutation, she exclaimed: "Oh, Desmond, I did not know you at first. How elegant you look!" "Thank you; how is my mother?" "She is well, but did not know you were coming home; neither did I." "Well, no, I thought I would give you a surprise. It's all right, here I am, this side up with care." "Your mother will be delighted." "And you?" "I am giddy with delight, and I hope all is well with you and with my--" The girl stopped short and said, "Mr. Brooks." "Yes, when I left him he was all right." "Did he come with you?" "No, he remained behind to transact some business; and, Amy, if you are surprised to see me looking so elegant, as you say, you would be more surprised did you behold at this moment your--I mean Mr. Brooks." A shadow flitted across the girl's face, but it was succeeded a moment later by a bright smile, as she said: "Oh, I am so happy, I was never happier in my whole life." "And what makes you so happy?" The question was put abruptly. CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION. Amy suddenly appeared to realize--well, our readers can guess what. It appeared to cross her mind that she was betraying too great happiness, and was a little too free in betraying it. She hesitated and blushed, and after an instant of embarrassment Desmond said: "Oh, don't be afraid, tell me why you are so happy." "Everything makes me happy, and I shall continue to be happy unless--" Again the girl stopped short. "Go on," said Desmond. "Unless I am to be taken away from your mother." "Do you desire to remain with my mother?" "Yes." "Why?" "I love your mother." "You love my mother?" "Yes, I do." "And who else?" The question came in a pointed manner; Amy was a girl nearly sixteen. "My--I mean Mr. Brooks." "Who else?" The girl did not answer. "Come, Amy, who else do you love?" "You are real mean." "I am?" "Yes." "How?" "You know." "I do?" "Yes." "I don't want to be mean, but tell me who else you love?" "I won't." "You won't?" "No." There was bantering in the tones of both these young people at that moment. "Shall I tell you who I love?" "Yes." "I love my mother." "You can't help it." "I have learned to love Mr. Brooks, your--I mean--well, Mr. Brooks." In a tantalizing tone the girl asked: "Who else?" "Oh, you're real mean," said Desmond, imitating Amy's tone at the moment she had made the same remark to him. "I don't want to be mean." "You don't?" "No." "Will you keep my secret?" "Yes," came the eager answer. "Honor bright?" "Yes, honor bright." "You won't tell even my mother?" The girl did not answer. "Come, promise." "I promise." "I've met a girl I love, and I've made you my confidante, but don't tell my mother." Amy had turned desperately pale, and in a pettish, trembling tone, she said: "Yes, I will tell your mother." "You promised not to do so." "I don't care, I'll break my promise." "Oh, Amy, you are real mean." "I can't help it if I am." "You can't?" "No." "Why not?" "I am mad--real mad." "You are?" "Yes." "Why?" "Because you went and fell in love with a girl; it's ridiculous, anyway." "It is?" "Yes." "Why?" "You are only a boy." "I am?" "Yes." "What are you, pray? you are only a girl." "I know it." "I couldn't fall in love with a mere girl, could I?" "Yes, you could." Desmond laughed in a merry manner, and said: "Well, to tell the truth, I did fall in love with a mere girl. Do you want to hear about her?" "No." "You don't?" "No, I don't." "I am going to tell you all the same; you are the girl I've fallen in love with." There came a bright, happy look to Amy's beautiful face as she said: "Oh, you are real mean." "I am?" "Yes." "Why?" "To tell me that so suddenly." "Well, who else do you love?" "I love you." "All right; go and break your promise and tell my mother," said Desmond in a provoking tone, following his advice by encircling Amy's waist and imprinting upon her red-hot cheek a kiss. "You tell your mother yourself," said Amy. "No, I won't; you said you would." "Then I will." "You will?" "Yes." "Well, well!" "Your mother will be glad." "What?" ejaculated Desmond. "Your mother will be glad." "How do you know?" "She told me so." That night there was a happy party under the old farmhouse roof. Mrs. Dare had met her son with tears of joy in her eyes, and Desmond had told the weird tale of his remarkable adventures. At once our hero set to work to prepare for college. He had talked the matter over with his mother and with Amy, and in due time he did enter Amherst College, and for a long time his adventures ceased. He heard occasionally from Mr. Brooks, who appeared to be doing well and who sent money on at intervals, but no explanation. And so the time passed until Desmond graduated and returned home. He met his mother and Amy, and a moment later there came forth from the house a well-known figure; it was Brooks, the whilom wizard tramp. Again there followed a pleasant evening, and on the following morning Desmond was out bright and early to take a walk over the farm. He had gone but a short distance when he saw a figure in the grove near the house. He advanced and met his old friend the wizard tramp. "You are out early," said Desmond. "Yes, I thought I might meet you." "And you will now tell me how you have succeeded?" "Yes, Desmond, I will tell you all now, and I owe all to you. We are rich--very rich. We found the mine, Creedon and I, and we got capitalists interested and developed it. You were our silent partner, and to-day you are worth a quarter of a million and I am worth as much more, or rather Amy is, for I have been working for my child." "I have suspected all along that Amy was your daughter. Has she told you anything?" "Yes, she has told me she is to become your wife." "What do you think of it?" "It has been the one hope of my life that you would win her love and she yours. It was for this reason I insisted upon your returning to the East, and the wisdom of my plans is fully confirmed." "You have a revelation to make to me." "I have made the revelation--Amy is my own child." "And is that all you have to reveal? I've known that all along." "That is my most important revelation, but I have another to make. My father was the younger son of an English nobleman; he married a beautiful but poor girl, as the world counts riches, and his father drove him away, and he came here to America. He never saw his brother again; his nephew, my cousin, inherited the estates and title, but strange to say, I was the nearest of kin. Five years ago my cousin died; he left no estate, but the title which had been maintained in honor by my ancestors has descended to me, and when you marry Amy you will marry a lord's daughter." Desmond meditated a moment, and then said: "I am satisfied to marry the daughter of plain Mr. Brooks." "Thank you, my son, but I shall clear the estate, and for a season at least dwell in the ancient halls of my ancestors. I will remain to witness your marriage and shall then go home to England. And now comes my last revelation: you and Amy are distantly connected; my remote ancestors were yours also. Your grandfather came down from the younger line a long time back, but blood as good as any one's flows in your veins." "Yes, from my mother." "I admit it, _from your mother_." Our readers know what followed. Amy and Desmond were married, and on the night of the wedding he remarked to his father-in-law: "This time I took no desperate chance." "Neither did Amy when she intrusted her future happiness to you," came the bright and elegant answer. The whilom wizard tramp did return to England, and it was in the ancestral halls that Desmond and Amy spent their delightful honeymoon. THE END. 
12424	----	[Illustration: THE TRAIL OF THE TRAMP by A-No. 1 "THE FAMOUS TRAMP WHO TRAVELED 500,000 MILES FOR $7.61"] [Illustration: Portrait of A-No. 1] THE TRAIL OF THE TRAMP BY A-No. 1 THE FAMOUS TRAMP WRITTEN BY HIMSELF FROM ACTUAL EXPERIENCES OF HIS OWN LIFE. Illustrated by JOSEPH EARL SHROCK EIGHTH EDITION PRICE, 25 CENTS. THE A-No. 1 (TRADE MARK) PUBLISHING COMPANY ERIE, PENN'A, U.S.A. Where to Obtain Our Books _To The Public_:-- You may purchase our books of any news agent, aboard every passenger train in the United States, Canada, England and Australia, carrying a "news butcher." At depot and other news stands and all up-to-date news and book stores. If residing far in the country, your store keeper, always willing to handsomely add to his income, may get our titles for you by requesting us to furnish him the address of the nearest jobber. _To The Dealer_:-- The American News Company and all its branches throughout the United States and Canada, and all other reliable jobbers from Halifax to San Diego and from Dawson City to Key West _always_ carry a complete line of our books in stock. Dealers should furnish a fair display to our books and explain to customers that their text is not only good reading but also that the stories are based on actual experiences of the author who wasted thirty years on the Road. Do not bury the "A-No. 1 Books" on shelves or in train boxes, but give them a chance to prove their great selling merit. One copy sold is sure to bring a sale of the complete set to the reader, so entertaining are the stories which cover every interesting phase of tramp life. Yours respectfully, The A-No. 1 Publishing Company _Erie, Pa., U.S.A._ An Introductory. CHAPTER I. "The Harvester." "It is my turn tonight to relate for your entertainment a story of my past, and I shall repeat to you the most pathetic happening that I have ever experienced in all my life. I have never been able to eradicate its details from my memory, as I witnessed its beginning with my own eyes, and its ending, many years later, was told to me by one of the principal participants." "I shall not repeat to you one of the same, old, time-worn tales of how slick hoboes beat trains, nor fabled romance concerning harmless wanderlusters, nor jokes at the expense of the poor but honest man in search of legitimate employment, but I shall relate to you a rarely strange story that will stir your hearts to their innermost depths and will cause you to shudder at the villainy of certain human beings, who, like vultures seeking carrion, hunt for other people's sons with the intention of turning them into tramps, beggars, drunkards and criminals--into despised outcasts." The man who spoke was a typical old-time harvester, who was known amongst his acquaintances as "Canada Joe", and the men for whose entertainment he offered to tell this story had, like himself, worked from dawn until nearly dark in the blazing sun and the choking dust of the harvest field, gathering the bounteous wheat crop of one of South Dakota's "Bonanza" farms, and who, now that their day's toil had been accomplished and their suppers partaken of, were lounging upon the velvety lawn in front of the ranch foreman's residence, and while the silvery stars were peacefully twinkling in the heavens overhead, they were repeating stories of their checkered lives, which only too often brought back memories of those long-ago days, before they too had joined the flotsam of that class of the "underworld", who, too proud to degrade themselves to the level of outright vagrancy while yet there was a chance to exchange long and weary hours of the hardest kind of labor for the right to earn an honorable existence, were nevertheless, included by critical society in that large clan of homeless drifters--"The Tramps". [Illustration: This evening it was Canada Joe's turn to tell a story.] * * * * * And this evening it was for "Canada Joe" to tell a story. [Illustration: a farm scene] CHAPTER II. "The Samaritans." Many years have passed since the day that "Peoria Red" and I were caught out of doors and entirely unprepared to face one of the worst blizzards that ever swept down from the Arctic regions across the shelterless plains of the Dakotas. We had been "hoboing" a ride upon a freight train and had been fired off by its crew at a lone siding about fifty miles east of Minot, North Dakota. In those early days trains were few and the chances that one of them would stop at this lone siding were so small that we decided to walk to the nearest water tank, which in those days of small engines were never more than twenty miles apart, and there catch another ride. It was a clear winter morning, and the sun's rays were vacillating upon the snow, that like a gigantic bedspread covered the landscape, and which made walking upon the hidden and uneven track a most wearisome task, the more so as neither of us had tasted a mouthful of food since the preceding day's dinner hour. While we were debating and wondering how and where we would rake up a meal amongst the few and widely scattered ranches, the wind veered to the north and commenced to blow with ever increasing force. Soon heavy, gray clouds followed in its wake, and quickly overcast the sky, and by two o'clock in the afternoon the rapidly growing fury of the wind commenced to drive sharp pointed particles of snow before it, which, as the storm increased to cyclonic proportions, changed to masses of rotating darts, which cut into the exposed portions of our illy-clad bodies and made breathing a serious problem. We soon gave up the small hope of being able to reach a ranch house, as to leave the railroad track would have spelled death, as we would have lost our way in a few minutes, as even now, while it was yet broad daylight, we could barely see a couple of telegraph poles ahead of us, and when night approached the ever increasing fury of the blizzard greatly reduced even this short distance. Staggering against the snow storm our one ardent prayer was that we would reach our only hope for succor--one of those railroad section houses, which are located ten miles apart along the right of way of every railroad, and are the homes of a foreman and a crew of laborers who repair and keep the track under constant surveillance. Every moment the cold increased, and although we were spurred on to almost superhuman efforts by sheer desperation to thwart the fate we knew would be ours should we falter by the way, gradually our strength failed us, and although we tried to encourage each other to quicker progress, it took every vestige of our will power to drag our benumbed feet from step to step against the howling, snow-laden hurricane. Peoria Red piteously pleaded with me to stop so he could recuperate, but well knowing the result should we linger, I shouted my warnings to him above the screaming of the storm, and when he reeled and even sank into the snow, I pulled him back upon his feet and forced him to move on. Presently I felt myself overtaken by the same drowsiness that had enthralled Peoria Red, and a queer numbness which as it crept upwards from my feet seemed to kill my ambition to battle for life against the "Death of the Arctic." Just as the last gleam of the blood-red sky which reflected the setting sun was swallowed up in the swirling masses of ice motes, Peoria Red sank beside the track, and although I tried everything to cause him to realize his danger if he failed to follow me, he keeled helplessly over into the snow, while a glassy stare in his half-shut eyes told me that he was doomed. Then my own danger came home to me. Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and I promptly realized that to save my own life I must reach the section house, which I felt assured could not be many miles ahead of me, and where I would not only find shelter for myself, but perhaps obtain assistance to rescue my pal before it would be too late. After taking one more farewell look at Peoria Red I made a step towards the track, but fell heavily to the ground. During the minutes I had lingered to save the life of my partner my feet seemed to have been turned into solid lead. I laughed aloud. As I was yet in full possession of my mental faculties this seemed to me a cruel joke, and I tried to arise so I could by stamping revive the circulation of the blood, but every time I arose half way I tumbled helplessly back into the snow. The desire to live increased, and when I felt the numbness creep from my limbs into my body, I crawled alongside Peoria Red and snuggled closely against him, hoping that our mutual body warmth would stave off the crisis to the last possible moment. He was groaning, and mustering the last vestige of control I yet had over my benumbed hands, I searched about in the darkness until I found his frozen fingers, and clasping them in my own I placed my mouth close to his ear and pleaded with him to bid me farewell. He was too far gone to speak, but twice a faint pressure against my frozen fingers told me that he had understood me, and I responded in the same manner. These were our farewells to each other in this world, a fitting finish to the tragedies of our toilful and thankless lives. I sank back into the snow and while I dreamily watched the snowflakes weave our spotless shroud, I dozed away and dreamed of those glorious, care-free days when I was yet with the "old folks" at home, chasing bright-hued butterflies in the warmth of the sunshine of youth and happiness. The next thing I recall was a burning sensation in my throat, which involuntarily caused me to open my eyes. I felt as if I had slept for such a long time that all my faculties had become useless, for I could not, try as I might, utter a word or move a muscle, although to this day I vividly remember having heard a man, whom I could plainly see as he poured a steaming liquid into my open mouth, exclaim: "Thank God we are having better luck reviving this poor fellow than we had with the other one! Look, he has just opened his eyes, and listen, can you not hear him faintly groan?" Then I wandered back into dream-land--into a most dangerous delirium which lasted for several weeks and during which I hung as if by a mere thread, betwixt life and death. When I recovered my reason, I found that I was domiciled in the bunk house, that together with the section house and tool house form the total of buildings upon every railroad "section" reservation. The foreman and his family resided in the section house, a two-story building; the tool house was used for storing the hand car and the track tools, while the bunk house, a small, one-story building, formed primarily the sleeping quarters, and secondly the social center of the section crew, whose five roughly dressed men were only permitted to enter the adjacent section house, where they boarded, at meal hours, as the foreman's home was at all other times considered by them a sort of hallowed spot. But the bunk house was their own, as within it they slept at night in the wooden "bunks", which were nailed one adjoining the other, all around the boarded walls, while in the center a small stove in which a roaring fire was kept up, made things comfortable for the inmates when they returned in the evenings after their day's work was done, and all day every Sunday--their day of rest. While the men were absent and I was yet unable to attend to my needs, a sweet-faced lady looked after my wants and gave me my medicine. She was the foreman's wife, and her ever cheering words with never a sign of weariness that I, a sick and penniless harvester, should have so unexpectedly become a charge upon her hands, were most grateful to me. I made inquiries among the laborers and ascertained from their answers that I was being cared for at the very section house that Peoria Red and I had striven to reach during the howling blizzard. I tried to find out what had become of my partner, but somehow they evaded my questions and it was many days before I managed by slow degrees to learn from them the facts concerning his absence. During the height of the blizzard the foreman had ordered his crew out and upon their hand car driven at a lively rate by the power of the wind they had inspected every switch and car standing on sidings upon their section, to assure themselves that everything was properly safeguarded. While they were slowly "pumping" the hand car homeward, fighting against the force of the raging snow storm, they discovered us lying closely cuddled together, all but buried in the snow and beginning the eternal sleep of death. They stopped, and finding that we were yet faintly breathing, they loaded us upon the hand car and brought us to the section reservation. Here by every means known to them they tried to revive the flickering sparks of life left in our frozen bodies. In my case they were successful, but Peoria Red, poor fellow, failed to respond to their heroic efforts. The following day they buried him on a slight elevation, diagonally across the track from the bunk house, where, whenever I looked in that direction, I could plainly discern the white board cross that the whole-souled laborers had erected to mark his grave. The section foreman's name was Henry McDonald. He was a kind-hearted, yet stern man who demanded utmost obedience of those whom he commanded, while at the same time he was a loving father to his family. Foreman McDonald had none but the friendliest of greetings for me and he spent many moments at the bunk house trying to cheer me in my hard luck. Whenever I felt ill at ease for having added such a heavy burden to his small income, his quaint answer would always be: "Joe, what little we can do for you we would cheerfully do for any human being in distress. We do not ask for your excuses, as I feel that the Almighty above us will take care of me and my family, the pride of my humble life." When I recovered some of my former strength I did the "chores" for the section foreman's wife, who not only boarded the five members of her husband's crew, but took proper care of her four healthy and ever hungry children. The oldest one of them, a boy of sixteen, was named Donald. Then came a set of lively boy twins of fourteen, who had been baptized "Joseph" and "James", but who were for convenience called Joe and Jim. These twins resembled each other so closely that only their parents and intimate acquaintances could tell them apart. They were inseparable companions, and full of boyish mischief. The fourth child, the pet of everybody, was a beautiful, doll-like baby girl of three, whose name was Helen. [Illustration: When I watched Baby Helen repeat her evening prayer, I turned away, for I realized that I missed that what is most sublime in all creation: A loving wife and devoted mother; a healthy baby and one's own "Home, sweet Home."] There was one singular imperfection about these children, that they had inherited from their father, which was a freak growth of an inch-wide streak of white hair which started from the center of their heads and continued downwards to the base of their skulls, and which as it showed plainly in their black hair made this strange birth-mark all the more conspicuous. Otherwise they were mentally, morally and physically perfect, and while I was convalescing I often stood by the window and watched them at play in the snow and it caused me to shudder every time I heard those youngsters shout with glee while they enjoyed the winter's sports, when I thought of poor Peoria Red whom this same merciless snow helped to murder. In the evenings after supper had been served, I could see from the bunk house window how baby Helen in her sleeping room across the road in the section house knelt and humbly repeated her evening prayer, and then just before she was put to rest for the night, her father would kiss her "good-night", and as soon as he had left the room her sweet-faced mother would smother her with kisses before she tucked her darling between the spotless sheets of her cradle, and many were the times that I turned away from this picture of perfect domestic happiness as tears were welling into my eyes, for I realized that I had missed that which is most sublime in all creation: A loving wife and devoted mother; a healthy baby and one's own "Home, sweet Home." [Illustration: Baby Helen playing in the fields] CHAPTER III. "The Wreck." Gradually I regained the use of my one-time totally frozen limbs, and when I felt myself able to do the severe labor required of men who toil upon a railroad section to earn their daily bread, I begged Foreman McDonald to allow me to work with his crew. I explained to him that this would be the greatest favor he could do for me, who found himself marooned many hundreds of miles from a city, without a job and penniless, in the midst of a bleak, snow-buried prairie. I also argued with him that to give me employment would be the easiest means for me to discharge my debt to him, which, although he absolutely refused to listen to any talk of indebtedness on my part, amounted to a tidy sum. He finally consented, and I commenced my task, fully equipped with warm clothes that were generously donated to me by my fellow laborers. The first time the pay-car stopped and the paymaster handed me my envelope I repaid Foreman McDonald every cent I owed him, and although this settled my financial indebtedness to him, the debt I owe him to this day for his timely help can never be repaid with mere coin. One other time the pay-car stopped, and then the glad holidays of Christmas approached, and when the happy Yule-tide was just a week away, Foreman McDonald procured for each laborer a return pass to St. Paul. We went and made our Christmas purchases and returned after an absence of three days, each of us staggering under the weight of a heavily-laden sack which we carried slung over our backs, from the train into the bunk house. Every spare minute until Christmas Eve there was a mysterious activity within the crowded space of the small bunk house. We were not only busy sorting over the purchases we had made in the big cities, which included a suitable present for each one of our foreman's family down to baby Helen, and one for each of the laborers, but we were kept busy keeping the youngsters from prying into the secrets which we did not wish to be revealed to them until Christmas Eve. One of us had smuggled in a small Christmas tree, while another one had purchased the long whiskers that always go with a genuine "Santa Claus", so dear to the hearts of the children. At last the natal feast of the Savior arrived, and to the complete surprise and delight of the McDonald family, we marched over to the foreman's home, led by old "Santa Claus", who in all his glory of a fur cap, long white hair and snowy whiskers, carried a wondrously decorated Christmas tree. We were royally welcomed, and after the Christmas tree's colored candles had been lighted and our presents had been distributed, we received those which had been purchased for us by the foreman and his thoughtful wife. Amidst the shouts of glee of the youngsters, and especially of Baby Helen, the hours flew past only too soon. The time came for her to be put to bed, and the moment arrived for our departure, but just before we went, the stern overseer of our work descended to the level of a satisfied father, and proudly permitted each one of us to kiss his baby's forehead, a most signal honor considering circumstances. As we were returning to our bunk house, he called from the porch of the section house, reminding us to be sure to be in proper shape on the coming day to enjoy the best Christmas dinner that his wife, who was a very good cook, had ever placed before guests. No sooner had we entered our bunk house than we threw off all the restraint of etiquette which we had to observe at the "big" house, and quickly had a roaring fire in our stove, and while out of doors another blizzard was playing a tattoo upon the telegraph wires and was piling tons of snow upon the right of way, we had brewing in a pot upon the stove something that is not altogether in accordance with the tenets of temperance, but which meant additional cheer to us, whose thoughts were ever and anon slipping back to those days when we spent happy Christmas Eve's in very different surroundings. It was a curious fact, that although we celebrated till into the wee, small hours of the morning, when the first one of us crawled into his bunk it was only a few minutes until all of us had followed his example. We seemed to hate to be left alone. About daybreak a loud pounding upon the door of our bunk house aroused us from our slumbers, and while we rubbed the drowsiness out of our eyes we heard Foreman McDonald calling to us to make haste, as a wrecking train was waiting to take us up the line to clear away a bad wreck. It took little time for us to slip into our clothes, rush to the tool house and throw our track implements aboard the wrecker, and then climb into the coaches provided for our accommodation, in which were other section crews who had been picked up below us, and into which were loaded those for whom we stopped west of our reservation. We had the right-of-track over every other train upon the line, and with six powerful engines pushing a snow-plow at full speed ahead of us, we reached our destination in almost record time, where we were put to work clearing away a serious wreck, which had been caused by a heavy passenger train running into a snow drift during a blinding blizzard, and having at the same time been derailed from the tender back to the rear truck beneath the last sleeper. For three days and nights we worked like beavers, taking turns in eight hour shifts, sleeping and dining in the "bunk" cars attached to the wrecking train, shoveling away the solidly packed snow, "jacking" up the coaches, one at a time, and replacing the trucks upon the rails, and in the afternoon of the third day our combined efforts were rewarded, for amid the gladsome whistling of its engine the released train resumed its interrupted, eastbound journey. We laborers were detained an additional day removing the wreckage, reloading the apparatus used and putting everything into a first-class condition for the resumption of the regular schedule. Then we boarded the wrecker to be distributed along the line. The wrecking train's speed rapidly closed the gap of miles separating us from our reservation, and when at last--at about supper time--we entered upon our own section, we noted a satisfied sparkle in Foreman McDonald's eyes, when the cars, which had heretofore been lurching like ships at sea, spun with hardly a perceivable motion over the well attended road bed. Now the whistle blew for our section house; the brakes gripped the flanges of the wheels, and we gathered our belongings so as not to unnecessarily delay the others, and when the train stopped we soon had our track tools piled in front of our tool house. Then the wrecking train continued its journey, and while we stored our tools away we noted the disappointed look in our foreman's face when neither his wife nor any of his children came to greet him, or at least inquire as to the extent of the wreck, a most interesting item of gossip, considering the lonely location of our reservation. When we had finished our task and the foreman had carefully locked the tool house, and while he walked towards the "big" house where not yet a single soul had opened the door to give him the usual glad greeting, although by the lamp that was illuminating the parlor we could see Mrs. McDonald and her children sitting about the heater, we hustled over to the bunk house, in which we quickly kindled a fire and then brought order out of the chaos we had left behind when we had been so unexpectedly called away to clear the track. While we were thus busily engaged, our work was suddenly interrupted by several almost demoniacal shrieks that seemed to belong to Hades, and as if driven by some common impulse, we rushed pell mell out of doors and towards the "big" house. But before we could even reach it, we stopped short as if rooted into the ground, for there upon the front porch, with his face uplifted towards the starry firmament above him, stood Foreman McDonald, tearing like a raving maniac at the hairs of his head, while through the quietude of the night reverberated his heart-rending shrieks: "Oh God! Give me back my baby! Bring back my darling Helen! Merciful Father, do not punish me so cruelly as this!" [Illustration: "Oh God! Give me back my baby! Merciful Father, do not punish me so cruelly as this!"] While we stood there wondering as to the causes of Foreman McDonald's strange pleading, his wife, pale as the snow, came from around the rear of the section house and begged us to take hold of Mr. McDonald to prevent him from harming himself, and when at this moment we saw the strong man sink into a corner of the porch and commence to pray aloud, we made a rush and after we took hold of him it required every bit of strength we six husky men could muster to restrain and drag him into the section house, where we stretched and tied him upon his bed and gave him narcotics that caused him to fall into a deep slumber. While we sat about his bed watching his every move, poor Mrs. McDonald repeated to us, amid heart-racking sobs, the dire calamity that had overtaken her happy family since our departure. That Helen, the pet of the family and of the rough section men, had disappeared from her home, leaving not a trace. Further questioning elicited from the distracted mother this information: The blizzard had given way to a perfectly calm afternoon, and after they had enjoyed their Christmas dinners, Mrs. McDonald had watched Helen toddle behind her brothers to where the passing siding turned away from the main line, permitting a small pond to form, which, being smooth as glass and swept clear of snow by the storm, offered a splendid opportunity to try out their new skates, which they had received amongst their presents. The youngsters were altogether too busy enjoying their rare sport to pay heed to their baby sister, and when darkness approached they scampered back to the house where they told their mother of the good time they had had. Her first question, however, was concerning the whereabouts of little Helen, as she quickly noted her absence from the returning children. "Boys, where have you left your little sister?" "Why, mother," readily replied Donald, her eldest son, "Helen must have been back to the house long ago, as we have not seen her since she watched us put on our new skates." Tormented by a mother's instinct which told her that all was not well with her child, Mrs. McDonald, assisted by her sons, made a thorough search of the house, thinking that perhaps the baby might have toddled back to its home, tired of watching her brothers skate upon the pond, and had, unobserved by her mother, entered one of the bed rooms and gone to sleep. Carefully she looked through every room and then she searched the whole building from cellar to garret, all the while loudly calling for her missing darling, but the search proved futile. Then she lit lanterns, one for herself and one for each of her boys, and together they searched through the bunk house, the tool house and every other out-building on the reservation, but all their hunting was of no avail, as they found no trace of the child. Up and down the right-of-way they searched, hoping to find the tracks in the soft snow showing the direction the tot might have taken, but every effort was in vain, and they had almost reached the garden gate of the house, all of them broken-heartedly weeping, having given up all hope of ever hearing again of their Helen, when "Spot", the shepherd dog, the playmate of the children, came racing towards them, swinging a rag, that he held between his sharp teeth, playfully about his head. He had been awakened by his mistress's calls for her child, and the lighted lanterns they carried had fooled the intelligent canine into reasoning that this was to be a prolongation of the Christmas festivities of the preceding night, and he had promptly entered into the spirit of the game. Mrs. McDonald called the dog to her side, and examined the supposed rag the beast had played with, and found it to be the first clue that she had thus far discovered, as it was little Helen's red flannel undergarment. Reeling but upheld by the thought that she might not yet be too late, poor Mrs, McDonald ordered her boys to take securely hold of Spot, and then she ran as fast as her fright and weakened feet would carry her, to the dog's house, but its interior and the usual slim appearance of the watch dog, disproved the terrible notion which had caused her to make the hasty trip, that Spot had made a meal of her baby. Grateful from the bottom of her heart for even this small relief in her terrible perdicament, she rejoined her boys, and as sort of forlorn hope, she rubbed Helen's tiny garment against the dog's nose, and ordered the collie to go and find the missing child. The intelligent animal seemed to understand what was demanded of him, for presently, whining as if to appeal to them to go with him, he rushed forward, and as they followed he led them to the pond, then across the tracks where he stopped by a small pile of clothes, which proved to be every stitch of little Helen's garments--shoes, stockings and all, with the sole exception of a tiny gold locket containing her parents' pictures, which Mrs. McDonald had hung by its gold chain around the baby's neck, and the red flannel garment that the dog had brought to their attention, no doubt considering it a most welcome plaything. Back to the section house she dragged herself carrying the tiny garments. Arriving there, she carefully questioned the boys and brought out only one more useless item, that a westbound immigrant train had pulled into the siding to permit an eastbound passenger train to pass them. For four seemingly endless days the poor mother with her three small boys helplessly waited for someone to assist her, her husband and all the other men having gone to the wreck. Telephones were unknown in those days, and with no strong hands to pump the heavy hand car through the foot-high snow that now covered the track, there was nothing else to do but to hope, as she did not dare send one of her sons to the nearest village, not knowing at what moment a blizzard might add another calamity to her burden of woe. In all those long days, until the released passenger train flew past, not a single train passed up or down the line, so all she and her children could do was to weep and wait for her husband's return, to whom she then told all the circumstances of the child's disappearance, which affected him far more than she thought it would be possible. After she had finished her sad story she asked us to give her our opinion as to the cause of the baby's disappearance. One of our men had the most likely solution of the riddle as he thought that the baby had watched her brothers discard their overcoats, and later their coats, as the exercise while skating warmed them, and Helen, childlike, thinking this the proper thing, had in a playful mood discarded her clothes, intending to skate barefooted upon the glistening ice, and finding that the cold snow hurt her feet, and being unable to don her garments, had wandered out upon the bleak prairie and had been frozen to death, the fate that had overtaken Peoria Red and so many strong men. Leaving one man to act as nurse to the foreman, we others returned to the bunk house, as Mr. McDonald's heavy and regular breathing assured us that he would at least rest peacefully until the following morning. For several days, undaunted by constant failures to accomplish anything, we carefully searched the right of way and the prairie for our pet, and had Spot, the collie, assist us, but finally were forced to believe that little Helen had departed for the land of the Angels. In the evenings, to while away the hours and to be in readiness when in the Spring the warm rays of the sun would remove the snowy shroud and reveal to us her mortal remains, we constructed a small coffin, that we carefully painted a somber black, and we also whittled another white cross, which should in due time mark her eternal resting place. For weeks Foreman McDonald raved in a high fevered delirium, but gradually, assisted by the railroad company's physician, who made frequent calls at the section house, and the loving aid and attention of his ever faithful wife, he rallied so far that he again became able to take us out on the track and personally direct our work. Night after night, for months after her disappearance, when our supper had been served at the big house, and we had returned to the bunk house and had blown out the lamp before retiring, the stern foreman, now only a broken hearted father, yearning for his own sweet baby girl, would slip noiselessly, and he thought unobserved, out of the front door of the section house, and slink stealthily to the very spot where his darling's tiny garments had been found, and there amid heart-rending shrieks, which we in our bunk house could plainly hear above the weird moanings of the winter storms, he would dig with his bare hands deep into the cruel snow, searching for his lost baby--his own little Helen. [Illustration: He would dig with his bare hands deep into the cruel snow, searching for his lost baby--his own little Helen.] As Spring approached the warming rays of the sun finally conquered the thick snow blanket that covered the landscape, and led by our foreman we carefully searched the prairie, praying to be permitted to give at least a human burial to his daughter's earthly remains, but it nearly wrecked his mind when even this privilege was denied him, as we found not a trace of the child. Then, hoping to lighten somewhat the fearful burden of woe borne by her parents, we placed those last mementos of her brief visit upon earth into the little black coffin that we had constructed, and gave the baby's garments a solemn burial alongside the mound of my partner, Peoria Red, and above the new mound we erected the other white cross to keep company with the first one, and tell its silent story to the passengers who flew past aboard swift trains, that two pitiful tragedies had been enacted at this lone section reservation within the short span of a few months. [Illustration: decorative symbol] CHAPTER IV. "The Drifter". And Spring came back to the Northland. The trees and bushes commenced to bud. As if by magic the brown winter tints of the water and frost bogged prairie were transformed into a daintily colored green carpet by the sprouts that the slumbering grasses sent forth into the balmy air, while here and there a venturesome flower spread its multi-colored petals towards the warming rays of the sun, and lastly the song birds, the infallible sign of nature's complete resurrection, came home from the Southland and rebuilt their storm-torn nests amid the warbling of gladsome notes, their jubilee song of happiness and satisfaction. With these signs of the re-awakening of Nature there came to me the strange "Call of the Road". Heretofore it had never come as strongly as it came at this time, when after a long and monotonous winter's toil the rattling trains as they shot over our section, the darting birds as they foraged their subsistence, and even the thumping of the wheels under our hand car seamed to beckon me to follow their example and move away. Although I tried with might and main to resist its call, gradually the bunk house became a dungeon, the endless prairie a prison, and the Dakotas themselves became entirely too small to hold me, and when the pay car stopped to hand me my month's wages, I could no longer withstand the temptation to follow the "Call of the Road" and be up and gone. It was a hard matter for me to bid Foreman McDonald and his family farewell, and the last promise I made before I left was, that should circumstances permit I would find my way back in the fall to again take my place with the section crew, that until then would be held open for my return. I drifted to Saint Paul and then down to hustling St. Louis, and from there to beautiful San Antonio, and when the binders cut wide swaths into the ripening, top-heavy, golden grain on the banks of the Rio Grande, I found myself back in my chosen element, toiling long hours during the day in the harvest field, and then until way into the night dancing the fantastic fandango with dark eyed Mexican Senoritas, to the accompaniment of twanging guitars and squeaking mouth organs, and staking my come-easy, go-easy earnings against the "Monte" layouts dealt by swift-handed Mexican Senores, who had crossed the river from the Mexican side for the double purpose of helping to harvest the wheat and trimming, by means of "sure thing" games, the American harvesters. Then came the harvest dance, the festival which indicated that upon the ranch the harvest had been finished, and that I was no longer wanted. So I drifted northward, following the ripening wheat, ever toiling, ever squandering, and always attending the harvest dance which celebrated my exit. When the inclement weather set in, for want of something better to do, I drifted back towards the lone prairie section reservation to take my place in the ranks of those who tamp the ties and tighten the "fish-plates," which hold the rails together. I had hoboed a freight train as far as the water tank, that stood a scant six miles east of the section reservation, and now I walked leisurely through familiar scenery towards my former winter home, hoping every minute to surprise Foreman McDonald and his crew at work on the track. That day, however, they happened to be repairing on the other end of the section, so I managed to slip unobserved up to the front door of the "big" house, where intending to surprise Mrs. McDonald by my unexpected return, I knocked on the front door. To our mutual delight Mrs. McDonald opened the door, and after giving me a glad welcome, asked me into the house. She soon had one of her best meals steaming in front of me, having correctly surmised that a man riding freight trains and walking six miles, needed a hearty repast. Although I was more than anxious to inquire about many items of interest, especially if my long journey had not been made in vain, as my place might have been filled by some other fellow in search of employment, she seemed to completely ignore my presence, for she was only in the dining room during the brief moments when she placed the filled plates upon the table. I finished my dinner, and then, uninvited by Mrs. McDonald, but just as she had taught me a year ago, when I helped her to do the chores about the house while convalescing from my freezing experience, I carried the soiled dishes into the kitchen. Noticing that she was still in full mourning, I made careful inquiries as to whether any trace had been found of the missing child during my absence, to which she sadly replied that nothing had ever become of the land-wide search that had been made. Her apparent reticence caused my curiosity to mount high, and I followed up my question by pleasantly inquiring as to Foreman McDonald's present state of health. She looked at me with an expression of terror in her eyes, as if my words had stabbed her to her heart, but did not answer, and a moment later she could not answer had she wanted to, for heart-broken sobs choked her voice, but she beckoned to me to follow her to the front porch and there she pointed her trembling finger in the direction where they had buried my pal, Peoria Red, and there I could plainly see three small, white crosses. Steeled by the many other woes that she had during a long and dreary year borne with fortitude, she temporarily overcame her weakness, and with a clear voice she counted: "One, two, three," and then the poor woman paused, it seemed the strain had almost been too much for her, and then in a faltering, almost inaudible voice she continued: "Peoria Red, Helen McDonald, Henry McDonald," and then collapsed. I carried her limp, unconscious form into the parlor, and after some efforts managed to bring her out of the faint, and when she had fully recovered so as to withstand the ordeal, she slowly repeated to me the story of her summer's experience, how Foreman McDonald, unable to be without his Helen, had wasted to a shadow of his former self; and in August had died of a broken heart, and how only the thoughts that upon her own frail self had now devolved the duty to provide for their three small sons had given her the strength to resolve not to succumb to a like fate. Her voice brightened when she told me that in all her misery there had come one tiny streak of good fortune to her, a poor, helpless widow cast upon the mercy of the world with three children. The new section foreman, whom the company had sent to fill the vacancy caused by Mr. McDonald's death, proved to be a crusty, old bachelor of perhaps sixty-five who no doubt appreciating a few extra comforts at his age, gladly consented to have Mrs. McDonald remain and continue taking charge of the section house, and the boarding crew, in return for a small stipend and a shelter for herself and her fatherless children. When in the evening the new foreman and the crew came home from their work, Mrs. McDonald spoke a word in my favor, and although there was no need of an additional laborer, the new foreman, after he had heard my story, engaged my services. Until the thawing of the snow I faithfully worked upon the section, but when Spring again set in with full force, there came another attack of the strange fever that drove me onward every year, and, following the "Call of the Wanderlust", I left for the South, having again promised that with the approach of winter I would be on hand to fill my place with the section crew. I drifted along with the harvest, but after the wintry storms that swept over the endless expanse of the plains had twisted off the last leaves which the autumn had burnished to a fiery red, and the nights became too chilly to make out-of-door camping a pleasure, I found my way back to my North Dakota section reservation, which I now considered my regular winter quarters. I arrived at the section house almost at the time when the hand car was due to return for supper, and intending to surprise Mrs. McDonald, knowing that in all the world it would be the poor widow who would give me, a homeless harvester, a glad welcome, I slipped almost noiselessly up to the porch and knocked on the door, but no answer came to my repeated knocks. Then I tried to open the door, which during Foreman McDonald's time had never been known to be locked, and to my surprise I found it bolted. Thinking that perhaps the widow had gone to purchase provisions, I walked around to the rear of the building and tried every door, but found that all of them were locked. A miserably starved black cat, that made a ten foot leap when she first espied me, was the only sign of life on the place, while the many rag-stuffed broken window panes plainly indicated that great changes had been made at the "big" house since my last departure. There was something uncanny in the silence about the place, and a strange gloom seemed to have settled over everything that foreboded to me only evil happenings. For want of something better I resolved to await the return of the section crew from their day's work, and walked back to the front of the house and took a seat upon the steps. I casually glanced across the tracks to where my pal, Peoria Red, was sleeping his eternal sleep, and I was almost stunned by surprise when instead of the three crosses which I had left behind when in the Spring I drifted to the Southland, I counted five of those ill-omened messengers of death. In vain I tried to solve the riddle of these added graves, and was about to cross over to the grave plot beyond the tracks, hoping to find some inscriptions upon the new crosses that would give me a key to the new tragedies that I knew must have caused their presence, when the hand car with the returning crew came into view, and forgetting all other matters, I walked down to the tool house to meet it and was soon cordially welcomed by my old comrades who had "held down" their jobs through the hot summer months. The same foreman, who had taken Foreman McDonald's place was still in charge of the section reservation, and he good naturedly ordered the crew to take proper care of me at the bunk house, where quickly a hot supper, which the laborers cooked and served themselves, was made ready, a welcome meal for a man who had not tasted a mouthful since the early morning. After supper had been cleared away and everything had been made snug about the house, my chance came to inquire why I had found everything about the reservation topsy-turvy, as compared with former days, and I especially inquired as to the well-being and whereabouts of Mrs. McDonald and her three youngsters, and the following is the information one of the laborers gave me: [Illustration: I walked around to the rear of the building where a miserably starved cat, that made a ten foot leap when she first espied me, was the only sign of life on the place.] Mrs. McDonald, with the assistance of her three sons, who had grown into strong lads, had given to the crew of the section house the same motherly care that characterized those days when yet her husband's presence and praises spurred her on to make her best efforts. Every school day she saw her boys ride off to the school house in the early morning upon ponies she had purchased for them, as the school was five miles south from the railroad. Amid the work of the household and the enjoyment that her three sturdy sons gave her, as they fairly adored their mother and did everything to cause her to forget the sorrowful past, gradually the deathly pallor of Mrs. McDonald's face and the lusterless eyes with their heavy black rings beneath them, gave way to red cheeks and the same brilliancy that were hers when she was yet the proud mother of baby Helen. Some days, especially when the darkness had hidden those ominous crosses from her vision, she would sing the songs she used to sing in the days of her happiness, which showed to us rough laborers the fight this weak woman was waging with herself trying to forget, for the sake of her sons, those many sad days which had been hers, so that her mourning for things that had been, would not embitter their future. Almost unawares the Summer followed the Spring, and soon came the glad days for the school children--the annual vacation of the schools--and the three sons of Mrs. McDonald came home to rest from their studies. Gradually unrest, especially in Joe and Jim, the twins, could be noted, as they found time hanging heavily upon their hands. They begged the foreman to permit them to work with the section crew during the months of their vacation, but as they had not sufficient strength to do the strenuous work required of a section laborer, the foreman had to refuse their request. Then they tried to find employment amongst the scattered ranches which here and there commenced to break the monotony of the prairie, but as the planting had been finished long ago, and the harvest would not commence until after school had re-opened, their appeals were in vain. Then they discovered that we had stacked a lot of useless, decayed railroad ties in the backyard of the section house, and they reduced these into stove lengths. After this task had been finished, despair seemed to have taken hold of the boys as there was nothing for them to do to occupy their time. Idleness breeds mischief. One morning when their good mother wondered why Joe and Jim did not show up at the breakfast table, she sent Donald, her eldest boy, upstairs to arouse them. He returned and reported that they were not in their room. Her hasty investigation proved that they had not only not occupied their beds, and their savings bank had been emptied of its contents, but the broken-hearted mother was nearly frantic when she found that her thoughtless sons had disappeared without leaving even a short note apprising her of their intentions, or at least bidding her a brief farewell. This was the last and most cruel blow an unkind fate had inflicted upon poor, suffering Mrs. McDonald, and it was days before they were sure that she would not succumb. In the meantime the foreman and every other friend of the sorrow-stricken widow put every bit of legal and police nachinery they could command into motion, trying to find at least a trace of the twins, and although for weeks they searched far and wide, not a single clue as to their whereabouts was found, nor was a single line or letter received from them by their mother, who prayed for weeks for this favor of Heaven, while at the same time her very appearance, her returned pallor and her lusterless eyes told far better than any words how this last calamity was slowly but none the less certainly eating out her heart. It was almost a month after their disappearance that the bereaved, helpless and hopeless mother received her first clue as to her sons whereabouts. A freight train had been held up on the siding on account of a bad washout, and the crew, finding itself short of provisions had come up to the section house and had requested Mrs. McDonald to prepare for them a meal. While they were dining, one of the brakemen caused Mrs. McDonald to fall into a dead faint when he in a rough but jocular way remarked to her: "I bet you, Mrs. McDonald, that your Joe and Jim are having the time of their lives down in Minneapolis, as I haven't seen them around the reservation since the night I found them hoboing my train into Grand Forks, although our train has passed through here many times since that day. They told me then that they were bound for the "Twin Cities" to pick up a fortune. Have you heard from them lately, Mrs. McDonald? Are they prospering?" The police authorities of Saint Paul and Minneapolis were notified, and although correspondence was exchanged, nothing was accomplished. For two more months Mrs. McDonald waited in vain, hoping against hope that at least they would send a letter to appease her piteous fears as to their fates, while in the meantime she faded away to a mere shadow of her former self, and then suddenly decided to quit the reservation forever. It seemed as if she wished to tear herself away from the place which had brought to her such merciless misfortune. She decided to move into Canada, in those days a newly discovered Eldorado, to which all those turned who were willing to work and to hustle while tempting fickle fortune. On the evening preceding the day Mrs. McDonald and Donald were to depart, after we had finished our suppers, we presented her with a purse of fifty dollars, that we had made up among ourselves, as a token of the high esteem in which we held the unfortunate woman, and too, to assist and cheer her on the journey into an unknown land. Then we filed back to our bunk house, and while we sat about its single room, the gloom that seemed to hold us, spoiled all desire to open a conversation, as the widow's departure meant the loss of one who had been almost a mother to us rough and homeless laborers. Just as we made ready to retire someone knocked on the bunk house door, and thinking that perhaps some wandering tramp had the nerve to bother us at this late hour in the night, we roughly ordered the intruder to be gone. Instead of going, the knocks continued, and angry at the persistence of the person, we pulled the door open, and to our complete surprise found that it was Mrs. McDonald who had knocked for admission. Realizing the great honor she was conferring upon us, we politely bade her to enter and asked her to be seated. She was attired in the dress in which she intended to make the journey on the following day, and its sombre black of deepest mourning, aided by the yellow light of our lamp, transformed the pallor of her haggard face into an almost ghastly white. We patiently waited for her to open the conversation, of course expecting that she had come to thank us once more for having presented her with the purse. It was some time before she could find her voice and then in the saddest tone that weaver heard, she begged of us strong men, as the last favor she would ever ask of us, to make for her two more white crosses, the same as stood above the other graves, and to deliver them to her in the early morning, and then, as if this last humble request had completely shattered her nerves, she tottered, an almost lifeless wreck, out into the moonlit night. None of us uttered a single word, it seemed we had been stunned by the solemnity of the poor widow's request, but we opened the bunk house door to see that no harm befell her upon her trip back to the "big" house. To our surprise, instead of going to the section house she tottered over to where Foreman McDonald lay buried, and we saw her pray long and earnestly by the little mound that held his remains; then she arose and wearily dragged herself to the place by the railroad track where little Helen's garments had been found, and here once more she sank upon her knees in prayer, and then staggered back towards the "big" house, where, just before she entered the gate of the fence surrounding the yard, she knelt a third time to utter a prayer. While we silently stood and watched and pitied the poor broken-hearted woman, she heavily keeled over. We rushed to her side to give her assistance, and found she had fainted away, but in her unconsciousness she muttered the words "Joe" and "Jim", and we readily understood for whom her last farewell prayer had been offered. We carried her into the section house where we revived her, and then we returned to the bunk house and until late into the night sawed, hammered and whittled those two crude crosses into shape, supposing Mrs. McDonald intended to take them with her into Canada, to keep as a memento of her sad experiences. In the morning after we had been served with breakfast, we handed her the crosses which we had carefully wrapped in paper so that upon her journey their ominous outlines would not recall unpleasant memories and cause her needless anguish. Then we went back to the bunk house to await the arrival of the train and assist in loading aboard the bagggage that Mrs. McDonald was to take with her into Canada. Only a few minutes had elapsed, when to our surprise, the foreman called us to the door and commanded us to follow him, Mrs. McDonald and Donald, who carried the two crosses we had made for his mother. We followed them to the little graveyard upon the right-of-way, and while we stood by bareheaded, frail Mrs. McDonald planted the two new crosses at equal distances from the other three, and we saw that upon one of them was written "James" and upon the other "Joseph." After she had scattered prairie flowers over all the graves, we offered up silent prayers, and then with not a single dry eye in our sad procession, we returned to the reservation. In the afternoon we flagged the westbound passenger train, and after wishing her God speed, we tenderly placed the sobbing widow and Donald aboard, bound for the then little known and undeveloped western section of Canada, and when the tail end of the train passed us, a sportily dressed fellow, who, with other passengers, was sitting upon the observation platform of the last Pullman, upon perceiving those plain, white crosses, which glared so conspicuously above the green sward of the prairie to the right of the train, while he pointed his finger derisively in their direction, made some remarks to the other passengers, and laughed. He did not know the story of the tragic events which caused their presence nor that under four of the little crosses the hopes and happiness of poor Mrs. McDonald lay buried. [Illustration: Five crosses look over the railroad tracks] CHAPTER V. "The Call of the City." It was the "Call of the City", the true brother of that other curse of humanity, the "Call of the Road", that had been heard by Joe and Jim. For years previous to their unannounced departure they had felt its subtle influence when they read about the grand city in the newspapers which were occasionally found upon the right-of-way, having been thrown there from the passing trains by passengers who had read them. The "call" had also come to them while listening to the stories of adventure among the wonderful palaces and the sodden slums which comprise every city, which were told them by passing tramps as they stopped to rest, to ask for employment, or more often to beg food at the section house. But the strongest incentive of all was the hoboes, who as they passed by aboard of freight trains, with their feet dangling out of open box car doors or hanging to the mail and express cars of passenger trains, waved friendly greetings to the lads, which they interpreted as a beckoning to the city. Except for the rare instances, when the railroad company transferred their father to take charge of some other section, or the few times when they had made trips to the nearest villages, which were small and had but few inhabitants, the McDonald boys had never seen another world except the one whose boundaries melted into the endless, undulating prairie around their home. Their parents, who were ever worrying about how to properly provide for their family, had--as nowadays so many other parents do--entirely overlooked the fact that growing boys should be permitted to travel, even if only upon an excursion, to curb within them the inborn and almost irresistible desire to roam, which all have inherited from ancestors, who attired in wooden shoes and coarse apparel, and carrying gunny sacks, had landed not so many years ago at Castle Garden, after having crossed the stormy Atlantic in the steerage of a sailing vessel, and who instead of bringing along a fancy "family tree", had brought with them a pair of calloused, but willing hands, intending to win with them a way to wealth and fame, in the New World, for their own humble selves and their "proud" descendants. The "Call of the City" found in the twins willing listeners as the cessation of their school duties, the enforced idleness at the reservation, and the monotony of their existence became a bane to them. They hearkened to the call that had already conquered a vast army of other boys, sons of those who till the soil and labor out-of-doors earning a fair competence, which although it demands hard toil, gives in exchange pure air, healthy food and every comfort and luxury that willing hands backed by intelligence can produce. For months prior to their departure on their trip, whenever they could gallop beyond ear shot of their elder brother, while riding to and from school, and at night when alone in their bedroom, Joe and Jim pictured to each other the grand future which they thought every city offered to them, comparing it favorably with the drudge of the life of monotonous toil that would be theirs at the section reservation. They repeated the stories of success they had read in the newspapers, the magazines and even in their school books, which told in glowing words of poor lads who had forsaken the country to become rich and famous in the cities, but they never repeated, for they had never read the stories of those unaccountable numbers who had "moved to town" and who had been swallowed up by the city's whirlpool, to become slaves of the mills and the factories, serfs of the bars and the counters, and who had been forced to toil from dawn to dusk to barely eke out an existence that meant residing high up in the simmering, sweltering tenements, or in damp, pest-ridden basements, deep down in the bowels of the earth, which coupled with improper food, quickly reduced their vitality, so that although they were young in years, the merciless lash of the city's fight for a living had bent their backs and prematurely aged them. Joe and Jim realized that it would have been an impossibility for them to wring from their mother her consent to let them try their luck in the city, for since their father's death, they had become her moral support. They felt ashamed to be loafing idly about the reservation until school opened again and have their widowed mother support them, as they were now sixteen years of age, and more than able to support not only themselves, but could and would gladly have supported her had an opportunity been offered them. The more they argued the matter between themselves, the more they became resolved to journey to some city, and at least until the time came for them to be on hand at school opening, make their own way and perhaps their fortune, which seemed to them within easy reach. They had saved almost fifty dollars, which had been earned running errands and working as water-boys whenever an "extra" gang had been sent from the division point to assist their father's crew in putting in a new culvert, building a new switch or doing other heavy work requiring more man-power then the reservation crew could supply. This money was kept in a small savings bank, to which they had easy access. Their scheming and plotting had finally reached the point where it needed only the least provocation to cause them to skip, and this chance came to them one evening while the section crew was in their bunk house, and their mother and Donald, whom they had not taken into their confidence, were busy in the kitchen, when a long, eastbound freight train pulled in upon the siding to let the westbound passenger train pass it. The boys were lounging in the front yard and as the freight train slowly drew past them they espied some open, empty box cars, and as if driven by some strange impulse, they pressed each other's hands and whispered that now "the time had come," and then dashed up to their room, emptied the savings bank, packed their few necessities into small bundles and, carefully avoiding the rear of the section house where the kitchen was located, and keeping on the alert to prevent meeting or being seen by any of the section men or train crew, they ran down the side of the train, which was just pulling out of the siding, climbed--as they had so often seen hoboes do--into an empty box car, and slinking back into the darkness of its farthest corner, they were soon traveling beyond familiar landscape. Gradually they became accustomed to the jolting and rattling of their side-door Pullman and stretched themselves upon its hard floor and fell asleep. It must have been almost morning when, as they stopped at the last water tank west of Grand Forks, they were aroused from their slumbers by the bright rays shed by a lighted lantern held in the hands of a brakeman who roughly shouted: "Which way, kids?" "To Saint Paul," answered Joe. "Got some money, lads, with which you can square your ride?" inquired the railroad man, as he raised his lantern higher so he could the better estimate the fare he could charge his hobo-passengers, who had now risen and were rubbing their sleep-laden eyes, and then he recognized the twins, whom he had so often greeted from his passing train, and added: "Well, I will be danged if you hoboes aren't Widow McDonald's twins," and then, after he had questioned them as to their destination, and while he withdrew his lantern from the door, he finished the conversation by excusing himself: "It's all right, my lads," he cheerfully said, "all charges have been settled as we brakemen do not collect toll from friends. It's the hoboes we are after to make them 'hit the grit'." and with that he was gone. [Illustration: They were aroused from their slumbers by the bright rays shed by a lantern held by a brakeman who discovered them in the box car.] A few hours later they landed at Grand Forks, N.D., and by keeping close to their side-door Pullman they had the luck to reach, unmolested, the outskirts of Minneapolis on the evening of the third day after leaving their home. When the freight train slowed up to pull into the railroad yards, imitating the other hoboes whom they saw diving out of all sorts of hiding places, they jumped to the ground, scaled the right-of-way fence and made a bee line for the wonder of all wonders, that they had read, heard and dreamed so much about--"The City." [Illustration: The train enters the city] CHAPTER VI. "The Golden Rule Hotel." It required some moments before the boys became accustomed to the strange sights which spread themselves out before their wondering eyes. The speed and the clanging of the horse-drawn street cars, the shouts of the teamsters, the gas lamps, which now as darkness was approaching were lit, while the brilliantly illuminated saloons, the gayly decorated windows of the stores and shops, in fact everything seemed to them a far different world from the one they had just left behind them upon the bleak prairie. They walked about the streets until they felt that they must find a shelter for the night, but being afraid to accost one of the many strangers who rushed past them and who not even deigned to cast a glance at the open-mouthed lads who marvelled at the people's haste to be gone, they tackled a gaudily uniformed policeman. "Yes, my lads," the good-natured guardian of the peace explained to them, after he had noted their red-bandana wrapped bundles and that their suits were somewhat the worse for their three days riding in the box car, "you of course do not wish to stop at the Windsor, the highest classed hotel in Minneapolis, but I think that I know the proper place for you, it's the 'Golden Rule Hotel', the best place in our city for lads like you." And then he directed them so they could easily find the hotel, and as a parting word, told them that it was a most reasonably priced place, as they charged only fifteen cents for a night's lodging, and then finished his fatherly advice by adding, that every cent saved meant a cent gained. They followed the officer's instructions, and within a short time found the "Golden Rule Hotel". They entered its office, a spacious well-kept room, but the next moment they were almost frightened out of their shoes by the loathsome sight which met their eyes, as they found themselves in the midst of a lot of cursing, semi-sober harvesters; crippled, alcohol-marked vagrants; blind mendicants; drunkards and blackguards, in fact a choice collection of the most degraded specimens of humanity. James nudged Joe and whispered: "Brother Joe, this is no place for fellows like we are. No place for lads who have come to seek employment. Let's get out of here as quickly as we can and hunt a different lodging house." Joe, who acted as the treasurer, having in mind the sum that they could save by stopping at a reasonably-priced lodging place, calmed his brother's fears by replying: "Wait and see what sort of a place this is. The company may not exactly suit us, but has not the policeman told us that this is the best hotel in Minneapolis for us, and look, Jim, doesn't this office look rather inviting?" While they yet argued the point, the manager of the hotel, an oily-faced fellow, accosted them: "Strangers in Minneapolis, eh?" he queried, with utmost kindness, while at the same time his shifty eyes scanned the country-style suits they wore. "I welcome you to our hustling city, and invite you to make your headquarters at the "Golden Rule Hotel" during your stay." Noting that the lads were yet undecided what to do and correctly surmising that they had received an old-fashioned, Christian home training, he suavely added: "Our charges are most reasonable, only fifteen cents per night, and every Sunday morning we hold here in the office a most beautiful song and prayer service, and I am sure you lads will be glad to join us in singing grand hymns." This last statement settled the whole matter, for the twins felt that a place in which prayer meetings were held and holy hymns chanted could never be an unfit place for the likes of them, and instead of landing in a "hobo-joint" as they had first feared, they concluded that they had actually struck a home. Perceiving the splendid impression his appeal had made upon the newcomers, the manager almost pushed the lads before the counter and made them write their names upon the soiled and tattered register. Then he explained to them that the charge was fifteen cents for one night's lodging, but if they wished to settle in advance by the week only seventy-five cents would be the rate. Seeing that he could save sixty cents, Joe paid for each a week's lodging. They left their bundles in the manager's care, and then inquired for a reasonable priced restaurant, to which they went and satisfied their appetites. It was nearly midnight when they found their way back to the "Golden Rule Hotel", whose manager was waiting their return, and who explained to them that as every "room" was taken he was anxious to show them to their "beds", so he could lock the hotel and retire for the night. He lighted the stub of a candle, and telling the boys to follow him, he led them up a creaky stairway. Higher and higher he mounted, and when the twins thought he must have almost reached the roof, he opened a small door, and picking his way by the flickering light of the candle between wooden partitions, he at last stopped in front of two unoccupied bunks, one above the other, and after telling his surprised guests that these were the "beds" for which they had paid, and after cautioning them to blow out the candle as soon as possible, he bade them good-night and vanished into the darkness, and a moment later the slamming of a door below them told the lads that they were virtually prisoners, as the hotel had been locked for the night. "Joe," whispered Jim to his brother, after both had inhaled several whiffs of the foul atmosphere into their lungs, which had heretofore only been accustomed to breathing the pure air of the prairie, "in what sort of an inferno have we landed?" And then he held the candle high, and by its unsteady, sickly-yellow light he counted five bunks, one above the other, in the tier they were to sleep, built from the floor right up to the ceiling, with only sufficient space intervening for a human being to crawl into. These vertical tiers of bunks looked for all the world like boarded up book shelves in a library, one adjoining the other as far as their eyes could penetrate the darkness of the hall, and in each and every bunk was a snoring human wretch, while the suffocating atmosphere caused by the overcrowding and the insufficient ventilation, which was greatly enhanced by the heat of the summer, made the "Golden Rule Hotel" an absolutely unfit place for human habitation. "Let's get out of this horrid place, even if we have to sleep upon the chairs down below in the office," whispered Jim; but before he could add another word or make a move to leave the hall, a threatening voice, emanating from the tier of bunks in the darkness behind them, whose owner had evidently been disturbed by their conversation, roughly commanded them to "hush up and blow out the candle." Unused to the ways of the city, the frightened boys obeyed the command, and after they had undressed in the darkness, they climbed into the bunks and being tired out by their sight-seeing, they were soon asleep. In the early morning, after they had made their toilets by an open faucet to which a cake of perforated laundry soap had been chained, they descended to the office and there demanded of the manager the return of the money they had paid for their week's lodging, less the cost of the lodging of the preceding night, but this worthy not only absolutely refused to refund a single cent, but derided them so for being "Reubens" that they decided to stop, just for spite, at the "Golden Rule Hotel" until they received their money's worth. After a hasty breakfast, they copied from the want columns of the Minneapolis Tribune, the best paper in the city, the addresses of those who had inserted advertisements which the twins thought would suit them, and set out to search for a job, that they had long ago planned should form the first stepping stone towards the fortune and the fame they had resolved to gather in the city. It is an easy job for someone who has had experience in this line to find employment in a city. Many a bright city chap quits his job in the evening to be almost certain to pick up a new one the following morning. But for Joe and Jim, filled as they were with childish dreams of easy fortune, it was a far different matter, especially while they had dollars clinking in their jeans, as a boy possessing plenty of loose change is mighty particular about the employment he accepts, so, although the lads hunted high and low, from early till late, they could not find suitable places, and after supper they returned to the "Golden Rule Hotel" to "roost" again in their bunks, surrounded by those occupied by the riff-raff of the slums. [Illustration: "Let's get out of this horrid place," whispered Jim, when by the unsteady yellow light of the candle he counted five bunks, one above the other, each of which held a sleeping hobo.] Joe and Jim were awakened the following morning by the racket the rising "guests" of the hotel made, and when they reached for their trousers to dress themselves, they not only found that these had disappeared, but that their shoes, hats and what proved to be their heaviest loss, their coats in which they had their purses with every cent that they possessed, had taken wing during the night from beneath their pillows, where they had hidden them for safety. They tried to explain their loss to the other inmates, but instead of receiving sympathy for their trouble, only malicious grunts and malevolent leers were their reward. A few moments later the manager, having been apprised of the theft, entered the dimly lighted quarters, not to search the other bunks for their stolen property, but merely to console his robbed guests, so they would not report their loss to the police and cause unpleasant comment in the papers. While they listened to him they saw only ugly scowls upon the rum-soaked visages of the other inmates of the place, who had crowded around and seemed to greatly enjoy their misfortune, and who broke into shouts of boisterous laughter when the manager explained to the boys that the golden rule of the "Golden Rule Hotel" had always read: "Do everybody--before they do you." [Illustration: decorative element] CHAPTER VII. "False Friends." The manager of the "Golden Rule Hotel" raked up a couple of outfits of cast-off hobo clothing, and coaxed Joe and Jim into dressing themselves into these, and then advised the twins to quickly find employment so they could purchase better attire. On the preceding day, when they were yet the possessors of almost fifty dollars, they had refused many offers of good employment, but now when they made the rounds calling upon the same employers, dressed as they were in their tattered clothes, to plead for a chance to be permitted to earn a living, these same men had suddenly become stony-hearted and some of them even refused to listen to their tale of how their clothes had been stolen from them. They attempted to fill jobs at common labor, but even in this they did not succeed, as their young bodies lacked the necessary strength to wield the heavy picks and shovels. When the dinner hour arrived, Jim, who had never been in all his life as hungry as he was at this moment, remarked that he thought it would be best to hobo the next train back to their home, but Joe caused him to quickly get over this attack of homesickness, when he asked if Jim had the nerve to dare face their mother without a cent and in the rags he wore. When the street lamps were lighted and the stores and offices commenced to be closed for the night, they made their way back to the "Golden Rule Hotel" where, luckily for them, they had at least a place to sleep in the bunks for which they had settled a week in advance. While they walked down the city's thoroughfares, they were attracted by the splendor and the brilliant illumination of a restaurant. They stopped and with famished countenances looked through the French plate glass windows and watched the diners enjoy toothsome tidbits, and then wearily moved on--their pride would not permit them to wait for a departing diner to accost him for the price of a loaf of bread wherewith to still their gnawing hunger. When they entered the "Golden Rule Hotel" office not a single word of greeting or sympathy was extended to them; on the contrary, the manager cautioned them to be careful not to have their present suits stolen from them during the night, and they realized how true was the perverted meaning he had given to the Golden Rule. It was yet early in the evening and none of the other inmates had retired for the night, but so completely exhausted were the boys that they asked for a candle and then in the semi-darkness of the hall found the numbers of the bunks they had occupied the preceding nights. Remembering the manager's warning to take better care of their property, they placed their clothes under the straw stuffed mattresses. They blew out the candle, but just at the moment when they were ready to crawl into their bunks, Jim whispered to Joe: "Brother, come let us pray the way, mother has taught us." And there in the darkness of the hall they knelt upon the bare floor, and while their torturing consciences told them that their own misfortunes were only a fraction of the woe they themselves had inflicted upon their poor, widowed mother, they pleaded with God to assist them in the extremity of their distress and at least not permit them to perish of sheer starvation. At break-of-day, aroused from a fitful sleep by the gnawing of their hunger, they dragged themselves down to the hotel office to scan the morning papers for some chance to find employment. But even this early there were several fellows ahead of them eagerly copying addresses from the want columns. While they waited for their turn to look into the paper, several lodgers came down stairs. "Are you looking for jobs, my lads?" they were addressed in a friendly manner by one of these early-risers, who was a rather small fellow and whose clothes and general appearance were somewhat above the average of the other inmates of the hotel, and as the twins nodded assent to his query, he continued: "Are you strangers in Minneapolis?" And as Joe affirmed this question he in a still more friendly tone added: "It's a hard matter for strangers, expecially if they are not dressed in style, to find employment in this city at this time of the year." His confiding conversation so impressed the thoroughly disheartened twins that upon his further questioning, they recounted to him their experiences since the moment they climbed into the empty box car that brought them to Minneapolis. [Illustration: They stopped in front of a brilliantly illuminated restaurant and watched with famished countenances diners enjoy toothsome dainties.] The fellow listened attentively to their story of misfortune and then asked them to give to him their correct name and home address. Joe, thinking that at last they had found a sympathizing friend, cheerfully furnished the stranger with their correct names, and gave to him as the address of their home the name of their lone prairie siding, Rugby, North Dakota. Then their newly made acquaintance pulled out a notebook into which he carefully wrote their addresses. Next he proposed that they wait for the appearance of his pal, who was yet on the floor above them, when all of them would go out and eat breakfast. "A man's stomach is his best friend", and no sooner had the fellow invited the starving lads, who for more than thirly-six hours had not tasted a solid bite, than they overwhelmed their friend with proofs of their gratitude. A little later their benefactor's partner, a medium-sized, clean shaven and neatly attired fellow, came down the stairway. Their friend called him aside and they held a hurried conversation. Then they joined the twins and all went to a nearby restaurant. While the lads made away with a quantity of food that caused the astonished waiter to gape with surprise, their two benefactors, while they rattled silver dollars in their pockets, explained to the lads that Chicago was a far better city for them to find employment in than either Minneapolis or St. Paul, and that if the twins would join them on a hobo trip to that city they would see to it that they would not suffer until a job was found for them. It was just like hanging candy before a baby, and Joe and Jim without a second thought accepted their offer. After they had settled for their breakfasts, they took the agreeably surprised youngsters into a clothing store and bought for each of them a serviceable outfit of clothes, and it now was not a matter if the boys would go with the strangers, but if the strangers would accept the boys, soul and body. "I propose that we get out of Minneapolis as quickly as we can," suggested the fellow whom they first met in the "Golden Rule Hotel" office, and his pal assented and they walked to the railroad station where they purchased tickets to the first station beyond St. Paul and within an hour they were aboard a train traveling to their new destination. Upon their arrival at this station, a small hamlet, their first acquaintance told them that his road name was "Kansas Shorty" and his partner's "Slippery". The lads were surprised that these men should not use their Christian names, but as they were accustomed to hearing all the section laborers and every harvester called by a "monicker" or "name-de-rail", they kept their thoughts to themselves, and Joe, after listening to these instructions gleefully remarked: "Gee, I wish that you would give each of us a hobo name the same as you have." After some discussion they nicknamed Joe, "Dakota Joe" and Jim, "Dakota Jim." They waited for some time to try to hobo some passing train, but as none of them stopped or slowed up sufficiently for them to risk swinging onto it, when the dinner hour drew near, Slippery visited a nearby country store and soon returned carrying canned foods and other material from which they could prepare a substantial "Mulligan", which is made by stewing in a large tin can almost everything edible over a slow fire. They collected some castaway tin cans and then went to a thicket by the side of a rippling brook, where they built a roaring fire and when the embers began to form they placed upon the glowing coals the tin can containing the "mulligan". Then all repaired to the side of the brook to scour the cans and make their own dinner toilets, and here, while the twins washed their faces, their pals noticed for the first time the singular white hair-growths upon the backs of their heads, their inheritance from their forefathers. Joe explained to their wondering companions that these streaks of white hair were their birth-marks, but Slippery, afraid that these conspicuous freaks of nature would draw too much attention to their young comrades, collected some sprigs of sage, and after he had pounded the same to a pulp between some stones, rubbed it into the white hair upon the boy's heads, with the result that within a few moments they were dyed to almost the same shade as the rest of their scalps. By this time the "mulligan" was ready to serve and they dined upon the savory hobo-stew, and after they had filled their inner selves, according to hobo usage they stretched themselves in the shade of the trees to take their after-dinner rest. Unused to the ways of the road, yet pleased with the fate that had brought them into the partnership of men who at least provided them with substantial meals, soon the satisfied snores that emanated from their throats proved to the others that the twins had landed in dreamland. The moment Kansas Shorty, who had anxiously waited for this chance, had assured himself that the lads were soundly sleeping, he beckoned to his pal and both moved beyond the earshot of the sleepers. "Slippery," Kansas Shorty addressed his pal, "what do you think of our lucky catch in the 'Road Kid Line'? Don't you think that we are the luckiest tramps that ever rambled over any railroad to make a catch of two healthy and good-looking lads as these two are?" And then after he had permitted his cunning eyes to wander back over the forms of the peacefully sleeping lads he continued: "And wasn't it funny to see how they appreciated the breakfasts we bought for them, the new store suits we paid for, and how eagerly they accepted our offer to permit them to hobo with us to Chicago, and how now they are blindly devoted to us, willing to follow us through Hades?" Here Kansas Shorty paused and added in a whisper, "And wouldn't they be surprised if they knew the truth, that they had paid for their own as well as our meals, their new suits, their railroad tickets, and even the mulligan with their own money, as we are the ones who, during the darkness of the night robbed their bunks at the Golden Rule Hotel?" Then the two rascals broke into hearty laughter, as they recalled how, amongst the hundreds of the homeless wretches who lodged at the Golden Rule Hotel, they were the ones guilty of having stolen everything the twins possessed in the world, and when Kansas Shorty repeated: "First we stole their clothes, then we found their well-filled purses, and now, to finish our streak of luck we have them thrown into the bargain," they renewed their laughter, which was abruptly stopped when Kansas Shorty suddenly asked his pal what he intended to do with the lads. "Of course we can take them to Chicago with us and find them some sort of a job, and thus rid ourselves of their presence," answered Slippery, intending to shed himself of their useless company, and ever wary of trouble he wisely added, "Kansas Shorty, you well know the trite saying: 'Two is company; three is a crowd; four is the road to disaster,' so let us give the lads a square deal and take them with us to Chicago and 'drop' them there after finding employment for them." But hardly had he finished this well-meant suggestion, than Kansas Shorty almost in a rage retorted: "Slippery, you are proving yourself to be a regular yegg by the soft talk you have just been giving me. You belong to the class of men who steal and rob, while I am a "plinger", and beg for a living. To your kind a boy is a handicap, while to our class a good-looking boy is a most decided asset as a boy to us means a heavy increase of our incomes and of our comforts, and now you tell me that you are anxious to find jobs for these lads whom I could easily train into first-class Road Kids." Slippery, dumfounded at the almost monstrous proposition his comrade made, who was ready and willing to spoil the youngsters' futures by transforming them into common beggars, failed to find an immediate answer, and now Kansas Shorty, abusively speaking, continued: "You, Slippery, have been my rambling-male for almost a month, but now I propose that we part comradeship and you travel on to Chicago and let me take charge of these sleeping lads, as I do not wish other plingers to know that I have been guilty enough to permit two likely looking lads to slip through my hands by permitting them to accept employment, and" he added as a sort of final argument, "when I take charge of these kids, I shall know how to keep my bread well buttered." Although Slippery himself was a confirmed criminal, he bore only the deepest of loathing for that class of scoundrels of which Kansas Shorty had proudly proclaimed himself a member, and his hatred of the begging class of tramps welled up in him and with a sudden movement his hand swung back to his hip pocket and glaring in a most menacing manner at Kansas Shorty he waited for further developments. Seeing that Slippery meant business, this scoundrel now took recourse in diplomacy. "Slippery, old pal," the miserable coward stammered, while at the same time his eyes followed the yegg's arm down to where he saw his hand gripping a large caliber revolver, and although perceiving his danger should he further provoke the anger of his pal, he was unwilling to give up the youngsters without at least a struggle, "what is the use of two such chums as we have been until this moment, to quarrel about a couple of good-for-nothing runaway kids? Let me make you a fair proposition. You said that two is company, while three is a crowd, and as I am sure you will not court the risk to drag two road kids with you past all the Johnny Laws (policemen) who will get wise to you when you have a "family" hoboing with you, I propose that you take one of these lads with you to Chicago, while I shall take it upon me to look after the other one," and when he noted that Slippery's hand had loosened its grip from the pistol, he said in almost pleading tones, "two of them will be entirely too many for you, while one will make a good companion for you in yegging, and the other one will make a good assistant for me in plinging, and to promptly settle the question whom each one is to take let's flip a dollar into the air, and if it falls with the head up you take your choice, while if the eagle turns up I have the first pick." Slippery gave in to Kansas Shorty's plausible argument because he not only wished to avoid bloodshed, but he also realized that the two lads would be a handicap to him, as he had his face and Bertillon measurements in every rogue's gallery in the country, and he saw a chance to thus peaceably rid himself of his companion, whom he now despised far more than he would a rattlesnake. He gave a nod with his head and Kansas Shorty flipped the dollar high into the air, and when it fell to the ground the eagle showed up on top, and Kansas Shorty went over to Jim, who seemed to him somewhat more tractable then his brother Joe, and more suited for his purposes. He awakened him and then aroused Joe, and explained to both that instead of rambling directly to Chicago, while they had been sleeping, Slippery and he had decided to tackle for employment the many farms which they saw on both sides of the railroad track, and that Joe should accompany Slippery, while Jim had been selected by him as his companion in this job-hunting venture. The unsuspecting lads readily assented to this fair sounding proposition, the more as Kansas Shorty, although he cautioned Slippery to meet him and Jim that evening under the "big oak", never exchanged another word with his partner. "So long, until tonight," called Jim to Joe, who returned his brother's farewell, and soon Kansas Shorty with Jim by his side was walking northward upon the railroad track, until around a curve, which placed them out of view of the other pair, who were walking upon the track southward, he left the right-of-way at a road crossing and struck westward upon a public highway into the interior. The flip of the coin had decided their fate. It meant for James McDonald that he had become an apprentice to Kansas Shorty, the Plinger--a begging tramp; while for Joseph McDonald it spelled that he had become a companion to Slippery, the Yegg--a criminal tramp. [Illustration: Walking the rails] CHAPTER VIII. "Busting a Broncho." For three long days after they had parted company with the others, Kansas Shorty kept Jim aimlessly wandering with him about the country, carefully avoiding the railroads, as he did not wish to meet other tramps while Jim was yet "green" to the dark ways of the road, as they by wily tricks and methods often entice new road kids from their partners, who in the language of the road are known as "jockers". From the moment that Kansas Shorty had Jim out of the view of Slippery and Joe, he commenced training the lad into the infamous ways of the road, so as to properly prepare him for his future work. The first and most important lesson he gave the unsuspecting youngster consisted in poisoning his faith in humanity by teaching him that henceforth he must consider and treat every human being, except his pal, as his bitter enemy. To prove that to be a fact he would call the lad's attention to the suspicious looks everybody whom they passed upon the public highway would cast at them. The second lesson was to impress upon Jim the importance of never revealing his correct name and address to any inquisitive questioner, but to always take refuge behind some common name such as Jones, Brown or Smith, and to give some faraway city as his place of residence. He taught the boy many other vicious tricks, and to prevent suspicions arising in the lad's mind that everything was not on the square, Kansas Shorty would let him wait for him in the public highway, after he had told him that he would call at a nearby farm house and try to find jobs for both. He would then knock on the farm house door, and if someone answered his knocks would ask for a match, a pin or some other trifle and then return to the waiting lad and bitterly complain about his inability to find employment. Towards the evening of the first day, Jim becoming somewhat anxious to meet his brother, and observing that Kansas Shorty made not the slightest move to reach the "big oak", which he had told Slippery should be their meeting place, he casually remarked: "Say, friend, is it not close to the time that we should find our way to the "big oak" where we are to meet Slippery and my brother Joe?" "It's plenty time until then," was Kansas Shorty's reply, and then to show Jim that he was from now on his master, he angrily added: "You do not need to remind me again, as I shall take care of you." Just as dusk blended into the night, after they had supped upon a handout that he had begged at a farm house, Kansas Shorty pointed his hand in the direction of some oaks which were growing some distance from the highway and told Jim that beneath the tallest of them was the place where they were to meet Slippery and Joe. They climbed over fences and crossed fields, and the closer they approached the tree the more Jim's heart palpitated, so anxious was he to rejoin his twin brother, whose inseparable companion he had been since their birth until this day, and strange forebodings seemed to have told him that all was not well, as Kansas Shorty during their conversation had contradicted himself in many statements, and too, they had passed farm house after farm house and many people in the public highway during the last two hours without his trying to apply to them for a job. When they reached the oak and Jim found that neither Slippery nor Joe had put in an appearance, he began to lament, and when Kansas Shorty assured him that he could only account for their absence by believing they had been jailed on a "suspicious character" charge, the frightened lad commenced to sob. Kansas Shorty feeling in need of a night's rest, climbed across fences into a nearby field and gathered some new-mown hay from which he fashioned beneath the protecting branches of the oak a comfortable resting place for himself and Jim. But before he went to sleep, to prevent Jim from taking French leave, he induced the boy to take off his shoes and his coat out of which he made for himself a pillow, and after he had assured the lad that Slippery and Joe would certainly find them should they arrive during the night, he turned over on to his side and was soon soundly sleeping. On the morning of the fourth day they struck a railroad for the first time since they left it. It proved to be the St. Paul-Omaha main line of the Chicago and Northwestern System, and as luck would have it, while they were walking up a steep grade a stock train loaded with sheep passed them so slowly that they found it an easy matter to swing themselves onto it and they climbed through an open end-door into one of the stock cars, in which, hidden amongst the sheep, they managed to hobo unmolested through many division points where they bought provisions while the sheep were being fed and watered. On the morning of the third day they landed, not at Chicago, as Kansas Shorty had until now made Jim believe, but at Denver, the beautiful capital city of Colorado. While they walked about the streets of the city, Kansas Shorty met a friend whom he addressed as "Nevada Bill," and who as soon as the former told him that Jim was "his road kid", placed his hand under the boy's chin and after sizing the lad up just as a butcher would a beef, he whispered: "Well, well, Kansas Shorty, I see you have brought a fine 'broncho' to town with you. I hope that you will be able to make a first-class road kid of him." To which coarse remarks Kansas Shorty laughingly replied: "Never fret, Nevada Bill, I have trained many a road kid into good plingers." Nevada Bill then told him where a gang of plingers had their headquarters, and as Kansas Shorty seemed to be acquainted with most of them whose monickers Nevada Bill repeated to him, he decided to pay this gang a visit. They wended their way through Denver's lowest slums and finally arrived at the headquarters of this gang of professional tramp beggars, who always prefer cities in which to ply their trade, and only strike out to visit smaller places and the country at large--and then only in separate pairs--when too many of them drifted into the same city, so as to make combing the public for money an unprofitable business, or when the police made a general raid upon vagrants of their class. This last reason was hardly to be feared, for as in this gang's case, they invariably have their headquarters in the building above a slum saloon, whose proprietor would and could not be in business very long unless he knew how to protect his lodgers against police interference, as a gang's quarters needed to be raided only one time, and ever after all plingers in the land would give this unsafe "dump," as tramps call this class of hangout, a wide berth, as this raid sufficiently proved to them that this slum saloon was not properly "protected." Up the well-worn stairway they climbed and when they reached the second floor of the building Kansas Shorty knocked on a door, which was only opened to them after he had given an account of his identity, and when they entered the room, that by another open door was connected with an adjoining second one, Jim, to his complete surprise found himself in the company of eight grown, burly hoboes of the roughest imaginable type and almost a school class of road kids. Kansas Shorty was most cordially welcomed by the men occupying the rooms, who insisted that he and his road kid should make their home with them during their stay in Denver, which offer he gladly accepted. Then he introduced Jim as "Dakota Jim" to the others and made the lad shake hands with each and everyone of the ragged, filthy and foul-visaged fellows, who, as Kansas Shorty had told Jim upon the street before he had found their hiding place, were "proper" tramps and explained to him that this meant that all of them were recognized amongst their own kind as worthy members of the fraternity. After he had shaken hands with the ugly, rum-bloated specimens of humanity, Jim had a chance to take a look at the two rooms which were to be his future home, and his thoughts went back to his mother's cleanly kept section house, for the total of the furniture in these rooms consisted of some empty soap boxes which served for chairs, a slime-covered table, a couple of rough wooden benches, a piece of mirror glass that was upheld by nails driven into the bare walls, a range, upon which at this moment a dinner was cooking, and two dilapidated beds, the pillows, blankets and mattresses of which--there was no trace of linen--were in an even far more filthy condition than the bunks of the "Golden Rule Hotel" at Minneapolis. Jim was aroused from his survey of the rooms by Kansas Shorty, who now introduced him to each one of the road kids, whose jockers called aloud the name-de-road of each. Some of these jockers had as many as four of these lads, whose ages ranged from ten to twenty years, and whose sizes were from that of mere children to fellows who shaved themselves daily so as to pass muster as "road kids". To have seen these road kids one would have never imagined that within the course of a few short years every one of these boys would be transformed into the same class of sodden wretches their jockers now were, who had trained them into the ways of the road, and that they in turn during their life time would spoil the futures of scores of sons of respectable parents, which proves that degeneration breeds degeneration. One of the road kids in the den of the plingers, who was known by the name of "Danny" because of his neat appearance and superior intelligence, attracted Jim's attention and gave a fair average example of the parentage of the rest. When after their short acquaintance in a burst of confidence Jim acquainted Danny with the fact that his late father had been the foreman and commander of a section crew of a North Dakota railroad, Danny puckered up his lips in utter contempt when he informed and proved to the surprised Jim that he was the son of a wealthy banker of Fort Worth, Texas, and--another proof of boyish thoughtlessness--had skipped school to hop freight trains in the railroad yards of his home city. One day he had watched some wandering hoboes cooking a mulligan by a campfire, and had helped to eat the stew, and through this had made the first acquaintance of his present jocker, who had enticed the little lad to run away from his home and follow him out on the road; had trained him into making a living for both; had taught him first to drink, then to like and last to crave strong liquor, and although he treated the lad as a master would his slave, he gave him daily a regular allowance of diluted alcohol, which caused his young victim to quickly forget all desire to return to his home and his parents as there he could not secure the dram he yearned. Their conversation was interrupted by one of the grown hoboes, who, acting as cook, called all hands to "dinner". This dinner, which was another mulligan, was placed in the center of the table in the same pot in which it had been cooked, and each member of the gang, just as if they were still camping about a hobo fire in the woods, by means of a small wooden paddle pulled as much of the mulligan as he desired, onto a tin plate, that had never been touched by dishwater, but had only been scraped since the day it arrived at the rooms. During their meal, also before they commenced to dine and after they had finished, in fact all the time except when they were sleeping, a "human chain" was kept busy fetching from the slum saloon on the ground floor of the building a steady stream of "growlers" filled with beer and diluted, sweetened alcohol, which passed as "whiskey", and returning the empty tin cans for further supplies, as not the small rent of the rooms but the large and steady thirst of their inmates made it very profitable for the dive keepers to lodge this class of human perverts. After they had finished their dinner the two filth-laden beds, the benches, the table and even the slime covered floor became sleeping places for the satiated tramps and their road kids, and gradually as their cigarettes burned low and their coarse conversation lagged, all of them, greatly assisted by the strong drink they had swallowed, dozed away. All of them--with the exception of James McDonald, who had not yet sunken to the sodden level of these brutes in human forms who lay scattered about the two rooms, dead to the world in maudlin sleep, proving themselves to be living models of every stage of the decaying influences of hobo life, from men whose countenances had been turned into bloated visages down to the pale faces of the younger boys who had just commenced to feel the curse of the lives which they had been forced by these jockers to lead. While Jim sat amongst them upon an empty upturned soap box, his eyes wandered from one to the other of these wretched beings, who from this time on would be his pals and companions and whose lives gave him a vivid picture of what his own future would be. Suddenly the blood welled up in him, and although he knew that hundreds of miles of unknown country separated him from his home and mother, one desire outbalanced everything, that was the wish to escape the fate of these hoboes and the longer he looked at the alcohol disfigured masks of these human vultures who, too, had once been clean and manly lads, the more fierce became his resolve to now or never escape the clutches of Kansas Shorty, who was sleeping as heavily as the others. He scanned again the face of each one of the hoboes, and especially that of Kansas Shorty, and after he had assured himself that all were soundly sleeping he carefully stepped over the bodies of those who lay between him and his liberty--the door that led into the hallway--but as he turned its knob, which being rusty from age and filth, creaked considerably, its grating noise awakened one of the road kids, who fathoming the reason of Jim's opening the door and darting into the hallway, let out a piercing shout, "that Kansas Shorty's kid was making his get-away". This warning shriek not only awakened every one of the sleepers but sobered Kansas Shorty so suddenly that he made a headlong dive through the open door, beyond which Jim was running down the hallway trying to make his escape. He caught the lad before he even reached the stairway and dragged the shuddering boy back into the filthy room, carefully locking the door behind them. He pulled the boy across the table, and after one of the inhuman monsters had stuffed a filthy rag into the poor lad's mouth to smother his screams, Kansas Shorty, as the jocker of the lad, gleefully assisted by the others in his savage task, pounded poor Jim until he became unconscious. [Illustration: Kansas Shorty pulled the lad across the table, and after one of the inhuman monsters had stuffed a filthy rag into the poor boy's mouth to smother his pitiful screams, they pounded him until he became unconscious.] When Jim came to, Kansas Shorty, of whom he expected this last of all, was sitting upon the edge of the bed upon which he had been placed, and while he fanned the poor boy's bruised and battered face with a folded newspaper, he was talking to him in a softly purring voice, telling him how sorry he felt to have been forced to punish him for having attempted to run away from his "protector", who intended to make out of "Dakota Jim" a "man" who in the future would be proud to tell other plingers that Kansas Shorty had been his jocker. Kansas Shorty continued to speak in this petting and almost flattering vein, while at the same time he fed the feverish and maltreated lad with pieces of choice candy and other tidbits for which he had sent while Jim was yet unconscious, and stroked the boy's hair and dressed his wounds with vaseline-soaked rags and showed in every possible manner how true a friend he was to Jim, to whom he repeated over and over the fact that he had clothed and fed him in Minneapolis when he and his brother Joe were on the verge of death by starvation. He never stopped his flow of pleasing language, ever harping upon the good he had done and would do for Jim, if the latter would only trust him, until forced by sheer friendless loneliness the boy folded his bruised arms around Kansas Shorty's neck and amid heart-broken sobs begged his pardon for having tried to leave him, and while the other hoboes in the room, old as well as young, who had all passed through the same sort of treatment, had a hard time to suppress their smiles, he solemnly promised to never again attempt to escape. Then the poor boy sank back upon the bed and gradually, urged on by Kansas Shorty's assurance that sleep would heal all the quicker the bruises and marks the terrible beating had left on him, a reminder of his promise, and a warning of far worse punishment should he dare to break it, he fell asleep. Then the other plingers sent down to the slum saloon for a new supply of beer and "whiskey", and while they took care not to make noise enough to awaken the new recruit to the army of professional beggars, they drank to Kansas Shorty's health and congratulated him upon the successful culmination of the first step necessary to make a good-for-nothing parasite of society out of a respectable boy. This inhuman brutality is administered to every boy who falls into the clutches of a plinger, as it not only deadens the spirit of pride and honor, but makes the boy obedient to the least command of his jocker. This cruel maltreatment is called amongst those hoboes who have boys tramping with them: "Busting a Broncho". [Illustration: Four tramps] CHAPTER IX. "The Abyss." The following law, if passed and enforced without mercy, would quickly put a stop to the common practice of degenerates spoiling the lives and futures of other people's children by training them to become tramps, drunkards, professional beggars and even dangerous criminals, viz: "Should any minor be found beyond the limits of his legal residence tramping, peddling, begging or stealing at the command or for the benefit of an adult person, who cannot prove that he had the legal consent of the minor's guardian, then this adult person shall be sentenced to a long term at hard labor in the state penitentiary." * * * * * (The actual experiences of the Author, who when a young boy was at one time a plinger's road kid, are embodied into this chapter and have been even far more revolting than herein described.) * * * * * It was several days after the terrible thrashing before Jim recovered sufficiently to be able to show himself upon the streets. On the morning of the fifth day after his arrival at Denver, he was told by Kansas Shorty to accompany Danny upon his day's work and watch how this small, weak boy managed to earn a living for himself and his master, who under the pretense of "showing him the world", had enticed him away from his home. Danny had been trained by his jocker, an ugly ex-convict, who on account of his ape-like face had been dubbed "Jocko", to peddle needle cases from house to house. These needle cases are paper packages containing an assortment of needles and are always retailed in every store in the land for five cents. These harmless packages have made more useless, if not dangerous men out of harmless youngsters than any other cause, as printed in bold type across their face are these words: "PRICE 25 CENTS". This fictitious price mark works straight into the hands of the jockers who purchase these needle cases by the gross for about two cents each and teach their road kids to dispose of them, at a huge profit. If needle cases can not be had, sticking plaster, aluminum thimbles, pencils, shoestrings and other such articles are given to the road kids to peddle. From the pages of a Denver City Directory, Jocko had copied upon sheets of paper the name, street and house number of every resident in the city, overlooking none, as sometimes those who occupy humble homes buy more needle cases and turn out more revenue than those who reside in marble palaces. Jocko had handed Danny a list of names and addresses and the road kid's trick, which his ugly jocker had most carefully rehearsed with him, was worked by calling at residences and by correctly quoting the names foil the servants and obtain an interview with the lady of the house to whom he would tell a story that would make a "stone weep." With Jim by his side this morning he spoke of him as being his cousin, and with a string of woeful lies attached to his yarn he usually managed not only to receive the price printed upon the package, which he held up in such a position that the lady could not fail to see its fictitious value, but oftentimes he received more than this sum. They sold a number of the needle cases, and although Jim had a look of complete disgust upon his face, showing how he disapproved of Danny's lying, the latter, proud as a peacock, instead of being ashamed of swindling kind-hearted ladies, said in a tone of voice which left no doubt that he would do exactly as he proposed: "Eh, Jim, when I get to be a plinger I shall have at least a dozen road kids peddling for me and not like Jocko, who besides myself has only three other kids hustling for him," and after a pause he disdainfully added, just as if his jocker was not already doing incalculable harm, "only four kids, with so many of them hoboing about the country." At one of the houses, after Danny had repeated his tale of woe, a charitable lady told them to await her return as she had left her purse in her bed room, located on the second floor. Never suspecting that boys appealing for assistance would turn into ingrates, she left the front door ajar. The next moment Jim almost sank to the floor when he saw Danny sneak into the house, enter the nearest room, and just as the lady descended the stairs, dart back to his former place upon the porch, holding a silver spoon in his hand, which he hid in his pocket. After the lady had paid him for a needle case they left. Danny repeated this disgraceful trick of basest ingratitude at several other houses. Then he coaxed Jim into making the lying appeal necessary to sell the needle cases, and whenever Jim managed to make a sale Danny's praises knew no bounds. Finally Danny had just one needle case left out of the stock Jocko had handed to him to peddle, and while they waited before the open entrance door of a palatial residence for the return of the lady of the house, who had left them to find her pocketbook, and whose footfalls they could hear as she descended the stairway leading into the basement of her home, Danny deliberately pushed the unsuspecting Jim through the half-open door into the hall of the mansion, and told him in a whisper that if he did not steal something he "would tell Kansas Shorty." In all his past life Jim had never stolen a single cent's worth of other people's property, but with Danny threatening to tell Kansas Shorty should he refuse to do as told, and remembering the cruel pounding he had received at the hands of this fiend only such a short time before, and the warning ere he and Danny set out upon their begging trip to do exactly as Danny ordered, he realized that perhaps another far more brutal beating would be his should he disobey Danny's command. Before him was an open door, and when he entered the room he found it to be the parlor. Looking about he saw a glittering gold watch lying upon the piano, and picked it up, and gazed at it for a moment. "No, I must not disgrace my honest name by becoming a common thief for the mere sake of furnishing sodden wretches with rum," he mused, but while he hesitated he heard the footfalls of the lady of the house as she ascended the stairs, then the fear of the terrible punishment that would be his if he disobeyed conquered his honesty and he slipped the time piece into his pocket and joined Danny at the entrance. When the lady of the house came to the door she handed Danny a bright silver dollar and when he wanted to give her the needle case she refused to take it from him, and while tears of pity streamed down her face she said: "May God forbid that I take from you poor unfortunate boys an article that you could dispose of to others, and thus further assist your starving parents", and before the lads could utter a sound she had shut the door in their faces. It was now half past eleven in the morning, and as road kids do "housework" only between nine and this time of the day, as after these hours the police commence to be more active and the ladies become far less inclined to listen to a tale of distress, they went back to the plinger's headquarters. In strict accordance with the unwritten code of the road although Jocko, his ugly-visaged jocker, was amongst those in the room, Danny paid not the least attention to his presence, but stepped up to the table upon which an empty tin plate had been placed for just this purpose, and deposited upon it every cent he had in his pockets and whatever he had pilfered from the houses. Danny now told Jim to place the watch he had stolen upon the tin plate, which he did. Kansas Shorty picked it up and estimated its value at not less than one hundred dollars, and then praised Jim for having upon his first raid proven himself to be a first-class road kid, and that the "gang" was proud to call him a pal. When Jim was out of hearing Danny received much praise for having turned an honest boy into a beggar and a thief by the same methods that he had been taught by his jocker and other road kids. So quickly had these rum-soaked, heartless monsters converted an absolutely harmless lad into a criminal, that Jim pleaded with Kansas Shorty to permit him to try unassisted to peddle needle cases. He was not accorded this privilege, but was sent out with a boy nicknamed "Snippy". This boy had a most repulsive looking sore upon his arm, reaching from the wrist four inches upward. His graft consisted of visiting offices located in the business district and showing to persons this noisome sore, and then handing them the begging letter his jocker had faked for him, he collected alms, while at the same time he contorted his face as if suffering agony from his "disease". When they returned to the hangout at the end of his working hours at 2 p.m., as the afternoon mails made charity calls of this class unprofitable, Jim was given his third lesson by a lad who went by the hobo name of "Spanish John." On the preceding evening John and Jim had played catch ball in the hallway and the way John chased after a ball he had failed to catch caused Jim to greatly admire the boy's agility. But this morning John certainly looked for all the world as if he had passed through a long war. He upheld his body by means of a pair of crutches and his face was all furrowed as if he were suffering agony, while his left foot was drawn high above the ground just as if a cannon ball had made its acquaintance, and it was with such a sad voice that he called to Jim to follow him, that Jim felt so sorry for John he forgot to ask him what had happened to him since both chased the elusive ball in the hallway. Spanish John had a sore upon his left leg just like Snippy had upon his arm, and he used this sore, assisted by small cards called "duckets", upon which an "appeal" was printed, to swindle honest and well meaning people out of money. Proprietors of stores and shops were his favorites. When supper time approached and while upon their way back to the plingers' quarters, after they had left the business section, John handed his crutches to Jim to carry, and told the astounded lad, who supposed John had actually been crippled, that limping with crutches was a "most tiresome job." Everyone of the road kids had been trained by his jocker to become a specialist in some particular brand of the begging game. One of them had around his arm a plaster of Paris casting, that during his begging trips would be filled with cotton upon which a few drops of carbolic acid or some other "medicinally" smelling liquid had been poured, to give the "phoney" broken-arm trick a cloak of respectability. When not at "work" the "dummy" was shoved far above the boy's elbow and tied so that it did not interfere with his playing "tag", and other boyish games. A simple-faced chap, but one who knew the game from A to Z, played the deaf and dumb game, for which purpose his jocker had forced him to learn the sign language. Another boy had been taught to throw his hand and fingers so far "out of joint" that a real crippled-for-life paralytic could not have improved upon the deceptive deformity. Both of these lads used duckets, pencils, shoestrings and thimbles as an addition to their mute appeals, although it is a well-known fact that no genuinely afflicted paralytics or mutes, least of all boys, ever resort to begging for their living. In the evening after supper had been served and things had somewhat quieted down in the rooms, almost dumfounded by surprise Jim watched Snippy's jocker paint a strong solution of lye into the dreadful sore--known in the hobo vernacular as a "jigger"--upon the road kid's arm. The poor little lad shrieked with pain as the acid ate into his quivering flesh, which deepened the wound still more and gave it a "fresh" look, which greatly added to its horrid repulsiveness so as to all the more arouse the pity of those from whom he would be forced to beg on the coming morning. [Illustration: After supper Jim watched a hobo paint acid into the dreadful sore upon Snippy's arm and heard the little lad shriek with pain when the fluid ate into his quivering flesh.] Joe made careful inquiries of one of the friends he had made among the road kids, and this boy told him that oftentimes these inhuman monsters continued the lye treatment for such a length of time and so fearfully corroded their helpless victim's limbs, that blood-poisoning set in and made amputations necessary to save their lives. The deeply seared, white scars which these "jiggers" leave during the balance of the road kids' natural lives, prove to those who are versed in the ways of the road, in which school of crime a criminal branded with these tell-tale scars received his first lesson. Just before Jim went to rest for the night upon one of the bare wooden benches that had been given to him for his bed, Kansas Shorty warned him that if he ever said a single word of what had occurred since he left Minneapolis, or would occur in the future, he would not only murder him but would ramble to Rugby and tell his mother that her son had robbed a house, and then he pulled out his notebook and repeated to Jim his correct name and address, which the boy had in his innocence given him at the Golden Rule Hotel. The poor lad first shuddered with terror as he thought how his poor mother would suffer should she be informed how he had disgraced her, then he snuggled close to the black-souled fiend and solemnly promised never to divulge a single word to any mortal. The following morning Kansas Shorty gave Jim a package of needle cases and in words that Jim could not misunderstand ordered him not to come "home" until every one had been peddled. Luck was with him. His rosy cheeks and his neat appearance opened the hearts and loosened the purse strings of charitable ladies and it was just ten o'clock when he returned to the hangout, having sold all of his stock. Jim pleaded to be permitted at least until the noon hour to sell more needle cases, and his jocker, pleased to see the the lad so anxious to support an able-bodied hobo loafer in idleness, consented and gave him another supply. Again fortune favored him and when a nearby clock pointed its hands to a quarter of twelve he had just one needle case left. He rang the door bell of a residence, and as if luck was with him, the lady of the house, a matron with snowy hair and features which in every line bespoke the kind-heartness of her soul, opened the door. After he had explained to her his errand, she took the needle case out of his hand and then told him to await her return as she had left her pocket book in her bed room upon the second floor of her home. She went, leaving the front door ajar. Jim heard the lady of the house mount the stairway, then the second flight, now she was walking towards the rear of the building, and when he heard a door slam, indicating that she had entered the bed room, like a flash of lightning an evil thought shot through his mind. It was just one step to the open parlor door. He craned his head, and looked into the parlor, and when he saw that the shades were drawn, which would prevent his being seen from the outside, he thought that this would be a fine chance to show to Kansas Shorty, Danny and all the rest of his "friends" how well he had learned their lessons. Without the least hesitation he stepped into the semi-darkness of the parlor, where his eyes were attracted by the gleaming steel of a large caliber revolver lying upon the center table. He heard the lady's footfalls as she descended from the second flight of stairs, and quickly reaching out his hand he picked up the pistol and slipped it into his pocket. He then turned about, to quietly take his former place before the front door, but just as he turned, he felt a pair of hands grip him from behind by the throat. He struggled hard to free himself from the ever tightening grip, and then lost consciousness. When he opened his eyes he found he was lying upon the floor in the entrance hall of the residence, and he gazed upon two pairs of handcuffs, one of which was clasped around his wrists, while the other held his ankles in their steel embrace, while above him, watching his every movement, was a man dressed in the uniform of a captain of police who in a most menacing manner fingered the trigger of a revolver, which Jim recognized as the same weapon that he had attempted to steal off the parlor table. Jim could not speak, as his badly crushed throat would not permit this even had he wished to do so, but he further saw the same charitable lady who had been so willing to purchase his last needle case, bending over him, and while she looked at him as he lay there upon the floor before her, handcuffed like a hardened, dangerous criminal, he heard her plead with him. "Boy," she said, while her pitying eyes looked straight into his own, "is there not somewhere in this world a good mother who has taught you that honesty is always the best policy?" And while tears of bitter repentance commenced to course down the poor boy's cheeks she repeated the question, which caused the now heart-broken lad to sob aloud in his anguish. A moment later the police patrol was heard clanging in the distance--it had been called by telephone. It stopped in front of the house and presently two blue-coats saluted their superior and then picked up the boy, but before they carried him to the waiting police patrol the captain told them that as he had come home for dinner a little earlier than usual, he had divested himself of his heavy pistol and then, while he was taking a mid-day rest upon the parlor lounge he had watched the boy sneaking into the room, picking up the revolver from the center table, and then he pictured to the policemen how he had quietly arisen from the lounge and like a bolt from the blue sky made a prisoner of the chap, whom he described as a most dangerous sneak thief--he did not know the true story of the boy's past nor that not two weeks had elapsed since the same handcuffed lad would have willingly laid down his life before he would have permitted himself to stoop so low as to touch property belonging to another person with the intention of stealing same, nor was the captain acquainted with the fact that a tramp within an even shorter space of time had killed this honesty, had spoiled the future and virtually wrecked the life of the lad by forcing him to become his road kid. * * * * * Within an hour's time the plinger gang in their rooms above the slum saloon had been apprised by the subtle and mysterious means which is a sixth sense with criminals, that the missing Jim, who had not shown up for dinner, was behind the bars of the city prison, and afraid that he would "peach" they made haste to vacate their quarters and scattered to the four winds, each jocker taking his road kids with him. Just as they separated, while the other scoundrels tried to console Kansas Shorty for having so quickly been deprived of such a good road kid as Jim had proven himself to be, he cheerily replied to their words of consolation: "There are many more cities like Denver in the States and Canada where we can ply our profession the same as we have here, and there are any number of other people's sons whom I can entrap and can force through fear of exposure and by brutality into becoming tramps, drunkards, beggars and criminals, all at one and the same time." * * * * * They carried Jim to the city prison and locked him into a dark dungeon, from which, after several hours of solitary confinement, three detectives took him into the chief of police's office and there pleaded with him to reveal the whereabouts of his jocker, as they were well aware that this lad was merely a tool in the hands of some designing scoundrel, but Jim, as all the other road kids before him have done, refused to divulge the least word that would have caused his jocker's apprehension. Finding that pleading and threats were unavailing, the officers in their efforts to catch the man "higher up" swore at Jim, then cuffed him and finally, angry at the stubborn silence of the boy, they beat him dreadfully, but even this punishment was in vain for Jim ever repeated in his mind at every cuff and lick he received, that Kansas Shorty had his mother's correct address and that this scoundrel would do far worse than merely murder him, should Jim fail to keep the promise not to tell who was his jocker. Unable to extort a word from Jim that would lead to the arrest of his jocker, the officers dragged the staggering, heart-broken lad back to his cell and locked him up. When from sheer exhaustion he fell asleep late in the night, he dreamed that Kansas Shorty's grinning face was pressed against his steel-barred cell door. "Jim, Jim," he could distinctly hear the scoundrel say mocking him in his helplessness, "come on, Jim, let us go and peddle needle cases and loot more houses." Jim leaped from his bunk at Kansas Shorty's throat, as if he were a wounded tiger, to strangle with his bare hands the fiend who had so wantonly spoiled his life, but he only gripped the cold steel bars of his cell and awakened, then as he sank back upon the edge of the prison-bunk, he realized that now it was too late--and he burst into bitter tears. [Illustration: Behind bars] CHAPTER X. "Slippery, the Yegg." After Slippery, the Yegg, and Joe had parted company with Kansas Shorty and Jim, they walked leisurely southward upon the railroad track. For some time their conversation lagged, as Slippery was absorbed in thoughts centering upon the boy who was walking by his side. Slippery had up to this moment lived strictly in accord with the laws laid down by the "Code of Crime", the rules of which, although not printed and bound into a costly volume, nor even written, are nevertheless strictly observed by those who defy law and order. A tradition of this unwritten code was to the effect that a "wise" yegg must never have a minor hoboing with him about the country, as not only would the youngster be of little value when committing a crime and a most decided handicap in making a getaway, but the greatest of danger lay in the fact that should they be arrested, the boy would be more than likely to not only reveal all he knew of the latest exploit of the yegg and tell everything he had seen and heard since their first day's comradeship, but he would undoubtedly turn state's evidence, and help to send the yegg to the penitentiary for a long term. Slippery also weighed the chances which he faced should he by misfortune "ramble" into other "brethren of the gun" who happened to be abroad in the land, especially along oft-traveled routes like those between St. Paul and Chicago, as they would not only frown upon a yegg who had offended the ethics of their clan by having a road kid traveling with him, but they would quickly spread the fact broadcast throughout the land to the detriment of the heretofore good reputation Slippery had enjoyed amongst the numerous members of the "Fraternity of the Dark Lantern." As a result of these reflections he decided to rid himself of Joe's company as soon as possible, and the easiest and fairest method he could think about to pull himself out of this dilemma was to find a job for the boy upon one of the many farms which were scattered along the right of way. After having tried for hours to find some sort of a job for the boy, Slippery, thoroughly disgusted at his vain efforts to rid himself of his unwelcome companion, whom he considered by this time a nuisance, decided that the next best plan would be to take Joe to Chicago and find there a employment for him. Then the fact that they were supposed to meet the others at the "big oak" in the evening flashed through his mind, and that perhaps on account of this, Joe would object to hoboing any sort of train. In furtherance of this plan Slippery visited several additional farm houses to seek employment for the boy, acting after each failure even more discouraged than ever in not being able to find a job, and his disgust increased to such a degree, that it finally became an easy matter for him to have the lad consent that they quit their resultless efforts in this line and instead strive to reach the "big oak" that Slippery assured Joe was growing close to the right of way several miles to the south of them, and there meet the others, whom he had no doubt had had no better success in finding employment. Slippery now began to paint in most wonderful colors for his younger companion, word-pictures of the grand sights and scenes which were awaiting their arrival at Chicago, and unintentionally drifted into describing the many cases he had heard about, where penniless boys there had risen in a comparatively short time to the rank of multimillionaires. Joe, who until now paid more attention to the rough, stone ballasted track beneath his feet that made walking a hardship, became greatly interested in the subject that Slippery had reached in his conversation, as it concerned the same matter that Jim and he had threshed out so many times before they left their section home at Rugby, and when Slippery spoke in glowing terms of the many advantages that employment in a large city like Chicago held out to a hustling lad, Joe threw all his troubles to the winds and laid bare to his older comrade every movement since his childhood, and finally came to the point where he and Jim had planned to run away to a city and there by watching for every chance of advancement offered them, and by saving every cent and especially by adhering strictly to honesty, had intended to work their way up the ladder of success until they had reached a respected and independent position. After he had paused to take a second breath, with a true boyish fervor, he commenced to build aircastles as to what he would do when the day arrived when they would not have to look so closely to the saving of their pennies. The more enthusiastically Joe spoke of this bright future, the less he became aware that his hopes had caused the answers he received to his many questions he asked his older companion to become more curt and sullen, nor did he realize that every word he spoke stabbed Slippery's conscience as if it were a two-edged dagger. Slippery, although he belonged to the the yeggs, had like ninety-nine out of every hundred of his kind, been in his youth a harmless boy who had been enticed by some good-for-nothing tramp to forsake his home, and showing more ambition than to end his days as an alcohol-rotted wreck, had drifted along with criminals, who for the sake of a few dollars or even a handful of unused postage stamps did not hesitate to commit murder, and who had in time taught Slippery the various divisions and subdivisions of their dangerous existence. Now that Slippery was barely thirty years of age, he was, although young in years, old in crime and had been in many collisions with those who represented law and order, and had served many long terms at hard labor behind the stone walls of state and federal penitentiaries. One evening, just before Slippery had finished his last sentence, after the prisoners had been locked up for the night, his cell-mate in a spirit of fun suggested that, to while away the time until the lights would be turned low, they compute the average daily wage their crime-steeped lives had earned for them. Although both were regarded by their brethren of crime as most successful in their chosen profession, they found after tedious calculating that the average daily wage of their miserable existence since the day they left their homes had been a fraction less than twenty cents. In this total they did not include the many years they spent behind prison bars, performing, without pay, ambition crushing toil under the eyes of brutal guards, fed upon poor food, sleeping in unhealthy quarters, dressed in coarse, zebra-striped suits and ruled by a most cruel discipline, all of which they were unable to reduce to a dollar and cents basis. Until that evening his bosom friends had been other equally desperate criminals, as misery loves company, but even few of these could he trust, as "stool pigeons" far outnumbered those whom he could implicitly depend upon and even amongst the few, only too many were snatched from his side by the stern hand of the law to linger for years in penal institutions, if they did not become targets for revolvers or were strangled upon a gallows. The more he thought of this shady side of his past, the more changed became the point of view with which he judged the rest of the world. The laborer whom he saw in the early morning swinging his dinner pail while with light steps he marched to the daily task in mill and factory, and whom he watched in the evening's dusk after the factory sirens had blown the working man's curfew, hurrying home anxious to reach his humble fireside, and for whom heretofore he had only known feelings of deepest contempt, suddenly had become a man who benefitted preciously far more of his life than any yegg he could recall. A strange yearning to join those who carried the dinner pails and who had homes and firesides of their own made itself felt, and still later this desire to foreswear his past and reform became ever stronger, especially when one day by a singular chance he happened during recess to pass a school house, and stepping behind a tree from where with a wistful look in his eyes he watched the rosy-cheeked, romping children, while at the same time revolting pictures of his own misspent life and thoughts of the far worse to-be-spent future, and the fact that he had been heretofore his own worst enemy came so strongly to his mind that he could barely keep himself from sobbing. From that evening when he for the first time in his whole life, studied the life of a yegg from a commonsense and strictly commercial side and found it in all its phases a losing game, dated the desire to quit the life of crime when the first opportunity presented itself, but whenever he tried to picture himself as having a happy home of his own, there, like a black cloud suspended in a blue sky, came to him the knowledge that never more could he hide his past, for from the moment that he should endeavor to walk the narrow path, every yegg in the land would point to him as a former brother-in-crime, and gossiping tongues would quickly force him back into the fold, even while with his calloused hands he would be toiling to earn an honest living. While all of these pictures of his past flashed through his active mind and the desire to be for just one time, a man who needed not to be afraid to associate with honest people, he attentively listened to the boy who was just now unfolding his plans for a bright future, and who was telling about his section home by the side of the railroad track in the midst of the endless prairies of the Dakotas, and although he described the siding of Rugby as being a most desolate place, the desire to reform became almost irresistible to Slippery when Joe told how every evening the railroad laborers returned to their humble quarters worn and tired out by the hard toil of the day, but happy with the satisfaction that by performing their task they had added their share to the world's work for the common good of all humanity. This was the boy of whose most unwelcome company only a few minutes before Slippery had wished to rid himself as he considered him a serious handicap to his career as a professional criminal, and who was now telling of his plans, how he wished to atone by leading an honest life for the wrong he had done to his widowed mother by leaving his home without her consent, and as he continued to speak of his hopes of a clean and glorious living, the same queer feeling that had attacked him before came with ever increasing force over Slippery, and it almost stunned him when the lad with his true-ringing, youthful voice, exclaimed, "Slippery, you are going to be my partner, for all of us working together can accomplish much more in Chicago to make our way to wealth and fame than we two could. And then, when we have made our fortune, I will want you to come back with us to Rugby and stay with us, even if you have to buy for yourself a prairie farm, for I know mother will wish that you stop with us, because she will always thank you for having taken such good care of her Joe." After he had given vent to this boyish dream he paused, expecting to receive an answer from his older companion, but Slippery only nodded in assent, while at the same time he rubbed his eyes with his hands as if tiny cinders had lodged in them. His emotions caused him to avert his face so Joe could not see the tears of repentance which his hurting conscience forced to run down his cheeks. And then his better self got the master hand over him and he silently swore that at this moment had arrived the oft wished for opportunity for him to forsake the road and quit the crooked game of crime. Now came Slippery's time to make plans. His first thoughts were to discover the best method to fullfil the promise he had just made to himself to lead a new and different life. The best method as it appeared to him would be for Joe and himself to ramble on to Chicago and there procure employment, as he realized that to separate from his younger companion would mean to him a rapid drifting back into his old ways. This plan looked mighty good and he slyly chuckled as he thought that it would be only a short time until his pay envelope would bulge from the sum to which his wage would quickly increase, for he felt assured that it would be an easy matter for him to be advanced into an ever better salaried position, for a man who had the nerve to attempt to force a living for himself from the world by means of the dangerous ways of crime could easily accomplish anything once his perverted ambitions were directed into the straight and narrow path. But suddenly his smiles ceased and he felt a queer shuddering sensation shake his spine, for he thought of the many criminals who made their headquarters in Chicago, and who would be only too willing to spoil his plans to quit their company and reform, so as to keep others of the brotherhood from quitting the game and thereby making it all the more hazardous for hardened and irreformable criminals to ply their nefarious vocations. He weighed the chances he stood to reform in Chicago and abandoned the scheme as impracticable. Then Slippery recalled Jim's narrative of his lone prairie section home, and he adroitly questioned the lad and discovered that the country about Rugby was a desolate prairie, that post offices and banks were few, widely scattered and poorly patronized, and that Joe had never heard of any one of these being robbed, nor even a residence or farm house being entered, and when the lad finished by telling of the fertility of the soil and the fact that homesteads could still be had there for the mere filing of the necessary claims, Slippery again became absorbed in his thoughts. Then he had a vision. He saw himself drilling into a safe. Then came a dull explosion and when the safe's door was torn from its hinges he saw himself upon his knees filling a large bag with the gold coins which poured out of the dynamited treasure box. Then he saw Joe and himself dressed in the best that money could purchase, speeding along aboard a Pullman to Rugby, North Dakota. He felt the hearty hand grip as Joe's mother thanked him for having kept her boy from coming to harm, and when he saw himself the prosperous owner of an immense and well worked farm, he then and there swore a silent but nevertheless solemn oath that after the next successful safe-blowing exploit he would do exactly as this vision had showed him would be the best method to turn over a new page of his life. "Look out, Slippery, jump for your life!" suddenly came a frightened cry from Joe's lips, and instinctively Slippery followed Joe's example and leaped off the track, upon which they had been so peacefully walking, blissfully ignorant of how close to death they had come. In the next fraction of a second a "Limited" thundered past them, whose ashen-faced engineer was frantically pulling at the whistling cord and blowing the danger signal, while he shook an angry fist at the frightened fellows, who had so narrowly escaped an impending calamity. "Joe," stammered Slippery, when he again found his voice that from sheer fright failed him for some moments, "boy, you have saved my life and come what may I shall stay and work with you and then after we have made a 'stake' we will go to Rugby and I shall buy a farm and make my home near your home and finish my days in peace and plenty." From this moment Slippery became a different kind of companion to his younger comrade, and while both now entered into an animated conversation, Joe came to the conclusion that Slippery after all was the best chum he had ever had. They were so busily engaged picturing their futures, that not until evening approached did Joe make any remark concerning the whereabouts of the "big oak" where they were to meet Jim and Kansas Shorty. [Illustration: "Jump for your life!" suddenly shouted the lad, and both leaped off the track, escaping by a hair's breadth being struck by the flying passenger train.] They were just approaching a water tank, the destination Slippery intended to reach, and pointing at a large oak close to the track he told Joe that it was the place where he had agreed to meet the others. They went over to it, and after they had made for themselves some coffee, they sat beneath the wide spreading branches of the oak and while dusk turned into night and the calls of the owls echoed over fields and moor, and the moon cast its pale light over the landscape, they patiently waited the arrival of the others. The longer they waited and the more anxious Joe became to meet his twin brother again, the more Slippery denounced Kansas Shorty's tardiness, and when midnight arrived and they heard in the distance to the north of them the rumbling of a train, Slippery had so completely won the confidence of Joe, that the latter consented to accompany the yegg to Chicago without waiting for the arrival of the others, whereupon Slippery tore a page out of his memorandum and after writing on it a brief note, telling Kansas Shorty that he and Joe had rambled into Chicago, and to meet them there, he silenced any rising suspicions Joe might have had that everything was not all right by pinning this note to the trunk of the tree. When the train, which proved to be a long string of empty, open box cars, pulled southward, after having filled its engine's tender at the water tank, Slippery and Joe had safely stowed themselves away in one of the "empties" and were soon rolling on towards Chicago, and had become a most contented pair of hobo-partners. Early on the third morning they landed at Chicago, and Joe found that Slippery's tales as to the magnitude of this city had not been exaggerated, for they rode hours and miles upon horseless "cable" cars before Slippery beckoned to Joe to follow him, as they had arrived at their destination, the center of the city's business district. After eating their breakfast in a restaurant, they sauntered through the streets to see the sights. While they walked aimlessly about the city, Slippery acted at times so strangely that he called the attention of Joe to him, who did not suspect the reason of his singular demeanor, nor that he was walking with a man who in police circles had earned a well merited reputation of being one of the most desperate criminals in the land. Whenever Slippery would spot a policeman ahead of him he would turn into an alley or by-way to avoid passing the guardian of the law. At other times, just after they had passed some well dressed and often really benign looking citizen, Slippery would roughly nudge him and whisper, "that was one of those 'fly mugs'--a detective", and then it would be some moments before he reverted to his former cheerfulness, proving to Joe how much he feared or despised those who uphold the law. The ringing of the church bells had just announced the noon hour, when Slippery was stopped in the street by a neatly attired gentleman, who, after they had most cordially shaken hands, entered into a whispered conversation, which Joe overheard. "Hello, Slippery, old boy, when did you find your way back to Chicago?" were the first words of the stranger's greeting, who acted as if he were greatly pleased with the return of Joe's pal to the "Windy City." "I too am glad to be once more where one's eyes do not tire looking into nothingness, bounded only by the horizon and the blue sky," answered Slippery, and then in a whisper, he added: "Say, Boston Frank, give me a square tip where Bunko Bill's gang is, so I can find a temporary hangout until I get straight as to the lay of the land." "Oh, is that what you wish to know, Slippery? Well they are in a private flat on South Clark, just below LaSalle Street, second house from the corner, on the fifth floor, and a dandy place at that, but," here he paused and with an ill-disguised look of resentment he stared at Joe and then queried: "Slippery, whose boy have you toting along with you?" And as Slippery did not promptly answer him he added with contempt in his voice, "I always understood that only a low-lived plinger dragged a road kid about with him and never a proper crook." Then to Joe's terror, he heard the man whom he had until this moment taken to be as honorable as his own late father answer: "Boston Frank, this lad is the wisest and shrewdest young crook that ever walked the streets of Chicago." This explanation pleased Boston Frank, who now asked Slippery to introduce him to the lad, which the former did, using his new nickname, "Dakota Joe." Listening to their further conversation, to his horror Joe became for the first time aware that Slippery was not a man looking for an honest job, but a criminal whose dislike for the police, which he had so openly manifested, was the natural result of the life he had been leading. Joe decided to keep this unpleasant discovery to himself, as he was a penniless lad in the center of an immense city. When they parted company with Boston Frank, Slippery and Joe found the house that he had described to be the "gang's" hangout, and after they had climbed five flights up a narrow stairway, Slippery rang the door bell of a flat. A shutter in the panel of the door that fitted so perfectly into an opening that Joe did not observe its presence before, was withdrawn and from behind a heavy wire screen a pair of glistening, suspicious eyes searched their faces, and then a voice demanded what they desired. Instead of an answer Slippery gave some differently sounding knocks upon the panel above the screened opening and whispered, "It's I, Slippery, the yegg." Joe could distinctly hear the same person who had carefully replaced the shutter over the once more invisible spy-opening unbolt, then unlock and finally slowly open the door, and after she, a middle-aged woman, had again most suspiciously scanned the features of her visitors, she permitted Slippery and Joe to slip within the slightly opened door, that she promptly shut, and then bolted and carefully locked, as if the flat, instead of a home for human beings was a safe-deposit vault of an immensely rich bank. "Hello, Marie," Slippery addressed the woman after she had tried the door knob to assure herself that the steel sheeted door was as correctly closed as before she opened it, "how are you and the rest of the gang?" And while they shook hands Joe looked about in the semi-darkness of the hallway trying to see some members of the gang Slippery had spoken about when he inquired of Boston Frank as to their whereabouts, and about whom he had just repeated the question, which to Joe seemed odd because there was not a sound to be heard in the flat, that, as it was supposed to be the home of a "gang", should have at least shown these signs of human habitation. After the woman and Slippery had exchanged other brief greetings all three went towards the rear of the hallway, and here she opened a door and bade them enter, and by the brilliant illumination they saw it was the dining room of the fiat. Around its well provisioned dinner table were seated a number of men and women who in a most friendly, but noise avoiding manner, greeted Slippery and while they questioned him as to his latest movements, they gave Joe a chance to recover from the surprise that completely shocked him, when he discovered that this strangely secluded flat was the home of seven men and four women, all of the latter--with the exception of the woman who had opened the door--being barely more than young girls. [Illustration: Marie at the door] CHAPTER XI. "The Wages of Sin is Death." "Look here, friends," remarked one of the men seated at the table, who was dressed in the height of fashion, and later proved to be the leader of the others, after he had greeted Slippery and had for a brief moment gazed at Joe, "Slippery has brought a road kid along with him, no doubt intending to imitate the ways of the accursed plingers and add another tramp to those who already hobo about the country." Slippery, to whom this tart rebuke was addressed, now explained that the lad by his side was his "pal", and not his road kid; this explanation seemed to satisfy the speaker for he stretched out his hand and greeted Joe in a most cordial manner, while Slippery introduced him to the party, not by his honest Christian name, but by his road name, "Dakota Joe". But the next moment a far greater surprise was in store for the boy when Slippery commenced to introduce him to the well attired gentlemen and richly gowned ladies, whom he supposed, judging by their general appearance, were far removed from the level they had chosen for themselves, for presently Slippery announced the name of the "gentleman" with whom he had just shaken hands as "Bunko Bill", and Joe's unpleasant suspicions that he had been led into a nest of human vipers were greatly increased when his pal called off the names of the other inmates of the flat. The nearest fellow was "Brooklyn Danny, the Dip"; the next one went by the name of "Buffalo Johnny, the Strong Arm Man"; the fourth responded to "Ohio Jack, the Sneak"; a neat looking fellow who sported a diamond stud upon his shirt bosom answered to the appropriate name of "Diamond Al"; while the criminal tendencies of the sixth were plainly stamped in his nickname, "Niagara Swifty, the Shop Lifter", while the last one, a red-haired, wary-looking chap answered to the rather suggestive name of "Atlanta Jerry, the Hold-Up." Joe, who had heard at home the section men tell about the "monicker" every tramp bore, could not help but note that these "names-de-crime" which Slippery had just now given as the ones with which these gentlemen addressed each other, so very closely resembled those used by the hoboes that perhaps every one of the men before him had formerly been a road kid. The boy's astonishment was greatly increased when next Slippery introduced the "ladies". The one who so cautiously opened the door for their entrance was honored by the name of "Dippy Marie"; the second on account of the color of her hair was known as "Red Annie"; while a third was titled "Noisy Jane", and the last, the youngest and best looking one of them, went by the nickname of "Babe". After this introduction Bunko Bill invited Slippery and Joe to make their home with them during their sojourn in Chicago, which offer was readily accepted and then all sat down to dine. After dinner Slippery under the pretense of wishing to show Joe the city, managed to keep out of complications which might have been caused by some of the inmates too closely questioning the lad, and he took the boy for a walk to the nearby shores of Lake Michigan. After Joe had enjoyed for some time the beauty of the marine scenery that spread like a gigantic panorama before his eyes, he broke the silence by bluntly asking Slippery how and when they were to meet his brother Jim. Slippery assured Joe and quieted him by saying that it would be merely a matter of days before they would meet Jim in the street in the same manner that they had met Boston Frank. They returned to the flat in time to join the others at supper, and after this had been served Joe wondered why one after another, all the members of the gang cautiously slipped out of the door and vanished down the stairway with the sole exception of "Dippy Marie", who showed them to their bedroom. In the morning Boston Frank made a call at the flat, and behind locked doors had a long conference with Slippery and the others. After his visit Slippery became a busy man and Joe watched him oiling, filing and tempering a collection of jimmies, nippers, wedges, pliers, saws, and other such tools for which an expert mechanic could find a proper use. When Joe carelessly picked up a small bottle that stood upon the table before Slippery, the yegg's face turned pale, and then he explained to the boy who too commenced to shudder the longer he listened, that the harmless looking liquid in the bottle was fearfully dangerous nitro-glycerine. The following afternoon Boston Frank made a second visit and then he and Slippery, each carrying a heavy satchel filled with the tools Slippery had so carefully looked after, followed by Joe, around whose left leg they had bandaged, despite his most vehement protests, the small bottle containing the deadly explosive, left the flat. They took a street car to the railroad station, where Boston Frank purchased tickets to Dixon, one of the prettiest and most hustling cities in western Illinois. Soon they were rolling out of the railroad yards and across the fertile plains and arrived at their destination late in the night. They left the train from the rear platform of the last Pullman, and climbed to the ground from the opposite side of the station platform, and after they had hurriedly walked about a mile in the darkness, Boston Frank stopped at a barn, and while Slippery and Joe walked ahead, he noiselessly opened the barn door and after hitching the owner's fastest horse to his best buggy he leisurely overtook the others and made them climb in, after they had placed the heavy satchels in the buggy's body, and then he carefully drove the horse on into the night. During their conversation, which Joe overheard, Boston Frank mentioned to Slippery that the "P.-O." had been reported to be a regular mint, and he repeatedly assured him that no one was sleeping in the "P.-O." as he had tried several nights in succession to purchase tobacco at the "P.-O.", but his knocks were not answered. At a cross-roads country store they stopped and here Joe understood what Boston Frank had meant with "P.-O.", as it bore a large sign that had the words "Post Office" painted upon it. While Boston Frank hitched the horse and buggy to a nearby tree, Slippery carried the heavy satchels containing the tools to the rear of the store, while he ordered Joe to carefully unwrap the nitro-glycerine bottle from his leg, which the boy gladly did to be rid of the dangerous explosive, and then handed it to Slippery. Joe, who had not yet the least inkling what sort of mysterious night work was contemplated by his older companions, suddenly came to the realization of his own danger when Slippery in a decidedly unfriendly manner, roughly commanded him to stand guard in front of the store, and after he had placed the lad so he could scan the different roads, he did something that has made more blood thirsty desperadoes out of harmless boys than any other trick, he pressed a cocked, large calibered revolver into the unsuspecting boy's hand and curtly ordered him, under pain of losing his own life if he failed to obey this order, to blaze away at any approaching human being. Then he disappeared towards the rear of the building. For a moment Joe's brain worked overtime, especially when he looked at the murder tool the other fellow had placed into his trembling hand and he promptly decided to cast the pistol into the middle of the roadway and run for his life to escape not only the clutches of these fellows, whom he now realized were desperate robbers, but to escape a possibly far worse fate. Just as he started to follow out this idea, Slippery stepped around the corner, and after he once more warned the lad not to falter in shooting to kill, he gave Joe a spool of fine copper wire to hold and when the surprised boy wished to know the reason, he showed Joe where he had the other end of the same wire twisted about his wrist, and cautioned him to hold it taut and that every time he gave the wire a sharp pull the boy should answer with the same signal, and that if he saw anyone approaching several sharp pulls should be the danger signal. Then he again left the lad, and whenever he tugged on the wire Joe answered with the agreed signal, and by this simple means Slippery had not only forced a harmless boy to do dangerous outpost duty, and was assured that he was always on guard, but what was most important, he had a noiseless danger signal that, even should the boy fail to kill somebody, he would thus notify the robbers that all was not well and give them plenty of time and a far better chance to make their getaway than the boy himself had, especially if he "shot to kill", as he had been commanded to do, which would have meant a long term behind the prison bars if not a trip by the route of the hangman's rope. While Joe had thus been forced to become their involuntary accomplice, the two yeggs pried open the rear entrance of the store, and then Slippery worked at his profession of safe blowing. When all had been made ready to explode the charge, they carried the satchels with their tools out of the store and placed them in the buggy and made everything ready for an instant escape. Boston Frank unhitched the horse and held it by the head, while Slippery went back to the store, lit the fuse and then stood at the rear door until an explosion, which seemed to tear the store asunder told the waiting yeggs that the moment to commence their dangerous harvest had arrived. While Boston Frank had trouble to quiet the madly plunging, frightened horse, Slippery dove into the store to emerge again an instant later choking, sneezing and almost blinded just as if he had dynamited a box loaded with powdered red pepper instead of a common fireproof safe. Foiled in stealing the contents of the safe, amid awful curses, he climbed into the buggy and called to Joe to jump upon its rear, and while they heard all around them loud calls and even pistol shots of the farmers, who had been aroused out of their slumbers, Boston Frank turned into the highway leading back to Dixon and the race for their liberty commenced. They dashed down the wagon road at top speed, Boston Frank ever urging the horse on to greater efforts, as in speed lay their only salvation. Passing the first farm house which fronted upon the wagon road, they could see by the light cast by a lantern that stood beside him upon the porch, a man dressed in his night robe raise a revolver and after taking a careful aim at the approaching buggy, just as they were in line with him, discharge point blank in quick succession its six messengers of death into their midst. But Boston Frank did not slacken the pace, on the contrary he urged the horse to ever greater speed. Not a word was exchanged by the inmates of the buggy during this race, and for several miles farther they drove at the utmost speed, then the horse's terrific gait commenced to slacken, and now that they were beyond the aroused neighborhood, Boston Frank slowed the horse and turned in at a road crossing to throw possible pursuers upon a wrong trail. Just as they realized how close an escape they had, Slippery keeled over against Boston Frank and said hoarsely: "Frank, for mercy's sake take me where I can get a drink of water. The fellow who fired at us from the first farm house hit his mark, for I am shot." "Slippery, old boy," now queried Boston Frank, not believing that such a dire calamity had overtaken them, "you are joking, aren't you?" And then, when Slippery did not answer, he looked into his pal's face and saw there the pallor of death while two dark lines emerging from the corner of his mouth caused by the wounded man's life blood, trickling away, proved to him that his comrade in crime had only too accurately spoken the bitter truth. Now he coughed and when Boston Frank saw a stream of blood shoot out of the wounded man's mouth and heard a choking noise in his throat, he readily recognized the nature of the hurt and that Slippery had been shot through his lungs. Boston Frank in sheer desperation again urged the rapidly tiring horse to one last effort, but soon the best speed he could get out of the animal was a slow trot. Again Slippery most piteously begged for a drink of water, and taking a desperate chance, when he saw in the darkness an open gate that led into a field, he guided the tired horse into it, and after Joe had closed the gate behind them he drove ahead until a thick thorn hedge stopped further progress. Here they lifted the wounded man out of the buggy and laid him upon the ground. He continued to plead most piteously for a cooling drink of water to appease his torturing fever thirst. "Joe," cautioned Boston Frank, after he had securely tied the horse to the hedge, "you take care of poor Slippery until I return with my derby filled with water, as I cannot bear to listen longer to the poor fellow's heart-rending appeals." Then he disappeared into the night, resolved to find water at any price. "Joe, Joe, come here, Joe," the lad heard Slippery weakly calling a moment later, and he knelt beside the wounded man and asked him what he desired. Just then Slippery could not answer, as he was again vomiting blood, and Joe tried to ease his breathing by elevating his head with boughs he broke from the hedge. "Joe," the wounded fellow called again, "where are you, Joe?" The boy placed his hand in the outstretched, searching hands of Slippery, who feebly pressed them with his own and said, "Joe, I know I am mortally wounded, and want you to make me, a dying man, a promise. I meant to forsake crime and live the life of an honest man for your sake after we had successfully pulled off this job--my last one." He paused a moment and then continued, "I took you with us, so when you and I went to your home in Rugby you would never forget that you had been my accomplice and would not be apt to peach on me. I know that the wound I received is the just punishment for the greatest wrong mortal man can commit, that of leading a harmless boy astray." Again he paused, as if his troubled conscience overpowered him, and then with a renewed effort that heavily taxed his fast ebbing vitality, he added, "Joe, for the love you bear for your mother, of whom you have spoken so often, swear now, before the Almighty, that you will from this moment forward shun the three evils which have brought me to this, and which are 'Bums, Booze and Boxcars', and that you will not further associate with the criminals at the flat, for if you return to them, on account of this night's work you will be forever one of their number." And there in the solitude of the night, kneeling beside his dying companion, with his arms uplifted towards the starry firmament, Joe solemnly swore that he would beware of "Bums, Booze and Boxcars", and quit the very people whose acquaintance he had made through Slippery. [Illustration: And there in the solitude of the night, kneeling beside his dying companion, Joe solemnly swore to forever forsake the "Road."] For a moment all was silence, which was interrupted only by the gurgling of the blood as it welled up into the mortally wounded yegg's throat, then came the pitifully human appeal from the lips of the dying man, "Joe, where are you, Joe? Do not leave me alone, Joe, now that all have left me and everything is so dark before my eyes." Then after a brief pause he painfully stammered, "Joe, find your brother Jim, then both of you go back to your mother and be once more her boys." He again became silent and then, now that it was too late, he plainly showed, that although he was a despised yegg, there was one place in this wide world where there would be one true friend waiting in vain for his return, for he slowly added, "Joe, believe me, there is no friend like mother and no place like home." Then came another hemorrhage and a stream of his life blood shot into the air and then, with a last effort, he drew Joe's hands to his parched, suffering lips, and while he covered them with kisses, the rattling in his throat increased, then decreased, and finally stopped--he had expired. When Boston Frank returned with the water, he only found his dead pal, as Joe, horror stricken by the dead man's glassy stare, by the blood covered corpse, by the quietude of the night and all the horrors which had transpired, had fled into the night as if furies and demons were pursuing him, bent only upon placing as much space as possible between his living self and the gruesome tragedy he had left behind. He climbed over fences and forced his way through hedges; forded creeks and swam streams, until from his frantic exertions he became so completely exhausted that when he fell into a clump of bushes he was unable to rise, and gradually sank into a deep sleep. Then a strange dream came to him. He dreamed he was a prisoner locked up in a narrow cell, and that he saw Slippery, the yegg's face pressed against its cross-barred steel door, while on both sides of him stood officers of the law. They were leading him to the gallows, upon which he had been condemned to expiate his crime, and now on his way to face his doom he had stopped to bid Joe a last farewell, and Joe could distinctly hear his words: "Good-bye, Joe, do not do as I did, who when a youngster ran away from a good home to follow Bums, Booze and Boxcars, but go back to your waiting mother before it is too late, for remember, 'The Wages of Sin is Shameful Death'." [Illustration: Hanging from the gallows] CHAPTER XII. "Scattered to the Winds." The sun stood high in the heavens when Joe awakened, and it was some moments before he remembered the horrible occurrences of the preceding night. But most vividly of all he remembered the solemn promise he had made to his dying pal and to strengthen himself in his resolve to strictly live up to his pledge, he fell upon his knees and repeated the solemn oath. At a rippling brook he washed and removed every trace of the ordeal he had passed through, and then inquired from a farmer the direction to the railroad station at Dixon, where he intended to hop a train to Chicago and, arriving in the city, find a job so he could support himself honestly, while keeping on a lookout for his missing brother Jim. After an hour's walk he arrived at the railroad station and found a crowd surging about a baggage truck which stood upon the station platform, and when he managed to push his way through the throng he found that the people were staring at a blood soaked blanket that covered a carcass of some sort. Joe only stopped for a moment, for when one of the men, more curious than the others, lifted up a corner of the blanket, Joe gazed into the lifeless features of Slippery, the yegg, and forced by his emotions he retreated quickly to another part of the platform. Here he overheard some of the citizens discussing the post office robbery, and he heard them say that the railroad and city policemen had identified the dead robber as one of the most dangerous criminals in the land for whose apprehension "dead or alive", the government offered a large reward. He also heard that the same country store post office had been dynamited twice in the past three months, and that the postmaster had set a trap with the aid of his neighbors, to give the next gang of burgling yeggs a hot reception. Presently a loud shout was heard and the crowd made a rush to the front of the station. Joe followed and saw a dirt covered man, securely manacled to an officer, entering the waiting room. Joe instantly recognized Boston Frank, and heard that he had been caught by a farmer's posse, who, following a trail of blood that had dripped from the buggy, had surprised Boston Frank while he was busy at work burying the satchels containing the burglar tools. Joe caught Boston Frank's eye and forthwith pushed himself alongside the yegg. While the officer to whom he was manacled paid close attention to the postmaster, who told him that although yeggs had spoiled his safe for a third time, he had protected his own and the government's valuables by having placed a quart bottle of formaldehyde in the safe, Boston Frank contrived to whisper to Joe that he had Slippery's purse in his hip pocket, and for him to take it and keep its contents, as he himself would have little use for cash in the penitentiary, for a long term now stared him in the face, and he ordered Joe to purchase a ticket and take the first train leaving for Chicago and to warn the others, as the officers, while searching him had found an incriminating letter that bore upon its envelope the correct address of the gang's hangout. Joe did as Boston Frank had directed, and a moment later he had, unobserved, abstracted a well-filled purse from the latter's pocket and hid it in his own. He then made his way to the ticket window and called for a ticket to Chicago. When he pulled out the purse that Boston Frank had told him belonged to the slain criminal, he almost dropped it from sheer surprise, as he instantly recognized it as his own purse, the very one that had been stolen from him at the Golden Rule Hotel, and the loss of which had started all of his misfortunes. He paid for the ticket and then in a secluded spot he counted the contents of the purse, which proved to be a windfall to the penniless lad, as it amounted to twelve dollars. While he waited for the arrival of the train, marvel as he might, he could not solve the riddle connected with the strange return of his purse that had so mysteriously managed to come back to its rightful owner after having disappeared at a place five hundred miles removed from Dixon, Illinois. He rode to Chicago on the same train upon which the government officers were bringing the corpse of the slain robber, and while Boston Frank was chained to a seat in the smoking car, Joe sat silently in the first-class coach, thinking of the lucky escape he had had and ever and anon repeating the oath he had made to the now lifeless clay in the baggage car ahead. While Joe was thus occupied he must have attracted the attention of one of the train men, who good-naturedly stopped to chat with him, and inquired where he was going. Joe told him that Chicago was his destination, and innocently added that he intended to find employment in the city. "Say, kid," the good-natured brakeman advised him, more as a huge joke than in a serious vein, "if you cannot find anything better, hit my boss for a job." And then he gave Joe the correct address of his superior. When the train arrived at the Chicago terminal, Joe boarded a street car that brought him quickly to the flat where he intended to acquaint its inmates with the misfortune that had overtaken Slippery and Boston Frank, and also to deliver the verbal message the latter had given him. To his surprise he found the front of the house in which the flat was located kept clear of public traffic by a cordon of policemen, while several police patrols were backed against the curb, and were not only loaded with the handcuffed criminals, who had been caught like rats in a trap, upon the telegraphic advice of the Dixon police authorities, but with thousands of dollars worth of stolen property that had been found in trunks and other hiding places. While Joe stood in the crowd watching the finish of those who had transgressed the law, with far better reasons than the curious idlers about him could suspect, he felt someone sharply pull his coat sleeve. He felt himself turning ashen-gray from fright as he thought some detective had recognized him, and when the same sharp pull was repeated, trembling with fear, he turned to see who it was that knew him in Chicago, and recognized that his dread was groundless as it was "Babe" who had pulled his sleeve, the youngest girl in the den of the thieves, who luckily happened to be away from home when the police commenced the raid of the flat. [Illustration: Her emotions got the better of her and she placed her arms around the sobbing lad's neck and kissed him.] "Come, Joe," she whispered, "I want to speak to you." He followed the girl and both walked to the nearby shore of Lake Michigan, where he repeated to her word for word everything that had occurred since he last saw her at the flat, and when he remarked that both of them should thank a kind Providence that had kept them out of the hands of the police, tears trickled down their cheeks, while they gazed out over the restless waters of the lake. It was "Babe" who broke the silence by remarking: "We are indeed lucky, Joe. Just think of what would have been our fate had we been arrested with the others. You would have been sent to a penal institution to emerge years later an ex-convict, a marked man forever afterwards, while I would have been sent to a home where I would have been forced to associate with the most degraded wretches. I was only seventeen last month and was sent from a faraway western city to a boarding school in the east, where the "blue stocking" matrons made the unfettered life that I had learned to love at home such a misery for me, that I ran away and came to Chicago to seek employment. I fell in with evil company, but, thank God, I have yet enough common sense left to know when to quit, and that is right now. For obvious reasons, I am not going to tell you my address, but," here she turned and out of a hiding place in her dress pulled a fair-sized roll of greenbacks, and then she continued, "I have managed to look out for a day just like this one and have saved a few dollars so I could get back home in the west, and" now she peeled a hundred dollar bill from the roll she held in her hand, "I want you to accept this sum and forget that you ever met me." Here her emotions got the best of her and she put her arms around Joe's neck, who was sobbing, being unable to express in any other manner his appreciation of the girl's generosity, and after she had kissed the boy she whispered: "Joe, for the sake of your mother I want you to swear that you will never again become a companion of criminals." Joe repeated to her the same solemn oath he had pledged to the dying Slippery, and promised that he would faithfully adhere to it as long as he lived. When he finished, for the want of something better to give her as a souvenir, he emptied the purse that had so strangely come back to him and made the girl accept it as a token of his gratitude for her timely help, when a mere dozen dollars stood between him and temptation. After making Joe promise that he would not attempt to follow her, she bade him farewell and walked to the nearest street crossing, and while Joe was busy wiping his eyes with one of his hands, he waved her farewell with the other until she mounted a street car and was whirled beyond his vision. After Joe had furnished himself with a proper outfit of clothing, and all the other things required by a young man who intends to find a respectable position, he engaged a room at a first-class hotel. He ate his supper in company with honest people and later retired for the night. He turned off the light, and while he lay there between the sheets waiting for sleep to overtake him, the fearful experiences of the last two days followed one another through his agitated mind just as if they were moving pictures. When he came to the scene where he knelt by the side of the flying yegg and solemnly swore to forever quit the path Slippery had shown him, he felt a strange power drag him out of the bed, force him to kneel upon the floor and repeat the sacred promise to shun Bums, Booze and Boxcars and then, when he went again to bed, it was only a few moments until he was soundly sleeping. CHAPTER XIII. "Where is my Brother James" On the following morning after he had breakfasted, he carefully copied all suitable advertisements inserted in the daily papers and set out to find employment, resolved to accept the very first job offered him, having profited by his Minneapolis experience when he and Jim refused many offers of employment which for the moment did not look good to them, but for which on the following day they actually begged. Filled with hope to quickly land a good job, he called at the different addresses, and, although he walked for hours up and down the streets and avenues, everywhere he inquired the place had been secured by some other person who had called earlier in the day. When afternoon approached, wearied by the resultless job-hunt and discouraged by his continued misfortune, he sank upon a bench in a city park to take a rest. While listlessly watching the passersby a touch of homesickness almost got the mastery of him. He was just at the point of deciding if it would not be best for him while yet he had the funds to do so, to purchase a ticket back to Rugby and ask his mother's forgiveness. He even arose from the bench to put this idea into execution, but he only made a few steps when he faltered and returned to his seat, the courage to face his mother without his brother James failed him. To find James now became his one desire, but think of whatever scheme he might, it seemed that to have patience and wait to meet him in Chicago was the only method he could discover. Just then, whistling a lively tune and with a toothpick saucily sticking out of one corner of his mouth, a small Western Union Messenger boy, dressed in all the brass buttoned glory of his snappy uniform, passed the tormented Joe, and somehow the latter's dejected countenance did not please the telegram carrier, and he greeted him with a withering, sneering look that caused Joe to double his fist within his pockets, aching to have it out with the fresh fellow. But before he could muster sufficient anger to start trouble, the messenger boy, no doubt fearing a sound thrashing, quickened his steps and hastened beyond the danger zone. Joe watched him until he passed around a street corner and wondered what caused him to be so overbearing, and just then the uniform of the messenger reminded him of the advice the brakeman gave him on the train, that should he be unable to find a job to tackle his superintendent for employment. He consulted his notebook into which he had entered the address, and taking a street car, a few minutes later he climbed the stairway of a large railroad office building and quickly found himself in the ante-room of the railroad ruler's office. When his turn came he entered the superintendent's office, whom he found to be a very kindly spoken gentleman, and brought matters to a quick head by blandly asking him for employment. The superintendent smiled to see a youngster like Joe daring to ask him, the master of thousands of employees, for a job, but Joe quickly convinced him that he was able to do a man's work and told how his late father had been a railroad employee at the time of his demise. The superintendent became interested in the open-faced lad, who most insistently pleaded to be given a chance to prove his desire to make good. In those days, the railroad companies were not so strict in the hiring of their employees as they are at present, and when the superintendent asked Joe what sort of job he thought he could fill, the latter, remembering the natty uniform of the passenger train's crew, promptly replied that a brakeman's job aboard a passenger train would just suit him, which answer caused the superintendent to break out into a hearty laugh, after he had told Joe that he was several sizes too small to fill that position. But Joe was entirely too much in earnest to be turned away this easily, and drawing himself to his full height, he pleaded that, as he had no home and neither touched tobacco nor strong drink, he should at least be given a trial, and then finished his appeal by telling the superintendent that a young, live and accommodating trainman was preferred by the patrons of every railroad to a cranky one. This last statement pleased the superintendent so well that he told Joe to report a week after date in a regulation uniform and that he should have a chance to prove his side of the argument. Joe thanked the superintendent for his kindness and after he closed the office door he jumped down the stairway three steps at a time, so happy was he. In fact he realized that he had not only found a job that would decently support him, but one that strictly conformed with his somewhat restless disposition, as it permitted him to travel to his heart's content aboard the flying trains, giving him at the same time a chance to earn an honest living and see a bit of the world. He gave a tailor a "hurry" order for a trainman's uniform, and when he reported on the appointed day at the superintendent's office, he was put in charge of a conductor who quickly became his fatherly friend, because Joe did everything required of him in a most satisfactory manner. Each pay day he placed a large percentage of his salary in a savings bank, and as his wages were from time to time increased, he soon became the owner of a comfortable bank account. He always kept a sharp lookout for his brother Jim, but five years rolled around in which time he found no trace of his missing brother. Finally he was attacked by a severe case of homesickness; somehow he felt a strange loneliness come over him, and the picture of his mother could not be effaced from his mind, and fearing as much as ever to return home without his twin brother, he finally wrote a long letter, pleading for her forgiveness and inquiring if anything had been heard from James since they left home together. He wrote his own address in the upper corner of the envelope and dropped the letter into a mail box. But from the moment the letter left his hands, his anxiety while waiting for an answer became such a burden that he was unable to attend to his duties, and had to ask for a lay-off. As hours were added to hours and days to days without an answer arriving, the strain of the suspense finally became so fearful that mute desperation was written in every line of his face, and to end the misery he was busily packing his suitcase ready to leave for Rugby, letter or no letter, the following morning and there upon his knees plead with his mother to forgive his boyish prank, when someone knocked on the door and when he opened it he found it was his landlady who handed him a letter, and he recognized it as being the same one he had addressed to his mother at Rugby, but there was this time written across its face: "Moved to Canada. Present address unknown." Joe stared at the letter for some moments as if dazed, then he locked the door, and when on the following afternoon his landlady knocked to inquire if anything was wanted he opened it. His bed was still unruffled, showing that he had not occupied it during the night, and when she saw the same letter she had brought to him, its writing blurred and tear-stained, lying open upon the dresser, and noted the red and swollen eyes and woe-begone expression of Joe's face, her motherly heart quickly surmised the pitiful drama that had been enacted behind the closed door of the room. She stepped close to the broken-hearted man, who was sitting upon a chair, mutely holding his head between his hands, and while she lightly stroked his hair she pleaded with him to go to the street, as she thought that mingling with the crowds would prove the best heart-balm for him. Joe took his kind landlady's advice, and while walking about the streets he felt that the pangs of remorse for the prank which had deprived him of his good mother were less severe, and when he began to feel more like his former self he retraced his steps to his lodging house. When he reached South Clark Street, his progress was blocked by a jam of vehicle traffic. The ever increasing crowd of delayed people forced Joe into the vestibule of one of the many slum saloons abounding in that locality, and here he watched the mounted police hard at work trying to again open the thoroughfare. While he thus passed the time until he could cross the street, he was accosted by a typical Chicago rum-soaked bum. "Say, friend," the semi-maudlin wretch pleaded while he edged most uncomfortably close to Joe, "would you mind assisting a hungry fellow who has not eaten a square meal in a week?" More for the sake of getting rid of his unpleasant company, than from a desire to accord charity, Joe went into his trouser pockets for a small coin to hand to the beggar, but while fumbling for the money he caused his trainman's cap to fall to the pavement. He reached down and picked it up, and when he straightened himself he pulled out a dime and handed it to the beggar, who, instead of accepting the proffered donation, disdainfully pushed aside the hand holding the alms and stepping closer he almost insultingly leered into Joe's face. "Say, McDonald," he hissed, "when did you make your getaway?" Before the astonished Joe could utter a single word the tramp pointed at Joe's trainman's cap and added: "I see you are working now for the Chicago & North-Western Railroad," and when still no sign of recognition came from Joe's mouth he in a most threatening manner finished: "Do they know your record over there?" Joe, although he trembled with ill-suppressed rage at this street beggar's impudence to openly insult him in such barefaced manner, held his peace for the moment, as he tried in vain to fathom how and where the mendicant had learned to call him by his correct name. To wring this information from the sodden wretch was his first purpose. "Say, fellow," Joe almost pleasantly asked the beggar, "who told you that my name is McDonald?" "Did you think I did not recognize you?" replied the bum in a most insolent tone while at the same time he pointed his hand at Joe's birthmark. "When you bent forward to pick up your cap I remembered you the moment I put my eyes on that streak of white hair," and then, sure that he had before him a victim whom he could blackmail with perfect impunity, he inquired, "Have you been back to Rugby since I saw you the last time, and say, McDonald, how are the chances for your helping a poor friend to the price of a meal and a bunking place for the night?" [Illustration: "Say, friend," pleaded the semi-maudlin beggar, "would you mind assisting a hungry fellow who has not eaten a square meal in a week?"] Joe felt greatly relieved when he heard the fellow's more familiar talk, as it seemed to prove that the beggar had been one of his late father's section laborers, and he searched his pockets once more and pulled out a silver dollar and pressed the coin into the man's outstretched palm, and then, wondering why he did not even deign to thank him for this generous gift he inquired if he had lately been back to Rugby, and if he ever heard what had become of his mother, Mrs. McDonald. Instead of an answer to his question the beggar straightened himself to his full height, "So you have not been home?" the bum mocked in a most impudent manner, "a little scared to show up amongst the folks at home with that soiled record chalked behind their honest family name, eh?" As yet no reply came from the trainman's trembling lips, still under the impression that he was speaking to Joe's twin brother, the bum added, while a most diabolical grin spread over his ugly visage, "Haven't peddled needle cases lately, have you?" "I do not understand what you are referring to," the now thoroughly mystified Joe interrupted the beggar, "I have never peddled a needle case in all my life." "Trying to wiggle yourself out of your past, eh?" the vagrant scornfully retorted, and thinking that his victim was trying to slip out of his net, he continued, "guess you think you can fool this old plinger and try to work the 'innocent' game on your old jocker, eh?" Joe again insisted that he did not understand what the fellow was trying to say, and tiring of the unpleasant conversation he blandly asked the beggar if he were not somewhat rum crazed. "Call me rum crazed," the wretch shrieked in towering rage, feeling that his victim was getting the better of the argument, that he intended should form a base upon which he would later collect blackmail, and while he shook his dirty fist in Joe's face, he added, "I, crazy? How dare you call me crazy? I, Kansas Shorty, the plinger?" Then he stepped back a pace and while his hideous, rum-bloated face was made all the more repulsive by his malevolent eyes with which he glared at the shuddering Joe, who only now, that the fiend had revealed his name-de-road recalled and recognized in the person of the beggar, the tramp who had taken charge of his brother James. While the rogue was yet gloating over the apparent discomfort his words had caused, Joe suddenly threw himself upon the vagabond, and while he bore him to the pavement and while his hands throttled the viper's throat, he shrieked into the beggar's ears. "I am Joseph McDonald, and you die on this spot unless you tell me what you have done with my brother James." They struggled desperately, one to free himself from the strangle hold, while Joe wished to force a confession from the fellow beneath him whose staring eyes were bulging out of his skull, and whose face had commenced to turn a bluish-black. Quickly the usual city crowd gathered about the fighting men and a second later the slum saloon in front of which they were battling, emptied its filthy scum into the street, all anxious to enjoy the combat. Some of the plingers amongst this riff-raff must have recognized their mate, and thinking that the trouble was merely a case of a street beggar insulting a citizen, and noting that this one wore the hated uniform of a railroad man--every tough's sworn enemy--they made common cause and the next moment Joe saw a heavy beer bottle descending upon his head, then all was darkness. When he regained consciousness he was lying upon the floor of the slum saloon, with his pockets turned inside out and his watch missing, and a dull pain almost bursting his skull. He staggered to his feet, and while he tried to steady himself against a table, the bartender took hold of his coat and shoved him through the swinging doors into the street, and advised him to make a quick getaway unless he wished to be arrested for attempting to murder a "poor and harmless working man". For a week his conductor did not see Joe, who was, during every moment of this time, ceaselessly combing the slums, the dives, the police courts and even the "jungles" upon the outskirts of the city in a vain effort to get a glimpse of Kansas Shorty. To some of the fellows whom he recognized as having been members of the "mob" which prevented his choking Kansas Shorty into a confession, he told the story of his missing brother and repeated the strange conversation that had passed between them before he felled the scoundrel to the pavement. These plingers, knitted together by the common knowledge that of all human vultures they are the most despised, had only shrugs for the unfortunate man, and when one of them, tiring of his repeated pleadings, condescended to hand him a mite of consolation, all the information he cared to impart was contained in the rejoinder that "Kansas Shorty had jumped the city." [Illustration: Unconscious in the gutter] CHAPTER XIV. "The Noble Work of the Salvation Army." A most decided change had come over Joseph McDonald when he again reported himself ready for duty. Since his struggle with Kansas Shorty he had repeatedly weighed every word this rascal had spoken and adduced from it that something most dishonorable must have been Jim's fate, and the oftener he attempted to unravel the mystery that lay concealed behind the ill-omened remarks made by this scoundrel, the more morose he became from the constant strain, for his troubled conscience caused him to feel that he was equally to be blamed for any disgrace that might have overtaken his missing brother. The more he worried the more he became resolved that even should he never be able to see his brother again, the chances that he would some day run across Kansas Shorty were far more favorable, as he well knew how drifters of his class roved aimlessly over the country as their fancy, the wanderlust, and more often the police drove them onward. To find Kansas Shorty became an obsession with Joe. If luck favored him in his search, he planned to plead with the scoundrel, but should this prove of no avail, then he intended to strangle him until he would divulge the secret which shrouded Jim's fate. Oftentimes, especially when late in the night, after the passengers had gone to sleep upon the coach seats, and Joe thought himself unobserved, his fellow trainmen, to whom he had confided his life's story, watched Joe, to whom a troubled conscience refused peace, raise his hands before him and slowly close the fingers with such suggestive motions, that it caused the trainmen to shudder when they imagined the same fingers executing like motions while entwined about Kansas Shorty's throat. Joe's second hobby was to study the hobo monickers written upon or carved into the railroad company's property. From the time his train left the Chicago Terminal until it pulled into the Union Station at Omaha, where Joe's "trip" ended, he employed every spare moment while they stopped at stations or water tanks, to carefully read every hobo sign that the drifters passing to and fro over the line had left behind them, ever hoping to discover a clue to Kansas Shorty's whereabouts by finding his name-de-rail with a date and an arrow beneath it pointing in the direction he was traveling. Joe's third and favorite hobby was to hunt hoboes who dared to beat their way upon his train. He finely discriminated between the man in search of employment, the harmless tramp who had fallen a victim to the wanderlust, the sneaking rogue who "toted" a six-shooter for the special purpose of killing human beings, preferring railroad employees and hoboes, and the rascal who had trained other people's sons to beg a living for him, exactly as an Italian organ grinder would train a performing monkey or bear. Many were the railroad lanterns Joe had to replace for those he broke over the heads of the two latter classes of tramps, especially the last ones, who clung even more obstinately to their road kids than a tiger clings to his prey. The youngsters he had rescued, if he was not able to send them safely home, he would turn over to proper authorities, for well he knew that each one of these runaway boys had not only somewhere a broken-hearted mother waiting for his return, but that, if they were not stopped drifting to the abyss while still young, with the evil training that depraved tramps gave them, it would be merely a matter of time before they too would have learned to destroy and pilfer railroad property; rob box cars and stations, and thus repay with almost brutal ingratitude those who had permitted them to travel unmolested upon their trains. The years rolled quickly by and although Joe had now been in the company's employ for almost fifteen years, he refused every offer of promotion, preferring his humble trainman's job, that, although he had years ago given up all hope of ever seeing his brother James again, gave him a chance to atone for his own blighted past by his self-appointed mission, that of trying to combat single-handed and unassisted the most vitally important and yet most revolting phase of the whole tramp problem. His endeavor in this line caused much ridicule among his fellow railroad men and those who had stopped to listen to tramps and especially to plingers, whom Joe's unselfish work had deprived of victims and who denounced him as a "Stool Pigeon", as a "Spotter" and whatever other venomous attribute their black souls could hurl at him, in an attempt to damage his well earned reputation as a benefactor to humanity, who in spite of many threats of bodily injury, by pointing to the seriousness of the road kid evil, proved to the world its intimate connection with the never lessening, nay, ever increasing, numbers of thieving and murdering vagrants. At both ends of his "run", at Chicago, as well as at Omaha, Joe had a rest of twelve hours before he again had to report for duty. One evening, just after he arrived at Omaha, his attention was attracted by a band of the Salvation Army holding a public service on a street corner. Their leader was loudly extorting and pleading with the crowd listening to his service, for penitents to come forward and permit the band to pray for their salvation. He was a good orator, and to hear him the better, Joe pushed his way through the crowd until he stood at the curb. Just at the moment when some of his audience commenced to titter at the poor success the appeal seemed to have, forcing his way through the crowd came a half drunken, shaggy bearded and poorly dressed man, who, when he reached the open center of the meeting, pleaded with the Salvation Army's leader to pray for him. Undaunted by the fellow's rough appearance and the very evident marks of his craving for strong drink, the leader shook his hand and after he bade him welcome asked him as a primary step towards complete salvation to make a public confession of his sins. Sobered by the solemnity of the moment the penitent wretch straightened and then gave a brief review of his life. It was the oft-repeated story of a runaway boy, hailing from a good family, drifting into hobo-companionship with all the rum, filth and crime that such association implies, and ended by telling that on this day, after having so wantonly wasted the best years of his life, he had made up his mind to end it all by placing his head upon the rails. On his way to the railway yards he had stopped to listen to the service of the Salvation Army, and when he heard their leader plead for lost souls, especially those who had been rejected by every other denomination, he felt it to be an act of God that had caused him to stop, and he came forward to try and make a second and better start in life. When he finished his pitiful story of a blasted life, there was hardly a dry eye amongst the listeners, and taking advantage of the good impression the confession had made, the Salvation Army leader asked all those who were believers in Christ to offer up a silent prayer for the penitent sinner. Joe joined the many others who complied with this request, and holding his cap before him, he bent his head in prayer. Then a strange incident occurred, for just as he replaced his cap the same repentant wretch for whose regeneration he had just prayed, came towards him and while tears rolled down his seamed face he stretched forth his hands and pleaded, "James McDonald, unfathomable are the ways of the merciful God, for here at the moment when I had resolved to henceforth lead a clean life he has sent you so I could beg your pardon for the greatest wrong a human being could inflict upon a harmless boy, that is, to wantonly spoil his future. James McDonald, I recognized your white hair streak when you lowered your head to pray for the salvation of the very man whom you had far better reason to curse. Will you not now forgive me, whom you have known as Kansas Shorty, and who will seek in the morning the first honest job he has ever done in his whole life?" Joe, dumfounded at meeting the fellow whom, although aged and disfigured by the unnatural life he had been leading, he now recognized as the tramp for whom he had searched for so many years, held his peace, for he recalled how he had at Chicago spoiled by undue haste his chance to discover the fate of his missing brother, who had resembled him so much that Kansas Shorty for a second time made the same error in their identity. [Illustration: A drunken, shaggy bearded and poorly dressed man pushed himself through the crowd, which listened to the Salvation Army's leader plea for penitents to come forward.] He told the wretch that he forgave him, and then drew back and became lost in the crowd, but while he stood well out of Kansas Shorty's view, he never took his eyes off the form of the new recruit of that immense army of human wrecks which the Salvationists have dragged out of saloons, gutters, penal institutions and back from suicide to convert and transform them into useful members of society. When the Salvation Army's street service had been concluded, led by flying flags and keeping step to the beating of a drum they marched to their prayer hall. Kansas Shorty, supported in his unsteady gait by two brethren of the Army, walked in the midst of the procession, while Joe kept some distance in the rear, never permitting his eyes to stray off the shambling form of the man who held the key to the riddle that had so effectively spoiled Joe's joy of life. After the army had entered the meeting hall, Joe called on the leader and gave him a brief outline of his past and asked him to assist him to cause Kansas Shorty to make a complete confession. The leader called his latest convert into his private office and explained to him that it was not James but his twin brother Joe of whom he had begged forgiveness, and he spoke so earnestly to the penitent outcast that the latter made a clean breast of all he knew concerning James McDonald, and although the leader as well as Joe tried to make him reveal more, he steadfastly maintained that after Jim's arrest at Denver he had left that city in a hurry and did not know anything further concerning his fate. When Joe left the Salvation Army's headquarters it was he who had to seek support to keep himself from falling, as the information he had just received unnerved him so completely that he could barely walk, for what Kansas Shorty had told not only proved that with Jim's disappearance he had lost every member of his family, but that his brother had also disgraced their good name. Late that night while he rolled restlessly about upon his bed, tormented by this last disappointment, and while he puzzled his feverish mind, a strong resentment came over him that Jim should have permitted himself to be so easily led astray by a good-for-nothing tramp, but when he remembered the circumstances of his own experience with Slippery, the yegg, brotherly love got the mastery over him and an idea flashed through his mind, that if Jim had been arrested at Denver the court records there should show the sentence the Judge had imposed, and that, although it seemed merely a forlorn hope, there was a chance to pick up the trail that would lead to something, and even if he failed to accomplish anything, for the sake of his own satisfaction, that he had done everything possible to clear up his brother's disappearance, he decided to leave on the morning for Denver. [Illustration: The Salvation Army] CHAPTER XV. "Forgive and Forget." In the morning Joe put his plan into execution by applying for and receiving a month's leave of absence, and taking the first train, he arrived early on the second day at Denver. Here he hastened to the court house and had the city clerk search in musty records and when he came close to the date that Joe had calculated tallied with Kansas Shorty's story, they found James McDonald's name, and the sentence the judge had imposed which read: "Imprisonment in the Colorado State Reformatory at Buena Vista until of age." This second step towards unravelling his missing brother's fate pleased Joe so well that before another hour had rolled around he was aboard a train bound for Buena Vista to continue the search there. At day break he arrived at this pretty mountain city and hired a livery rig and drove to the reformatory, situated upon the outskirts of Buena Vista. Here he called at the warden's office, and after stating his errand, again old records were searched, which showed that James McDonald had been received at the institution, but on account of exemplary behavior had soon after his arrival been paroled into the care of a rancher named Holmes. Then the warden recalled the case and explained to him that Jim not only had become Mr. Holmes' son-in-law by marrying his daughter, but that he was the proud father of a son and a daughter and was considered a respected member of the community. He also advised Joe to drive to Mr. Holmes' ranch, as it was only about ten miles down the valley. It was almost dinner time when Joe arrived at Mr. Holmes' handsome home, and when he saw a man standing at the gate as he approached, he immediately knew that it was his long lost brother, as he still resembled Joe, as much as in the past. "Jim," cried Joe, as he swung himself from the buggy, and "Brother Joe," came back the prompt reply, and then with tears of joy streaming from their eyes they embraced each other, and after their affectionate greeting they repaired to a nearby bench, and while holding his at-last-found brother's hands Joe remarked, not aware that his brother did not know that their mother and their eldest brother Donald had disappeared in Canada, a land almost as large as the United States: "Brother Jim, there is just one thing in this world that would add to our happiness and that is, I wish our mother were here to join us at this happy reunion," but hardly had he finished when Jim replied: "Joe, now that we have at last found each other, let us do what for so many years I have promised my wife and babies, should the good Lord answer my prayers and permit me to meet you again, and travel to Rugby and surprise our mother and plead for her forgiveness before she has passed from among the mortals, as she has no doubt suffered untold anguish in all the weary years since we ran away, as I have not dared during all this time to visit her nor write to her until I was assured that you were still among the living." [Illustration: "Jim", cried Joe, as he swung himself from the buggy, and "Brother Joe" came back the prompt reply, and then with tears of joy streaming down their faces the reunited brothers embraced each other.] Joe merely nodded his head as if assenting, as he did not wish to spoil his brother's gladness at this moment by telling of the fateful letter across the face of which was written: "Moved to Canada. Present address unknown," nor of the many official letters he had in his trunk from the Governor of every Canadian Province and many other officials, all of whom had searched in vain for their missing mother, and, too, he recalled those long hours of fearful remorse behind the locked door of his room, and decided to withhold this knowledge from his brother as well he realized that it would cause heart wounds which would require years to heal. Joe now gave his brother a brief review of his own career since they were separated, and finished by telling him that his present occupation was that of a railroad employee. At this moment an elderly gentleman approached and Joe introduced him to his brother as Mr. Holmes, his father-in-law, who, while Jim left to arrange for Joe's dinner, told Joe that after he had engaged Jim, the latter had proven himself so reliable that when a few years later his only daughter, Dorothy, who had been sent east to finish her education, returned and had fallen head over heels in love with Jim, he not only gave his paternal blessing, but on their marriage day gave her for a wedding present a deed to the ranch. Just then the dinner bell rang, and when they came to the house Mrs. James McDonald with her son, a lad of eight, and her daughter, a pretty girl of five, were waiting for them, and after Jim had introduced Joe he called his attention to the fact that his baby girl was named after her Aunt Helen who disappeared so mysteriously, and that the children had the McDonald family mark, the streak of white hair upon their heads. After dinner Jim called Joe into his private office and pleaded with him to forsake the railroad and make his future home upon the ranch. But it was quite a while before Joe would even listen to his proposition, but when Jim assured his brother that he could not think of having to part with him again he finally consented to the change. During the remainder of the afternoon Joe was busy writing his resignation and arranging to have his property transferred from Chicago, while Mr. Holmes and Jim were away from the house overseeing the work of the ranch. After Joe had finished his correspondence he took a seat in a rocking chair upon the porch from where he had a grand view of the fertile valley of the Arkansas and the snow capped mountain ranges beyond. A little later his sister-in-law joined him, and although she sat in another rocker close to Joe's, he found it impossible to engage her in a conversation, try as he might, as she persisted in staring him in the face. Chagrined at what he thought to be an affront, he suddenly blurted out: "Mrs. McDonald, is there something about my face that interests you?" Instead of an answer the lady who had turned a ghastly pallor handed him a small, paper wrapped parcel. Joe opened the same, and then after he hastily scanned its contents he speechlessly stared at his hostess. "Great God in Heaven," exclaimed Joe, breaking the suspense and unable to better express his amazement at the singular turn affairs had taken, while with a trembling hand he drew forth from the paper a small leather purse. "Can it be possible that you, Mrs. McDonald, are 'Babe', the girl I met fifteen years ago in Chicago, and whose timely assistance gave me a start upon the narrow path?" "I am the same girl, Joe," she quietly replied, "and it was for the express purpose of getting a chance to tell you that I am 'Babe' that I stared so rudely into your face, because I knew that now or never had come the climax in the lives of those who had in former days known each other as 'Babe' and 'Dakota Joe'." Then she took the small leather purse out of Joe's trembling hand and again wrapped it in the paper, and after striking a match that she had brought for this purpose, she held the lighted splinter against the paper, and when the hungry flames leaped up she threw the burning parcel upon the lawn below, and while they both watched the fire consume the fateful purse, Mrs. McDonald took Joe's hand into her own and while they pressed a mute, but none the less oath-bound promise to each other, she solemnly said: "For the sake of Jim's happy home and our innocent children, for the sake of the name all of us bear, and the many years I have lived an honorable life to atone for what occurred before the day when I last saw you in Chicago, I plead with you, whom, to my horror, I later discovered to be my own husband's missing brother, to let the past be forgiven, to be buried in silence and be forever hereafter forgotten." [Illustration: decorative element] CHAPTER XVI. "All is Well, that Ends Well." Joe's sojourn at his brother's home had reached the fifth year, and although he outwardly gave every indication of being perfectly satisfied, his visit had actually been a continued torture to him, for his brother became from day to day more insistent to pay their mother at Rugby the long intended visit. Joe, who had never yet dared to acquaint his brother with the truth concerning her disappearance, found it the hardest task of his life to dissuade Jim from making the journey and to find plausible excuses to prevent him from sending a letter to Rugby. The "skeleton in the closet" rattled ever more threateningly. "Next Spring," was Jim's ultimate reply, while his fist came angrily down upon the parlor table, after he and Joe had another of their evermore heated arguments as to the why and why not they should visit their mother, "Dorothy and the children and I will certainly visit Rugby, and if you do not care to join us to see her, we shall go without you," and then he arose and left the room. Singular indeed are the ways of Providence, for with the arrival of Spring a Canadian colonization agent found his way into the fertile valley of the Arkansas, where every acre of land was pre-empted and worth a huge price. Backed by an unlimited number of well written pamphlets which he freely distributed, he described Canada as equal to the land of Canaan; that homesteads were begging there for settlers and that land would bountifully produce anything, considering the northern latitude. Jim, who had saved a large portion of the annual income the ranch had earned became greatly interested in that part of the colonizer's story, in which he spoke of the enormous dividends that investments would bring, and when the agent explained to him that at a small additional outlay he could combine a Canadian trip with his journey to Rugby, this settled the matter. There was not a single loop hole left for Joe to prevent the journey, and when Jim and his wife commenced to pack their trunks, ready to leave for Canada on the coming morning, with or without Joe, the latter with a heavy heart followed suit, intending to ease as much as possible his brother's grief when Jim discovered that his journey to Rugby had been made in vain. In the morning Mr. Holmes drove Joe, Jim and his wife and children to the railroad station, but when the brothers asked at the ticket window for a round trip ticket to Canada, via Rugby, they were informed--to the dismay of Jim and to the joy of Joe, as this spelled additional delay--that the ticket would be only good for stop-overs upon their return journey. Soon they were aboard their train, and while Jim and his family had the time of their lives, Joe could hardly conceal the dread which racked his conscience when he thought how pitifully different would be their homeward trip. The outward journey ended at Edmonton, the hustling "Gate City to the Arctic", and then they commenced their return trip, stopping at Saskatoon, the beautiful "Hub City of the Saskatchewan"; at Regina, that stately "Queen City of the North West;" at Calgary, the "Gem City of the Rockies", and travelled from the latter to Winnipeg, the "Chicago of Canada." They intended that Winnipeg should be their last stop, as from there they meant to return via Rugby to their Colorado ranch. While viewing the sights of cosmopolitan Winnipeg with its wide streets and beautiful avenues, their progress was stopped in front of the City Hall by policemen, who held back a curious crowd, while they were unloading several patrol wagons filled with oddly dressed foreigners. Joe pushed himself close to one of the policemen and inquired the reason of their arrest, and the obliging guardian of the peace explained to him that they were "Doukhobors", a religious sect that on account of persecution had left Russia, and although they made first-class settlers, some of them had been arrested on account of queer practices which conflicted with the laws of Canada, and which, despite repeated warnings, they refused to discontinue. By this time the prisoners had been transferred into the city hall, and the officer volunteered to see to it that Joe and his friends would find a good vantage point from where they could watch a Canadian court trial. Joe accepted the officer's kind offer, and the latter opened a path through the densely crowded court room for the McDonalds, who were soon standing at the railing that separated the prisoners from the public. Amongst the more than a score of prisoners were several women, all of whom were old hags with the exception of one, who was really good looking considering that she wore the same homely, gray homespun dress and black shawl that did service for headwear, worn by all the women of her sect. All noise subsided when the judge entered the court room. He was a stern-faced gentleman, and wore a white wig and a black robe, which, although they gave him the appearance of a patriarch, also added greatly to the austerity of his exalted office. It was against the tenets of the Doukhobors to employ legal counsel to defend them, and so the trial was quickly finished. The young woman was the only one amongst them who could understand the English language, and she answered the judge's questions, and when the sentence had been passed, the others in their anxiety to hear from her how long a term they had been condemned to, almost mobbed her, and in the struggle the black shawl covering her head fell to the floor. "Look, Jim, look!" shouted Joe to his brother above the din the Doukhobors made, while at the same time he pointed towards the young woman's head, upon which one braid of white hair stood plainly out against a black braid on each side of it. "She is the first human being I ever saw or heard of that had the birth-mark of the McDonald's." Then a vague suspicion flashed through his mind and he asked the officer to bring the woman over to where he was standing so he could question her concerning her past. While the judge and the barristers were engaged in writing the commitment papers, Joe asked the woman to tell him who was her mother, and when she pointed at a wrinkled hag, he had the policeman stand the latter beside her daughter, who now acted as interpreter. Now Joe had Jim's daughter stand beside the younger woman, and when the old hag noted the resemblance between the two she paled and commenced to weep. Aided by the policeman, and the promise that if the Doukhobor woman told the truth concerning the young woman's parentage she would not be molested, and greatly influenced by the fact that her sect, like the Quakers, consider telling an untruth a mortal sin, she told the following story: While she and her husband in company with many others of their sect were crossing the Atlantic, during the stormy winter voyage, her only child, a little girl, died and was buried at sea. They landed in America and were loaded aboard an immigrant train, which several days later stopped in a snow covered prairie. Looking out of the coach window, the bereaved mother saw a little tot, just the size of their own "Maritzka", playing in the snow below the window, and yearning for her departed baby she had climbed from the train and petted the little child, who instead of being frightened by the strange woman, permitted her to kiss its rosy cheeks, and while she felt the tot's chubby hands and soft limbs, the mother love which she used to lavish upon her own Maritzka got the upper hand of her, and noting that no one was guarding this smiling baby girl, and that no homes were near, she could not resist the temptation to have this child replace the one God had taken from her. Realizing that the child's clothing did not match her own, she quickly undressed the tot, and after she had wrapped it in her shawl she climbed aboard the train, which at this moment commenced to pull away. While she dressed the child in the clothes which had belonged to her own child, she discovered that she had overlooked a locket that hung around its neck, and that ever since that day had kept this place. She now caused her kidnapped daughter to take off and hand this locket to Joe, and when he opened it he found his late father's and his mother's picture in it, and an inscription that read, "Henry McDonald to Ethel, his wife." Then Joe and Jim quickly proved to the young woman that they were truly her brothers, and promised her that they would properly look after her every need if she would part with the foreign woman, who, in her ignorance, had not only spoiled her life, but had caused her father's death. She consented to go with them and took a tearful farewell of the Doukhobor woman, who had been a mother to her all these years, and although poor herself, had provided her with a fair education. The story of the strange finding of their long lost sister traveled through the court room, and when it came to the attention of the judge, he suspended the young woman's sentence so her brothers could take her back with them to the States. He was anxious to hear from their own lips the story of the strange recovery, and he induced Joe to repeat to him every fact connected with the loss and the finding of their sister. After Joe had finished, the judge seemed so well pleased with the story he told, that he begged them to be seated so he could send for a reporter of Winnipeg's leading paper, "The Manitoba Free Press", so all the world could read of the wonderful recovery of their sister. They gladly consented, and then the judge gave whispered instructions to a messenger. When the messenger returned the judge arose from his chair and met him half way across the court room, and both entered an adjacent jury chamber, from which the judge a few minutes later emerged and beckoned to the McDonalds to join him in this room. When they entered the jury chamber they found themselves in the presence of an elderly lady seated at a table, whose silvery hair lent an added charm to the sad expression of her face, and whom the judge introduced as the reporter sent by the "Free Press" to write their interesting story for that paper. Joe then repeated the story of the mysterious disappearance of their baby sister, and while he narrated her recovery after so many years, his strange tale caused the attentively listening lady reporter to exclaim: "How wonderful are the ways of our Lord." When Joe had finished the judge inquired of the brothers what their intentions were concerning their sister's future, to which question Jim answered that they would take the earliest train to Rugby and that he thought it would be best to leave her there in care of their mother and their eldest brother Donald. While he was talking the judge had taken off his wig and laid aside his robe. Hardly had Jim finished unfolding his plan, than the judge wheeled around, and when the brothers looked in the direction of his uplifted finger, which was pointing towards the back of his head, to their complete amazement they saw there the same strange streak of snow white hair that distinguished every member of the McDonald family. Ere they could utter a single syllable the judge again faced them and told them that he himself, was their brother Donald McDonald, and that after they ran away from home he and their mother had emigrated to Canada, where by hard work and frugality they had managed to send him to a university, from which, after he had studied law, he had gradually been promoted to a judgeship. Joe, whose conscience had troubled him ever since the fatal moment when his unopened letter had been returned to him from Rugby, broke the profound silence that prevailed in the room after the judge's revelation as to his identity, by asking the one question ever supreme in his mind. He wished to know if his newly found brother Donald could not tell them their mother's present address, so he and Jim could hasten to her and beg her pardon for all the trouble their running away from their home must have caused her. Tears were welling into the judge's eyes when he pointed to the lady at the table, and then with his voice choking with emotion he said: "This lady is not a reporter, but is our own dear mother, and I am sure that she will gladly forgive you for your thoughtless boyish prank, for you plainly show how grieved and repentant you are, and how anxious you will henceforth be to atone by true filial devotion in the future for the nameless woe you have brought upon her life in the past." As if spurred on by a common impulse, Joe and Jim humbly knelt before the sweet faced lady in whose careworn face they readily recognized the countenance of their own once so happy mother, and pleaded for her forgiveness. While they were still waiting for the words which would end a penance stretching over twenty weary years, she arose from her chair, and trembling with emotion lifted her withered arms high above her head, and with a face that bespoke the joy which had at last blessed her life, she pronounced this benediction: "Oh, Henry McDonald, my dear departed husband, how I wish that at this happy moment you were standing beside me to assist me in blessing those who have come home, and praising the good Lord above us from now until my children bury me, for having this day, after so many sorrowful years, mercifully answered my tearful prayers." This maternal blessing was followed by a most affectionate greeting and then the happy family repaired to Judge Donald McDonald's stately mansion where they further celebrated their reunion. When some weeks later Joe and Jim and the latter's family returned to the Buena Vista ranch they not only had their sister Helen accompany them, but had persuaded their beloved mother to take a pleasure trip to their Colorado home, and according to the latest reports the judge is having the time of his life trying to induce the happy mother to return to her home in Canada. This was Canada Joe's story. [Illustration: The End] [Illustration: A tramp] 
14658	----	THE ROAD by JACK LONDON (New York: Macmillan) 1907 TO JOSIAH FLYNT The Real Thing, Blowed in the Glass CONTENTS CONFESSION HOLDING HER DOWN PICTURES "PINCHED" THE PEN HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS TWO THOUSAND STIFFS BULLS "Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all, The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world. Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good For such as cannot use one bed too long, But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done, An' go observin' matters till they die." --Sestina of the Tramp-Royal CONFESSION There is a woman in the state of Nevada to whom I once lied continuously, consistently, and shamelessly, for the matter of a couple of hours. I don't want to apologize to her. Far be it from me. But I do want to explain. Unfortunately, I do not know her name, much less her present address. If her eyes should chance upon these lines, I hope she will write to me. It was in Reno, Nevada, in the summer of 1892. Also, it was fair-time, and the town was filled with petty crooks and tin-horns, to say nothing of a vast and hungry horde of hoboes. It was the hungry hoboes that made the town a "hungry" town. They "battered" the back doors of the homes of the citizens until the back doors became unresponsive. A hard town for "scoffings," was what the hoboes called it at that time. I know that I missed many a meal, in spite of the fact that I could "throw my feet" with the next one when it came to "slamming a gate" for a "poke-out" or a "set-down," or hitting for a "light piece" on the street. Why, I was so hard put in that town, one day, that I gave the porter the slip and invaded the private car of some itinerant millionnaire. The train started as I made the platform, and I headed for the aforesaid millionnaire with the porter one jump behind and reaching for me. It was a dead heat, for I reached the millionnaire at the same instant that the porter reached me. I had no time for formalities. "Gimme a quarter to eat on," I blurted out. And as I live, that millionnaire dipped into his pocket and gave me ... just ... precisely ... a quarter. It is my conviction that he was so flabbergasted that he obeyed automatically, and it has been a matter of keen regret ever since, on my part, that I didn't ask him for a dollar. I know that I'd have got it. I swung off the platform of that private car with the porter manoeuvring to kick me in the face. He missed me. One is at a terrible disadvantage when trying to swing off the lowest step of a car and not break his neck on the right of way, with, at the same time, an irate Ethiopian on the platform above trying to land him in the face with a number eleven. But I got the quarter! I got it! But to return to the woman to whom I so shamelessly lied. It was in the evening of my last day in Reno. I had been out to the race-track watching the ponies run, and had missed my dinner (_i.e._ the mid-day meal). I was hungry, and, furthermore, a committee of public safety had just been organized to rid the town of just such hungry mortals as I. Already a lot of my brother hoboes had been gathered in by John Law, and I could hear the sunny valleys of California calling to me over the cold crests of the Sierras. Two acts remained for me to perform before I shook the dust of Reno from my feet. One was to catch the blind baggage on the westbound overland that night. The other was first to get something to eat. Even youth will hesitate at an all-night ride, on an empty stomach, outside a train that is tearing the atmosphere through the snow-sheds, tunnels, and eternal snows of heaven-aspiring mountains. But that something to eat was a hard proposition. I was "turned down" at a dozen houses. Sometimes I received insulting remarks and was informed of the barred domicile that should be mine if I had my just deserts. The worst of it was that such assertions were only too true. That was why I was pulling west that night. John Law was abroad in the town, seeking eagerly for the hungry and homeless, for by such was his barred domicile tenanted. At other houses the doors were slammed in my face, cutting short my politely and humbly couched request for something to eat. At one house they did not open the door. I stood on the porch and knocked, and they looked out at me through the window. They even held one sturdy little boy aloft so that he could see over the shoulders of his elders the tramp who wasn't going to get anything to eat at their house. It began to look as if I should be compelled to go to the very poor for my food. The very poor constitute the last sure recourse of the hungry tramp. The very poor can always be depended upon. They never turn away the hungry. Time and again, all over the United States, have I been refused food by the big house on the hill; and always have I received food from the little shack down by the creek or marsh, with its broken windows stuffed with rags and its tired-faced mother broken with labor. Oh, you charity-mongers! Go to the poor and learn, for the poor alone are the charitable. They neither give nor withhold from their excess. They have no excess. They give, and they withhold never, from what they need for themselves, and very often from what they cruelly need for themselves. A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog when you are just as hungry as the dog. There was one house in particular where I was turned down that evening. The porch windows opened on the dining room, and through them I saw a man eating pie--a big meat-pie. I stood in the open door, and while he talked with me, he went on eating. He was prosperous, and out of his prosperity had been bred resentment against his less fortunate brothers. He cut short my request for something to eat, snapping out, "I don't believe you want to work." Now this was irrelevant. I hadn't said anything about work. The topic of conversation I had introduced was "food." In fact, I didn't want to work. I wanted to take the westbound overland that night. "You wouldn't work if you had a chance," he bullied. I glanced at his meek-faced wife, and knew that but for the presence of this Cerberus I'd have a whack at that meat-pie myself. But Cerberus sopped himself in the pie, and I saw that I must placate him if I were to get a share of it. So I sighed to myself and accepted his work-morality. "Of course I want work," I bluffed. "Don't believe it," he snorted. "Try me," I answered, warming to the bluff. "All right," he said. "Come to the corner of blank and blank streets"--(I have forgotten the address)--"to-morrow morning. You know where that burned building is, and I'll put you to work tossing bricks." "All right, sir; I'll be there." He grunted and went on eating. I waited. After a couple of minutes he looked up with an I-thought-you-were-gone expression on his face, and demanded:-- "Well?" "I ... I am waiting for something to eat," I said gently. "I knew you wouldn't work!" he roared. He was right, of course; but his conclusion must have been reached by mind-reading, for his logic wouldn't bear it out. But the beggar at the door must be humble, so I accepted his logic as I had accepted his morality. "You see, I am now hungry," I said still gently. "To-morrow morning I shall be hungrier. Think how hungry I shall be when I have tossed bricks all day without anything to eat. Now if you will give me something to eat, I'll be in great shape for those bricks." He gravely considered my plea, at the same time going on eating, while his wife nearly trembled into propitiatory speech, but refrained. "I'll tell you what I'll do," he said between mouthfuls. "You come to work to-morrow, and in the middle of the day I'll advance you enough for your dinner. That will show whether you are in earnest or not." "In the meantime--" I began; but he interrupted. "If I gave you something to eat now, I'd never see you again. Oh, I know your kind. Look at me. I owe no man. I have never descended so low as to ask any one for food. I have always earned my food. The trouble with you is that you are idle and dissolute. I can see it in your face. I have worked and been honest. I have made myself what I am. And you can do the same, if you work and are honest." "Like you?" I queried. Alas, no ray of humor had ever penetrated the sombre work-sodden soul of that man. "Yes, like me," he answered. "All of us?" I queried. "Yes, all of you," he answered, conviction vibrating in his voice. "But if we all became like you," I said, "allow me to point out that there'd be nobody to toss bricks for you." I swear there was a flicker of a smile in his wife's eye. As for him, he was aghast--but whether at the awful possibility of a reformed humanity that would not enable him to get anybody to toss bricks for him, or at my impudence, I shall never know. "I'll not waste words on you," he roared. "Get out of here, you ungrateful whelp!" I scraped my feet to advertise my intention of going, and queried:-- "And I don't get anything to eat?" He arose suddenly to his feet. He was a large man. I was a stranger in a strange land, and John Law was looking for me. I went away hurriedly. "But why ungrateful?" I asked myself as I slammed his gate. "What in the dickens did he give me to be ungrateful about?" I looked back. I could still see him through the window. He had returned to his pie. By this time I had lost heart. I passed many houses by without venturing up to them. All houses looked alike, and none looked "good." After walking half a dozen blocks I shook off my despondency and gathered my "nerve." This begging for food was all a game, and if I didn't like the cards, I could always call for a new deal. I made up my mind to tackle the next house. I approached it in the deepening twilight, going around to the kitchen door. I knocked softly, and when I saw the kind face of the middle-aged woman who answered, as by inspiration came to me the "story" I was to tell. For know that upon his ability to tell a good story depends the success of the beggar. First of all, and on the instant, the beggar must "size up" his victim. After that, he must tell a story that will appeal to the peculiar personality and temperament of that particular victim. And right here arises the great difficulty: in the instant that he is sizing up the victim he must begin his story. Not a minute is allowed for preparation. As in a lightning flash he must divine the nature of the victim and conceive a tale that will hit home. The successful hobo must be an artist. He must create spontaneously and instantaneously--and not upon a theme selected from the plenitude of his own imagination, but upon the theme he reads in the face of the person who opens the door, be it man, woman, or child, sweet or crabbed, generous or miserly, good-natured or cantankerous, Jew or Gentile, black or white, race-prejudiced or brotherly, provincial or universal, or whatever else it may be. I have often thought that to this training of my tramp days is due much of my success as a story-writer. In order to get the food whereby I lived, I was compelled to tell tales that rang true. At the back door, out of inexorable necessity, is developed the convincingness and sincerity laid down by all authorities on the art of the short-story. Also, I quite believe it was my tramp-apprenticeship that made a realist out of me. Realism constitutes the only goods one can exchange at the kitchen door for grub. After all, art is only consummate artfulness, and artfulness saves many a "story." I remember lying in a police station at Winnipeg, Manitoba. I was bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Of course, the police wanted my story, and I gave it to them--on the spur of the moment. They were landlubbers, in the heart of the continent, and what better story for them than a sea story? They could never trip me up on that. And so I told a tearful tale of my life on the hell-ship _Glenmore_. (I had once seen the _Glenmore_ lying at anchor in San Francisco Bay.) I was an English apprentice, I said. And they said that I didn't talk like an English boy. It was up to me to create on the instant. I had been born and reared in the United States. On the death of my parents, I had been sent to England to my grandparents. It was they who had apprenticed me on the _Glenmore_. I hope the captain of the _Glenmore_ will forgive me, for I gave him a character that night in the Winnipeg police station. Such cruelty! Such brutality! Such diabolical ingenuity of torture! It explained why I had deserted the _Glenmore_ at Montreal. But why was I in the middle of Canada going west, when my grandparents lived in England? Promptly I created a married sister who lived in California. She would take care of me. I developed at length her loving nature. But they were not done with me, those hard-hearted policemen. I had joined the _Glenmore_ in England; in the two years that had elapsed before my desertion at Montreal, what had the _Glenmore_ done and where had she been? And thereat I took those landlubbers around the world with me. Buffeted by pounding seas and stung with flying spray, they fought a typhoon with me off the coast of Japan. They loaded and unloaded cargo with me in all the ports of the Seven Seas. I took them to India, and Rangoon, and China, and had them hammer ice with me around the Horn and at last come to moorings at Montreal. And then they said to wait a moment, and one policeman went forth into the night while I warmed myself at the stove, all the while racking my brains for the trap they were going to spring on me. I groaned to myself when I saw him come in the door at the heels of the policeman. No gypsy prank had thrust those tiny hoops of gold through the ears; no prairie winds had beaten that skin into wrinkled leather; nor had snow-drift and mountain-slope put in his walk that reminiscent roll. And in those eyes, when they looked at me, I saw the unmistakable sun-wash of the sea. Here was a theme, alas! with half a dozen policemen to watch me read--I who had never sailed the China seas, nor been around the Horn, nor looked with my eyes upon India and Rangoon. I was desperate. Disaster stalked before me incarnate in the form of that gold-ear-ringed, weather-beaten son of the sea. Who was he? What was he? I must solve him ere he solved me. I must take a new orientation, or else those wicked policemen would orientate me to a cell, a police court, and more cells. If he questioned me first, before I knew how much he knew, I was lost. But did I betray my desperate plight to those lynx-eyed guardians of the public welfare of Winnipeg? Not I. I met that aged sailorman glad-eyed and beaming, with all the simulated relief at deliverance that a drowning man would display on finding a life-preserver in his last despairing clutch. Here was a man who understood and who would verify my true story to the faces of those sleuth-hounds who did not understand, or, at least, such was what I endeavored to play-act. I seized upon him; I volleyed him with questions about himself. Before my judges I would prove the character of my savior before he saved me. He was a kindly sailorman--an "easy mark." The policemen grew impatient while I questioned him. At last one of them told me to shut up. I shut up; but while I remained shut up, I was busy creating, busy sketching the scenario of the next act. I had learned enough to go on with. He was a Frenchman. He had sailed always on French merchant vessels, with the one exception of a voyage on a "lime-juicer." And last of all--blessed fact!--he had not been on the sea for twenty years. The policeman urged him on to examine me. "You called in at Rangoon?" he queried. I nodded. "We put our third mate ashore there. Fever." If he had asked me what kind of fever, I should have answered, "Enteric," though for the life of me I didn't know what enteric was. But he didn't ask me. Instead, his next question was:-- "And how is Rangoon?" "All right. It rained a whole lot when we were there." "Did you get shore-leave?" "Sure," I answered. "Three of us apprentices went ashore together." "Do you remember the temple?" "Which temple?" I parried. "The big one, at the top of the stairway." If I remembered that temple, I knew I'd have to describe it. The gulf yawned for me. I shook my head. "You can see it from all over the harbor," he informed me. "You don't need shore-leave to see that temple." I never loathed a temple so in my life. But I fixed that particular temple at Rangoon. "You can't see it from the harbor," I contradicted. "You can't see it from the town. You can't see it from the top of the stairway. Because--" I paused for the effect. "Because there isn't any temple there." "But I saw it with my own eyes!" he cried. "That was in--?" I queried. "Seventy-one." "It was destroyed in the great earthquake of 1887," I explained. "It was very old." There was a pause. He was busy reconstructing in his old eyes the youthful vision of that fair temple by the sea. "The stairway is still there," I aided him. "You can see it from all over the harbor. And you remember that little island on the right-hand side coming into the harbor?" I guess there must have been one there (I was prepared to shift it over to the left-hand side), for he nodded. "Gone," I said. "Seven fathoms of water there now." I had gained a moment for breath. While he pondered on time's changes, I prepared the finishing touches of my story. "You remember the custom-house at Bombay?" He remembered it. "Burned to the ground," I announced. "Do you remember Jim Wan?" he came back at me. "Dead," I said; but who the devil Jim Wan was I hadn't the slightest idea. I was on thin ice again. "Do you remember Billy Harper, at Shanghai?" I queried back at him quickly. That aged sailorman worked hard to recollect, but the Billy Harper of my imagination was beyond his faded memory. "Of course you remember Billy Harper," I insisted. "Everybody knows him. He's been there forty years. Well, he's still there, that's all." And then the miracle happened. The sailorman remembered Billy Harper. Perhaps there was a Billy Harper, and perhaps he had been in Shanghai for forty years and was still there; but it was news to me. For fully half an hour longer, the sailorman and I talked on in similar fashion. In the end he told the policemen that I was what I represented myself to be, and after a night's lodging and a breakfast I was released to wander on westward to my married sister in San Francisco. But to return to the woman in Reno who opened her door to me in the deepening twilight. At the first glimpse of her kindly face I took my cue. I became a sweet, innocent, unfortunate lad. I couldn't speak. I opened my mouth and closed it again. Never in my life before had I asked any one for food. My embarrassment was painful, extreme. I was ashamed. I, who looked upon begging as a delightful whimsicality, thumbed myself over into a true son of Mrs. Grundy, burdened with all her bourgeois morality. Only the harsh pangs of the belly-need could compel me to do so degraded and ignoble a thing as beg for food. And into my face I strove to throw all the wan wistfulness of famished and ingenuous youth unused to mendicancy. "You are hungry, my poor boy," she said. I had made her speak first. I nodded my head and gulped. "It is the first time I have ever ... asked," I faltered. "Come right in." The door swung open. "We have already finished eating, but the fire is burning and I can get something up for you." She looked at me closely when she got me into the light. "I wish my boy were as healthy and strong as you," she said. "But he is not strong. He sometimes falls down. He just fell down this afternoon and hurt himself badly, the poor dear." She mothered him with her voice, with an ineffable tenderness in it that I yearned to appropriate. I glanced at him. He sat across the table, slender and pale, his head swathed in bandages. He did not move, but his eyes, bright in the lamplight, were fixed upon me in a steady and wondering stare. "Just like my poor father," I said. "He had the falling sickness. Some kind of vertigo. It puzzled the doctors. They never could make out what was the matter with him." "He is dead?" she queried gently, setting before me half a dozen soft-boiled eggs. "Dead," I gulped. "Two weeks ago. I was with him when it happened. We were crossing the street together. He fell right down. He was never conscious again. They carried him into a drug-store. He died there." And thereat I developed the pitiful tale of my father--how, after my mother's death, he and I had gone to San Francisco from the ranch; how his pension (he was an old soldier), and the little other money he had, was not enough; and how he had tried book-canvassing. Also, I narrated my own woes during the few days after his death that I had spent alone and forlorn on the streets of San Francisco. While that good woman warmed up biscuits, fried bacon, and cooked more eggs, and while I kept pace with her in taking care of all that she placed before me, I enlarged the picture of that poor orphan boy and filled in the details. I became that poor boy. I believed in him as I believed in the beautiful eggs I was devouring. I could have wept for myself. I know the tears did get into my voice at times. It was very effective. In fact, with every touch I added to the picture, that kind soul gave me something also. She made up a lunch for me to carry away. She put in many boiled eggs, pepper and salt, and other things, and a big apple. She provided me with three pairs of thick red woollen socks. She gave me clean handkerchiefs and other things which I have since forgotten. And all the time she cooked more and more and I ate more and more. I gorged like a savage; but then it was a far cry across the Sierras on a blind baggage, and I knew not when nor where I should find my next meal. And all the while, like a death's-head at the feast, silent and motionless, her own unfortunate boy sat and stared at me across the table. I suppose I represented to him mystery, and romance, and adventure--all that was denied the feeble flicker of life that was in him. And yet I could not forbear, once or twice, from wondering if he saw through me down to the bottom of my mendacious heart. "But where are you going to?" she asked me. "Salt Lake City," said I. "I have a sister there--a married sister." (I debated if I should make a Mormon out of her, and decided against it.) "Her husband is a plumber--a contracting plumber." Now I knew that contracting plumbers were usually credited with making lots of money. But I had spoken. It was up to me to qualify. "They would have sent me the money for my fare if I had asked for it," I explained, "but they have had sickness and business troubles. His partner cheated him. And so I wouldn't write for the money. I knew I could make my way there somehow. I let them think I had enough to get me to Salt Lake City. She is lovely, and so kind. She was always kind to me. I guess I'll go into the shop and learn the trade. She has two daughters. They are younger than I. One is only a baby." Of all my married sisters that I have distributed among the cities of the United States, that Salt Lake sister is my favorite. She is quite real, too. When I tell about her, I can see her, and her two little girls, and her plumber husband. She is a large, motherly woman, just verging on beneficent stoutness--the kind, you know, that always cooks nice things and that never gets angry. She is a brunette. Her husband is a quiet, easy-going fellow. Sometimes I almost know him quite well. And who knows but some day I may meet him? If that aged sailorman could remember Billy Harper, I see no reason why I should not some day meet the husband of my sister who lives in Salt Lake City. On the other hand, I have a feeling of certitude within me that I shall never meet in the flesh my many parents and grandparents--you see, I invariably killed them off. Heart disease was my favorite way of getting rid of my mother, though on occasion I did away with her by means of consumption, pneumonia, and typhoid fever. It is true, as the Winnipeg policemen will attest, that I have grandparents living in England; but that was a long time ago and it is a fair assumption that they are dead by now. At any rate, they have never written to me. I hope that woman in Reno will read these lines and forgive me my gracelessness and unveracity. I do not apologize, for I am unashamed. It was youth, delight in life, zest for experience, that brought me to her door. It did me good. It taught me the intrinsic kindliness of human nature. I hope it did her good. Anyway, she may get a good laugh out of it now that she learns the real inwardness of the situation. To her my story was "true." She believed in me and all my family, and she was filled with solicitude for the dangerous journey I must make ere I won to Salt Lake City. This solicitude nearly brought me to grief. Just as I was leaving, my arms full of lunch and my pockets bulging with fat woollen socks, she bethought herself of a nephew, or uncle, or relative of some sort, who was in the railway mail service, and who, moreover, would come through that night on the very train on which I was going to steal my ride. The very thing! She would take me down to the depot, tell him my story, and get him to hide me in the mail car. Thus, without danger or hardship, I would be carried straight through to Ogden. Salt Lake City was only a few miles farther on. My heart sank. She grew excited as she developed the plan and with my sinking heart I had to feign unbounded gladness and enthusiasm at this solution of my difficulties. Solution! Why I was bound west that night, and here was I being trapped into going east. It _was_ a trap, and I hadn't the heart to tell her that it was all a miserable lie. And while I made believe that I was delighted, I was busy cudgelling my brains for some way to escape. But there was no way. She would see me into the mail-car--she said so herself--and then that mail-clerk relative of hers would carry me to Ogden. And then I would have to beat my way back over all those hundreds of miles of desert. But luck was with me that night. Just about the time she was getting ready to put on her bonnet and accompany me, she discovered that she had made a mistake. Her mail-clerk relative was not scheduled to come through that night. His run had been changed. He would not come through until two nights afterward. I was saved, for of course my boundless youth would never permit me to wait those two days. I optimistically assured her that I'd get to Salt Lake City quicker if I started immediately, and I departed with her blessings and best wishes ringing in my ears. But those woollen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went west. HOLDING HER DOWN Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and agility, can hold a train down despite all the efforts of the train-crew to "ditch" him--given, of course, night-time as an essential condition. When such a hobo, under such conditions, makes up his mind that he is going to hold her down, either he does hold her down, or chance trips him up. There is no legitimate way, short of murder, whereby the train-crew can ditch him. That train-crews have not stopped short of murder is a current belief in the tramp world. Not having had that particular experience in my tramp days I cannot vouch for it personally. But this I have heard of the "bad" roads. When a tramp has "gone underneath," on the rods, and the train is in motion, there is apparently no way of dislodging him until the train stops. The tramp, snugly ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and all the framework around him, has the "cinch" on the crew--or so he thinks, until some day he rides the rods on a bad road. A bad road is usually one on which a short time previously one or several trainmen have been killed by tramps. Heaven pity the tramp who is caught "underneath" on such a road--for caught he is, though the train be going sixty miles an hour. The "shack" (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin and a length of bell-cord to the platform in front of the truck in which the tramp is riding. The shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the former down between the platforms, and pays out the latter. The coupling-pin strikes the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and again strikes the ties. The shack plays it back and forth, now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for every variety of impact and rebound. Every blow of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death. The next day the remains of that tramp are gathered up along the right of way, and a line in the local paper mentions the unknown man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably drunk, who had probably fallen asleep on the track. As a characteristic illustration of how a capable hobo can hold her down, I am minded to give the following experience. I was in Ottawa, bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Three thousand miles of that road stretched before me; it was the fall of the year, and I had to cross Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains. I could expect "crimpy" weather, and every moment of delay increased the frigid hardships of the journey. Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles. I ought to know, for I had just come over it and it had taken me six days. By mistake I had missed the main line and come over a small "jerk" with only two locals a day on it. And during these six days I had lived on dry crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the French peasants. Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by the one day I had spent in Ottawa trying to get an outfit of clothing for my long journey. Let me put it on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception, is the hardest town in the United States and Canada to beg clothes in; the one exception is Washington, D.C. The latter fair city is the limit. I spent two weeks there trying to beg a pair of shoes, and then had to go on to Jersey City before I got them. But to return to Ottawa. At eight sharp in the morning I started out after clothes. I worked energetically all day. I swear I walked forty miles. I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes. I did not even knock off work for dinner. And at six in the afternoon, after ten hours of unremitting and depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt, while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and, moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disintegration. At six I quit work and headed for the railroad yards, expecting to pick up something to eat on the way. But my hard luck was still with me. I was refused food at house after house. Then I got a "hand-out." My spirits soared, for it was the largest hand-out I had ever seen in a long and varied experience. It was a parcel wrapped in newspapers and as big as a mature suit-case. I hurried to a vacant lot and opened it. First, I saw cake, then more cake, all kinds and makes of cake, and then some. It was all cake. No bread and butter with thick firm slices of meat between--nothing but cake; and I who of all things abhorred cake most! In another age and clime they sat down by the waters of Babylon and wept. And in a vacant lot in Canada's proud capital, I, too, sat down and wept ... over a mountain of cake. As one looks upon the face of his dead son, so looked I upon that multitudinous pastry. I suppose I was an ungrateful tramp, for I refused to partake of the bounteousness of the house that had had a party the night before. Evidently the guests hadn't liked cake either. That cake marked the crisis in my fortunes. Than it nothing could be worse; therefore things must begin to mend. And they did. At the very next house I was given a "set-down." Now a "set-down" is the height of bliss. One is taken inside, very often is given a chance to wash, and is then "set-down" at a table. Tramps love to throw their legs under a table. The house was large and comfortable, in the midst of spacious grounds and fine trees, and sat well back from the street. They had just finished eating, and I was taken right into the dining room--in itself a most unusual happening, for the tramp who is lucky enough to win a set-down usually receives it in the kitchen. A grizzled and gracious Englishman, his matronly wife, and a beautiful young Frenchwoman talked with me while I ate. I wonder if that beautiful young Frenchwoman would remember, at this late day, the laugh I gave her when I uttered the barbaric phrase, "two-bits." You see, I was trying delicately to hit them for a "light piece." That was how the sum of money came to be mentioned. "What?" she said. "Two-bits," said I. Her mouth was twitching as she again said, "What?" "Two-bits," said I. Whereat she burst into laughter. "Won't you repeat it?" she said, when she had regained control of herself. "Two-bits," said I. And once more she rippled into uncontrollable silvery laughter. "I beg your pardon," said she; "but what ... what was it you said?" "Two-bits," said I; "is there anything wrong about it?" "Not that I know of," she gurgled between gasps; "but what does it mean?" I explained, but I do not remember now whether or not I got that two-bits out of her; but I have often wondered since as to which of us was the provincial. When I arrived at the depot, I found, much to my disgust, a bunch of at least twenty tramps that were waiting to ride out the blind baggages of the overland. Now two or three tramps on the blind baggage are all right. They are inconspicuous. But a score! That meant trouble. No train-crew would ever let all of us ride. I may as well explain here what a blind baggage is. Some mail-cars are built without doors in the ends; hence, such a car is "blind." The mail-cars that possess end doors, have those doors always locked. Suppose, after the train has started, that a tramp gets on to the platform of one of these blind cars. There is no door, or the door is locked. No conductor or brakeman can get to him to collect fare or throw him off. It is clear that the tramp is safe until the next time the train stops. Then he must get off, run ahead in the darkness, and when the train pulls by, jump on to the blind again. But there are ways and ways, as you shall see. When the train pulled out, those twenty tramps swarmed upon the three blinds. Some climbed on before the train had run a car-length. They were awkward dubs, and I saw their speedy finish. Of course, the train-crew was "on," and at the first stop the trouble began. I jumped off and ran forward along the track. I noticed that I was accompanied by a number of the tramps. They evidently knew their business. When one is beating an overland, he must always keep well ahead of the train at the stops. I ran ahead, and as I ran, one by one those that accompanied me dropped out. This dropping out was the measure of their skill and nerve in boarding a train. For this is the way it works. When the train starts, the shack rides out the blind. There is no way for him to get back into the train proper except by jumping off the blind and catching a platform where the car-ends are not "blind." When the train is going as fast as the shack cares to risk, he therefore jumps off the blind, lets several cars go by, and gets on to the train. So it is up to the tramp to run so far ahead that before the blind is opposite him the shack will have already vacated it. I dropped the last tramp by about fifty feet, and waited. The train started. I saw the lantern of the shack on the first blind. He was riding her out. And I saw the dubs stand forlornly by the track as the blind went by. They made no attempt to get on. They were beaten by their own inefficiency at the very start. After them, in the line-up, came the tramps that knew a little something about the game. They let the first blind, occupied by the shack, go by, and jumped on the second and third blinds. Of course, the shack jumped off the first and on to the second as it went by, and scrambled around there, throwing off the men who had boarded it. But the point is that I was so far ahead that when the first blind came opposite me, the shack had already left it and was tangled up with the tramps on the second blind. A half dozen of the more skilful tramps, who had run far enough ahead, made the first blind, too. At the next stop, as we ran forward along the track, I counted but fifteen of us. Five had been ditched. The weeding-out process had begun nobly, and it continued station by station. Now we were fourteen, now twelve, now eleven, now nine, now eight. It reminded me of the ten little niggers of the nursery rhyme. I was resolved that I should be the last little nigger of all. And why not? Was I not blessed with strength, agility, and youth? (I was eighteen, and in perfect condition.) And didn't I have my "nerve" with me? And furthermore, was I not a tramp-royal? Were not these other tramps mere dubs and "gay-cats" and amateurs alongside of me? If I weren't the last little nigger, I might as well quit the game and get a job on an alfalfa farm somewhere. By the time our number had been reduced to four, the whole train-crew had become interested. From then on it was a contest of skill and wits, with the odds in favor of the crew. One by one the three other survivors turned up missing, until I alone remained. My, but I was proud of myself! No Croesus was ever prouder of his first million. I was holding her down in spite of two brakemen, a conductor, a fireman, and an engineer. And here are a few samples of the way I held her down. Out ahead, in the darkness,--so far ahead that the shack riding out the blind must perforce get off before it reaches me,--I get on. Very well. I am good for another station. When that station is reached, I dart ahead again to repeat the manoeuvre. The train pulls out. I watch her coming. There is no light of a lantern on the blind. Has the crew abandoned the fight? I do not know. One never knows, and one must be prepared every moment for anything. As the first blind comes opposite me, and I run to leap aboard, I strain my eyes to see if the shack is on the platform. For all I know he may be there, with his lantern doused, and even as I spring upon the steps that lantern may smash down upon my head. I ought to know. I have been hit by lanterns two or three times. But no, the first blind is empty. The train is gathering speed. I am safe for another station. But am I? I feel the train slacken speed. On the instant I am alert. A manoeuvre is being executed against me, and I do not know what it is. I try to watch on both sides at once, not forgetting to keep track of the tender in front of me. From any one, or all, of these three directions, I may be assailed. Ah, there it comes. The shack has ridden out the engine. My first warning is when his feet strike the steps of the right-hand side of the blind. Like a flash I am off the blind to the left and running ahead past the engine. I lose myself in the darkness. The situation is where it has been ever since the train left Ottawa. I am ahead, and the train must come past me if it is to proceed on its journey. I have as good a chance as ever for boarding her. I watch carefully. I see a lantern come forward to the engine, and I do not see it go back from the engine. It must therefore be still on the engine, and it is a fair assumption that attached to the handle of that lantern is a shack. That shack was lazy, or else he would have put out his lantern instead of trying to shield it as he came forward. The train pulls out. The first blind is empty, and I gain it. As before the train slackens, the shack from the engine boards the blind from one side, and I go off the other side and run forward. As I wait in the darkness I am conscious of a big thrill of pride. The overland has stopped twice for me--for me, a poor hobo on the bum. I alone have twice stopped the overland with its many passengers and coaches, its government mail, and its two thousand steam horses straining in the engine. And I weigh only one hundred and sixty pounds, and I haven't a five-cent piece in my pocket! Again I see the lantern come forward to the engine. But this time it comes conspicuously. A bit too conspicuously to suit me, and I wonder what is up. At any rate I have something else to be afraid of than the shack on the engine. The train pulls by. Just in time, before I make my spring, I see the dark form of a shack, without a lantern, on the first blind. I let it go by, and prepare to board the second blind. But the shack on the first blind has jumped off and is at my heels. Also, I have a fleeting glimpse of the lantern of the shack who rode out the engine. He has jumped off, and now both shacks are on the ground on the same side with me. The next moment the second blind comes by and I am aboard it. But I do not linger. I have figured out my countermove. As I dash across the platform I hear the impact of the shack's feet against the steps as he boards. I jump off the other side and run forward with the train. My plan is to run forward and get on the first blind. It is nip and tuck, for the train is gathering speed. Also, the shack is behind me and running after me. I guess I am the better sprinter, for I make the first blind. I stand on the steps and watch my pursuer. He is only about ten feet back and running hard; but now the train has approximated his own speed, and, relative to me, he is standing still. I encourage him, hold out my hand to him; but he explodes in a mighty oath, gives up and makes the train several cars back. The train is speeding along, and I am still chuckling to myself, when, without warning, a spray of water strikes me. The fireman is playing the hose on me from the engine. I step forward from the car-platform to the rear of the tender, where I am sheltered under the overhang. The water flies harmlessly over my head. My fingers itch to climb up on the tender and lam that fireman with a chunk of coal; but I know if I do that, I'll be massacred by him and the engineer, and I refrain. At the next stop I am off and ahead in the darkness. This time, when the train pulls out, both shacks are on the first blind. I divine their game. They have blocked the repetition of my previous play. I cannot again take the second blind, cross over, and run forward to the first. As soon as the first blind passes and I do not get on, they swing off, one on each side of the train. I board the second blind, and as I do so I know that a moment later, simultaneously, those two shacks will arrive on both sides of me. It is like a trap. Both ways are blocked. Yet there is another way out, and that way is up. So I do not wait for my pursuers to arrive. I climb upon the upright ironwork of the platform and stand upon the wheel of the hand-brake. This has taken up the moment of grace and I hear the shacks strike the steps on either side. I don't stop to look. I raise my arms overhead until my hands rest against the down-curving ends of the roofs of the two cars. One hand, of course, is on the curved roof of one car, the other hand on the curved roof of the other car. By this time both shacks are coming up the steps. I know it, though I am too busy to see them. All this is happening in the space of only several seconds. I make a spring with my legs and "muscle" myself up with my arms. As I draw up my legs, both shacks reach for me and clutch empty air. I know this, for I look down and see them. Also I hear them swear. I am now in a precarious position, riding the ends of the down-curving roofs of two cars at the same time. With a quick, tense movement, I transfer both legs to the curve of one roof and both hands to the curve of the other roof. Then, gripping the edge of that curving roof, I climb over the curve to the level roof above, where I sit down to catch my breath, holding on the while to a ventilator that projects above the surface. I am on top of the train--on the "decks," as the tramps call it, and this process I have described is by them called "decking her." And let me say right here that only a young and vigorous tramp is able to deck a passenger train, and also, that the young and vigorous tramp must have his nerve with him as well. The train goes on gathering speed, and I know I am safe until the next stop--but only until the next stop. If I remain on the roof after the train stops, I know those shacks will fusillade me with rocks. A healthy shack can "dewdrop" a pretty heavy chunk of stone on top of a car--say anywhere from five to twenty pounds. On the other hand, the chances are large that at the next stop the shacks will be waiting for me to descend at the place I climbed up. It is up to me to climb down at some other platform. Registering a fervent hope that there are no tunnels in the next half mile, I rise to my feet and walk down the train half a dozen cars. And let me say that one must leave timidity behind him on such a _passear_. The roofs of passenger coaches are not made for midnight promenades. And if any one thinks they are, let me advise him to try it. Just let him walk along the roof of a jolting, lurching car, with nothing to hold on to but the black and empty air, and when he comes to the down-curving end of the roof, all wet and slippery with dew, let him accelerate his speed so as to step across to the next roof, down-curving and wet and slippery. Believe me, he will learn whether his heart is weak or his head is giddy. As the train slows down for a stop, half a dozen platforms from where I had decked her I come down. No one is on the platform. When the train comes to a standstill, I slip off to the ground. Ahead, and between me and the engine, are two moving lanterns. The shacks are looking for me on the roofs of the cars. I note that the car beside which I am standing is a "four-wheeler"--by which is meant that it has only four wheels to each truck. (When you go underneath on the rods, be sure to avoid the "six-wheelers,"--they lead to disasters.) I duck under the train and make for the rods, and I can tell you I am mighty glad that the train is standing still. It is the first time I have ever gone underneath on the Canadian Pacific, and the internal arrangements are new to me. I try to crawl over the top of the truck, between the truck and the bottom of the car. But the space is not large enough for me to squeeze through. This is new to me. Down in the United States I am accustomed to going underneath on rapidly moving trains, seizing a gunnel and swinging my feet under to the brake-beam, and from there crawling over the top of the truck and down inside the truck to a seat on the cross-rod. Feeling with my hands in the darkness, I learn that there is room between the brake-beam and the ground. It is a tight squeeze. I have to lie flat and worm my way through. Once inside the truck, I take my seat on the rod and wonder what the shacks are thinking has become of me. The train gets under way. They have given me up at last. But have they? At the very next stop, I see a lantern thrust under the next truck to mine at the other end of the car. They are searching the rods for me. I must make my get-away pretty lively. I crawl on my stomach under the brake-beam. They see me and run for me, but I crawl on hands and knees across the rail on the opposite side and gain my feet. Then away I go for the head of the train. I run past the engine and hide in the sheltering darkness. It is the same old situation. I am ahead of the train, and the train must go past me. The train pulls out. There is a lantern on the first blind. I lie low, and see the peering shack go by. But there is also a lantern on the second blind. That shack spots me and calls to the shack who has gone past on the first blind. Both jump off. Never mind, I'll take the third blind and deck her. But heavens, there is a lantern on the third blind, too. It is the conductor. I let it go by. At any rate I have now the full train-crew in front of me. I turn and run back in the opposite direction to what the train is going. I look over my shoulder. All three lanterns are on the ground and wobbling along in pursuit. I sprint. Half the train has gone by, and it is going quite fast, when I spring aboard. I know that the two shacks and the conductor will arrive like ravening wolves in about two seconds. I spring upon the wheel of the hand-brake, get my hands on the curved ends of the roofs, and muscle myself up to the decks; while my disappointed pursuers, clustering on the platform beneath like dogs that have treed a cat, howl curses up at me and say unsocial things about my ancestors. But what does that matter? It is five to one, including the engineer and fireman, and the majesty of the law and the might of a great corporation are behind them, and I am beating them out. I am too far down the train, and I run ahead over the roofs of the coaches until I am over the fifth or sixth platform from the engine. I peer down cautiously. A shack is on that platform. That he has caught sight of me, I know from the way he makes a swift sneak inside the car; and I know, also, that he is waiting inside the door, all ready to pounce out on me when I climb down. But I make believe that I don't know, and I remain there to encourage him in his error. I do not see him, yet I know that he opens the door once and peeps up to assure himself that I am still there. The train slows down for a station. I dangle my legs down in a tentative way. The train stops. My legs are still dangling. I hear the door unlatch softly. He is all ready for me. Suddenly I spring up and run forward over the roof. This is right over his head, where he lurks inside the door. The train is standing still; the night is quiet, and I take care to make plenty of noise on the metal roof with my feet. I don't know, but my assumption is that he is now running forward to catch me as I descend at the next platform. But I don't descend there. Halfway along the roof of the coach, I turn, retrace my way softly and quickly to the platform both the shack and I have just abandoned. The coast is clear. I descend to the ground on the off-side of the train and hide in the darkness. Not a soul has seen me. I go over to the fence, at the edge of the right of way, and watch. Ah, ha! What's that? I see a lantern on top of the train, moving along from front to rear. They think I haven't come down, and they are searching the roofs for me. And better than that--on the ground on each side of the train, moving abreast with the lantern on top, are two other lanterns. It is a rabbit-drive, and I am the rabbit. When the shack on top flushes me, the ones on each side will nab me. I roll a cigarette and watch the procession go by. Once past me, I am safe to proceed to the front of the train. She pulls out, and I make the front blind without opposition. But before she is fully under way and just as I am lighting my cigarette, I am aware that the fireman has climbed over the coal to the back of the tender and is looking down at me. I am filled with apprehension. From his position he can mash me to a jelly with lumps of coal. Instead of which he addresses me, and I note with relief the admiration in his voice. "You son-of-a-gun," is what he says. It is a high compliment, and I thrill as a schoolboy thrills on receiving a reward of merit. "Say," I call up to him, "don't you play the hose on me any more." "All right," he answers, and goes back to his work. I have made friends with the engine, but the shacks are still looking for me. At the next stop, the shacks ride out all three blinds, and as before, I let them go by and deck in the middle of the train. The crew is on its mettle by now, and the train stops. The shacks are going to ditch me or know the reason why. Three times the mighty overland stops for me at that station, and each time I elude the shacks and make the decks. But it is hopeless, for they have finally come to an understanding of the situation. I have taught them that they cannot guard the train from me. They must do something else. And they do it. When the train stops that last time, they take after me hot-footed. Ah, I see their game. They are trying to run me down. At first they herd me back toward the rear of the train. I know my peril. Once to the rear of the train, it will pull out with me left behind. I double, and twist, and turn, dodge through my pursuers, and gain the front of the train. One shack still hangs on after me. All right, I'll give him the run of his life, for my wind is good. I run straight ahead along the track. It doesn't matter. If he chases me ten miles, he'll nevertheless have to catch the train, and I can board her at any speed that he can. So I run on, keeping just comfortably ahead of him and straining my eyes in the gloom for cattle-guards and switches that may bring me to grief. Alas! I strain my eyes too far ahead, and trip over something just under my feet, I know not what, some little thing, and go down to earth in a long, stumbling fall. The next moment I am on my feet, but the shack has me by the collar. I do not struggle. I am busy with breathing deeply and with sizing him up. He is narrow-shouldered, and I have at least thirty pounds the better of him in weight. Besides, he is just as tired as I am, and if he tries to slug me, I'll teach him a few things. But he doesn't try to slug me, and that problem is settled. Instead, he starts to lead me back toward the train, and another possible problem arises. I see the lanterns of the conductor and the other shack. We are approaching them. Not for nothing have I made the acquaintance of the New York police. Not for nothing, in box-cars, by water-tanks, and in prison-cells, have I listened to bloody tales of man-handling. What if these three men are about to man-handle me? Heaven knows I have given them provocation enough. I think quickly. We are drawing nearer and nearer to the other two trainmen. I line up the stomach and the jaw of my captor, and plan the right and left I'll give him at the first sign of trouble. Pshaw! I know another trick I'd like to work on him, and I almost regret that I did not do it at the moment I was captured. I could make him sick, what of his clutch on my collar. His fingers, tight-gripping, are buried inside my collar. My coat is tightly buttoned. Did you ever see a tourniquet? Well, this is one. All I have to do is to duck my head under his arm and begin to twist. I must twist rapidly--very rapidly. I know how to do it; twisting in a violent, jerky way, ducking my head under his arm with each revolution. Before he knows it, those detaining fingers of his will be detained. He will be unable to withdraw them. It is a powerful leverage. Twenty seconds after I have started revolving, the blood will be bursting out of his finger-ends, the delicate tendons will be rupturing, and all the muscles and nerves will be mashing and crushing together in a shrieking mass. Try it sometime when somebody has you by the collar. But be quick--quick as lightning. Also, be sure to hug yourself while you are revolving--hug your face with your left arm and your abdomen with your right. You see, the other fellow might try to stop you with a punch from his free arm. It would be a good idea, too, to revolve away from that free arm rather than toward it. A punch going is never so bad as a punch coming. That shack will never know how near he was to being made very, very sick. All that saves him is that it is not in their plan to man-handle me. When we draw near enough, he calls out that he has me, and they signal the train to come on. The engine passes us, and the three blinds. After that, the conductor and the other shack swing aboard. But still my captor holds on to me. I see the plan. He is going to hold me until the rear of the train goes by. Then he will hop on, and I shall be left behind--ditched. But the train has pulled out fast, the engineer trying to make up for lost time. Also, it is a long train. It is going very lively, and I know the shack is measuring its speed with apprehension. "Think you can make it?" I query innocently. He releases my collar, makes a quick run, and swings aboard. A number of coaches are yet to pass by. He knows it, and remains on the steps, his head poked out and watching me. In that moment my next move comes to me. I'll make the last platform. I know she's going fast and faster, but I'll only get a roll in the dirt if I fail, and the optimism of youth is mine. I do not give myself away. I stand with a dejected droop of shoulder, advertising that I have abandoned hope. But at the same time I am feeling with my feet the good gravel. It is perfect footing. Also I am watching the poked-out head of the shack. I see it withdrawn. He is confident that the train is going too fast for me ever to make it. And the train _is_ going fast--faster than any train I have ever tackled. As the last coach comes by I sprint in the same direction with it. It is a swift, short sprint. I cannot hope to equal the speed of the train, but I can reduce the difference of our speed to the minimum, and, hence, reduce the shock of impact, when I leap on board. In the fleeting instant of darkness I do not see the iron hand-rail of the last platform; nor is there time for me to locate it. I reach for where I think it ought to be, and at the same instant my feet leave the ground. It is all in the toss. The next moment I may be rolling in the gravel with broken ribs, or arms, or head. But my fingers grip the hand-hold, there is a jerk on my arms that slightly pivots my body, and my feet land on the steps with sharp violence. I sit down, feeling very proud of myself. In all my hoboing it is the best bit of train-jumping I have done. I know that late at night one is always good for several stations on the last platform, but I do not care to trust myself at the rear of the train. At the first stop I run forward on the off-side of the train, pass the Pullmans, and duck under and take a rod under a day-coach. At the next stop I run forward again and take another rod. I am now comparatively safe. The shacks think I am ditched. But the long day and the strenuous night are beginning to tell on me. Also, it is not so windy nor cold underneath, and I begin to doze. This will never do. Sleep on the rods spells death, so I crawl out at a station and go forward to the second blind. Here I can lie down and sleep; and here I do sleep--how long I do not know--for I am awakened by a lantern thrust into my face. The two shacks are staring at me. I scramble up on the defensive, wondering as to which one is going to make the first "pass" at me. But slugging is far from their minds. "I thought you was ditched," says the shack who had held me by the collar. "If you hadn't let go of me when you did, you'd have been ditched along with me," I answer. "How's that?" he asks. "I'd have gone into a clinch with you, that's all," is my reply. They hold a consultation, and their verdict is summed up in:-- "Well, I guess you can ride, Bo. There's no use trying to keep you off." And they go away and leave me in peace to the end of their division. I have given the foregoing as a sample of what "holding her down" means. Of course, I have selected a fortunate night out of my experiences, and said nothing of the nights--and many of them--when I was tripped up by accident and ditched. In conclusion, I want to tell of what happened when I reached the end of the division. On single-track, transcontinental lines, the freight trains wait at the divisions and follow out after the passenger trains. When the division was reached, I left my train, and looked for the freight that would pull out behind it. I found the freight, made up on a side-track and waiting. I climbed into a box-car half full of coal and lay down. In no time I was asleep. I was awakened by the sliding open of the door. Day was just dawning, cold and gray, and the freight had not yet started. A "con" (conductor) was poking his head inside the door. "Get out of that, you blankety-blank-blank!" he roared at me. I got, and outside I watched him go down the line inspecting every car in the train. When he got out of sight I thought to myself that he would never think I'd have the nerve to climb back into the very car out of which he had fired me. So back I climbed and lay down again. Now that con's mental processes must have been paralleling mine, for he reasoned that it was the very thing I would do. For back he came and fired me out. Now, surely, I reasoned, he will never dream that I'd do it a third time. Back I went, into the very same car. But I decided to make sure. Only one side-door could be opened. The other side-door was nailed up. Beginning at the top of the coal, I dug a hole alongside of that door and lay down in it. I heard the other door open. The con climbed up and looked in over the top of the coal. He couldn't see me. He called to me to get out. I tried to fool him by remaining quiet. But when he began tossing chunks of coal into the hole on top of me, I gave up and for the third time was fired out. Also, he informed me in warm terms of what would happen to me if he caught me in there again. I changed my tactics. When a man is paralleling your mental processes, ditch him. Abruptly break off your line of reasoning, and go off on a new line. This I did. I hid between some cars on an adjacent side-track, and watched. Sure enough, that con came back again to the car. He opened the door, he climbed up, he called, he threw coal into the hole I had made. He even crawled over the coal and looked into the hole. That satisfied him. Five minutes later the freight was pulling out, and he was not in sight. I ran alongside the car, pulled the door open, and climbed in. He never looked for me again, and I rode that coal-car precisely one thousand and twenty-two miles, sleeping most of the time and getting out at divisions (where the freights always stop for an hour or so) to beg my food. And at the end of the thousand and twenty-two miles I lost that car through a happy incident. I got a "set-down," and the tramp doesn't live who won't miss a train for a set-down any time. PICTURES "What do it matter where or 'ow we die, So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all?" --Sestina of the Tramp-Royal Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean--an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance. Often I think over my tramp days, and ever I marvel at the swift succession of pictures that flash up in my memory. It matters not where I begin to think; any day of all the days is a day apart, with a record of swift-moving pictures all its own. For instance, I remember a sunny summer morning in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and immediately comes to my mind the auspicious beginning of the day--a "set-down" with two maiden ladies, and not in their kitchen, but in their dining room, with them beside me at the table. We ate eggs, out of egg-cups! It was the first time I had ever seen egg-cups, or heard of egg-cups! I was a bit awkward at first, I'll confess; but I was hungry and unabashed. I mastered the egg-cup, and I mastered the eggs in a way that made those two maiden ladies sit up. Why, they ate like a couple of canaries, dabbling with the one egg each they took, and nibbling at tiny wafers of toast. Life was low in their bodies; their blood ran thin; and they had slept warm all night. I had been out all night, consuming much fuel of my body to keep warm, beating my way down from a place called Emporium, in the northern part of the state. Wafers of toast! Out of sight! But each wafer was no more than a mouthful to me--nay, no more than a bite. It is tedious to have to reach for another piece of toast each bite when one is potential with many bites. When I was a very little lad, I had a very little dog called Punch. I saw to his feeding myself. Some one in the household had shot a lot of ducks, and we had a fine meat dinner. When I had finished, I prepared Punch's dinner--a large plateful of bones and tidbits. I went outside to give it to him. Now it happened that a visitor had ridden over from a neighboring ranch, and with him had come a Newfoundland dog as big as a calf. I set the plate on the ground. Punch wagged his tail and began. He had before him a blissful half-hour at least. There was a sudden rush. Punch was brushed aside like a straw in the path of a cyclone, and that Newfoundland swooped down upon the plate. In spite of his huge maw he must have been trained to quick lunches, for, in the fleeting instant before he received the kick in the ribs I aimed at him, he completely engulfed the contents of the plate. He swept it clean. One last lingering lick of his tongue removed even the grease stains. As that big Newfoundland behaved at the plate of my dog Punch, so behaved I at the table of those two maiden ladies of Harrisburg. I swept it bare. I didn't break anything, but I cleaned out the eggs and the toast and the coffee. The servant brought more, but I kept her busy, and ever she brought more and more. The coffee was delicious, but it needn't have been served in such tiny cups. What time had I to eat when it took all my time to prepare the many cups of coffee for drinking? At any rate, it gave my tongue time to wag. Those two maiden ladies, with their pink-and-white complexions and gray curls, had never looked upon the bright face of adventure. As the "Tramp-Royal" would have it, they had worked all their lives "on one same shift." Into the sweet scents and narrow confines of their uneventful existence I brought the large airs of the world, freighted with the lusty smells of sweat and strife, and with the tangs and odors of strange lands and soils. And right well I scratched their soft palms with the callous on my own palms--the half-inch horn that comes of pull-and-haul of rope and long and arduous hours of caressing shovel-handles. This I did, not merely in the braggadocio of youth, but to prove, by toil performed, the claim I had upon their charity. Ah, I can see them now, those dear, sweet ladies, just as I sat at their breakfast table twelve years ago, discoursing upon the way of my feet in the world, brushing aside their kindly counsel as a real devilish fellow should, and thrilling them, not alone with my own adventures, but with the adventures of all the other fellows with whom I had rubbed shoulders and exchanged confidences. I appropriated them all, the adventures of the other fellows, I mean; and if those maiden ladies had been less trustful and guileless, they could have tangled me up beautifully in my chronology. Well, well, and what of it? It was fair exchange. For their many cups of coffee, and eggs, and bites of toast, I gave full value. Right royally I gave them entertainment. My coming to sit at their table was their adventure, and adventure is beyond price anyway. Coming along the street, after parting from the maiden ladies, I gathered in a newspaper from the doorway of some late-riser, and in a grassy park lay down to get in touch with the last twenty-four hours of the world. There, in the park, I met a fellow-hobo who told me his life-story and who wrestled with me to join the United States Army. He had given in to the recruiting officer and was just about to join, and he couldn't see why I shouldn't join with him. He had been a member of Coxey's Army in the march to Washington several months before, and that seemed to have given him a taste for army life. I, too, was a veteran, for had I not been a private in Company L of the Second Division of Kelly's Industrial Army?--said Company L being commonly known as the "Nevada push." But my army experience had had the opposite effect on me; so I left that hobo to go his way to the dogs of war, while I "threw my feet" for dinner. This duty performed, I started to walk across the bridge over the Susquehanna to the west shore. I forget the name of the railroad that ran down that side, but while lying in the grass in the morning the idea had come to me to go to Baltimore; so to Baltimore I was going on that railroad, whatever its name was. It was a warm afternoon, and part way across the bridge I came to a lot of fellows who were in swimming off one of the piers. Off went my clothes and in went I. The water was fine; but when I came out and dressed, I found I had been robbed. Some one had gone through my clothes. Now I leave it to you if being robbed isn't in itself adventure enough for one day. I have known men who have been robbed and who have talked all the rest of their lives about it. True, the thief that went through my clothes didn't get much--some thirty or forty cents in nickels and pennies, and my tobacco and cigarette papers; but it was all I had, which is more than most men can be robbed of, for they have something left at home, while I had no home. It was a pretty tough gang in swimming there. I sized up, and knew better than to squeal. So I begged "the makings," and I could have sworn it was one of my own papers I rolled the tobacco in. Then on across the bridge I hiked to the west shore. Here ran the railroad I was after. No station was in sight. How to catch a freight without walking to a station was the problem. I noticed that the track came up a steep grade, culminating at the point where I had tapped it, and I knew that a heavy freight couldn't pull up there any too lively. But how lively? On the opposite side of the track rose a high bank. On the edge, at the top, I saw a man's head sticking up from the grass. Perhaps he knew how fast the freights took the grade, and when the next one went south. I called out my questions to him, and he motioned to me to come up. I obeyed, and when I reached the top, I found four other men lying in the grass with him. I took in the scene and knew them for what they were--American gypsies. In the open space that extended back among the trees from the edge of the bank were several nondescript wagons. Ragged, half-naked children swarmed over the camp, though I noticed that they took care not to come near and bother the men-folk. Several lean, unbeautiful, and toil-degraded women were pottering about with camp-chores, and one I noticed who sat by herself on the seat of one of the wagons, her head drooped forward, her knees drawn up to her chin and clasped limply by her arms. She did not look happy. She looked as if she did not care for anything--in this I was wrong, for later I was to learn that there was something for which she did care. The full measure of human suffering was in her face, and, in addition, there was the tragic expression of incapacity for further suffering. Nothing could hurt any more, was what her face seemed to portray; but in this, too, I was wrong. I lay in the grass on the edge of the steep and talked with the men-folk. We were kin--brothers. I was the American hobo, and they were the American gypsy. I knew enough of their argot for conversation, and they knew enough of mine. There were two more in their gang, who were across the river "mushing" in Harrisburg. A "musher" is an itinerant fakir. This word is not to be confounded with the Klondike "musher," though the origin of both terms may be the same; namely, the corruption of the French _marche ons_, to march, to walk, to "mush." The particular graft of the two mushers who had crossed the river was umbrella-mending; but what real graft lay behind their umbrella-mending, I was not told, nor would it have been polite to ask. It was a glorious day. Not a breath of wind was stirring, and we basked in the shimmering warmth of the sun. From everywhere arose the drowsy hum of insects, and the balmy air was filled with scents of the sweet earth and the green growing things. We were too lazy to do more than mumble on in intermittent conversation. And then, all abruptly, the peace and quietude was jarred awry by man. Two bare-legged boys of eight or nine in some minor way broke some rule of the camp--what it was I did not know; and a man who lay beside me suddenly sat up and called to them. He was chief of the tribe, a man with narrow forehead and narrow-slitted eyes, whose thin lips and twisted sardonic features explained why the two boys jumped and tensed like startled deer at the sound of his voice. The alertness of fear was in their faces, and they turned, in a panic, to run. He called to them to come back, and one boy lagged behind reluctantly, his meagre little frame portraying in pantomime the struggle within him between fear and reason. He wanted to come back. His intelligence and past experience told him that to come back was a lesser evil than to run on; but lesser evil that it was, it was great enough to put wings to his fear and urge his feet to flight. Still he lagged and struggled until he reached the shelter of the trees, where he halted. The chief of the tribe did not pursue. He sauntered over to a wagon and picked up a heavy whip. Then he came back to the centre of the open space and stood still. He did not speak. He made no gestures. He was the Law, pitiless and omnipotent. He merely stood there and waited. And I knew, and all knew, and the two boys in the shelter of the trees knew, for what he waited. The boy who had lagged slowly came back. His face was stamped with quivering resolution. He did not falter. He had made up his mind to take his punishment. And mark you, the punishment was not for the original offence, but for the offence of running away. And in this, that tribal chieftain but behaved as behaves the exalted society in which he lived. We punish our criminals, and when they escape and run away, we bring them back and add to their punishment. Straight up to the chief the boy came, halting at the proper distance for the swing of the lash. The whip hissed through the air, and I caught myself with a start of surprise at the weight of the blow. The thin little leg was so very thin and little. The flesh showed white where the lash had curled and bitten, and then, where the white had shown, sprang up the savage welt, with here and there along its length little scarlet oozings where the skin had broken. Again the whip swung, and the boy's whole body winced in anticipation of the blow, though he did not move from the spot. His will held good. A second welt sprang up, and a third. It was not until the fourth landed that the boy screamed. Also, he could no longer stand still, and from then on, blow after blow, he danced up and down in his anguish, screaming; but he did not attempt to run away. If his involuntary dancing took him beyond the reach of the whip, he danced back into range again. And when it was all over--a dozen blows--he went away, whimpering and squealing, among the wagons. The chief stood still and waited. The second boy came out from the trees. But he did not come straight. He came like a cringing dog, obsessed by little panics that made him turn and dart away for half a dozen steps. But always he turned and came back, circling nearer and nearer to the man, whimpering, making inarticulate animal-noises in his throat. I saw that he never looked at the man. His eyes always were fixed upon the whip, and in his eyes was a terror that made me sick--the frantic terror of an inconceivably maltreated child. I have seen strong men dropping right and left out of battle and squirming in their death-throes, I have seen them by scores blown into the air by bursting shells and their bodies torn asunder; believe me, the witnessing was as merrymaking and laughter and song to me in comparison with the way the sight of that poor child affected me. The whipping began. The whipping of the first boy was as play compared with this one. In no time the blood was running down his thin little legs. He danced and squirmed and doubled up till it seemed almost that he was some grotesque marionette operated by strings. I say "seemed," for his screaming gave the lie to the seeming and stamped it with reality. His shrieks were shrill and piercing; within them no hoarse notes, but only the thin sexlessness of the voice of a child. The time came when the boy could stand it no more. Reason fled, and he tried to run away. But now the man followed up, curbing his flight, herding him with blows back always into the open space. Then came interruption. I heard a wild smothered cry. The woman who sat in the wagon seat had got out and was running to interfere. She sprang between the man and boy. "You want some, eh?" said he with the whip. "All right, then." He swung the whip upon her. Her skirts were long, so he did not try for her legs. He drove the lash for her face, which she shielded as best she could with her hands and forearms, drooping her head forward between her lean shoulders, and on the lean shoulders and arms receiving the blows. Heroic mother! She knew just what she was doing. The boy, still shrieking, was making his get-away to the wagons. And all the while the four men lay beside me and watched and made no move. Nor did I move, and without shame I say it; though my reason was compelled to struggle hard against my natural impulse to rise up and interfere. I knew life. Of what use to the woman, or to me, would be my being beaten to death by five men there on the bank of the Susquehanna? I once saw a man hanged, and though my whole soul cried protest, my mouth cried not. Had it cried, I should most likely have had my skull crushed by the butt of a revolver, for it was the law that the man should hang. And here, in this gypsy group, it was the law that the woman should be whipped. Even so, the reason in both cases that I did not interfere was not that it was the law, but that the law was stronger than I. Had it not been for those four men beside me in the grass, right gladly would I have waded into the man with the whip. And, barring the accident of the landing on me with a knife or a club in the hands of some of the various women of the camp, I am confident that I should have beaten him into a mess. But the four men _were_ beside me in the grass. They made their law stronger than I. Oh, believe me, I did my own suffering. I had seen women beaten before, often, but never had I seen such a beating as this. Her dress across the shoulders was cut into shreds. One blow that had passed her guard, had raised a bloody welt from cheek to chin. Not one blow, nor two, not one dozen, nor two dozen, but endlessly, infinitely, that whip-lash smote and curled about her. The sweat poured from me, and I breathed hard, clutching at the grass with my hands until I strained it out by the roots. And all the time my reason kept whispering, "Fool! Fool!" That welt on the face nearly did for me. I started to rise to my feet; but the hand of the man next to me went out to my shoulder and pressed me down. "Easy, pardner, easy," he warned me in a low voice. I looked at him. His eyes met mine unwaveringly. He was a large man, broad-shouldered and heavy-muscled; and his face was lazy, phlegmatic, slothful, withal kindly, yet without passion, and quite soulless--a dim soul, unmalicious, unmoral, bovine, and stubborn. Just an animal he was, with no more than a faint flickering of intelligence, a good-natured brute with the strength and mental caliber of a gorilla. His hand pressed heavily upon me, and I knew the weight of the muscles behind. I looked at the other brutes, two of them unperturbed and incurious, and one of them that gloated over the spectacle; and my reason came back to me, my muscles relaxed, and I sank down in the grass. My mind went back to the two maiden ladies with whom I had had breakfast that morning. Less than two miles, as the crow flies, separated them from this scene. Here, in the windless day, under a beneficent sun, was a sister of theirs being beaten by a brother of mine. Here was a page of life they could never see--and better so, though for lack of seeing they would never be able to understand their sisterhood, nor themselves, nor know the clay of which they were made. For it is not given to woman to live in sweet-scented, narrow rooms and at the same time be a little sister to all the world. The whipping was finished, and the woman, no longer screaming, went back to her seat in the wagon. Nor did the other women come to her--just then. They were afraid. But they came afterward, when a decent interval had elapsed. The man put the whip away and rejoined us, flinging himself down on the other side of me. He was breathing hard from his exertions. He wiped the sweat from his eyes on his coat-sleeve, and looked challengingly at me. I returned his look carelessly; what he had done was no concern of mine. I did not go away abruptly. I lay there half an hour longer, which, under the circumstances, was tact and etiquette. I rolled cigarettes from tobacco I borrowed from them, and when I slipped down the bank to the railroad, I was equipped with the necessary information for catching the next freight bound south. Well, and what of it? It was a page out of life, that's all; and there are many pages worse, far worse, that I have seen. I have sometimes held forth (facetiously, so my listeners believed) that the chief distinguishing trait between man and the other animals is that man is the only animal that maltreats the females of his kind. It is something of which no wolf nor cowardly coyote is ever guilty. It is something that even the dog, degenerated by domestication, will not do. The dog still retains the wild instinct in this matter, while man has lost most of his wild instincts--at least, most of the good ones. Worse pages of life than what I have described? Read the reports on child labor in the United States,--east, west, north, and south, it doesn't matter where,--and know that all of us, profit-mongers that we are, are typesetters and printers of worse pages of life than that mere page of wife-beating on the Susquehanna. I went down the grade a hundred yards to where the footing beside the track was good. Here I could catch my freight as it pulled slowly up the hill, and here I found half a dozen hoboes waiting for the same purpose. Several were playing seven-up with an old pack of cards. I took a hand. A coon began to shuffle the deck. He was fat, and young, and moon-faced. He beamed with good-nature. It fairly oozed from him. As he dealt the first card to me, he paused and said:-- "Say, Bo, ain't I done seen you befo'?" "You sure have," I answered. "An' you didn't have those same duds on, either." He was puzzled. "D'ye remember Buffalo?" I queried. Then he knew me, and with laughter and ejaculation hailed me as a comrade; for at Buffalo his clothes had been striped while he did his bit of time in the Erie County Penitentiary. For that matter, my clothes had been likewise striped, for I had been doing my bit of time, too. The game proceeded, and I learned the stake for which we played. Down the bank toward the river descended a steep and narrow path that led to a spring some twenty-five feet beneath. We played on the edge of the bank. The man who was "stuck" had to take a small condensed-milk can, and with it carry water to the winners. The first game was played and the coon was stuck. He took the small milk-tin and climbed down the bank, while we sat above and guyed him. We drank like fish. Four round trips he had to make for me alone, and the others were equally lavish with their thirst. The path was very steep, and sometimes the coon slipped when part way up, spilled the water, and had to go back for more. But he didn't get angry. He laughed as heartily as any of us; that was why he slipped so often. Also, he assured us of the prodigious quantities of water he would drink when some one else got stuck. When our thirst was quenched, another game was started. Again the coon was stuck, and again we drank our fill. A third game and a fourth ended the same way, and each time that moon-faced darky nearly died with delight at appreciation of the fate that Chance was dealing out to him. And we nearly died with him, what of our delight. We laughed like careless children, or gods, there on the edge of the bank. I know that I laughed till it seemed the top of my head would come off, and I drank from the milk-tin till I was nigh waterlogged. Serious discussion arose as to whether we could successfully board the freight when it pulled up the grade, what of the weight of water secreted on our persons. This particular phase of the situation just about finished the coon. He had to break off from water-carrying for at least five minutes while he lay down and rolled with laughter. The lengthening shadows stretched farther and farther across the river, and the soft, cool twilight came on, and ever we drank water, and ever our ebony cup-bearer brought more and more. Forgotten was the beaten woman of the hour before. That was a page read and turned over; I was busy now with this new page, and when the engine whistled on the grade, this page would be finished and another begun; and so the book of life goes on, page after page and pages without end--when one is young. And then we played a game in which the coon failed to be stuck. The victim was a lean and dyspeptic-looking hobo, the one who had laughed least of all of us. We said we didn't want any water--which was the truth. Not the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind, nor the pressure of a pneumatic ram, could have forced another drop into my saturated carcass. The coon looked disappointed, then rose to the occasion and guessed he'd have some. He meant it, too. He had some, and then some, and then some. Ever the melancholy hobo climbed down and up the steep bank, and ever the coon called for more. He drank more water than all the rest of us put together. The twilight deepened into night, the stars came out, and he still drank on. I do believe that if the whistle of the freight hadn't sounded, he'd be there yet, swilling water and revenge while the melancholy hobo toiled down and up. But the whistle sounded. The page was done. We sprang to our feet and strung out alongside the track. There she came, coughing and spluttering up the grade, the headlight turning night into day and silhouetting us in sharp relief. The engine passed us, and we were all running with the train, some boarding on the side-ladders, others "springing" the side-doors of empty box-cars and climbing in. I caught a flat-car loaded with mixed lumber and crawled away into a comfortable nook. I lay on my back with a newspaper under my head for a pillow. Above me the stars were winking and wheeling in squadrons back and forth as the train rounded the curves, and watching them I fell asleep. The day was done--one day of all my days. To-morrow would be another day, and I was young. "PINCHED" I rode into Niagara Falls in a "side-door Pullman," or, in common parlance, a box-car. A flat-car, by the way, is known amongst the fraternity as a "gondola," with the second syllable emphasized and pronounced long. But to return. I arrived in the afternoon and headed straight from the freight train to the falls. Once my eyes were filled with that wonder-vision of down-rushing water, I was lost. I could not tear myself away long enough to "batter" the "privates" (domiciles) for my supper. Even a "set-down" could not have lured me away. Night came on, a beautiful night of moonlight, and I lingered by the falls until after eleven. Then it was up to me to hunt for a place to "kip." "Kip," "doss," "flop," "pound your ear," all mean the same thing; namely, to sleep. Somehow, I had a "hunch" that Niagara Falls was a "bad" town for hoboes, and I headed out into the country. I climbed a fence and "flopped" in a field. John Law would never find me there, I flattered myself. I lay on my back in the grass and slept like a babe. It was so balmy warm that I woke up not once all night. But with the first gray daylight my eyes opened, and I remembered the wonderful falls. I climbed the fence and started down the road to have another look at them. It was early--not more than five o'clock--and not until eight o'clock could I begin to batter for my breakfast. I could spend at least three hours by the river. Alas! I was fated never to see the river nor the falls again. The town was asleep when I entered it. As I came along the quiet street, I saw three men coming toward me along the sidewalk. They were walking abreast. Hoboes, I decided, like myself, who had got up early. In this surmise I was not quite correct. I was only sixty-six and two-thirds per cent correct. The men on each side were hoboes all right, but the man in the middle wasn't. I directed my steps to the edge of the sidewalk in order to let the trio go by. But it didn't go by. At some word from the man in the centre, all three halted, and he of the centre addressed me. I piped the lay on the instant. He was a "fly-cop" and the two hoboes were his prisoners. John Law was up and out after the early worm. I was a worm. Had I been richer by the experiences that were to befall me in the next several months, I should have turned and run like the very devil. He might have shot at me, but he'd have had to hit me to get me. He'd have never run after me, for two hoboes in the hand are worth more than one on the get-away. But like a dummy I stood still when he halted me. Our conversation was brief. "What hotel are you stopping at?" he queried. He had me. I wasn't stopping at any hotel, and, since I did not know the name of a hotel in the place, I could not claim residence in any of them. Also, I was up too early in the morning. Everything was against me. "I just arrived," I said. "Well, you turn around and walk in front of me, and not too far in front. There's somebody wants to see you." I was "pinched." I knew who wanted to see me. With that "fly-cop" and the two hoboes at my heels, and under the direction of the former, I led the way to the city jail. There we were searched and our names registered. I have forgotten, now, under which name I was registered. I gave the name of Jack Drake, but when they searched me, they found letters addressed to Jack London. This caused trouble and required explanation, all of which has passed from my mind, and to this day I do not know whether I was pinched as Jack Drake or Jack London. But one or the other, it should be there to-day in the prison register of Niagara Falls. Reference can bring it to light. The time was somewhere in the latter part of June, 1894. It was only a few days after my arrest that the great railroad strike began. From the office we were led to the "Hobo" and locked in. The "Hobo" is that part of a prison where the minor offenders are confined together in a large iron cage. Since hoboes constitute the principal division of the minor offenders, the aforesaid iron cage is called the Hobo. Here we met several hoboes who had already been pinched that morning, and every little while the door was unlocked and two or three more were thrust in on us. At last, when we totalled sixteen, we were led upstairs into the court-room. And now I shall faithfully describe what took place in that court-room, for know that my patriotic American citizenship there received a shock from which it has never fully recovered. In the court-room were the sixteen prisoners, the judge, and two bailiffs. The judge seemed to act as his own clerk. There were no witnesses. There were no citizens of Niagara Falls present to look on and see how justice was administered in their community. The judge glanced at the list of cases before him and called out a name. A hobo stood up. The judge glanced at a bailiff. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said the bailiff. "Thirty days," said his Honor. The hobo sat down, and the judge was calling another name and another hobo was rising to his feet. The trial of that hobo had taken just about fifteen seconds. The trial of the next hobo came off with equal celerity. The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your Honor," and his Honor said, "Thirty days." Thus it went like clockwork, fifteen seconds to a hobo--and thirty days. They are poor dumb cattle, I thought to myself. But wait till my turn comes; I'll give his Honor a "spiel." Part way along in the performance, his Honor, moved by some whim, gave one of us an opportunity to speak. As chance would have it, this man was not a genuine hobo. He bore none of the ear-marks of the professional "stiff." Had he approached the rest of us, while waiting at a water-tank for a freight, we should have unhesitatingly classified him as a "gay-cat." Gay-cat is the synonym for tenderfoot in Hobo Land. This gay-cat was well along in years--somewhere around forty-five, I should judge. His shoulders were humped a trifle, and his face was seamed by weather-beat. For many years, according to his story, he had driven team for some firm in (if I remember rightly) Lockport, New York. The firm had ceased to prosper, and finally, in the hard times of 1893, had gone out of business. He had been kept on to the last, though toward the last his work had been very irregular. He went on and explained at length his difficulties in getting work (when so many were out of work) during the succeeding months. In the end, deciding that he would find better opportunities for work on the Lakes, he had started for Buffalo. Of course he was "broke," and there he was. That was all. "Thirty days," said his Honor, and called another hobo's name. Said hobo got up. "Vagrancy, your Honor," said the bailiff, and his Honor said, "Thirty days." And so it went, fifteen seconds and thirty days to each hobo. The machine of justice was grinding smoothly. Most likely, considering how early it was in the morning, his Honor had not yet had his breakfast and was in a hurry. But my American blood was up. Behind me were the many generations of my American ancestry. One of the kinds of liberty those ancestors of mine had fought and died for was the right of trial by jury. This was my heritage, stained sacred by their blood, and it devolved upon me to stand up for it. All right, I threatened to myself; just wait till he gets to me. He got to me. My name, whatever it was, was called, and I stood up. The bailiff said, "Vagrancy, your Honor," and I began to talk. But the judge began talking at the same time, and he said, "Thirty days." I started to protest, but at that moment his Honor was calling the name of the next hobo on the list. His Honor paused long enough to say to me, "Shut up!" The bailiff forced me to sit down. And the next moment that next hobo had received thirty days and the succeeding hobo was just in process of getting his. When we had all been disposed of, thirty days to each stiff, his Honor, just as he was about to dismiss us, suddenly turned to the teamster from Lockport--the one man he had allowed to talk. "Why did you quit your job?" his Honor asked. Now the teamster had already explained how his job had quit him, and the question took him aback. "Your Honor," he began confusedly, "isn't that a funny question to ask?" "Thirty days more for quitting your job," said his Honor, and the court was closed. That was the outcome. The teamster got sixty days all together, while the rest of us got thirty days. We were taken down below, locked up, and given breakfast. It was a pretty good breakfast, as prison breakfasts go, and it was the best I was to get for a month to come. As for me, I was dazed. Here was I, under sentence, after a farce of a trial wherein I was denied not only my right of trial by jury, but my right to plead guilty or not guilty. Another thing my fathers had fought for flashed through my brain--habeas corpus. I'd show them. But when I asked for a lawyer, I was laughed at. Habeas corpus was all right, but of what good was it to me when I could communicate with no one outside the jail? But I'd show them. They couldn't keep me in jail forever. Just wait till I got out, that was all. I'd make them sit up. I knew something about the law and my own rights, and I'd expose their maladministration of justice. Visions of damage suits and sensational newspaper headlines were dancing before my eyes when the jailers came in and began hustling us out into the main office. A policeman snapped a handcuff on my right wrist. (Ah, ha, thought I, a new indignity. Just wait till I get out.) On the left wrist of a negro he snapped the other handcuff of that pair. He was a very tall negro, well past six feet--so tall was he that when we stood side by side his hand lifted mine up a trifle in the manacles. Also, he was the happiest and the raggedest negro I have ever seen. We were all handcuffed similarly, in pairs. This accomplished, a bright nickel-steel chain was brought forth, run down through the links of all the handcuffs, and locked at front and rear of the double-line. We were now a chain-gang. The command to march was given, and out we went upon the street, guarded by two officers. The tall negro and I had the place of honor. We led the procession. After the tomb-like gloom of the jail, the outside sunshine was dazzling. I had never known it to be so sweet as now, a prisoner with clanking chains, I knew that I was soon to see the last of it for thirty days. Down through the streets of Niagara Falls we marched to the railroad station, stared at by curious passers-by, and especially by a group of tourists on the veranda of a hotel that we marched past. There was plenty of slack in the chain, and with much rattling and clanking we sat down, two and two, in the seats of the smoking-car. Afire with indignation as I was at the outrage that had been perpetrated on me and my forefathers, I was nevertheless too prosaically practical to lose my head over it. This was all new to me. Thirty days of mystery were before me, and I looked about me to find somebody who knew the ropes. For I had already learned that I was not bound for a petty jail with a hundred or so prisoners in it, but for a full-grown penitentiary with a couple of thousand prisoners in it, doing anywhere from ten days to ten years. In the seat behind me, attached to the chain by his wrist, was a squat, heavily-built, powerfully-muscled man. He was somewhere between thirty-five and forty years of age. I sized him up. In the corners of his eyes I saw humor and laughter and kindliness. As for the rest of him, he was a brute-beast, wholly unmoral, and with all the passion and turgid violence of the brute-beast. What saved him, what made him possible for me, were those corners of his eyes--the humor and laughter and kindliness of the beast when unaroused. He was my "meat." I "cottoned" to him. While my cuff-mate, the tall negro, mourned with chucklings and laughter over some laundry he was sure to lose through his arrest, and while the train rolled on toward Buffalo, I talked with the man in the seat behind me. He had an empty pipe. I filled it for him with my precious tobacco--enough in a single filling to make a dozen cigarettes. Nay, the more we talked the surer I was that he was my meat, and I divided all my tobacco with him. Now it happens that I am a fluid sort of an organism, with sufficient kinship with life to fit myself in 'most anywhere. I laid myself out to fit in with that man, though little did I dream to what extraordinary good purpose I was succeeding. He had never been in the particular penitentiary to which we were going, but he had done "one-," "two-," and "five-spots" in various other penitentiaries (a "spot" is a year), and he was filled with wisdom. We became pretty chummy, and my heart bounded when he cautioned me to follow his lead. He called me "Jack," and I called him "Jack." The train stopped at a station about five miles from Buffalo, and we, the chain-gang, got off. I do not remember the name of this station, but I am confident that it is some one of the following: Rocklyn, Rockwood, Black Rock, Rockcastle, or Newcastle. But whatever the name of the place, we were walked a short distance and then put on a street-car. It was an old-fashioned car, with a seat, running the full length, on each side. All the passengers who sat on one side were asked to move over to the other side, and we, with a great clanking of chain, took their places. We sat facing them, I remember, and I remember, too, the awed expression on the faces of the women, who took us, undoubtedly, for convicted murderers and bank-robbers. I tried to look my fiercest, but that cuff-mate of mine, the too happy negro, insisted on rolling his eyes, laughing, and reiterating, "O Lawdy! Lawdy!" We left the car, walked some more, and were led into the office of the Erie County Penitentiary. Here we were to register, and on that register one or the other of my names will be found. Also, we were informed that we must leave in the office all our valuables: money, tobacco, matches, pocketknives, and so forth. My new pal shook his head at me. "If you do not leave your things here, they will be confiscated inside," warned the official. Still my pal shook his head. He was busy with his hands, hiding his movements behind the other fellows. (Our handcuffs had been removed.) I watched him, and followed suit, wrapping up in a bundle in my handkerchief all the things I wanted to take in. These bundles the two of us thrust into our shirts. I noticed that our fellow-prisoners, with the exception of one or two who had watches, did not turn over their belongings to the man in the office. They were determined to smuggle them in somehow, trusting to luck; but they were not so wise as my pal, for they did not wrap their things in bundles. Our erstwhile guardians gathered up the handcuffs and chain and departed for Niagara Falls, while we, under new guardians, were led away into the prison. While we were in the office, our number had been added to by other squads of newly arrived prisoners, so that we were now a procession forty or fifty strong. Know, ye unimprisoned, that traffic is as restricted inside a large prison as commerce was in the Middle Ages. Once inside a penitentiary, one cannot move about at will. Every few steps are encountered great steel doors or gates which are always kept locked. We were bound for the barber-shop, but we encountered delays in the unlocking of doors for us. We were thus delayed in the first "hall" we entered. A "hall" is not a corridor. Imagine an oblong cube, built out of bricks and rising six stories high, each story a row of cells, say fifty cells in a row--in short, imagine a cube of colossal honeycomb. Place this cube on the ground and enclose it in a building with a roof overhead and walls all around. Such a cube and encompassing building constitute a "hall" in the Erie County Penitentiary. Also, to complete the picture, see a narrow gallery, with steel railing, running the full length of each tier of cells and at the ends of the oblong cube see all these galleries, from both sides, connected by a fire-escape system of narrow steel stairways. We were halted in the first hall, waiting for some guard to unlock a door. Here and there, moving about, were convicts, with close-cropped heads and shaven faces, and garbed in prison stripes. One such convict I noticed above us on the gallery of the third tier of cells. He was standing on the gallery and leaning forward, his arms resting on the railing, himself apparently oblivious of our presence. He seemed staring into vacancy. My pal made a slight hissing noise. The convict glanced down. Motioned signals passed between them. Then through the air soared the handkerchief bundle of my pal. The convict caught it, and like a flash it was out of sight in his shirt and he was staring into vacancy. My pal had told me to follow his lead. I watched my chance when the guard's back was turned, and my bundle followed the other one into the shirt of the convict. A minute later the door was unlocked, and we filed into the barber-shop. Here were more men in convict stripes. They were the prison barbers. Also, there were bath-tubs, hot water, soap, and scrubbing-brushes. We were ordered to strip and bathe, each man to scrub his neighbor's back--a needless precaution, this compulsory bath, for the prison swarmed with vermin. After the bath, we were each given a canvas clothes-bag. "Put all your clothes in the bags," said the guard. "It's no good trying to smuggle anything in. You've got to line up naked for inspection. Men for thirty days or less keep their shoes and suspenders. Men for more than thirty days keep nothing." This announcement was received with consternation. How could naked men smuggle anything past an inspection? Only my pal and I were safe. But it was right here that the convict barbers got in their work. They passed among the poor newcomers, kindly volunteering to take charge of their precious little belongings, and promising to return them later in the day. Those barbers were philanthropists--to hear them talk. As in the case of Fra Lippo Lippi, never was there such prompt disemburdening. Matches, tobacco, rice-paper, pipes, knives, money, everything, flowed into the capacious shirts of the barbers. They fairly bulged with the spoil, and the guards made believe not to see. To cut the story short, nothing was ever returned. The barbers never had any intention of returning what they had taken. They considered it legitimately theirs. It was the barber-shop graft. There were many grafts in that prison, as I was to learn; and I, too, was destined to become a grafter--thanks to my new pal. There were several chairs, and the barbers worked rapidly. The quickest shaves and hair-cuts I have ever seen were given in that shop. The men lathered themselves, and the barbers shaved them at the rate of a minute to a man. A hair-cut took a trifle longer. In three minutes the down of eighteen was scraped from my face, and my head was as smooth as a billiard-ball just sprouting a crop of bristles. Beards, mustaches, like our clothes and everything, came off. Take my word for it, we were a villainous-looking gang when they got through with us. I had not realized before how really altogether bad we were. Then came the line-up, forty or fifty of us, naked as Kipling's heroes who stormed Lungtungpen. To search us was easy. There were only our shoes and ourselves. Two or three rash spirits, who had doubted the barbers, had the goods found on them--which goods, namely, tobacco, pipes, matches, and small change, were quickly confiscated. This over, our new clothes were brought to us--stout prison shirts, and coats and trousers conspicuously striped. I had always lingered under the impression that the convict stripes were put on a man only after he had been convicted of a felony. I lingered no longer, but put on the insignia of shame and got my first taste of marching the lock-step. In single file, close together, each man's hands on the shoulders of the man in front, we marched on into another large hall. Here we were ranged up against the wall in a long line and ordered to strip our left arms. A youth, a medical student who was getting in his practice on cattle such as we, came down the line. He vaccinated just about four times as rapidly as the barbers shaved. With a final caution to avoid rubbing our arms against anything, and to let the blood dry so as to form the scab, we were led away to our cells. Here my pal and I parted, but not before he had time to whisper to me, "Suck it out." As soon as I was locked in, I sucked my arm clean. And afterward I saw men who had not sucked and who had horrible holes in their arms into which I could have thrust my fist. It was their own fault. They could have sucked. In my cell was another man. We were to be cell-mates. He was a young, manly fellow, not talkative, but very capable, indeed as splendid a fellow as one could meet with in a day's ride, and this in spite of the fact that he had just recently finished a two-year term in some Ohio penitentiary. Hardly had we been in our cell half an hour, when a convict sauntered down the gallery and looked in. It was my pal. He had the freedom of the hall, he explained. He was unlocked at six in the morning and not locked up again till nine at night. He was in with the "push" in that hall, and had been promptly appointed a trusty of the kind technically known as "hall-man." The man who had appointed him was also a prisoner and a trusty, and was known as "First Hall-man." There were thirteen hall-men in that hall. Ten of them had charge each of a gallery of cells, and over them were the First, Second, and Third Hall-men. We newcomers were to stay in our cells for the rest of the day, my pal informed me, so that the vaccine would have a chance to take. Then next morning we would be put to hard labor in the prison-yard. "But I'll get you out of the work as soon as I can," he promised. "I'll get one of the hall-men fired and have you put in his place." He put his hand into his shirt, drew out the handkerchief containing my precious belongings, passed it in to me through the bars, and went on down the gallery. I opened the bundle. Everything was there. Not even a match was missing. I shared the makings of a cigarette with my cell-mate. When I started to strike a match for a light, he stopped me. A flimsy, dirty comforter lay in each of our bunks for bedding. He tore off a narrow strip of the thin cloth and rolled it tightly and telescopically into a long and slender cylinder. This he lighted with a precious match. The cylinder of tight-rolled cotton cloth did not flame. On the end a coal of fire slowly smouldered. It would last for hours, and my cell-mate called it a "punk." And when it burned short, all that was necessary was to make a new punk, put the end of it against the old, blow on them, and so transfer the glowing coal. Why, we could have given Prometheus pointers on the conserving of fire. At twelve o'clock dinner was served. At the bottom of our cage door was a small opening like the entrance of a runway in a chicken-yard. Through this were thrust two hunks of dry bread and two pannikins of "soup." A portion of soup consisted of about a quart of hot water with floating on its surface a lonely drop of grease. Also, there was some salt in that water. We drank the soup, but we did not eat the bread. Not that we were not hungry, and not that the bread was uneatable. It was fairly good bread. But we had reasons. My cell-mate had discovered that our cell was alive with bed-bugs. In all the cracks and interstices between the bricks where the mortar had fallen out flourished great colonies. The natives even ventured out in the broad daylight and swarmed over the walls and ceiling by hundreds. My cell-mate was wise in the ways of the beasts. Like Childe Roland, dauntless the slug-horn to his lips he bore. Never was there such a battle. It lasted for hours. It was shambles. And when the last survivors fled to their brick-and-mortar fastnesses, our work was only half done. We chewed mouthfuls of our bread until it was reduced to the consistency of putty. When a fleeing belligerent escaped into a crevice between the bricks, we promptly walled him in with a daub of the chewed bread. We toiled on until the light grew dim and until every hole, nook, and cranny was closed. I shudder to think of the tragedies of starvation and cannibalism that must have ensued behind those bread-plastered ramparts. We threw ourselves on our bunks, tired out and hungry, to wait for supper. It was a good day's work well done. In the weeks to come we at least should not suffer from the hosts of vermin. We had foregone our dinner, saved our hides at the expense of our stomachs; but we were content. Alas for the futility of human effort! Scarcely was our long task completed when a guard unlocked our door. A redistribution of prisoners was being made, and we were taken to another cell and locked in two galleries higher up. Early next morning our cells were unlocked, and down in the hall the several hundred prisoners of us formed the lock-step and marched out into the prison-yard to go to work. The Erie Canal runs right by the back yard of the Erie County Penitentiary. Our task was to unload canal-boats, carrying huge stay-bolts on our shoulders, like railroad ties, into the prison. As I worked I sized up the situation and studied the chances for a get-away. There wasn't the ghost of a show. Along the tops of the walls marched guards armed with repeating rifles, and I was told, furthermore, that there were machine-guns in the sentry-towers. I did not worry. Thirty days were not so long. I'd stay those thirty days, and add to the store of material I intended to use, when I got out, against the harpies of justice. I'd show what an American boy could do when his rights and privileges had been trampled on the way mine had. I had been denied my right of trial by jury; I had been denied my right to plead guilty or not guilty; I had been denied a trial even (for I couldn't consider that what I had received at Niagara Falls was a trial); I had not been allowed to communicate with a lawyer nor any one, and hence had been denied my right of suing for a writ of habeas corpus; my face had been shaved, my hair cropped close, convict stripes had been put upon my body; I was forced to toil hard on a diet of bread and water and to march the shameful lock-step with armed guards over me--and all for what? What had I done? What crime had I committed against the good citizens of Niagara Falls that all this vengeance should be wreaked upon me? I had not even violated their "sleeping-out" ordinance. I had slept outside their jurisdiction, in the country, that night. I had not even begged for a meal, or battered for a "light piece" on their streets. All that I had done was to walk along their sidewalk and gaze at their picayune waterfall. And what crime was there in that? Technically I was guilty of no misdemeanor. All right, I'd show them when I got out. The next day I talked with a guard. I wanted to send for a lawyer. The guard laughed at me. So did the other guards. I really was _incommunicado_ so far as the outside world was concerned. I tried to write a letter out, but I learned that all letters were read, and censured or confiscated, by the prison authorities, and that "short-timers" were not allowed to write letters anyway. A little later I tried smuggling letters out by men who were released, but I learned that they were searched and the letters found and destroyed. Never mind. It all helped to make it a blacker case when I did get out. But as the prison days went by (which I shall describe in the next chapter), I "learned a few." I heard tales of the police, and police-courts, and lawyers, that were unbelievable and monstrous. Men, prisoners, told me of personal experiences with the police of great cities that were awful. And more awful were the hearsay tales they told me concerning men who had died at the hands of the police and who therefore could not testify for themselves. Years afterward, in the report of the Lexow Committee, I was to read tales true and more awful than those told to me. But in the meantime, during the first days of my imprisonment, I scoffed at what I heard. As the days went by, however, I began to grow convinced. I saw with my own eyes, there in that prison, things unbelievable and monstrous. And the more convinced I became, the profounder grew the respect in me for the sleuth-hounds of the law and for the whole institution of criminal justice. My indignation ebbed away, and into my being rushed the tides of fear. I saw at last, clear-eyed, what I was up against. I grew meek and lowly. Each day I resolved more emphatically to make no rumpus when I got out. All I asked, when I got out, was a chance to fade away from the landscape. And that was just what I did do when I was released. I kept my tongue between my teeth, walked softly, and sneaked for Pennsylvania, a wiser and a humbler man. THE PEN For two days I toiled in the prison-yard. It was heavy work, and, in spite of the fact that I malingered at every opportunity, I was played out. This was because of the food. No man could work hard on such food. Bread and water, that was all that was given us. Once a week we were supposed to get meat; but this meat did not always go around, and since all nutriment had first been boiled out of it in the making of soup, it didn't matter whether one got a taste of it once a week or not. Furthermore, there was one vital defect in the bread-and-water diet. While we got plenty of water, we did not get enough of the bread. A ration of bread was about the size of one's two fists, and three rations a day were given to each prisoner. There was one good thing, I must say, about the water--it was hot. In the morning it was called "coffee," at noon it was dignified as "soup," and at night it masqueraded as "tea." But it was the same old water all the time. The prisoners called it "water bewitched." In the morning it was black water, the color being due to boiling it with burnt bread-crusts. At noon it was served minus the color, with salt and a drop of grease added. At night it was served with a purplish-auburn hue that defied all speculation; it was darn poor tea, but it was dandy hot water. We were a hungry lot in the Erie County Pen. Only the "long-timers" knew what it was to have enough to eat. The reason for this was that they would have died after a time on the fare we "short-timers" received. I know that the long-timers got more substantial grub, because there was a whole row of them on the ground floor in our hall, and when I was a trusty, I used to steal from their grub while serving them. Man cannot live on bread alone and not enough of it. My pal delivered the goods. After two days of work in the yard I was taken out of my cell and made a trusty, a "hall-man." At morning and night we served the bread to the prisoners in their cells; but at twelve o'clock a different method was used. The convicts marched in from work in a long line. As they entered the door of our hall, they broke the lock-step and took their hands down from the shoulders of their line-mates. Just inside the door were piled trays of bread, and here also stood the First Hall-man and two ordinary hall-men. I was one of the two. Our task was to hold the trays of bread as the line of convicts filed past. As soon as the tray, say, that I was holding was emptied, the other hall-man took my place with a full tray. And when his was emptied, I took his place with a full tray. Thus the line tramped steadily by, each man reaching with his right hand and taking one ration of bread from the extended tray. The task of the First Hall-man was different. He used a club. He stood beside the tray and watched. The hungry wretches could never get over the delusion that sometime they could manage to get two rations of bread out of the tray. But in my experience that sometime never came. The club of the First Hall-man had a way of flashing out--quick as the stroke of a tiger's claw--to the hand that dared ambitiously. The First Hall-man was a good judge of distance, and he had smashed so many hands with that club that he had become infallible. He never missed, and he usually punished the offending convict by taking his one ration away from him and sending him to his cell to make his meal off of hot water. And at times, while all these men lay hungry in their cells, I have seen a hundred or so extra rations of bread hidden away in the cells of the hall-men. It would seem absurd, our retaining this bread. But it was one of our grafts. We were economic masters inside our hall, turning the trick in ways quite similar to the economic masters of civilization. We controlled the food-supply of the population, and, just like our brother bandits outside, we made the people pay through the nose for it. We peddled the bread. Once a week, the men who worked in the yard received a five-cent plug of chewing tobacco. This chewing tobacco was the coin of the realm. Two or three rations of bread for a plug was the way we exchanged, and they traded, not because they loved tobacco less, but because they loved bread more. Oh, I know, it was like taking candy from a baby, but what would you? We had to live. And certainly there should be some reward for initiative and enterprise. Besides, we but patterned ourselves after our betters outside the walls, who, on a larger scale, and under the respectable disguise of merchants, bankers, and captains of industry, did precisely what we were doing. What awful things would have happened to those poor wretches if it hadn't been for us, I can't imagine. Heaven knows we put bread into circulation in the Erie County Pen. Ay, and we encouraged frugality and thrift ... in the poor devils who forewent their tobacco. And then there was our example. In the breast of every convict there we implanted the ambition to become even as we and run a graft. Saviours of society--I guess yes. Here was a hungry man without any tobacco. Maybe he was a profligate and had used it all up on himself. Very good; he had a pair of suspenders. I exchanged half a dozen rations of bread for it--or a dozen rations if the suspenders were very good. Now I never wore suspenders, but that didn't matter. Around the corner lodged a long-timer, doing ten years for manslaughter. He wore suspenders, and he wanted a pair. I could trade them to him for some of his meat. Meat was what I wanted. Or perhaps he had a tattered, paper-covered novel. That was treasure-trove. I could read it and then trade it off to the bakers for cake, or to the cooks for meat and vegetables, or to the firemen for decent coffee, or to some one or other for the newspaper that occasionally filtered in, heaven alone knows how. The cooks, bakers, and firemen were prisoners like myself, and they lodged in our hall in the first row of cells over us. In short, a full-grown system of barter obtained in the Erie County Pen. There was even money in circulation. This money was sometimes smuggled in by the short-timers, more frequently came from the barber-shop graft, where the newcomers were mulcted, but most of all flowed from the cells of the long-timers--though how they got it I don't know. What of his preeminent position, the First Hall-man was reputed to be quite wealthy. In addition to his miscellaneous grafts, he grafted on us. We farmed the general wretchedness, and the First Hall-man was Farmer-General over all of us. We held our particular grafts by his permission, and we had to pay for that permission. As I say, he was reputed to be wealthy; but we never saw his money, and he lived in a cell all to himself in solitary grandeur. But that money was made in the Pen I had direct evidence, for I was cell-mate quite a time with the Third Hall-man. He had over sixteen dollars. He used to count his money every night after nine o'clock, when we were locked in. Also, he used to tell me each night what he would do to me if I gave away on him to the other hall-men. You see, he was afraid of being robbed, and danger threatened him from three different directions. There were the guards. A couple of them might jump upon him, give him a good beating for alleged insubordination, and throw him into the "solitaire" (the dungeon); and in the mix-up that sixteen dollars of his would take wings. Then again, the First Hall-man could have taken it all away from him by threatening to dismiss him and fire him back to hard labor in the prison-yard. And yet again, there were the ten of us who were ordinary hall-men. If we got an inkling of his wealth, there was a large liability, some quiet day, of the whole bunch of us getting him into a corner and dragging him down. Oh, we were wolves, believe me--just like the fellows who do business in Wall Street. He had good reason to be afraid of us, and so had I to be afraid of him. He was a huge, illiterate brute, an ex-Chesapeake-Bay-oyster-pirate, an "ex-con" who had done five years in Sing Sing, and a general all-around stupidly carnivorous beast. He used to trap sparrows that flew into our hall through the open bars. When he made a capture, he hurried away with it into his cell, where I have seen him crunching bones and spitting out feathers as he bolted it raw. Oh, no, I never gave away on him to the other hall-men. This is the first time I have mentioned his sixteen dollars. But I grafted on him just the same. He was in love with a woman prisoner who was confined in the "female department." He could neither read nor write, and I used to read her letters to him and write his replies. And I made him pay for it, too. But they were good letters. I laid myself out on them, put in my best licks, and furthermore, I won her for him; though I shrewdly guess that she was in love, not with him, but with the humble scribe. I repeat, those letters were great. Another one of our grafts was "passing the punk." We were the celestial messengers, the fire-bringers, in that iron world of bolt and bar. When the men came in from work at night and were locked in their cells, they wanted to smoke. Then it was that we restored the divine spark, running the galleries, from cell to cell, with our smouldering punks. Those who were wise, or with whom we did business, had their punks all ready to light. Not every one got divine sparks, however. The guy who refused to dig up, went sparkless and smokeless to bed. But what did we care? We had the immortal cinch on him, and if he got fresh, two or three of us would pitch on him and give him "what-for." You see, this was the working-theory of the hall-men. There were thirteen of us. We had something like half a thousand prisoners in our hall. We were supposed to do the work, and to keep order. The latter was the function of the guards, which they turned over to us. It was up to us to keep order; if we didn't, we'd be fired back to hard labor, most probably with a taste of the dungeon thrown in. But so long as we maintained order, that long could we work our own particular grafts. Bear with me a moment and look at the problem. Here were thirteen beasts of us over half a thousand other beasts. It was a living hell, that prison, and it was up to us thirteen there to rule. It was impossible, considering the nature of the beasts, for us to rule by kindness. We ruled by fear. Of course, behind us, backing us up, were the guards. In extremity we called upon them for help; but it would bother them if we called upon them too often, in which event we could depend upon it that they would get more efficient trusties to take our places. But we did not call upon them often, except in a quiet sort of way, when we wanted a cell unlocked in order to get at a refractory prisoner inside. In such cases all the guard did was to unlock the door and walk away so as not to be a witness of what happened when half a dozen hall-men went inside and did a bit of man-handling. As regards the details of this man-handling I shall say nothing. And after all, man-handling was merely one of the very minor unprintable horrors of the Erie County Pen. I say "unprintable"; and in justice I must also say "unthinkable." They were unthinkable to me until I saw them, and I was no spring chicken in the ways of the world and the awful abysses of human degradation. It would take a deep plummet to reach bottom in the Erie County Pen, and I do but skim lightly and facetiously the surface of things as I there saw them. At times, say in the morning when the prisoners came down to wash, the thirteen of us would be practically alone in the midst of them, and every last one of them had it in for us. Thirteen against five hundred, and we ruled by fear. We could not permit the slightest infraction of rules, the slightest insolence. If we did, we were lost. Our own rule was to hit a man as soon as he opened his mouth--hit him hard, hit him with anything. A broom-handle, end-on, in the face, had a very sobering effect. But that was not all. Such a man must be made an example of; so the next rule was to wade right in and follow him up. Of course, one was sure that every hall-man in sight would come on the run to join in the chastisement; for this also was a rule. Whenever any hall-man was in trouble with a prisoner, the duty of any other hall-man who happened to be around was to lend a fist. Never mind the merits of the case--wade in and hit, and hit with anything; in short, lay the man out. I remember a handsome young mulatto of about twenty who got the insane idea into his head that he should stand for his rights. And he did have the right of it, too; but that didn't help him any. He lived on the topmost gallery. Eight hall-men took the conceit out of him in just about a minute and a half--for that was the length of time required to travel along his gallery to the end and down five flights of steel stairs. He travelled the whole distance on every portion of his anatomy except his feet, and the eight hall-men were not idle. The mulatto struck the pavement where I was standing watching it all. He regained his feet and stood upright for a moment. In that moment he threw his arms wide apart and omitted an awful scream of terror and pain and heartbreak. At the same instant, as in a transformation scene, the shreds of his stout prison clothes fell from him, leaving him wholly naked and streaming blood from every portion of the surface of his body. Then he collapsed in a heap, unconscious. He had learned his lesson, and every convict within those walls who heard him scream had learned a lesson. So had I learned mine. It is not a nice thing to see a man's heart broken in a minute and a half. The following will illustrate how we drummed up business in the graft of passing the punk. A row of newcomers is installed in your cells. You pass along before the bars with your punk. "Hey, Bo, give us a light," some one calls to you. Now this is an advertisement that that particular man has tobacco on him. You pass in the punk and go your way. A little later you come back and lean up casually against the bars. "Say, Bo, can you let us have a little tobacco?" is what you say. If he is not wise to the game, the chances are that he solemnly avers that he hasn't any more tobacco. All very well. You condole with him and go your way. But you know that his punk will last him only the rest of that day. Next day you come by, and he says again, "Hey, Bo, give us a light." And you say, "You haven't any tobacco and you don't need a light." And you don't give him any, either. Half an hour after, or an hour or two or three hours, you will be passing by and the man will call out to you in mild tones, "Come here, Bo." And you come. You thrust your hand between the bars and have it filled with precious tobacco. Then you give him a light. Sometimes, however, a newcomer arrives, upon whom no grafts are to be worked. The mysterious word is passed along that he is to be treated decently. Where this word originated I could never learn. The one thing patent is that the man has a "pull." It may be with one of the superior hall-men; it may be with one of the guards in some other part of the prison; it may be that good treatment has been purchased from grafters higher up; but be it as it may, we know that it is up to us to treat him decently if we want to avoid trouble. We hall-men were middle-men and common carriers. We arranged trades between convicts confined in different parts of the prison, and we put through the exchange. Also, we took our commissions coming and going. Sometimes the objects traded had to go through the hands of half a dozen middle-men, each of whom took his whack, or in some way or another was paid for his service. Sometimes one was in debt for services, and sometimes one had others in his debt. Thus, I entered the prison in debt to the convict who smuggled in my things for me. A week or so afterward, one of the firemen passed a letter into my hand. It had been given to him by a barber. The barber had received it from the convict who had smuggled in my things. Because of my debt to him I was to carry the letter on. But he had not written the letter. The original sender was a long-timer in his hall. The letter was for a woman prisoner in the female department. But whether it was intended for her, or whether she, in turn, was one of the chain of go-betweens, I did not know. All that I knew was her description, and that it was up to me to get it into her hands. Two days passed, during which time I kept the letter in my possession; then the opportunity came. The women did the mending of all the clothes worn by the convicts. A number of our hall-men had to go to the female department to bring back huge bundles of clothes. I fixed it with the First Hall-man that I was to go along. Door after door was unlocked for us as we threaded our way across the prison to the women's quarters. We entered a large room where the women sat working at their mending. My eyes were peeled for the woman who had been described to me. I located her and worked near to her. Two eagle-eyed matrons were on watch. I held the letter in my palm, and I looked my intention at the woman. She knew I had something for her; she must have been expecting it, and had set herself to divining, at the moment we entered, which of us was the messenger. But one of the matrons stood within two feet of her. Already the hall-men were picking up the bundles they were to carry away. The moment was passing. I delayed with my bundle, making believe that it was not tied securely. Would that matron ever look away? Or was I to fail? And just then another woman cut up playfully with one of the hall-men--stuck out her foot and tripped him, or pinched him, or did something or other. The matron looked that way and reprimanded the woman sharply. Now I do not know whether or not this was all planned to distract the matron's attention, but I did know that it was my opportunity. My particular woman's hand dropped from her lap down by her side. I stooped to pick up my bundle. From my stooping position I slipped the letter into her hand, and received another in exchange. The next moment the bundle was on my shoulder, the matron's gaze had returned to me because I was the last hall-man, and I was hastening to catch up with my companions. The letter I had received from the woman I turned over to the fireman, and thence it passed through the hands of the barber, of the convict who had smuggled in my things, and on to the long-timer at the other end. Often we conveyed letters, the chain of communication of which was so complex that we knew neither sender nor sendee. We were but links in the chain. Somewhere, somehow, a convict would thrust a letter into my hand with the instruction to pass it on to the next link. All such acts were favors to be reciprocated later on, when I should be acting directly with a principal in transmitting letters, and from whom I should be receiving my pay. The whole prison was covered by a network of lines of communication. And we who were in control of the system of communication, naturally, since we were modelled after capitalistic society, exacted heavy tolls from our customers. It was service for profit with a vengeance, though we were at times not above giving service for love. And all the time I was in the Pen I was making myself solid with my pal. He had done much for me, and in return he expected me to do as much for him. When we got out, we were to travel together, and, it goes without saying, pull off "jobs" together. For my pal was a criminal--oh, not a jewel of the first water, merely a petty criminal who would steal and rob, commit burglary, and, if cornered, not stop short of murder. Many a quiet hour we sat and talked together. He had two or three jobs in view for the immediate future, in which my work was cut out for me, and in which I joined in planning the details. I had been with and seen much of criminals, and my pal never dreamed that I was only fooling him, giving him a string thirty days long. He thought I was the real goods, liked me because I was not stupid, and liked me a bit, too, I think, for myself. Of course I had not the slightest intention of joining him in a life of sordid, petty crime; but I'd have been an idiot to throw away all the good things his friendship made possible. When one is on the hot lava of hell, he cannot pick and choose his path, and so it was with me in the Erie County Pen. I had to stay in with the "push," or do hard labor on bread and water; and to stay in with the push I had to make good with my pal. Life was not monotonous in the Pen. Every day something was happening: men were having fits, going crazy, fighting, or the hall-men were getting drunk. Rover Jack, one of the ordinary hall-men, was our star "oryide." He was a true "profesh," a "blowed-in-the-glass" stiff, and as such received all kinds of latitude from the hall-men in authority. Pittsburg Joe, who was Second Hall-man, used to join Rover Jack in his jags; and it was a saying of the pair that the Erie County Pen was the only place where a man could get "slopped" and not be arrested. I never knew, but I was told that bromide of potassium, gained in devious ways from the dispensary, was the dope they used. But I do know, whatever their dope was, that they got good and drunk on occasion. Our hall was a common stews, filled with the ruck and the filth, the scum and dregs, of society--hereditary inefficients, degenerates, wrecks, lunatics, addled intelligences, epileptics, monsters, weaklings, in short, a very nightmare of humanity. Hence, fits flourished with us. These fits seemed contagious. When one man began throwing a fit, others followed his lead. I have seen seven men down with fits at the same time, making the air hideous with their cries, while as many more lunatics would be raging and gibbering up and down. Nothing was ever done for the men with fits except to throw cold water on them. It was useless to send for the medical student or the doctor. They were not to be bothered with such trivial and frequent occurrences. There was a young Dutch boy, about eighteen years of age, who had fits most frequently of all. He usually threw one every day. It was for that reason that we kept him on the ground floor farther down in the row of cells in which we lodged. After he had had a few fits in the prison-yard, the guards refused to be bothered with him any more, and so he remained locked up in his cell all day with a Cockney cell-mate, to keep him company. Not that the Cockney was of any use. Whenever the Dutch boy had a fit, the Cockney became paralyzed with terror. The Dutch boy could not speak a word of English. He was a farmer's boy, serving ninety days as punishment for having got into a scrap with some one. He prefaced his fits with howling. He howled like a wolf. Also, he took his fits standing up, which was very inconvenient for him, for his fits always culminated in a headlong pitch to the floor. Whenever I heard the long wolf-howl rising, I used to grab a broom and run to his cell. Now the trusties were not allowed keys to the cells, so I could not get in to him. He would stand up in the middle of his narrow cell, shivering convulsively, his eyes rolled backward till only the whites were visible, and howling like a lost soul. Try as I would, I could never get the Cockney to lend him a hand. While he stood and howled, the Cockney crouched and trembled in the upper bunk, his terror-stricken gaze fixed on that awful figure, with eyes rolled back, that howled and howled. It was hard on him, too, the poor devil of a Cockney. His own reason was not any too firmly seated, and the wonder is that he did not go mad. All that I could do was my best with the broom. I would thrust it through the bars, train it on Dutchy's chest, and wait. As the crisis approached he would begin swaying back and forth. I followed this swaying with the broom, for there was no telling when he would take that dreadful forward pitch. But when he did, I was there with the broom, catching him and easing him down. Contrive as I would, he never came down quite gently, and his face was usually bruised by the stone floor. Once down and writhing in convulsions, I'd throw a bucket of water over him. I don't know whether cold water was the right thing or not, but it was the custom in the Erie County Pen. Nothing more than that was ever done for him. He would lie there, wet, for an hour or so, and then crawl into his bunk. I knew better than to run to a guard for assistance. What was a man with a fit, anyway? In the adjoining cell lived a strange character--a man who was doing sixty days for eating swill out of Barnum's swill-barrel, or at least that was the way he put it. He was a badly addled creature, and, at first, very mild and gentle. The facts of his case were as he had stated them. He had strayed out to the circus ground, and, being hungry, had made his way to the barrel that contained the refuse from the table of the circus people. "And it was good bread," he often assured me; "and the meat was out of sight." A policeman had seen him and arrested him, and there he was. Once I passed his cell with a piece of stiff thin wire in my hand. He asked me for it so earnestly that I passed it through the bars to him. Promptly, and with no tool but his fingers, he broke it into short lengths and twisted them into half a dozen very creditable safety pins. He sharpened the points on the stone floor. Thereafter I did quite a trade in safety pins. I furnished the raw material and peddled the finished product, and he did the work. As wages, I paid him extra rations of bread, and once in a while a chunk of meat or a piece of soup-bone with some marrow inside. But his imprisonment told on him, and he grew violent day by day. The hall-men took delight in teasing him. They filled his weak brain with stories of a great fortune that had been left him. It was in order to rob him of it that he had been arrested and sent to jail. Of course, as he himself knew, there was no law against eating out of a barrel. Therefore he was wrongly imprisoned. It was a plot to deprive him of his fortune. The first I knew of it, I heard the hall-men laughing about the string they had given him. Next he held a serious conference with me, in which he told me of his millions and the plot to deprive him of them, and in which he appointed me his detective. I did my best to let him down gently, speaking vaguely of a mistake, and that it was another man with a similar name who was the rightful heir. I left him quite cooled down; but I couldn't keep the hall-men away from him, and they continued to string him worse than ever. In the end, after a most violent scene, he threw me down, revoked my private detectiveship, and went on strike. My trade in safety pins ceased. He refused to make any more safety pins, and he peppered me with raw material through the bars of his cell when I passed by. I could never make it up with him. The other hall-men told him that I was a detective in the employ of the conspirators. And in the meantime the hall-men drove him mad with their stringing. His fictitious wrongs preyed upon his mind, and at last he became a dangerous and homicidal lunatic. The guards refused to listen to his tale of stolen millions, and he accused them of being in the plot. One day he threw a pannikin of hot tea over one of them, and then his case was investigated. The warden talked with him a few minutes through the bars of his cell. Then he was taken away for examination before the doctors. He never came back, and I often wonder if he is dead, or if he still gibbers about his millions in some asylum for the insane. At last came the day of days, my release. It was the day of release for the Third Hall-man as well, and the short-timer girl I had won for him was waiting for him outside the wall. They went away blissfully together. My pal and I went out together, and together we walked down into Buffalo. Were we not to be together always? We begged together on the "main-drag" that day for pennies, and what we received was spent for "shupers" of beer--I don't know how they are spelled, but they are pronounced the way I have spelled them, and they cost three cents. I was watching my chance all the time for a get-away. From some bo on the drag I managed to learn what time a certain freight pulled out. I calculated my time accordingly. When the moment came, my pal and I were in a saloon. Two foaming shupers were before us. I'd have liked to say good-by. He had been good to me. But I did not dare. I went out through the rear of the saloon and jumped the fence. It was a swift sneak, and a few minutes later I was on board a freight and heading south on the Western New York and Pennsylvania Railroad. HOBOES THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT In the course of my tramping I encountered hundreds of hoboes, whom I hailed or who hailed me, and with whom I waited at water-tanks, "boiled-up," cooked "mulligans," "battered" the "drag" or "privates," and beat trains, and who passed and were seen never again. On the other hand, there were hoboes who passed and repassed with amazing frequency, and others, still, who passed like ghosts, close at hand, unseen, and never seen. It was one of the latter that I chased clear across Canada over three thousand miles of railroad, and never once did I lay eyes on him. His "monica" was Skysail Jack. I first ran into it at Montreal. Carved with a jack-knife was the skysail-yard of a ship. It was perfectly executed. Under it was "Skysail Jack." Above was "B.W. 9-15-94." This latter conveyed the information that he had passed through Montreal bound west, on October 15, 1894. He had one day the start of me. "Sailor Jack" was my monica at that particular time, and promptly I carved it alongside of his, along with the date and the information that I, too, was bound west. I had misfortune in getting over the next hundred miles, and eight days later I picked up Skysail Jack's trail three hundred miles west of Ottawa. There it was, carved on a water-tank, and by the date I saw that he likewise had met with delay. He was only two days ahead of me. I was a "comet" and "tramp-royal," so was Skysail Jack; and it was up to my pride and reputation to catch up with him. I "railroaded" day and night, and I passed him; then turn about he passed me. Sometimes he was a day or so ahead, and sometimes I was. From hoboes, bound east, I got word of him occasionally, when he happened to be ahead; and from them I learned that he had become interested in Sailor Jack and was making inquiries about me. We'd have made a precious pair, I am sure, if we'd ever got together; but get together we couldn't. I kept ahead of him clear across Manitoba, but he led the way across Alberta, and early one bitter gray morning, at the end of a division just east of Kicking Horse Pass, I learned that he had been seen the night before between Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers' Pass. It was rather curious the way the information came to me. I had been riding all night in a "side-door Pullman" (box-car), and nearly dead with cold had crawled out at the division to beg for food. A freezing fog was drifting past, and I "hit" some firemen I found in the round-house. They fixed me up with the leavings from their lunch-pails, and in addition I got out of them nearly a quart of heavenly "Java" (coffee). I heated the latter, and, as I sat down to eat, a freight pulled in from the west. I saw a side-door open and a road-kid climb out. Through the drifting fog he limped over to me. He was stiff with cold, his lips blue. I shared my Java and grub with him, learned about Skysail Jack, and then learned about him. Behold, he was from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was a member of the celebrated Boo Gang--a gang with which I had affiliated at rare intervals. We talked fast and bolted the grub in the half-hour that followed. Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound west on the trail of Skysail Jack. I was delayed between the passes, went two days without food, and walked eleven miles on the third day before I got any, and yet I succeeded in passing Skysail Jack along the Fraser River in British Columbia. I was riding "passengers" then and making time; but he must have been riding passengers, too, and with more luck or skill than I, for he got into Mission ahead of me. Now Mission was a junction, forty miles east of Vancouver. From the junction one could proceed south through Washington and Oregon over the Northern Pacific. I wondered which way Skysail Jack would go, for I thought I was ahead of him. As for myself I was still bound west to Vancouver. I proceeded to the water-tank to leave that information, and there, freshly carved, with that day's date upon it, was Skysail Jack's monica. I hurried on into Vancouver. But he was gone. He had taken ship immediately and was still flying west on his world-adventure. Truly, Skysail Jack, you were a tramp-royal, and your mate was the "wind that tramps the world." I take off my hat to you. You were "blowed-in-the-glass" all right. A week later I, too, got my ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and Sailor Jack--gee! if we'd ever got together. Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a "stiff" or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were still going. "Monicas" are the nom-de-rails that hoboes assume or accept when thrust upon them by their fellows. Leary Joe, for instance, was timid, and was so named by his fellows. No self-respecting hobo would select Stew Bum for himself. Very few tramps care to remember their pasts during which they ignobly worked, so monicas based upon trades are very rare, though I remember having met the following: Moulder Blackey, Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boiler-Maker, Sailor Boy, and Printer Bo. "Chi" (pronounced shy), by the way, is the argot for "Chicago." A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas on the localities from which they hail, as: New York Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo Smithy, Canton Tim, Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Mickey, K.L. Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim Jim from Vinegar Hill, who never worked and never will." A "shine" is always a negro, so called, possibly, from the high lights on his countenance. Texas Shine or Toledo Shine convey both race and nativity. Among those that incorporated their race, I recollect the following: Frisco Sheeny, New York Irish, Michigan French, English Jack, Cockney Kid, and Milwaukee Dutch. Others seem to take their monicas in part from the color-schemes stamped upon them at birth, such as: Chi Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston Blackey, Seattle Browney, and Yellow Dick and Yellow Belly--the last a Creole from Mississippi, who, I suspect, had his monica thrust upon him. Texas Royal, Happy Joe, Bust Connors, Burley Bo, Tornado Blackey, and Touch McCall used more imagination in rechristening themselves. Others, with less fancy, carry the names of their physical peculiarities, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio Fatty, Long Jack, Big Jim, Little Joe, New York Blink, Chi Nosey, and Broken-backed Ben. By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an infinite variety of monicas. For example, the following, whom here and there I have encountered: Buck Kid, Blind Kid, Midget Kid, Holy Kid, Bat Kid, Swift Kid, Cookey Kid, Monkey Kid, Iowa Kid, Corduroy Kid, Orator Kid (who could tell how it happened), and Lippy Kid (who was insolent, depend upon it). On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a dozen years ago, was the following hobo bill of fare:-- (1) Main-drag fair. (2) Bulls not hostile. (3) Round-house good for kipping. (4) North-bound trains no good. (5) Privates no good. (6) Restaurants good for cooks only. (7) Railroad House good for night-work only. Number one conveys the information that begging for money on the main street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes; number three, that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four, however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat, and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven bothers me. I cannot make out whether the Railroad House is a good place for any hobo to beg at night, or whether it is good only for hobo-cooks to beg at night, or whether any hobo, cook or non-cook, can lend a hand at night, helping the cooks of the Railroad House with their dirty work and getting something to eat in payment. But to return to the hoboes that pass in the night. I remember one I met in California. He was a Swede, but he had lived so long in the United States that one couldn't guess his nationality. He had to tell it on himself. In fact, he had come to the United States when no more than a baby. I ran into him first at the mountain town of Truckee. "Which way, Bo?" was our greeting, and "Bound east" was the answer each of us gave. Quite a bunch of "stiffs" tried to ride out the overland that night, and I lost the Swede in the shuffle. Also, I lost the overland. I arrived in Reno, Nevada, in a box-car that was promptly side-tracked. It was a Sunday morning, and after I threw my feet for breakfast, I wandered over to the Piute camp to watch the Indians gambling. And there stood the Swede, hugely interested. Of course we got together. He was the only acquaintance I had in that region, and I was his only acquaintance. We rushed together like a couple of dissatisfied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our feet for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail" the same freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her out alone, to be ditched myself in the desert twenty miles beyond. Of all desolate places, the one at which I was ditched was the limit. It was called a flag-station, and it consisted of a shanty dumped inconsequentially into the sand and sagebrush. A chill wind was blowing, night was coming on, and the solitary telegraph operator who lived in the shanty was afraid of me. I knew that neither grub nor bed could I get out of him. It was because of his manifest fear of me that I did not believe him when he told me that east-bound trains never stopped there. Besides, hadn't I been thrown off of an east-bound train right at that very spot not five minutes before? He assured me that it had stopped under orders, and that a year might go by before another was stopped under orders. He advised me that it was only a dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth and that I'd better hike. I elected to wait, however, and I had the pleasure of seeing two west-bound freights go by without stopping, and one east-bound freight. I wondered if the Swede was on the latter. It was up to me to hit the ties to Wadsworth, and hit them I did, much to the telegraph operator's relief, for I neglected to burn his shanty and murder him. Telegraph operators have much to be thankful for. At the end of half a dozen miles, I had to get off the ties and let the east-bound overland go by. She was going fast, but I caught sight of a dim form on the first "blind" that looked like the Swede. That was the last I saw of him for weary days. I hit the high places across those hundreds of miles of Nevada desert, riding the overlands at night, for speed, and in the day-time riding in box-cars and getting my sleep. It was early in the year, and it was cold in those upland pastures. Snow lay here and there on the level, all the mountains were shrouded in white, and at night the most miserable wind imaginable blew off from them. It was not a land in which to linger. And remember, gentle reader, the hobo goes through such a land, without shelter, without money, begging his way and sleeping at night without blankets. This last is something that can be realized only by experience. In the early evening I came down to the depot at Ogden. The overland of the Union Pacific was pulling east, and I was bent on making connections. Out in the tangle of tracks ahead of the engine I encountered a figure slouching through the gloom. It was the Swede. We shook hands like long-lost brothers, and discovered that our hands were gloved. "Where'd ye glahm 'em?" I asked. "Out of an engine-cab," he answered; "and where did you?" "They belonged to a fireman," said I; "he was careless." We caught the blind as the overland pulled out, and mighty cold we found it. The way led up a narrow gorge between snow-covered mountains, and we shivered and shook and exchanged confidences about how we had covered the ground between Reno and Ogden. I had closed my eyes for only an hour or so the previous night, and the blind was not comfortable enough to suit me for a snooze. At a stop, I went forward to the engine. We had on a "double-header" (two engines) to take us over the grade. The pilot of the head engine, because it "punched the wind," I knew would be too cold; so I selected the pilot of the second engine, which was sheltered by the first engine. I stepped on the cowcatcher and found the pilot occupied. In the darkness I felt out the form of a young boy. He was sound asleep. By squeezing, there was room for two on the pilot, and I made the boy budge over and crawled up beside him. It was a "good" night; the "shacks" (brakemen) didn't bother us, and in no time we were asleep. Once in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts aroused me, when I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the coughing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels. The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went no farther. A wreck ahead blocked the line. The dead engineer had been brought in, and his body attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been killed, but his body had not been brought in. I talked with the boy. He was thirteen years old. He had run away from his folks in some place in Oregon, and was heading east to his grandmother. He had a tale of cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true; besides, there was no need for him to lie to me, a nameless hobo on the track. And that boy was going some, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and me. It meant travelling the rest of that frigid night in order to gain no more than a dozen miles or so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was cleared away, and in the meantime get a good sleep. Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at midnight, in cold weather, and find a place to sleep. The Swede hadn't a penny. My total assets consisted of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the town boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the saloons kept open all night. There was our meat. Two glasses of beer would cost ten cents, there would be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep it out till morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walking briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill little wind blowing through us. Alas, I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer was five cents in one saloon only in the whole burg, and we didn't strike that saloon. But the one we entered was all right. A blessed stove was roaring white-hot; there were cosey, cane-bottomed arm-chairs, and a none-too-pleasant-looking barkeeper who glared suspiciously at us as we came in. A man cannot spend continuous days and nights in his clothes, beating trains, fighting soot and cinders, and sleeping anywhere, and maintain a good "front." Our fronts were decidedly against us; but what did we care? I had the price in my jeans. "Two beers," said I nonchalantly to the barkeeper, and while he drew them, the Swede and I leaned against the bar and yearned secretly for the arm-chairs by the stove. The barkeeper set the two foaming glasses before us, and with pride I deposited the ten cents. Now I was dead game. As soon as I learned my error in the price I'd have dug up another ten cents. Never mind if it did leave me only a nickel to my name, a stranger in a strange land. I'd have paid it all right. But that barkeeper never gave me a chance. As soon as his eyes spotted the dime I had laid down, he seized the two glasses, one in each hand, and dumped the beer into the sink behind the bar. At the same time, glaring at us malevolently, he said:-- "You've got scabs on your nose. You've got scabs on your nose. You've got scabs on your nose. See!" I hadn't either, and neither had the Swede. Our noses were all right. The direct bearing of his words was beyond our comprehension, but the indirect bearing was clear as print: he didn't like our looks, and beer was evidently ten cents a glass. I dug down and laid another dime on the bar, remarking carelessly, "Oh, I thought this was a five-cent joint." "Your money's no good here," he answered, shoving the two dimes across the bar to me. Sadly I dropped them back into my pocket, sadly we yearned toward the blessed stove and the arm-chairs, and sadly we went out the door into the frosty night. But as we went out the door, the barkeeper, still glaring, called after us, "You've got scabs on your nose, see!" I have seen much of the world since then, journeyed among strange lands and peoples, opened many books, sat in many lecture-halls; but to this day, though I have pondered long and deep, I have been unable to divine the meaning in the cryptic utterance of that barkeeper in Evanston, Wyoming. Our noses _were_ all right. We slept that night over the boilers in an electric-lighting plant. How we discovered that "kipping" place I can't remember. We must have just headed for it, instinctively, as horses head for water or carrier-pigeons head for the home-cote. But it was a night not pleasant to remember. A dozen hoboes were ahead of us on top the boilers, and it was too hot for all of us. To complete our misery, the engineer would not let us stand around down below. He gave us our choice of the boilers or the outside snow. "You said you wanted to sleep, and so, damn you, sleep," said he to me, when, frantic and beaten out by the heat, I came down into the fire-room. "Water," I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes, "water." He pointed out of doors and assured me that down there somewhere in the blackness I'd find the river. I started for the river, got lost in the dark, fell into two or three drifts, gave it up, and returned half-frozen to the top of the boilers. When I had thawed out, I was thirstier than ever. Around me the hoboes were moaning, groaning, sobbing, sighing, gasping, panting, rolling and tossing and floundering heavily in their torment. We were so many lost souls toasting on a griddle in hell, and the engineer, Satan Incarnate, gave us the sole alternative of freezing in the outer cold. The Swede sat up and anathematized passionately the wanderlust in man that sent him tramping and suffering hardships such as that. "When I get back to Chicago," he perorated, "I'm going to get a job and stick to it till hell freezes over. Then I'll go tramping again." And, such is the irony of fate, next day, when the wreck ahead was cleared, the Swede and I pulled out of Evanston in the ice-boxes of an "orange special," a fast freight laden with fruit from sunny California. Of course, the ice-boxes were empty on account of the cold weather, but that didn't make them any warmer for us. We entered them through hatchways in the top of the car; the boxes were constructed of galvanized iron, and in that biting weather were not pleasant to the touch. We lay there, shivered and shook, and with chattering teeth held a council wherein we decided that we'd stay by the ice-boxes day and night till we got out of the inhospitable plateau region and down into the Mississippi Valley. But we must eat, and we decided that at the next division we would throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon, but too early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering" back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung off the side-ladders as the freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had bad luck at first; but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked into my shirt, I chased for the train. It was pulling out and going fast. The particular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet had already gone by, and half a dozen cars down the train from it I swung on to the side-ladders, went up on top hurriedly, and dropped down into an ice-box. But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few miles farther on, Rock Springs, the shack stuck his head into my box and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right, and the orange special and the Swede rolled on without me. Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was coming on. After dark I hunted around in the railroad yards until I found an empty refrigerator car. In I climbed--not into the ice-boxes, but into the car itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges, covered with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight. The walls were thick. There was no way for the outside cold to get in. But the inside was just as cold as the outside. How to raise the temperature was the problem. But trust a "profesh" for that. Out of my pockets I dug up three or four newspapers. These I burned, one at a time, on the floor of the car. The smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beautiful night. I didn't wake up once. In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing my feet for breakfast, I missed an east-bound freight. Later in the day I nailed two other freights and was ditched from both of them. All afternoon no east-bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker than ever, but at twilight I rode out on the first blind of the overland. As I swung aboard the blind from one side, somebody swung aboard from the other. It was the boy who had run away from Oregon. Now the first blind of a fast train in a driving snow-storm is no summer picnic. The wind goes right through one, strikes the front of the car, and comes back again. At the first stop, darkness having come on, I went forward and interviewed the fireman. I offered to "shove" coal to the end of his run, which was Rawlins, and my offer was accepted. My work was out on the tender, in the snow, breaking the lumps of coal with a sledge and shovelling it forward to him in the cab. But as I did not have to work all the time, I could come into the cab and warm up now and again. "Say," I said to the fireman, at my first breathing spell, "there's a little kid back there on the first blind. He's pretty cold." The cabs on the Union Pacific engines are quite spacious, and we fitted the kid into a warm nook in front of the high seat of the fireman, where the kid promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Rawlins at midnight. The snow was thicker than ever. Here the engine was to go into the round-house, being replaced by a fresh engine. As the train came to a stop, I dropped off the engine steps plump into the arms of a large man in a large overcoat. He began asking me questions, and I promptly demanded who he was. Just as promptly he informed me that he was the sheriff. I drew in my horns and listened and answered. He began describing the kid who was still asleep in the cab. I did some quick thinking. Evidently the family was on the trail of the kid, and the sheriff had received telegraphed instructions from Oregon. Yes, I had seen the kid. I had met him first in Ogden. The date tallied with the sheriff's information. But the kid was still behind somewhere, I explained, for he had been ditched from that very overland that night when it pulled out of Rock Springs. And all the time I was praying that the kid wouldn't wake up, come down out of the cab, and put the "kibosh" on me. The sheriff left me in order to interview the shacks, but before he left he said:-- "Bo, this town is no place for you. Understand? You ride this train out, and make no mistake about it. If I catch you after it's gone ..." I assured him that it was not through desire that I was in his town; that the only reason I was there was that the train had stopped there; and that he wouldn't see me for smoke the way I'd get out of his darn town. While he went to interview the shacks, I jumped back into the cab. The kid was awake and rubbing his eyes. I told him the news and advised him to ride the engine into the round-house. To cut the story short, the kid made the same overland out, riding the pilot, with instructions to make an appeal to the fireman at the first stop for permission to ride in the engine. As for myself, I got ditched. The new fireman was young and not yet lax enough to break the rules of the Company against having tramps in the engine; so he turned down my offer to shove coal. I hope the kid succeeded with him, for all night on the pilot in that blizzard would have meant death. Strange to say, I do not at this late day remember a detail of how I was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I looked around and sighed. It was the sheriff. Without a word he led me out into the snow. "There's an orange special down there in the yards," said he. "It's a damn cold night," said I. "It pulls out in ten minutes," said he. That was all. There was no discussion. And when that orange special pulled out, I was in the ice-boxes. I thought my feet would freeze before morning, and the last twenty miles into Laramie I stood upright in the hatchway and danced up and down. The snow was too thick for the shacks to see me, and I didn't care if they did. My quarter of a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at Laramie, and immediately afterward I was on board the blind baggage of an overland that was climbing to the pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One does not ride blind baggages in the daytime; but in this blizzard at the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted if the shacks would have the heart to put me off. And they didn't. They made a practice of coming forward at every stop to see if I was frozen yet. At Ames' Monument, at the summit of the Rockies,--I forget the altitude,--the shack came forward for the last time. "Say, Bo," he said, "you see that freight side-tracked over there to let us go by?" I saw. It was on the next track, six feet away. A few feet more in that storm and I could not have seen it. "Well, the 'after-push' of Kelly's Army is in one of them cars. They've got two feet of straw under them, and there's so many of them that they keep the car warm." His advice was good, and I followed it, prepared, however, if it was a "con game" the shack had given me, to take the blind as the overland pulled out. But it was straight goods. I found the car--a big refrigerator car with the leeward door wide open for ventilation. Up I climbed and in. I stepped on a man's leg, next on some other man's arm. The light was dim, and all I could make out was arms and legs and bodies inextricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over, and under, and around one another. Eighty-four husky hoboes take up a lot of room when they are stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful. Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea, and imparted an involuntary forward movement to me. I could not find any straw to step upon, so I stepped upon more men. The resentment increased, so did my forward movement. I lost my footing and sat down with sharp abruptness. Unfortunately, it was on a man's head. The next moment he had risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying through the air. What goes up must come down, and I came down on another man's head. What happened after that is very vague in my memory. It was like going through a threshing-machine. I was bandied about from one end of the car to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed me out till what little was left of me, by some miracle, found a bit of straw to rest upon. I was initiated, and into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that day we rode through the blizzard, and to while the time away it was decided that each man was to tell a story. It was stipulated that each story must be a good one, and, furthermore, that it must be a story no one had ever heard before. The penalty for failure was the threshing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right here that never in my life have I sat at so marvellous a story-telling debauch. Here were eighty-four men from all the world--I made eighty-five; and each man told a masterpiece. It had to be, for it was either masterpiece or threshing-machine. Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The blizzard was at its height, and though the last meal of all of us had been breakfast, no man cared to throw his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through the storm, and next day found us down on the sweet plains of Nebraska and still rolling. We were out of the storm and the mountains. The blessed sun was shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight would arrive about noon at a town, if I remember right, that was called Grand Island. We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the authorities of that town. The text of the message was that eighty-five healthy, hungry hoboes would arrive about noon and that it would be a good idea to have dinner ready for them. The authorities of Grand Island had two courses open to them. They could feed us, or they could throw us in jail. In the latter event they'd have to feed us anyway, and they decided wisely that one meal would be the cheaper way. When the freight rolled into Grand Island at noon, we were sitting on the tops of the cars and dangling our legs in the sunshine. All the police in the burg were on the reception committee. They marched us in squads to the various hotels and restaurants, where dinners were spread for us. We had been thirty-six hours without food, and we didn't have to be taught what to do. After that we were marched back to the railroad station. The police had thoughtfully compelled the freight to wait for us. She pulled out slowly, and the eighty-five of us, strung out along the track, swarmed up the side-ladders. We "captured" the train. We had no supper that evening--at least the "push" didn't, but I did. Just at supper time, as the freight was pulling out of a small town, a man climbed into the car where I was playing pedro with three other stiffs. The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his hand he carried a battered quart-measure from which arose steam. I smelled "Java." I turned my cards over to one of the stiffs who was looking on, and excused myself. Then, in the other end of the car, pursued by envious glances, I sat down with the man who had climbed aboard and shared his "Java" and the hand-outs that had bulged his shirt. It was the Swede. At about ten o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Omaha. "Let's shake the push," said the Swede to me. "Sure," said I. As the freight pulled into Omaha, we made ready to do so. But the people of Omaha were also ready. The Swede and I hung upon the side-ladders, ready to drop off. But the freight did not stop. Furthermore, long rows of policemen, their brass buttons and stars glittering in the electric lights, were lined up on each side of the track. The Swede and I knew what would happen to us if we ever dropped off into their arms. We stuck by the side-ladders, and the train rolled on across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs. "General" Kelly, with an army of two thousand hoboes, lay in camp at Chautauqua Park, several miles away. The after-push we were with was General Kelly's rear-guard, and, detraining at Council Bluffs, it started to march to camp. The night had turned cold, and heavy wind-squalls, accompanied by rain, were chilling and wetting us. Many police were guarding us and herding us to the camp. The Swede and I watched our chance and made a successful get-away. The rain began coming down in torrents, and in the darkness, unable to see our hands in front of our faces, like a pair of blind men we fumbled about for shelter. Our instinct served us, for in no time we stumbled upon a saloon--not a saloon that was open and doing business, not merely a saloon that was closed for the night, and not even a saloon with a permanent address, but a saloon propped up on big timbers, with rollers underneath, that was being moved from somewhere to somewhere. The doors were locked. A squall of wind and rain drove down upon us. We did not hesitate. Smash went the door, and in we went. I have made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make a tougher camp, pass a more miserable night, than that night I passed with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first place, the building, perched up as it was in the air, had exposed a multitude of openings in the floor through which the wind whistled. In the second place, the bar was empty; there was no bottled fire-water with which we could warm ourselves and forget our misery. We had no blankets, and in our wet clothes, wet to the skin, we tried to sleep. I rolled under the bar, and the Swede rolled under the table. The holes and crevices in the floor made it impossible, and at the end of half an hour I crawled up on top the bar. A little later the Swede crawled up on top his table. And there we shivered and prayed for daylight. I know, for one, that I shivered until I could shiver no more, till the shivering muscles exhausted themselves and merely ached horribly. The Swede moaned and groaned, and every little while, through chattering teeth, he muttered, "Never again; never again." He muttered this phrase repeatedly, ceaselessly, a thousand times; and when he dozed, he went on muttering it in his sleep. At the first gray of dawn we left our house of pain, and outside, found ourselves in a mist, dense and chill. We stumbled on till we came to the railroad track. I was going back to Omaha to throw my feet for breakfast; my companion was going on to Chicago. The moment for parting had come. Our palsied hands went out to each other. We were both shivering. When we tried to speak, our teeth chattered us back into silence. We stood alone, shut off from the world; all that we could see was a short length of railroad track, both ends of which were lost in the driving mist. We stared dumbly at each other, our clasped hands shaking sympathetically. The Swede's face was blue with the cold, and I know mine must have been. "Never again what?" I managed to articulate. Speech strove for utterance in the Swede's throat; then faint and distant, in a thin whisper from the very bottom of his frozen soul, came the words:-- "Never again a hobo." He paused, and, as he went on again, his voice gathered strength and huskiness as it affirmed his will. "Never again a hobo. I'm going to get a job. You'd better do the same. Nights like this make rheumatism." He wrung my hand. "Good-by, Bo," said he. "Good-by, Bo," said I. The next we were swallowed up from each other by the mist. It was our final passing. But here's to you, Mr. Swede, wherever you are. I hope you got that job. ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp--well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; because--well, just because it was easier to than not to. It happened in my own town, in Oakland, when I was sixteen. At that time I had attained a dizzy reputation in my chosen circle of adventurers, by whom I was known as the Prince of the Oyster Pirates. It is true, those immediately outside my circle, such as honest bay-sailors, longshoremen, yachtsmen, and the legal owners of the oysters, called me "tough," "hoodlum," "smoudge," "thief," "robber," and various other not nice things--all of which was complimentary and but served to increase the dizziness of the high place in which I sat. At that time I had not read "Paradise Lost," and later, when I read Milton's "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," I was fully convinced that great minds run in the same channels. It was at this time that the fortuitous concatenation of events sent me upon my first adventure on The Road. It happened that there was nothing doing in oysters just then; that at Benicia, forty miles away, I had some blankets I wanted to get; and that at Port Costa, several miles from Benicia, a stolen boat lay at anchor in charge of the constable. Now this boat was owned by a friend of mine, by name Dinny McCrea. It had been stolen and left at Port Costa by Whiskey Bob, another friend of mine. (Poor Whiskey Bob! Only last winter his body was picked up on the beach shot full of holes by nobody knows whom.) I had come down from "up river" some time before, and reported to Dinny McCrea the whereabouts of his boat; and Dinny McCrea had promptly offered ten dollars to me if I should bring it down to Oakland to him. Time was heavy on my hands. I sat on the dock and talked it over with Nickey the Greek, another idle oyster pirate. "Let's go," said I, and Nickey was willing. He was "broke." I possessed fifty cents and a small skiff. The former I invested and loaded into the latter in the form of crackers, canned corned beef, and a ten-cent bottle of French mustard. (We were keen on French mustard in those days.) Then, late in the afternoon, we hoisted our small spritsail and started. We sailed all night, and next morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a fair wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez Straits to Port Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not twenty-five feet from the wharf. We ran alongside and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey forward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the gaskets. A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us. It was the constable. It suddenly came to me that I had neglected to get a written authorization from Dinny McCrea to take possession of his boat. Also, I knew that constable wanted to charge at least twenty-five dollars in fees for capturing the boat from Whiskey Bob and subsequently taking care of it. And my last fifty cents had been blown in for corned beef and French mustard, and the reward was only ten dollars anyway. I shot a glance forward to Nickey. He had the anchor up-and-down and was straining at it. "Break her out," I whispered to him, and turned and shouted back to the constable. The result was that he and I were talking at the same time, our spoken thoughts colliding in mid-air and making gibberish. The constable grew more imperative, and perforce I had to listen. Nickey was heaving on the anchor till I thought he'd burst a blood-vessel. When the constable got done with his threats and warnings, I asked him who he was. The time he lost in telling me enabled Nickey to break out the anchor. I was doing some quick calculating. At the feet of the constable a ladder ran down the dock to the water, and to the ladder was moored a skiff. The oars were in it. But it was padlocked. I gambled everything on that padlock. I felt the breeze on my cheek, saw the surge of the tide, looked at the remaining gaskets that confined the sail, ran my eyes up the halyards to the blocks and knew that all was clear, and then threw off all dissimulation. "In with her!" I shouted to Nickey, and sprang to the gaskets, casting them loose and thanking my stars that Whiskey Bob had tied them in square-knots instead of "grannies." The constable had slid down the ladder and was fumbling with a key at the padlock. The anchor came aboard and the last gasket was loosed at the same instant that the constable freed the skiff and jumped to the oars. "Peak-halyards!" I commanded my crew, at the same time swinging on to the throat-halyards. Up came the sail on the run. I belayed and ran aft to the tiller. "Stretch her!" I shouted to Nickey at the peak. The constable was just reaching for our stern. A puff of wind caught us, and we shot away. It was great. If I'd had a black flag, I know I'd have run it up in triumph. The constable stood up in the skiff, and paled the glory of the day with the vividness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun. You see, that was another gamble we had taken. Anyway, we weren't stealing the boat. It wasn't the constable's. We were merely stealing his fees, which was his particular form of graft. And we weren't stealing the fees for ourselves, either; we were stealing them for my friend, Dinny McCrea. Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few minutes later my blankets were aboard. I shifted the boat down to the far end of Steamboat Wharf, from which point of vantage we could see anybody coming after us. There was no telling. Maybe the Port Costa constable would telephone to the Benicia constable. Nickey and I held a council of war. We lay on deck in the warm sun, the fresh breeze on our cheeks, the flood-tide rippling and swirling past. It was impossible to start back to Oakland till afternoon, when the ebb would begin to run. But we figured that the constable would have an eye out on the Carquinez Straits when the ebb started, and that nothing remained for us but to wait for the following ebb, at two o'clock next morning, when we could slip by Cerberus in the darkness. So we lay on deck, smoked cigarettes, and were glad that we were alive. I spat over the side and gauged the speed of the current. "With this wind, we could run this flood clear to Rio Vista," I said. "And it's fruit-time on the river," said Nickey. "And low water on the river," said I. "It's the best time of the year to make Sacramento." We sat up and looked at each other. The glorious west wind was pouring over us like wine. We both spat over the side and gauged the current. Now I contend that it was all the fault of that flood-tide and fair wind. They appealed to our sailor instinct. If it had not been for them, the whole chain of events that was to put me upon The Road would have broken down. We said no word, but cast off our moorings and hoisted sail. Our adventures up the Sacramento River are no part of this narrative. We subsequently made the city of Sacramento and tied up at a wharf. The water was fine, and we spent most of our time in swimming. On the sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys likewise in swimming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked. They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding with. It was a new vernacular. They were road-kids, and with every word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold of me more imperiously. "When I was down in Alabama," one kid would begin; or, another, "Coming up on the C. & A. from K.C."; whereat, a third kid, "On the C. & A. there ain't no steps to the 'blinds.'" And I would lie silently in the sand and listen. "It was at a little town in Ohio on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern," a kid would start; and another, "Ever ride the Cannonball on the Wabash?"; and yet another, "Nope, but I've been on the White Mail out of Chicago." "Talk about railroadin'--wait till you hit the Pennsylvania, four tracks, no water tanks, take water on the fly, that's goin' some." "The Northern Pacific's a bad road now." "Salinas is on the 'hog,' the 'bulls' is 'horstile.'" "I got 'pinched' at El Paso, along with Moke Kid." "Talkin' of 'poke-outs,' wait till you hit the French country out of Montreal--not a word of English--you say, 'Mongee, Madame, mongee, no spika da French,' an' rub your stomach an' look hungry, an' she gives you a slice of sow-belly an' a chunk of dry 'punk.'" And I continued to lie in the sand and listen. These wanderers made my oyster-piracy look like thirty cents. A new world was calling to me in every word that was spoken--a world of rods and gunnels, blind baggages and "side-door Pullmans," "bulls" and "shacks," "floppings" and "chewin's," "pinches" and "get-aways," "strong arms" and "bindle-stiffs," "punks" and "profesh." And it all spelled Adventure. Very well; I would tackle this new world. I "lined" myself up alongside those road-kids. I was just as strong as any of them, just as quick, just as nervy, and my brain was just as good. After the swim, as evening came on, they dressed and went up town. I went along. The kids began "battering" the "main-stem" for "light pieces," or, in other words, begging for money on the main street. I had never begged in my life, and this was the hardest thing for me to stomach when I first went on The Road. I had absurd notions about begging. My philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to steal than to beg; and that robbery was finer still because the risk and the penalty were proportionately greater. As an oyster pirate I had already earned convictions at the hands of justice, which, if I had tried to serve them, would have required a thousand years in state's prison. To rob was manly; to beg was sordid and despicable. But I developed in the days to come all right, all right, till I came to look upon begging as a joyous prank, a game of wits, a nerve-exerciser. That first night, however, I couldn't rise to it; and the result was that when the kids were ready to go to a restaurant and eat, I wasn't. I was broke. Meeny Kid, I think it was, gave me the price, and we all ate together. But while I ate, I meditated. The receiver, it was said, was as bad as the thief; Meeny Kid had done the begging, and I was profiting by it. I decided that the receiver was a whole lot worse than the thief, and that it shouldn't happen again. And it didn't. I turned out next day and threw my feet as well as the next one. Nickey the Greek's ambition didn't run to The Road. He was not a success at throwing his feet, and he stowed away one night on a barge and went down river to San Francisco. I met him, only a week ago, at a pugilistic carnival. He has progressed. He sat in a place of honor at the ring-side. He is now a manager of prize-fighters and proud of it. In fact, in a small way, in local sportdom, he is quite a shining light. "No kid is a road-kid until he has gone over 'the hill'"--such was the law of The Road I heard expounded in Sacramento. All right, I'd go over the hill and matriculate. "The hill," by the way, was the Sierra Nevadas. The whole gang was going over the hill on a jaunt, and of course I'd go along. It was French Kid's first adventure on The Road. He had just run away from his people in San Francisco. It was up to him and me to deliver the goods. In passing, I may remark that my old title of "Prince" had vanished. I had received my "monica." I was now "Sailor Kid," later to be known as "'Frisco Kid," when I had put the Rockies between me and my native state. At 10.20 P.M. the Central Pacific overland pulled out of the depot at Sacramento for the East--that particular item of time-table is indelibly engraved on my memory. There were about a dozen in our gang, and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the train ready to take her out. All the local road-kids that we knew came down to see us off--also, to "ditch" us if they could. That was their idea of a joke, and there were only about forty of them to carry it out. Their ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named Bob. Sacramento was his home town, but he'd hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole country. He took French Kid and me aside and gave us advice something like this: "We're goin' to try an' ditch your bunch, see? Youse two are weak. The rest of the push can take care of itself. So, as soon as youse two nail a blind, deck her. An' stay on the decks till youse pass Roseville Junction, at which burg the constables are horstile, sloughin' in everybody on sight." The engine whistled and the overland pulled out. There were three blinds on her--room for all of us. The dozen of us who were trying to make her out would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and shameless publicity and advertisement. Following Bob's advice, I immediately "decked her," that is, climbed up on top of the roof of one of the mail-cars. There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra beats, and listened to the fun. The whole train crew was forward, and the ditching went on fast and furious. After the train had run half a mile, it stopped, and the crew came forward again and ditched the survivors. I, alone, had made the train out. Back at the depot, about him two or three of the push that had witnessed the accident, lay French Kid with both legs off. French Kid had slipped or stumbled--that was all, and the wheels had done the rest. Such was my initiation to The Road. It was two years afterward when I next saw French Kid and examined his "stumps." This was an act of courtesy. "Cripples" always like to have their stumps examined. One of the entertaining sights on The Road is to witness the meeting of two cripples. Their common disability is a fruitful source of conversation; and they tell how it happened, describe what they know of the amputation, pass critical judgment on their own and each other's surgeons, and wind up by withdrawing to one side, taking off bandages and wrappings, and comparing stumps. But it was not until several days later, over in Nevada, when the push caught up with me, that I learned of French Kid's accident. The push itself arrived in bad condition. It had gone through a train-wreck in the snow-sheds; Happy Joe was on crutches with two mashed legs, and the rest were nursing skins and bruises. In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car, trying to remember whether Roseville Junction, against which burg Bob had warned me, was the first stop or the second stop. To make sure, I delayed descending to the platform of the blind until after the second stop. And then I didn't descend. I was new to the game, and I felt safer where I was. But I never told the push that I held down the decks the whole night, clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds and tunnels, and down to Truckee on the other side, where I arrived at seven in the morning. Such a thing was disgraceful, and I'd have been a common laughing-stock. This is the first time I have confessed the truth about that first ride over the hill. As for the push, it decided that I was all right, and when I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I was a full-fledged road-kid. Yet I had much to learn. Bob was my mentor, and he was all right. I remember one evening (it was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were knocking about and having a good time) when I lost my hat in a fight. There was I bare-headed in the street, and it was Bob to the rescue. He took me to one side from the push and told me what to do. I was a bit timid of his advice. I had just come out of jail, where I had been three days, and I knew that if the police "pinched" me again, I'd get good and "soaked." On the other hand, I couldn't show the white feather. I'd been over the hill, I was running full-fledged with the push, and it was up to me to deliver the goods. So I accepted Bob's advice, and he came along with me to see that I did it up brown. We took our position on K Street, on the corner, I think, of Fifth. It was early in the evening and the street was crowded. Bob studied the head-gear of every Chinaman that passed. I used to wonder how the road-kids all managed to wear "five-dollar Stetson stiff-rims," and now I knew. They got them, the way I was going to get mine, from the Chinese. I was nervous--there were so many people about; but Bob was cool as an iceberg. Several times, when I started forward toward a Chinaman, all nerved and keyed up, Bob dragged me back. He wanted me to get a good hat, and one that fitted. Now a hat came by that was the right size but not new; and, after a dozen impossible hats, along would come one that was new but not the right size. And when one did come by that was new and the right size, the rim was too large or not large enough. My, Bob was finicky. I was so wrought up that I'd have snatched any kind of a head-covering. At last came the hat, the one hat in Sacramento for me. I knew it was a winner as soon as I looked at it. I glanced at Bob. He sent a sweeping look-about for police, then nodded his head. I lifted the hat from the Chinaman's head and pulled it down on my own. It was a perfect fit. Then I started. I heard Bob crying out, and I caught a glimpse of him blocking the irate Mongolian and tripping him up. I ran on. I turned up the next corner, and around the next. This street was not so crowded as K, and I walked along in quietude, catching my breath and congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away. And then, suddenly, around the corner at my back, came the bare-headed Chinaman. With him were a couple more Chinamen, and at their heels were half a dozen men and boys. I sprinted to the next corner, crossed the street, and rounded the following corner. I decided that I had surely played him out, and I dropped into a walk again. But around the corner at my heels came that persistent Mongolian. It was the old story of the hare and the tortoise. He could not run so fast as I, but he stayed with it, plodding along at a shambling and deceptive trot, and wasting much good breath in noisy imprecations. He called all Sacramento to witness the dishonor that had been done him, and a goodly portion of Sacramento heard and flocked at his heels. And I ran on like the hare, and ever that persistent Mongolian, with the increasing rabble, overhauled me. But finally, when a policeman had joined his following, I let out all my links. I twisted and turned, and I swear I ran at least twenty blocks on the straight away. And I never saw that Chinaman again. The hat was a dandy, a brand-new Stetson, just out of the shop, and it was the envy of the whole push. Furthermore, it was the symbol that I had delivered the goods. I wore it for over a year. Road-kids are nice little chaps--when you get them alone and they are telling you "how it happened"; but take my word for it, watch out for them when they run in pack. Then they are wolves, and like wolves they are capable of dragging down the strongest man. At such times they are not cowardly. They will fling themselves upon a man and hold on with every ounce of strength in their wiry bodies, till he is thrown and helpless. More than once have I seen them do it, and I know whereof I speak. Their motive is usually robbery. And watch out for the "strong arm." Every kid in the push I travelled with was expert at it. Even French Kid mastered it before he lost his legs. I have strong upon me now a vision of what I once saw in "The Willows." The Willows was a clump of trees in a waste piece of land near the railway depot and not more than five minutes walk from the heart of Sacramento. It is night-time and the scene is illumined by the thin light of stars. I see a husky laborer in the midst of a pack of road-kids. He is infuriated and cursing them, not a bit afraid, confident of his own strength. He weighs about one hundred and eighty pounds, and his muscles are hard; but he doesn't know what he is up against. The kids are snarling. It is not pretty. They make a rush from all sides, and he lashes out and whirls. Barber Kid is standing beside me. As the man whirls, Barber Kid leaps forward and does the trick. Into the man's back goes his knee; around the man's neck, from behind, passes his right hand, the bone of the wrist pressing against the jugular vein. Barber Kid throws his whole weight backward. It is a powerful leverage. Besides, the man's wind has been shut off. It is the strong arm. The man resists, but he is already practically helpless. The road-kids are upon him from every side, clinging to arms and legs and body, and like a wolf at the throat of a moose Barber Kid hangs on and drags backward. Over the man goes, and down under the heap. Barber Kid changes the position of his own body, but never lets go. While some of the kids are "going through" the victim, others are holding his legs so that he cannot kick and thresh about. They improve the opportunity by taking off the man's shoes. As for him, he has given in. He is beaten. Also, what of the strong arm at his throat, he is short of wind. He is making ugly choking noises, and the kids hurry. They really don't want to kill him. All is done. At a word all holds are released at once, and the kids scatter, one of them lugging the shoes--he knows where he can get half a dollar for them. The man sits up and looks about him, dazed and helpless. Even if he wanted to, barefooted pursuit in the darkness would be hopeless. I linger a moment and watch him. He is feeling at his throat, making dry, hawking noises, and jerking his head in a quaint way as though to assure himself that the neck is not dislocated. Then I slip away to join the push, and see that man no more--though I shall always see him, sitting there in the starlight, somewhat dazed, a bit frightened, greatly dishevelled, and making quaint jerking movements of head and neck. Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids. Robbing a drunken man they call "rolling a stiff"; and wherever they are, they are on the constant lookout for drunks. The drunk is their particular meat, as the fly is the particular meat of the spider. The rolling of a stiff is ofttimes an amusing sight, especially when the stiff is helpless and when interference is unlikely. At the first swoop the stiff's money and jewellery go. Then the kids sit around their victim in a sort of pow-wow. A kid generates a fancy for the stiff's necktie. Off it comes. Another kid is after underclothes. Off they come, and a knife quickly abbreviates arms and legs. Friendly hoboes may be called in to take the coat and trousers, which are too large for the kids. And in the end they depart, leaving beside the stiff the heap of their discarded rags. Another vision comes to me. It is a dark night. My push is coming along the sidewalk in the suburbs. Ahead of us, under an electric light, a man crosses the street diagonally. There is something tentative and desultory in his walk. The kids scent the game on the instant. The man is drunk. He blunders across the opposite sidewalk and is lost in the darkness as he takes a short-cut through a vacant lot. No hunting cry is raised, but the pack flings itself forward in quick pursuit. In the middle of the vacant lot it comes upon him. But what is this?--snarling and strange forms, small and dim and menacing, are between the pack and its prey. It is another pack of road-kids, and in the hostile pause we learn that it is their meat, that they have been trailing it a dozen blocks and more and that we are butting in. But it is the world primeval. These wolves are baby wolves. (As a matter of fact, I don't think one of them was over twelve or thirteen years of age. I met some of them afterward, and learned that they had just arrived that day over the hill, and that they hailed from Denver and Salt Lake City.) Our pack flings forward. The baby wolves squeal and screech and fight like little demons. All about the drunken man rages the struggle for the possession of him. Down he goes in the thick of it, and the combat rages over his body after the fashion of the Greeks and Trojans over the body and armor of a fallen hero. Amid cries and tears and wailings the baby wolves are dispossessed, and my pack rolls the stiff. But always I remember the poor stiff and his befuddled amazement at the abrupt eruption of battle in the vacant lot. I see him now, dim in the darkness, titubating in stupid wonder, good-naturedly essaying the role of peacemaker in that multitudinous scrap the significance of which he did not understand, and the really hurt expression on his face when he, unoffending he, was clutched at by many hands and dragged down in the thick of the press. "Bindle-stiffs" are favorite prey of the road-kids. A bindle-stiff is a working tramp. He takes his name from the roll of blankets he carries, which is known as a "bindle." Because he does work, a bindle-stiff is expected usually to have some small change about him, and it is after that small change that the road-kids go. The best hunting-ground for bindle-stiffs is in the sheds, barns, lumber-yards, railroad-yards, etc., on the edges of a city, and the time for hunting is the night, when the bindle-stiff seeks these places to roll up in his blankets and sleep. "Gay-cats" also come to grief at the hands of the road-kid. In more familiar parlance, gay-cats are short-horns, _chechaquos_, new chums, or tenderfeet. A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-grown, or, at least, youth-grown. A boy on The Road, on the other hand, no matter how green he is, is never a gay-cat; he is a road-kid or a "punk," and if he travels with a "profesh," he is known possessively as a "prushun." I was never a prushun, for I did not take kindly to possession. I was first a road-kid and then a profesh. Because I started in young, I practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship. For a short period, during the time I was exchanging my 'Frisco Kid monica for that of Sailor Jack, I labored under the suspicion of being a gay-cat. But closer acquaintance on the part of those that suspected me quickly disabused their minds, and in a short time I acquired the unmistakable airs and ear-marks of the blowed-in-the-glass profesh. And be it known, here and now, that the profesh are the aristocracy of The Road. They are the lords and masters, the aggressive men, the primordial noblemen, the _blond beasts_ so beloved of Nietzsche. When I came back over the hill from Nevada, I found that some river pirate had stolen Dinny McCrea's boat. (A funny thing at this day is that I cannot remember what became of the skiff in which Nickey the Greek and I sailed from Oakland to Port Costa. I know that the constable didn't get it, and I know that it didn't go with us up the Sacramento River, and that is all I do know.) With the loss of Dinny McCrea's boat, I was pledged to The Road; and when I grew tired of Sacramento, I said good-by to the push (which, in its friendly way, tried to ditch me from a freight as I left town) and started on a _passear_ down the valley of the San Joaquin. The Road had gripped me and would not let me go; and later, when I had voyaged to sea and done one thing and another, I returned to The Road to make longer flights, to be a "comet" and a profesh, and to plump into the bath of sociology that wet me to the skin. TWO THOUSAND STIFFS A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks with a "push" that numbered two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's Army." Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out to capture a train. It was quite an imposing sight. General Kelly sat a magnificent black charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and drum corps, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand stiffs countermarched before him and hit the wagon-road to the little burg of Weston, seven miles away. Being the latest recruit, I was in the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and, furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. The army went into camp at Weston beside the railroad track--beside the tracks, rather, for two roads went through: the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and the Rock Island. Our intention was to take the first train out, but the railroad officials "coppered" our play--and won. There was no first train. They tied up the two lines and stopped running trains. In the meantime, while we lay by the dead tracks, the good people of Omaha and Council Bluffs were bestirring themselves. Preparations were making to form a mob, capture a train in Council Bluffs, run it down to us, and make us a present of it. The railroad officials coppered that play, too. They didn't wait for the mob. Early in the morning of the second day, an engine, with a single private car attached, arrived at the station and side-tracked. At this sign that life had renewed in the dead roads, the whole army lined up beside the track. But never did life renew so monstrously on a dead railroad as it did on those two roads. From the west came the whistle of a locomotive. It was coming in our direction, bound east. We were bound east. A stir of preparation ran down our ranks. The whistle tooted fast and furiously, and the train thundered at top speed. The hobo didn't live that could have boarded it. Another locomotive whistled, and another train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines, cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for keeps. That day went by, and the next, and nothing moved, and in the meantime, pelted by sleet, and rain, and hail, the two thousand hoboes lay beside the track. But that night the good people of Council Bluffs went the railroad officials one better. A mob formed in Council Bluffs, crossed the river to Omaha, and there joined with another mob in a raid on the Union Pacific yards. First they captured an engine, next they knocked a train together, and then the united mobs piled aboard, crossed the Missouri, and ran down the Rock Island right of way to turn the train over to us. The railway officials tried to copper this play, but fell down, to the mortal terror of the section boss and one member of the section gang at Weston. This pair, under secret telegraphic orders, tried to wreck our train-load of sympathizers by tearing up the track. It happened that we were suspicious and had our patrols out. Caught red-handed at train-wrecking, and surrounded by twenty hundred infuriated hoboes, that section-gang boss and assistant prepared to meet death. I don't remember what saved them, unless it was the arrival of the train. It was our turn to fall down, and we did, hard. In their haste, the two mobs had neglected to make up a sufficiently long train. There wasn't room for two thousand hoboes to ride. So the mobs and the hoboes had a talkfest, fraternized, sang songs, and parted, the mobs going back on their captured train to Omaha, the hoboes pulling out next morning on a hundred-and-forty-mile march to Des Moines. It was not until Kelly's Army crossed the Missouri that it began to walk, and after that it never rode again. It cost the railroads slathers of money, but they were acting on principle, and they won. Underwood, Leola, Menden, Avoca, Walnut, Marno, Atlantic, Wyoto, Anita, Adair, Adam, Casey, Stuart, Dexter, Carlham, De Soto, Van Meter, Booneville, Commerce, Valley Junction--how the names of the towns come back to me as I con the map and trace our route through the fat Iowa country! And the hospitable Iowa farmer-folk! They turned out with their wagons and carried our baggage; gave us hot lunches at noon by the wayside; mayors of comfortable little towns made speeches of welcome and hastened us on our way; deputations of little girls and maidens came out to meet us, and the good citizens turned out by hundreds, locked arms, and marched with us down their main streets. It was circus day when we came to town, and every day was circus day, for there were many towns. In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every company had its campfire, and around each fire something was doing. The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the encampment the glee club would be singing--one of its star voices was the "Dentist," drawn from Company L, and we were mighty proud of him. Also, he pulled teeth for the whole army, and, since the extractions usually occurred at meal-time, our digestions were stimulated by variety of incident. The Dentist had no anaesthetics, but two or three of us were always on tap to volunteer to hold down the patient. In addition to the stunts of the companies and the glee club, church services were usually held, local preachers officiating, and always there was a great making of political speeches. All these things ran neck and neck; it was a full-blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine, and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays. Last year, while on a lecturing trip, I rode into Des Moines in a Pullman--I don't mean a "side-door Pullman," but the real thing. On the outskirts of the city I saw the old stove-works, and my heart leaped. It was there, at the stove-works, a dozen years before, that the Army lay down and swore a mighty oath that its feet were sore and that it would walk no more. We took possession of the stove-works and told Des Moines that we had come to stay--that we'd walked in, but we'd be blessed if we'd walk out. Des Moines was hospitable, but this was too much of a good thing. Do a little mental arithmetic, gentle reader. Two thousand hoboes, eating three square meals, make six thousand meals per day, forty-two thousand meals per week, or one hundred and sixty-eight thousand meals per shortest month in the calendar. That's going some. We had no money. It was up to Des Moines. Des Moines was desperate. We lay in camp, made political speeches, held sacred concerts, pulled teeth, played baseball and seven-up, and ate our six thousand meals per day, and Des Moines paid for it. Des Moines pleaded with the railroads, but they were obdurate; they had said we shouldn't ride, and that settled it. To permit us to ride would be to establish a precedent, and there weren't going to be any precedents. And still we went on eating. That was the terrifying factor in the situation. We were bound for Washington, and Des Moines would have had to float municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares, even at special rates, and if we remained much longer, she'd have to float bonds anyway to feed us. Then some local genius solved the problem. We wouldn't walk. Very good. We should ride. From Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi flowed the Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river was three hundred miles long. We could ride on it, said the local genius; and, once equipped with floating stock, we could ride on down the Mississippi to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a short portage over the mountains to Washington. Des Moines took up a subscription. Public-spirited citizens contributed several thousand dollars. Lumber, rope, nails, and cotton for calking were bought in large quantities, and on the banks of the Des Moines was inaugurated a tremendous era of shipbuilding. Now the Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly dignified by the appellation of "river." In our spacious western land it would be called a "creek." The oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn't make it, that there wasn't enough water to float us. Des Moines didn't care, so long as it got rid of us, and we were such well-fed optimists that we didn't care either. On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got under way and started on our colossal picnic. Des Moines had got off pretty easily, and she certainly owes a statue in bronze to the local genius who got her out of her difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats; we had eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-works; and we took twelve thousand additional meals along with us in our commissary--as a precaution against famine in the wilds; but then, think what it would have meant if we had remained at Des Moines eleven months instead of eleven days. Also, when we departed, we promised Des Moines we'd come back if the river failed to float us. It was all very well having twelve thousand meals in the commissary, and no doubt the commissary "ducks" enjoyed them; for the commissary promptly got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again. The company formation was hopelessly broken up during the river-trip. In any camp of men there will always be found a certain percentage of shirks, of helpless, of just ordinary, and of hustlers. There were ten men in my boat, and they were the cream of Company L. Every man was a hustler. For two reasons I was included in the ten. First, I was as good a hustler as ever "threw his feet," and next, I was "Sailor Jack." I understood boats and boating. The ten of us forgot the remaining forty men of Company L, and by the time we had missed one meal we promptly forgot the commissary. We were independent. We went down the river "on our own," hustling our "chewin's," beating every boat in the fleet, and, alas that I must say it, sometimes taking possession of the stores the farmer-folk had collected for the Army. For a good part of the three hundred miles we were from half a day to a day or so in advance of the Army. We had managed to get hold of several American flags. When we approached a small town, or when we saw a group of farmers gathered on the bank, we ran up our flags, called ourselves the "advance boat," and demanded to know what provisions had been collected for the Army. We represented the Army, of course, and the provisions were turned over to us. But there wasn't anything small about us. We never took more than we could get away with. But we did take the cream of everything. For instance, if some philanthropic farmer had donated several dollars' worth of tobacco, we took it. So, also, we took butter and sugar, coffee and canned goods; but when the stores consisted of sacks of beans and flour, or two or three slaughtered steers, we resolutely refrained and went our way, leaving orders to turn such provisions over to the commissary boats whose business was to follow behind us. My, but the ten of us did live on the fat of the land! For a long time General Kelly vainly tried to head us off. He sent two rowers, in a light, round-bottomed boat, to overtake us and put a stop to our piratical careers. They overtook us all right, but they were two and we were ten. They were empowered by General Kelly to make us prisoners, and they told us so. When we expressed disinclination to become prisoners, they hurried ahead to the next town to invoke the aid of the authorities. We went ashore immediately and cooked an early supper; and under the cloak of darkness we ran by the town and its authorities. I kept a diary on part of the trip, and as I read it over now I note one persistently recurring phrase, namely, "Living fine." We did live fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember rightly, "pale Vienna." While we were ahead, skimming the cream, and while the commissary was lost far behind, the main Army, coming along in the middle, starved. This was hard on the Army, I'll allow; but then, the ten of us were individualists. We had initiative and enterprise. We ardently believed that the grub was to the man who got there first, the pale Vienna to the strong. On one stretch the Army went forty-eight hours without grub; and then it arrived at a small village of some three hundred inhabitants, the name of which I do not remember, though I think it was Red Rock. This town, following the practice of all towns through which the Army passed, had appointed a committee of safety. Counting five to a family, Red Rock consisted of sixty households. Her committee of safety was scared stiff by the eruption of two thousand hungry hoboes who lined their boats two and three deep along the river bank. General Kelly was a fair man. He had no intention of working a hardship on the village. He did not expect sixty households to furnish two thousand meals. Besides, the Army had its treasure-chest. But the committee of safety lost its head. "No encouragement to the invader" was its programme, and when General Kelly wanted to buy food, the committee turned him down. It had nothing to sell; General Kelly's money was "no good" in their burg. And then General Kelly went into action. The bugles blew. The Army left the boats and on top of the bank formed in battle array. The committee was there to see. General Kelly's speech was brief. "Boys," he said, "when did you eat last?" "Day before yesterday," they shouted. "Are you hungry?" A mighty affirmation from two thousand throats shook the atmosphere. Then General Kelly turned to the committee of safety:-- "You see, gentlemen, the situation. My men have eaten nothing in forty-eight hours. If I turn them loose upon your town, I'll not be responsible for what happens. They are desperate. I offered to buy food for them, but you refused to sell. I now withdraw my offer. Instead, I shall demand. I give you five minutes to decide. Either kill me six steers and give me four thousand rations, or I turn the men loose. Five minutes, gentlemen." The terrified committee of safety looked at the two thousand hungry hoboes and collapsed. It didn't wait the five minutes. It wasn't going to take any chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting of the requisition began forthwith, and the Army dined. And still the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us. They did their work thoroughly, all right. The erstwhile hospitable farmers met us with the icy mit. Also, they summoned the constables when we tied up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two of the latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence between me and the river. I was carrying two buckets of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage the fence any; but we drank plebian coffee boiled with vulgar water, and it was up to me to throw my feet for another pair of trousers. I wonder, gentle reader, if you ever essayed hastily to climb a barbed-wire fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since that day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire, and I have gathered statistics on the subject. Unable to make an honest living so long as General Kelly kept his two horsemen ahead of us, we returned to the Army and raised a revolution. It was a small affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second Division. The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we were deserters, and traitors, and scalawags; and when he drew rations for Company L from the commissary, he wouldn't give us any. That captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't have refused us grub. Promptly we intrigued with the first lieutenant. He joined us with the ten men in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of Company M. The captain of Company L raised a roar. Down upon us came General Kelly, Colonel Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood firm, and our revolution was ratified. But we never bothered with the commissary. Our hustlers drew better rations from the farmers. Our new captain, however, doubted us. He never knew when he'd see the ten of us again, once we got under way in the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to clinch his captaincy. In the stern of our boat, one on each side, were driven two heavy eye-bolts of iron. Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were fastened two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together, end on, the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and there we were, hard and fast. We couldn't lose that captain. But we were irrepressible. Out of our very manacles we wrought an invincible device that enabled us to put it all over every other boat in the fleet. Like all great inventions, this one of ours was accidental. We discovered it the first time we ran on a snag in a bit of a rapid. The head-boat hung up and anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at the stern of the tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried to shove off. Then I ordered the men from the head-boat into the tail-boat. Immediately the head-boat floated clear, and its men returned into it. After that, snags, reefs, shoals, and bars had no terrors for us. The instant the head-boat struck, the men in it leaped into the tail-boat. Of course, the head-boat floated over the obstruction and the tail-boat then struck. Like automatons, the twenty men now in the tail-boat leaped into the head-boat, and the tail-boat floated past. The boats used by the Army were all alike, made by the mile and sawed off. They were flat-boats, and their lines were rectangles. Each boat was six feet wide, ten feet long, and a foot and a half deep. Thus, when our two boats were hooked together, I sat at the stern steering a craft twenty feet long, containing twenty husky hoboes who "spelled" each other at the oars and paddles, and loaded with blankets, cooking outfit, and our own private commissary. Still we caused General Kelly trouble. He had called in his horsemen, and substituted three police-boats that travelled in the van and allowed no boats to pass them. The craft containing Company M crowded the police-boats hard. We could have passed them easily, but it was against the rules. So we kept a respectful distance astern and waited. Ahead we knew was virgin farming country, unbegged and generous; but we waited. White water was all we needed, and when we rounded a bend and a rapid showed up we knew what would happen. Smash! Police-boat number one goes on a boulder and hangs up. Bang! Police-boat number two follows suit. Whop! Police-boat number three encounters the common fate of all. Of course our boat does the same things; but one, two, the men are out of the head-boat and into the tail-boat; one, two, they are out of the tail-boat and into the head-boat; and one, two, the men who belong in the tail-boat are back in it and we are dashing on. "Stop! you blankety-blank-blanks!" shriek the police-boats. "How can we?--blank the blankety-blank river, anyway!" we wail plaintively as we surge past, caught in that remorseless current that sweeps us on out of sight and into the hospitable farmer-country that replenishes our private commissary with the cream of its contributions. Again we drink pale Vienna and realize that the grub is to the man who gets there. Poor General Kelly! He devised another scheme. The whole fleet started ahead of us. Company M of the Second Division started in its proper place in the line, which was last. And it took us only one day to put the "kibosh" on that particular scheme. Twenty-five miles of bad water lay before us--all rapids, shoals, bars, and boulders. It was over that stretch of water that the oldest inhabitants of Des Moines had shaken their heads. Nearly two hundred boats entered the bad water ahead of us, and they piled up in the most astounding manner. We went through that stranded fleet like hemlock through the fire. There was no avoiding the boulders, bars, and snags except by getting out on the bank. We didn't avoid them. We went right over them, one, two, one, two, head-boat, tail-boat, head-boat, tail-boat, all hands back and forth and back again. We camped that night alone, and loafed in camp all of next day while the Army patched and repaired its wrecked boats and straggled up to us. There was no stopping our cussedness. We rigged up a mast, piled on the canvas (blankets), and travelled short hours while the Army worked over-time to keep us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to diplomacy. No boat could touch us in the straight-away. Without discussion, we were the hottest bunch that ever came down the Des Moines. The ban of the police-boats was lifted. Colonel Speed was put aboard, and with this distinguished officer we had the honor of arriving first at Keokuk on the Mississippi. And right here I want to say to General Kelly and Colonel Speed that here's my hand. You were heroes, both of you, and you were men. And I'm sorry for at least ten per cent of the trouble that was given you by the head-boat of Company M. At Keokuk the whole fleet was lashed together in a huge raft, and, after being wind-bound a day, a steamboat took us in tow down the Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, where we camped across the river on Goose Island. Here the raft idea was abandoned, the boats being joined together in groups of four and decked over. Somebody told me that Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to throw my feet. No "blowed-in-the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small dug-out; but I came back in a large riverboat, down to the gunwales with the results of my thrown feet. Of course I kept all the money I had collected, though I paid the boat-hire; also I took my pick of the underwear, socks, cast-off clothes, shirts, "kicks," and "sky-pieces"; and when Company M had taken all it wanted there was still a respectable heap that was turned over to Company L. Alas, I was young and prodigal in those days! I told a thousand "stories" to the good people of Quincy, and every story was "good"; but since I have come to write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story, the fecundity of fiction, I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois. It was at Hannibal, Missouri, that the ten invincibles went to pieces. It was not planned. We just naturally flew apart. The Boiler-Maker and I deserted secretly. On the same day Scotty and Davy made a swift sneak for the Illinois shore; also McAvoy and Fish achieved their get-away. This accounts for six of the ten; what became of the remaining four I do not know. As a sample of life on The Road, I make the following quotation from my diary of the several days following my desertion. "Friday, May 25th. Boiler-Maker and I left the camp on the island. We went ashore on the Illinois side in a skiff and walked six miles on the C.B. & Q. to Fell Creek. We had gone six miles out of our way, but we got on a hand-car and rode six miles to Hull's, on the Wabash. While there, we met McAvoy, Fish, Scotty, and Davy, who had also pulled out from the Army. "Saturday, May 26th. At 2.11 A.M. we caught the Cannonball as she slowed up at the crossing. Scotty and Davy were ditched. The four of us were ditched at the Bluffs, forty miles farther on. In the afternoon Fish and McAvoy caught a freight while Boiler-Maker and I were away getting something to eat. "Sunday, May 27th. At 3.21 A.M. we caught the Cannonball and found Scotty and Davy on the blind. We were all ditched at daylight at Jacksonville. The C. & A. runs through here, and we're going to take that. Boiler-Maker went off, but didn't return. Guess he caught a freight. "Monday, May 28th. Boiler-Maker didn't show up. Scotty and Davy went off to sleep somewhere, and didn't get back in time to catch the K.C. passenger at 3.30 A.M. I caught her and rode her till after sunrise to Masson City, 25,000 inhabitants. Caught a cattle train and rode all night. "Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7 A.M...." * * * * * And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of learning that the device we employed to navigate the rapids of the Des Moines--the one-two-one-two, head-boat-tail-boat proposition--was not originated by us. I learned that the Chinese river-boatmen had for thousands of years used a similar device to negotiate "bad water." It is a good stunt all right, even if we don't get the credit. It answers Dr. Jordan's test of truth: "Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?" BULLS If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States, widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also, I believe, he got mileage fees. Ways and means was always a pressing problem in our household, and the amount of meat on the table, the new pair of shoes, the day's outing, or the text-book for school, were dependent upon my father's luck in the chase. Well I remember the suppressed eagerness and the suspense with which I waited to learn each morning what the results of his past night's toil had been--how many tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were for convicting them. And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some of the good things of life. But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's watch-dogs make a living out of him. Some hoboes like to be caught by the watch-dogs--especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes select communities where the jails are "good," wherein no work is performed and the food is substantial. Also, there have been, and most probably still are, constables who divide their fees with the hoboes they arrest. Such a constable does not have to hunt. He whistles, and the game comes right up to his hand. It is surprising, the money that is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or "slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular community. Now I don't know anything about the quarries at Rutland, Vermont. I'm very glad that I don't, when I remember how near I was to getting into them. Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those quarries when I was in Indiana. But when I got into New England, I heard of them continually, and always with danger-signals flying. "They want men in the quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never give a 'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I got into New Hampshire I was pretty well keyed up over those quarries, and I fought shy of railroad cops, "bulls," and constables as I never had before. One evening I went down to the railroad yards at Concord and found a freight train made up and ready to start. I located an empty box-car, slid open the side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win across to White River by morning; that would bring me into Vermont and not more than a thousand miles from Rutland. But after that, as I worked north, the distance between me and the point of danger would begin to increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat," who displayed unusual trepidation at my entrance. He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and when he learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I had given him. He was a young country fellow, and had beaten his way only over local stretches of road. The freight got under way, and we lay down in one end of the box-car and went to sleep. Two or three hours afterward, at a stop, I was awakened by the noise of the right-hand door being softly slid open. The gay-cat slept on. I made no movement, though I veiled my eyes with my lashes to a little slit through which I could see out. A lantern was thrust in through the doorway, followed by the head of a shack. He discovered us, and looked at us for a moment. I was prepared for a violent expression on his part, or the customary "Hit the grit, you son of a toad!" Instead of this he cautiously withdrew the lantern and very, very softly slid the door to. This struck me as eminently unusual and suspicious. I listened, and softly I heard the hasp drop into place. The door was latched on the outside. We could not open it from the inside. One way of sudden exit from that car was blocked. It would never do. I waited a few seconds, then crept to the left-hand door and tried it. It was not yet latched. I opened it, dropped to the ground, and closed it behind me. Then I passed across the bumpers to the other side of the train. I opened the door the shack had latched, climbed in, and closed it behind me. Both exits were available again. The gay-cat was still asleep. The train got under way. It came to the next stop. I heard footsteps in the gravel. Then the left-hand door was thrown open noisily. The gay-cat awoke, I made believe to awake; and we sat up and stared at the shack and his lantern. He didn't waste any time getting down to business. "I want three dollars," he said. We got on our feet and came nearer to him to confer. We expressed an absolute and devoted willingness to give him three dollars, but explained our wretched luck that compelled our desire to remain unsatisfied. The shack was incredulous. He dickered with us. He would compromise for two dollars. We regretted our condition of poverty. He said uncomplimentary things, called us sons of toads, and damned us from hell to breakfast. Then he threatened. He explained that if we didn't dig up, he'd lock us in and carry us on to White River and turn us over to the authorities. He also explained all about the quarries at Rutland. Now that shack thought he had us dead to rights. Was not he guarding the one door, and had he not himself latched the opposite door but a few minutes before? When he began talking about quarries, the frightened gay-cat started to sidle across to the other door. The shack laughed loud and long. "Don't be in a hurry," he said; "I locked that door on the outside at the last stop." So implicitly did he believe the door to be locked that his words carried conviction. The gay-cat believed and was in despair. The shack delivered his ultimatum. Either we should dig up two dollars, or he would lock us in and turn us over to the constable at White River--and that meant ninety days and the quarries. Now, gentle reader, just suppose that the other door had been locked. Behold the precariousness of human life. For lack of a dollar, I'd have gone to the quarries and served three months as a convict slave. So would the gay-cat. Count me out, for I was hopeless; but consider the gay-cat. He might have come out, after those ninety days, pledged to a life of crime. And later he might have broken your skull, even your skull, with a blackjack in an endeavor to take possession of the money on your person--and if not your skull, then some other poor and unoffending creature's skull. But the door was unlocked, and I alone knew it. The gay-cat and I begged for mercy. I joined in the pleading and wailing out of sheer cussedness, I suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that would have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that sordid money-grasper of a shack. When he became convinced that we didn't have any money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then lingered a moment on the chance that we had fooled him and that we would now offer him the two dollars. Then it was that I let out a few links. I called him a son of a toad. I called him all the other things he had called me. And then I called him a few additional things. I came from the West, where men knew how to swear, and I wasn't going to let any mangy shack on a measly New England "jerk" put it over me in vividness and vigor of language. At first the shack tried to laugh it down. Then he made the mistake of attempting to reply. I let out a few more links, and I cut him to the raw and therein rubbed winged and flaming epithets. Nor was my fine frenzy all whim and literary; I was indignant at this vile creature, who, in default of a dollar, would consign me to three months of slavery. Furthermore, I had a sneaking idea that he got a "drag" out of the constable fees. But I fixed him. I lacerated his feelings and pride several dollars' worth. He tried to scare me by threatening to come in after me and kick the stuffing out of me. In return, I promised to kick him in the face while he was climbing in. The advantage of position was with me, and he saw it. So he kept the door shut and called for help from the rest of the train-crew. I could hear them answering and crunching through the gravel to him. And all the time the other door was unlatched, and they didn't know it; and in the meantime the gay-cat was ready to die with fear. Oh, I was a hero--with my line of retreat straight behind me. I slanged the shack and his mates till they threw the door open and I could see their infuriated faces in the shine of the lanterns. It was all very simple to them. They had us cornered in the car, and they were going to come in and man-handle us. They started. I didn't kick anybody in the face. I jerked the opposite door open, and the gay-cat and I went out. The train-crew took after us. We went over--if I remember correctly--a stone fence. But I have no doubts of recollection about where we found ourselves. In the darkness I promptly fell over a grave-stone. The gay-cat sprawled over another. And then we got the chase of our lives through that graveyard. The ghosts must have thought we were going some. So did the train-crew, for when we emerged from the graveyard and plunged across a road into a dark wood, the shacks gave up the pursuit and went back to their train. A little later that night the gay-cat and I found ourselves at the well of a farmhouse. We were after a drink of water, but we noticed a small rope that ran down one side of the well. We hauled it up and found on the end of it a gallon-can of cream. And that is as near as I got to the quarries of Rutland, Vermont. When hoboes pass the word along, concerning a town, that "the bulls is horstile," avoid that town, or, if you must, go through softly. There are some towns that one must always go through softly. Such a town was Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific. It had a national reputation for being "horstile,"--and it was all due to the efforts of one Jeff Carr (if I remember his name aright). Jeff Carr could size up the "front" of a hobo on the instant. He never entered into discussion. In the one moment he sized up the hobo, and in the next he struck out with both fists, a club, or anything else he had handy. After he had man-handled the hobo, he started him out of town with a promise of worse if he ever saw him again. Jeff Carr knew the game. North, south, east, and west to the uttermost confines of the United States (Canada and Mexico included), the man-handled hoboes carried the word that Cheyenne was "horstile." Fortunately, I never encountered Jeff Carr. I passed through Cheyenne in a blizzard. There were eighty-four hoboes with me at the time. The strength of numbers made us pretty nonchalant on most things, but not on Jeff Carr. The connotation of "Jeff Carr" stunned our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole gang was mortally scared of meeting him. It rarely pays to stop and enter into explanations with bulls when they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has been an automatic process with me to make a run for it when I see a bull reaching for me. This automatic process has become a mainspring of conduct in me, wound up and ready for instant release. I shall never get over it. Should I be eighty years old, hobbling along the street on crutches, and should a policeman suddenly reach out for me, I know I'd drop the crutches and run like a deer. The finishing touch to my education in bulls was received on a hot summer afternoon in New York City. It was during a week of scorching weather. I had got into the habit of throwing my feet in the morning, and of spending the afternoon in the little park that is hard by Newspaper Row and the City Hall. It was near there that I could buy from pushcart men current books (that had been injured in the making or binding) for a few cents each. Then, right in the park itself, were little booths where one could buy glorious, ice-cold, sterilized milk and buttermilk at a penny a glass. Every afternoon I sat on a bench and read, and went on a milk debauch. I got away with from five to ten glasses each afternoon. It was dreadfully hot weather. So here I was, a meek and studious milk-drinking hobo, and behold what I got for it. One afternoon I arrived at the park, a fresh book-purchase under my arm and a tremendous buttermilk thirst under my shirt. In the middle of the street, in front of the City Hall, I noticed, as I came along heading for the buttermilk booth, that a crowd had formed. It was right where I was crossing the street, so I stopped to see the cause of the collection of curious men. At first I could see nothing. Then, from the sounds I heard and from a glimpse I caught, I knew that it was a bunch of gamins playing pee-wee. Now pee-wee is not permitted in the streets of New York. I didn't know that, but I learned pretty lively. I had paused possibly thirty seconds, in which time I had learned the cause of the crowd, when I heard a gamin yell "Bull!" The gamins knew their business. They ran. I didn't. The crowd broke up immediately and started for the sidewalk on both sides of the street. I started for the sidewalk on the park-side. There must have been fifty men, who had been in the original crowd, who were heading in the same direction. We were loosely strung out. I noticed the bull, a strapping policeman in a gray suit. He was coming along the middle of the street, without haste, merely sauntering. I noticed casually that he changed his course, and was heading obliquely for the same sidewalk that I was heading for directly. He sauntered along, threading the strung-out crowd, and I noticed that his course and mine would cross each other. I was so innocent of wrong-doing that, in spite of my education in bulls and their ways, I apprehended nothing. I never dreamed that bull was after me. Out of my respect for the law I was actually all ready to pause the next moment and let him cross in front of me. The pause came all right, but it was not of my volition; also it was a backward pause. Without warning, that bull had suddenly launched out at me on the chest with both hands. At the same moment, verbally, he cast the bar sinister on my genealogy. All my free American blood boiled. All my liberty-loving ancestors clamored in me. "What do you mean?" I demanded. You see, I wanted an explanation. And I got it. Bang! His club came down on top of my head, and I was reeling backward like a drunken man, the curious faces of the onlookers billowing up and down like the waves of the sea, my precious book falling from under my arm into the dirt, the bull advancing with the club ready for another blow. And in that dizzy moment I had a vision. I saw that club descending many times upon my head; I saw myself, bloody and battered and hard-looking, in a police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly conduct, profane language, resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to explain with a club. Why, years after my tramping days, when I was a student in the University of California, one night I went to the circus. After the show and the concert I lingered on to watch the working of the transportation machinery of a great circus. The circus was leaving that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch of small boys. There were about twenty of them, and as they talked with one another I learned that they were going to run away with the circus. Now the circus-men didn't want to be bothered with this mess of urchins, and a telephone to police headquarters had "coppered" the play. A squad of ten policemen had been despatched to the scene to arrest the small boys for violating the nine o'clock curfew ordinance. The policemen surrounded the bonfire, and crept up close to it in the darkness. At the signal, they made a rush, each policeman grabbing at the youngsters as he would grab into a basket of squirming eels. Now I didn't know anything about the coming of the police; and when I saw the sudden eruption of brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of them reaching with both hands, all the forces and stability of my being were overthrown. Remained only the automatic process to run. And I ran. I didn't know I was running. I didn't know anything. It was, as I have said, automatic. There was no reason for me to run. I was not a hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It was my home town. I was guilty of no wrong-doing. I was a college man. I had even got my name in the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never been slept in. And yet I ran--blindly, madly, like a startled deer, for over a block. And when I came to myself, I noted that I was still running. It required a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine. No, I'll never get over it. I can't help it. When a bull reaches, I run. Besides, I have an unhappy faculty for getting into jail. I have been in jail more times since I was a hobo than when I was one. I start out on a Sunday morning with a young lady on a bicycle ride. Before we can get outside the city limits we are arrested for passing a pedestrian on the sidewalk. I resolve to be more careful. The next time I am on a bicycle it is night-time and my acetylene-gas-lamp is misbehaving. I cherish the sickly flame carefully, because of the ordinance. I am in a hurry, but I ride at a snail's pace so as not to jar out the flickering flame. I reach the city limits; I am beyond the jurisdiction of the ordinance; and I proceed to scorch to make up for lost time. And half a mile farther on I am "pinched" by a bull, and the next morning I forfeit my bail in the police court. The city had treacherously extended its limits into a mile of the country, and I didn't know, that was all. I remember my inalienable right of free speech and peaceable assemblage, and I get up on a soap-box to trot out the particular economic bees that buzz in my bonnet, and a bull takes me off that box and leads me to the city prison, and after that I get out on bail. It's no use. In Korea I used to be arrested about every other day. It was the same thing in Manchuria. The last time I was in Japan I broke into jail under the pretext of being a Russian spy. It wasn't my pretext, but it got me into jail just the same. There is no hope for me. I am fated to do the Prisoner-of-Chillon stunt yet. This is prophecy. I once hypnotized a bull on Boston Common. It was past midnight and he had me dead to rights; but before I got done with him he had ponied up a silver quarter and given me the address of an all-night restaurant. Then there was a bull in Bristol, New Jersey, who caught me and let me go, and heaven knows he had provocation enough to put me in jail. I hit him the hardest I'll wager he was ever hit in his life. It happened this way. About midnight I nailed a freight out of Philadelphia. The shacks ditched me. She was pulling out slowly through the maze of tracks and switches of the freight-yards. I nailed her again, and again I was ditched. You see, I had to nail her "outside," for she was a through freight with every door locked and sealed. The second time I was ditched the shack gave me a lecture. He told me I was risking my life, that it was a fast freight and that she went some. I told him I was used to going some myself, but it was no go. He said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide, and I hit the grit. But I nailed her a third time, getting in between on the bumpers. They were the most meagre bumpers I had ever seen--I do not refer to the real bumpers, the iron bumpers that are connected by the coupling-link and that pound and grind on each other; what I refer to are the beams, like huge cleats, that cross the ends of freight cars just above the bumpers. When one rides the bumpers, he stands on these cleats, one foot on each, the bumpers between his feet and just beneath. But the beams or cleats I found myself on were not the broad, generous ones that at that time were usually on box-cars. On the contrary, they were very narrow--not more than an inch and a half in breadth. I couldn't get half of the width of my sole on them. Then there was nothing to which to hold with my hands. True, there were the ends of the two box-cars; but those ends were flat, perpendicular surfaces. There were no grips. I could only press the flats of my palms against the car-ends for support. But that would have been all right if the cleats for my feet had been decently wide. As the freight got out of Philadelphia she began to hit up speed. Then I understood what the shack had meant by suicide. The freight went faster and faster. She was a through freight, and there was nothing to stop her. On that section of the Pennsylvania four tracks run side by side, and my east-bound freight didn't need to worry about passing west-bound freights, nor about being overtaken by east-bound expresses. She had the track to herself, and she used it. I was in a precarious situation. I stood with the mere edges of my feet on the narrow projections, the palms of my hands pressing desperately against the flat, perpendicular ends of each car. And those cars moved, and moved individually, up and down and back and forth. Did you ever see a circus rider, standing on two running horses, with one foot on the back of each horse? Well, that was what I was doing, with several differences. The circus rider had the reins to hold on to, while I had nothing; he stood on the broad soles of his feet, while I stood on the edges of mine; he bent his legs and body, gaining the strength of the arch in his posture and achieving the stability of a low centre of gravity, while I was compelled to stand upright and keep my legs straight; he rode face forward, while I was riding sidewise; and also, if he fell off, he'd get only a roll in the sawdust, while I'd have been ground to pieces beneath the wheels. And that freight was certainly going some, roaring and shrieking, swinging madly around curves, thundering over trestles, one car-end bumping up when the other was jarring down, or jerking to the right at the same moment the other was lurching to the left, and with me all the while praying and hoping for the train to stop. But she didn't stop. She didn't have to. For the first, last, and only time on The Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and foot-holds as those car-ends were. I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed easing down. I knew the train wasn't going to stop, but my mind was made up to chance it if she slowed down sufficiently. The right of way at this point took a curve, crossed a bridge over a canal, and cut through the town of Bristol. This combination compelled slow speed. I clung on to the side-ladder and waited. I didn't know it was the town of Bristol we were approaching. I did not know what necessitated slackening in speed. All I knew was that I wanted to get off. I strained my eyes in the darkness for a street-crossing on which to land. I was pretty well down the train, and before my car was in the town the engine was past the station and I could feel her making speed again. Then came the street. It was too dark to see how wide it was or what was on the other side. I knew I needed all of that street if I was to remain on my feet after I struck. I dropped off on the near side. It sounds easy. By "dropped off" I mean just this: I first of all, on the side-ladder, thrust my body forward as far as I could in the direction the train was going--this to give as much space as possible in which to gain backward momentum when I swung off. Then I swung, swung out and backward, backward with all my might, and let go--at the same time throwing myself backward as if I intended to strike the ground on the back of my head. The whole effort was to overcome as much as possible the primary forward momentum the train had imparted to my body. When my feet hit the grit, my body was lying backward on the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. I had reduced the forward momentum some, for when my feet struck, I did not immediately pitch forward on my face. Instead, my body rose to the perpendicular and began to incline forward. In point of fact, my body proper still retained much momentum, while my feet, through contact with the earth, had lost all their momentum. This momentum the feet had lost I had to supply anew by lifting them as rapidly as I could and running them forward in order to keep them under my forward-moving body. The result was that my feet beat a rapid and explosive tattoo clear across the street. I didn't dare stop them. If I had, I'd have pitched forward. It was up to me to keep on going. I was an involuntary projectile, worrying about what was on the other side of the street and hoping that it wouldn't be a stone wall or a telegraph pole. And just then I hit something. Horrors! I saw it just the instant before the disaster--of all things, a bull, standing there in the darkness. We went down together, rolling over and over; and the automatic process was such in that miserable creature that in the moment of impact he reached out and clutched me and never let go. We were both knocked out, and he held on to a very lamb-like hobo while he recovered. If that bull had any imagination, he must have thought me a traveller from other worlds, the man from Mars just arriving; for in the darkness he hadn't seen me swing from the train. In fact, his first words were: "Where did you come from?" His next words, and before I had time to answer, were: "I've a good mind to run you in." This latter, I am convinced, was likewise automatic. He was a really good bull at heart, for after I had told him a "story" and helped brush off his clothes, he gave me until the next freight to get out of town. I stipulated two things: first, that the freight be east-bound, and second, that it should not be a through freight with all doors sealed and locked. To this he agreed, and thus, by the terms of the Treaty of Bristol, I escaped being pinched. I remember another night, in that part of the country, when I just missed another bull. If I had hit him, I'd have telescoped him, for I was coming down from above, all holds free, with several other bulls one jump behind and reaching for me. This is how it happened. I had been lodging in a livery stable in Washington. I had a box-stall and unnumbered horse-blankets all to myself. In return for such sumptuous accommodation I took care of a string of horses each morning. I might have been there yet, if it hadn't been for the bulls. One evening, about nine o'clock, I returned to the stable to go to bed, and found a crap game in full blast. It had been a market day, and all the negroes had money. It would be well to explain the lay of the land. The livery stable faced on two streets. I entered the front, passed through the office, and came to the alley between two rows of stalls that ran the length of the building and opened out on the other street. Midway along this alley, beneath a gas-jet and between the rows of horses, were about forty negroes. I joined them as an onlooker. I was broke and couldn't play. A coon was making passes and not dragging down. He was riding his luck, and with each pass the total stake doubled. All kinds of money lay on the floor. It was fascinating. With each pass, the chances increased tremendously against the coon making another pass. The excitement was intense. And just then there came a thundering smash on the big doors that opened on the back street. A few of the negroes bolted in the opposite direction. I paused from my flight a moment to grab at the all kinds of money on the floor. This wasn't theft: it was merely custom. Every man who hadn't run was grabbing. The doors crashed open and swung in, and through them surged a squad of bulls. We surged the other way. It was dark in the office, and the narrow door would not permit all of us to pass out to the street at the same time. Things became congested. A coon took a dive through the window, taking the sash along with him and followed by other coons. At our rear, the bulls were nailing prisoners. A big coon and myself made a dash at the door at the same time. He was bigger than I, and he pivoted me and got through first. The next instant a club swatted him on the head and he went down like a steer. Another squad of bulls was waiting outside for us. They knew they couldn't stop the rush with their hands, and so they were swinging their clubs. I stumbled over the fallen coon who had pivoted me, ducked a swat from a club, dived between a bull's legs, and was free. And then how I ran! There was a lean mulatto just in front of me, and I took his pace. He knew the town better than I did, and I knew that in the way he ran lay safety. But he, on the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull. He never looked around. He just ran. My wind was good, and I hung on to his pace and nearly killed him. In the end he stumbled weakly, went down on his knees, and surrendered to me. And when he discovered I wasn't a bull, all that saved me was that he didn't have any wind left in him. That was why I left Washington--not on account of the mulatto, but on account of the bulls. I went down to the depot and caught the first blind out on a Pennsylvania Railroad express. After the train got good and under way and I noted the speed she was making, a misgiving smote me. This was a four-track railroad, and the engines took water on the fly. Hoboes had long since warned me never to ride the first blind on trains where the engines took water on the fly. And now let me explain. Between the tracks are shallow metal troughs. As the engine, at full speed, passes above, a sort of chute drops down into the trough. The result is that all the water in the trough rushes up the chute and fills the tender. Somewhere along between Washington and Baltimore, as I sat on the platform of the blind, a fine spray began to fill the air. It did no harm. Ah, ha, thought I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the fly being bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this little spray amount to? Then I began to marvel at the device. This was railroading! Talk about your primitive Western railroading--and just then the tender filled up, and it hadn't reached the end of the trough. A tidal wave of water poured over the back of the tender and down upon me. I was soaked to the skin, as wet as if I had fallen overboard. The train pulled into Baltimore. As is the custom in the great Eastern cities, the railroad ran beneath the level of the streets on the bottom of a big "cut." As the train pulled into the lighted depot, I made myself as small as possible on the blind. But a railroad bull saw me, and gave chase. Two more joined him. I was past the depot, and I ran straight on down the track. I was in a sort of trap. On each side of me rose the steep walls of the cut, and if I ever essayed them and failed, I knew that I'd slide back into the clutches of the bulls. I ran on and on, studying the walls of the cut for a favorable place to climb up. At last I saw such a place. It came just after I had passed under a bridge that carried a level street across the cut. Up the steep slope I went, clawing hand and foot. The three railroad bulls were clawing up right after me. At the top, I found myself in a vacant lot. On one side was a low wall that separated it from the street. There was no time for minute investigation. They were at my heels. I headed for the wall and vaulted it. And right there was where I got the surprise of my life. One is used to thinking that one side of a wall is just as high as the other side. But that wall was different. You see, the vacant lot was much higher than the level of the street. On my side the wall was low, but on the other side--well, as I came soaring over the top, all holds free, it seemed to me that I was falling feet-first, plump into an abyss. There beneath me, on the sidewalk, under the light of a street-lamp was a bull. I guess it was nine or ten feet down to the sidewalk; but in the shock of surprise in mid-air it seemed twice that distance. I straightened out in the air and came down. At first I thought I was going to land on the bull. My clothes did brush him as my feet struck the sidewalk with explosive impact. It was a wonder he didn't drop dead, for he hadn't heard me coming. It was the man-from-Mars stunt over again. The bull did jump. He shied away from me like a horse from an auto; and then he reached for me. I didn't stop to explain. I left that to my pursuers, who were dropping over the wall rather gingerly. But I got a chase all right. I ran up one street and down another, dodged around corners, and at last got away. After spending some of the coin I'd got from the crap game and killing off an hour of time, I came back to the railroad cut, just outside the lights of the depot, and waited for a train. My blood had cooled down, and I shivered miserably, what of my wet clothes. At last a train pulled into the station. I lay low in the darkness, and successfully boarded her when she pulled out, taking good care this time to make the second blind. No more water on the fly in mine. The train ran forty miles to the first stop. I got off in a lighted depot that was strangely familiar. I was back in Washington. In some way, during the excitement of the get-away in Baltimore, running through strange streets, dodging and turning and retracing, I had got turned around. I had taken the train out the wrong way. I had lost a night's sleep, I had been soaked to the skin, I had been chased for my life; and for all my pains I was back where I had started. Oh, no, life on The Road is not all beer and skittles. But I didn't go back to the livery stable. I had done some pretty successful grabbing, and I didn't want to reckon up with the coons. So I caught the next train out, and ate my breakfast in Baltimore. 
50558	----	A Tramp's Scraps _By H. I. M. Self_ [Illustration] _To_ _Anybody_ _Anywhere_ _Anytime_ C. C. Parker 220 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, California 1913 Table of Contents Page ? 7 Fire 9 The Ghost 13 In a Houseboat 13 Animals 15 Humatiaá 17 At Sea 21 A Quarrel 25 The Witching Hour 27 Perrochino 29 Smallpox 29 "May Good Digestion" 31 Bug-hunting 33 Evelina 35 Shooting in Illinois 39 After Ostrich 41 A Whitlow 43 Buchaton 45 Fever 47 "To Sleep, to Sleep" 49 "Half the World, Etc." 51 Hard Times 53 "There was a Ship Quoth He." 55 Health and Appetite 59 The Knuckle-duster 59 Wanderers 61 "The Weary Ploughboy" 63 Another Quarrel 63 Another Fire 65 Two Falls and a Cow 69 Real Ghosts 71 On the San Rafael Ranch 73 Express Charges 77 Cotton Packing 81 Man Overboard 85 "The Old Oaken Bucket" 87 A Dog Story 89 Arden 89 Horses 95 Sudden Death, Etc. 97 A Game at Billiards 98 Thieves 101 Brief Authority 105 [Illustration] ? A, an Argentino, comes in to a pulperia and talks loudly to another native. B objects, laying his hand on A's arm, and asks him to make less noise. A steps back, putting his hand on his knife, and B throws him out of doors and shuts the door. Later A returns and he and B sit down to talk it over. A says that he is an Estanciero, with thirty thousand head of live stock and would have treated B well if he had come to his place; why had B thrown him out? B said: "Too much noise and knife." B had put on an ulster and had a Derringer in his hand in his pocket; a man had told him that A was coming back to kill him. For two hours or so they sat, A talking a little and then jumping up in front of B, his knife wandering up and down B who sat perfectly still watching as if it was a show. Then A would sit again and jump up again and so on. They use a knife here as an Englishman would his hand and are so quick that the pistol would never have saved B, though he might have killed A, killing is not much thought of and this man was wild to do it. Why did he not? Was it Providence? Or was it that A being a brave man, he could not kill a thing that made no resistance. [Illustration: Buena Noche Toreador.] [Illustration: Digging Ye First Corral Ditch.] Later it turned out that A was on some government work and had seventeen soldiers camped outside; they had stayed at an Estancia the night before where he had lost money at monte probably, probably had a "wet" night. He was not in an amiable frame of mind. When he went to bed, he asked B if he would come and kill him as he slept; also if B would lock up his papers and things. B told him to go to bed; that (B) was English. But why is B alive? and perhaps A? FIRE! Five small wooden huts originally brought from England and later hauled forty miles or more across a camp on bullock-wagons to start a new colony next to Indian territory. Each hut is about eight feet square and they are a foot apart with the high grass cut off around about in case of prairie fires. Three men from one end hut have gone shooting deer or emus or whatever turns up, leaving a heap of powder-flasks, guns, saddles, and clothes in one corner of their shanty; blankets, etc., hanging out of the lower bunk, half-cover and open box on the floor with eight pounds of loose powder in it. The next hut is empty except when the owner comes to lie down, gasp, and perspire. It is so hot that you can break a piece of grass, and he is digging, with scarcely any clothes on, the first big corral ditch. Once as he lies half stupidly, listening lazily to a crackling, thinking that if he had sense enough he would wonder what it could be. Then he gets up to see. Fire had started in some way in the heap of clothes and was running up the thin boards to the roof. There is not much room but there is a fork with which he begins to shovel out the burning heap, and yell for water, which his brother, asleep in a further hut, brings when he realizes what is wanted. This water was thrown into the box of powder, but all this time the sparks have been falling into it and the man wants to know why everything was not blown to kingdom come before that water came. [Illustration: A "Prairie" Fire.] When the shooters got home there were remarks. Reminded me of the story of two roughs in London who were talking over an article in a paper about the improvement of the lower classes which one read to the other, who remarked: "Yes, we're a bad lot, Bill, but we 'as our fun. The other day there was a bloody fire and the bloody fire engine come down the bloody street to the bloody 'ouse an' there was a bloody ole fool standin' at the top winder, an' I says, jump, ye bloody fool and me an' my mate Bill'll ketch yer in our blanket, an' the bloody fool 'e jumps an' e' breaks 'is bloody neck--we 'adn't got no bloody blanket." [Illustration: "And Said as Plain as Whisper in the Ear, the Place is Haunted."] [Illustration: Sampans on the Yellow River.] THE GHOST. A lonely little old hut on the bank of a river in Illinois said to be haunted. Man went and slept there part of a night, cold, woke up covered with snow that had drifted in through holes in the roof. Went home, no ghost. Shooting duck on the way back got stuck in a slough. Another man turned up and took one end of the gun. Man in the mud's legs stayed on and he came out. If anyone don't believe this he has the legs still. Don't go after ghosts though; you may find one. IN A HOUSEBOAT. On the Yangtze River, houseboats have a cabin with bunks, table, and a mast, that should go up and down so that you can get under bridges made of long blocks of stone; they also have a huge sail made of matting. You put your cook, coolies, and provisions aboard, get your passport, and are off through merchant ships, junks, men-of-war, sampans, etc., up the river, and through the pass where they saw the fire from Shanghai and got up in time to save the captain of a craft where the men had been tied to the masts and the ships set on fire by pirates. Sometimes the coolies pull you with a rope; sometimes push you with poles; sometimes you sail. When you please you land and shoot pheasants scared out of Chinese graves (big and little mounds covered with reeds etc.) by bones thrown in, plenty of bones, remains of bamboo stockades used in the Taeping rebellion still standing. There are duck, plover, and snipe; and now and then you pass through a Chinese village. Natives stare and big dogs get excited. It is as well to keep a watch, at night particularly when near any soldier junks, as we were at Foochow. [Illustration: On the Yangtze Kiang.] [Illustration: A Pulperia.] ANIMALS. A pulperia with the usual crowd evenings, Spanish Mayor domo excited because he says a big Argentino (a stranger in with a tropa of prairie schooners from Mendoza) drew a knife on his compradre, the Italian proprietor. Writer was close but saw no knife. Spaniard being a man in authority has always a lot of human jackals ready to take his part; he is not any good himself. Argentino run out of pulperia and beaten, etc., till insensible. Englishman comes up and finding another Spaniard (said to have been a brigand formerly) burning the Argentino's fingers with a match, saying that he is shamming, abuses everybody; stooping over the Argentino, finding his heart is still beating; slips his hand under him and takes his knife (a poor little one which he pockets); asks if the crowd think they've done enough? They go back to the pulperia, Englishman also, but he returns in five minutes and finds the man has come to and is staggering about. He lies down when found. Crowd turn up again, but hearing that the first who meddles will be shot, keep quiet till at last the juez de paz (Argentino) turns up and takes charge of man. Tried in Rosario later, he says that the Englishman, who is not called as a witness saved his life, dare say he was right; men are brutes sometimes. [Illustration: A Row.] [Illustration: What's Left of San Carlos Cathedral--Humatiaá, Paraguay.] HUMATIAÁ. In a little Paraguayan village where there is no hotel we find a shanty with a table on which are cold meat and pickles mostly; eat when you like, sleep when and where you can, and pay is exorbitant. Two of us slept on a table. We are here after jaguars. One found a hammock said to belong to the cook--don't know what became of him--this was slung over the table, all in the same room which opened on the main street. The old town was smashed in the last fight which was a plucky one and where the fellows left alive got out of the town by tying dead soldiers to posts by dummy guns, leaving them on guard till the other fellows found out. There is nothing left of it but the ruins of a cathedral (San Carlos), high bare walls with great timbers sticking out into the sky and holes made by cannon. One of us tried to sketch it, but it was not easy as the population were interested and shut one up in a circle. The present village is half a mile away, a street of wooden shanties with big shutters (no glass) nearer the river. In the houses they played loto with much noise, and taught green parrots to whistle. [Illustration: Evening in Humatiaá.] In one there were two delightful and rather fiedish little jaguar cubs, in the street people played bowls and talked to anyone they wished. We all knew each other directly and did the same. Now and then, to some belle going out in scarlet dress, gold embroideries, and huge earrings, her dress up to her knees in front and a long train; nothing much on her shoulders or her feet and at night people wander into the room where we are trying to sleep, eat, play cards, sing, fight, and so on. Sometimes a man on the table goes mad and sits up. I am in the hammock above so I go mad. It doesn't matter, everyone is mad with an uncivilized madness here. So we get up and eat, the language is guarani, two-thirds Spanish, one-third Indian and a trifle of Portuguese; nice language, with a click in it like a dissipated watch. [Illustration: Adios Humatiaá.] [Illustration: Your Stateroom.] There was a baby's funeral among other things. The little body covered with flowers and surrounded by candles, is carried round on a board, by a crowd and brass band; they come in, put it on a table or somewhere. The band plays and the crowd fraternize and drink cana till tired. Then to another house and this goes on till they are all drunk and till the baby has to be buried. AT SEA. "_Ye gentlemen of England who stay at home at ease, How little do ye think upon the dangers of the seas._" Eleven days in the Bay of Biscay off Tencriffe. A nasty sea; seems to come everyway; knocks the ship one side and the other till she trembles like a live thing. Engines only strong enough to keep us off shore and we get out twice only to be driven back again. Life lines out; fiddles on the table; water washing about saloon and cabins; one lady, in a top berth, with her door swinging open and shut, wants to know when we are going to be drowned; and "to have her cabin mopped out." Another, who has been so ill ever since we left that she is expected to die and who the captain wants to put ashore but can't get there, has a husband looking after her. He becomes ill and she suddenly gets well and stays so! What kind of a cure is this? The stove breaks loose, but no fire; too much water. Rather an unlucky ship; crank and cargo badly stowed, overmasted and undermanned; once a fort'gallant yard came down endways through forecastle deck, lead water tank, etc., made the splinters fly. Once a marine spike came from aloft and stuck in the deck close to yours truly. Fog around St. Paul's island. We took reckoning for three days but did not know where we were. Expected to make the voyage in seventy-five days; took nearly four months and when we did anchor ship ahead on fire broke loose and drifted down on us, "those that go down to the sea in ships". One night she was rolling horribly; people holding onto saloon rails, steward came along top side rail and broke a man's hold, man flew across and avoided crushing a girl in a red garibaldi, red hair, and a pink ribbon (he should have crushed her) by spreading his arms and feet as he brought up against the wall. Another steward stooped for a turkey which was doing something in a big silver dish on the floor. He loosed the rail as the ship rolled. Away went turkey and man, getting to the other side. Man's head went whack. By the time he got his wits, the ship had rolled again and the turkey was half way back. Comforted oneself, remembering the man who when the ship was going down, reflected that he had paid £12 to go to New York, and they "had to take him there." [Illustration: "Down in the Saloon Boys"--"Bay of Biscay Oh!"] A QUARREL IN CAMP. Sunday afternoons here in camp there are horse races, bone game, monte, drinking, etc. At the pulperias, at a race today, two brothers quarrelled. One stands, knife in hand, talking to friends; the other twenty feet away, is held back by men all around him, who getting tired of persuasion begin to hammer him with their short whip stocks made of wood or iron covered with hide or silver, with a long flat rawhide thong. These rattle on his head like hail but he seems to feel nothing and see nothing but his brother till suddenly he drops stunned. [Illustration: "Children, You Should Never Let Your Angry Passions Rise."] Fighting here, a man wraps his poncho round the left forearm to catch the other man's knife, holding his own knife below in the right hand and watching the antagonist's knife instead of his eye. Sometimes they face each other a long while but are as quick as cats when they move; there is not much interference usually. Once a man on horseback rode in and grasping one of the fighters by his long black hair pushed him away backwards. Unless it is serious they do not fight to kill so much as to slash faces; but they don't seem to care for their lives much. A peon of mine was brought home an awful object. Santa (his woman) wept and said he was killed but he got well, I asked the other fellows afterward what they wanted to kill my fellow for and they laughed and said a man did not matter; pity to kill a woman, as they are scarce; but Santa could soon have got another man. The last is true enough. One day a big domador started back to G's house, where we sat on the porch and could see across the slope; he rode over. He had won money or his silver harness, or for some other reason three fellows followed him; he had a good little mare and rode till the one following who had the best mount was ahead of the others. Then Jose jumped off and waited, getting his knife (it was mine by the by), and the other man rode up jumped off and ran at him, Jose made one thrust and jumping on his mare rode in with his hand and knife all blood. Don't know who the other man was but this time soldiers came after Jose who hid for three weeks in the maize; his woman took him food. Then he appeared again with three small black cats which he had found in the corn and of which made pets. [Illustration: The Guanaco Episode.] THE WITCHING HOUR. Night in a little house on the pampas edge we got some girls together and had a dance. The natives have gone home and men are sleeping all over the floor and on the table over which is a sack of hard biscuits, etc., slung to the rafters. Through the darkness and open door enters one of two tame guanacos (something like small fawn-colored camels), steps on a man who wakes with a shriek. One man on the table wakes up, tries to sit up in a hurry, and the bag of biscuits meets him and knocks him flat. Over goes the table and other man and everyone and everything is mixed up with the guanaco in the dark till the brute fights his way out of the house. Someone gets a light and saves the pieces. [Illustration: Perrochino Trapped.] [Illustration: Fetching the Priest.] PERROCHINO. Woman calling for help at the end of hallway. Man wanders over to see what is wrong. At the other end of the hall is a door and a crowd. Wanderer jumps in and helps to hold the door, asking next man what is going on. Perrochino, the strongest Italian in the colony, has got into trouble and is jammed in the doorway, unable to do anything, while one Spaniard beats his head with a chairleg. Head looks ugly and the man is raging. Wanderer gets the door open a bit and Perrochino slips out, his brother, who sees him from a distance, discreetly slipping down a side street. Later lightning strikes a wheat stack and most of the men go off with a tarpaulin to draw over and smother the fire. Wanderer left to sit on the steps with a gun in case the Italian should return to the Señora and niñito. He does not. SMALLPOX. Smallpox came our way; seemed to take a piece about a quarter of a mile wide. Many died. Woman very ill and man went for Priest. Rainy and windy night and the little lamp the man carried in front of the Priest, who was saying prayers, kept blowing out and having to be lit again. The atmosphere of the room was awful for the Priest. Antonia and two men. Antonia was confessed and died. The others cleared and next day the man got a Spanish carpenter (Tapia) and boards and sixteen old kerosene cans from the store and they made a coffin and lined it with the kerosene cans and put Antonia in; her feet were tied with a ribbon and the smallpox lumps showed through her white stockings. Some friends came at night and in the morning we soldered her up and had the funeral. Two wheels and the coffin on boards covered with a cloth, a cross with her name, etc., painted on it as well as one could; all the mourners on horseback. We buried her. Hers was the first death here. Her sister, who came to see her, was well for two weeks; then she died in twenty minutes; she only had one mark on her. [Illustration: Antonia's Funeral.] [Illustration: Near Corientes.] "MAY GOOD DIGESTION WAIT ON APPETITE." We had run out of meat and were living on a few hard biscuits and oranges for two days in our boat on a big river in South America; but today we ran up a creek to Corientes and found any quantity at fifty cents the aroba (25 pounds); so we took some to the creek mouth and Maria cooked it while we sat round with our hunting knives. Don't use plates and things; when cooked you cut a piece off, lay hold with your mouth and cut off your mouthful avoiding your nose. Cooking is done by sticking an iron rod (if you have one) through the meat into the ground slanting over the fire, turning it when one side is done. Then we sailed off again and came to Parana after a while. There is a revolution on (Blancos and Colorados) and the town population is picknicking with bedding, etc., on an island in the river. In the town men are on the flat roofs shooting at others scurring about in the bush shooting back; also maniacs are riding about like drunken demons cutting at anything that comes in reach. We got away after a bit and past batteries on the river bluffs which don't notice us (too small, I suppose), though we pass close to the tops of the funnels of a steamer that they just sank. [Illustration: Cold Water Cure--Java.] BUG HUNTING. In Java you are (or were) only allowed to drive around the island. You get a permit, from the Dutch, but are not to go into the interior far from the landing place where there is the biggest banyan tree in the world, it is said; a village could be put away in the arches. There are also numbers of fighting cocks, a very fine cocoanut grove; and lots of other fruits, bananas, plantains, etc. The ship doctor, who was a collector of insects, and I got away seven miles or so over small hills and through forest meeting only a few blacks and other insects till we came to the Upas tree valley (the poison from these trees was mostly used for arrows). It is said that anyone sleeping under them dies, and it may be true--I don't know how soon death will take place though. We did not sleep there. There are bones but other animal's bones perhaps. They say that those that gathered the poison soon died. Trees look like a palm. The doctor got some beetles and we came back and eat bananas and things till time to return to the ship with some little bullocks and vegetables. Our coxwain (quarter-master) had been in the navy, and, with them I believe he stays by the boat till all the others are away. Our ship is P. and O. and our cox was standing at the foot of the gangway holding a stanchion and steadying the boat with his foot. Captain looked over the side and called him. Cox (who had had a drink ashore no doubt) did not move, captain spoke to mate who ran down two or three steps and jumped landing on cox's chest. Both went into the sea with a crash. Boat picked them up and cox was put in irons. They spatch-cock chicken very well in Java. [Illustration: In Irons.] [Illustration: A Tormento.] EVELINA. A tormento generally begins with dust; then wind, then rain; the two last fight furiously till the rain comes down solid, with now and then blasts of wind through it. One usually sees them coming and shuts everything that will shut. Huts are sent flying sometimes. I've seen the roof of a house taken off, and a man get to a house on his hands and knees. Oh, yes; she blows; and the rain! In one a man, his peon, and woman, start out to get three favorite horses picketted two hundred yards away. Man tells the woman to go back; but once outside one can hardly see or hear, though people are close together. Lightning all around and thunder that seems to shake the ground. There is a white glare that feels hot and a crash of thunder and the peon (Pascassio) called "my woman's dead! my woman's dead." [Illustration: "To Die! To Sleep--Perchance to Dream!"] Man says: "Is Evelina here?" "She's blown into the ditch." But the next minute he steps on her, picks her up; sounds as if she said something but her head is wrapped in a poncho, man gets her back to the house and lays her on her bed. Sends peon, who does not know what he is doing and anyway, they won't touch anything struck by lightning--to the nearest house where there is a native woman, cooking. Petrona came, and did what was necessary. Evelina was dead when picked up very heavy to carry. Only one little hole was burned in the poncho and brown mark as big as one's finger nail on the back of her neck. They put four candles around her in one corner and left. Man slept in another corner and kept candles alight for them. They would not stop and said the devil would come for her and take the man as well. Man said the devil probably had better places to go to, and they said he was the wickedest man they ever saw. Came back next afternoon and spent the night singing, playing cards, praying, and drinking mate. Two children went to sleep on the floor, man got up, put "kids" in his bed, and joined the wake. Next day they took Evelina away and left the man alone again. [Illustration: Rats! Musk Rats.] [Illustration: On the Calumet.] SHOOTING IN ILLINOIS. "_The days that are no more._" The way you used to catch the wily muskrat years ago on the Calumet River was to set a tooth trap in the water, in one of his runs in summer; in winter you could skate or walk to their houses, built of reeds, three feet high, and dome shaped, and spear them with a three-foot spear on a pole. The skins, taken off and dried by being stretched on willow twigs, were worth seventeen cents a piece. Big ducks sold for two and a half to three dollars a dozen to the dealers--canvas back, red-heads, etc.--smaller ones, Teal, blue-bills, widgeon, butter balls, etc., for two dollars. There were fellows there making a good living at hunting and trapping, and some owned farms on the river bank. The duck-shooting was the best I have had in any country. Now I believe there is still some shooting held by clubs. The Pullman place is where we used to shoot hundreds of birds beyond where the best shooting house (Chittendens) used to be, where the river forks. Then you could shoot forty miles up to the Grand Calumet and there were lakes and swamps, flight shooting night and morning, and in the day one could pole through the wild rice; etc., or take a stand now and then, or land and try the ridges for prairie chicken. There were also woodcock and snipe. Further away the pineries for deer. Still hunting, because there were Indians who would shoot dogs; they do spoil still hunting. You would not see the Indian as the brush was very thick. If you do see him and shoot at him and miss him, as one of us did, it is better not to go again. We did, and a bullet came between us and stuck in a tree. The man I was with did not like Indians and shot at them when he got a chance. [Illustration: L-- and F. W. Shot With the P. of W. When He Was Here (in Chicago), Missed His "Injin".] [Illustration: "I'm a Simple Little Ostrich, But I Know It All,"] AFTER OSTRICHES. On the South American pampas you ride one horse and lead your fastest when you are after ostriches. The birds raise their wings and sail before the wind at an awful pace and if you do not get up to one soon after he starts you might as well give up. When you get near you change horses, and, taking your bolas (three balls as big as pigeon eggs of lead or brass, on a plaited rawhide thong) from around your middle, begin to swing them around in your right hand keeping your finger hooked through the fork of the thong, holding one ball in your hand. As you close up, you bring them over your head, letting your finger loose them to their six foot length. You send your gee along and, bending forward, loose them at your ostrich. If you hit him, the bolas tangle him up and down he comes. If there are holes and things, you come down instead. It is a fast thing and as often as not or oftener you are bareback. Sometimes fellows make a big circle and close in on the birds; then you have a lively time, particularly if you play at being an ostrich yourself. [Illustration: Ostriches--On the Look-out.] [Illustration: Somerset and Yo.] [Illustration: Whitlow, From Tree Pruning. South America.] [Illustration: Men off H. M. "Rattler".] A WHITLOW. Pain! oh yes! Fourteen days in and out of bed alone in a shanty, forty miles from town. Whitlow they call it; an Indian woman advised a piece of willow burned and the powder mixed with the yolk of an egg in the shell; no good. Animals to feed, water to draw, etc., when one is so scared of one's own finger that one breaks a demijohn up and cuts a hole in the wicker cover in which to slip one's hand in bed. Not much to eat and one gets weaker, but has sense enough not to stay too long in a room with a gun. Got the old horse (Somerset) and saddle on someway and to town. Lot of English sailors off a gunboat in the hotel, dancing and singing. Two are interested and want to know if man will come aboard because they "have a sawbones who will take it off with a handsaw." Well, surgeon cuts the finger up both sides and later the other two sides; couldn't tell what it was; never be a success again. One can see what it was meant for. Another time diphtheria. Doctor came one hundred and thirty miles and found man with his head in a blanket on the table, no brush and made one out of prairie wolf hair; did his throat like cleaning a gun; man got well. [Illustration: Diphtheria at Pera.] [Illustration: Buchaton's Death in la Candelaria.] BUCHATON. Three houses now in this colony, joining Indian Territory. Mine was first; then a Frenchman came and used my well and corral, etc., till he got settled half a mile away; and another is being put up for a store. One foggy night, or morning rather (1 A. M.), some one woke me, rapping on the door. As I was alone and one did not expect people, or open the door after dark without knowing what is on the other side, I asked and a woman's voice answered; opened and there was Buchaton's wife with two small children. They had found the house luckily after two hours in the fog. Her man had been doing something with the stove and had words with an Argentino and friend. The Argentino started for him with his knife but the wife got it and threw it away (man was a little drunk). He picked it up again and killed the Frenchman; then they tied him up with a lasso (the woman had run out with the children), got their horses, and left. Some of us got horses and went to the house but the man was dead; there was a trail in the wet grass in the moonlight but we never caught them as they changed horses and got over the line into another state. [Illustration: Acclimatizing Fever--Shanghai.] [Illustration: Oil Springs Typhoid--Canada.] FEVER. In China and some other places one has a fever getting acclimated. One in Shanghai left man pretty weak when the usual plague of boils broke out. Then there was less rest for the wicked than ever, and he balanced himself on a boil and thought about Job. The doctor says that the man is better and that this is a crisis he wanted (man wishes doctor had it). But man does get well after many dawns, watching the bats come home to roost in the round tiles used in the roofs here. Then cats come along the edge and reaching paws over extract the bats and put them away and go after more. The man thinks he's glad he's not a bat and goes to sleep and wakes up better and forgets about it till some day years after he dreams dreams. Talking of fevers, when the oil wells started in Canada it was rather rough living. The water to drink very bad, and so on. At all events we got a bad mixture of typhoid and smallpox and not much doctor. So a great many died. One of us had it and another nursed him till he got to his bed and forgot everything except sticking a favorite pin in a rafter overhead. The other was better and had sent a line to friends a hundred miles away; they came, and the two men were put on their mattresses on the bottom of a wagon and so over eighteen miles of corduroy road (which is trees laid alongside one another) and into the baggage car of a railroad train. The war was going on and sympathetic passengers came in: "Oh, poor fellows! where were they wounded?" Our friends said: "not wounded at all; typhoid," and the car was empty. Took us nine weeks to get around. H. McC. carried one along the railway platform and if you have ever been carried through a lot of people when you have sense enough to know that you are grown up and want to hit some one if you had the strength, you know what one felt like--Wonder who got that pin! [Illustration: Baggage.] [Illustration: A Night on the "Grimsel" Pass--Switzerland] TO SLEEP, TO SLEEP. We did not know this morning if we would stay the night and went out for a walk. While away twenty-seven geological students arrived and took everything and more in the shape of beds; so here we are in a big attic of a little house on top of the Grinsel Pass in Switzerland. The room is the cheese room surrounded by shelves on which immense gruyere cheeses are drying--all kinds of makeshift beds on the floor and for washing little basins and wine bottles on a bench; lovely! Went to bed midnight and as we leave at 4 a.m. and the interval is filled up by a number of peasants yodeling--below why "Happy, happy, happy be thy dreams." [Illustration: Death.] [Illustration: Katrina.] HALF THE WORLD DON'T KNOW HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES OR DIES. A small hut made of reeds, lost in an immense swamp--the home of a girl and an old gaucho. Man gone; don't know when or where, leaving the girl stripped and tied with a piece of a lasso to a post in the hut, stabbed and dead. She was quite young and rather pretty--poor thing. At another place found the German girl who cooked for the S----s, stripped and tied down in the prairie just outside the village. Three natives (horseback of course) caught her and carried her off and staceared her. (I don't know how they spell it but that is what it's called in Spanish) means pegging your hands and feet with rawhide to the ground. Under her was a knife; suppose they meant to kill her but got scared away. She died; had been there all night. [Illustration] [Illustration: British Benevolent Society--2 A. M.] HARD TIMES--AGAIN. A man (in California) lying in bed dying; wife ill in bed in the next room watching him through the open door; third and last room divided by sheets into two, one-half with stove in it, the other used by anyone including seven children all under nine years old. No money. The man died; money was collected and he was buried; and family sent back to Europe. S. P. railway made a reduction on fares; train was to leave at 10 p.m., telegram to say it would be 11 p.m. The woman, children, and man waited till eleven when another message came to say the cars would not be in till 2 a.m. So they went over to the hotel and got a sleep till a quarter to two when the man woke them up and the procession trailed back and got aboard. Trainman interested: "Where's she goin'?" "Europe," said the man. "With all them kids! Never get there alive." She did though; man nearly went also as he was inside the car putting a big roll of mattresses through the door and they jammed, cars were moving and man crawled over the top of the bundle and slid onto the platform and off the car saying to an astonished conductor who appeared from somewhere, "you get those mattresses in old man." [Illustration: The "Cisne" at the Old Wharf Rosario--Santa Fé.] "THERE WAS A SHIP QUOTH HE." Coming down the Plata River in the "Cisne" steamer a fellow passenger asked us to help him when we landed. We said we would. Well, it was very dark and raining; we landed under a wharf, arrangement on the other side of which was a ten-foot steep and slippery mud-bank on top of which were one or two wheel carts made with a pole with a hole in the far end. The carter slips a rawhide fast to his horse's cinch, through the pole hole and makes fast, he (riding the horse) can then pull, or if he wants to back, ride his horse around the pole and push backwards. To return to our mutton, what our man wanted was help to land a portmanteau and some heavy small boxes and we got them into a cart after a weary time sliding up and down that mud bank and much indifferent language. One native rode and two friends kept him company. We had to go two miles over a wicked road. The tall grass grows right up to it on both sides and there have been a lot of unpleasant things happening; so we had our guns in our hands. We had found out that our friend from Paraguay, one of his prisoners Lopez left alive, had been trading and the boxes, etc., were full of gold, and silver dollars. Got to the hotel all right and had a drink. There was a funny little old man with hair over his shoulders and white beard to his middle and very old clothes. He looked lonely so we asked him to drink. No, he did not drink. Smoke? No; he did not smoke but he put a cigar in his pocket. Felt curious about him and asked him and the capitalist to my room, also, drink and cigars. They came and oh, yes! I had struck it rich. The little man was I think doing penance. He would not say why he had tramped hundreds of leagues through the wildest parts of the country with some polenta to eat and no arms except a small pocket knife, or why he had not cut hair or beard for seven years; but the stories those men told each other, myself sitting listening till 4 a.m. with hardly a word; and they could have gone on for weeks. I said that queer things happened on the road we came here by, in the grass that borders the road back a little way are adobe huts and very queer people live there. Everyone carries a knife of course but the police had a very bad character for a time. At another men riding were lassoed from the grass and you are gone if a lasso gets you. At another the natives did not like it because a number of men were killed one by one and there were stories of a ghost. Soldiers hunted and some of us went out many nights. At last some one was stabbed but before he died shot a tall man dressed as a woman. What with the night, tall grass in which to slip out of sight, and dark dress, the ghost theory is easy. His trick had been to ask you for the time or for a light, and stab you as you got it. For some time after if one was asked for a light about there after dark, one threw a matchbox and said help yourself. [Illustration: O'Geary.] [Illustration] HEALTH AND APPETITE. Sitting in a little park in Los Angeles some one sat down on the other end of the bench. Seeing a dilapidated pair of boots that did not match I went on reading. After a while the stillness was broken by: "Got ten cents pardner?" "What do you want ten cents for?" said I. "Well, pardner, I'm here from Milwaukee, was in the lumber trade there and got six dollars a day, my brother has a big place there; he sent me some money yesterday, I got broke, an' I went on a tear an' spent it all, an' my mouth's awful dry an' I want a drink." It sounded straight so we had a talk about the Keeley cure about which I told him, and about Florida and lumber about which he told me and compromised on twenty-five cents of which he agreed to spend fifteen on solid food; hope he did. [Illustration: "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching."] KNUCKLE-DUSTING. Coming up from Aspinwall to New York, a second-class passenger came into the first-class saloon and a big steward objected. Man did not like it and when the steward swore at him, he struck the steward (much the biggest man) and knocked him down; the steward said the man used a knife; no one had seen a knife but over the Steward's heart was a little tear in his white duck. Captain took a hand, and steward, who had had a bad record was put in irons. Other man turned out to be an artist; had been through Borneo--of all places--and come out alive with a wonderful lot of pictures and photographs (burned later). Came into my cabin as he wanted to copy a little sketch of Panama. Showed me how that tear happened; he used a knuckle-duster that was in his pocket when he (the steward) came at him the second time. An ugly thing; iron ring with holes that your fingers go through, short spikes over your knuckles, and a longer one below your clenched hand. [Illustration: The Knuckle-duster.] [Illustration: Callers!] WANDERERS. Making a fire after a long day in the boat and not thinking there was anyone else for miles; rather there was not, as the nearest place is the line between two states where a number of "bad men" have settled. When the soldiers from one state come for any of them (if they ever do) the men can step over the line. Well, we were getting wood and one of us came out of the night with a fellow walking behind, knife in hand (such a foolish thing; why not in front?) A canoe slid out of the fog with two muffled women astern, and three more men who got out and stood round the fire. As they had their knives out, one of us left fishing in the boat and passed guns round to our side. Then we talked and ate. They were very free and easy villains but went off into the fog again all right. After keeping watch awhile we went to sleep. "THE WEARY PLOUGHBOY." "The weary ploughboy homeward bound," and not knowing one day from another here we were ploughing with bullocks when a man riding by said: "Thought you English did not work Sundays." My brother was wild; he threw the ear ropes down and wanted to know "If he'd lived all these years and traveled all these miles to plough Sundays with adjectived bullocks in a condemned country!" Bullocks are trying. The Reverend--looking out of the train at Frayle Muerto saw an Englishman swearing wonderfully at his bullocks. The Reverend told him to be gentle; the man being angry threw his ropes down, telling the Reverend to take them around himself. The Reverend did so; and it is said that by the time he got around--well you can guess. We got a little two-wheeled cart and with a broncho not used to driving. Some one behind him with his leather belt and buckle; and a peon on a horse in front to pull him along, and so across camp to a railway and my brother went back to England. The rest of the outfit got home somehow. [Illustration: Nineteen Miles to Go Across Camp and "The Day is Departing, de-par-ar-ting."] A QUARREL--CANDELARIA. Swede playing billiards with an Italian in a cafe full of Italians; they quarrelled and the Swede used his cue and the Italian a small knife, as the manager came in the Swede went down and some men bolted. [Illustration: Bringing in Ruffinelli.] [Illustration: Our Last Night on the "Plata".] Manager locked the doors with thirty or forty inside but the man had gone. Three of us went through houses where men were sleeping and then a mile into camp to a house where two Italians and a big dog lived; knocked; man appeared behind dog in doorway. H told him to call off his dog; would not; so H shot the dog and we went in. Found Ruffinelli in bed, pretending sleep; shirt covered with blood and head tied up; not pretty to look at. Put him on a horse and tied his feet together, brought him to the only brick building in town. Some got on top of it with guns while the manager did sentry; there are hundreds of Italians here. A stage starts for town at 8 A. M. and the manager suggested that if there were no passengers the stage should take the man in now before the other gentlemen woke up, and we could go to bed. It was done, and Ruffinelli went off and later got seven years on the frontier. FIRE AGAIN. A cold night on this big river though we are getting south now after our thousand miles in our little boat; so we got ashore and supped on grebe which reminded one of red herrings. Found a little grass hut built by a woodcutter possibly, and three of us snuggled up on the floor, just big enough, with a candle and part of a book. Heaven knows where the man got it. Well, we went to sleep and the bookman knocked the candle over and the fire ran up the hut luckily one of us woke and put it out and the others never knew and told the fireman next noon that "he had been dreaming"; is so, why that black streak? Another morning we found a big jaguar and cub had passed a yard from A's head. They were grunting all night close to us in the jungle, and could not have been hungry as there were five of us to choose from. Got aboard and got lost on the Chaco side of the river. This gran Chaco is an endless maze of creeks and little islands covered with trees and jungle, no birds or beasts seemingly and the fish won't bite often. There are some hostile Indians but the chances are greatly in favor of starving to death, a desolate place but the wind brought us to the river again and when the cox wanted to go about, it blew so fresh that mast and big lateèn sail went. Two of us jumped and held on to it but it was hard on finger nails and as there was quite a little sea our small boat was tumbling about. We all had our trousers rolled up to our knees except Maria, who was a Paraguayan woman and wife of Salvador, a Portuguese, who we called Joe. Fortunately there was a little island on to which we drifted. Maria was frightened and knelt down a few yards off, with her skirt over her head, for five minutes, like an image. Then she rose up and said: "It is a bad wind; we shall not get to Rosario alive," and set to work like a little man. We fixed our mast up with fish lines and whatever we had. Drifting again on the Chaco side where the jungle is not as thick as on the other, with more trees. We ran in to look at what turns out to be boughs bent over in a half-circle, once a tiny hut four feet high. Now the thatch is gone and there is two or three inches of water and rotten leaves, sitting in which and leaning against the boughs is a skeleton and a worm-eaten flint lock musket alongside, the skull has rolled or been blown off and lies there. What a death! miles of dark silent forest behind, in front the immense river, the wash of which is the only sound. Poor devil, wonder who it was once! We left it sitting there and I do not suppose anyone will come across it again. [Illustration: A Dismal Swamp--Hundreds of Miles of It. Ye Gran Chaco.] [Illustration: Shipwrecked.] [Illustration: A Lonely Skeleton.] [Illustration] TWO FALLS AND A COW. Chasing a little cow bareback and riding loosely she made a quick turn and the mare stuck to her just where we had worn a track bringing the adobes for houses. Man's head struck the track and a native woman carried the remains into a house and doctored him. Another time, sitting on a blanket strapped around a tall black beast with a back like the roof of a church, and leading a mare, dogs came and scared the mare, man held but the rope was only around the mare's neck and, as she was faster than the horse, man was pulled forward over the horse's head, one hand full of reins, revolver, and mane, the other of the mare. Strap round the blanket loosened and away went man onto his back. Mare dragged him fifty yards over burned camp and the skin came off his arms and the black stuff rubbed in. Took some time to heal and he could not get up for a while because he thought his back was broke; also he had to swear at the dog owners when they ran up. One day, as we stood about among some piles of brick, a cow stood pawing the dust up near, suddenly she charged and all got on brick piles except one who thought it was all right because he was behind a heap; but the cow turned round the corner and came at him head down and tail up. Now would you think that that man stood perfectly still and watched the cow's shoulder wondering if he had a sword whether he could hit the right spot? We had been seeing a good many bull fights lately. Anyway when he jumped to one side he did it mechanically and the cow's horn tore his coat. She kept straight on though. [Illustration: The Mare Wins Easy.] [Illustration: El Hombre ò la Vaca.] REAL GHOSTS. Did you ever keep house for friends gone away? If you have not, don't do it, the place is full of ghosts of live people, this is quite unfair. No well conducted live person should have a ghost; but there they are, and their feet go hither and thither making no sound, and their mouths eat at meals though the food never gets less, and they talk to you and to each other. You know what they say though there is no sound, and you get no answer if you speak to them. One does not really object to it; they are just like the live people in a way; they have exactly the same ways as the people they seem to be. They seem to hear your remarks and pass them by; often I fancy you are like a ghost to them, but one is not sure because if so why do they listen to you? Still, as I said, one does talk to them--but they don't answer. Do they expect you to reply to them; mine don't. In the open air, gardening or filling up time someway, they are not with one so much; it is at meals mostly. What becomes of them later. When you come into the place at night the stillness is wonderful either in the black darkness or with the bright moonlight shadowing everywhere with wraiths of boughs and plants; but one misses the ghosts; there is only an open grave; there's nothing in it. [Illustration: Real Ghosts.] ON THE SAN RAFAEL RANCH. Once on a time there was a ranch with a church on it amongst other things. There was also a winery, and a man for whom the manager tried to find work that he could do, having got down to weeding which was not a success, he gave him the winemaker's shanty in which to sleep close to the winery which he was to see was safe; and Sundays he was to sweep the church by 11 o'clock. The manager had been doing this when he took the flowers down formerly, coming down the first Sunday that the man was to have done it, it was not done; so after getting the church ready, the manager drove to the winery and found the door forced, shouted down a trap door and the man appeared from below, saying that four men with clubs had broken in; he watched them from his window being afraid to interfere; but there were four empty wine bottles in his room, he was told to pack. As he was sulky and wanted to argue with a club full of nails to help him, he was put on the floor and his head bumped till he was reasonable; the blacksmith put his head in and requested that the man should not be killed. Manager said he was not worth it and sent blacksmith off to put him on the cars. Had smith fix the winery door again, after which they went to church just in time to meet the clergyman from town. A very pretty little church, built in memory of her husband who owned the ranch on the road to the village (one hundred and ranch, by his widow. There is a long tunnel on this thirty yards long) made by the last owner trying for coal. When he did not find coal, he made a road of the tunnel, and a big reservoir by banking at one end, fifty feet of this embankment washed out in our big flood year (ground squirrels had been working in it) and swept a railroad bridge away further down. We come through nights without a light often and feel our way along the sides with the whip, as dark a place as I ever was in, and there is not above eighteen inches to spare, each side your wheels. Coming out at one end there is a long downhill and once on a wagon with no break or foot board. Sitting on top of a load of wheat the wagon ran onto the four horses and away we went, the driver swung the horses off the road onto the plough to the mountains, the only way to save a smash; but as he swung, the rope loosened with the jerk and landed the sack he sat on and him on his back in the road, close to the wheel, luckily turning from him. He threw up the reins, the plough, etc., stopped the horses and another man and he having sorted them out, got a better wagon. That is enough about ranching. [Illustration: The Day of Rest.] [Illustration: Saionara.] [Illustration: "Went down the hill without the drag on, Poor Mary Ann. Mother she waxed her, petted her and kissed her, Docter he came and he put on a blister, If she'd a' died we'd never a' missed her; Poor Mary Ann." ] [Illustration: Man in a Slough.] EXPRESS CHARGES. In the pineries (Illinois), where there was shooting, a man got lost, they are twelve miles through timber, ridges, and sloughs covered with green moss that closes over you if you don't mind your ways. This man luckily came across a solitary railroad track and as he had been out a good while and was seven miles from home he sat down to smoke and think about things. Then the handcar came along, three men; so the shootster, who knew many of the men, got on and worked his passage leaving his spaniel, Dash, to run. We came along, talking and singing, till we came to the quarter mile long trestle bridge over the Calumet and swamps. Here an express turned up behind us and we started to work; oh, yes; we worked with that beast of a train getting closer. We could not stop to get off the track, but we got to the little station and a man at the switch had time to let us off while the express thundered by. Whether they saw us or not we never knew; if they did it was a cruel game to play and when we got in we sat on a woodpile and felt queer. My dog turned up half an hour later; the pace was too good for him at first. The undergrowth is so thick in those woods that you cannot see any distance. It was here two brothers, shooting forward, and whistling to know where each other was came to the edge of the tall trees. A woodcock got up and shot off through the brush down this edge. One man shot it and, looking beyond as he loaded, saw something he could not make out. It turned out to be his brother's head. "What are you waiting for?" said No. 1. "The rest of the charge," said he, "you've shot me." [Illustration: Express Charges--Pittsburg & Fort Wayne R. R.] [Illustration: F. P. Long Stop.] "Oh, shot your grandmother," said No. 1. But all the same there was one little spot of blood on his left cheekbone and I could feel the shot which he never would take out though I wanted to; it was my shot anyway. COTTON PACKING. In Shanghai it was against the law to pack cotton at night but it was done, one night, in a big go-down, a lot of Chinese on a platform ten feet above the floor were running round a capstan as if getting up anchor, only their thing works downwards, around, around to their eternal chant of ha ho, ha, hao o ha. Two fell over the edge. Now there were pigs of lead piled up below and their skulls cracked like eggs. The other fellows did not seem to care much and in the morning carried the bodies off in their ropes and probably threw them in the weeds a little way outside town. On the Bubbling Well road (so called because there is a well that always has a bubble coming up from the bottom), it used to be horrible sometimes in one's early morning ride. They are rather an awful people, and there are razor-backed hogs that roam around. [Illustration: "Roll Dat Cotton."] [Illustration] [Illustration] Acapulco is a queer little place, mostly heat, blacks, shell work, sharks, etc. There are immense sharks (about sixteen feet). They won't look at pork with or without a hook in it. What do they eat. Must be mostly the stuff thrown from ships. Some say that they run up into the surf and catch the little darkies by the legs. Anyway they are big and fat and there are lots of them. A war with the French is about to begin and the ships are expected but have not come; so we can't land some French officers who are here to join their ships--not good for them ashore just now. We were round, look, see business, and there was a fuss, and a fellow shot and missed; but the bullet got my leg. Curious it did not sting but was more like a blow; did not break anything though. The native imitations of flowers (shell work) are very pretty and there is lots of coral, etc. Only a small place and not much clothing. An old fort at the entrance with mouldy cannon, harbor to get into which one goes up a passage that is parallel to the coast. You can't see anyway in when you are out, or out when you are in, is like a big pond with a grove of cocoanuts on the far side from the village but no other trees except a palm or two, the colors of the mountains are fine, and the young fry dive any distance after money thrown to them, as they do at all these places, carry it in their mouths, their only pocket. Principal industries, when there is no ship to coal, lying in (and out of) the sun and drinking; as some one said: "Customs beastly manners none." MAN OVERBOARD. Aboard a ship where there were a lot of young men passengers, and jumping back and forth over open hatches, diving from the yardarm, catching sharks, and revolver practice at men-of-war hawks, molly hawks, cape pigeons, catching albatross with a hook and line, etc., were among the amusements, some of us met at about 11 A. M. to breakfast in a cabin the owner of which had a hamper of cakes and two boxes of Partaga and Regalia Brittanica cigars, these men amongst whom were a T-- and two M's--had been brought up on civilized things so the unfortunate owner's cigars went fast. One of us poor fellows was too fond of drinks and other things and had no business to have come as he soon got d.t's. and was shut up in his cabin with a sentry. Some way he got out, ran the length of the saloon, and dived through the big stern window, through the glass, bending the guard rods right and left. A man standing by the wheel on deck above, looking aft, saw the head and arms of a man rise on the top of a following wave, shouted "man overboard", and threw a preserver. The captain was very good and we went astern for an hour or more which was dangerous with the sea that was running; had a boat out too. Then we picked up the boat and went ahead and he floated alongside near where he went overboard. They tried everything, though he had already been a little eaten by fish. Several of our crowd on this ship could not stand the new life after landing. H shot himself. W shut himself up with brandy and drank till he died; and so on. [Illustration: Coaling--Rio Janeiro.] [Illustration: Man Overboard--Bay of Biscay.] "THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET." If you do not know what baldearing is and are short of amusement, tie the end of a well rope to your cinch and then walk your horse away eighty feet or so till your bucket comes up full, if you like to and have a trough along side, arrange it so that bucket catches and tilts at the top so as to let the water into the trough, or 'troff' as I suppose it will be spelled later. Then walk your horse back and down goes your bucket. The first time one man tried, as he turned he let the rope touch the horse and this horse did not approve. It whirled around a few times, tied himself up in a knot, and over they went. Horse up again some way and got to the end of his rope in a hurry. The two brick pillars of the well (the pride of the man's heart) crumbled away and off went that animal with eighty foot or so of suga, the bucket, and the cross beam, into a drove of mares which stampeded all over the world. Don't know what became of the mares but we got the horse fifty miles from home next day. He was a good beast but nervous about ropes apparently. It is better to have a quieter gee for baldearing. [Illustration: Act I.--The Great Baldearing Trick.] [Illustration: Act II.] A DOG'S TALE. Lx, who was one of the Prince of Wales shooting party around about Chicago (F. W. was there also), had one of the dogs they shot over with him. He was a liver colored pointer named Grouse, and one of the most cantankerous beasts in temper I ever saw. Once he growled at Mark (A No. 1 bullterrier owned by my brother). Mark was the quietest dog unless he was bothered. He went for Grouse who jumped away so quickly that Mark only reached his tail. It healed all right but left a lump and we thought L-- would be wild when he returned. However, he was not, but thanked Frank, as he said Grouse bit when he was threshed and L used to hold him by the tail and when he turned to bite hit him with one of those short knotted dog whips; then Grouse would try the other side and get straightened out again. So L was obliged; as he said he never could hold him before as he could now from behind. This is a true dog story. L was the man who always shot at an Indian. [Illustration] [Illustration: The Tale of Grouse.] ARDEN. Leaving el Toro after about a ten mile drive over two ranges of small mountains, through wild flowers, grain, cotton wood, and live oak trees and by a creek, a fine drive but not for wild horses, you wind past the home farm and turn sharply to your right over a bridge with a swing gate, to find yourself suddenly amongst big lawns and live oaks, great beds of roses and flowers, shrubbery, and a little lake and glass houses. At the back of this eight acres or more is a natural terrace one hundred feet high, covered with live oaks, geraniums, creepers, etc., and up which goes a flight of steps to the orange orchard at the top. Back of this on the mountains, they are all round. At the foot of this terrace stands the house, a long rambling collection of rooms, porches, entrances, open-air dining-room, etc., very prettily built to harmonize with the scenery. From the inside one looks out into a green sea of a dozen different shades of green; inside it is a perfect place, everything one can want from madame down to cocktails at which Mr. B. is a pastmaster. Pictures, music, books, and most of them with histories. The rides and walks up the canyon are beautiful, the one that goes on past the house winds through the mountains and across and across the creek, ferns and flowers are all about and one passes two little cabins, in the furthest of which they lived when they first came out, there are stories of a bear that comes here but we don't see anything of him--there are live stock, olives, oranges, etc., and bees, on the ranch. Friends are always coming and going, carriages meeting the train at el Toro twice a week for friends, and so many visitors (and uninvited guests) come that there has been a well sunk and grounds made for picnic parties about a quarter of a mile from the house. "Arden" is its name and madame played Rosalind on the lawn once, where the hammocks and tables for afternoon tea, etc., are, one forgets that there is any world outside here, why should you remember when there is all you want, and nothing to remind you? There are papers of course if you can't let them alone. "The world forgotten, by the world forgot", is something like it but not nice enough, and we do a little honey business and get stung enough to see what it is like, and sometimes garden with musical interludes and play whist and poker, and fight about gardening or cards, or whether dried currants are currants, and make cigarettes with crafty little machines, and go walks and get flowers sometimes drive or ride or shoot or fish, or watch R making a contraption for pumping water out of the lake, or go up to where a 40-foot high dam is starting across a road where the rocks nearly meet, this will make a big lake, more water, fish and boating, you don't know how the days go till you are away--then you know. [Illustration: Arden, 1897.] Los Angeles, October 14, 1897. Well, beginning on the left is the little house Mr. B and Madame went to stay, but when she was getting better last time, they said it was dryer than her own room--next that is an enclosed yard with a store room at the back and over it a room where her theatrical dresses are kept, the little house right off that is the house girls' rooms, in front of the last is a bed of carnations and where the two girls are is the open air dining room, next that is the indoor dining room, kitchen behind, then Nashtia's room with a rustic well in front, part of dining room behind and part of kitchen and big pantry behind that--then an entrance and little hall behind which is my room as they call it and bathroom beyond--then Mr. Bozentas' study, hall behind and then the room with the church windows (the odd window is a seat of Madames) this a very large room and goes the whole depth of the house and up to the rafters with a big granite fireplace and no end of pretty things in it. I suppose you would call it a drawing room--then there is a spare bedroom, hall and another bedroom at the back, then an entrance with a bathroom beyond the hall--then Mr. B's room with Madame's at the back and these open onto a wide deep porch with Japanese screens and trellis and creepers which is the end--the kitchen garden is beyond the shrubbery to the left and that lawn runs to the right ever such a way to the farmyard entrance--at the back is a deep hill 50 yards high or more covered with live oak, geraniums, wild grasses and so on--on top there is an orange and olive orchard--in front excepting drives it is all garden and shrubbery to a creek with a swing gate, I dare say there are 8 or 10 acres, all this and a small valley are shut in by high mountains and you exist in a sort of green sea. That is Madame by her porch, the girls on the right were Misses Langenberger, Yorke and Easton. I am doing roses on the well, Annie and Maggie are in the open dining room, Nashtia is by the little house, Mr. B is talking to Johnny, left front, Sam is watering with his small and faithful Bobilo dog near him, the other dog is a big hound named Rock. If you keep this till you get the sketch perhaps you can make it out. [Illustration: Weeding.] [Illustration: 1900--Beginning of the D----.] [Illustration: Let Go!] [Illustration: They're Off!] HORSES. "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse." One man who was nervous wanted to drive forty miles across camp to Rosario, Santa Fé, and one of us who was not nervous said he would drive the pair of greys; one had been in harness twice and the other not at all; but the trap and harness were strong. So when the driver went to start and found them loading chains and ironware in case there was a runaway, he had it out again; there are no fences or ditches and all there was to do if they did runaway was to head for Rosario, they did, after trying if they could fly, horses buck here more than they kick, and when they wanted to stop the driver prevailed on them with a whip to keep on till one tried to fall down and nearly pulled him over the dashboard, but they got to town. Talking of bucking; we have some prize-takers. We all tried one and no one could stay on. Sometimes a piece of wood is used which you tie in front and push your knees under, or a blanket rolled up helps. Another, a beautiful labuno, was brought for me one day, the Señora who knew the horse, asked if I was a domador which I am not at all, she said "better not get on" and next day I knew she was right. Our best rider was going to try but the horse went around in circles at the end of a lasso, bucking like an airy fiend, everything flying till he broke away and no one got near him for hours, then he was captured with bolas, all this is different from hunting or riding races, the horse seems to express his opinions more freely and forcibly here, and one wants a special education. In Australia I know there is plenty of bucking, but I never was there, we had some horses from there in China, one of them (F--s) bucked his saddle over his head and never broke the girths. I did not see this but it is true. Another fell in a race and would not get up although fire-crackers were let off among his legs; then they tied a chain to him and dragged him away. Don't know if he ever got up. One Tartar pony I knew ran away with a Consul and up forty steps into the grand stand, another in a race jumped on top on one of these wide mud walls, and as he had his fore legs one side and hind legs the other he had to be taken off. I was riding in these races and we had no end of fun; last a week, but two men were nearly killed and one horse quite. [Illustration: Russian Consul Going for the Grand Stand--Shanghai.] [Illustration: "Get on Ferguson."] [Illustration: One on the Wall.] [Illustration: A Bad 'un to Mount.] [Illustration: Lloyd's "Crumpler" on Miss Louise. Steeple. Flat.] SUDDEN DEATH. In Los Angeles on Main street a hack drove along and one man directed another's attention to two girls in it. They were very pretty but like many others, had their faces covered with white powder, these were Mexicans. They drove across to Rose and Ferguson's stable (Rose shot himself later) and then down Commercial street and Los Angeles street to a hotel with a man (I-- F) they picked up at the stables. One of the first two men was passing as the hack stopped and made a grab for the girl, who got out first, because as the man put his foot on the hack step to get out, she shot him in the eye and he fell forward onto the sidewalk dead. She only said: "He'll never fool another girl" and was going to shoot again but changed her mind and walked off with her sister to the police station to give herself up. She was tried; she was impudent and said she would shoot anyone that said anything about her. Some fellows took her bouquets; she got no punishment, of course, and the day she was free went to get the revolver which she had borrowed she said. B's daughter shot at a man on Spring street near First three times front of where the P. O. used to be, but only shot a bit off the top of his head. He ought to have been killed; his folks had money though and he was let off. I was summoned as a witness in this. The father knew me but I knew nothing of the affair. I got mad in court as usual and Mr. S. W. let me go. There used to be a good deal of shooting in Los Angeles but it is all changed now. At the same corner of Commercial Street a man sat at an upstairs window and waited till the man he wanted went along the other side; then he shot him with a shot gun. [Illustration: The End of Don J-- F. Front of White House, Commercial St., Los Angeles.] [Illustration: Man coming in suddenly--"Now I've got you." Man, looking up--"Oh let up, don't interrupt this game." First man, paralyzed, walks out again without shooting. The Good Old Days.] M and I used to go down Sonora town to Spanish fandangos and things where there was often trouble. Once they were shooting in the night around the adobes and a policeman fell down and was carried home but when they searched they found the ball in his clothes and he was not hurt a bit. I was shot in the Pico house and S-- drove me to his funeral, next week I was at S's funeral; he was shot in his room. [Illustration: One Adobe--Los Angeles.] [Illustration: "Empty is the Cradle, Baby's Gone"--San Rafael Ranch.] THIEVES. Staying in a house full of things for friends who were away once there was a burglary. I never knew till a day or two after. Well, the things were mostly recovered; it was an old servant and his partner who did it. When we looked around there was an outside adobe store room that would not open and a locksmith said that the door was not locked. After some gymnastics we found through an extremely dusty window that there was something against the door. The crafty George had jammed a crowbar into the floor and leaned it against the door so that when shut the other end of the bar dropped under a crosspiece and held the door like a rock. Wonder where he learned that. [Illustration: California--Voices of the Night.] [Illustration: Pincher--All That Could be Seen, or Heard.] One night, being away from a ranch some one went into my bedroom and took the cash box (only $225 and $50 was mine and $15 A. C. J's). There were two men playing chess in the next room who never went to see what was going on though all the dogs were wild the men say, and the men's quarters are some distance away. We found the broken box on the tennis court, house table, all the money, but $19 church money in an envelope, gone of course. Never knew who did it. Another time, at a little ranch I had five miles from town, I used to walk out sometimes at night. Some one broke in one night as I found the door open but nothing gone. So next Sunday I left everything just the same and came out after dark but earlier and lay down with my gun just opposite the door, at twelve whoever it was came (there was no house near) and I lay trying to hear what they said but could not. They came to the door and then that little fiend Pincher (my fox terrier) turned up from some where and "raised Cain"; they left and I followed a little way; it was a black night; struck one that searching for gentlemen one had not been introduced to, able to see nothing ahead and with the light from the open door in one's rear, was not correct; so I went to bed. Next morning found where they had tied their horses in the willows down by the creek. Mexicans from the mountains probably. Have not had many robbery games. Father went down once long ago with a sawed off shotgun and I went to open the door. I asked him after "what he thought about?" and he said that he thought he should spoil a new carpet. Another time still further back, when so small that I was sleeping in his room, I woke him to see the shadow of a ladder on the blind in London. There were burglars, but in the next house. He caught one and let him go and the grateful ruffian sent him a paper of written rules as to how to make his house safe. [Illustration: "Marshals Them the Way That They Should Go?"] [Illustration: "Oh Lie Down P.---- It's All Right."] BRIEF AUTHORITY. Once upon a time a man, call him P.o1, was Marshal at a big picnic and cavorted around in a gorgeous scarf, riding an ancient but fiery untamed Mexican bronco, blanco I mean, which had lots of action, particularly forward. This man had been yarning with another, call him P.o2, who had also been in the golden South Americas and who, being in that frivolous state of mind, often found in travelers, insisted on climbing up behind P.o1 whenever he got a chance, and inciting the blanco till the action became worse than ever, and the three nearly got seasick. They did not though, but feasted sumptiously on part of a whole bullock barbecued, which was so good that they wished they had known him when alive; might have been better men. Picnic was a success but P.o2 was not satisfied with one day, and carried on till a couple of weeks later P.o1 got a message to come to the St. C. hotel. P.o2 had got D.T.'s and was amusing himself trying to get out of a three-story window. The St. C. people sent for P.o1 who took the maniac away and kept him in his bedroom for four abandoned nights. P.o2 was big and wiry and strong withal, and in the lengua del pais it was "no circus". P.o2 got better and two years after P.o1 had a telegram from him saying their ship went down in the Atlantic and took his twenty thousand draft with her, and he was busted. Now he is in England with a title and estate and P.o1 has neither, and this is the reward of virtue--but P.o1 was a Marshal once--and "The world goes up, and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown never come over again." "La vie est vaine: Un peu d'amour, Un peu de haine ... Et puis--bon-jour! La vie est brève: Un peu d'espoir, Un peu de rève ... Et puis--bonsoir." ... * * * * * Transcriber's Notes Repositioned illustrations and silently corrected minor punctuation errors. Retained original spelling except for the following changes: Page 21: Tencriffe may be a typo for Teneriffe (now Tenerife). (Orig: Eleven days in the Bay of Biscay off Tencriffe.) Page 27: Changed "quanaco" to "guanaco." (Orig: everything is mixed up with the quanaco in the dark) Page 61: Changed "villians" to "villains." (Orig: They were very free and easy villians) Page 90: Changed "prettyly" to "prettily." (Orig: very prettyly built to harmonize with the scenery.) Page 93: Changed "shruberry" to "shrubbery." (Orig: all garden and shruberry to a creek) Page 105: Changed "mim" to "him." (Orig: yarning with another, call mim P.o2,) Page 106: English Translation: "Life is in vain: A little love, A little bit of hatred ... And then--good-day! Life is short: A little hope, A little dream ... And then goodnight." ... 
45306	----	AN AMERICAN HOBO IN EUROPE By WINDY BILL A TRUE NARRATIVE OF THE ADVENTURES OF A POOR AMERICAN AT HOME AND IN THE OLD COUNTRY PRESS OF THE CALKINS PUBLISHING HOUSE SAN FRANCISCO, CAL. Copyright 1907 by B. Goodkind Contents Chapter. Page. I. Billy and Me 1 II. Frisco 41 III. The Journey Overland 85 IV. New York City 130 V. Them Bloomin' Publishers 139 VI. The Ocean Voyage 148 VII. The Steerage 156 VIII. Glasgow 171 IX. Getting a Square Meal 181 X. The Glasgow Green (or Common) 188 XI. Hunting for a Furnished Room 193 XII. Dancing in the Green 202 XIII. Taking in a Glasgow Show 214 XIV. Robert Burns, the Poet 224 XV. Sir Walter Scott 276 CHAPTER I. BILLY AND ME. Stranger, will you please permit me to give you an introduction to a particular friend of mine, little Billy. Little Billy and I had long been friends and had become so intimate that we were more like brothers than friends. Some brothers indeed do not stick to each other as closely as Billy and I did for we never quarreled and the worst that ever happened between us was a little growl which we soon got over. Billy and I had been on the bum together a long while and had prospected for gold and other things in Utah, Nevada and California. The adventures we had if I were to relate them would fill several such volumes as this. And many of them were worth relating, too, but I will merely give a general outline of our experiences, for his experiences were mostly mine. While hiking it along the railroad one day between Ogden and Salt Lake City which is a distance of about thirty-seven miles, we ran across a couple of pretty Mormon girls about half a mile from town and they made goo-goo eyes at us. Billy, who is rather reserved with strangers, was for moving on, but I, who am a friendly and sociable cuss, was in for having a little time with them. "What's the harm, Billy?" said I to my chum; "let's see what kind of stuff the girls are made of." "Oh, what's the use, Windy," responded Billy; "we might get into trouble." "Trouble be blowed," said I; "they ain't agoing to make any trouble so why should _we_. Let's see what their game is anyway." We approached the ladies, tipped our hats, and passed the compliments of the day. They responded pleasantly enough, entered into a conversation with us and soon we all strolled further on from the town and sat down on a viaduct spanning a rushing irrigation ditch. Billy was as chipper as anyone when once he got started and held his end down in the conversation first class. The girls were merry and talkative and seemed to like to talk to the fellers. They told us all about the Mormons, how they live, act, and what they do, and Billy wanted to know how Mormons got married. "Why don't you get married and find out?" asked one of the girls. "I ain't no Mormon," spoke up Billy. "You can be if you want to," says the girl, "religion is free." "All right," says Billy, "I'll think it over." The girls were giving us a game I thought, but we could stand it if they could. We chinned away there for hours until it began to grow late, when the girls concluded they would have to go. We were sorry to part from such elegant company but it was a case of have to. After they had gone we wondered what their little game was, whether it was merely a case of flirtation or whether they were looking for converts to their religion. Billy put the question to me and I told him he could search me; I didn't know. Anyway, neither of us wanted to get married just then, so after the girls left us we troubled our heads no more about them. We stopped in Ogden, Utah, a few days, and then beat our way to Virginia City, Nevada, where we did some laboring work at the old Bonanza mines. Neither of us were miners, although we had prospected some without results. We found the miners to be a good-hearted set of fellows and liked to be among them. Grub and booze could be had for the asking in Virginia City when we were broke, but handouts were more plentiful than work. Not many strangers wander to Virginia City these days, for the town is off the main line and no bums visit it. It is on the decay order. Its streets are in ruins, ditto the sidewalks and houses, and over the whole place there is a musty odor. It is away high up in the air about eight thousand feet above sea level and the wealth that once was brought up from several thousand feet below the surface amounted to billions, not millions of dollars. Today the big mill houses still stand in their usual place in good order but little mining is done there. Some of the big plants, such as the Ophir, Savage, Norcross and Hale, Consolidated Virginia and Best & Belcher are still there, but where there were a thousand miners working before there are not ten working today. The place is strictly on the bum, just like me and my little pardner. Once there were forty or fifty thousand people in Virginia City, but today there are not five thousand, or anyways near that number and the ruins and scenes of desolation make a fellow feel sad. The old International Hotel where the nobs used to stop and spent a fortune every day, is now run by a Chinaman at a cheap rate. There is plenty of fine scenery around Virginia City, however, and plenty of Piute Indians, but the Piutes don't enhance the scenery any. They are a dirty crowd and sit around on decaying lumber piles and hillsides within the town, playing cards and other gambling games. The miners are mostly Cornishmen, Englishmen from Cornwall, England, and as Billy is English he took to them very readily. Carson was our next stopping place and we found it to be a nice little town. It isn't far from Virginia City and is the capital of Nevada. It contains a few thousand people, lots of tall poplar trees which stand along the streets, sage-brush and alkali covered hills and plains, a large stone railroad roundhouse, the State Capitol building (which is enclosed in a park several acres in extent), a U. S. mint and that's about all. No work to speak of is going on around there and as Billy and me could not get anything to do we lived on hand-outs mostly. One evening we saw a hen wandering about rather aimlessly, so to put her out of misery we caught her, wrung her neck and took her out of town where we roasted her over a slow fire. We rubbed her while she was cooking with a little sage to make us think of Christmas and devoured her by starlight. Bill said she reminded him of home and felt kind of blue for a few moments. But he munched away and soon cheered up. It may be the proper thing here to give a short description of Billy. Billy was a little fellow, about five foot two, and was a Britisher, a native of the city of York, in Yorkshire, after which New York is named. He was what you might call a strawberry blonde, for he had light hair and a moustache that was halfway between golden and red. It wasn't one of your straggly kind of moustaches with big hairs sticking out all over it, but small, neat and compact with just the cutest little turned up spit-curls at each end of it you ever saw. Maybe Billy wasn't proud of that moustache! He was dead stuck on it and was nearly always fussing with it and fondling it. Quite often he trimmed it with the aid of a little looking glass which he carried in his kit. Whenever the kit was unrolled Billy got the glass and admired himself with it. And yet I can't say the little cuss was vain, for whenever he met females he seemed indifferent to their charms and looked another way. His eyes were blue and his hands and feet small. Taken all together he wasn't a bad looking chap. Billy had some folks in the old country, a mother and two sisters but no father or brothers, and they lived in old York. Billy was born and raised in York and at a very early age was apprenticed to a harness-maker. His folks probably thought that the sooner he got out and rustled the better for himself and all concerned. Apprentices don't get much in old England, Billy told me, and have to serve long years at their trade before they can become a journeyman. Billy worked seven or eight years for his clothes and board and an occasional ha-'penny with which he bought a meat pie or lollipops. One day the idea struck him that he wasn't getting rich very fast. He had been working a long time and hadn't a bean to show for it, so he began to grow dissatisfied. He had heard some tales of how easy it is to get rich in America and he thought that it might be a good thing if he went there. His mother and sisters didn't agree with his notions but Billy didn't seem to care for that. He just laid low for awhile and said nothing. But the more he thought things over the more dissatisfied he became and the more determined to flit. He slept in the back room of his boss's shop and had to arise early every morning to take down the shutters, sweep out, dust off, and get things in shape generally for business. One day the boss came down and found the shutters still up, the place unswept and no Billy. The boss probably wondered where little Billy was but he had to take it out in wondering, for Billy had flown the coop and was over the hills and far away on his way to London. The boss went to Billy's folks and asked them if they knew where Billy was, but they told him he could search them. They didn't know anything about Billy. The boss probably did some pretty tall cussing just then and made up his mind that something would happen to Billy when he turned up, but he never did turn up and never will until he (Billy) gets rich. Then he'll go back to visit his folks and settle with his master, he told me. Billy says the boss don't owe him any money and he don't owe the boss any, so it's a standoff financially between them; but Billy owes him a few years of service which he says he is willing to put in if the boss can catch him. Billy says he had a hard time of it in London and found it difficult to secure passage to this country. Finally, after many heart-breaking experiences he secured a job as steward on an ocean liner by a fluke, merely because another chap who had previously been engaged failed to show up. Billy was in luck, he thought. He landed in New York with a little tip-money, for the steamship company would pay him no wages unless he made the round trip according to an agreement previously made in London and with this small sum of money he managed to live until he found work. He secured a job as dishwasher in a restaurant and received five dollars a week and his chuck as wages. Out of this big sum he paid room rent and managed to save a little money which he sent home to his mother. Compared with what he had been getting in the old country Billy considered that he was on the road to fortune and he felt elated. He held down his job for some months but got into a difficulty one day with his boss over something or other and got fired. He took his discharge much to heart and concluded to leave New York. He made his way to Philadelphia, about one hundred miles west, and there secured work in a small restaurant as a hashslinger. When he left this place because of a little argument with another waiter, he concluded to go out West where he was told the opportunities were great. I met him in a camp seated at a fire one evening surrounded by a lot of 'bos in Wyoming. He didn't look wealthy just then. We scraped up an acquaintance and I took to the young fellow at the first go-off as I saw he was not a professional vag, and we joined forces and have been together ever since. Our trip from Carson in Nevada over the mountains into California was a delightful one. From Carson to Reno the scenery is no great shakes (although it was over hill and dale), for the hills looked lone and barren. The crops had just been gathered from these hills and dales. The leaves were turning color on the trees and it was the melancholy season of the year when nature looks blue. Me and Billy weren't melancholy, however, for we were good company to each other and never felt lonely. At Reno early one morning we crept into an unsealed boxcar and rode upward to the high Sierras. The scenery when day broke was so fine that we were enchanted. No barren mountains were here and no sage-brush covered plains, but well-timbered mountains whereon grew trees and bushes of all kinds. To us it seemed like wakening from autumn to spring. Billy and me couldn't understand this. A few miles away were leaves that were turning in their autumn tints whilst here everything was green and fresh like the dawning of life. It astonished us but made us feel good all over. We were both as happy and joyous as if we were millionaires. Here was a beautiful sheet of water with a big paper-mill near it; further along was a little railroad station entirely surrounded by hills. Nothing but lofty mountains towered all around us, with a canyon running through them, along which we rode. Ice-ponds were there with no ice in them just then, for it was the wrong season for ice, but numerous huge ice-houses were there, which showed us what the ponds were for. The iron horse wound around and around these lofty mountains and the keen, pure air made us feel as good as if we had been taking a nip. We sure felt gay and happy as larks. By-and-by we reached a place called Truckee which seemed to be quite a town. We hopped off to reconnoiter for we knew the freight train would be there some little time, and noticed that there was only one street in the town, which contained several stores, a butcher-shop or two, several restaurants, two hotels and about a dozen or more saloons. As we walked along the street we noticed a sign over a stairway leading into a cellar which read, "Benny's Gray Mule." We started to go down the steps but found that "Benny's Gray Mule" was shut up tight. Too bad! A saloon with such a romantic name as that ought to thrive. We went into another saloon and I ordered two beers and threw a dime upon the counter in payment. "Come again," said Mr. Barkeep, giving me an evil glance. I hesitated. "Another dime, pardner, all drinks are ten cents here," says barkeep. "All right," says I, "don't get huffy; I didn't know the price." I laid down another dime and this Mr. Barkeep swept into his till nonchalantly. The place seemed tough and so did the barkeeper. Toward the rear of the large room was a lunch counter where a square meal could be had for two bits (25 cents), or coffee and hot cakes for fifteen cents; sandwiches for a dime each; a piece of pie and coffee, ten cents. In convenient places were gambling layouts where a fellow could shoot craps, play roulette or stud-horse poker. It was too early in the day for gambling but a few tough-looking nuts were there sitting around and waiting for a chance to try their luck. We saw all we wanted of this place and sloped. Truckee is the last big town in California going eastward, and it is a lumber camp, railroad division and icing station (refrigerator cars are iced there). A pretty rough old place it is. Me and Billy bought a couple of loaves of bread and some cheese and then made tracks for our box-car. We found it all right and climbed aboard. Our train had done a lot of switching at Truckee and a good many cars had been added to the train. Two big engines now were attached to the train instead of one and soon with a "toot toot" we were off. It was uphill all the way and the locomotives seemed to be having a hard time of it for their coughs were loud and deep and the hissing of steam incessant. To Billy and me the work was easy for all we had to do was to listen to the laboring engines and look out at the pretty scenery. The scenery was fine and no mistake, for the higher we went the prettier it got. Mountains we saw everywhere with spruce, fir, pine and cedar trees upon them. The views were ever changing but soon we came to a lot of snow-sheds that partly shut off the views. They must have been a hundred miles in length, for it took us an awful long time to get through them. The sheds were huge affairs of timber built over the track to keep off the snow in winter, and I felt like stopping and counting how many pieces of timber were in each shed. It must have taken a forest to build these sheds. Along in the afternoon we began to get hungry, so we jumped off at a place called Dutch Flat, to see what we could scare up in the shape of a handout. The outlook didn't seem promising to us for all we could see of Dutch Flat was a lot of Chinese shacks strung along one side of the railroad track. "Billy, I guess we're up against it here," I remarked; "I don't see any signs of a white man's house around. Where can we get anything to eat?" "Let's try the Chinks; we've got to have something to eat, you know; we can't starve," ruefully responded Billy. We were both pretty hungry by this time for the bracing mountain air had given us a hearty appetite. I stepped up to the first hut we came to, rapped at the door and when a chink opened it told him we were very hungry and would like something to eat. "No sabee," says the chink, slamming the door. I tried other huts with the same result. It was "no sabee" with all of them. I told Billy that my errand was a failure and his jaw dropped. "How much money have you got, Billy?" I asked. Billy dug down and brought up a lone nickel. I had a dime. I asked Billy to give me his nickel and told him that as we couldn't beg any grub maybe we might be able to buy fifteen cents' worth of something. With the fifteen cents I strode forth to try my luck once more. I saw a very old Chinaman in front of his hut and asked him if he would sell me fifteen cents worth of grub. "No gotee anything; only law (raw) meat." "What kind of meat?" "Pork chop," answered the old man, briefly. "All right, here's fifteen cents; give me some meat." I handed him the money and he went inside and brought out two fair sized chops. "You sabee cookee?" asked the aged celestial. "Heap sabee, you bet; me cookee before," remarked I. "All lightee," said the celestial, giving me a little salt and pepper. The country around Dutch Flat was hilly so Billy and me hunted up some secluded spot where we could eat our chops in peace and quietness. We built a rousing fire, for wood around there was plentiful, and put the chops upon long sticks which we hung over the fire. The grass around our camp was pretty dry and the first thing we knew the fire began to spread all over the country. When we stamped it out on one side it made good headway on the other side, and do all we could we couldn't stop it. We got scared, dropped our meat and sloped. It wasn't long before the Chinamen saw the fire and then there was a whole lot of loud talk in Chinese. The whole village was out in a jiffy with buckets, pails, empty oil cans and any old thing that would hold water and at it they went, trying to put out the fire. Not a few of the Chinamen procured wet sacks with which they tried to beat out the flames, but it was no go. Me and Billy returned and grabbed a sack each, wet it and aided all we could in putting out the fire, but it had gained too much headway and defied us all. I concluded that it was going to burn down all the Sierra mountains before it got through. There was a laundry in the Chinese village for I noticed a lot of white man's underwear and white shirts hanging on lines to dry, and near by was the washerman's horse tethered to a stake. When the horse saw and smelt the flames he became frantic and was a hard horse to hold. His owner ran up and yelled and shouted at him in Chinese but the horse either did not or would not understand what was said to him for he tried to kick the stuffing out of his boss and everything else that came near him. He kicked down every wash line that he could, one after another, and did his best to break loose from his halter, but it was no go. He wouldn't let his boss get anyway near him for his heels flew in every direction and it made us laugh to hear the Chinamen swear in Chinese. After the brute kicked down every line within reach of his heels he finally broke loose and galloped over the hills at a breakneck pace. For all that Billy and I know to the contrary he is galloping yet. Billy and me concluded that it was about time for us to skip out, too, so we did so. We had done all we could to help put out the fire and lost our grub in the operation, so we felt that we had done our duty. I have often thought of that fire since and wondered what the result was, whether it ended in great damage to the country and the destruction of the Chinese village, or whether the horse had ever showed up again. There is no rainfall in California during the summer months, I am told, and in consequence the grass and much of the vegetation dries up and one has to be very careful where to light a fire. We didn't know that, hence the disaster. We climbed into our car again, and were ready to move on whenever the train did. We lit our pipes, indulged in a smoke, and laughed over our recent experience. We must have laughed pretty loud, for a head was suddenly thrust into the car doorway and a stern visage confronted us. It was the brakeman's. "What you fellers doin' there?" asked Brakey. "Only taking a ride," responded Billy. "Where to?" asked Brakey. "Down the line a little way." "What are you riding on?" asked Mr. Brakeman. "On a freight train," innocently answered Billy. I guffawed, for I knew Billy had given the wrong answer, but Brakey never cracked a smile. "Got any money or tickets?" asked he, gravely. "No," answered Billy. "Get off then and be quick about it," was the stern command. Off we hopped and quite crestfallen, too, for our journey for the time being was ended. We wandered back to the railroad station to ascertain when the next train would leave. There would be nothing until early the next morning we learned, so there was nothing for us to do but to unroll our blankets and lay off somewhere near by where we could catch a train as it came by. We were very hungry, but turned in supperless, and chewed tobacco to satisfy the cravings of our stomachs. We soon fell asleep but kept one ear open to catch the sound of any freight train coming our way. Wayfarers are wonderfully acute, even in their sleep, as regards noticing the approach of trains. No matter how sound their sleep may be, they will wake up at the proper time to board a train nine times out of ten, unless they are too badly boozed. During the early hours of the morning a long train full of empty cars came our way and we made it easily. It was mighty chilly at that time of the day, but as we had on heavy overcoats, our bodies did not suffer much. Our feet, however, did. Fellows who beat their way, though, must put up with such little inconveniences without kicking. It belongs to the business. They must bear hunger, cold, thirst, dust, dirt and other trifles of that kind and get used to it. Those who travel in Pullman and tourist cars pay their money and sleep on feathers, but we slept just as well and nearly as warmly, wrapped in our blankets in a box car. During our wanderings we slept on the ground, in old shacks, barns, sidetracked cars or any old place and got along fairly well. We didn't have washbasins to wash in, but we carried soap, brushes and hand-glasses with us, and could make our toilet at any place where there was running water. Water was plentiful in the Sierra mountains. We pulled out of Dutch Flat when the train got ready and flew down the mountain side at great speed. We could go as lively as the train could in our car, however, and the speed was exhilarating, but the morning breeze was mighty keen and cutting. We would have given a great deal for a cup of hot coffee just then, but of course it wasn't to be had. When we neared a place called Auburn we saw a grove of trees, the leaves of which were a deep green, and among them hung little balls of golden yellow fruit that looked good to us. "Hi, Billy," exclaimed I, "look at them yellow balls hanging on the trees, will you? Wonder what they are?" Billy looked at them fixedly for quite a while and then suddenly made a shrewd guess. "Them's oranges, Windy, as sure as we're alive." These were the first oranges Billy or I had ever seen growing on trees and they surely looked good to us. They reminded us of Christmas trees. We would liked to have jumped out to get some oranges for breakfast, but they were so near and yet so far that we desisted. How tantalizing it was to see a tempting breakfast before you and not be able to eat it. But the train didn't stop anywhere for refreshments, so that let us out. When we got down to a place called Roseville, which was a junction, we noticed several orange trees standing near the depot with plenty of oranges hanging amid the leaves, and oh, how we did long to make a rush for them. The train crew was on that side of the train, however, and there were plenty of people near the depot so we dared not make the venture. Oh, if this train would only stop twenty minutes for refreshments maybe we could get a handout, but it didn't stop, so we had to go hungry till we reached Sacramento. We got to Sacramento, the Capital of California, before noon, and jumped off the train in the railroad yard, keeping an eye on the bulls and fly-cops that buzzed around there. No one got on to us so we walked leisurely along with our blankets slung over our shoulders. The railroad yards were quite extensive and it took us quite a while to traverse them. In them were car shops, foundries and all kinds of buildings and things pertaining to railroads. Sacramento is a railroad division, the first out of Frisco, I believe, and we noticed a good deal doing in the way of railroad manufacturing, but we were too hungry to care for such things just then. We got to the passenger train shed which was a large housed-over building of glass and iron, and outside of it came upon a broad street which led into the town. Alongside of this street I noticed a slough with green scum upon it which didn't look good to me for swimming or any other purpose. On the other side of this pond was a big Chinatown and Billy and me thought we might as well see what it looked like. We entered it and saw a young workingman come out of a ten-cent restaurant. Billy stepped up to him and boned him for the price of a square meal. He listened to Billy's hungry tale of woe and coughed up a dime with which we bought two loaves of bread. We then wandered through the streets looking for a retired spot where we could sit down and eat but the streets in that locality were so filthy and the Mongolians so plentiful that we concluded to keep a moving. We came to J and then to K Street, which were broad business thoroughfares full of stores and then we walked along K Street until we saw a shady green park. To it we wandered and found a comfortable rustic seat under the shade of a spreading oak tree. We threw our blankets behind our seat and sat down and blew off steam. We were tired, hot, dusty and hungry. While eating we looked about us. The park wasn't a large one but it was a trim one. The lawns were shaved down close, the winding walks were well-kept, there were flowers to be seen, palm trees, pampas-plume bushes and, oh ye gods! orange trees with oranges on them. "Say Billy," remarked I with my mouth full of bread, "get on to the orange trees, will you?" "Where?" asked Billy, with wide-staring eyes. "Why, right along the walk up that way," said I, pointing. "Sure enough," says Billy, "keep an eye on my grub, will you, while I get a hatful," said he excitedly. "Keep your eyes peeled for cops," admonished I, as Billy rushed off. Billy made the riffle all right and came back with four or five nice looking oranges, which were all he could carry. He remarked that they would do for the present. After stowing the bread and getting a drink of muddy water from a fountain near by, we tackled the oranges and found them dry and tasteless and bitter as gall. "Call them things oranges!" sneered Billy, as he threw his portion away with disgust; why they're bitter as gall. I've bought many a better orange than that in the old country for a penny. "I thought they raised good oranges in California," said I, "but if they're all like these, then I don't want any of them," whereupon I threw mine over my shoulder, too, into the shrubbery behind me. Oh, weren't they bitter; Boo! "Billy, we've been misinformed," said I, "the oranges in California are N. G." "Right you are, Windy, but as they didn't cost us anything we oughtn't to kick." After eating and resting, we took in the town. We found Sacramento to be a sizeable place, containing about fifty thousand people, and the people to us seemed sociable, chatty and friendly. We both liked the place first class, and as we were broke, concluded to try our luck there for awhile. We struck a street cleaning job and held it down for a week. The water used in Sacramento comes from the Sacramento river, we were told, and as it wasn't at all good, we took to beer, as did many others. We were told about a class of people in Sacramento called Native Sons, who monopolized all the good things in the way of jobs. Native Sons are native born Californians who take a great deal of pride in their state and have an organization which they call the Native Sons of the Golden West. The aim of this organization is to beautify California, plant trees, keep up the old missions, preserve the giant redwood trees, forests, and the like. Lots of fellows spoke ill of the Native Sons, but we didn't, for they weren't hurting us any. The native Californians we met in Sacramento to us seemed a genial sort of people who are willing to do strangers or anyone a good turn, if they can. Lots of them were hustlers and full of business and their city surely is a snorter. There are several large parks in Sacramento, fruit and vegetable markets, and any number of swell saloons where a schooner of beer and a free lunch can be had for a nickel. Then there is the Western Hotel, State House and Capitol Hotels, all of which are big ones, and any number of fine stores and lots of broad, well-shaded residence streets, traction cars, electric lights, etc. The city is right up to date. After we had been there about a week, Billy suddenly got a severe attack of the shakes and seemed in a bad way. His lips turned blue, his eyes burned with fever, his teeth rattled like clappers, and his body shook as if he had the jim-jams. I went to a dispensary and had some dope fixed up for him, but it didn't seem to do him any good. I then bought a quart bottle of whiskey, and poured the whole of it down his throat. He took to it as naturally as a kid does to its mother's milk, but every day the poor little cuss got worse. "Let's hike out of this place, Billy," said I; "the best cure for the shakes is to go where there isn't any, for as long as we stay here you'll be sick." Billy, as usual, was willing to do as I said (and I was always willing to do as he said), so we made tracks out of Sacramento in pretty short order. We crossed the Sacramento river, which is about a half a mile across, on a wooden bridge, and it was all Billy could do to walk across it. He was as weak as a kitten and so groggy on his pins that he could hardly stand up. Some people who saw him probably thought he was boozed, but he wasn't, any more than I was. I took hold of his arm and led him along, but the little cuss sat down on a string piece of the bridge and told me to let him die in peace. "Die nothing, you silly little Britisher: you ain't any nearer death than I am," said I. "Sit down and rest yourself and then we'll take another little hike. We'll make a train somewhere on the other side of the river, then ho! for 'Frisco, where our troubles will soon be ended. Brace up, old man, and never say die." I jollied the little cuss along in that way until we got to a little station where we could catch a train and we soon did catch one. We rode on to Davis, which was a junction, and close to the station I saw a large vineyard. I pointed it out to Billy. "Stay where you are, Billy, and I'll get you some grapes," said I. Grapes were ripe just then. I jumped over the fence and secured a big hatful of fine big, flaming tokay grapes. They were delicious and did Billy a world of good. We were now fairly on our way to 'Frisco, the Mecca of all bums. We never saw a bum yet who hadn't been in 'Frisco or who didn't know all about the city. Billy and me had heard about it, but hadn't seen it, and though we were on the tramp, didn't consider ourselves bums. We worked when we could find something to do, but when there was nothing to do, of course we couldn't do it. Work is something a bum will never do. Lots of the bums we met along the road were criminals and some of them pretty desperate ones at that. A few were chaps who were merely traveling to get somewhere and had no money to pay their way. Others had money and would not pay. Some were honest laboring men flitting from point to point in search of work, and not a few were unfortunates who had held high positions and were down and out through drink or misfortune of some sort. There were all sorts beating their way, and there always will be. The professional vag is a low down fellow who has few redeeming qualities. He is agreeable with his chums and that is about all. Neither Billy nor I were low, base born fellows, or criminals, and our parents were respectable, so that is why we took to each other. We were fellow mortals in distress, that is all. We did not think it very wrong to take a chicken if we were very hungry, but that was the extent of our evil doing. We bought our own clothes, blankets, etc., and never broke into a house to steal anything. One outfit that we were with at one time in Utah, one night stole a suit case that was standing on the platform of a railroad station and they divided up its contents among themselves. It consisted of a coat, vest, pants, collars, ties, handkerchiefs, brush, combs, etc., and had we been caught the whole bunch of us might have been pinched, but the gang made tracks in a hurry and got as far away from the scene of the robbery as they could. Some of the characters we met in our travels would have contaminated a saint almost, for their looks, actions and words revealed their disposition. The higher up in crime some of these chaps were, and the abler and more desperate, the more were they admired by some of their fellows. This kind of chaps were generally the captains of the camp, and gave orders that were readily obeyed by the others. One bum was generally commanded by the captain to go and rustle up bread, another was sent for meat, a third for coffee, a fourth for sugar, a fifth for pepper and salt, etc. No matter how things were obtained, if they were obtained no questions were asked. One fellow returned to camp with a quarter of a lamb one night and boastfully told how he had got it. It had hung up outside a butcher shop and he stole it. The captain mumbled his approval in low tones, for he was too mighty to praise loudly or in many words. The ways of hobos are various, and it would take up a great deal of space to describe them in detail. It was along toward sundown when we made a train out of Davis. Davis, like Sacramento, was a pretty hard town to get out of, and the best we could do was to ride the rods. That was easy enough, even for Billy, who was rather delicate at that time. The rods under some freight cars are many and well arranged for riding purposes. They are fairly thick bars of iron set close together, stretching from one side of the car to the other, underneath the body of the car, and though not very often soft, when an overcoat is strung across them, with rolled up blankets for a pillow, they are the next best thing to a berth in a Pullman car. When one side of our body ached, we just turned over to the other side, and it beat riding on the bumpers or brake-beams all hollow. A berth in a Pullman costs about five dollars per night, fare extra, so we were saving lots of money. Beating our way on a railroad we considered no crime at all, for to judge from what I can read in the newspapers, the railroads rob the people, so why shouldn't the people rob them? That's a good argument, ain't it? The measly old train must have been a way-freight, for she made long stops at every little excuse of a town she came to. About ten o'clock at night she came to a place called Benicia, and there the train was cut in two, so I hopped off to see what the difficulty was. On both sides and ahead of us was water. I rushed back to Billy and told him to get off in a hurry. "What's the matter?" asked Billy. "There's water all around us, and I guess they're going to carry the cars over on a ferry boat. I suppose our journey for the night will end here." "Not much, Windy," replied Billy; "I want to get to 'Frisco tonight and maybe we can pay our way across on the boat." We walked boldly on a boat that we saw the cars being pulled onto by a locomotive, and when we got near a cabin a ship's officer stepped up to us and wanted to know where we were going. "To 'Frisco," said I. "To 'Frisco?" said he with a grin. "Well, you'll have to pay your way across the ferry on this boat." "What's the fare?" asked Billy. "Seeing that you two are good-looking fellows, I'll only charge you ten cents apiece," said the captain, or officer, jokingly. We both drew a long breath of relief, for we thought the boat was going to 'Frisco and that we'd have to pay a big price. I handed the good-natured officer two dimes for us both and we felt happy once more. The boat wasn't long making the trip, only about ten minutes or so, and on the other side we found no difficulty in making our train again, after she was made up. We held her down until she reached Oakland, which is opposite 'Frisco. There we learned there was one more ferry to cross before we could get into 'Frisco, so Billy and I decided to remain where we were for the night, for it was late. We prowled around until we found an open freight car, and turned in for a snooze. The next morning was a beautiful one, and we were up and out by daylight. The weather wasn't cold, the sun was bright and cheery, but over 'Frisco we could see a sort of fog hanging. It was easy enough to see across the bay of San Francisco, for the distance is only about five miles, but the length of the bay we could not determine, for it stretched further than the eye could reach. We noticed an island in the bay not far from Oakland, and from Oakland a long wharf extended far out into the harbor, maybe a mile or so. We walked along this wharf until we came to a big train-shed and ferry house combined, where we coughed up two more dimes and got upon a large ferry-boat. As it was very early in the morning, very few passengers were on the boat. We walked to the front of the boat and drank in the delicious morning breeze. The ferry-boat was as large and fine a one as I had ever seen. It was a double-decker with large cabins below and aloft, and with runways for vehicles between. The cabins were very spacious and handsomely fitted up. At about half past five the boat started on her way across, and now we were making a straight shoot for 'Frisco. Talking of 'Frisco, by the way, permit me to say a word about the name. The people of San Francisco don't like to have their city called 'Frisco, but prefer to have it called by its full title. They think the abbreviation is a slur. I can't see it in that light. 'Frisco is short and sweet and fills the bill; life is too short to call it San Francisco. The ride across the bay was fine and lasted about half an hour. We passed an island which someone told us was Goat Island, and Billy and me wondered whether there were any billies or nannies on it. We didn't get close enough to see any. Further on we saw another island which was hilly like Goat Island. It was called Alcatraz. It contained an army post and was fortified. It looked formidable, we thought. Not very far away, and straight out, was the Golden Gate, which had no gates near it that we could see, but just two headlands about a mile or so apart. Outside of the Golden Gate is the Pacific Ocean. We were now nearing 'Frisco, which lay right ahead of us. Nothing but steep hills could we see. They were built up compactly with houses. As we got close to the shore we saw plenty of level streets and wharves, and alongside of the wharves, ships. We steered straight for a tall tower on which there was a huge clock, which told us the time--six o'clock. We entered the ferry slip, moored fast and soon set foot in 'Frisco. CHAPTER II. 'FRISCO. Our first glimpse of 'Frisco made us like the place. Near the ferry slip were eating joints by the bushel, more saloons than you could shake a stick at, sailors' boarding houses, fruit stands containing fruit that made our teeth water; oyster-houses, lodging-houses--in fact there was everything there to make a fellow feel right at home. 'Frisco is all right and everyone who has been there will tell you so. What she ain't got ain't worth having. Every bum that I ever saw spoke well of the town and gave it a good name. It is a paradise for grafters. You can get as good a meal there for ten cents as you will have to pay double for anywhere else. Fruit is fine, plentiful and cheap; vegetables are enormous in size and don't cost anything, hardly; any and every kind of fish is there; meats are wonderful to behold, and not dear; and say, it's an all-around paradise, sure enough. Every kind of people can be found there--Greasers, Greeks, Scandinavians, Spanish, Turks, Armenians, Hebrews, Italians, Germans, Chinese, Japanese, negroes and all sorts. It is a vast international city. Bums are there in unlimited quantities, any number of criminals, bunco-men, "chippies" till you can't rest, highbinders by the score up in Chinatown, and lots of bad people. The town is noted for being pretty lively. It surely is wide open and you can sit in a little game at any time. Californians in particular and Westerners generally take to gambling as naturally as a darky does to watermelons and pork chops. The 'Frisco gambling houses are never closed. Efforts have been made to close them but they were futile. Might as well try to sweep back the ocean with a broom. There are lots of good people in 'Frisco, but the bad ones are more than numerous. I think 'Frisco is about the liveliest, dizziest place on the continent today, of its size. It has more restaurants, saloons, theaters, dance halls, pull-in-and-drag-out places, groceries with saloon attachments to them, than any place I ever struck. Money is plentiful, easy to obtain and is spent lavishly. A dollar seems less to a Californian than a dime to an Easterner. He will let it go quicker and think less of it. If he goes into a restaurant or saloon and buys a drink or meal which does not suit him, he pays the price and makes no kick, but don't go there again. He don't believe in kicking. He was not brought up that way. He will lose his money at the races and try his luck again. "Better luck next time," says he, and his friends to him. He will take his girl out and blow in his money for her on the very best of everything. The best theater, the best wine supper are none too good for his girl. What if he does go broke, there's plenty more money to be had. Money is no object to a 'Friscoite. Billy and I weren't in 'Frisco long before we got onto these things. Californians are sociable and will talk to anyone. Billy concluded to live and die there, the place suited him so well. Work was plentiful, wages were high, and the working hours few. Billy said it beat the old country all hollow. Ha'-pennies or tup-pennies didn't go here; the least money used was nickels and dimes. Nothing could be purchased for less than a nickel (five cents) for even a newspaper of any kind cost that much. No wonder the newsboys could shoot craps or play the races. Even the servant girls gambled in something or other. 'Frisco is all right. Bet your sweet life! The rest of America ain't in it with her. Lots of Britishers live there, too; that is why Billy liked it so well. Everyone who ain't sick or got the belly ache, or some other trouble, likes 'Frisco. As regards climate! They have it in 'Frisco. About sixty degrees by the thermometer all the year round. No snow, ice, cyclones or mosquitoes; but bed-bugs, fleas, earthquakes and fogs. As for fleas, they are thick in 'Frisco and mighty troublesome. When you see a lady or gent pinch his or her leg that means a bite--flea. As 'Frisco is built on a sandy peninsula, that may be the reason why fleas are so plentiful, for it is said they like sandy spots. Billy and I had a little money which we earned in Sacramento, so we concluded that the first thing to do was to get a square meal. We sought out a likely looking restaurant along the water front where a good meal could be had for ten cents and in we went. I ordered a steak and Billy ordered mutton chops; Billy wanted tea and I wanted coffee. Each of us had a bowl of mush first, then potatoes, bread and butter, hot cakes, tea or coffee, and meat. More than we could eat was put before us and I had a horse-like appetite. Billy was a little off his feed. The meal was as good as it was cheap. The next thing to be done was to hunt up a lodging place. There were any number of them in the vicinity, and we soon found a joint where the two of us could room together for a dollar and a half per week. The place was over a saloon, and though it wasn't high-toned, it seemed neat enough. The next event on the program was sight-seeing. We left our things under lock and key in our room and leisurely strolled along the water front to see what we could see. While strolling along the street facing the wharves, we were passing a clothing store when a Hebrew gentleman stepped out and asked us if we wanted to buy a suit of clothes. We told him no, but he didn't seem to want to take "no" for an answer. "Shentlemens, I got some mighty fine clothes inside and I'll sell them very cheap." "Ain't got no money, today," said I, as we tried to pass on. "Don't be in der hurry," said the Hebrew gentleman; "come in and take a look, it won't cost you noddings." I was for moving on, but Billy said, "What's the harm? Let's go in and see what he's got." In we went, slowly and cautiously, but we knew the old Jew couldn't rob us in open daylight. "What size do you wear?" asked he of Billy. "Damfino," says Billy; "I didn't come in to buy any clothes today." "Let me measure you," says the Israelite, "I got some clothes here that will make your eyes water when you see dem." Billy stood up and let his measure be taken. This done, the vender of clothes made an inspection of the clothing-piles, calling out to Jakie in a back room to come forth and assist. Jakie appeared, and seemed a husky chap of twenty-five or so. Jakie had been eating his breakfast. The two storekeepers went through the clothing piles. "Aha!" triumphantly exclaimed the old Hebrew. "I've got a fine suit here. Dey'll make you look like a gentleman. Try 'em on," turning to Billy. He brought forth the clothes where Billy could examine them, but after examination Billy shook his head. "You don't like 'em?" exclaimed the old gent; "what's de matter with 'em?" "Oh, I don't fancy that kind of cloth," said Billy. It looked like gray blotting paper. "What kind do you like?" asked the Hebrew, rather aggressively. "Oh, I don't know," answered Billy. The Jew was getting mad, but he brought forth another suit after a short search. "Here is something fine; you kin wear 'em for efery day or Sunday." Billy examined the clothes, but shook his head. "Dry 'em on! Dry 'em on! You'll see they'll fid you like der paper on der vall!" "What's the use trying 'em on?" said Billy, quietly; "I don't like 'em and they wouldn't fit me anyway." "Not like 'em!" exclaimed the now thoroughly enraged clothing merchant; "I don't think you want to buy no clothes at all; you couldn't get a finer suit of clothes in San Francisco, and look at der price, too; only ten dollars, so hellup me Isaac!" "The price is all right, but I don't like the cut of the clothes," said Billy. "You don't like der style?" The angry man now got the thought through his noddle that Billy wasn't going to buy any clothes, whereupon he grew furious. "What you come in here for, you dirty tramp. Get out of here, or I trow you out." Here I stepped up and told the miserable duffer what I thought of him. I expected there was going to be a knock down and drag out scene, but as there were two of us, the two Israelites thought better of it than to tackle us. The young feller hadn't said a word, but the old man was mad clear through. If he had been younger I would have swiped him one just for luck. We got out of the place all right, the old man and I telling each other pretty loud what we thought of each other. I told Billy he ought not to have gone in there at all for he didn't intend to buy any clothes. "He wanted me to go in, didn't he, whether I wanted to or not?" asked Billy. "Of course, he did. You should have given him a kick in the rump and skipped out. That's what I would have done." "I'm glad it didn't end in a row. We might have got into trouble," concluded Billy. We strolled along the wharves to see the shipping. The ferry-house at the foot of Market Street is a huge granite building (with a lofty clock-tower on top) wherein are to be found the various ticket offices of the Southern Pacific, Santa Fe, the North Shore, California & North Western and other railroads. Up stairs in the second story is an extensive horticultural exhibit, where are displayed the products of California; there are the offices of various railroad and other officials, there, too. To take a train on any railroad one must cross the bay on a ferry-boat. Each railroad line has its own line of ferry-boats and slips. One line of boats crosses to Oakland, Alameda and Berkeley; another to Tiburon; a third to Sausalito; a fourth to Point Richmond, etc. Every boat is a fine one and those of the Santa Fe Railroad plying to Point Richmond are all painted yellow. The traffic at the ferry building is considerable at all hours of the day and night. The next wharf, which is also a covered one like the ferry-house, is the landing-place of the Stockton steamboats. There are two lines of these boats plying between 'Frisco and Stockton, and they are rivals. The distance between Stockton and 'Frisco by water is about one hundred miles, yet the fare is only fifty cents. There are sleeping berths aboard, if one cares to use them, at fifty cents each, and meals may be had for twenty-five cents. Fifty cents in Western lingo is called four bits, and twenty-five cents, two bits. A dime is a short bit and fifteen cents a long bit; six bits is seventy-five cents, and a dollar is simply called a dollar. A few of the wharves we noticed were roofed over, but some were not. The Folsom Street Wharf is devoted to the United States Army transport service, and a huge transport ship going to Manila and other eastern countries can be seen there at any time, almost. No one is allowed on this wharf, except on business. As we hadn't any particular business on this wharf we didn't care to go upon it. There was a watchman at the gate. At a wharf or two from this one all the whaling vessels dock, and 'Frisco today is the greatest whaling port in America, we were told. There was one whaling vessel there at the time, but she didn't look good to us. She was short, squat, black and grimy, and smelled loudly of oil. Billy and I concluded we wouldn't care to sail in such a ship for a hundred dollars per month. Near by was a long uncovered wharf which extended quite a way out into the water. At either side of it were moored big deep-sea going vessels. One was the Dumbarton, of Glasgow, another the Selkirk, a third the Necker--all foreigners. The Selkirk was British, and Billy's heart warmed to her. When he saw an English flag flying on one of the masts tears came to his eyes and he got homesick. He walked up the gang-plank and wanted to go on board, but a sailor on deck told him there was no admittance. Billy marched down again much crestfallen. There are lots of evil characters in 'Frisco, so that is why the mariners are wary. We slowly sauntered along the wharf, and at a string piece at the end of it we came across other idlers, several of whom were engaged in fishing. We saw several young sharks pulled up and several other kinds of fish that we didn't know the names of. After watching the fishing for a while we moved on and went into some of the side streets. They were full of saloons, some of which were fitted up very handsomely with plate-glass, fine woodwork, marble floors and elaborate bars with free lunch counter. Other saloons were mere groggeries in which we could see and hear sailors and longshoremen singing and dancing. Steam beer and lager was five cents a glass and whiskey ten cents. Sailors' boarding-houses were numerous in these localities, as were hotels, stores of all kinds, ship-outfitting shops, lumber yards, coal offices, foundries, iron works and the like. We now strolled up Market Street, which is the main thoroughfare of 'Frisco. It is a broad street, flanked on either side by wholesale and retail commercial establishments, high-toned saloons and restaurants. Many street car lines traverse this street by means of cables, and there are one or two horse-car lines. The street was a lively one, and thronged with people and vehicles. Billy and I had heard a great deal about the Golden Gate Park, the Cliff House, the Seal Rocks and the Sutro Baths, so we concluded to take a little jaunt out that way to see what those places were like. The first things we wanted to see were the seals. We boarded a street-car running out to the Cliff House, and found the ride a long and interesting one. The distance was many miles and the fare only five cents. There was much to be seen. Long stretches of unfamiliar streets rolled by, residence and business sections, strange looking houses, hills and valleys, and the like. The air was wonderfully balmy and bracing and not a bit cold. The car whirled us along very rapidly and revealed to us a great deal of Golden Gate Park, and further on lofty tree-covered hills, bare sand hills, and a very extensive public building of some sort which was perched on a tree clad hillside, and then it skimmed along parallel with the ocean. We saw no ships on the ocean, but it was a grand sight nevertheless. We rushed by a life-saving station at railroad speed, which we regretted, for we should like to have seen more of it, and after riding about a mile or so more, finally stopped alongside a shed, which was the end of the car line. Here we hopped off with the rest of the crowd, and walked along a wooden sidewalk which was laid over the sands. Two or three restaurants and saloons were to be seen in the vicinity, and about a half dozen booths. There was a picture gallery or two, and fruit and peanut stands. We bought some candy and peanuts to keep from getting hungry, and then followed the crowd to the beach. We walked along the beach and then up a hill leading to the Cliff House. The views along this road were fine. We came to the Cliff House and saw it was nothing more nor less than a large hotel built on a cliff. It looked pretty high-toned to us, so me and Billy hesitated about going in. "They'll soak us when we get in there, Windy," warned Billy. "Nary time, Billy," retorted I. "We'll go in and if they try to hold us up we'll skip." "All right, then; let's try our luck," said Billy. In we went, and saw a barroom, which we didn't enter. Further on was a glass covered porch, along which were disposed tables and chairs, and which invited us to sit down and have something. We were not hungry or thirsty just then, so we kept a-walking, and through an open window facing the sea we saw some tall rocks in the water, about a quarter of a mile distant, upon which were a whole lot of seals that were barking to beat the band. "There's the seals, Billy, large as life, sure enough," remarked I. Billy stared. "I'll be blowed if they ain't cheeky beggars," said he, with a face full of astonishment. "It's a wonder they'd come so near to the shore." Some of the animals were snoozing on the rocks, others were crawling up the rocky sides of the islet, a few were bellowing, and the whole place seemed covered with them. A wonderful sight it was! We looked until we grew tired, and I wanted to drag Billy away, but he didn't seem to want to go. "There's other things to be seen, Billy," said I; "we can't stay here all day." Billy tore himself away reluctantly and then we wandered over to the Sutro Heights, which is a tall hill with fine and extensive gardens upon it. From this hill a fine view of the ocean may be obtained. There are fine drives in these gardens bordered with flowers, shady walks, statues, fountains, rustic arbors and seats, cosy niches where one could sit and view the ocean, roads built terrace-like upon the cliffs, and other very pretty features. A lovely spot indeed, it was. It was built by Mr. Adolph Sutro, a millionaire. It was free to all. We walked in the gardens until we grew tired, and then sat down and contemplated the ocean. Afterward we strolled toward Golden Gate Park and inspected it. It was close by and we found it a very extensive one. It seemed endless, indeed, to us, for long before we reached an entrance where we could take a car, we were dead tired. We took another route going cityward, for we wanted to see as much of the city as we could. The more we saw of 'Frisco, the better we liked it. It must be seen to be appreciated. We reached Market Street all right, and then we knew where we were. We strolled down toward the ferry-house, near which we knew our lodging-house to be, and after having a good supper, we went to our room to lay off until evening, when there would be more sight-seeing. "What do you think of 'Frisco, Windy?" asked Billy. "Suits me to a T, Billy. Believe I'll camp here for a while." "Same here, Windy. I never struck a place I like better. I think a fellow can get on here. I'm going to try it, anyway." "I'm with you, Billy," said I. "Where'll we go this evening?" "I've heard a lot about Chiney town. Suppose we go there." "Good idea! Let's take it in." Accordingly, about eight o'clock that evening we strolled forth, bent on seeing 'Frisco by gaslight. The streets were well lighted, and we found no difficulty in moving about. By making inquiries we readily found our way to the Mongolian district. What we saw there filled us with amazement. Street after street we saw (and long ones at that) inhabited solely by slanty-eyed Asiatics. There were thousands of them, and it seemed to us that we were transplanted into a Chinese city. All kinds of Chinese establishments were located in this quarter; barber shops, drug stores, furnishing goods stores, butcher shops, cigar manufacturing establishments, restaurants (chop suey), temples, theaters, opium joints in back alleys and basements, street venders who sold fruits, street cobblers, open air fortune tellers, newspapers, bookbinderies, vegetable stores, and not a few high-class curio establishments. Any number of Chinese children were noisily playing in the streets, Chinese women were walking about the streets and all over the quarter was an oriental atmosphere. It made us feel mighty foreign-like. Billy wanted to know whether he was in Asia or America, and I told him Asia. The Chinese women and children interested us considerably. The women were habited in loose flowing robes and trousers, and their lips and faces were painted scarlet. Their hair was done up in thick folds, with long golden pins stuck through them. They were mighty gaudy, I thought. The kids were noisy but interesting. They played all kinds of games like white children. Of course the games they played were Chinese, and what kind of games they were, I don't know. The articles of food and wear displayed were very curious. So were the books, photographs, etc. Billy and I took in the sights, and felt mighty interested in it all. It was better than a circus to us. At about ten o'clock we meandered homeward. We talked late that night about what we had seen, and it was after midnight before we fell asleep. Billy was unaccountably restless that night and kept a-tossing and a-rolling. He kept this up so long that finally I got huffy and asked him what the trouble was. He kept quiet for a while but suddenly he rose up and said he'd be ---- if he didn't think there were bugs in the bed. I felt a bite or two myself, but didn't mind it. "I'm going to get up and see what's in this bed," said Billy. He got up, lit a candle, and I hopped out too, so as to give him a chance to examine things. Billy threw back the clothes and saw three or four good-sized fleas hopping about and trying to escape to a safe shelter. We both went for them bodily, but they were too swift for us. We did a pile of cussing and swearing just then, but the fleas were probably laughing at us from some safe retreat. We couldn't catch a one of them. We went to bed again and I slept soundly, but Billy put in a bad night. I told Billy the next morning he oughtn't to mind such trifling things as fleas. "Trifles, are they?" snorted he, and showed me his bare white skin, which was all eaten up. "Look at that; call them trifles?" "What are you going to do about it, Billy?" inquired I. "Do?" retorted he, with disgust, "why, grin and bear it, of course; what else can I do; but those bites itch like blazes." Billy had to do what all 'Frisco people do when they are bitten--grin and bear it, or cuss and scratch. The 'Frisco fleas sure are lively, and the best way to catch them is to wet your finger and bear down on them suddenly. They'll wiggle away from a dry finger. The next morning was a fine one, balmy and sunny. We arose, dressed, breakfasted, and then felt happy. "How are we going to put in the day, Windy?" asked Billy, after we emerged from a restaurant and stood picking our teeth in front of the place. "Blest if I know," responded I. "Suppose we put it in sight-seeing?" "I'll go you," said Billy. "We haven't seen much of 'Frisco yet. Suppose we take a stroll up Market Street and see what there is to see up that way." Accordingly, up Market Street we leisurely strolled, taking in the sights by the wayside. Market Street, as I said before, is the main thoroughfare of 'Frisco, and is a broad one. The sidewalks are wide enough for a dozen or more people to walk abreast along them and the driveway in the middle of the street contains two or three sets of street-car tracks, and sufficient room on either side for vehicles. The lower portion of the street, toward the ferry-house, is taken up with wholesale business establishments, and the upper portion toward which we were now walking contains retail shops, high-class saloons, restaurants, newspaper buildings, sky-scrapers, banks, department stores, etc. We came to Market and Third Street, and turned down Third Street. It, too, was rather a broad thoroughfare, but not nearly so wide as Market Street. It wasn't high-toned like Market Street, nor were the buildings on it of a high class, for they were mostly of frame, one and two stories in height. The ground floors of these buildings were used as stores and the upper portions as dwellings. Fruit, fish and vegetable stores abounded, and saloons were more than numerous. The size and varieties of the fruit, fish and vegetables in the stores pleased the eye. Fine crabs and clams were there, but the California oysters seemed small. We stepped into a saloon called "The Whale," where a fine free lunch was set out on a side table. There were huge dishes of cheese on the table, tripe, various kinds of sausage sliced up thin, pickled tongue, radishes, cold slaw, pickles, sliced tomatoes and big trays of bread of various kinds. The layout was generous. Having had breakfast but a short time before, all these dainties did not tempt us, but we sat down for awhile and indulged in a smoke, in the meanwhile observing the ways of the patrons of the place. Some seedy looking bums were lined up against the bar chinning whilst others were sipping beer and paying their best respects to the lunch counter. They were a dirty lot, and if some of them weren't hobos, I miss my guess. We didn't remain in the place long, but strolled into a similar establishment further on. In one saloon we noticed a sign over the lunch counter which informed the hungry one to-- "Please regulate your appetite according to your thirst; this is not a restaurant." Notwithstanding the gentle hint conveyed on the sign, the place did a roaring trade, for the liquids as well as the solids were excellent. Beginning from Market and running parallel with Market were Mission, Howard, Folsom, Bryant, Brannan, Bluxome, Townsend, Channel and other streets. Nearly all of them were broad, but a few were narrow, such as Stevenson, Jessie, Minna, Natoma, Tehama, etc., being hardly more than alleys. This was the poorer residence section, inhabited by the working classes. Some of the alleys were tough and contained cheap lodging-houses wherein dwelt many a hard case and criminal. We walked down Third Street as far as the railroad depot and saw lots of things to interest us. All the goods displayed in the store windows seemed dirt cheap. How they did tempt us, but as we were not overburdened with wealth just then we didn't feel like buying. Silk pocket handkerchiefs, dandy hats, elegant trousers, mouth harmonicas, pistols, knives, razors, accordions were there in great variety. Why were we born poor? Had we been rich we would have blowed ourselves for fair. The display was too tempting. We walked to Fourth Street, which is the next one to Third, and then slowly sauntered up toward Market again. The blocks along Third and Fourth Streets were long ones, and from Market Street down to the railroad depot the distance is a mile or more. But we were not tired, so on we kept. Fourth Street was about like Third Street, and afforded many interesting sights. Billy and me liked everything we saw. When we finally reached Market Street again we crossed it and took in another quarter of the city. Where we had been was called south of Market; so this must be north of Market. We didn't like it half as well as we did south of Market. Here were pretentious shops and restaurants, and a fine class of dwellings, but even here the buildings were all of wood and hardly two were alike. In this quarter is located what is called "The Tenderloin," which means gambling joints, fast houses and the like. We, being strangers, could not locate them. It was now nearing noon and as we had become hungry, we concluded to step into a saloon to have a beer and a free lunch, but the free lunch establishments in that neighborhood seemed few and far between. Some saloons had signs on them which stated that free clam chowder, beef stew, roasted clams, or a ham sandwich with every drink was to be had today, but those were not the kind of a place we were after. We were looking for some place like "The Whale," but couldn't find one. We finally got tired of hunting for such a place, and stepped into a ten-cent restaurant, where we had a bum meal. After dining we strolled back to our lodging-house, where we laid off the rest of the day. "What'll it be tonight; a ten-cent show or Chinatown once more?" "A ten-cent show," answered Billy; "we did Chinatown last night, and can do it again some other night, so let's take in a show." Accordingly we went to a fine big theater that evening where the prices ranged from ten to fifty cents, and went up to "nigger heaven" (price ten cents), from whence we saw a pretty fair variety show. The show consisted of singing, dancing, moving pictures, a vaudeville play, negro act, monologue speaker and an acrobatic act. The performance lasted about two hours. The negro act made Billy laugh until he nearly grew sick, and we both enjoyed ourselves hugely. One singer, an Australian gentleman, sang the "Holy City," and he sang it so well that he was recalled many times. The little vaudeville play was good, and so were the moving pictures. It was about ten o'clock when the play let out, and it was after midnight when Billy and I turned in. We continued our sightseeing tour about a week and saw about all worth seeing of 'Frisco, and then as funds began to run low, we concluded it was about time for us to look for work. I struck a job as helper in a foundry the very next day, but Billy was not so fortunate. He did not find a job for several days. Of course I went "snucks" with him when he wasn't working, and saw to it that he had a bed to sleep in and something to eat, for he would have done as much for me. Billy struck a job a few days afterward and it was one that seemed to please him mightily. It was in a swell hotel run by an Englishman and Billy was installed as pantryman. His duties were to take good care of and clean the glassware and silverware. The job was an easy one, with the pay fairly good. Billy said it was like getting money from home. He worked from seven o'clock in the morning until eight at night, and had three hours off in the afternoon. The waiters took a shine to him, for they, like himself, were English, and brought him all kinds of good things to eat in the pantry, which was his headquarters. They brought him oysters, roast fowl of various kinds, game, ice cream, water ices, plum pudding, the choicest of wines, etc., and were sociable enough to help Billy eat and drink these things. No one molested them so long as they did their work, for the cast-off victuals would have gone into the swill-barrel, anyway. Billy was in clover and had the best opportunity in the world to grow stout on "the fat of the land." I was glad to know that he was getting along so well for he sure was a true and steady little pard. One night, several weeks after this, when we were in our room chinning, I remarked to Billy: "Say, Billy, you have told me so much about the old country that I've a notion to go there." Billy looked at me keenly to see if I was joking, but I wasn't. "I mean it, Billy," said I. "I've always had a notion that I'd like to see the old country, and if you can get along here I guess I can get along over there." "You're way off, Windy," replied Billy, "the old country is different from this, in every way." "In what way." "Why, you can't beat your way over there as you can here, and you couldn't earn as much there in a week as you can here in a day. And the ways of people are different, too. Stay where you are, Windy; that's my advice to you." "You say I can't beat my way in the old country, Billy; why not?" asked I. "You'll get pinched the first thing, if you try it. In the first place there are no railroad trains running across to Europe, so how are you going to cross the little duck pond; swim across?" "How do others cross it; can't I ride over in a boat?" "Of course you can but it will cost you lots of money, and where are you going to get it?" "What's the matter with earning it or getting a job on a steamer; didn't you do it?" "Of course I did; but the steamship companies hire their help on the other side of the ocean, not on this side." "Go on, Billy; you are giving me a fairy tale." "No, I'm not," earnestly responded Billy; "it's true as preaching." I doubted just the same. "You say I can't beat my way when I get across to Europe; why not?" "Because they won't let you. The towns are close together, for the country is small, and if you beat your way on a train you'd be spotted before you traveled ten miles. And another thing, there are no brake-beams on the other side, no blind baggage and no bumpers, so where are you going to ride? And another thing, too; the railway cars over there are totally different from those here. The coaches are different, the engines are different, the freight cars are different; everything is so different," said Billy with a reminiscent smile. "Go on, Billy; you're only talking to hear yourself talk," said I, thinking he was romancing. "You say, Billy," continued I, "that the ways of the people are different over there; in what way?" "In every way. I couldn't begin to explain it all to you, if I tried six months." "They talk English over there, don't they? Can't I talk English?" "Of course you can," laughed Billy; "but their language is different from yours and so are their ways. Their victuals are different; their dress, their politics--" "Cut out the politics, Billy; I ain't going over there to run for office. They must be a queer lot on the other side of the pond to judge from what you say." "Not a bit queer," warmly responded Billy. "They are just different, that is all. We will suppose you are over there, Windy. What will you do?" "Do the Britishers, of course; what else?" "Better stay at home and do your own countrymen. You'll find it easier," gravely admonished Billy. "You are on your own ground and know the country and the ways of the people. You'd have a hard time of it over there; mind now, I'm giving it to you straight. I don't think you're serious about going." "Serious and sober as a judge, Billy. I've been thinking about this thing for a long time. Let me tell you something else, Billy, that I haven't told you before. I intend to keep a diary when I get on the other side and write down everything I see worth noting." "The hell you are," profanely responded Billy; "what are you going to do with it after it is written down?" "Have it printed in a book," calmly responded I. Billy regarded me intently, as a dog does a human being whom he is trying to understand and cannot, and then when the full force of my revelation struck him he dropped on the bed and laughed and laughed until I thought he'd split his sides. "What's tickling you, Billy?" asked I, grinning, for his antics made me laugh. "You--you--" here he went off into another fit. "_You_ write a book? Say, Windy, I've been traveling with you a long while but I never suspected you were touched in the upper story." "No more touched than you are, Billy," said I indignantly. Billy rose up. "So you're going to write a book, eh?" asked Billy, still laughing. "Do you know anything about grammar, geography or composition?" "You bet I do, Billy; I was pretty fair at composition when I was at school, but I always hated grammar and don't know much about it." "That settles it," said Billy. "How could you write a book if you don't know anything about grammar?" "That stumps me, Billy, but I guess the printer can help me out." "The printer ain't paid for doing that sort of thing; he won't help you out." "The h---- he won't," responded I, angrily; "that's what he's paid for, isn't it?" "I don't think," said Billy. "Say, Windy, you're clean off. Better turn in and sleep over it." "Sleep over nothing," quickly retorted I; "am I the first man who ever wrote a book?" "No, you ain't the first, nor the last damn fool who has tried it." "Now, see here, Billy," said I, getting heated, "let me tell you something. I've read a whole lot of books in my time, and a good many of them weren't worth hell room. I've read detective stories that were written by fellows that didn't know anything about the detective business. Look at all the blood-and-thunder novels will you, that are turned out every year by the hundred. Not a word in them is true, yet lots of people read them. Why? Because they like them. See what kids read, will you? All about cowboys, Indians, scalping, buffalo hunting, the Wild West, etc. After the kids read such books they get loony and want to go on scalping expeditions themselves, so they steal money, run away from home, buy scalping knives, pistols and ammunition, and play hell generally. My book ain't that kind. When I write a book it will contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." "So help you ----," irreverently put in Billy. "No foolishness, Billy; I'm serious." "Oh, you are, are you?" answered Billy; "well, let's hear something serious, then." "Did you ever read the life of the James boys, Billy?" "No, I never did? Who were they?" "They were outlaws and robbers, and the book I read about them was the most interesting one I ever read. It was all facts, solid facts, and no nonsense about it. That's what I want to write, solid facts." "About the James boys?" "No, you little ignoramus; about what I see in the old country." "There are many smarter men than you are that have written books about the old country, Windy, and some of these writers were English and some were American. Are you going to go in opposition to them?" "Opposition your grandmother! Haven't I got as good a right to write a book as anyone else?" "Who says you haven't? After you get the book printed who's going to sell it for you; going around peddling it?" "No, I expect the printer to print what I write, and buy the book from me." "Who gets all the money from the sale of the book?" asked Billy, with a huge grin on his face. "Why, I expect that the printer and me'll go snucks. He gets half for printing it, and I get half for writing it." "Oh, that's the game, is it? I think you'll have a sweet time of it finding a printer on that sort of a deal." "Don't you think that would be a fair divvy?" "No, the printer is taking all the chances and you're taking none. He puts up the dough and what do you put up?" "My time and ability." "Your _ability_!" shouted Billy as he went off into a spasm; "well, you've got lots of time, but I never know'd you had any ability." "Laugh away, old boy," said I, considerably nettled; "it takes ability to write a book." "Of course it does," said Billy, meaningly. "Maybe you think I ain't got any?" "Maybe you have, but you'll have to show me." "Well, Billy," said I, "we've discussed this matter long enough; suppose we go to bed." Nothing more was said on the subject that night. The next morning we went to our separate jobs as usual, and I did a good deal of thinking during the day over some of the information Billy had given me about the old country. It made me waver at times about going, but at other times it did not. That night, after we came home from work, Billy and me took a stroll as usual through Chinatown, and every time we went through it we found something new to see. The streets were always thronged with celestials and sightseers, the stores of the Chinese and Japanese were all lit up, the queer goods in the windows still riveted our attention and the ways of the orientals proved a source of never-ending interest to us. There were several Chinese theaters in the quarter, too, in which the beating of gongs and the "high-toned" singing could plainly be heard by us, but as the admission fees to these theaters to the "Melican man" was fifty cents, we didn't go in. Some of the plays lasted about six weeks. We were strolling along quietly enjoying ourselves, when suddenly Billy banteringly remarked: "By the way, Windy, when are you going to take that little flier across the duck-pond?" "Don't know, Billy; haven't decided yet." "What are you going to do with all the money you make out of that book of yourn?" "Never you mind, Billy; I'm going to write the book just the same; don't you worry about that." "I suppose you'll get rich some day, and cut me the first thing. Fellers who write books make lots of money. I suppose you'll buy a mansion on Nob Hill, have a coach and four with a coachman in livery on the box and the regulation flunkey behind. Maybe you'll drive tandem and handle the ribbons yourself?" "Stop roasting me, Billy; let up!" But Billy continued mercilessly; "Of course you'll have a box at the opera, wear a claw hammer coat and a plug hat, put on white kids and take your lady-love to a little supper after the play is over. Be lots of champagne flowing about that time, eh?" "Let up, you darned little Britisher," said I laughing. "Greater things than that have come to pass. I'll cut you, the first thing, Billy." "I knew it. Rich people ain't got any use for their poor friends or relations. "Which bank will you put your money in?" "Haven't decided yet; ain't going to let that worry me." "Maybe you'll fall in love with some girl and get married. When a feller has money he'll do fool things." "The girl I marry will have to be a pretty good looker, and will have to have a little money of her own," responded I. "Of course, Windy; I'm glad to see you've got some sense. After that old country trip yarn of yours I didn't think you had any." "No yarn about it, Billy; I'm going." "Where to?" "To the old country." "When?" "Oh, you're asking me too many questions. Better go to the old country with me, Billy." "Not I, Windy; I've been there and know what it is. I'll never return to it until I'm rich." "Hope that'll be soon, Billy." "So do I, Windy; but it don't look that way now." "Can you blame me for trying to make a stake?" asked I. "Blame you, no; but you'll never make a stake writing a book." "Faint heart never won a fair lady, my boy, and I'm going to try it, if it takes a leg off." "I believe you are serious, Windy; I thought you were kiddin'!" "Kiddin' nothing; I was serious from the go-off." "Well, Windy, old pard, I wish you luck but it don't look to me as if you'd make it. Too big a contract." "Time will tell." We had many another talk on the subject, Billy bantering me every time, for he either couldn't or wouldn't believe I was serious. We had been together so long, that he was loath to believe I would desert him. One evening when I came home from work I informed Billy that I had made up my mind positively to start out on my trip at the end of the week. You should have seen him when I told him this. At first he argued, then, seeing that did no good, he called me all kinds of a fool, and cursed and fumed. He finally told me to go to hades if I wished, for he had no strings on me. He didn't care a tinker's damn how soon I went, or what became of me. He hoped I'd get drowned, or, if not that, then pinched as soon as I set foot on British soil. The little fellow was badly wrought up. I informed him it was my intention to beat my way to New York and that when I got that far, I would plan the next move. I told him also that I didn't believe in crossing a river until I got to it, and that I would find some means of crossing the ocean. He sarcastically advised me again to swim across, but I took no heed. We parted the next morning and I knew Billy felt sore, but he didn't show it. He told me that he should remain in 'Frisco, and that I would find him there when I came back, that is, if I ever came back. "Oh, I'll come back, my boy; never fear." "And mind what I told you about my folks. If you go to London they live only a short way from there, and if you see them tell them all about me." "I'll do it, old pard, and write you everything," responded I. "Good-bye, then, Windy, and don't take in any bad money while you're gone," was Billy's parting bit of advice. I felt bad, too, but didn't show it. I was leaving the true-heartedest little fellow that ever lived, but the best of friends must part sometimes. CHAPTER III. THE JOURNEY OVERLAND. The distance from 'Frisco to New York overland, is over three thousand miles, and by water it is much more than that, but such little trips are a trifle to me, as they are to every well-conditioned wayfarer. I started out happily enough one fine day at dawn to make the long journey and though I did feel a qualm or two the first few days after leaving Billy, the feeling soon wore off. I chose the central route, which is the shortest via Sacramento, Reno, Ogden, Omaha, Chicago, Niagara Falls and New York, and I anticipated having lots of fun along the way. I was out for sight-seeing and adventure and believed I would have a good time. I didn't have any money to speak of, for, though I had worked several months I had saved nothing. Anyway, it wasn't safe to travel hobo style with money, for if anyone suspects you have any, it may be possible that you'll get knocked on the head or murdered outright for it. Such things are a common occurrence. I got as far as Sacramento in good shape and when the freight train I was riding on got to Newcastle, which is a town in the foothills of the Sierra mountains, a long halt was made to attach a number of refrigerator cars to it. These cars were laden with fruit. Had I wished I could have crawled into one of them and made the journey east in ten days, or less, for they are laden with perishable goods and travel as fast, almost, as a passenger train, but I didn't care to travel that way, for the reason that I didn't like it. These refrigerator cars have heavy air-tight doors at the sides which are hermetically sealed when the cars are loaded, making the cars as dark as a pocket. When in them one can't see anything and can hardly turn around. There are no conveniences whatever. One must take a sufficiency of supplies with him to last during the trip in the shape of food and water, and one must go unwashed and unkempt during the journey. Lots of hobos travel that way, and think nothing of it, but I didn't care to do so. It is almost as bad, if not worse, than being in jail, for one can take little or no exercise, and the only light and ventilation afforded is from the roof, where there is an aperture about two feet wide, over which there is a sliding door. This can be shoved up or down, but it is usually locked when the train is en route. The cars must be kept at an even temperature always, and must not be too hot or too cold. A certain number of tons of ice is put into a compartment at either end of the car, which keeps the temperature even. The side doors, as I said, are hermetically closed and sealed. Thus the fruits, meats, vegetables or whatever the car may contain, are kept fresh and sweet. I slipped into one of these loaded cars and had a look around, but one survey was enough for me. I didn't like the prospect at all. Ten days of imprisonment was too much. Any hobo may ride over the Sierra Nevada Mountains as far as Reno without being molested, for it is a rule of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company not to incur their ill-will. Some hobos have been known to set fire to the snow sheds in revenge for being put off a train in the lonely mountains. Fires occur in the snow-sheds every year, but of course it is hard to tell who or what starts a fire. The sheds are of wood and have always had to be rebuilt, for without them the road would be blocked every winter and traffic stopped. There are miles of them and wonderful creations they are. They are roofed over and very strongly built. I held down the freight train until we reached Reno, where I was glad to hop off for rest and refreshment. Refreshments of all kinds are plentiful in Reno. The railroad runs through the main street of the town and the town is a wide open one. Across the track along the main street are restaurants, saloons and gambling houses. The gambling is not done secretly for it is licensed and anyone may play who wishes. One may step into, at least, one of these places from the street, for the gambling room is on the ground floor. It is a handsomely appointed apartment. The floors are of marble, the drinking bar is elaborate, the fittings superb. In front, as you enter, is the bar and behind it a back bar with the finest of glassware. The liquors are of excellent quality. Opposite the bar, near the wall, are faro and crap tables. At the rear of the long apartment is a horseshoe shaped lunch counter, where the best the market affords can be had at reasonable rates. The bar and restaurant are patronized by gamblers and by outsiders who never gamble. Anyone over the age of twenty-one may step inside and play, and no questions are asked. The crap game is interesting. It is played with dice and anyone may throw the dice. The way some fellows throw them would make a horse laugh. Some throw them with a running fire of conversation, their eyes blazing with excitement. Others, like the coons, keep a saying as they throw the dice, "Come seben, come eleben!" "What you doin' dar?" "Roll right dis time for me you son of--" etc., etc. It is interesting to watch the players. Many refined men visit these places and sometimes take a little flyer. These men are quiet, open-handed fellows, who seem to regard their little indulgence in the play as a joke, whether they win or lose. They seem to have plenty of money and don't care--at least one would judge so from their manner. While observing them I thought it must be a fine thing to have plenty of money, so as not to care whether you win or lose. Westerners, as a rule, are free and generous, and seem to be just as ready to spend their money as they are to earn it. Bootblacks, waiters, cooks, newsboys and all sorts of men are always ready and willing to take a chance in the games. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but win or lose they are always ready to try their luck again. Another gaming place I went into was situated on the first floor above the street in a building facing the railroad, and it, too, was palatial. On the ground floor was the saloon and above were the gambling rooms. A pretty tough crowd was in them at the time of my visit and the crowd was so dense it was rather difficult to move about. I was jostled considerably and found it difficult to get near the gaming tables. Craps and roulette were the main games here, too. Fights and shooting scrapes are common in the gambling places, but the Reno officers are alert and fearless, and soon put obstreperous people where the dogs won't bite them. Notwithstanding its gambling and recklessness, Reno is a good business town, and full of orderly, respectable people. There are many wholesale and retail establishments in the town; ice plants, machine shops, breweries, ore reduction works and lumber yards. Besides, it is a great cattle shipping center. Many of the streets are broad and well-shaded, and the Truckee River, in which are any number of speckled beauties in the shape of mountain trout, flows through the town. Surrounding Reno are tall mountains which form a part of the Sierra Nevada range, but they seem bare and lonely. I landed in Reno during the afternoon and steered straight for the Truckee River, as I needed a bath. I quickly espied a sequestered nook under a wagon-bridge on the outskirts of the town, and from the looks of things in the vicinity could tell that it was a hobo camping place. Old tin cans were strewn about, and down the bank near the water was a fireplace made of stones. One lone Wandering Willie was in camp and he greeted me as effusively as if I were a long-lost brother. A hobo can tell another hobo at a glance. "Hello, pardner; how's tricks?" was the greeting of my fellow wayfarer. "Fair to middlin'," responded I. "Where you bound for?" "Just got to Reno; and I am going to hold the town down for a while," said I. I was cautious and didn't want this chance acquaintance to know too much about my affairs. "Where'd you come from?" inquired I. "Me? Oh, I've been hittin' the line all the way from Bloomington, Illinoi', and I'm going to take a flier to the Coast." "You are, hey? I just came from there." "The hell you did; how's things out that way?" "Fine and dandy; ever been there?" "No," laconically answered the chap and began to question me about the Coast. I gave him all the information I could and then told him I was going to take a wash-down. He had just done the same and as he seemed anxious to go to town he soon left me. I stripped and had a glorious bath in the cool, swift-flowing river. The river was neither broad nor very deep but so clear that I could see every stone at the bottom of it. Not a fish could I see but doubtless they were plentiful. After the clean-up I leisurely strolled along the railroad track into town and steered for a restaurant, where I had a good supper for twenty-five cents. I then lit my pipe and strolled about taking in the sights. I remained in Reno a day or two, and did not find time hanging heavy on my hands. There are extensive cattle corrals about half a mile from the town where I put in a whole afternoon watching the loading of cattle into cars. It was better than seeing a circus. A chute ran from the corral to the car to be loaded and the animals were made to walk the plank in great shape. No harm was done them unless they grew obstreperous, in which case there was a great deal of tail twisting done, punching in the ribs with long poles, yelling and shouting, which soon brought a refractory animal to terms. The railroad depot in Reno is a lively spot, too. The S. P. R. R. trains and the Virginia & Truckee Railroad use the same depot, and at train times there is always a sizeable crowd on hand. The Virginia & Truckee road, which goes from Reno to Virginia City, a distance of about sixty miles, is said to be the crookedest road in the country. It winds around bare mountain sides to a great height and is continually going upward. It was built in the early Bonanza mining days when times were flush and is said to have cost a lot of money. It has paid for itself many times over and was a great help to Gold Hill, Carson and Virginia City. Although it has been in existence over a quarter of a century and though it winds over almost inaccessible mountain peaks, not a human life up to the writing of this book (1907) has ever been lost on this road. Indians may ride on the road free, and as they are aware of the fact, hardly a day passes but they may be seen in the smoking car or on the platform of a car taking a little flier to Carson, Virginia City, Washoe, Steamboat Springs or any other place along the line they care to go to. There is a State law in Nevada which permits any Indian to ride free on any railroad. What the object of this law is, I don't know. I noticed that the passenger trains going eastward over the S. P. R. R. leave Reno between eight and nine o'clock at night, so I concluded to beat my way out of town on one of them. I noticed that others did it and that it was easy. All a fellow had to do was to let the train get a good move on, then swing underneath to the rods, or jump the blind baggage. "The blind baggage is good enough for you, Windy," says I to myself. Accordingly, one very fine evening I permitted a passenger train to get a good move on, and then boarded her a little way out, before she began to go too fast. I was onto my job pretty well. I made it all right, but as soon as I swung onto the steps of the blind baggage I found I wasn't the only pebble on the beach for a number of other non-paying passengers were there who must have got on before the train pulled out. There were just seven deadheads on the car, excluding myself, and they were not a bit glad to see me. Seven on the platform of a car is a good many, but eight is one too many; so my fellow voyagers assured me by black looks. They were greasers, every one of them, and cow punchers at that, most likely. I was an American. There was no welcome for me. The greasers jabbered among themselves about me, but what they said I could not understand, for I don't understand Spanish. Finally one of them said to me in fairly good English: "It's too much crowded here; you better jump off." "Jump off while the train is going like this; not much! Jump off yourself and see how you like it," said I angrily. Not only was I angry but apprehensive, for I felt there was going to be trouble. I was not armed and had only a pocket knife with me. Even had I been armed what could I have done against seven men in close quarters? Nothing was said to me for quite a while after that and the train clattered along at a great rate. The cold, swift-rushing night wind blew keenly against us, making the teeth of some of the greasers chatter. They could stand any amount of heat but a little cold made them feel like hunting their holes. After riding along for an hour or so through the bare, cheerless plains of Nevada, the engine whistle blew for the town. The cow-puncher who had addressed me before spoke up and said: "It is more better you get off at the next station." "No, I won't; get off yourself," said I. Before I knew what had happened two of the greasers grabbed me around the throat so I couldn't holler, and two others pulled off my coat, which they threw from the train. The fellow who had spoken to me told me that if I didn't jump off the train as soon as she slacked up they'd throw me off. I knew they would do so when opportunity offered, so off I hopped, mad as blazes. As I didn't want to lose my coat I walked back to get it and I had to walk a mile or so to do so. Luckily, I found my coat not far from the track and after putting it on, I faced eastward again toward the station. It is no joke to hike through an unfamiliar wilderness at night with no habitation or human being in sight or anyways near. The night was a fine one, clear, cold and star-lit, so I managed to walk along the ties without serious mishap. In the sage brush, as I walked along, I could hear the sudden whirr of birds as they flew off startled, and the suddenness of the noise startled me at first for I didn't know what made the noise. But I quickly caught on. In the distance I could hear the melancholy yelp of a coyote which was quickly answered from all points by other animals of the same species. One or two coyotes can make more noise than a pack of wolves or dogs. They are animals of the wolf species and are death to poultry, sheep, little pigs and small animals generally. I got to the little town safe and sound but it must have been after midnight when I reached it, for there wasn't a soul to be seen in the streets and all was quiet. The town was Wadsworth. I walked to the pump-house of the railroad, which was situated along the tracks and where I could hear the pump throbbing, and talked to the engineer, who didn't seem averse to a chat. His vigil was a lonely one, and anything to him was agreeable to vary the monotony. During the course of the conversation I learned that an eastbound freight would be along in a few hours. I made the freight all right by riding the brakes. The train was made up of closed box-cars and there was no other way to ride except on the bumpers. I preferred the brakes. It was pretty cold riding during the early morning hours, but luckily I had my overcoat with me once more, which helped to keep me warm. Beating one's way is a picnic sometimes, but not always. During the summer time there is dust and heat to contend with, according to how one rides, and in winter time there are cold winds, snow and frost. I rode the brakes all night and was glad when day broke. I was quite numbed. The scenery was still the same--plains and alkali. At Lovelock I had time to get a bite of breakfast and a cup of hot coffee, and then the train was off for Humboldt. The distances between towns were great, about a hundred miles or so. Finally the train stopped at Winnemucca, a town which, for short and sweet, is called "Winnemuck" by the knowing ones. At this place I concluded to hop off for a rest. Winnemucca is quite a sizeable town, and is the county seat of some county. It contains about two thousand inhabitants, and used to be as wild and woolly a place as any in the West, but it has tamed down some since. Saloons are plentiful and all drinks are ten cents straight, with no discount for quantity. A pretty good meal can be had for two bits, but short orders and such things as life preservers, sinkers, or a bit of "mystery" with coffee, are all the same price--two bits. I found no place where I could get anything for less. There was a river or creek at the further end of town wherein I wished to bathe, but the water was so intolerably filthy that I deemed it wise to wait until I found a more suitable place along the route. I noticed a bank in Winnemucca and was informed that it had been robbed recently of many thousands of dollars by bandits. Soon after the robbery a trellis-work of structural iron was put up from the money-counters clear to the ceiling with mere slots for the receiving and paying out of money, so that the next set of bandits who call there will have to crawl through mighty small holes to make a raise. The next town along the line which amounted to anything was Elko and I made it that same day on a freight. I found it a pretty little town with good people in it, who treated me well. I learned there were some wonderful natural hot springs about a mile or so from town, so that afternoon I hiked out to see them. I shall never regret having seen them for they are one of nature's wonders. Out in the wilderness, near where they were situated, I came upon an amphitheater of hills, at the base of which was a little lake about 100 yards in diameter. The hills were bare and lonely and near them was no house or habitation. All was wild, lone, still. I climbed down one of these hills to the lake and had a good survey of it. The water was clear and pure as crystal but near the banks were sulphur springs which bubbled up now and then. The water was so hot it was impossible to put a finger in it. I walked around the banks and at one end of the lake there was a hole so deep I couldn't see bottom. This is a crater-hole so deep that bottom has never been found, although it has been sounded to a depth of several thousand feet. The entire place looks like the crater of an extinct volcano. A single glance would lead anyone to suppose so. Indian men, women, boys and girls go to the lake during the warm seasons to bathe, and many a daring buck who has swum across the crater was drowned in it and his body has never been recovered. I needed a bath myself so I disrobed and plunged in. The water was neither too hot nor too cold but half way between the two. It was just right. Where I swam was not in the crater but near it. The water there was part crater water and part sulphur water from the springs. The bath was delicious. The ride eastward from Elko was uneventful. There was nothing to see but bare plains and mountains and a few border towns. The towns were very small, and hardly more than railroad stations. They were composed of a general store or two, several saloons, a blacksmith shop, drug store, bakery, butchershop, barbershop, and that is all. I boarded a freight train at Wells and rode the brakes through the Lucin Cutoff to Ogden. The trains used to run around Salt Lake, but now a trestle has been built through it, which saves many miles. The trestle is forty or fifty miles long, I should judge, and as I clung tightly to my perch on the brakebeam and looked down into the clear blue water through the ties I got kind of dizzy, but met with no disaster. After a long and tedious ride of several hours I reached Ogden, the end of the S. P. line. As funds were low I remained in Ogden several days and went to work. Ogden is in Utah and full of Mormons. It is a beautiful city, surrounded by lofty mountains, the Wasatch range, and contains about 50,000 people. It has a Mormon tabernacle, tithe-house, broad streets, fine stores, elegant public buildings and is quite a railroad center. I happened to discover a Mormon lady who had a wood-pile in her back yard and she was needing a man to chop the wood, so we struck a bargain. I was to receive a dollar and a half per day and my board for my work and was given a room in an outhouse to bunk in. The terms suited me. The board was plentiful and good, and the sleeping quarters comfortable. I never saw a man about the place and wondered whether the lady was married or not. She was old enough to be. I knew she was a Mormon because she told me so, and possibly she was the plural wife of some rich old Mormon. I didn't like to ask too many questions for I might have got fired for being too nosy. The lady was sociable and kind-hearted and treated me well. The Mormons like apples, cider and ladies, and they are an industrious people. The Bible says they can have all the wives they want, but the United States law says they can't have 'em, so what are the poor fellows to do? Sh! They have 'em on the sly. Don't give me away. Can you blame a rich old Mormon for having a big bunch of wives if he can support them? If I had the price I'd have two, at least, one for week days and one for Sundays, but if the mother-in-law is thrown in, I pass. One good healthy mother-in-law of the right sort can make it mighty interesting for a fellow, but a bunch of them; whew! Excuse me! During my stay in Ogden I didn't see any funny business going on, and wouldn't have suspected there was any, but from what I could learn on the outside, there was something doing. I saw lots of rosy-cheeked Mormon girls in the tabernacle one day when I was there, but they behaved just like other girls. The tabernacle is a church and it ain't. It is an immense egg-shaped building arranged very peculiarly, yet it is snug and cosy inside. It can hold thousands of people. It must be seen to be appreciated. I liked Ogden very much and would like to linger there longer but I deemed it best to keep a moving. After leaving Ogden the scenery became interesting. The country is mountainous going eastward, and we struck a place called Weber Canyon, which is a narrow pass between high mountains through which the railroad winds. The mountains were pretty well wooded. In one spot I saw a place called the Devil's Slide, which was made by nature and consists of two long narrow ledges of rocks that begin high up on a mountain side and run down almost to the bottom of the mountain where the car tracks are. These rocks form two continuous lines that run down side by side with a space of several feet between them, and they are rough and raggedy on top. Imagine two rails with about four or five feet of space between them running down a mountain side several hundred feet and then you will have some idea of the formation of the slide. How in the devil the devil rode it, gets me. He must have been pretty broad in the beam, and I would like to have seen him when he performed the act. He must have come down a-flying, for the slide is nearly perpendicular. This kind of scenery, though wild, was a relief from the bare and lonely plains of Nevada, and I appreciated it. A little variety is the spice of life, they say, and after seeing dullness it is nice to see beauty. I was now on the Union Pacific Railroad and was in an empty cattle car, through the slats of which I could see the scenery on both sides of me. During the daytime it was nice, but at night the weather grew cold and the long watches of the night were dreary. A companion then would have been agreeable. I missed little Billy. At a small station in Wyoming called Rock Creek, I was put off the train one afternoon and as I hadn't a dime left, I felt it was incumbent on me to go to work. I saw a bunch of cattle in a corral near the railroad station that had probably been unloaded from a train, and as there were some bull-whackers with them I struck them for a job. "Kin you ride?" asked a chap who looked like the boss. "Ride anything with hair on," replied I. "Ever herd cattle?" asked the boss. "I'm an old hand at the business," answered I. "Where'd you do your herding?" "In California." I never herded cattle in my life, but I could ride all right, and as I didn't consider bull-whacking much of a job, I thought I could hold it down easily. The boss hired me then and there at twenty dollars per month and chuck, and while on the range my bedroom was to be a large one--all Wyoming. It didn't take the cowboys long to get on to the fact that I was a tenderfoot, but as I was a good rider they said nothing. They were a whole-souled, rollicking, devil-may-care set of fellows, and the best they had was none too good for me. They treated me like a lord. They knew, and the boss soon found out that I didn't know any more about roping a steer than a baby did, but as they were not branding cattle just then, that didn't matter so much. I got on to their way of herding quickly enough, and that was all that was necessary just then. I didn't ask where the outfit was bound for, nor did I care much, for all I was after was to earn a few dollars. There were a good many hundred head of cattle in the bunch and many of the them were steers, but there were also many dried-up cows among them and some yearlings. They had all to be herded carefully so they wouldn't stray away, and to accomplish this we had to keep riding around them all day long. At night after feeding, the cattle rested. On dark nights they generally squatted down contentedly and chewed the cud, but on a moonlit night they would keep on their feet and feed. The very first moonlit night I was put on watch I got into trouble. The cattle arose to feed, and do what I would, I could not keep them together. When riding along on one side of the herd to keep them in, a few ignorant brutes on the other side would wander away and at such times some hard riding had to be done to keep them in. I could do it, but I couldn't ride everywhere at once. I did some pretty fast riding and kept yelling and hallooing at the cattle, but one of the brutes got so far away from me that when he saw me coming he raised his tail and bolted outright. By the time I got him in others were scattered far and wide. I now saw that I was helpless, so I went to camp and aroused the sleeping cowboys. They knew instinctively what the trouble was and got out of their warm blankets cussing to beat the band. They mounted their ponies and off we all rode to gather the scattered herd. It was no picnic. There were four of us, and as the cattle had strayed off in all directions, it is easy to imagine what our task was. One of the boys and myself traveled together in one direction and made for an ornery brute that shook his head when we gently told him to "git in there." Off he shot like a rocket with a bellow of defiance, and his tail in the air. "I'll fix the ugly son of--!" yelled my comrade, as he uncoiled his rope from his saddle and got it ready for a throw. His pony was after the steer like a shot, for it knew its business, and got in range in a jiffy. Out flew the rope and settled around the steer's neck. Quick as a flash the steer flew in the air, turned a complete somersault and landed on the turf with a jar that shook the earth. "You will run away, you ----!" exclaimed the irate cowboy. "I guess you won't do it in a hurry again, gol darn your ugly hide." The animal got up meek as a lamb, trembled in every limb, shook his head in a dazed way, and probably wondered what had struck him. We had no trouble with him after that, and made off after the rest. It was long after midnight before all the cattle were rounded up. The boss was mad clear through. The next day he politely told me that I didn't understand my business; that I didn't know any more about herding cattle than a kid; that I had lied to him about being a cowboy and that I had better skip. He cursed me up and down and kept up his abuse so long that I finally got tired of it and fired back. That made matters worse. We soon were at it, tooth and nail. He struck me with his fist and it was a hard blow. I was taller and longer in the reach than he and kept him off from me. The first blow was the only one he struck me, but it was a good one and dazed me for a moment. "I knowed you was a Greaser," yelled he as he danced around me, "and I'm going to put you out of business." "Come on, you--," yelled I. He wasn't in the mix-up at all. I was younger, stronger and longer in the reach than he, and one of the blows I put in was a tremendous one, for it knocked him down and he lay still for awhile. When he got up I knocked him down again. I saw he was my meat. "Now, pay me off, you--, and I'll get out of here pretty darn quick; if you don't, I'll beat the life out of you," yelled I. The cowboys stood by and said nothing. It wasn't their funeral. The boss paid me off and I got out. At Cheyenne, Wyoming, I ran across a gassy little red-headed Hebrew who put me on to a good, money-making scheme. He had a lot of paste-board signs with him on which were neatly printed such things as: "Our trusting department is on the roof; take the elevator"; "Every time you take a drink things look different"; "In God we trust; all others must pay cash"; "We lead; others follow"; "Razors put in order good as new," etc., etc. The young fellow told me that he was beating his way to the Coast and that he sold enough of these signs to pay expenses. He told me also that the signs by the quantity cost him only five cents each, and that he sold them readily for twenty-five cents each. I thought the little chap was lying for I didn't think anyone would pay twenty-five cents for such a sign, but he solemnly assured me on his word of honor that he had no trouble selling them at the price. He further told me that he would sell me a hundred of the signs at cost price, adding that if I bought a hundred of them, he would give me the address of the wholesaler in Omaha where I could obtain all the signs I wanted. The little scheme looked good to me but unfortunately I had only two dollars in my possession. This I offered him for forty signs with the name of the wholesaler thrown in. He accepted. I soon found that the little Israelite had told me the truth, for the signs sold readily for two bits each, though in some places I had to do a deal of talking to sell a sign, and in other places they laughed at me, when I told them the price was twenty-five cents, and offered me ten cents. As I wasn't sure whether I could purchase any more signs at the price I paid for them, I was loath to sell them for ten cents each. When I reached Omaha I found the address of the sign man, and learned that I could buy all the signs I wanted in hundred lots at three cents each. The little cuss had done me after all. I bought a hundred signs and now felt that I had struck a good thing, for I would have to do no more hard work. I sold many of the signs in small towns and cities, and found little difficulty in doing so. No more handouts for yours truly, no more wood-chopping, no more cow-punching. I was a full-fledged merchant and able to hold my own with any of them. It was easier sailing now. The trip from Omaha to Chicago was interesting, but uneventful. At Omaha I crossed the muddy-looking Missouri River on a bridge while riding the bumpers of a freight, but was detected and put off on the other side of the river. That night I did rather a daring thing. Along toward nine o'clock there came along a passenger train and as I had made up my mind to get on to Chicago as fast as I could, I stepped upon the platform of one of the passenger coaches and climbed upon the roof of the car, where I rode along for many a mile. Bye-and-bye, however, the wind became so keen, cold and cutting, and the rush of air so strong, that I became numbed and was obliged to climb down for warmth. I walked boldly into the passenger coach and sat down in a vacant seat near the door. I knew the conductor would not be round again for some time, for he had made his round, so for the present I felt safe. When taking up tickets the conductor of a train usually starts at the front end and moves along to the rear. After his work is ended he will rarely sit down in any of the middle coaches, especially if every seat has an occupant, but he and the brakeman usually go to the smoker and sit down there. I was in the coach next to the smoker, and later on, I saw the conductor coming around again for tickets, I leisurely strolled to the rear platform of the car I was in and climbed on top again. I watched the conductor and waited until he had made his rounds, and then I returned to my seat in the coach. In this way I traveled a long distance. I kept up these tactics for hours, but bye-and-bye I noticed a young woman who was traveling with her husband (a young fellow of about twenty-five), watch me suspiciously. She put her husband on to my little racket, and he, most likely, told the conductor, who laid a cute little trap to catch me. After he had been through all the coaches on his next round he went to the smoker, as usual, but when he came to the rear coach I was in he locked the rear door behind him. It was through this door I had been making my exit. He then passed slowly through the train again from the front looking at the hat checks. When I saw him coming and the brakeman following in the rear I tried the usual tactics but found the door locked. I was trapped. The conductor came up to me and seeing no hat-check asked me for my ticket. I pretended to look for it, but couldn't find it. The conductor eyed me coldly and told me to follow him to the baggage car. The brakeman acted as a rear guard. When we stepped into the baggage car the conductor asked me a few questions which to him did not seem satisfactory, whereupon he sternly warned me to get off at the next station. "If I catch you on here again, I'll throw you off," threatened he. I knew he dared not legally throw me off a train while it was in motion, and that he was bluffing, but I got off at the next station just the same. I concluded I had ridden far enough that night, anyway. My journey to Chicago was soon completed. I remained in Chicago several days selling the signs for a living but found it difficult work. The sign that seemed to sell best in Chicago was the one reading: "Every Time You Take a Drink, Things Look Different," and it made quite a hit in the saloons, but I could only get ten cents for it. The Chicago saloon keepers wanted all the money to come their way. In the smaller towns this sign sold readily for twenty-five cents, and no questions asked. I concluded to shake the dust of Chicago off my feet in a hurry, for the grafting was too hard for me. I had got onto it that there were easier places. It was the Michigan Central that had the honor to yank me out of Chicago and a hard old road she was to beat. Spotters were everywhere--fly cops and bulls--and they gave me a run for my money. I gave some of them a cock-and-bull story about trying to get to a sick relative in New York City, and showed them the signs I was selling to help pay expenses. Some laughed, and told me to "git," but one or two sternly told me they had a mind to run me in. They didn't, though. I got along all right as far as Detroit, where I crossed over to Windsor, Canada, on a boat which ferried the whole train over at once. I was now in a foreign country, but everything there looked pretty much as it did in the United States. The Michigan Central took me clear through Canada to Niagara Falls, where I concluded to remain a few days, for much as I had heard of the Falls, I had never seen them. I found that there is a big city of about 25,000 people at the Falls called "Niagara Falls," and it is a beautiful place. On the Canadian side there is a little city, too, the name of which I forget. It is not nearly so large as the city on the American side, but it is a quaint and pretty little place. Niagara Falls City is something like Coney Island, only it is on an all-the-year-round scale. Ordinary electric cars run through the place, electric tourist cars that will take one over the Gorge Route for a dollar are there, and so are hotels, boarding and rooming houses, plenty of stores, an extensive government reservation called Prospect Park, a Ferris Wheel, Shoot-the-Chutes, candy and ice cream booths, a hot frankfurter booth, picture galleries, beer gardens, etc. The place is lively and pretty, but full of grafters. Why wouldn't it be, when suckers by the million flock there every year from all over the world? I got to like the place so well that I remained there nearly a week and learned a whole lot of things. I wasn't a sucker and didn't get catched for I wasn't worth catching. Small fry ain't wanted. Did I see the Falls? Did I? Well, you can bet your sweet life I did. I saw them early, late and often, and every time I saw them they made my hair rise higher and higher. They are stupendous, tremendous--well, I can't say all I feel. They will awe anyone and fill him chock full of all kinds of thoughts. I'll try to give you an idea of them. Niagara River is a stream about half a mile wide and about a hundred miles long. It connects Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, and as the waters of these great lakes form the river, the volume of its waters is great. About twenty-five miles from Buffalo the Niagara River enters rocky canyons, which are formed by Goat Island, and which divide the river. The rushing, roaring and leaping of the waters on either side of the island is tremendous. These rushing, roaring waters are called the Upper Rapids. The waters rush along at cannon-ball speed almost until they reach a hill about 165 feet in height. Down this they tumble. That constitutes the Falls. The river, as I said, is divided by Goat Island, so that one part of the stream shoots along the American shore and the other part along the Canadian. By far the greater part of the river rushes along the Canadian side, hence the falls on that side are much greater than on the American. In fact, the American falls ain't a marker to the Canadian. I saw the falls from both sides, and when viewed from the Canadian side they are indescribably grand. No words of mine can describe them. You can hear the thunder of the rushing, roaring, falling waters a mile off, and the spray that arises from the depths below after the fallen waters have struck the rocks can be seen at a great distance. While the great lakes flow and the Niagara River runs, this scene of rushing, roaring, tumbling waters will never cease. After the waters take their tumble they flow on placidly enough until they strike another narrow gorge or canyon, about a mile below the falls, which is called the Lower Rapids. In them may be seen a wicked whirlpool, the Devil's Hole, and other uncanny things. Niagara is great, but the grafters who are there are greater. They will fool the stranger who goes there so slick that he won't know he has been fooled. The majority of visitors don't care, for they go there to spend their money, anyway. Some do care, however, for their means are limited. The grafters, who are not only hackmen, but storekeepers and others, lie awake nights studying how to "do" you. It is their business to make money, but how they make it don't worry them. If you go to the Falls, beware of them. People from every nation under the sun flock to the Falls every year, as I said, and a million visitors a year is a low estimate, I am sure. There are some people who believe that this great work of nature ought to be preserved intact, but there are others who do not think so. The latter think the Falls were created for their benefit, so they can make money. I am not now speaking of the grafters, but the manufacturers who have established factories along the banks of the Niagara River and utilize its waters for running their machinery, etc. These people would drain the river dry were they permitted to do so, and were doing so until stopped by the Government. I make no comments on this but simply state the facts and let others do the commenting. After I had done the Falls pretty thoroughly I concluded to go to Buffalo, the beautiful city by the lake (Erie). It can be reached in several ways from Niagara Falls by trolley and by several lines of railroads. It cannot be reached by water, however, for the reason that the Upper Rapids in the river extend a mile or so from the Falls toward Buffalo, rendering navigation impracticable. The trolley line running from Buffalo to the Falls is one of the best patronized roads in the country, and is crowded every day and overcrowded on holidays and Sundays. The fare is fifty cents the round trip and the scenery, through which a part of the road passes, is very fine. The road runs pretty close to the Niagara River for quite a distance, and along the banks of the river may be seen manufacturing establishments, such as cyanide plants, paper mills, chemical works, etc., nearly all of which empty their refuse into the stream, polluting its waters considerably. All of these establishments can easily be seen near the river as you ride along in the trolley. In the town of Niagara Falls itself are quite a number of very large manufacturing plants, which use the waters of the river for their purposes. Buffalo is one of the handsomest cities in the United States, to my notion. Its water front along the business section of the town is pretty punky, for there is a vile-smelling canal in the vicinity, and malodorous streets and alleys, but otherwise the town is away up in G. She's a beaut, and no mistake. Delaware Avenue is a corker. Imagine a thoroughfare about 150 to 200 feet wide, with driveways in the center shaded by fine old trees, and ample sidewalks also shaded by fine trees. Along the sidewalks, but set far back, are roomy mansions that are set in ample gardens, and then you will have a faint idea of the beauty of Delaware Avenue. And there are many other streets in the vicinity of Delaware Avenue that are just as beautiful. Boulevards and fine streets abound in this fair city. The people of Buffalo are quite like the Westerners in disposition, for they are sociable and free, and not too busy or too proud to talk to you. They are like their city, lovely, and I speak of them as I found them. There are many Canadians in the city (for Canada is only across the Niagara River and can be reached by ferry-boat) and I think they are a very desirable class of citizens. There are all sorts among them, of course, as is the case with Americans. My signs went well in Buffalo, especially the one reading, "Every Time You Take a Drink, etc." It went well in the saloons along the water front and on Main Street, the leading thoroughfare. Lots of people laughed when they read it and said it was a good one. There is nothing like a laugh to put people in good humor. I liked some of the Canadians very well and loved to listen to their queer accent. It is nothing like the American, but peculiarly their own. I thought some of the Canadian ladies were very nice. I liked Buffalo so well that I concluded to remain there until I grew tired of it. After I had been there a day or so I became acquainted with a young girl whose front name was Rose. She was of an auburn type and very artless. She had a decided penchant for milk chocolates. She was as pretty as a rose and it was awful hard for me to resist her. She was a poor, but good, honest, hardworking girl. She had been hurt in a street car collision and was just recovering from its effects. She craved chocolates but was too poor to buy them herself. I pitied her. She told me in her frank and artless way that she had thought a great deal of a certain young fellow, but he was in another city at present, working, and that she hadn't seen him for a long time. She didn't know whether she ever would see him again, but she hoped to, for he was a very sweet fellow, she said. "If he thinks anything of me don't you think he'll come back to me?" she asked, turning up her soulful blue eyes at me. "He would be a brute if he didn't, Rose," responded I, with considerable warmth. The girl surely loved him. "Why don't he write to me?" "Maybe he hasn't got the time or ain't much of a writer," said I. "Some people don't like to write." "I guess that's true," said she, sadly. Though she had a sneaking regard for the young fellow, she didn't object to me buying milk chocolates for her, nor to going to a show with me, nor to taking a ride to Crescent Beach on a cosy little lake steamer. In fact, Rosie was out for a good time, and evidently wasn't particular who furnished the funds. As I fancied the poor girl I was not averse to giving her a good time. We went to Delaware Park and spent several whole afternoons rowing on the little lake. We fed the ducks, walked in shady groves, and the time flew swiftly by in her company. During the morning I sold signs and in the afternoon I went with Rosie. I put in a whole lot of time in Buffalo with her, more than I should have done. One day I told her that I would have to go and then there was a kick. She wouldn't have it. She could not and she would not let me go, she said. I argued the case with her, but she wasn't open to argument. She was one of these kind of girls who are apt to forget the absent one when the present charmer is nigh. It was the hardest job in the world for me to leave her, but I finally did so. Rosie, farewell; and if forever, then forever, fare thee well. CHAPTER IV. NEW YORK CITY. I have heard it stated that "a great city is a great solitude" and so it is if you are a stranger. New York seemed a big solitude to me, for I didn't know anyone and no one knew me. I landed in the Grand Central Depot in a swell quarter of the city one day, and felt utterly lost, for I didn't know which way to turn. As I was poor, that swell neighborhood was no place for me, but where was I to find a poorer locality? I concluded to walk and find one. I kept a walking and a walking and a walking, but the more I walked the more high-toned did the streets seem. Nothing but fine houses and well-paved streets met my view and they made me tired. I did not like to address any of the people walking along these streets for they seemed hurried, cold and distant. Says I to myself: "Windy, you've struck a cold place. Chicago was bad, but this place is worse. If you are going to Europe, this will have to be your headquarters for awhile, though." Bye-and-bye I struck a street called Eighth Avenue, which was a long and wide one. It was full of people and stores. The sidewalks were so crowded that locomotion was difficult, and I saw more coons there than I had ever seen in my life before. They were dressed up to kill and considered they owned the town. From their manner one would suppose they had no use for white trash. I had walked so much that I was pretty well tired out, and I also was hungry and thirsty. I concluded I would seek some saloon where I could obtain a rest, a drink and a free lunch, all for a nickel. There are such places everywhere in the cities, plenty of them, and all you have to do is to find them. I walked along and kept my eyes peeled for one. I saw lots of stylishly fitted-up stores along the avenue, and as there was so much style I thought there ought to be lots of money. Everyone I met was dressed to kill, and it seemed to me that no one was poor. Finally I came to a saloon which was bejeweled and be-cut-glassed outside, and swell inside, having marble floors and fancy fixtures. Into this saloon I stepped and strode up to the bar, where I ordered a schooner of beer. I laid down a nickel on the bar and then leisurely strolled over to the lunch counter, which contained a pretty good spread of free lunch. I tackled a fistful of bread and cheese, and then wound up with bologna, pickles, crackers and pickled tripe. I ordered another schooner and hit the free lunch again real hard. No one said anything to me. After a good long rest I hit the "Avenue" again to see the sights. There was plenty to be seen for the avenue was jammed with people, trolley cars and trucks. The buildings were of brick, as a rule, and old-fashioned in appearance. On the ground floor were stores and over head dwellings. Everyone was a hustling and a bustling and didn't seem to have much time for anything except to sell you something. No one knew me or seemed to care a cuss for me. I felt lonely. The din was so great and the crowd so dense that I couldn't hear myself think. I was swept along with the crowd and kept my eyes and ears open. The stores were very fine, and the signs upon them handsome. Though Eighth Avenue is by no means in a rich section of the city, it seemed to me that there was a whole lot of wealth and style there. I felt quite out of place for I wasn't well dressed. Some of the free lunch I had eaten--I believe it was the bologna--had given me a thirst, so I stepped into an ice cream saloon and had a "schooner" of ice cream soda, which quenched my thirst admirably. Things were cheap and good in New York, I quickly learned, and if one only had the price, one could live well there. One could have all kinds of fun, too, for there are so many people. The city is like an overgrown bee-hive--it more than swarms with people. I believe that New York City today has over four millions of people, with more a coming every year--thousands of them. I had heard a great deal about the Bowery in New York, so I concluded to see it. I knew the song about it, the chorus of which was: The Bowery, the Bowery, They say such things, and they do such things, On the Bowery, the Bowery-- Oh! I'll never go there any more. And I was wondering what kind of things they said there and what they did. Well, they didn't say much when I struck it and there was nothing doing to speak of, except people rushing along minding their own business. It may have been wicked, but it isn't now. It is a business street and that is all. There is an "Elevated" over the street, which makes noise enough to raise the dead, and a lot of cheap-looking stores and restaurants. There is any number of "hat-blocking" establishments run by Hebrews, and the whole street in fact, seems like a section of Jerusalem. Jews till you can't rest. There may be some knock-down-and-drag-out places, but these are not confined to the Bowery. There are other streets far worse. No, the Bowery today is a peaceful, quiet street, and there isn't "anything doing" worth speaking about. New York has some fine streets, such as Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Madison Square, Twenty-third Street, Fourteenth Street, etc. Broadway is the main business street and begins at Bowling Green and runs up to Central Park and thence beyond. It is several miles long, its lower portion from Bowling Green to Fourteenth Street being lined on either side by many sky-scrapers and massive wholesale business establishments, and from Fourteenth Street up, by retail stores. Rents are high on this street and the buildings fine. Fifth Avenue is not so long as Broadway and contains the residences of many millionaires and less rich people. There is lots of style and wealth on that street. The Central Park is a beautiful spot. It runs from Fifty-ninth Street to One Hundred and Tenth Street, and from Fifth to Eighth Avenue. It is two and a half miles long by about two miles wide, and isn't big enough sometimes to contain the crowds of people that flock into it. It contains shady walks and trees, lawns, baseball grounds, lakes, casinos, stately malls (avenues), a large zoological collection, a great art gallery, an immense natural history building, extensive drives, secluded nooks for love-making, and lots of other nice things. Around its grand entrance at Fifth Avenue are some of the largest and swellest hotels in New York. As everyone knows, of course, New York is the largest city in the country and the most cosmopolitan. It is the center of art, trade and finance, and its population is composed of all sorts. There are as many Irish as in the largest city in Ireland, as many Germans, almost, as in Hamburg, as many Jews as in Jerusalem, and a big crowd of almost every nationality under the sun. The main part of the city is situated on Manhattan Island, and it is overcrowded, compelling the overplus to seek the suburbs and other near-by localities. Even these are becoming too well populated. Jersey City, Newark, Brooklyn, Paterson, Kearney, Harrison, Staten Island, Coney Island, etc., are increasing in population all too rapidly. New York is one of the "step lively" towns, and you are expected to hustle there, whether you want to or not. It is all your life is worth sometimes to cross a street, and a car won't stop long enough to enable you to get on or off. The tenement sections are studies in human life, and malodorous ones at that. The throngs are wonderful to behold. If you have plenty of money New York is an interesting place to live in. You will never feel dull there. You can live in some pretty suburb and go back and forth every morning and evening, as thousands do; or you can live in the city and ride out into the country every day by carriage, train or boat. In the good old summer time, if you live in the city, you can go to Manhattan or Brighton Beach, Coney Island, North Beach, South Beach, Rockaway, Fire Island, Long Branch, the Highlands, Shrewsbury River and a thousand and one other resorts in the vicinity. There is no lack of amusement or pleasure places. Even the very poor can find lots of pleasant places to go, around New York, for the fares are low. For ten cents one can ride from New York to Coney Island, a distance of over twenty miles; to Fort George for five cents, fifteen miles or more; to Manhattan Beach, South Beach, Staten Island, Newark, up the Hudson, and lots of other places. In the city itself, and free for all, are the Aquarium, Art Galleries, Public Squares, Parks, Roof Gardens along the two rivers (the Hudson and East Rivers), the animals in Bronx and Central Parks, the museums and other things. There is always something to hear and see in New York City at all hours of the day and night. New York surely is quite a sizeable village, and to judge from the way it has been growing, ten years from now it will extend a hundred miles or more up the Hudson, to Albany, maybe. CHAPTER V. THEM BLOOMIN' PUBLISHERS. Before I say much more about New York I want to say a word about the book publishers of that city, for I got to know a little something about them. I will relate my experiences among them, which will enable others to judge what they are like. I wanted to find a publisher for this book, and was told that New York is the proper place to do business of that kind. The first publisher I attempted to do business with has a large establishment on Vandewater Street, which is not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. I asked an elevator man who stood in the hallway of this building where I could find the boss. "Which boss?" asked he, with a huge grin, for he probably deemed me some country jay looking for a job. My appearance was not very respect-inspiring, to say the truth; not for New York, anyway. "The head of this establishment," answered I, placidly. "What do you want to see him about? Are you looking for a job?" "No, I'm not; I want to have some printing done." "Oh, that's the ticket, is it? The superintendent is the man _you_ want to see. He's on the top-floor. Come with me and I'll take you up to him." I stepped into the elevator and up we shot. We never stopped until we struck the top landing, where a door confronted us which opened into a huge apartment that was full of type-stands, presses, paper-cutters and printing machinery of all sorts. At the furthest end of this huge apartment were some offices. Upon my entrance into the large apartment a man stepped up to me and wanted to know what I wanted. "I'd like to see the superintendent." "Looking for a job, cully?" asked this gentleman. "Well, hardly," responded I. "I want to have some printing done." "Oh, you do, eh? You'll find the super in the rear office; away in the back," and he waved his hand toward the rear. I walked toward the rear and was met by a small boy, who came out of an office and wanted to know my business. "I want to see the superintendent, sonny," said I. "What do you want to see him about?" asked the kid. "Never you mind; I want to see him." "Will you please let me have your card?" "My card? What do you want my card for?" "So as to let the boss know who you are." "He don't know me; anyway, I haven't got a card." "Will you please write your name and the nature of your business on this tablet? and I'll take it to him," said the boy, handing me a writing tablet and pencil. I didn't understand this method of doing business but I did as requested. The boy took the card in and presently the superintendent appeared. His name was Axtell. "What can I do for you?" promptly asked Mr. Axtell, without any preliminaries. Probably he was a busy man. "I have written a book, sir, and I want to have it printed." The gent looked at me contemplatively. What his thoughts were I don't know. "What kind of a book is it you've written? History, travel, poetry, novel or what?" I told him it was a novel. "How many pages will the book contain?" asked the superintendent. "There will be four or five hundred pages, I guess, as near as I can figure it," responded I. "How many copies will you want?" "I'll leave that to you, sir, for you know best. This is my first book, and though I don't think it is going to set the world on fire," said I modestly, "I think a first edition of about ten thousand copies would be the thing. Don't you think that would do for a starter?" "It might," said he contemplatively. "Excuse me," continued he as he sat down at his desk and began to do some figuring. When he got through he turned to me and said: "Ten thousand copies of the book in paper cover will cost you in the neighborhood of $1000." "Cost _me_ $1000," almost shrieked I. "I wanted to know what you'll give me for the manuscript and print it yourself." A cold glare froze in the gent's eye. "We only print 'reprint' here; we do not buy manuscripts." I did not understand, and the gent judged so from my demeanor, for he added: "You want to see a publisher. Go up to Twenty-third Street; you'll find lots of them up that way." I did not know the difference between a printer and a publisher at that time, so that is how I came to make the mistake. Up Twenty-third Street way I went. Twenty-third Street was a pretty swell one, far too swell for rather a seedy-looking chap like me. I came upon the establishment of Messrs. Graham & Sons, which was one of the swellest on the street. It was contained in a six-story marble building, all ornaments and furbelows in front, and it was so swell that it made me feel small. The store must have been at least 200 feet long and nearly as wide as it was long. A small part of this vast space was divided off into offices, but by far the greater portion was devoted to the exposure of books. Books were piled around till you couldn't rest--on counters, shelves, in elaborate glass cases, and on the floor, even. All were handsomely bound and good to look at. When I saw the conglomeration my heart sank. "Look at all this array, Windy," said I to myself; "where are you going to get off at? You want to add another book to this little pile, do you? You are all kinds of a fool." For a few moments I was discouraged, but the feeling did not last long. I am an optimist, a fellow who never gets discouraged. Instantly I mustered courage and walked up to a white-haired old gentleman whom I told that I would like to see the proprietor. The old gentleman told me that he was in his office on the top floor of the building. Up I went to see him. When I reached the top floor, which was a sort of literary symposium and printing office combined, a small boy came forward and asked me my business. I told him, whereupon he asked me for my card. As I hadn't any, I wrote my name and the nature of my business on a tablet, and the boy took it into an office. A well-groomed and handsome young gentleman came forward and asked me to be seated. It was in an outer, not walled-in office, but even the furniture in it was swell. After exchanging airy compliments and discussing the weather a bit, the gentleman remarked _en passant_, "You have written a book?" That broke the ice. I told him I had and then we proceeded to business. He wanted to know the nature of the book and such other things as were well for him to know. I then asked a few questions myself. "What do you pay authors for their books, Mr. Graham?" "That depends," replied he. "We usually pay a royalty of $500 down and ten per cent on every book sold, after that." I thought that was a pretty fair rattle out of the box. I concluded to leave my writings with Mr. Graham on those terms and he consented to receive them. I knew he had but to read to accept. I always was optimistic, as I said before. Mr. Graham requested me to leave my address, so he could communicate with me. He informed me I would hear from him in a few days. I did. In a few days I got a note from him in a high-toned, crested envelope, which stated that "the first reader" of the house had read the book and found good points in it, but that "the second reader" was dubious. To make sure he, Mr. Graham, had read the book himself and wasn't certain whether there was any money in it. Under these circumstances he was constrained to forego the pleasure of publication, etc., etc., etc. These were not his exact words, but their substance. After reading the kind note I concluded to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, but thought better of it. Messrs. Graham & Sons were not the only pebbles on the beach, so why not see what I could do elsewhere. That's what I did--tried my luck elsewhere. There were other publishers on Twenty-third Street and if Graham & Sons did not know a good thing when they saw it, others might. On the same block, only a few doors distant, was another large firm. To them I went. A small little man with a Scotch accent sat in the ante-room and asked me what I was after. He wanted my card, too, but didn't get it. He went in to see Mr. Phillips, the editor of the publishing house, and this gentleman turned me down in short order. He told me that there are too many books published nowadays, and that books of travel were a drug on the market. The cuss told me everything in the world to discourage me, but he couldn't do it. I just went around to see some of the other publishers, but none of them would "touch" the story at any price and each one had a different reason for refusing. I was unknown, poor and obscure, and that settled it. There was no show there for me. To get along one must be rich or have "a pull." CHAPTER VI. THE OCEAN VOYAGE. I put in the winter in New York working at Berry's, one of the swellest catering houses in the city. It is situated on Fifth Avenue and is a rival of the great Delmonico establishments. The nobs of New York, when they want to give a little dinner or supper at home, see Berry, who furnishes all the fine grub, cooks, waiters, dishes, plates, etc., or if they want to eat at his place they can do so, for he has private dining-rooms, ball-rooms, etc., where they can have anything they want, providing they have the price to pay for it. He employs a lot of people in his establishment, in the shape of a housekeeper, chambermaids, male chefs and assistants, waiters, omnibuses, porters, head-waiters, superintendents and a window-cleaner. I was the window-cleaner. It was the softest snap I had ever struck. I worked from 8 in the morning until about dusk, and all I had to do was to keep every window in the house as bright and shiny as a new dollar. The building is a large one and the windows are many, but it was no trick at all to keep them clean. I cleaned a few windows every day and put in a whole lot of unnecessary time at it. I got twenty-five dollars a month for the job with board thrown in. The board was extra fine. Roast goose and chicken for dinner every day (left over victuals, of course), crab, shrimp and potato salads, oysters in any style, rich puddings, pies and cakes, wines of all vintages--say, sonny, we lived there and no mistake. I had struck a home. I held the job down all winter and saved a little money. I told some of my fellow-workers, both male and female, that I intended to take a little flyer to the old country in the spring, and they laughed at me and guyed me unmercifully. One fine spring day "when fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love" as I once saw it stated in a novel, I strolled down Bowling Green where the steamship offices are located and got pointers for my little trip. I learned that I could go to London direct, to Amsterdam, Rotterdam and several other dams; to Hamburg, Southampton, Liverpool, Havre, Glasgow and to so many other places that I grew bewildered. As I stood in front of the Cunard line office a young fellow stepped up to me and asked: "Say, mister, are you thinking of going to Yurrup?" I didn't think it was any of his business, so I said: "What do you want to know for?" "Who, me?" replied he, taking time to gather his wits. "I'm connected with a ticket agency around on Greenwich Street, and if you want a ticket cheap, come with me and I'll get you one." "How cheap?" asked I. "That'll depend on where you want to go to. We sell tickets to all places mighty cheap. Where do you want to go?" "Don't know yet; haven't decided." "Let me sell you a ticket to Glasgow on the Anchor line. That line will take you to Ireland and Scotland and is the finest trip in the world." "What's the fare?" inquired I. "Only thirty dollars," answered he, "and you will get your money's worth." I didn't think I'd see much of Ireland or Scotland if I bought a ticket from him, so I told him I'd see him later. I wandered into the Anchor Line office and asked the ticket agent what the price of a ticket to Glasgow would be. "Cabin or steerage?" inquired he. "Steerage, of course; I'm no Vanderbilt." The agent looked at me quizzingly and then remarked: "From twenty-seven dollars upward, according to accommodation." I didn't know what he meant by "accommodation" but I thought twenty-seven dollars was enough for me. "Do you want a ticket?" asked the agent, as if he were in a hurry. "I haven't the price with me now," said I. "What did you come here for then," snapped he. "For information," snapped I. He saw that I was getting huffy so he pulled in his horns and said: "We can take you to Scotland in pretty good shape for twenty-seven dollars. You will have a good berth and the best of food, and we'll land you in Glasgow in less than ten days from the time you leave here. What do you say; shall I give you a ticket?" I cogitated. The prospect looked good to me. "Yes," said I impulsively, "give me a ticket!" I gave him my name, as he requested, answered all the questions he put to me, and in a jiffy he had the ticket made out for me. "What's the name of the ship I'm going to sail on?" asked I. "The Furnessia," answered he, adding, "she will leave from the foot of West Twenty-fourth Street on Saturday morning at nine o'clock sharp. Be on hand at that time, or you'll get left." "Don't you worry about me getting left," retorted I; "I'll be there all right." Was I happy after I bought the ticket? I can't say that I was, for I wasn't at all positive whether I had better go. I didn't know what the old country would be like, so that visions of all kinds of trouble floated through my noddle, but faint heart never won a fair lady. I might as well be found dead in Europe as in any other place. What's the dif? This was Thursday and the ship was to sail on Saturday. It seemed to me a long time to wait for when I go anywhere I like to go in a hurry. Saturday morning came and I arose bright and early. I slept very little that night, for I was thinking, thinking, thinking. After arising and having a cup of coffee I took my time strolling down toward the steamship pier. After I arrived there I was about to enter the long covered shed, when an official strode up to me and asked me where I was going. I carried no baggage of any sort and didn't think I needed any. I am too old a traveler to encumber myself with baggage. All I carried was on my person. I told the official I was bound for Europe on the Furnessia and showed him my ticket. He looked at it and let me pass. I went on board. When I reached the deck a young man dressed in a white jacket and peaked cap asked me if I were a married man. I didn't think it was any of his business, so I asked him what he wanted to know for. The young fellow frowned and exclaimed: "Don't give me no language, young feller; I want to know if yer married or single." I told him I was a single man, whereupon he said: "You go forward to the quarters for single men!" "Where's that?" queried I. "For'ard of the main hatch," responded he. I didn't know the difference between a main hatch and a chicken hatch, but I went up to the front part of the vessel where I saw several sailors slinging trunks down a hole by means of a rope. I walked up to them and asked one of them who wasn't too busy to answer a question, where the main hatch was. "It's in the fo'-castle," says Jack, with a wink at his mates; "do you want it?" "No," said I. "I don't; where's the quarters for the single men." "Oh, that's what you're after, is it? You follows your nose till you gets to the bows, and then you'll see a companionway down which you goes." "All right," says I; "thank you." The directions weren't clear, but I guessed I could find my way. I went forward through rows of boxes, trunks, valises, ropes and other impediments, and finally came to a stairway over which was a hood or sliding cover. This stairway was almost straight up and down, with rough brass plates on each step to prevent one from slipping. At either side of it was a rope in lieu of a balustrade. That stairway did not look good to me. CHAPTER VII. THE STEERAGE. As soon as I tried to go down the stairway there was trouble, trouble of the worst kind. I could get down all right, but when I got down a few steps an odor came up that made me pause. The odor was not of stale onions, a rotting steer or anything like that, but an indefinable one. I never smelt anything like it before and it conquered me at once. It caught me right in the throat and though I tried to swallow I couldn't do so to save my life. I began to chew as if I were chewing tobacco, and the lump rose in my throat and wouldn't go up nor down. I hadn't drunk a drop that morning excepting a cup of coffee, so it couldn't have been liquor that upset me. It must have been the smell and nothing else. I stood on a step holding to the side rope to steady myself and hesitated about going down. I grew dizzy and thought I was going to fall but held on like grim death. "Come Windy," says I to myself, "your bunk is below, and you'll have to go down to it or someone else will get it. This won't do." I went down slowly and the further down I got the stronger the smell became. Suddenly I got very sick. I felt like giving up the enterprise right then and there but as my friends would have had the laugh on me if I did so, I concluded to see the thing out. I had to go down the stairway, though, there was no getting around that; I had to select a berth, and to do that I had to go below. I kind of fooled around and hesitated to make the plunge but finally I mustered courage and made the attempt once more. I went down very slowly, holding my hand over my nose and mouth. I got down a few steps and then I stopped again. I just couldn't. I just laid down where I was and fired away like a good fellow. I was more than willing to die. As I lay there a jacky suddenly came down, airy-fairy fashion, as if he were dancing on eggs, and in his hands he carried a long, black tin pan in which was his mate's breakfast, consisting of meat, gravy and potatoes. I caught a whiff of the mess and oh mercy! When jacky got down to the bottom and saw me sitting there and the muss I had made he became very indignant and wanted to know what I meant by mussing up the ship like that. "Why don't you go on deck if you want to be sick?" said he. Had I been well I would have swiped the heartless cuss one just for luck, but I was too weak to speak, even. I fired away again and seeing this, Jacky flew away as if the devil was after him. After a good long time I got down in the steerage and saw the steerage steward who was a Scotchman with a broad accent, and he gave me a berth. He noticed that I had been sick and advised me to go upstairs and get all the fresh air I could. I acted on his advice and made my way up the stairway again as quickly as I could, but that wasn't very quick. When I got on deck the fresh air revived me somewhat, but it seemed to me as if my stomach were all gone. There was an "all gone" feeling there, sure enough. The ship was getting ready to start by this time. An officer mounted a raised deck over the forecastle and gave orders to heave the hawsers off. The captain, who stood on the bridge, signalled to the engineer below to let her go, and off we were. Slowly we moved out from the pier, to the farewells of the multitudes on shore and on deck. Some blubbered, but ne'er a blubber from me. I wasn't caring whether school kept or not. The vessel's prow after she got out of her dock was turned down the Hudson toward the Battery, and she went well out into the middle of the stream. This afforded us a good view of the river. On one side was the New York shore, and on the other, the Jersey. Panoramas of houses and docks on either side swept by us as we moved along, and sky-scrapers loomed up prominently. We passed pretty close to the Goddess of Liberty, and saw plainly Governor's Island, Ellis Island, Fort Hamilton, Fort Wordsworth, Bath Beach, Staten Island and Coney Island. Quickly enough we were abreast of Sandy Hook, which was the last point of land we would see until we reached Europe. Straight ahead of us was nothing but sky and water. It was now nearly noon. I had eaten nothing that morning and what I had eaten yesterday was mostly downstairs in the hallway. The fresh sea-breeze had revived me a little and now I felt that I could eat something. None of the passengers had eaten anything since they came on board, and probably they, too, must have been hungry, for when the dinner bell rang there was a mighty stampede. Some of them didn't take time to rush downstairs, they just dropped down. The dinner was good. There was plenty of nourishing soup on hand, a liberal allowance of meat, vegetables, bread, butter and coffee. No one need have gone hungry. All the other meals were satisfactory, though an occasional one was punky. Of course there were kickers, but those kind of people will be found everywhere. The second day out was Sunday, and it was a fine spring day, but on Monday morning clouds began to gather and tried to work up a storm. They succeeded all too speedily. The sky became black, the wind roared up aloft, the masts hummed, timbers creaked, the ship rolled from side to side and then rose and fell; the cordage whipped against the masts and everything looked lovely for a first-class storm. I got scared. I hated to die so young, but what's the odds? The waves were high as mountains and to me seemed about as mean looking as anything I ever saw. They were white on top and made straight for us. We could not run away from them. I was on deck waiting to see the storm out, for what was the use going below and being drowned there? If I was to die I would die game and at the front. It didn't seem to me that anything built by human hands could withstand the buffeting of those waves. The force of the sky-scraping billows was awful. They kind of made me wilt when I looked at them. I survived that storm or I wouldn't be writing this. If you catch me on the sea again though, you'll have to be a fast runner. I was told that we would see land again by the following Sunday and I was sort of pining to see it. It was a wait of several long days, but I didn't have much else to do than wait. There was nothing to do on board except to eat, sleep and wait. I got pretty badly drenched during the storm. A huge comber made a leap for me and broke right over me, spilling a few tons of water on top of me. It was a soaker, sure enough, and I didn't dry out until several days afterward. I had only one suit of clothes with me and they were on my back so they had no chance to dry. I slept in them to keep them warm. A life on the ocean wave is a gay thing. It is awful nice to be spun around like a cork and then see-sawed up and down with a possibility of touching bottom. The heel over from side to side is also very funny, for there is a good chance of being shot overboard when the ship jams suddenly away over. You hold on wondering whether the ship is going to right herself or not. If she does, you're in luck, and if she don't it's good-bye Lisa Jane. How many ships do tip over? Several thousand of them every year. Luckily, the Furnessia wasn't one of the unlucky ones this trip. The worst that happened to me was a bad scare and a shower-bath. Maybe the water wasn't cold when that wave struck me! Ugh! It knocked the wind out of me for a moment and I didn't know where I was at. I dripped like a drowned rat and when my fellow passengers saw me they roared. On Tuesday morning of the second week we saw the shores of Europe. We had now been out about ten days. I have read that Columbus and his crew felt pretty good when they saw land again after their eventful voyage but I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut they didn't feel half as good as I felt when I saw land again. I was more than pining to see it. Ten days of sloppiness was a whole lot for me. If there is any fun wandering around with one's clothing sticking to one's back I fail to see it. I was feeling all right and my general health was good, but the lack of sleep and the fetid odors down below helped to daze me. I was in a sort of pipe dream and hardly knew whether I was afoot or on horseback. There was land ahead, though, and I felt like shouting. The land ahead of us was the coast of Ireland and it looked good to me. The name of Ireland was familiar to me since my boyhood days, and I had seen Irishmen on the stage and off it, had heard songs sung about it and had heard it spoken of a million times. Here was the real thing right before me. I became mightily interested in it as did almost everyone else. The Irish passengers aboard, and there were plenty of them, became frantic with joy. Ireland surely is a beautiful country. Rocky headlands we saw, capes, bays, towering mountains in the background, green trees and farms. An air of romance seemed to hang over the place and the blue skies of the spring above looked down on it kindly. We steered straight in for the shore and then sailed northward along the coast. We kept off shore only a few miles. When we got to Tory Island we steamed between it and the mainland, and had a close view of this little islet. It was only a mile or two long with a quaint looking light-house at one end of it and a vegetable garden in bloom near by. Those green things growing, how they did entrance me! At the other end of the isle were rocks that towered up higher than the masts of our ship, and they were scarred, seamed and causewayed by the elements. They had taken the strangest shapes imaginable. We steamed through the strait between the island and the mainland swiftly, for though the strait was narrow the channel was deep; then we skirted southward along the east coast of Ireland until we came to a broad bay, where we anchored. This bay was shallow close in to the shore, so we anchored far out. On the shore was the town of Moville, where the Irish passengers were to disembark for points in Ireland. A little tender came steaming up and when she was loaded with baggage and passengers, there was hardly room enough to swing a cat in but as the Irish passengers were happy, we had no kick coming. The warm-hearted Irish bade us farewell with many a thrown kiss and handkerchief flutter. They were off. So we were soon, for Scotland. The scenes along the east coast of Ireland were no whit inferior to those on the west coast. It did not take us long to reach Scotland, where the scenery was enchanting. Words are entirely inadequate to give one a proper idea of it. To be appreciated it must be seen and _felt_, for reading about it don't do much good. Here, right before us, were the Highlands of Scotland and many a place famous in song and story. In due course of time we reached the Firth of Clyde and anchored off Greenock. This was the disembarking point for all the passengers. A little steamer shot out from Greenock and landed us, bag and baggage, at the Princess Pier, which reminded me somewhat of a Mississippi levee, for it was stone paved and sloping. On the pier cabbies stood about, touching their hats respectfully, but saying never a word. They were seeking "fares," and giving us the tip noiselessly. Newsboys were there, too, yelling in strange accents, "Morning Nip!" "Daily Bladder," etc., and some of them when they got on to my presence and saw that I was a greenhorn, made loud uncomplimentary remarks about me in language that I couldn't understand. This rather embarrassed me, for I didn't like to be made a show of. Them kids ought to have got a kick in the pants for their freshness but the more you fool with some kids the worse they get, so I just walked on minding my business and said nothing. All we third-raters were steered into the custom house where the baggage was to be examined. It didn't take the authorities long to examine mine. A quiet, lynx-eyed official asked me where my baggage was and when I told him I hadn't any, he jerked his head upward and backward, giving me a quiet hint to skip. I waited a few moments and then followed some of the other passengers to the railroad station, which was close by. Our destination was Glasgow, and Greenock was twenty-five miles distant, so we were compelled to make the rest of the journey by rail. When I entered the railroad station I stood stock still for a moment and stared. On one side of the station was a blank wall and on the other a "buffet," waiting-room, ticket office, "luggage" room and telegraph office. What stumped me was the cars and locomotive. The cars were stage-coaches strung on wheels with no bumpers to speak of; no blind baggage, no brake-beams, no nothing. Where was a fellow to ride when he was beating his way? One couldn't beat it in any shape, form or manner. To say that I was disappointed won't express my feelings. I was totally discouraged. I felt like going back home again on the return trip of the Furnessia but I didn't have the price. I had less than fifteen dollars in my possession and was up against it. I had no idea how big a country Scotland was or how the walking would be, so I did some pretty lively thinking. I now remembered what Little Billy had told me and found out that he had told me the truth. No, there was no way of "beating it" on those kind of cars. I mixed in with the push on the platform and began looking for a comfortable seat in a car. There were only two seats in a car, facing each other, and each seat was capable of holding four persons. Thus when there were eight persons in a coach it was full. I made a rush for a seat where I could view the scenery comfortably, and after the coaches were all filled and "all set," the doors were slammed shut, somebody outside blew a tin-horn and with a ratlike squeak from the engine we were off. The engine had seemed like a toy to me but she was speedy and powerful and could go like a streak. Away we clattered through tunnels, past fields and meadows, villages and towns. The scenery looked mighty foreign-looking to me and I was uneasy. I sure felt that I wasn't at home. On our right hand side as we sped up to Glasgow were the fields and meadows I just spoke of, and on the other side was a bare prairie through which wound the river Clyde. Along the banks of the Clyde were shipyards which are famous the world over. I believe these shipyards are so famous because ships can be built cheaper and better there than anywhere else. To be a Clyde-built ship is usually a recommendation. The scenery was interesting and would have been more so had I been happier. I was still half-dazed from the want of sleep during ten nights on board ship, my clothes didn't feel right on me from the soaking they had got and then the disappointment of not being able to "beat it," affected me, too. But it was all in the game, so I had no kick coming. After journeying about an hour we came upon the town of Paisley, which has been famous for centuries for the manufacture of "Paisley shawls." Large spool-cotton factories we could see in the place too, and it seemed to be a city of some size and consequence. In a little while after that we rushed into St. Enoch's station, Glasgow. This was our jumping-off place. The station was a very large and fine one, almost as much so as the Grand Central Station in New York. To judge from the station, Glasgow must be a sizeable place, for it was first-class in every respect and right up to date. CHAPTER VIII. GLASGOW. "All out for Glasgow," was the cry, so out we tumbled. I made my way out of the station and soon found myself upon the street, where I stood perplexed and bewildered. It seemed to me I had landed in some other world. Everything was so different--the houses, the stores, the streets, the sidewalks, the driveways, the people, the vehicles, the dogs, the horses, the skies, the clouds, everything. How or where will I begin to describe these things? I have a pretty big contract on my hands, one that I am unequal to. I had never seen so many Scotch people in a bunch before and had no idea there were so many alive. There were thousands of them, tens of thousands of them. If Glasgow hasn't got a million of people then I miss my guess sadly. Scotchmen till you can't rest, anywhere and everywhere. Even the names on all the stores were Scotch. There was MacPherson and Blair, MacTevish, MacDonald, Brown, Alexander, MacFeely. Shetland ponies came trotting by that were about knee-high to a grasshopper and though so small they dragged after them carriages in which were seated grown persons. Why, a grown man could have picked up pony, rig and all, and carried them. I felt like telling the people in those rigs to get out and walk, and not disgrace themselves by making such a little creature in the shape of a horse drag them about. Oh, my! Oh, my! What queer things a fellow can see. Here came a two-wheeled cart clattering along which was hauled by a melancholy-looking little donkey and it was called a "sweet-milk cart." I kept my eyes peeled to see if a "sour-milk" cart would come along, but I didn't see any. They designate their stores in a curious way. A butcher shop is called a "flesher's," a furnishing goods store is called a "haberdashery," a dry goods store a "draper's," etc., etc. Say, pardner, pinch me, will you? I wonder whether I am alive. By this time I had stopped gazing standing still, and walked along, for the people were getting on to the fact that I was a greenhorn. My dress and appearance, and the way I stared gave me away. As I walked along unsteadily, still feeling that the ship was under me, I saw things. The houses were of gray stone several stories in height, with tall chimney tiles on top all in a cluster; stores on the ground floor and dwellings overhead. Nearly all of them had mansard roofs. They were nearly all alike and their exterior seemed plain and dull to me. But the stores riveted and held my attention. They were rather dingy, but the show windows were fitted up fine. Here was a fish store in the window of which were displayed salmon, grilse, lemons, plaice, megrins, haddock, cod, herrings; labels upon the platters designating what they were. In a candy store I saw toffie balls, chocolate bouncers, pomfret cakes, voice pastiles, and frosty nailrods. I laughed and wondered if they had any railroad spikes and rails. Frosty nailrods and bouncers, hey! Well, I was getting a pretty good show for my money. I looked into a tobacco store and there I saw a vast array of cigars, tobacco and smokers' articles. The brands of tobacco had curious names, such as Baillie Nicol Jarvey, Starboard Navy, Tam O'Shanter, Aromatic Mixture, English Birdseye and many others. The tobacco and cigars were dear, tobacco being eight cents an ounce, and funny-looking cigars four cents each. In the clothing store windows I noticed clothes made of excellent cloth in all varieties, that sold for eight and ten dollars the suit. They were fine and made me feel sad, for I hadn't the price to buy one, though I needed a suit badly. Shoes, too, were cheap and good. The windows of all the stores were heaped to profusion with goods, and it seemed to me there was more stock in the windows than there was in the stores. The wares were displayed very temptingly with a price tag on everything. The jewelry displayed was more than tasteful, I thought; I wanted a few diamonds awful bad. I wandered along Argyle street, which seemed a broad and busy thoroughfare. The sidewalks were jammed and so was the roadway. I sauntered along slowly, taking in the circus, for it was better than a circus to me. It was a continuous performance. Lots of people gazed at me, nudged each other and made remarks, but I couldn't catch what they said. Probably they took me for some animal that had escaped from a menagerie. I wasn't caring, though, what they thought. I was having as much fun out of them as they were having out of me. I saw so many queer sights that I couldn't describe a tithe of them. Many fine people drove by in fine rigs, and some of these wealthy ones were probably out on shopping expeditions. There were grand ladies and gentlemen in multitudes, and I figured it out that wealth and nobility must be pretty prevalent in Scotland. Many of the ladies were beauties of the blond type and the gentlemen were well-dressed and elegant in appearance. They carried themselves nobly and proudly and seemed stern yet manly. The ladies surely were engaging and I noticed several of them alight from moving street cars gracefully. They didn't wait for the car to stop, but swung off, alighting in the right direction every time. Had they been American ladies it is more than likely they would have landed on top of their heads. The Glasgow ladies have mastered the trick, all right, and mastered it well, for you can't down them, nohow. As I sauntered along slowly, two young girls came along with plaid shawls thrown over their shoulders and when they got near me one of the girls collapsed and fell on the sidewalk. None of the crowd stopped, whereat I wondered, but I stopped to see what the trouble was. If the girl wasn't as full as a goat you may smother me. She must have been imbibing too much hot Scotch. The girl was in her teens, and quite pretty, and so was her companion. I felt sorry that so young and pretty a girl would make a spectacle of herself, so I strode up and asked if I could be of any assistance. The fallen one glared at me and the one standing on her feet trying to help her companion stared at me. My American accent may have been too much for her for she made no reply. I remained standing there, whereupon the sober one got angry and turned on me with the remark: "Did yer never see ah lassie fou?" From her indignant tones and manner I saw that she was huffy, so I made tracks in a hurry, for I wasn't looking for trouble. After seeing as much as I wanted to of Argyle Street, I walked toward the embankment of the Clyde River, which I could see not far away, and had a look at the shipping. The ships were as curious to me as everything else I saw in Glasgow, for they were distinctly foreign-looking and odd. Glasgow seemed a great port, for there were ships of all nations there. The banks along the water front were high and walled up with stone, forming fine promenades. Quite a number of very fine bridges spanned the stream and they must have cost a lot of money. They were of stone, iron and wood, and were equal to structures of their kind anywhere. I noticed that the water was of a dark chocolate color, which means--mud. The stream isn't very broad, but it is deep. I was speaking of the vessels! Well, they took my time. I had read of low, black-hulled, rakish crafts in pirate stories and these looked like them. Wonder if they were pirates? I didn't go aboard any of them to investigate. Along the water front street opposite the embankment were hotels, stores, lodging-houses, ship-outfitting establishments, taverns, inns, and all manner of places catering to seafaring men. All of them seemed curiosity shops to me. My little pen isn't able to describe them. What's the use of trying? I came upon a spot called for short and sweet "The Broomielaw," which was a section of the water front given up to the landing of "up-country" steamboats, which came down the various lochs, rivers, bays, "the Minch," and other waters of northern Scotland, and it was more than interesting to observe the little steamers when they came in. They were laden with cattle and people from the Highlands and elsewhere, and with produce and merchandise. Many of the people were dressed in togs that I never saw outside of a comic opera show and when cattle were unloaded from these long, narrow piratical-looking craft I had more fun watching them than I ever had in my life before. The cattle were mostly black like the ships, and a whole lot of tail-twisting and Scotch language had to be used before they would take the hint and go ashore. They didn't like the looks of things and bucked. The sights of the city bewildered them, no doubt, for they were used to quieter scenes. The cowboys had on Tam O'Shanter caps and wore not describable togs. They punched the cattle, twisted their tails and shouted words that the cattle maybe could understand, but I couldn't. Highland Scotch was too high for my nut. Excursion boats came to the Broomielaw and dumped their passengers on the landing from the Harris, Skye, Stormaway, Fladda, the Dutchman and all the other places so renowned in Scottish stories. After dumping one lot of passengers and freight they took another load back to the same places. Had I had the price I would have gone up country sure, for there are a whole lot of things to be seen up that way. But by this time it was nearing noon and I was getting hungry, so I concluded that a good, square meal would do me good. The Broomielaw and the other places weren't going to run away, and I would have plenty of opportunities of seeing them. CHAPTER IX. GETTING A SQUARE MEAL. I drifted along Salt Market Street and then came upon a street which, for want of a better name, was called Sauchiehall Street, in the neighborhood of which I saw a restaurant called the "Workingman's Restaurant," on the side-wall of which was painted in large letters the following bill of fare: Tea, 2 cents. Coffee, 2 cents. Porridge and milk, 2 cents. Sandwiches, 2 and 4 cents. Eggs, 2 cents. Ham and eggs, 16 cents. Broth, 2 cents. Pea soup, 2 cents. Potato soup, 2 cents. Beefsteak pudding, 4 cents. Sausage, 2 cents. Collops, 4 and 6 cents. Dessert puddings, 2 cents. Fish suppers, 8 and 12 cents. Tripe suppers, 8 and 12 cents. The bill of fare and the prices looked good to me and I concluded that this would be my dining place. In front of the restaurant were two large show windows in one of which was displayed all kinds of bakery goods, such as large flapjacks, big as elephant ears, labeled "scones." They looked like flapjacks to me, but were bigger and thicker, and could be had for two cents each. One of them was enough for a square meal. I wanted something better than that, though, just then. There were big biscuits in the window, too, cakes of various kinds, tarts, etc. In the other window were huge joints of beef and mutton, meat pies, hog-meat in various shapes and styles, and other dainties. My teeth began to water as I eyed the display and a drop trickled down my chin. "Lemme see, now; what'll I tackle?" says I to myself. Some of the hog meat looked good to me and so did the beef and mutton. I was willing to spend two bits or so for a good square meal. While I stood gazing and deliberating a young girl with a shawl around her shoulders came up to me and addressed me: "Hoo air ye?" asked she. I thought she had made a mistake and had taken me for someone she knew, so I asked her if she wasn't mistaken in the person. Either she did not understand pure English or else she did not want to, for she kept up the conversation. It didn't take me long to catch on to the fact that she was bent on making a mash. She didn't know me from Adam, nor I her. She was light haired and pretty, and had a slight, graceful figure, which was not well hidden by a shawl, which she kept opening and closing in front of her. I concluded that I was in for joy the first thing. To tell the real, honest truth, I wasn't hankering for fun just then, for I was too hungry, but of course it wouldn't do to be discourteous to a stranger, and a pretty one at that. To her inquiry how I was, I told her "Tiptop," which she didn't seem to understand. She did catch on to it, though, that I was a stranger. "Where'd ye come from, the noo?" "The noo, the noo," thinks I. "What does she mean by that?" I caught on suddenly. "Oh, I just landed this morning from New York." "Ho, yer a Yankee, then?" says she. "No, I'm not," answered I. "I'm a Westerner." "Ooh eye, ooh eye," repeated she twice, as if she didn't understand. "What air ye going to do in Glesgie?" asked she in clear, bell-like accents. She came up pretty close to me and now I could detect from her breath that she had been indulging in Scotch bug-juice. This displeased me. I gave her a hint that I had had no dinner and that I was pretty hungry, but it was evident that something stronger than a hint would be needed to cut me loose from her. She began to coax and then suddenly she called me a bully. That got me off. I told her in pretty plain language that she was a trifle fresh and that I hadn't said or done anything to warrant her in calling me names. She didn't understand what I said, but I guess she could tell from my manner that I was angry, so her soft eyes gazed down to the ground sadly. I excused myself, left her and went into the restaurant. The unexpected interview had agitated me somewhat, but I soon got over it. The front part of the restaurant was a sort of store, where edibles were displayed on counters and which could be bought and carried away, or eaten on the premises, as one chose. The rest of the apartment was divided off into cabinets having sliding doors to them. In each cabinet was a rough wooden table with backless, wooden benches, close up to it, and on either side of it. The cabinet wasn't big enough to turn around in, but it served the purpose for which it was built. A young waitress came to the cabinet I had chosen as my retreat and asked me what I would have. When she heard my foreign accent it was all she could do to keep from sniggering. I asked for pea soup for the first course. It was brought to me and it was nice. While eating it, the door slid back quietly, and who do you think entered it? Guess! I'll bet you never could guess. Why, it was no one else than the young girl who had addressed me outside the restaurant. She had probably watched from the outside and seen in which cabinet I had gone and there she was, large as life. Tell _me_ Scotch girls aren't cute. For a moment I was so flabbergasted you could have knocked me down with a feather, but I soon recovered my equanimity. The girl asked me if she might sit down beside me. What could I say? Of course, I said yes. I kept on eating my soup and cogitated. If this was the custom of the country I didn't like it. Where I came from strangers were not in the habit of inviting themselves to dinner. The lassie (that's what girls are called in Scotland) chinned away to me, but I didn't understand her, nor did I care to very much just then. After the pea soup had disappeared I asked the lassie if she was hungry and she gave me to understand that she was not. Probably she had only come in for a social chat. The waitress soon came in again and sniffed scornfully when she saw my companion there. She probably took me for a naughty man. All this goes to show how a poor, innocent fellow can get into trouble when he isn't looking for it. I next ordered some roast mutton, potatoes and bread and butter. To the waitress's inquiry what I would drink I said "Water." The lassie looked at me reproachfully. I divined that _she_ wouldn't have ordered water. While I ate the lassie chinned and seemed to stick to me as faithfully as a Dutch uncle to a rich relative. I don't think that she was fully aware of what she was doing or saying. After I had finished the second course, the waitress made her appearance again and wanted to know what further would be wanted. I told her, nothing, whereupon she began to gather up the dishes and her manner proclaimed that the cabinet might be wanted for the next customer. I took the hint and withdrew and the lassie followed me out. Outside of the restaurant the lassie gave me a gentle hint that she knew of a snug place where we could have "a little smile" together, but I wasn't drinking just then and told her so. I was leery of her, in fact. How did I know who she was or what her little game was. I didn't know the language of the country, the laws, the customs or anything, so I proposed to proceed carefully. I shook the lassie firmly but politely as soon as I could and went my way. CHAPTER X. GLASGOW GREEN (or Common.) I concluded to go down toward the Clyde again but had some difficulty finding my way, for the streets were tortuous and winding, though quaint and old-fashioned. I had seen pictures of such streets on the stage and in plays. After much walking I came upon a thoroughfare called Stockwell Street which led direct to the quays. I walked to the Albert Bridge and contemplated its strength and solidity, and then walked in the direction of a park which I saw not far distant. I was informed by someone whom I asked that this was the Glasgow Common, or Green. The park, I should judge, is about two miles long by about half a mile wide, and is almost destitute of trees or plants. It is, in fact, nothing more than a bare public playground fitted up with tennis courts, cricket grounds, apparatus for gymnastic exercises, swings, a music-stand, etc. It surely is an interesting spot. The walks are long and numerous, resting-places are plentiful and near the river is a building used by the Humane Society--a hospital, most likely. A little way in from the entrance is a fountain that is worth describing. The "Glesgie" people seem to have a grudge against it for some reason or other, but it is a nice and elaborate work of art for all that. It is a large structure with a broad basin and many other basins that diminish in diameter as they near the top. The top basin is quite small. Around the largest basin are groups of life-sized figures representing the various races of man, such as Africans, Asiatics, Europeans, Australians and Americans. The figures are exceedingly well done. On the topmost pinnacle of the fountain is a heroic image of Lord Nelson, the great English Admiral. I thought the whole work was a most elaborate and fine one. Being tired, I sat down on a bench to rest. There were not very many people in the park just then and I had a good view of everything. Clear over on the other side of the park there wasn't a single person to be seen except a couple that sat on a bench making love in strenuous fashion. It was a workingman and a lassie. Did you ever watch a calf when it sucks its mother, how it makes a grab for a teat, rest awhile, then make another grab? That is the way that man made love. Suddenly he would throw his arm around the girl's waist, press her to him, then let go and take a breathing spell. The lassie sat quiet taking it all in and saying never a word. In a few minutes the man would make another grab, take a fresh hold and then let go again. It was a queer way of making love, I thought. The couple wasn't bashful a bit and evidently didn't care who saw them. I thought to myself that I would have to find some lassie to give me a few lessons in the art of making love in Scotch fashion, for I wasn't on to the game at all. After a good long rest I strolled through the city to see some more of it. It was quiet in the park just then and nothing doing. I came upon the old Glasgow Cathedral which is by far the oldest structure in the city and the most thought of by Glasgowites, but I was not much impressed by it. It is a thousand years old or more, is great in extent, is surrounded by ample grounds and is made of stone. It contains flying buttresses and some other gim-crackery but the whole thing is rather plain, black and dull. Sir Walter Scott in one of his novels describes it faithfully, and if any one wants to know more about it I politely request them to look up Sir Walter Scott. I ain't equal to the task of describing architecture in detail and such things. Not far from the Cathedral is the Necropolis, a very ancient burial ground right in the heart of the city, almost. It is as ancient as the Cathedral, maybe. It is a pretty spot and I went all through it. It is built around a hillside and is of considerable extent. Along the street level are walks bordered by trees, shrubs and flowers, and as you ascend the hillside you will see elaborate tombs, monuments, shady nooks and bosky bowers. On the highest portion of the rather steep and lofty hill a fine view of Glasgow may be had, and here lies buried, beneath a fine monument, John Knox, the Reformer. The Scotch think a heap about Mr. Knox, but as I don't know much about him I can't say much. He must have been a wonderful man and he surely lies buried in a grand spot. As a rule I don't like to wander about in bone-yards, but as this one was so pretty I was impelled to do so. Let me say a few words about Glasgow in a general way before I continue my story. Glasgow is the commercial metropolis of Scotland. It contains about 800,000 people, and in most respects is a modern city. It is the center of art, finance and trade, and what New York is to the United States, Glasgow is to Scotland. There is much wealth, style and fashion there, the people are workers and full of business. Wholesale and retail establishments abound, ship-building yards are numerous, as are foundries and manufacturing shops of many kinds. Chief of all the great industries in Glasgow is the ship-building. The business of the port of Glasgow is great and the volume of the shipping immense. These few pointers will reveal to you that Glasgow is not a jay town by any means. CHAPTER XI. HUNTING FOR A FURNISHED ROOM. As I said before, when I landed in Glasgow I had only a few dollars in my possession, therefore I deemed it wise to make them go as far as possible, for I didn't know what I was up against or how I would get along. The country was strange and new to me, I didn't know a soul this side the water, I knew nothing of the ways of the country or the people, and hadn't the faintest idea as yet how I was going to get through the country. That I could not beat my way I had already learned, and as I am not very partial to hiking it over long distances, I cogitated. But what was the use of thinking or worrying? Didn't I have some money in my inside pocket? Of course I had, and it was time enough to worry when I was broke. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," has always been my motto, and I had been on the turf long enough to know that there is always some way out of a scrape when one gets into it. What was the next event on the program? I had dined and seen considerable of the city and it was "more better" that I go and look up a furnished room. I had to have some place to sleep and the cheapest and most comfortable way, I thought, was to rent a room in a private family. I have slept in lodging houses time without number but they are too public and sometimes too noisy. For a good, honest sleep give me a private dwelling. I knew that I was looking shabby but good clean money looks good to a whole lot of people. I wandered through Buchanan and Argyle Streets, the Trongate and Gallowgate Street, but couldn't find a "To Let" sign anywhere. This kind of stumped me. I asked some one if there were no furnished rooms to let in Glasgow and he informed me that there were lots of them but that I would have to look in the upper stories of the houses for the signs. I did so but saw very few of them. I tackled the first place where I saw one. It was in a three-story building along the Trongate and the structure didn't look good to me. There was a narrow, stone-paved hallway leading through the building and at the rear of it was a cork-screw-like stairway that wound upward. The hallway was as dim and dark as a dungeon and made me feel funny. But I was there for a purpose so there was no use getting scared of bugaboos. Up the stairway I went, slowly and cautiously, keeping my eyes peeled for obstructions. I came to the first landing, where there was a single strongly made wooden door. I saw a knocker on the door and rapped at it rather faintly for admittance. An elderly woman came to the door and demanded to know what I wanted. I told her I was looking for a furnished room. From my accent she gathered that I was a foreigner for she asked at once: "Yer a furriner, ain't ye?" I can't describe the Scotch accent just right for it ain't my language, but I will try to set down what the lady said to me as well as I can. "Yes, ma'am," said I; "I arrived from New York today." "Yer a Yankee, I believe." "No, ma'am," responded I, "I'm a Westerner." This evidently puzzled the lady for she murmured "Ooh eye! ooh eye!" in the same tone somewhat as the boozy lassie at the Workingman's Restaurant had done. "What will ye be doin' in Glasgie?" asked the lady. I was stumped for a moment. I assured her I was going to look for a job. "What's yer trade?" "Oh, I work at anything," I answered. "Ah, then yer jack of all trades and maister of none." I assured the lady that was about the size of it and she then asked me how much I wanted to pay for a room. I told her about a dollar a week. As things were cheaper on this side of the water than on the other side, I figured it out that I ought to get things at about half price. Evidently the lady didn't think so, for she scanned me scornfully and wanted to know if I took her place for a tramp's lodging house. That was putting it rather plain which caused me to kind of wilt. I assured the landlady I had no such idea. I asked her what she charged for a room and she said two dollars and a half per week. Too much for yours truly, I thought, and told her so. We couldn't make a deal so I groped my way down stairs and tried my luck elsewhere. Rents probably were high in that part of the city so I crossed the Clyde and wandered into the Gorbals district. This is a section of the city inhabited by the poorer classes of working people and I had my eye on it while wandering along the Broomielaw. I saw warehouses along the waterfront over there and stone-paved streets full of houses. The houses were ancient-looking and grimy but I would probably find what I sought there. The first house I entered in that district had the same kind of a hallway with a spiral stairway at the end of it as the house I had been in on the other side of the river, and when I rapped at the door on the first floor a lady answered the summons. When I told her that I wanted a furnished room she wanted to know how much I was willing to pay. She did not tell me her price but wanted to size up my pile. Her little racket wouldn't work. I told her that if she had a room that suited me and if the price was right we could make a deal, otherwise not. Whereupon she opened her hall door, let me in and led me to a fair-sized room and asked me how I liked it. It contained a table, sofa and two chairs, but nothing else. I told her I wanted a bed-room, not a sitting-room. "This is a bed-room," said she, opening a closet in the room in which was a bunk. Holy Jerusalem! What did the lady take me for; a Chinaman, to put me in a china closet? Nay, nay, Pauline! I'm no Chinaman. Here was another case where the deal fell through. I like plenty of fresh air and light where I sleep when I can get it, and enough room to kick in. Here there was none of these things. I kept a-moving. I came to a house opposite a theater where I met two young ladies who occupied a flat and had a spare room. I believe they were actresses. They told me that their vacant room was rented by an actor who was now making a tour of the cities and that they didn't know just when he would be home. In the meanwhile I could occupy his room if I wished and when the actor returned I could share the room with him. I did not feel as if I would like to sleep with an actor, for he might have been a snorer or a high kicker, and I didn't know when he would be back anyway. That sort of an arrangement did not suit me. No deal was made here, either. The next place I went to and where I finally located, was a flat occupied by an old man and his daughter. The father was over seventy years of age and the daughter about thirty. They rented me a neat room for one dollar a week which contained an ample bed, chairs, rocker, a wash-stand, soap, towel, a window, lace curtains and a shade. My patience and perseverance had been rewarded at last. As soon as my landlady left me I stripped and took a wash from head to foot, the first good clean-up I had since I left New York. It was great. I rented the room for a week and concluded to hike out of town when the week was up. During the week that I remained in this house I became quite well acquainted with the old man and his daughter and learned that he was from the north of Ireland and that his wife who was dead had been Scotch. The daughter, therefore, was half-and-half. She was an amiable, good-tempered young woman, though far from pretty, and the devotion she showed to her father astonished me. He wasn't in the best of health and often was crabbed and cross, but no matter how crusty he was the daughter petted and humored him, and crowed and goo-ed and gaa-ed to him and never got out of patience. She treated him as a mother does her child and never wearied of soothing him. The old man didn't seem to appreciate these attentions for his daughter got no thanks from him and not even a kind word. One day when the daughter had gone out on an errand the father suspected that she was in my room, so he rushed into my room, looked under the bed and into the corners to see if she were there. The old man had not the slightest reason or cause to suspect his daughter and I watched his maneuvers with anger but said nothing. He deserved a good tongue-lashing and I felt like giving it to him but his great age held me back. Had he been a younger man I would have told him what I thought of him in short order. CHAPTER XII. DANCING IN THE GREEN. I slept well that night, better than I had slept since I left New York, for there was nothing to disturb me. A good rub down and a good night's rest had done me a world of good. Those who have traveled know what my feelings were. After a cheap breakfast in a Municipal Restaurant, where I had two big, thick slices of bread with excellent butter and a cup of good coffee for two cents, I bummed around the Clyde again, taking in the sights. I liked Glasgow first rate. The people were as friendly and sociable as they were out West, and their accent and ways were a never-ending source of interest to me. Everything that I saw interested me, for it was all so new and strange. No one can have the faintest idea what there is to be seen abroad unless he or she goes there and hears and sees for himself. Word-pictures are inadequate to give one a proper idea, for there is something even in a foreign _atmosphere_ that must be felt before it can be appreciated. I bought a morning paper and sat down on a bench along the embankment to read it. It was interesting from start to finish with nothing "yellow" about it. The articles were written in an able, scholarly way, and besides giving the news there were columns devoted to giving useful hints, such as "Master and Man," "Husbands and Wives," and such like things, that were well to know. They were in the shape of "Answers and Queries," somewhat. Even the advertisements were interesting to me but "The Want" ads were mostly incomprehensible, for there were too many Scotch colloquialisms in them. I saw an announcement in the paper stating that there would be dancing in the Green that afternoon, and I concluded instantly that I would take it in. It was to be a free show and when there is anything of that sort going on you may count me in, every time. In the meanwhile I just loafed around the banks of the Clyde, watching them load and unload vessels, taking in the foreigners' ways of doing things, peering into the shop-windows along the water-front, etc. The time passed quickly enough. I wasn't homesick a bit but felt right at home. There was something about the people and the place that made me feel quite at home. After dinner, at about two o'clock, I strolled into the Green. People were slowly sauntering into it in groups, and walking up toward the music stand where the dancing was to be done. The music stand was about half a mile from the park entrance. It was early, so I sat down on a bench and made myself comfortable. Little boys came along handing out programs and I secured one of them. Here is what it said: _Glasgow Green._ No. 1--March; Glendaurel Highlanders. No. 2--Strathspey; Marquis of Huntley. No. 3--Reel; The Auld Wife Ayont the Fire. No. 4--March; Brian Boru. No. 5--Strathspey; Sandy King. No. 6--Reel; Abercairney Highlanders. No. 7--Dance; Reel o' Tullock. No. 8--Waltz; The Pride of Scotland. No. 9--Highland Fling. No. 10--March; Loch Katrine Highlanders. No. 11--Strathspey; When You Go to the Hill. No. 12--Reel; Over the Isles to America. No. 13--Dance; Sword Dance. No. 14--March; 93d's Farewell to Edinburgh. No. 15--Strathspey; Kessock Ferry. No. 16--Reel; Mrs. McLeod's. No. 17--Slow March; Lord Leven. _Choir._ No. 1--Glee; Hail, Smiling Morn. No. 2--Part Song; Rhine Raft Song. No. 3--Part Song; Maggie Lauder. No. 4--Part Song; Let the Hills Resound. No. 5--Scottish Medley, introducing favorite airs. No. 6--We'll Hae Nane But Hielan Bonnets Here. No. 7--Part Song; Hail to the Chief. No. 8--Part Song; The Auld Man. No. 9--Part Song; Awake Aeolian Lyre. No. 10--Part Song; Night, Lovely Night. No. 11--God Save the King. The program was a good long one and sure looked good to me. I imagined there would be something doing. At about half past two there was a big crowd congregated about the music stand but as there were few seats near it most of the people had to stand. As I wanted to see all I could I mingled with the throng and patiently waited for the performance to begin. The band hadn't made its appearance yet and there was no one on the band stand. To relieve the tedium some of the young fellows who were in the crowd began to chaff some of the lassies in a flirty way. Three pretty girls in a group were the especial target of the laddies. If I could only get off the Scotch right I would jot down some of their badinage for it was very amusing, to me, at least, but I couldn't do the theme justice. After what to me seemed an interminable long wait we heard some yelling and snarling away down toward the entrance of the park I took to be dog-fighting. Too bad it was so far away, for anything would have been agreeable just then to relieve the monotony, even a dog-fight. I noticed the people near the entrance scattering to either side of the walk and forming a lane through which to give the dogs a show. The yelping and snarling came nearer and finally I perceived that it was a band of men approaching dressed in Highland costume and playing the bagpipes. I had heard the bagpipes played many a time and knew what they were but I had never heard a whole lot of them played at once. I now knew that it wasn't a dog-fight that had caused the noise. The bag-pipers came along quickly with long strides, their heads erect, stern of visage with petticoats flying from side to side like those of a canteen-girl when she marches with her regiment. The men were husky fellows, broad-shouldered, lithe and active, but they wore no pants. The whole lot of them were bare-legged and upon their heads was perched a little plaid cap with a feather in it, and over their shoulders was thrown a plaid shawl. Stockings came up to their knees, but their legs a little way further up beyond the stockings were entirely bare. Although there were lots of the girls present I didn't notice any of them blush at this exposure of the person. Maybe they were used to such spectacles. What tune do you think these Highlanders were playing as they marched along? Nothing more nor less than-- "Where, oh where has my little dog gone, Where, oh where can he be? With his hair cut short and his tail cut long, Where, oh where can he be?" This was a mighty nice little tune and I had heard it before, but I had never heard it played by such instruments. The people liked the tune and seemed to like the Highlanders too, for when they went by, the people closed in after them in a solid body, and marched behind them, a pushing, elbowing, struggling mass. When the music stand was reached the band did not go upon it but marched around it playing that same little old tune. I wondered why they didn't change it and play something else but as the crowd didn't kick there was no use of me kicking. They kept a marching and a marching around the stand for quite a little while but the tune never changed. The musicians took a good fresh hold on the air every minute or two, some note rising a little shriller than the others but that is all the variation there was. Do you want to know the honest truth? Well I wasn't stuck on the tune or the bagpipes either. The noise they made would have made a dog howl. It was nothing but a shrieking, yelling, and squeaking. Call that music? From the pleased faces of the people you would have judged it was fine. After what seemed a coon's age the band quit playing and marching, and mounted the platform, upon which they had been preceded by a lot of boys and girls who formed the choir. Number one on the program was a march, the Glendaurel Highlanders. I couldn't see anything in it except more marching to a different tune. The crowd seemed to like it and applauded frantically. There was a whole lot of pushing and shoving by the crowd in my neighborhood and I wasn't comfortable at all. A sturdy dame behind me made herself especially obnoxious by wanting to get right up front and she didn't seem to care how she got there or who she shoved out of the way to accomplish her purpose. She dug her elbow into my side in no gentle fashion, and was bent on getting in front of me, whether I was agreeable or not. Well, she didn't make the riffle. I planted my elbow in her rib to see how she liked it. She scuttled away from me then quickly enough. Number two on the program was Marquis of Huntley. I didn't know who the Marquis of Huntley was but evidently the crowd did for they went wild over the tune and dancing. The dancing was fine, tip-top, but I can't say as much for the tune. The way them Highlanders could dance was a caution, for they were graceful and supple as eels. No flies on them. Number three was a corker, a reel called "The Auld Wife Ayont the Fire." There was something doing this time. The Highlanders turned themselves loose and they hopped, skipped, jumped and yelled like a tribe of Sioux Indians on the war path. How they did carry on and how the crowd whooped it up in sympathy! The whole push was frantic, Highlanders and all. My hair riz but I don't know why. If any one tells me that those bare-legged Highlanders can't dance I will surely tell them they are mistaken. They were artists and no mistake, every one of them. Brian Boru was the next event on the program, a march. I was getting tired of marches but the mob wasn't. They applauded the Brian Boru wildly and saw a whole lot in it that I couldn't see. Number five was another strathspey, Sandy King. I was wondering who Sandy was and if he were a king, but I didn't like to ask questions. No use letting the "hoi-polloi" get on to it that I was a greenhorn. There might have been something doing had they known it, for it takes but a little thing to set a mob a-going. Next came a reel, Abercairney Highlanders. I wondered how many different clans of Highlanders there were in Scotland. The woods seemed full of them. This was another wild Indian affair, worse than the first reel. Them chaps were good yellers and jumpers, and I think could hold their own with any wild Indian, no matter what tribe he belonged to. Their lungs were leathery, their limbs tireless, and their wind excellent. The Reel of Tullock came next and then a waltz, "The Pride of Scotland." Both were excellent. Number nine was a Highland Fling. That was a great number. It aroused everyone to enthusiasm. I could not help but admire the grace of the dancers. So quick they were, so unerring. Their wind was so good that I felt I would have hated to tackle any one of them in a scrap. Number thirteen was a sword-dance, danced by one man only. Crossed swords were laid on the platform and the highlander danced between them slowly, rapidly, any old way, and never touched. He never looked down while dancing, and how he managed to avoid these swords was a marvel to me. The sword blades were placed close together and the dance was kept up a long time. That chap was an artist of a high class, and could have made a whole lot of money on the stage had he chosen to do so. Maybe he was a celebrity in Glasgow and Scotland. He never touched a sword. His dancing was marvelous. It was evident these Highlanders could do something besides squeezing wind out of a bag and playing "where, oh where." Yes, they were all right. Their performance was a good one and worth anyone's while to see. When I returned to my lodgings that evening I told my landlady that I had attended the dance in the Green and she wanted to know how I liked it. I told her truly that it was the best I had ever seen. And it was, by long odds. CHAPTER XIII. TAKING IN A GLASGOW SHOW. The evening of my second day's stay in Glasgow I put in by taking in a show at the theater. It was the Gayety Theater I intended to go to, where vaudeville plays were given, but as the theater was a long distance from the Gorbals District, I had some trouble finding it. The theatrical performances in Glasgow begin early, some at half-past five and some at six o'clock, and let out at about nine o'clock, which gives those so inclined a chance to go to bed early. The days were long at that season of the year, so that I arrived in front of the theater while the evening sun was still high in the heavens. The theater building was an immense one of stone and very lofty. In front of it was a long line of people waiting to make a rush for good seats in the gallery, and I joined the throng. There was a good deal of rough horse-play among some of the fellows waiting there and a whole lot of chaffing. A chap behind me gave me a kick in the rump and tipped my hat over my eyes, which he deemed a very good joke. I didn't think it was and told him not to get too gay, whereupon he roared with laughter. He told his neighbors that they had a greenhorn among them, whereupon many in the crowd made life a burden for me for a while. They made all kinds of chaffing remarks, they jeered me, they hooted me and groaned. They were having a whole lot of fun at my expense but I never said another word, for what was the use? I was mad clear through, though. Had I only had a gang with me there might have been a different tale to tell. I was alone and friendless. A fellow thinks all kinds of things when a crowd gets after him. The line was growing longer rapidly, and before the doors were opened a couple of hundred people must have been on the street waiting. As soon as the doors were opened there was a grand rush and scramble to secure tickets. I held my own in the push, though I was nearly suffocated and squeezed flat, but managed to secure a ticket after a little while, for which I paid twelve cents--six pence. Cheap enough if the show is any good. I rushed up the spiral stairway after the crowd, but before I got half way up I was obliged to stop and blow off steam. The steps were many and winding. I did not notice anyone else stopping for a breather which led me to conclude that the Scots are a long-winded race. Two or three times did I have to stop before I reached nigger-heaven, my destination. The gallery was so high up and so close to the ceiling that I could have touched the ceiling with my hand when standing up. Below, clear to the orchestra seats, or "pit," as it is called, was gallery after gallery. Some of these were divided off into queer contrivances called "stalls." To me the stalls seemed like huge dry-goods boxes, with the part facing outward, toward the stage, open, from the middle to the top. The lower part was boarded in. They were queer-looking contrivances, and the people in them looked as if they were caged. The stalls were supposed to be private and exclusive--in a word, private boxes. Some little boys in livery were wandering about on the various floors crying out "Program" with the accent on the first syllable, and as I wanted one, I hailed a boy who gave me one and charged me a penny for it (two cents). Printing must be dear in Glasgow, I thought, to charge a fellow two cents for a printed piece of paper. I said nothing but scanned the program. Here is what it said: No. 1--La Puits d'Amour, Balfe; Band. No. 2--Mr. John Robertson, Baritone Vocalist. No. 3--Drew and Richards in their specialty act, Old Fashioned Times. No. 4--Mr. Billy Ford, Negro Comedian. No. 5--The Alaskas--Ben and Frank--Comic Horizontal Bar Experts. No. 6--Mr. Edward Harris, London Comedian. No. 7--Miss Josie Trimmer, Child Actress, and the Forget-me-nots, Vocalists and Dancers. No. 8--Selection, Yeoman of the Guard. No. 9--Sallie Adams, American Serpentine Dancer. No. 10--The Gees, in their Musical Oddity, Invention. No. 11--Collins and Dickens, in their Refined Specialty act. No. 12--Mr. Charles Russell, Comedian and descriptive Vocalist. No. 13--National Anthem. Quite a lengthy program this and it looked to me as if it might be good, especially the Serpentine Dancer, who was a countrywoman of mine, and the darkies, who were probably countrymen. After a moderate wait the lights were turned up, the orchestra tuned up and soon the band gave us a selection by Balfe called "La Puits d'Amour." I didn't know what "La Puits d'Amour" was but it didn't make any difference to me. It was some kind of music. The selection was a long one and the band sawed away at it as if they were never going to stop. It was so long drawn out in fact that my wits went a wool gathering and I nearly fell asleep, for tedious music is apt to make me snooze. When the music stopped I woke up and was ready for business. The first event on the program was Mr. John Robertson, Baritone Vocalist. The band played a preliminary flourish when out walked Mr. Robertson dressed in a spike-tail coat, black vest and biled shirt. Hanging in front of his vest was a long, thick watch-chain which must have been a valuable one, for it looked like gold. Mr. Robertson sang a song and kept a hold on his watch chain. The song was hum-drum and so was Mr. Robertson's voice. Mr. Robertson made no great hit and when he left us he took his chain with him. Number two was Drew and Richards in their specialty act, "Old Fashioned Times." A lady and gent came upon the stage dressed in very old-fashioned garb, and sang. Just as soon as the lady opened her mouth to sing I knew she was a gentleman and she couldn't sing any more like a lady than I could. I have seen female impersonators on the stage many a time and they carried out the illusion perfectly, but this chap wasn't in it at all. He gave me a pain. I wasn't sorry when this couple made their exit. Mr. Billy Ford, the Negro Comedian, next came to the front. Now there'll be a little something doing, anyway, thought I. Mr. Billy Ford was not a negro at all but a Britisher with a cockney accent. Maybe I wasn't astonished! Holy Smoke! He sang out bold as you please just as if he were singing like a darkey and the gallery gods went into ecstacies over him. They laughed, roared, and chirruped. They seemed to think a heap of Mr. Ford, but I felt like going somewhere to lay off and die. A nigger with a cockney accent! Oh my! Oh my! Will wonders never cease? The comic horizontal bar experts, the Alaskas, were very tame turners, and to my view, anything but funny. I had seen better stunts than they performed in free shows on the Bowery at Coney Island. The sixth number on the program was Mr. Edward Harris, London Comedian. Here at last was someone who could sing and act. Mr. Harris was from the London Music Halls and was evidently a favorite, for he was given a great reception. He was greeted with roars of welcome and shouts and calls from the gallery gods that seemed unfamiliar and queer to me. Even the people in the pit and stalls applauded loudly. Mr. Harris turned himself loose and impersonated London characters in a way that brought forth the wildest enthusiasm. Some of the gods nearly died laughing at his comicalities and a man away down in the pit laughed out loud in such a way that it made me think of a dream I once had when I saw ghosts playing leap-frog over a graveyard fence and having an elegant time of it. The noise this man made was a high sepulchral shriek, like theirs. It was wild and weird. The comedian was first class and the audience was loath to let him go. They recalled him several times and he responded. Number seven was Miss Josie Trimmer, child actress, and the two Forget-Me-Nots, vocalists and dancers. This was another tame affair for the two Forget-Me-Nots were Scottish lassies who got off coon songs with a Scotch accent and had acquired an improper idea of coon dancing. Their act was a caricature and a-- well, never mind. It isn't right to be too critical. They were doing the best they could and were appreciated by the audience, so it may be well for me not to say too much. The next number was a selection by the band, "Yeoman of the Guard," which was played after a long intermission. I was getting rather weary by this time and had half a mind to go home, but I wanted to see the serpentine dancer, Sallie Adams, who was a countrywoman of mine. It seemed to me I hadn't seen a countryman or countrywoman for a coon's age, and I felt as if I just couldn't go until I saw Sallie. When the time came for Miss Adams to appear on the stage, all the lights in the theater were turned out and a strong calcium light was thrown upon the stage. Sallie hopped into view chipper as you please, never caring a whoop who saw her, countryman or foreigner, and she began to throw diaphanous folds of cheese-cloth all over herself and around herself. Different colored lights were thrown upon her draperies as she danced, and the effect was thrilling and made my hair stand up. Sallie was all right. She was onto her job in good shape. Maybe I didn't applaud? I roared, I stamped and whistled, and my neighbors must have thought I was clean off. The gorgeous spectacle reminded me of the Fourth of July at home, when sky-rockets go up with a hiss and a roar, Roman candles color the black skies, sissers chase through the air like snakes, bombs explode and fall in stars of all colors. Siss! Boom! Ah! When Sallie made her exit I made mine, for I had got my money's worth and was satisfied. CHAPTER XIV. MR. ROBERT BURNS, THE POET. One thing that struck me very forcibly before I had been in Glasgow any length of time was the fact that the people thought a great deal of Mr. Burns, the poet. Streets and lanes were named after him, inns and taverns, shoes, hats, caps, clothing, tobacco, bum-looking cigars, bad whiskey, in fact his name was attached to all kinds of articles to make them sell, and in some cases merely as a mark of respect or affection. It was plain to the most casual observer that Mr. Burns was thought a great deal of. He had been dead a hundred years or more, yet his personality pervaded the place, and his picture was to be seen on signs, posters, in the stores and elsewhere. For Mr. Burns most Scotchmen will die, Scotch ladies sigh, Scotch babies cry, Scotch dogs ki-yi. He was a good-looking chap, and highly gifted, but the poor fellow died before he had reached his thirty-eighth year, which was a national calamity. Had he lived there is no telling what he might have accomplished, for during the short span of his life he did wonderful things. He took the old Scotch songs that had been written before his day and gave them a twist of his own which improved them vastly, and made them immortal; he portrayed Scottish life in a way that no poet has ever imitated or will imitate maybe, and he loved his country deeply and fervently. His father was a rancher, and a poverty-stricken one at that, and the poet was born in a shack on the farm. The house was a little old one of stone, and a rich man of the day would have used it for a chicken house. In this house and in a china closet in the kitchen was born the greatest poet Scotland ever produced. When Bobbie grew up the old man set him a-plowing, and while at this work the boy composed rhymes which were so good that some of his friends induced him to print them. Old man Burns didn't see any good in the verses, for he knew more about poultry than he did about poetry, and told his son to cut it out. Bobbie couldn't, for it just came natural. Before he was twenty-one the boy had written lots of good poetry and it was put in book form and printed at Kilmarnock, a town not far from his birthplace. The birthplace of the poet was on the farm near the town of Ayr, in Ayrshire, and that whole county (or shire) is now called "The Burns Country," because it was the poet's stamping-ground. The poet knew lots of people throughout the county and his writings have immortalized many a place in it. After his book had been printed he sprang into fame at once and was made much of by man, woman and child. Being a good-looking chap, the girls began to run after him, and poor Burnsie had the time of his life. He wanted to steer clear of 'em, but he couldn't, for the girls liked and admired him too much. The result was that a few of them got into trouble, and soon some wild-eyed fathers and brothers went gunning for him. The fault was not the poet's wholly, for he couldn't have kept these girls away from him with a cannon. To avoid such troubles in the future he finally married a blond, buxom young lassie called Jean Armour, by whom he had twins, the first rattle out of the box. Not long after that he had two at a throw again. Bobbie could do something besides write poetry, evidently. He was a thoroughbred any way you took him, though the people at that time did not know it and did not fully appreciate his great qualities. It was only after he had been dead a long time that the world fully realized his worth. At the present day they estimate him properly and their affection and reverence for him are boundless. Some of his countrymen call him simply Burns, others call him Rabbie, and still others, "puir Rabbie," puir meaning poor. The country that he lived in, Ayrshire, is visited by a million strangers or more every year, who visit the shack he was born in and the places he made immortal by his writings. The shack has been fixed up and improved somewhat since he lived in it, and is now a sort of museum where are displayed various editions of the books, manuscripts and other things, that once were his. Among the things is a walking-cane that a New York lawyer named Kennedy somehow got hold of. How Kennedy got the cane I don't know, but he returned it to the Burns collection in the cottage. Mr. Kennedy is a rare exception to New York lawyers in general, for they rarely return anything that they once get their hands on. Mr. Kennedy must have had a whole lot of regard for the great poet. Lots of people have never read any of Burns' poems. I wonder would they appreciate it if I showed them a few samples? I will not print the long ones, but only the shorter ones, for even they will show, I am sure, the greatness of "Puir Rabbie." As I said in a previous chapter, when I first set foot in Scotland it was at Greenock, about 25 miles from Glasgow, where a tender took us ashore from the Furnessia. Greenock is quite a city, for it contains a good many factories and other establishments, but the city has become famous the world over just because of one little circumstance connected with the great poet, namely: A young girl named Highland Mary lived there who loved, and was beloved by the poet, and they were engaged to be married. Sad to relate, the young girl died while she was engaged to the poet, which saddened him considerably. Years afterward he married Jean Armour. The poet wrote some lines to the memory of Highland Mary which almost any Scotchman or Scotch lady can recite by heart. Here they are: HIGHLAND MARY. Ye banks and braes and streams around The Castle o' Montgomery, Green be your woods, and fair your flowers, Your waters never drumlie; There Summer first unfauld her robes, And there the langest tarry; For there I took the last farewell O' my sweet Highland Mary. How sweetly bloomed the gay green birk How rich the hawthorn's blossom! As, underneath their fragrant shade I clasped her to my bosom! The golden hours, on angels' wings Flew o'er me and my dearie; For dear to me as light and life Was my sweet Highland Mary. Wi' mony a vow and locked embrace Our parting was fu' tender; And pledging oft to meet again We tore oursels asunder; But, O! fell Death's untimely frost, That nipt my flower sae early! Now green's the sod and cauld's the clay That wraps my Highland Mary. O pale, pale now those rosy lips I oft ha'e kissed sae fondly! And closed for aye the sparkling glance, That dwelt on me sae kindly! And mouldering now in silent dust That heart that lo'ed me dearly! But still within my bosom's core Shall live my Highland Mary. Was there anything ever written more sad, pathetic and sweet? Following is a little poem written in a different vein which may serve as a sort of temperance lesson to some husbands who stay out late at night having a good time. The recreant husband's name in the poem is Mr. Jo, and Mrs. Jo sends it in to him good and hard. Says Mr. Jo: O let me in this ae night, This ae, ae, ae night; For pity's sake this ae night, O rise and let me in, Jo! Thou hear'st the winter wind and weet; Nae star blinks thro' the driving sleet. Tak' pity on my weary feet, And shield me frae the rain, Jo. The bitter blast that 'round me blaws Unheeded howls, unheeded fa's; The cauldness o' thine heart's the cause Of a' my grief and pain, Jo. O let me in this ae, ae night, This ae, ae, ae night; For pity's sake this ae night O rise and let me in, Jo. Mr. Jo's pleadings were in vain, to judge from Mrs. Jo's answer, which is as follows: O tell na me o' wind and rain! Upbraid na me wi' cauld disdain! Gae back the gate ye came again-- I winna let you in, Jo. I haven't the least idea where Jo spent the night, but it surely wasn't with Mrs. Jo. There are lots of husbands who get full and don't know when to go home. Let them paste this poem in their hats. It may do them good. Here is an old song revised by Puir Rabbie, whose magic touch has made it better and more famous than it ever was before. It is entitled: "Will ye go to the Highlands, Leezie Lindsay?" Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay, Will ye go to the Hielands wi' me? Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay, My pride and my darling to be? To gang to the Hielands wi' you, sir, I dinna ken how that may be; For I ken na the land that ye live in, Nor ken I the lad I'm gaun wi'. O Leezie, lass, ye maun ken little, If sae that ye dinna ken me; My name is Lord Ronald McDonald, A chieftain o' high degree. She has kilted her coats o' green satin, She has kilted them up to the knee; And she's off wi' Lord Ronald McDonald His bride and his darling to be. A whole lot of human nature about this little poem and a fine swing to it. Burns had a touch that no one has ever imitated or ever can imitate. It is a twist, which for want of a better name, I would call "a French Twist." Imitate it, ye who can! Everyone knows "Auld Lang Syne." It is an old song that didn't amount to much until Burns got a hold of it and put his twist to it. Here it is: AULD LANG SYNE. Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to min'? Should auld acquaintance be forgot And days o' auld lang syne? For auld lang syne, my dear, For auld lang syne, Well tak' a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. We twa ha'e run about the braes And pu'd the gowans fine; But we've wandered many a weary foot Sin' auld lang syne; We two ha'e paid'lt i' the burn Frae mornin' sun till dine; But seas between us braid ha'e roar'd Sin auld lang syne. Chorus. And here's a hand, my trusty fren, And gie us a hand o' thine; And we'll take a right good wallie-waught For auld lang syne. Chorus. And surely ye'll be your pint stoup, And surely I'll be mine; And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet For auld lang syne. Following is a composition that is famous the world over and is used as a recitation, not only in this country but in every other English-speaking country. It is entitled: "Bruce at Bannockburn": BRUCE AT BANNOCKBURN. Scots, wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled; Scots, whom Bruce has often led; Welcome to your gory bed, Or to glorious victorie! Now's the day, and now's the hour; See the front o' battle lower; See approach proud Edward's power-- Edward! chains and slaverie! Wha will be a traitor knave? Wha can fill a coward's grave? Wha sae base as be a slave? Traitor! Coward! turn and flee. Wha for Scotland's king and law Freedom's sword will strongly draw, Freemen stand or freemen fa', Caledonian! on wi' me! By oppression's woes and pains! By your sons in servile chains! We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall--they shall be free! Lay the proud usurper low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Forward! Let us do or die. Here is a love song to Jennie, entitled, "Come, Let Me Take Thee!" COME, LET ME TAKE THEE. Come, let me take thee to my breast And pledge we ne'er shall sunder; And I shall spurn as vilest dust The world's wealth and grandeur; And do I hear my Jennie own That equal transports move her? I ask for dearest life alone That I may live to love her. Thus in my arms, wi' a' thy charms, I clasp my countless treasure; I'll seek nae mair o' heaven to share Than sic a moment's pleasure; And by thy een sae bonnie blue I swear I'm thine forever! And on thy lips I seal my vow, And break it I shall never. One day Burns was called upon for a toast during a dinner which was given by the Dumfries Volunteers, in honor of their anniversary. The poet got up and spoke the following lines extempore: Instead of a song, boys, I'll give you a toast-- Here is the memory of those on the 12th that we lost! That we lost, did I say; nay, by heaven, that we found; For their fame it shall last while the world goes around. The next in succession I'll give you--the King! Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he swing! And here's the grand fabric, our Free Constitution, As built on the base of the great Revolution. And longer with politics not to be crammed, Be anarchy cursed and be tyranny damned; And who would to Liberty e'er be disloyal, May his son be a hangman and he his first trial. A GRACE BEFORE MEAT. Some ha'e meat and canna eat it, And some wad eat that want it; But we ha'e meat and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit. TO A HEN-PECKED COUNTRY SQUIRE. As father Adam first was fooled, A case that's still too common, Here lies a man a woman ruled-- The devil ruled the woman. The poet's father, William Burness, lies buried in a graveyard at Alloway. The following lines were written by his son to his memory: LINES TO HIS FATHER. O ye whose cheek the tear of pity stains, Draw near with pious reverence and attend. Here lie the loving husband's dear remains, The tender father and the generous friend. The pitying heart that felt for human woe; The dauntless heart that feared no human pride; The friend of man, to vice alone a foe; "For e'en his failings leaned to virtue's side." I believe there are some husbands who grow tired of the married state after they have been in it a while. They came to find out that it isn't all "beer and skittles," as they first imagined it would be. Even "Puir Rabbie" had troubles of his own, as the following will show, for it is written about himself: "Oh, that I had n'er been married! I would never had nae care; Now I've gotten wife and bairns, And they cry crowdie ev'ry mair; Ance crowdie, twice crowdie, Three times crowdie in a day; Gin ye crowdie ony mair, Ye'll crowdie a' my meal away. Waefu' want and hunger fley me, Glowrin' by the hallan en'; Sair I fecht them at the door, But aye I'm eerie the come ben." The poet had lots of cronies and friends, and he was as loyal to some of them as they were to him. He was a good boon companion and liked "a wee drappie" (nip) himself as well as anyone. Many an alehouse proudly proclaims that he visited it and preserves the chair or bench that he sat on, the glass he drank out of or the table he sat at, to this day, and any and every thing that is familiar with his presence is sacred and treasured. William Muir of Tarbolton is the friend to whom the following lines were written: ON A FRIEND. An honest man here lies at rest, As e'er God with his image blest; The friend of man, the friend of truth; The friend of age, the guide of youth; Few hearts like his with virtue warmed, Few heads with knowledge so informed; If there's another world, he lives in bliss; If there is none he made the best of this. Mr. John Dove kept an inn at Mauchline called the "Whiteford Arms," and the poet pays his respects to him in the following fashion: ON JOHN DOVE, INNKEEPER. Here lies Johnny Pidgeon; What was his religion? Whae'er desires to ken, To some other warl' Maun follow the carl, For here Johnny Pidgeon had nane. Strong ale was ablution-- Small beer persecution-- A dram was momento mori; But a full flowing bowl Was the saving his soul, And port was celestial glory. To judge from the following, the poet did not have a great respect for all ruling elders of the church. Souter Hood was a miserly one. TO A CELEBRATED RULING ELDER. Here Souter Hood in death doth sleep; To hell, if he's gone thither; Satan, gie him thy gear to keep, He'll hand it weel thegither. TO ANOTHER HEN-PECKED HUSBAND. O Death, hadst thou but spared his life Whom we this day lament, We freely wad exchanged the wife An' a' been weel content. The poet was hospitably entertained at a place one day called for short and sweet Dahna Cardoch. In appreciation he got off the following: When death's dark stream I ferry o'er, A time that surely shall come-- In heaven itself I'll ask no more Than just a Highland Welcome. One Sunday while in the northern part of Scotland with Nicol, a friend of his, he visited the Carron Works which they had traveled some distance to see. There was a sign on the gate: "No Admittance to Strangers," which barred the poet and his friend. Here is an apostrophe by Burns in regard to the matter: NO ADMITTANCE TO STRANGERS. We cam' na here to view your warks In hopes to be mair wise, But only, lest we gang to hell, It may be nae surprise; But when we tirled at your door, Your porter dought na hear us; Sae may, should we to hell's yetts come, Your billy Satan serve us. LORD GREGORY. O, mirk, mirk is this midnight hour, And loud the tempest roar; A waeful wanderer seeks thy tower-- Lord Gregory, ope the door. An exile frae her father's ha', And a' for loving thee; At least some pity on me show, If love it may na be. Lord Gregory, mind'st thou not the grove By bonnie Irwine side, Where first I owned that virgin love I lang, lang had denied! How often didst thou pledge and vow Thou wad for aye be mine; And my fond heart, itself sae true, It ne'er mistrusted thine. Hard is thy heart, Lord Gregory, And flinty is thy breast-- Thou dart of heaven that flashed by, O, wilt thou give me rest! Ye mustering thunders from above, Your willing victim see! But spare and pardon my fause love His wrangs to Heaven and me! MARY MORISON. O, Mary, at thy window be, It is the wished, the trysted hour! Those smiles and glances let me see That makes the miser's treasure poor. How blithely wad I bide the stoure A weary slave frae sun to sun, Could I the rich reward secure-- The lovely Mary Morison. Jestreen, when to the trembling string The dance gaed through the lighted ha', To thee my fancy took its wing-- I sat, but neither heard nor saw; Though this was fair, and that was braw, And you the toast of a' the town, I sighed and said amang them a' "Ye are na Mary Morison." O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, Wha for thy sake wad gladly die; Or canst thou break that heart of his Whose only faut is loving thee? If love for love thou wilt na gi'e At least be pity to me shown, A thought ungentle canna be The thought o' Mary Morison. TO A LAIRD. When ---- deceased to the devil went down 'Twas nothing would serve him but Satan's own crown; Thy fool's head, quoth Satan, that crown shall wear never, Grant thou'rt wicked but not quite so clever. OPEN THE DOOR TO ME, O! O, open the door some pity to show, O, open the door to me, O! Though thou has been fause, I'll ever prove true, O, open the door to me, O! Cauld is the blast upon my pale cheek, But caulder thy love for me, O! The frost that freezes the life at my heart Is naught to my pains frae thee, O! The wan moon is setting behind the white wave, And time is setting with me, O! False friends, false love, farewell! for mair I'll ne'er trouble them nor thee, O! She has opened the door, she has opened it wide; She sees his pale corse on the plain, O! My true love! she cried, and sank down by his side Never to rise again, O! TO CARDONESS. Bless the Redeemer, Cardoness, With grateful lifted eyes; Who said that not the soul alone But body, too, must rise. For had he said, "The soul alone From death I shall deliver," Alas! alas! O Cardoness, Then thou hadst slept forever. YOUNG JESSIE. True hearted was he, the said swain o' the Yarrow, And fair are the maids on the banks o' the Ayr, But by the sweet side of the Nith's winding river Are lovers as faithful and maidens as fair; To equal young Jessie seek Scotland all over, To equal young Jessie you seek it in vain; Grace, beauty and elegance fetter her lover, And maidenly modesty fixes the chain. O, fresh is the rose in the gay dewy morning, And sweet is the lily at evening close; But in the fair presence o' lovely young Jessie Unseen is the lily, unheeded the rose. Love sits in her smile, a wizard ensnaring, Enthroned in her een, he delivers his law; And still to her charms she alone is a stranger, Her modest demeanor's the jewel of a'. DOWN THE BURN, DAVIE. As down the burn they took their way And thro' the flowery dale, His cheek to hers he aft did lay, And love was aye the tale. "O, Mary, when shall we return Sic pleasure to renew?" Quoth Mary, "Love, I like the burn, And aye shall follow you." A BIT OF ADVICE. Deluded swain, the pleasure The fickle Fair can give thee Is but a fairy treasure-- Thy hopes will soon deceive thee. The billows on the ocean, The breezes idly roaming, The clouds' uncertain motion-- They are bu t types of women. O! art thou not ashamed To doat upon a feature? If man thou wouldst be named, Despise the silly creature. Go, find an honest fellow-- Good claret set before thee-- Hold on till thou'rt mellow-- And then to bed in glory. MY SPOUSE NANCY. Husband, husband, cease your strife, No longer idly rave, sir; Though I am your wedded wife, Yet I am not your slave, sir. "One of two must still obey, Nancy, Nancy; Is it man or woman, say? My spouse Nancy!" "If it is still the lordly word, Service and obedience; I'll desert my sovereign lord-- And so, good by, allegiance!" "Sad will I be, so bereft; Nancy, Nancy! Yet I'll try to make a shift, My spouse Nancy!" "My poor heart, then break it must, My last hour I am near it; When you lay me in the dust, Think, think how you will bear it." O, CAN YE SEW CUSHIONS? O, can ye sew cushions and can ye sew sheets, And can ye sing bal-lu-loo when the bairn greets? And hee and baw birdie, and hee and baw lamb! And hee and baw birdie, my bonnie wee lamb! Hee, O, wee! O, what would I do wi' you; Black is the life that I lead wi' you! Money o' you--little for to gie you! Hee, O, wee! O, what would I do wi' you? WOMAN, COMPLAIN NOT! Let not woman e'er complain Of inconstancy in love; Let not woman e'er complain Fickle man is apt to rove. Look abroad through Nature's range-- Nature's mighty law is change; Ladies, would it not be strange, Man should then a monster prove? Mark the winds and mark the skies, Ocean's ebb and ocean's flow; Sun and moon but set to rise-- Round and round the seasons go. Why, then, ask of silly man To oppose great Nature's plan? We'll be constant while we can-- You can be no more, you know. JENNIE. The following was written to Jean Jeffrey, daughter of a minister, who afterward became Mrs. Renwick, and emigrated to New York with her husband: When first I saw fair Jennie's face I couldna tell what ailed me; My heart went fluttering pit-a-pat-- My een, they almost failed me. She's aye sae neat, sae trim, sae tight All grace does 'round her hover, Ae look deprived me o' my heart And I became a lover. Had I Dundas' whole estate Or Hopetown's wealth to shine in-- Did warlike laurels crown my brow Or humbler bays entwining-- I'd lay them a' at Jennie's feet, Could I but hope to move her And prouder than a belted knight, I'd be my Jennie's lover. But sair I fear some happier swain Has gained sweet Jennie's favor; If so, may every bliss be hers, Tho' I maun never have her. But gang she east or gang she west, 'Twixt Forth and Tweed all over, While men have eyes, or ears, or taste She'll always find a lover. The poet one day was taking a ride through the country on horseback and when he got to the town of Carlisle became thirsty and stopped at a tavern for a drink. He tethered his horse outside in the village green where it was espied by the poundmaster, who took it to the pound. When Burnsie came out he was mad clear through and this is what he wrote: Was e'er puir poet sae befitted? The maister drunk--the horse committed, Puir harmless beast, tak thee nae care, Thou'lt be a horse when he's nae mair (mare). Andrew Turner was not highly appreciated by the poet, if we may judge from the following: In seventeen hundred and forty-nine Satan took stuff to make a swine And cuist it in a corner; But wilely he changed his plan And shaped it something like a man And called it Andrew Turner. A MOTHERS ADDRESS TO HER INFANT. My blessing upon thy sweet wee lippie, My blessing upon thy bonnie e'e brie! Thy smiles are sae like my blithe sodger laddie Thou's aye the dearer and dearer to me. NATIONAL THANKSGIVING ON A NAVAL VICTORY. Ye hypocrites! are these your pranks, To murder men and gi'e God thanks? For shame gi'e o'er! proceed no further-- God won't accept your thanks for murther. TO FOLLY. The graybeard, Old Wisdom, may boast of his treasures-- Give me with gay Folly to live; Grant him calm-blooded, time-settled pleasures But Folly has raptures to give. TO LORD GALLOWAY. What dost thou in that mansion fair? Flit, Galloway, and find Some narrow, dirty dungeon cave, The picture of thy mind! No Stewart art thou, Galloway-- The Stewarts all were brave; Besides, the Stewarts were but fools, Not one of them a knave. Bright ran thy line, O Galloway! Through many a far-famed sire; So ran the far-famed Roman way-- So ended--in a mire! Spare me thy vengeance, Galloway-- In quiet let me live; I ask no kindness at thy hand, For thou hast none to give. The poet subscribed for a paper which he didn't receive regularly, so he told the editor about it in this fashion: Dear Peter, dear Peter, We poor sons of meter Are aften negleckit, ye ken; For instance, your sheet, man, Tho' glad I'm to see it, man, I get no ae day in ten. HONEST POVERTY. Is there for honest poverty, That hangs its head and a' that; The coward slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a' that; For a' that and a' that! Our toil's obscure and a' that, The rank is but the guinea's stamp The man's the gowd for a' that. What though on hamely fare we dine Wear hoddin grey and a' that; Give fools their silks and knaves their wine A man's a man for a' that! For a' that and a' that, Their tinsel show and a' that; The honest man, though e'er sae poor, Is king o' men for a' that! Ye see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha' struts and stares and a' that? Though hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that; For a' that and a' that; His riband, star and a' that, The man of independent mind He looks and laughs at a' that! A prince can mak' a belted knight, A marquis, duke and a' that; But an honest man's aboon his might-- Guid faith he maunna fa' that; For a' that and a' that, Their dignities and a' that. The pith o' sense, and pride o' worth, Are higher ranks than a' that. Then let us pray that come it may, As come it will for a' that, That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth May bear the gree, and a' that! For a' that and a' that It's coming yet for a' that, That man to man, the warld o'er, Shall brothers be for a' that. Here are a few facts concerning the personal and family history of the poet: His father's name was William Burness, and was born November 11, 1721, at Clockenhill, Scotland. I suppose that Burness was the old-fashioned way of spelling Burns, hence the difference in the names of the son and father. The poet's name was Robert Burns and the father's William Burness, or Burns. His mother's name was Agnes Brown and she was born in the Carrick district, Scotland, March 17, 1732. Robert Burns, the great poet, was born January 25, 1759, and died July 21, 1796, being therefore not thirty-eight years of age at the time of his death. He was the eldest of seven children who were named consecutively Robert, Gilbert, Agnes, Arabella, William, John and Isabel. The wife of the poet, as I have previously stated in this volume, was Jean Armour, and she was born at Mauchline in 1763 and died at Dumfries in 1834. She survived the poet many years and died at the ripe old age of 71. She was a national character and was made much of, as was everyone else intimately or even remotely connected with the National Bard. This is the reward of greatness, and thus any man or woman who achieves honorable greatness, leaves distinction behind them and throws a halo of glory over those with whom they have been connected or associated. The following children were born to the great poet and his wife: Twins in 1786. The boy, Robert, lived, but the girl died in infancy. Twins in 1788. Both died in infancy. Francis Wallace died at the age of 14. William Nicol, born in 1791. Elizabeth Riddell, born in 1792. Died at the age of two years. James Glencairne, born in 1794, died in 1865. Maxwell, born in 1796, died at the age of two. It will be seen that the poet was the father of quite a number of children, some of whom lived to a ripe old age. Whether he was the father of any more children I am sure I don't know. If he was, almost any Scot will know it and can tell you more about it than I can. Bobbie was a very handsome man and was greatly admired by almost everyone, including the ladies. Some of his poems would lead one to believe that, like Byron, He was unskilled to cozen, And shared his love among a dozen. but that may be mere poetic license. Poets, you know, have an eye for the _beautiful_, whether it be in landscape scenery, flowers, architecture, painting, statuary, the human form or what not. At any rate "Puir Rabbie" was the daddy of the children whose names I have given, for that is a matter of history. To show that the poet loved a joke himself, no matter on what subject, I here quote a little rhyme of his gotten off on a friend named James Smith who lived at Mauchline: Lament him, Mauchline husbands a' He aften did assist ye; For had ye stayed whole weeks awa' Your wives they n'er had missed ye. In my short career I have run up against lots of folks who cannot take a joke or see the point of one and these poor people I pity, but do not blame, for they were born that way. I have always been poor but never proud and could take a joke--that is, when I could see the point of it. When I couldn't see the point of it I did not get angry. Burnsie was a farmer and lived on ranches the most of his life. He was a hayseed from way back but as soon as he got celebrated high society began to run after him and the poor fellow couldn't keep away from it if he tried. It didn't take him long to learn how to make a bow without upsetting the table, but he was out of his element among the grand folks. Did he need polish to make him shine? I trow not. Wasn't his genius just as great before he struck society? Sure! But just to please folks he hobnobbed with them though he was as much out of his element as a fish when out of water. No doubt he wore a biled shirt and black claw-hammer coat and made his coat tails fly around pretty lively as he skipped around in a dance, but as society wanted him it got him. Had he lived long enough he might have been a baron, marquis, duke or count. Who can tell? While a plowman he scorned titles, but I wonder whether he would have rejected a patent of nobility had it been tendered him. Genius is a complex quality. Samuel Smiles in his great work, "Self Help," says that genius is nothing more nor less than a capacity for taking infinite pains, and the world in general seems to have accepted his definition or explanation, but I, Windy Bill, an untutored savage from the Wild West, beg to differ wholly from Sam and I will "show you" why, and permit you to judge for yourself. Had Samuel defined _art_ instead of genius as "an infinite capacity for taking pains" he might have been nearer the truth. Let us take the case of Burns. While plowing he wrote rhymes, but as he knew little or nothing of the art of versification he set his thoughts in mellifluous language of his own. Was it his thoughts or their setting that captivated people? His thoughts, of course, though the jingle made them more harmonious. Genius is the thought; art the setting. Tell me then that genius is a capacity for taking pains. Nary time. It comes forth spontaneous, natural, can't help itself. It is a God-given quality which lots of people possess to a greater or less degree. Musicians have it, as have painters, architects, writers, sculptors and people in all walks of life. Lots of poets in Scotland had genius long before our great friend Rabbie was born, and lots since them have had more or less of a share of the "divine afflatus," as some writers call it, but were any of them gifted as highly as Puir Rabbie? Not a one. Will another like him arise? Search me! There hasn't yet. Notwithstanding that Rabbie was so highly gifted, he didn't know it. Don't you believe me? If you don't you needn't take my word for it, for I have evidence here that will prove it. I quote the preface that he wrote to the first book of his that ever was printed. Here it is: "The following trifles are not the production of the poet, who, with all the advantages of learned art and perhaps amid the elegancies and idleness of upper life looks down for a rural theme with an eye to Theocritus or Virgil. Unacquainted with the necessary requisites for commencing poetry by rule, he sings the sentiments and manners he felt and saw in himself and his rustic compeers around him, in his and their native language. Though a rhymer from his earlier years it was not till very lately that the applause (perhaps the partiality) of friendship awakened his vanity so as to make him think anything of his worth showing, for none of the poems were composed with a view to the press. To amuse himself with the little creations of his own fancy amid the toil and fatigue of a laborious life, these were his motives for courting the muses. Now that he appears in the public character of an author, he does it with fear and trembling. So dear is fame to the rhyming tribe that even he, an obscure, nameless bard, shrinks aghast at the thought of being branded as an impertinent blockhead, obtruding his nonsense on the world; and because he can make shift to jingle a few doggerel Scottish rhymes together, looking upon himself as a poet of no small consequence, forsooth! If any critic catches at the word Genius, the author tells him, once for all, that he certainly looks upon himself as possessed of some poetic abilities, otherwise the publishing, in the manner he has done, would be a maneuver below the worst character his worst enemy will ever give him. But to the genius of an Allan Ramsay or a Robert Ferguson he has not the least pretension, nor ever had, even in his highest pulse of vanity. These two justly admired Scottish poets he has often had in his eye but rather to kindle in their flame than for servile imitation. "To his subscribers the author returns his most sincere thanks--not the mercenary bow over a counter, but the heart-throbbing gratitude of the bard, conscious how much he owes to benevolence and friendship for gratifying him, if he deserves it, in that dearest wish of every poetic bosom--to be distinguished. He begs his readers, particularly the learned and the polite who may honor him with a perusal, that they will make every allowance for education and circumstances of life; but if, after a fair, candid and impartial criticism he shall stand convicted of dullness and nonsense let him be done by as he would in that case do by others--let him be condemned without mercy, to contempt and oblivion." It is a queer fact that those mortals who possessed the greatest genius were always the most simple and diffident, and dubious about their own powers. They had a feeling in them that they were born to soar but they were hesitating, doubtful and did not know their very simplicity was a part of their greatness. They didn't appreciate their own capacities at first any more than are their capabilities appreciated by less gifted mortals. Before Burns' time Allan Ramsay and Robert Ferguson were looked upon as the greatest poets Scotland had ever produced, and so great were they that even Burns looked upon them with awe; and yet, unknown to himself, he was far greater than they. His generation may not have known it, but this generation does. Was Shakespeare appreciated in his generation? He was not. Was any truly great man? Hardly. The earliest book of Burns that ever was put in print consisted of his minor poems which were written while he was in the fields plowing. Of course he wasn't plowing always, so some were written while he was outdoors, here, there and everywhere in the vicinity of his country home. They were put into book-form by the advice of his friends and John Wilson at Kilmarnock, was the man who volunteered to do the printing. The book was a thin one, about half as thick as the ordinary novel of to-day, and it was agreed that only 612 books be struck off as a first edition. Mr. John Wilson was a long-headed printer and would not agree to print a single volume until at least 300 of the books had been subscribed for beforehand. He figured it out this way: "Suppose the book fails, where do I get off at? I set it up in type, do the binding, furnish the paper, pay the devil and the compositors, do the press work, make-up and all, so can I afford to take all the chances of getting any money out of this blooming poetry?" Mr. Wilson was a canny Scot and didn't propose to take any chances. He surely didn't lose anything in this venture, but whether he made anything I am unable to say. Now, all of this is a very imperfect sketch of my old pard Burnsie, and if you care to know more about him I can refer you to quite a few biographies that have been written about him and are still being written about him by the score to this day. No less a personage than Sir Walter Scott has written a life history of him and so has the poet's own brother, Gilbert. Here is a list you can choose from: Appeared 1. Robert Heron (Life of Burns) 1797 2. Dr. James Currie (Life and Works, 4 vols 1800 Works and Sketch of Life) 3. James Stover and John Grieg (Illustrated) 1804 4. Robert Hartley Cromek (Reliques of Burns) 1808 5. Lord Francis Jeffrey (Edinburgh Review) 1808 6. Sir Walter Scott (Quarterly Review) 1808 7. Dr. David Irving (Life of Burns) 1810 8. Prof. Josiah Walker (Life and Poems, 2 vols) 1811 9. Rev. Hamilton Paul (Life and Poems) 1819 10. Gilbert Burns 1820 11. Hugh Ainslie (Pilgrimage to the Land of Burns) 1822 12. Archibald Constable (Life and Works, 3 vols) 1823 13. Alex. Peterkin (Life and Works, 4 vols) 1824 14. John G. Lockhart (Life of Burns) 1828 15. Thomas Carlyle (Edinburgh Review) 1828 16. Allan Cunningham (Life and Works, 8 vols) 1834 17. James Hogg and William Motherwell (Memoirs and Works, 5 vols.) 1854 18. Prof. John Wilson (Essay on Genius) 1840 19. W. C. McLehose (Correspondence) 1843 20. Samuel Tyler (Burns as a Poet and Man) 1849 21. Robert Chambers (Life and Works) 1851 22. George Gilfillan (Memoirs and Works, 2 vols) 1856 23. Rev. James White (Burns and Scott) 1858 24. Rev. P. H. Waddell (Life and Works) 1859 25. William Michael (Life and Works) 1871 CHAPTER XV. SIR WALTER SCOTT. Although Robert Burns is the idol of the Scotch people nowadays, it must not be supposed that he is the only one worshipped, for there is another man who is greatly revered, honored and loved. This man is Sir Walter Scott. The Scotch people affectionately call him Sir Walter and he did as much for his country as did Puir Rabbie. Both were Scotch to the backbone and loved their country as fondly and devotedly as any patriot can, but in their work they were totally dissimilar. Sir Walter started out as a writer of ballads, and chose for his themes historical subjects, mainly those connected with the ancient and modern history of his country. Burns, as I said before, remodeled and improved the old Scotch folk songs and in his democratic way described life around him in tuneful periods. Had he not been cut off in the flower of his prime he, too, might have been a great novelist for his great genius was capable of anything. He sprang from the masses and his heart was with the masses, but Sir Walter, who came from the classes had a heart for all, and described the lowly and humble as well as the great. Sir Walter's delineations of human character stand unrivalled today. He surely was proud of the fact that he was of gentle birth, which well he might have been, for that was no disgrace to him, any more than it is disgraceful to be of lowly birth, although in the old country blood counts for something. To show what Sir Walter thought of himself I here quote an extract from one of his works which he wrote himself: "My birth was neither distinguished nor sordid. According to the prejudices of my country, it was esteemed gentle, as I am connected, though remotely, with ancient families both by my father's and mother's side. My father's grandfather was Walter Scott, well known by the name of Beardie. He was the second son of Walter Scott, first lord of Raeburn, who was the third son of Sir Walter Scott and the grandson of Walter Scott, commonly called in tradition Auld Watt of Harden. I am therefore lineally descended from that chieftain, whose name I have made to ring in many a ditty, and from his fair dame, the Flower of Yarrow, no bad genealogy for a Border Minstrel." Well, my poor friend Rabbie didn't spring from any border minstrel, but he was a born minstrel himself and could concoct a tune with the best of them. Mind you, I am not decrying Sir Walter, for that would be sacrilege, but Burnsie had nothing to brag of in the way of ancestry. Would Sir Walter have been less great had he sprung from common stock or would Robbie have been greater had he been blue-blooded? I am an American, an ex-member of Coxey's unwashed army, so I don't want to say yes or nay to this question. Let others decide. Sir Walter's earliest success as a writer was won by discarding the conventionalities of art and creating a style of art his own. It takes a genius to do that. His style was simple, plain, and direct and won followers very quickly because it gained favor. This goes to show that if one has anything to say it is not necessary to say it in involved language, but just simply. Sir Walter's good common sense told him this was the fact and he acted accordingly. To say the honest truth some of Sir Walter's novels here and there are a little prolix, but there was a reason for it. Sir Walter was getting paid for space-writing. You don't believe me? I'll prove it. He went broke and to pay his debts--or rather those of the publishing house he unfortunately was connected with--he ground out "copy" as fast as he could, for every word of his was worth money. He begged his financial friends not to treat him like "a milch cow" but like a man, but as he was a money-maker they staid with him until all his money and property were gone and all he could earn until he died was swallowed up, too. His was another case like General Ulysses Simpson Grant. Sir Walter was the ninth child in a very large family. His father was a methodical and industrious lawyer, and his mother a woman of much culture, refinement and imagination. Of delicate health and lame from his second year, Sir Walter spent much of his childhood in the country with his relatives. At the fireside of neighbors he listened to the old ballads and stories of border warfare, which caused him at a very early age to acquire a taste for reading ancient history and to become imbued with a love for antiquarian research. When seven years of age he entered the High School of Edinburgh and attended it until twelve. When thirteen he entered the University of Edinburgh and decided on the profession of law. At the age of 21 he was admitted to the bar. He didn't like his profession, however, and spent much of his time in antiquarian research. When about 26 years of age he married Charlotte Margaret Carpenter, the daughter of a French Royalist, whose family after the death of the father had removed to England. Sir Walter and his wife lived first at Edinburgh and three years later rented a cottage at Lasswade. They remained at Lasswade six years and then took up their abode at Ashestiel. In 1799, when about 28 years of age, Sir Walter was made Deputy Sheriff of Selkirkshire to which was attached a salary of $1,500 per annum, and seven years afterward he was appointed a Clerk of Session with a salary of $3,500. He held down both jobs for 25 years, which proved he was a stayer. As his income was $5000 for 25 years it can be figured out about how much he earned. But Sir Walter wasn't a money-saver; he was a spender and a good provider. He kept open house and anyone who called received an old-fashioned Scotch welcome, and I know from my sojourn in Scotland what that means. It means you're welcome to stay or welcome to go, but while you do stay the best is none too good for you. Sir Walter's hospitality was of that sort and while holding down both jobs he was doing a little literary work on the side. First came ballads, then poems of romance and later novels. He was getting along first rate financially so he concluded to take up his residence at Abbottsford, a palatial mansion. By this time he had already gained fame and much lucre and was run after by the "hoi-polloi," the "would-be could-be's" and the Great. The doors of Abbottsford opened wide for all. Even the poor were given "a hand-out" of some kind. Too bad Billy and me wasn't alive then. But this was before our time, about a hundred years or so. Oh what a place for grafters Abbottsford must have been! Sir Walter was easy. So easy was he, in fact, that the publishing house of Ballantyne & Co., which roped him in as a side partner, went flewy and left Sir Walter to foot all the bills. Sir Walter was an honorable man and prized honor above wealth, so he turned over everything he had, including Abbottsford, to the alleged creditors, but there was not enough to satisfy claims. The debt amounted to several hundred thousand dollars. Thereupon he continued writing novels and wrote as he never wrote before. He ground out ten novels in six years and had paid up about $200,000, when his health began to fail. The pace was too swift for a man sixty years of age, which he was then. The creditors were insatiable and were greedy for the last farthing. Business is business, said they. When a little over sixty years of age Sir Walter had a stroke of paralysis caused by overwork and worry, and was recommended by his physicians to take a sea voyage. He embarked for Italy in a frigate which was placed at his disposal by the English government, but sad to relate, the trip benefited him but little. He visited Rome, Venice and other places, but came home a few months afterward to die. "Man's inhumanity to man" killed Sir Walter before his time. Sir Walter's manner was that of a gentleman and he was amiable, unaffected and polished. He was simple and kindly and approachable by all. Much of his literary work was done at Ashestiel, but more at Abbottsford. He kept open house everywhere. He arose at five o'clock in the morning and wrote until eight o'clock. He then breakfasted with his family and after putting in an hour or so with them returned to his writings. He worked until noon and then was his own man, to do as he liked. During the afternoon he put in some time with his guests, gave reporters interviews, was snap-shotted by cameras, saw that the dogs got enough to eat, gave orders to the servants that if too many 'bos came around to sick the dogs on them and then he went a horseback or a carriage riding. In the evening there was some social chat, after which Sir Walter retired early. That was the routine. This master in the art of novel writing was fully six feet in height, well proportioned and well built with the exception of a slight deformity in the ankle, which I have alluded to before. His face was of a Scotch cast, heavy and full; the forehead was high and broad, the head lofty, the nose short, the upper lip long, and the expression of his features kindly. I have seen dead loads of pictures, images and statues of Sir Walter, yet hardly two of them were alike. I consider Sir Walter a handsome man and to me there seems to be something grand and noble in the cast of his countenance. I _know_ the light of genius was there, and maybe that is why he so impresses me, but with it all his features have a noble cast. He is goodly to look upon, surely. To tell the truth, I don't read much poetry, but some competent critic who has read Sir Walter's has this to say of it: "The distinctive features of the poetry of Scott are ease, rapidity of movement, a spirited flow of narrative that holds our attention, an out-of-door atmosphere and power of natural description, an occasional intrusion of a gentle personal sadness and but little more. The subtle and mystic element so characteristic of the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge is not to be found in that of Scott, while in lyrical power he does not approach Shelley. We find instead an intense sense of reality in all his natural descriptions; it surrounds them with an indefinable atmosphere, because they are so transparently true. Scott's first impulse in the direction of poetry was given to him from the study of the German ballads, especially Burger's Lenore, of which he made a translation. As his ideas widened, he wished to do for Scottish Border life what Goethe had done for the ancient feudalism of the Rhine. He was at first undecided whether to choose prose or verse as the medium; but a legend was sent him by the Countess of Dalkeith with a request that he would put it in ballad form. Having thus the framework for his purpose, he went to work, and "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" was the result. The battle scene in Marmion has been called the most Homeric passage in modern literature, and his description of the Battle of Beal au Duine from "The Lady of the Lake" is an exquisite piece of narration from the gleam of the spears in the thicket to the death of Roderick Dhu at its close. In the deepest sense Scott is one with the spirit of his time in his grasp of fact, in that steadily looking at the object which Wordsworth had fought for in poetry, which Carlyle had advocated in philosophy. He is allied, too, to that broad sympathy for man which lay closest to the heart of the age's literary expression. Wordsworth's part is to inspire an interest in the lives of men and women about us; Scott's to enlarge the bounds of our sympathy beyond the present, and to people the silent centuries. Shelley's inspiration is hope for the future; Scott's is reverence for the past." I have read a few of Sir Walter's novels, and some of them several times, and every time I read them it is with renewed interest. His delineation of human character is so true to nature and so graphic that I feel the living, speaking person before me as I read. If that ain't writing I would like to know what is. Whether it be peasant, servant, knight, esquire, king, lord, lady or girl, all are shown up on the screen so plainly that I take it all as a matter of course and say nothing. It is all so plain and simple that there is nothing to say. That is art and the highest form of it. It is next to nature. Art and genius are closely allied. It is not everyone who loves the "altogether" or the "realistic," which may be well. Were it not so, many poets, painters, sculptors, musicians and other handicraftsmen would be left out in the cold, with none to do him reverence. All tastes happily are catered to, so everyone is happy. As I am neither a critic nor a biographer I shall endeavor to give my readers an idea what Sir Walter was thought of by others and will quote the language they used. George Tichnor, the author, says that Scott repeated to him the English translations of two long Spanish ballads which he had never seen, but which had been read to him twice. Scott's college friend, John Irving, in writing of himself and Scott, says: "The number of books we thus devoured was very great. I forgot a great part of what I read; but my friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained, to my surprise, master of it all, and could even, weeks and months afterwards, repeat a whole page in which anything had particularly struck him at the moment." Washington Irving remarked: "During the time of my visit he inclined to the comic rather than to the grave in his anecdotes and stories; and such, I was told, was his general inclination. He relished a joke or a trait of humor in social intercourse, and laughed with right good will.... His humor in conversation, as in his works, was genial and free from causticity. He had a quick perception of faults and foibles, but he looked upon human nature with an indulgent eye, relishing what was good and pleasant, tolerating what was frail and pitying what was evil.... I do not recollect a sneer throughout his conversation, any more than there is throughout his works." Lord Byron said: "I think that Scott is the only very successful genius that could be cited as being as generally beloved as a man as he is admired as an author; and I must add, he deserves it, for he is so thoroughly good-natured, sincere and honest, that he disarms the envy and jealousy his extraordinary genius must excite." Leslie Stephen remarked: "Scott could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He is the _poet of association_." Lockhart, who married the daughter of Sir Walter and who was therefore his son-in-law, wrote a biography of his father-in-law wherein he says that: "The love of his country became indeed a passion; no knight ever tilted for his mistress more willingly than he would have bled and died to preserve even the airiest surviving nothing of her antique pretensions for Scotland. But the Scotland of his affections had the clan _Scott_ for her kernel." I believe the son-in-law is inclined to be facetious, but is he _just_ to his immortal father-in-law? I don't believe he is--therefore his criticisms are not worth a whoop. Thomas Carlyle, the cynical philosopher and mugwump, condescended to give Sir Walter a sort of recommendation of character, which it renders me extremely happy to quote. Here it is. Read it carefully and ponder: "The surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fantasticality or distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay, withal, was he not a right brave and strong man according to his kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity he quietly bore along with him! With what quiet strength he both worked on this earth and enjoyed in it, invincible to evil fortune and to good!" This cynic, this philosopher, this mugwump says Sir Walter was a _genuine man_. Good for Mr. Carlyle. Everyone was proud to call Sir Walter "friend," and he was just great enough to be happy to call those who were worthy, his friend. Among his great friends were the following: John Irving, who was an intimate college friend. I have quoted him in regard to the number of books read by Sir Walter. Robert Burns came to Edinburgh when Sir Walter was fifteen years of age, and Sir Walter's boyish admiration for the National Bard was great. In after life, when Sir Walter became great, he wrote a great deal concerning Puir Rabbie. And it is worth reading. James Ballantyne, Sir Walter's partner in the publishing business, was a good friend. So was James Hogg, the poet peasant, sometimes called "The Ettrick Shepherd." And so was Thomas Campbell, the poet, author of "The Pleasures of Hope." The poet William Wordsworth was a lifelong friend. Robert Southey, the poet, visited Sir Walter at Ashestiel and was admired by him greatly. Joanna Baillie, the poetess, was a warm friend. So was Lord Byron. Sir Humphry Davy, the philosopher, visited Sir Walter and was well liked by him. Goethe, the German poet, was a warm admirer and friend of Sir Walter. So was Henry Hallam, the historian; Crabbe, the poet; Maria Edgeworth, the novelist; George Ticknor, the author; Dugald Stewart, Archibald Alison, Sydney Smith, Lord Brougham, Lord Jeffrey, Thomas Erskine, William Clerk, Sir William Hamilton, etc., etc. Last but not least among those who regarded Sir Walter as a friend and who were so regarded by him was our own countryman, Washington Irving. Our own "Washy" was an author, too, and one not to be sneezed at. Sir Walter regarded him highly and Washy dropped in on him, casual like, at Abbottsford. Washy had written some good things himself, but had found it difficult to win recognition. Sir Walter stood sponsor for him and told the world it ought to be ashamed of itself not to recognize merit of so high an order. Thereupon the world promptly did recognize our Washy. Did our Washy need a sponsor? Well, hardly. No American ever lived who was an abler or more polished writer than he. Will you please show me a man who can beat our Washy. You can't do it. Smile at me if you will, but I doubt if even Sir Walter himself was so much superior to him. Have you read Irving's Astoria, a true and lifelike history of the Northwest? or his Rip Van Winkle, or his sketches, the Alhambra, etc.? Irving's is another case where a great man failed of appreciation at first. Well, my countrymen, our Washy is dead, but we appreciate him now just the same. The United States never produced a writer more polished and able than he, and it is rather humiliating to think that a great foreigner had to apprise us of his merits. To wind up this chapter on Sir Walter Scott I will give you a list of his writings, arranged in chronological order: BALLADS. Glenfinlas, 1799. Eve of St. John, 1799. The Grey Brothers, 1799. Border Minstrelsy, 1802-1803. Cadyow Castle, 1810. English Minstrelsy, 1810. The Battle of Sempach, 1818. The Noble Moringer, 1819. The Lay of the Last Minstrel, 1805. Marmion, 1808. The Lady of the Lake, 1810. Vision of Don Roderick, 1811. Rokeby, 1812. The Bridal of Triermain, 1813. The Lord of the Isles, 1815. PROSE WORKS. Waverley, 1814. Guy Mannering, 1815. The Antiquary, 1816. The Black Dwarf, 1816. Old Mortality, 1816. Rob Roy, 1818. The Heart of Mid-Lothian, 1818. The Bride of Lammermoor, 1819. The Legend of Montrose, 1819. Ivanhoe, 1820. The Monastery, 1820. The Abbott, 1820. Kenilworth, 1821. The Pirate, 1822. The Fortunes of Nigel, 1822. Peveril of the Peak, 1823. Quentin Durward, 1823. St. Ronan's Well, 1824. Red Gauntlet, 1824. The Betrothed, 1825. The Talisman, 1825. Woodstock, 1826. The Two Drovers, 1827. The Highland Widow, 1827. The Surgeon's Daughter, 1827. The Fair Maid of Perth, 1828. Anne of Geierstein, 1829. Count Robert of Paris, 1831. Castle Dangerous, 1831. 
878	----	YANKEE GYPSIES by John Greenleaf Whittier "Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering train." BURNS.(1) I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." (2) I profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her _yashmak;_(3) schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow, or blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof: there is nothing in all this to complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,--its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties,--sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs, and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above, reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz(4) administers his hydropathic torment,-- "A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,-- The land it soaks is putrid;" or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thomsonian steam-box(5) on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous, melancholy drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot,--he who can extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted. (1) From the closing air in _The Jolly Beggars,_ a cantata. (2) "A breath thou art Servile to all the skyey influences, That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st Hourly afflict." Shakespeare: _Measure for Measure,_ act III. scene 1. (3) "She turns and turns again, and carefully glances around her on all sides, to see that she is safe from the eyes of Mussulmans, and then suddenly withdrawing the yashmak she shines upon your heart and soul with all the pomp and might of her beauty." Kinglake's _Eothen,_ chap. iii. In a note to _Yashmak_ Kinglake explains that it is not a mere semi-transparent veil, but thoroughly conceals all the features except the eyes: it is withdrawn by being pulled down. (4) Vincenz Priessnitz was the originator of the water-cure. After experimenting upon himself and his neighbors he took up the profession of hydropathy and established baths at his native place, Grafenberg in Silesia, in 1829. He died in 1851. (5) Dr. Samuel Thomson, a New Hampshire physician, advocated the use of the steam bath as a restorer of system when diseased. He died in 1843 and left behind an autobiography (_Life and Medical Discoveries_) which contains a record of the persecutions he underwent. Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of the raindrops. I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-brown and wind-dried; small, quick-winking black eyes,--there he stands, the water dripping from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows. I speak to him; but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery, quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs unpronounceable, name. Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mahometans tell us, has two attendant angels,--the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel, "of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!" replies the left-hand sentinel; "his paper purchased from one of those ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to suit customers." Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant. Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd, old face, with its sharp, winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee before. _Si, signor,_ that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of half-grown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did it not belong to that down-east unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country"(1) and got the "fevernnager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises,--Stephen Leathers, of Barrington,--him, and none other! Let me conjure him into his own likeness:-- (1) The _Genesee country_ is the name by which the western part of New York, bordering on Lakes Ontario and Erie, was known, when, at the close of the last and beginning of this century, it was to people on the Atlantic coast the Great West. In 1792 communication was opened by a road with the Pennsylvania settlements, but the early settlers were almost all from New England. "Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?" "Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted. "How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this 'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who could n't make himself understood any more than a wild goose. I though I'd just start him for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it." Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot; and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam-doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him. But he evidently has no wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent upon his benevolent errand he is already clattering down stairs. Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist. He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm-house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon; the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,--the dear old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a daguerreotype from that picture within, which I have borne with me in all my wanderings. I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling, half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh." The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known; they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we would calculate them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent, would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,--"Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's monk,(1) came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of cider. Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done, it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad, melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them, half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the favor, as "dear, good children"! Not unfrequently these wandering tests of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man, woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. (2) I remember some who were evidently the victims of monomania,--haunted and hunted by some dark thought,--possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild-haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a "dumb spirit." (1) Whom he met at Calais, as described in his _Sentimental Journey._ (2) The _cantata_ is _The Jolly Beggars,_ from which the motto heading this sketch was taken. _Poosie-Nansie_ was the keeper of a tavern in Mauchline, which was the favorite resort of the lame sailors, maimed soldiers, travelling ballad-singers, and all such loose companions as hang about the skirts of society. The cantata has for its theme the rivalry of a "pigmy scraper with his fiddle" and a strolling tinker for a beggar woman: hence the _maudlin affection._ One--I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow way up to our door--used to gather herbs by the wayside and called himself doctor. He was bearded like a he-goat, and used to counterfeit lameness; yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily, as if walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed-sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack" always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a mysterious life, or that some evil monsters would leap out of it, like robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse! There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving rather as a walking-staff than as a protection from the rain. He told us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on a brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos.(1) As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired, anxiously. There was a cunning twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no she did n't. She got married." (1) It was upon the Isle of Lemnos that Vulcan was flung by Jupiter, according to the myth, for attempting to aid his mother Juno. Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger branches of the family. No love-sick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country seclusion, as Autolycus to the clown in "Winter's Tale,"(1) we listened with infinite satisfaction to his reading of his own verses, or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new subject his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads, and all men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly as I can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,--"doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably." He was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When invited to sit down at our dinner-table he invariably took the precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe keeping. "Never mind they basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we shan't steal thy verses." "I 'm not sure of that," returned the suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'" (1) "He could never come better," says the clown in Shakespeare's _The Winter's Tale,_ when Autolycus, the pedler, is announced; "he shall come in. I love a ballad but even too well, if it be doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant thing indeed and sung lamentably." Act IV. scene 4. Thou, too, O Parson B.,--with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white, flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,--art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the _entree_ of our farmhouse. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the winter season, as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of three-score and ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons,(1) and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:(2)-- "They had been fou for weeks thegither." He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosed, the golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave. (1) Nathaniel Emmons was a New England theologian of marked character and power, who for seventy years was connected with a church in that part of Wrentham, Mass., now called Franklin. He exercised considerable influence over the religious thought of New England, and is still read by theologians. He died in 1840, in his ninety-sixth year. (2) Souter (or cobbler) Johnny, in Burns's poetic tale of _Tam O'Shanter,_ had been _fou_ or _full_ of drink with Tam for weeks together. One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle"(1) of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster(2) (than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter), but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. Another wanderer made us acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at e'en." He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set at work splitting stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and stopped to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the animal attentively, as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the old poem:-- "Our gude man cam hame at e'en, And hame cam he; And there he saw a saddle horse Where nae horse should be. 'How cam this horse here? How can it be? How cam this horse here Without the leave of me?' 'A horse?' quo she. 'Ay, a horse,' quo he. 'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,-- And blinder might ye be,-- 'T is naething but a milking cow My mamma sent to me.' 'A milch cow?' quo he. 'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she. 'Weel, far hae I ridden, And muckle hae I seen; But milking cows wi' saddles on Saw I never nane.'"(3) (1) From the first line of _The Gaberlunzie Man,_ attributed to King James V. of Scotland,-- "The pawky auld carle came o'er the lee." The original like Whittier's was a sly old fellow, as an English phrase would translate the Scottish. _The Gaberlunzie Man_ is given in Percy's _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_ and in Child's _English and Scottish Ballads,_ viii. 98. (2) William R. Dempster, a Scottish vocalist who had recently sung in America, and whose music to Burns's song "A man 's a man for a' that" was very popular. (3) The whole of this song may be found in Herd's _Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs,_ ii. 172. That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse, and was never after heard of. Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more "gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night. I was once sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farmhouse was situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light of the kitchen fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses, and robbers, when we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A strippling of fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household; so, with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out into the darkness. The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider,--colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night. The strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge presence excited. Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clinched his fists, struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his "mortal frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating liquors; and on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon,(1) led me about from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the course of which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him. After bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he was very much pleased with her appearance; adding that, if agreeable to her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her. While vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father, who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without ceremony. (1) See Ezekiel viii. 3. On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother had very reluctantly refused his request. I found her by no means satisfied with her decision. "What if a son of mine was in a strange land?" she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path over the fields, soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious perplexity in the street. He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,(1)--one of those bandit visages which Salvator(2) has painted. With some difficulty I gave him to understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully followed me back. He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and, when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and partly by gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor. (1) Provinces into which the old Kingdom of Naples was divided. (2) Salvator Rosa was a Neapolitan by birth, and was said to have been himself a bandit in his youth; his landscapes often contain figures drawn from the wild life of the region. It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence got the better of her charity. The regular "old stragglers" regarded her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing, under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh is heir to." It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late, that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, known by the appellation of Hopping Pat,--the wise woman of her tribe,--was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"--a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice. These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." It has been said--I know not upon what grounds--that their ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my friend Mary Russell Mitford,--sweetest of England's rural painters,--who has a poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.(1) (1) See in Miss Mitford's _Our Village._ "The proper study of mankind is man;" and, according to my view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and returning, once for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may suppose Major Laing(1) parted with his friends when he set out in search of desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half-ruinous mill, and, climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide, sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,--no wall or paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own? and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth--that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all--is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:-- "Other hands may grasp the field and forest, Proud proprietors in pomp may shine, . . . . . . . Thou art wealthier,--all the world is thine."(2) (1) Alexander Gordon Laing was a major in the British army, who served on the west coast of Africa and made journeys into the interior in the attempt to establish commercial relations with the natives, and especially to discover the sources of the Niger. He was treacherously murdered in 1826 by the guard that was attending him on his return from Timbuctoo to the coast. His travels excited great interest in their day in England and America. (2) From a poem, _Why Thus Longing?_ by Mrs. Harriet Winslow Sewall, preserved in Whittier's _Songs of Three Centuries._ But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar. 
40036	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print archive. [Illustration: Book Cover] Tramping With Tramps [Illustration] Tramping With Tramps STUDIES AND SKETCHES OF VAGABOND LIFE By Josiah Flynt With Prefatory Note by Hon. Andrew D. White [Illustration] New York The Century Co. 1907 Copyright, 1893, 1894, 1895, 1899, by THE CENTURY CO. * * * * * Copyright, 1894, 1895, by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Copyright, 1897, by the Forum Publishing Co. Copyright, 1895, 1896, 1897, by Harper & Brothers. TO MY MOTHER EMBASSY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, BERLIN, April 19, 1899. DEAR MR. FLYNT: Your letter of March 27 and accompanying articles have greatly interested me. As you know, I consider the problems furnished by crime in the United States as of the most pressing importance. We are allowing a great and powerful criminal class to be developed, and while crime is held carefully in check in most European countries, and in them is steadily decreasing, with us it is more and more flourishing, increases from year to year, and in various ways asserts its power in society. So well is this coming to be known by the criminal classes of Europe that it is perfectly well understood here that they look upon the United States as a "happy hunting-ground," and more and more seek it, to the detriment of our country and of all that we hold most dear in it. It seems to me that the publication of these articles in book form will be of great value, as well as of fascinating interest to very many people. Yours faithfully, ANDREW D. WHITE. MR. JOSIAH FLYNT. AUTHOR'S NOTE During my university studies in Berlin I saw my fellow-students working in scientific laboratories to discover the minutest parasitic forms of life, and later publishing their discoveries in book form as valuable contributions to knowledge. In writing on what I have learned concerning human parasites by an experience that may be called scientific in so far as it deals with the subject on its own ground and in its peculiar conditions and environment, I seem to myself to be doing similar work with a like purpose. This is my apology, if apology be necessary, for a book which attempts to give a picture of the tramp world, with incidental reference to causes and occasional suggestion of remedies. A majority of the papers in this volume have appeared in the "Century Magazine." Thanks are due to Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for permission to reprint "The Children of the Road" and "Old Boston Mary," published in the "Atlantic Monthly"; to Harper & Brothers for similar permission in regard to the papers entitled "Jamie the Kid" and "Club Life among Outcasts," published in "Harper's Monthly Magazine," and "What the Tramp Eats and Wears" and "One Night on the 'Q'," which appeared in "Harper's Weekly." To the Forum Publishing Company I am indebted for permission to reprint from the "Forum" the paper called "The Criminal in the Open." JOSIAH FLYNT. CONTENTS PART I--STUDIES PAGE I. THE CRIMINAL IN THE OPEN 1 II. THE CHILDREN OF THE ROAD 28 III. CLUB LIFE AMONG OUTCASTS 67 IV. THE AMERICAN TRAMP CONSIDERED GEOGRAPHICALLY 91 V. THE CITY TRAMP 113 VI. WHAT THE TRAMP EATS AND WEARS 137 PART II--TRAVELS I. LIFE AMONG GERMAN TRAMPS 169 II. WITH THE RUSSIAN GORIOUNS 200 III. TWO TRAMPS IN ENGLAND 229 IV. THE TRAMP AT HOME 267 V. THE TRAMP AND THE RAILROADS 291 PART III--SKETCHES I. OLD BOSTON MARY 317 II. JAMIE THE KID 336 III. ONE NIGHT ON THE "Q" 355 IV. A PULQUE DREAM 366 V. A HOBO PRECEDENT 372 PART IV--THE TRAMP'S JARGON THE TRAMP'S JARGON 381 GLOSSARY 392 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JOSIAH FLYNT, ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA, AUGUST 8, 1897 _Frontispiece_ DISCOURAGED CRIMINALS 15 THE MODE OF TRAVEL THAT ATTRACTS BOYS 35 YOUTHFUL TRESPASSERS 51 TELLING "GHOST-STORIES" 59 A GATHERING OF "OLD BUCKS" 73 MIDNIGHT 87 A "TIMBER LESSON" 101 TOMATO-CAN TRAMPS 115 A CITY TRAMP AT WORK 125 A WESTERN ROADSTER 149 AN AUCTION 157 THE FOURTH-CLASS CAR 173 HUNTING FOR HIS PASS 179 ON THE ROAD 187 DANCING AROUND A BONFIRE 193 SLEEPING IN A BARN 209 A LODGING-HOUSE 223 AN ENGLISH TYPE 235 A MOOCHER 245 A REST BY THE WAYSIDE 257 A DIVISION 275 ASLEEP IN A FREIGHT-CAR 283 RIDING ON THE BUMPERS 295 A BRAKEMAN OF A FREIGHT-TRAIN COLLECTING FARES 305 A TRAMPS' DEPOT 311 OLD BOSTON MARY'S SHANTY 327 OLD BOSTON MARY 335 BEATING A PASSENGER-TRAIN 343 A RIDE ON A TRUCK 357 PART I STUDIES PART I STUDIES PAGE I. THE CRIMINAL IN THE OPEN 1 II. THE CHILDREN OF THE ROAD 28 III. CLUB LIFE AMONG OUTCASTS 67 IV. THE AMERICAN TRAMP CONSIDERED GEOGRAPHICALLY 91 V. THE CITY TRAMP 113 VI. WHAT THE TRAMP EATS AND WEARS 137 I THE CRIMINAL IN THE OPEN Up to the present time the criminal has been studied exclusively behind prison-bars, after he has been caught, tried, and convicted. Out of durance he is his own master, and is naturally averse to being measured and experimented upon by scientists; hence the criminologist has been forced to await the almost certain vicissitudes which bring him once more inside a prison-cell. Here he has been subjected to the most minute examinations; and there exists a bulky literature on the results which these examinations have brought to light. We have volumes, for instance, about the criminal's body, skull, and face, his whimsical and obscene writings on prison-walls, the effect of various kinds of diet on his deportment, the workings of delicate instruments, placed on his wrists, to test the beat of his pulse under various conditions, the stories he has been persuaded to tell about his life, his maunderings when under the influence of hypnotism, and numerous things, anthropological and psychological, which have been noted down, compared, and classified. Out of this mass of information, gathered in great part by prison doctors and other prison officials, the conclusion has been drawn that the criminal is a more or less degenerate human being. There are differences of opinion in regard to the degree of his degeneracy; but all investigators agree upon the main fact, while some go so far as to claim that he is abnormally deficient in mental and moral aptitudes, and, in a large number of instances, should be in an insane asylum rather than in a penitentiary. Human justice recoils from a severe treatment of the man who, though an outbreaking sinner, bears evidence of being sinned against as well as sinning; and yet, before we can safely fall in with this view, we must carefully consider the theory on which it is based, and its claims to a scientific foundation. The first question with which to begin a scientific investigation of this sort is, it seems to me, this: "Where may we hope to find the criminal in his most natural state of body and mind--in confinement, a balked and disappointed man, or in the open, faring forth on his plundering errands, seeking whom and what he may devour?" That he should be studied when undergoing punishment goes without saying; but I claim that imprisonment should be considered rather as an incident in his existence than its normal sphere, and that, because it has not been so regarded, we have to-day a distorted view of the criminal and an illogical tendency in penology. It is now more than a decade since I became acquainted with tramps. My purpose in seeking them out was to learn about their life; and I soon saw that, to know it well, I must become joined to it and be part and parcel of its various manifestations. At different times during this period,--some of them lengthening out into months,--I have lived intimately with the vagabonds of both England and the United States. In the tramp class, or so near it that the separation is almost imperceptible, are to be found any number of criminals associating freely, either for purposes of business or sociability, with their less ambitious brethren. In nearly every large city of the two countries mentioned I know something about them, and in not a few instances I have succeeded in becoming well acquainted with notorious members of their class. My desire is to tell of the impression they make on one who studies them in their own habitat, that I may be able to show how different is the outdoor criminal from his convicted brother shut in behind prison-bars. I I must first note the species of criminal that I have met in the open. Lombroso and other investigators classify the cases they have studied as political, instinctive, occasional, habitual, and professional; but, so far as my finding is concerned, only one class is of any great importance--the professional. That there are also instinctive criminals, as well as occasional, I am well aware; but they form a very small part of that outcast world that I know best, and cannot be taken as definitely representative of it. It is the man who wilfully and knowingly makes a business of crime or is experimenting with it from commercial motives that I have found in largest numbers "on the road"; and it is he, I believe, who appears oftenest in our criminal courts. To be sure, he tries to make out that he is not a wilful offender, and often succeeds in convincing a jury that he is not; but this is due to his cleverness and trained abilities. Contrary to a more or less popular opinion, I must also say that the criminals I am acquainted with are not such because they are unable to keep body and soul together in any other way. The people who go into crime for this reason are far less numerous than is generally supposed. It is true that they come, as a rule, from the poverty-stricken districts of our large cities, and that the standard of life in these districts, particularly for families, is pitifully low; but a single person can live in them far more easily than the philanthropists think. The necessaries of life, for instance, can be had by simply begging; and this is the way they are found by the majority of people who are not willing to work for them. The criminal, however, wants the luxuries of life as well; he seeks gold and the most expensive pleasures that gold can buy; and to get them he preys upon those who have it. He thinks that if all goes well he may become an aristocrat; and having so little to lose and so much to gain, he deliberately takes his chances. I most say furthermore that those criminals who are known to me are not, as is also popularly supposed, the scum of their environment. On the contrary, they are above their environment, and are often gifted with talents which would enable them to do well in any class, could they only be brought to realize its responsibilities and to take advantage of its opportunities. The notion that the criminal is the lowest type of his class in society arises from a false conception of that class and of the people who compose it. According to my experience, they are mainly paupers; and they have been such so long, and are so obtuse and unaccustomed to anything better, even in the United States, that they seldom make any serious effort to get out of their low condition. Indeed, I think it can be said that the majority of them are practically as happy and contented in their squalor and poverty as is the aristocrat in his palace. In Whitechapel as well as in the worst parts of New York, for example, I have met entire families who could not be persuaded to exchange places with the rich, provided the exchange carried with it the duties and manners which wealth presupposes; they even pity the rich, and express wonder at their contentment "in such a strait-jacket life." In this same class, however, there are some who are born with ambitions, and who have energy enough to try to fulfil them. These break away from class conditions; but, unfortunately, the ladder of respectable business has no foothold in their environment. No one of their acquaintance has gone springing up its rounds in tempting promotions; and although the city missionary tells them that there are those who thus succeed, they will not believe him--or, rather, they prefer to believe the, to them, far more probable stories of success which they read in the "Police Gazette" and the "Criminal Calendar." Most of them know perfectly well that the success thus portrayed is the result of law-breaking, and that they will be punished if caught trying to achieve it; but it is a choice between the miserable slum, which they hate, and possible wealth, which they covet, and they determine to run the risk. Not all of these ambitious ones are endowed with an equal amount of energy. Some are capable only of tramp life, which, despite its many trials and vicissitudes, is more attractive than the life they seek to escape. Those with greater energy go into crime proper; and they may be called, mentally as well as physically, the aristocracy of their class. This is my analysis of the majority of the criminal men and women I have encountered in the open, and I believe it will hold good throughout their entire class. Concerning their nationalities, I must say that most of them are indigenous to the countries in which they live. In this country it is often said that foreigners are the main offenders, and a great deal has been written about the dumping of European criminals on American shores; but the main offenders, in the open at least, are natives, and are generally of Irish-American parentage. In England, unmixed blood is a little more noticeable. Ireland is said to be the least criminal land in all Europe, and this may be the case so far as local crime is concerned; but more criminals trace their ancestry back to that country than to any other where English is spoken. Indeed, in America it is considered something quite out of the ordinary if the criminal cannot attach himself somehow or other to the "Emerald Isle"; and nothing has hindered me more in my intercourse with him than the fact that my own connection with it is very slight. In regard to the ages of the criminals I have met, it is difficult to write definitely; but the average, I think, is between twenty-five and thirty years. The sex is predominantly masculine. For every female criminal I have found twenty males; and the proportion in the United States is even higher. It cannot, however, be inferred that the women of the same original environment are less ambitious than the men; but they take to the street, instead of to crime, to satisfy their love of high living, and they hope to find there the same prizes that their brothers are seeking by plunder. It is a mistake to say that all these women are driven to the street by the pangs of hunger. A great many are no doubt thus impelled; but I believe there are multitudes who are there merely to satisfy their ambitious and luxurious tastes. As the degeneration of the criminal is said by the criminologists to be physical, mental, and moral, I shall take up the subject, as it pertains to the criminals I have studied, from these different points of view. II It has of course been impossible for me, a fellow-traveler with tramps and but a casual observer of criminals, to conduct my investigations as scientific observers of prison specimens have done. I have not been permitted, for instance, to measure their skulls; neither have I been able to weigh them, to inspect their teeth and palates, nor even to test their pulse under excitement. It has been possible for me, however, to study their countenances, to get acquainted with their type, as it is called, and to compare it, as I have seen it in the open day, with its pictorial representation in books and pamphlets. As a rule, these pictures are very different from the type that I know. Only in a few cases have they ever approximated to the truth; and why artists have given us such as their models is more than I can understand. In New York I once showed a criminal one of these caricatures and asked what he thought of it. He replied, "Why, I wouldn't be found dead lookin' like that!"--a sentiment which I consider both justified and representative. The trouble is that writers about crime have usually picked out as illustrations for their books the very worst specimens possible; and the public has been led to consider these as true representatives of the entire class. A retreating forehead, for example, and the most depraved expressions of the eyes and mouth are to-day considered typical stigmata of the criminal's face. The majority of those that I am acquainted with, particularly those under thirty years of age, if well dressed, could pass muster in almost any class of society; and I doubt very much whether an uninitiated observer would be able to pick them out for what they are. After thirty years of age, and sometimes even younger, they do acquire a peculiar look; but, instead of calling it a criminal look, in the sense that the instinctive offender is criminal, I should describe it as that of a long resident in a penitentiary. Prison life, if taken in large doses and often enough, will give the most moral men in the world prison features; and it is no wonder that men who make a business of crime and are so much in prison possess them. Even men who are busied in the detection of crime have more or less similar facial characteristics. I have never met a detective who had been long in the service that did not have some features or habits common to the criminals he was engaged in hunting down; and I know several detectives who have been taken for criminals by criminals, simply because of their looks. In regard to other abnormalities, such as absence of hair on the face, remarkable eyesight, length of certain fingers, insensibility to pain, unusual development of the lower jaw, high cheek-bones, fixed eyes, projecting ears, and stooping shoulders, which are said to differentiate the criminal from the ordinary human being, I can only report that I have not found them to be any more noticeable in the criminal class than among normal people. In the majority of cases the criminal can grow a beard, and is glad that he can do so. Without this ability to change his looks he would be greatly handicapped in his business; and, as I know him, he usually has a beard once in two years. It has been said that his habit of tattooing is evidence of his obtuseness to pain; but it is not easy to see why. At the worst, it is not a trying ordeal; and the little suffering that it does occasion is as much felt by the criminal as by any one else. Moreover, those that I know are not so prone to be tattooed as is reported. Indeed, it is considered a mistake to have marks on the body, for they naturally aid detection. On all these questions of the senses, criminologists have relied altogether on what the criminal himself has told them. They give him something to taste or smell, or prick him with a needle, and his reply is noted down as scientific evidence. How do they know that he has not some object in view in telling them what he does? He may want to appear degenerated or queer, or is perhaps simply mischievous and says the first thing that comes into his head. Until instruments have been invented which can discover the truth quite independently of the criminal's personal testimony, nothing really positive can be known concerning whatever freaks of the senses may have been wrought in the criminal's organization. The general health of the criminal is good. Up to twenty-five years of age he is as hardy and vigorous as the average person. Although he comes from the slums, he gets somehow a very fair constitution; and if he would only take care of it, he might live to a good old age. When he nears his thirtieth year, however, his strength and vigor begin to fail him. By that time he has served a number of terms in prison, and it is this existence that drags him down. In the open he seems able to endure a great deal and still keep his health; but behind the bars, care for him as the penologists will, he weakens and withers away. This side of his life has scarcely received the attention it deserves from investigators who find the criminal diseased. That he becomes diseased must be readily admitted; but, as a rule, it is only after society has shut him up in its penal institutions. Stand, for instance, at the doors of one of these institutions when a ten-year convict is released, and see how he looks. I once did this; and a worse wreck of a formerly strong man I have never encountered--a being ruined in both body and mind, a victim of passions which in the open he would have abhorred. There is no better proof that it is the prison, and not his life and business, that makes the criminal diseased than that furnished by tramps. These men live almost entirely in the open, and, as a general rule, have a harder life than a criminal; yet they are about the healthiest people in the world. In the United States it is one of their superstitions that they simply cannot die, like other men, of disease, but have to be killed. This is what happens to a great many of them. They fall from freight-trains at night, or are found starved to death, locked fast in a box-car on some distant side-track. III Finding the criminal diseased and abnormal physically, it is only natural that investigators should have found him equally abnormal in mind; but this, too, I have not discovered. Lack of will-power, for example, is one of the first delinquencies noted in criminology; and yet out of prison and in the open, the will is one of the criminal's strongest points. Most of them have enough of it, at least while they are young, to satisfy any one; and could they but be brought to use it in honest industry, they might become the most successful people in the world. The trouble is that they will do the things which society considers and punishes as crime. They think that they can "get on" faster in their profession than in any other; and they bend every energy to achieve their ambition. Because this ambition is so flatly contradictory to what is upright and honest, it is common, not only among criminologists, but with the general public as well, to speak of the criminal as one weak of will. I think this is one of the greatest mistakes in psychology. Napoleon I, for instance, was instrumental, directly or indirectly, in the deaths of nearly two million people, and was one of the most unscrupulously ambitious human beings that have ever lived; yet his passes for one of the strongest wills the world has known. The unimperial criminal, on the other hand, if he be unsuccessful, is catalogued by prison psychologists as a pathological specimen simply because he wills to do wrong. This strange classification is doubtless to be accounted for on the ground that the criminal in prison has been taken to be the natural criminal. Behind the bars he does indeed become somewhat volatile, and finds it hard to concentrate his mind; but this is due to imprisonment and its harassing trials rather than to innate deficiency. The strongest of wills would deteriorate under such conditions, and perhaps even more rapidly than that of the criminal who, from the very nature of his trade, expects and plans for a certain amount of exile. The charge of impatience, which is so often brought against him, may be explained in the same way; and the tramps are again good illustrations. As a class they are the most patient people imaginable, and are able to endure pleasantly any amount of ruffling circumstances. Where, for example, is there a calmer and more stoical human being than the American "hobo," waiting through rain or shine at the railway watering-tank for the freight-train that shall carry him farther on the road? He will stay there for days, if necessary, rather than pay the regular fare on the passenger-trains; and nothing arouses his scorn more than the dilettante, or "gay-cat," as he calls him, who gives up waiting and buys a regulation ticket. The criminal, after a certain age, often lacks this ability to hang on; but his nerves and general equipoise have been disturbed by imprisonment. Even the tramp is a less patient person in county jails than he is in the open; but his stay there is so short, and the confinement, compared with that in convict prisons, is so much easier to bear, that he soon recuperates. I can write from personal experience on this point; for, as an American tramp, I have had to take my share of jail life, and I have never been so nervous and impatient as when undergoing it. In the open, on the other hand, I have never been so healthy and under control. If a few days' confinement can have such an effect upon an absolutely voluntary prisoner, what must be the effect of years of this sort of life upon the man who hates prison as he does poison, and is not sure that when he is released an officer may not be waiting to read him a warrant for another arrest? Criminologists who believe in the innate nervous weakness of the criminal would do well to test their own nerves during even voluntary residence in prison-cells in order to estimate their power to disturb a natural equilibrium. It is also said that the criminal is more or less an epileptic. Lombroso makes a great deal of this supposition; and there are other students of the subject who go quite as far as he does. I have never met a pure epileptic criminal on the road, and I cannot recall having heard the subject discussed by tramps or criminals in any way that would lead me to believe the disorder at all common among them. Among tramps a favorite trick is to feign epilepsy; and I have seen it done with a fidelity to the "real thing" that was remarkable. Whether or not criminals also feign in prison, I am not prepared to say; but if they are as clever as tramps at it, I can well believe that they might deceive even the very elect among specialists. I have also failed to find insanity common among criminals. Among those under twenty-five years of age, I have never known one clear case; and the few cases that I have known after that period have been men who have had long sentences in prison, and whose confinement, I have no doubt, has had much to do with their mental derangement. [Illustration: DISCOURAGED CRIMINALS.] There is no better evidence of the criminal's ability to reason than the fact that, the minute he is convinced that crime does not pay, he gives it up. Even at the start he is not sure that it will pay; but, as I have said, having so little to lose and so much to gain, he takes his chances. After a time, long or short according to his success, he generally comes to the conclusion that it does not pay, or at least that he lacks the wit to make it successful; and he drops it, becoming what I call a discouraged criminal. There is a difference of opinion among criminals as to how much imprisonment is necessary to convince a man that he is not getting his fair share of the prizes of his profession; but, so far as I have been able to make inquiries, I should say that between ten and fifteen years are enough to frighten the average man out of the business. Some stick to it with even twenty years spent behind the bars; but they are generally those who have been uncommonly successful in making large catches, and have risked "just one more job" in order to win the "great stake" that is to make them rich. The main reason why the criminal is afraid to go beyond the fifteen-year limit is that, after that time, unless he be an uncommonly clever man, he is likely to get what is called "the shivers"--one of the weirdest disorders to which the human body ever yields. Men describe it differently; but, by all accounts, the victim is possessed by such a terror of capture that each member of his body is in a constant tremor. Instances have been known where, owing to a sudden attack of this shivering palsy, he has had to quit a "job" that was almost finished. If these fits once become customary the man is unqualified for any kind of work ever after, and usually ends his life in the lowest class of the outcasts' world--the "tomato-can tramp class." It is interesting to note where criminals draw the dividing-line between success and failure. Generally speaking, they consider a man fairly successful if between imprisonments he gets a "vacation," as they call it, of eight or ten months, and is lucky enough during this period to make sufficient "hauls" to compensate him for the almost inevitable punishment that follows. The understanding, of course, in all this is that he gets the benefit, either in carousals or more practical investments, of the money he has been lucky enough to win. As a rule, however, the plunder usually goes in debauches, and very quickly, too; but the criminal always hopes to recoup himself by a great stake which is to be put away in safety. If he be a man of average criminal wit and experience, particularly the latter, he can frequently secure the vacation of eight months for a number of years. But the more confinement he suffers the more reckless he becomes, and the less able to think carefully; and there are a great many men who soon find that even six months is the most that they can count on. This time, however, is not enough, as a rule, for the hauls necessary to offset the expected term in prison; and the criminal is usually clever enough to get out of the business. He then bids good-by to his more tenacious brethren and joins the tramp class, where he is made welcome by others who have joined it before him. He becomes a tramp because it is the career that comes nearest to the one he hoped to do well in. Besides affording considerable amusement, it also permits the discouraged man to keep track of the comrades whom he used to know in the higher walks of outlawry; and this is an attraction not to be overlooked. It is usual to classify the criminal according to the crimes he commits. One classification, for example, makes murderers the least intelligent; vagabonds, sexual offenders, and highwaymen a little more so; while the fraudulent class, pickpockets and burglars, are accounted the most gifted of all. I think this a fair division and one that will generally hold good; but I have found that criminals who commit crimes against property, or the fraudulent class, are far and away in the majority. Their native intelligence will compare favorably with that of the average run of people; and I have been unable to discover any mental defects until they have been a long time in prison. Nearly all of them can read and write very well indeed; and there are many who have read far more than the ordinary business man. I have met men, very low-born men too, who, while in prison, have read through more volumes of philosophy and history than even the usual college student can boast in his reading; and they have been able to converse very wisely on these subjects. These same men have acquired the rudiments of their studies in reformatory and industrial institutions, and have succeeded in continuing them in the libraries of penitentiaries. I know one criminal who in his prison-cell informed himself about a branch of chemistry simply for purposes of business: he was thought at the time to be more or less crazy. Prison officials are often deceived by criminals in regard to their acquirements in learning. In many prisons, diligence and progress in study earn as much promotion as general good conduct does; and as the average prisoner has every reason to desire the benefits which promotions bring with them, he tries after a fashion to progress. But what is this fashion? Very frequently this: On his arrival at the prison, instead of telling the truth to the officials who quiz him about his abilities, he says that he does not even know the alphabet, and is consequently given very light mental work. He is thus able to advance rapidly, and his teachers pride themselves on his quickness to learn and their ability to teach. Ere long he gets into a better class, and so on until he has enjoyed all the benefits which precocity can earn. There are other men who profess ignorance in order to appear simple and unknowing, and thus create the impression that they are not so guilty as they are taken to be. Many times and in many cases the criminal is a little cleverer than the people who are examining him; and one cannot set a high value on statistics concerning his intelligence. If the student of criminology could and would eavesdrop for a while at some "hang-out" in the open, and hear the criminal's own account of the way he is investigated, he might learn "foxier" methods of dealing with his subject. One other fact belongs properly to this division: The professional criminal is not, in his own class, the revolutionary creature that he seems when preying upon the classes above him. His attitude toward society in general is without doubt disrespectful and anarchistic, and it is usually immaterial to him what happens to society as such, so long as he can make a "stake"; but in his own environment he is one of the most conservative of human beings. There is no class, for instance, where old age and mature opinion receive more respect and carry more weight; and, as a general thing, the young men in it--the radical element--are expected to take a back seat. At a hang-out gathering they must always show deference to the older men, and nothing is so severely judged as "freshness" on their part. I think this is a characteristic of the criminal that might be turned to good account if he should ever be won over to respectable living: in affairs of the State, provided he had a fair share of this world's goods, he would be found invariably on the conservative rather than on the radical side. IV I come now to the question of the criminal's moral responsibility. Can he be held definitely answerable for his evil-doing, or is he morally insane and unable to distinguish between right and wrong? The instinctive criminal must be irresponsible, and his treatment should be such as we give to insane people. As I know him, he cannot help his criminal actions; it is in him to do them; and the only merciful thing is to put him where he at least cannot continue his depredations on society, and where, if cure be possible, he may be in the hands of specialists best fitted to help him. But, as I said at the outset, he is not the sort of criminal that I have found in largest numbers in the open. It is the commercial criminal that predominates there; and, as a rule, he can be held responsible for his evil-doing. It is often said that his lack of remorse for his crimes proves him to be morally incompetent; but this opinion is founded on insufficient knowledge of his life. He has two systems of morality: one for his business, and the other for the hang-out. The first is this: "Society admits that the quarrel with me is over after I have served out my sentence; and I, naturally enough, take the same view of the matter. It is simply one of take and pay. I take something from society and give in exchange so many years of my life. If I come out ahead, so much the better for me; if society comes out ahead, so much the worse for me, and there is no use in whimpering over the transaction." So long as he remains in the business he thinks it only fair to "stick up for it"; and he dislikes and will not associate with men who denounce it in public. This is his attitude toward the world at large. He puts on a bold front, and, as he himself says, "nerves" the thing through. In the bosom of his hang-out, however,--and this is where we ought to study his ethics,--he is a very different man. His code of morals there will compare favorably with that of any class of society; and there is no class in which fair dealing is more seriously preached, and unfair dealing more severely condemned. The average criminal will stand by a fellow-craftsman through thick and thin; and the only human being he will not tolerate is the one who turns traitor. The remorse of this traitor when brought to bay by his former brethren I have never seen exceeded anywhere. It was my fate some years ago, while living with tramps, to be lodged in a jail where one of the prisoners was a "State's evidence" witness. He had been released from prison by promising to tell tales on an old man,--who was supposed to be the main culprit in the crime in question,--and was lodging in the jail until the trial was over. Unfortunately for him, some of the prisoners had known him prior to this episode in his career; and they sent him to Coventry so completely that his life in the jail became unbearable, and he almost died ere he could give his testimony. At night we could hear him groaning in his sleep as if he were undergoing the most fearful torture, and in the daytime he slunk around the corridors like a whipped dog. He lived to give his evidence in the trial, and was released from durance; but a few days later he was found dead by his own hand. When the inmates of the jail heard of his fate they relented a little in their hatred of him; but the final opinion was that suicide was the best solution of the problem. It is thought by criminologists that the good fellowship of the criminal is due to self-preservation and the fear that each man will hang separately if all do not hang together. They maintain that his good feeling is not genuine and spontaneous emotion, and that it is immaterial what happens to a "pal" so long as he himself succeeds. This is not my experience in his company. He has never had the slightest intimation that I would return favors that he did me; and in the majority of instances he has had every reason to know that it was not in my power to show him the friendliness he wanted. Yet he has treated me with an altruism that even a Tolstoi might admire. At the hang-out I have been hospitably entertained on all occasions; and I have never met a criminal there who would not have given me money or seen me through a squabble, had I needed his assistance and he was able to give it. This same comradeship is noticeable in all his relations with men who are in the least connected with his life and business; and it is a notorious fact that he will "divvy" his last meal with a pal. To have to refuse the request of one of his fellows, or to do him an unkindness, is as much regretted by the criminal as by any one else; and I have never known him to tell me a lie or to cheat me or to make fun of me behind my back. There are also some things in his relations with the outside world which, in his heart of hearts, he regrets and repents of as much as he does the misdeeds in his own world. He always feels bad, for instance, when he takes money from the poor. It sometimes happens in his raids that he makes mistakes and gets into the wrong house, or has been deceived about the wealth of his victims; and if he discovers that he has robbed a poor man, or one who cannot conveniently bear the loss, he is ashamed and never enjoys the plunder thus won. He is too near the poor, in both birth and sentiment, not to feel remorse for such an action; and I have known him to send back money after he has discovered that the person from whom he took it needed it more than he. The taking of life is another deed that he regrets far more than he has been given credit for. One thinks of the criminal as the man who has no respect for life, as one who takes it without any twitchings of conscience; but this is not the general rule. The business criminal never takes a life, if he can help it; and when he does, he expects, in court, to receive the death-penalty. Indeed, he believes, as a rule, that murder deserves capital punishment; and I have often heard him express wonder at the lightness of the penalties which murderers receive. At the hang-out a favorite topic of discussion is, which penalty is preferable--life-imprisonment or death. The consensus of opinion has generally run in favor of life-imprisonment, even with no hope of pardon; but I have never heard a whimper against the justice of the death-sentence. It is also true that the majority of criminals regret finding a man in their class who has once belonged to a better one. They are invariably sorry that he has lost caste, no matter what the circumstances have been that have brought him low, and are more likely to help him back to decent society, providing he shows repentance and willingness to do better, than they are to help themselves. Philanthropists might learn a great deal of charity from the criminal. His idea is that it is better to keep a member of a respectable class of society from falling than it is to raise some one in a lower class to a higher one--a philosophy which I think very sound. One more regret which nearly all criminals of the class I am considering have experienced at one time or another in their lives, is that circumstances have led them into a criminal career. Their remorse may be only for a moment, and an exaggerated indifference often follows it; but while it lasts it is genuine and sincere. I have never known a criminal well who has not confessed to me something of this sort; and he has often capped it with a further confidence--his sorrow that it was now too late to try anything else. V Such, in hurried and transitory outline, is the impression the criminal has made upon me in the open day. The mistakes which criminologists have made in regard to his case seem to me to be these: They have failed to take note of the fearful effects of confinement upon his health; they have allowed themselves to be deceived by him in regard to his intelligence; and they have judged of his moral status simply from his "faked" attitude toward the world at large, failing to take into account his ethics among his fellows. I believe, too, that they are on the wrong track in their studies of the criminal's skull. They have examined it in all manner of ways with an ever-varying result; for each investigator comes to a different conclusion. Far better for criminology to study the criminal's _milieu_; and until this is done thoroughly and conscientiously, he cannot be reasonably apprehended and scientifically treated. So far as our present knowledge of his case can help us, he himself teaches what ought to be done with him. I have written of the discouraged criminal--the man who has given up crime because he has discovered that it was not worth the pains it cost him. Punishment, or expiatory discipline, if you please, has brought him to this conclusion. Here is good penology for us. If a man does wrong, wilfully and knowingly, he must be disciplined till he learns that society will not tolerate such conduct. The discouraged criminal is one who has been thus instructed. Now that he is a tramp, the same principle must be applied to him again: make him a discouraged vagabond. Such is the treatment which society must bring to bear on the deliberate law-breaker. If I have studied the criminal to any purpose, it is with the resulting conviction that he is physically, mentally, and morally responsible; and that, though unhappy in his birth and environment, the very energy which has enabled him to get away from his poverty is the "promise and potency" of a better life. And human hope looks forward to a day when, in the regeneration of his class, he shall be born into better things than crime. II THE CHILDREN OF THE ROAD I The real "road" is variously named and variously described. By the "ambulanter" it is called Gipsyland, by the tramp Hoboland; the fallen woman thinks it is the street, the thief, that it means stealing and the penitentiary; even the little boy who reads dime novels and fights hitching-posts for desperados believes momentarily that he too is on the real road. All these are indeed branches of the main line. The road proper, or "the turf," as the people who toil along its stretches sometimes prefer to call it, is low life in general. It winds its way through dark alleys and courts to dives and slums, and wherever criminals, hoboes, outcast women, stray and truant children congregate; but it never leads to the smiling windows and doorways of a happy home, except for plunder and crime. There is not a town in the land that it does not touch, and there are but few hamlets that have not sent out at least one adventurer to explore its twists and turnings. The travelers, as I have said, are of all kinds, conditions, and ages: some old and crippled, some still in their prime, and others just beginning life. To watch in thought the long and motley procession marching along is to see a panorama of all the sins, sorrows, and accidents known to human experience. Year after year they trudge on and on, and always on, seeking a goal which they never seem to find. Occasionally they halt for a while at some half-way house, where they have heard that there is a resting-place of their desire; but it invariably proves disappointing, and the tramp, tramp, tramp begins afresh. Young and old, man and woman, boy and girl, all go on together; and as one dies or wearies of the march, another steps into his heel-tracks, and the ranks close up as solidly as ever. The children of the road have always been to me its most pitiful investiture, and I have more than once had dreams and plans that looked to the rescue of these prematurely outcast beings. It needs skilled philanthropists and penologists, however, for such a work, and I must content myself with contributing experiences and facts which may perhaps aid in the formation of theory, and thus throw light upon the practical social tasks that are before us. There are four distinct ways by which boys and girls get upon the road: some are born there, some are driven there, others are enticed there, and still others go there voluntarily. Of those who are born on the road, perhaps the least known are the children of the ambulanters. The name is a tramp invention, and not popular among the ambulanters themselves. They prefer to be called gipsies, and try at times, especially when compelled by law to give some account of themselves, to trace their origin to Egypt; but the most of them, I fear, are degenerated Americans. How they have become so is a question which permits of much conjecture, and in giving my own explanation I do not want it to be taken as applicable to the entire class. I know only about fifty families, and not more than half of these at all familiarly; but those whom I do know seem to me to be the victims of a pure and simple laziness handed down from generation to generation until it has become a chronic family disease. From what they have told me confidentially about their natural history, I picture their forefathers as harmless village "do-nothings," who lounged in corner groceries, hung about taverns, and followed the fire-engine and the circus. The second generation was probably too numerous for the home parish, and, inheriting the talent for loafing, started out to find roomier lounges. It must have wandered far and long, for upon the third generation, the one that I know, the love of roaming descended to such a degree that all North America is none too large for it. Go where one will, in the most dismal woods, the darkest lanes, or on the widest prairies, there the ambulanter may be found tenting with his large and unkempt family. He comes and goes as his restless spirit dictates, and the horse and wagon carry him from State to State. It is in Illinois that I know his family best. Cavalier John, as he proudly called himself, I remember particularly. He gave me shelter one night in his wagon, as I was toiling along the highway south of Ottawa, and we became such good friends that I traveled with his caravan for three days. And what a caravan it was! A negro wife, five little mulattoes, a deformed white girl, three starved dogs, a sore-eyed cat, a blasphemous parrot, a squeaking squirrel, a bony horse, and a canvas-topped wagon, and all were headed "Texas way." John came from Maine originally, but he had picked up his wife in the West, and it was through their united efforts in trickery and clever trading that they had acquired their outfit. So far as I could learn, neither of them had ever done an honest stroke of business. The children ranged from three years to fourteen, and the deformed girl was nearly twenty. John found her among some other ambulanters in Ohio, and, thinking that he might make money out of her physical monstrosities as "side-shows," cruelly traded off an old fox for her. She ought to have been in an insane asylum, and I hope John has put her there long ago. The other "kidlets," as they were nicknamed, were as deformed morally as was the adopted girl physically. They had to beg in every town and village they came to, and at night their father took the two oldest with him in his raids on the hen-roosts. It was at town and county fairs, however, that they were the most profitable. Three knew how to pick pockets, and the two youngest gave acrobatic exhibitions. None of them had ever been in school, none could read or write, and the only language they spoke was the one of their class. I have never been able to learn it well, but it is a mixture of Rom and tramp dialects with a dash of English slang. On the journey we met another caravan, bound West by way of Chicago. There were two families, and the children numbered sixteen; the oldest ranging from fifteen to twenty, and the youngest had just appeared. We camped together in a wood for a night and a day, and seldom have I sojourned in such company. John had given me a place with him in the wagon, but now the woman with the babe was given the wagon, and John and I slept, or tried to, "in the open." In the other wagon, both sexes, young and old, were crowded into a space not much larger than the ordinary omnibus, and the vermin would have made sleep impossible to any other order of beings. The next day, being Sunday, was given over to play and revel, and the poor horses had a respite from their sorrows. The children invented a queer sort of game, something like "shinny," and used a dried-up cat's head as block. They kicked, pounded, scratched, and cursed one another; but when the play was over all was well again, and the block was tucked away in the wagon for further use. Late at night the journeys were taken up once more, one caravan moving on toward Dakota, and the other toward the Gulf. "Salawakkee!"[1] cried John, as he drove away; and the strangers cried back, "Chalamu!"[2] I wonder what has become of that little baby for whom I sat the night out? It is over ten years ago now, and he has probably long since been compelled to play his part in crime, and scratch and fight as his older brothers and sisters did on that autumn Sunday morning. Certainly there is nowhere in the world a more ferocious set of children than these of the ambulanters. From morning till night it is one continual snap and bite, and the depraved fathers and mothers look on and grin. They have not the faintest ideal of home, and their only outlook in life is some day to have a "rig" of their own and prowl throughout the land, seeking whom they may devour. To tame them is a task requiring almost divine patience. I should not know how to get at them. They laugh at tenderness, never say "Thank you," and obey their parents only when driven with boot and whip. I wish that I could suggest some gentle method by which they could be rescued from the road and made good men and women. It always seems harsh to apply strict law to delinquents so young and practically innocent, but it is the only remedy I can offer. They must be put under stiff rule and order, and trained strictly and long. Although lacking gipsy blood, they have acquired gipsy character, and it will take generations to get it out of them. Just how many children are born on the road is a question which even the ambulanter would find difficult to answer. They are scattered so widely and in such out-of-the-way places that a census is almost impossible. In the families that I have met there have never been less than four children. Gipsy Sam once told me that he believed there were at least two hundred ambulanter families in the United States, but this will strike every one as a low estimate; however, if this is true, and each family has as many boys and girls as those that I have met, then there must be at least a thousand of their kind. Another kind of ragamuffin, also born on the road, and in many ways akin to the ambulanter, although wanting such classification, is the one found so often in those families which every community supports, but relegates to its uttermost boundary-lines. They are known as "the McCarthys," "the Night-Hawks," or "the Holy Frights," as the case may be. I have found no town in the United States of twenty thousand inhabitants without some such little Whitechapel in its vicinity, and, like the famous original, it is often considered dangerous to enter unarmed. Speaking generally, there is a great deal of fiction afloat concerning these tabooed families, a number of them being simply poor or lazy people whom the boys of the vicinity have exaggerated into gangs of desperados. There are, however, some that are really very bad, and I have found them even in new little villages. They are not exactly out-and-out criminals whom the police can get hold of, but moral lepers who by public consent have been sentenced to live without the pale of civilization. Some years ago I had occasion to visit one of these miniature Whitechapels. It was situated in a piece of woods not far from St. Paul, Minnesota, and belonged by right of appropriation to three families who were called "the Stansons." A tramp friend of mine had been taken sick in their camp, and I was in duty bound to go out to see him. I managed to find the settlement all right, but was stopped about a hundred yards from the log shanties by a bushy-bearded man, barefooted and clad only in trousers, who asked my errand. My story evidently satisfied him, for he led the way to the largest of the shanties, where I found my friend. He was lying in the middle of the floor on some straw, the only furniture in the room being a shaky table and a three-legged chair. All about him, some even lying in the straw beside him, were half-clothed children of both sexes, playing "craps" and eating hunks of bread well daubed with molasses. I counted nine in that shanty alone, and about as many again in the other two. They belonged severally to six women who were apportioned after Mormon custom to three men. The tramp told me in his dialect that they really were Mormons and came from Utah. He was passing by their "hang-out," as he called it, when taken ill, and they hospitably lodged him. He said they had not been there long, having come up the river from Des Moines, Iowa, where they had also had a camp; but long enough, I discovered on my return to St. Paul, to acquire a reputation among the city lads for all kinds of "toughness." I suppose they were "tough" when considered from certain viewpoints, but, as the tramp said, it was the silliest kind he had known. They were not thieves, and only luke-warm beggars, but they did seem to love their outlandish existence. The children interested me especially, for they all spoke a queer jargon which they themselves had invented. It was something like the well-known "pig Latin" that all sorts of children like to play with, but much more complicated and difficult to understand. And, except the very youngest, who naturally cried a little, they were the jolliest children I have ever seen in such terrible circumstances. The mothers were the main breadwinners, and while I was there one of them started off to town on a begging trip, with a batch of children as "guy." The men sat around, smoked, and talked about the woods. The tramp told me later, however, that they occasionally raided a hen-roost. Since my visit to the Stansons I have seen three of the children in different places: one, a cripple, was begging at the World's Fair; another was knocking about the Bowery; and the third, a girl, was traveling with an ambulanter in the Mohawk valley. Not all of these families are like the Stansons. A number are simply rough-and-tumble people who haunt the outskirts of provincial towns, and live partly by pilfering and partly from the municipal fund for the poor. Somehow or other the children always dodge the school commissioners, and grow up, I am sorry to say, very much like their usually unmarried parents. On the other hand, there are several well-known organized bands, and they thrive mainly, I think, in the South and West. Near New Orleans there used to be, and for aught I know they are still there, "the Jim Jams" and "the Rincheros"; near Cairo, Illinois, "the River Rats"; near Chicago, "the Dippers"; and not far from New York, in the Ramapo Mountains, I knew of "the Sliders," but they have since moved on to new fields. Each of these families, or collection of families, had its full quota of children. Very often the public becomes so enraged at their petty thefts that an investigation is ordered, and then there is a sudden packing of traps and quick departure to a different neighborhood, where a new name is invented. But the family itself never dies out entirely. There are a few children who are born in Hoboland. Now and then, as one travels along the railway lines, he will come to a hastily improvised camp, where a pale, haggard woman is lying, and beside her a puny infant, scarcely clothed, blinking with eyes of wonder upon the new world about him. I know of no sadder sight than this in all trampdom. Not even the accident of motherhood can make the woman anything but unhuman, and the child, if he lives, grows up in a world which I believe is unequaled for certain forms of wickedness. Fortunately, his little body usually tires of the life ere he comes to realize what it is, and his soul wanders back to regions of innocence, unsoiled and unscarred. I wonder whether there are still men in Hoboland who remember that interesting little fellow called "the Cheyenne Baby"? Surely there are some who have not forgotten his grotesque vocabulary, and his utterly overpowering way of using it. There are different stories concerning his origin, and they vary in truthfulness, I have heard, as one travels southward from the Northern Pacific to Santa Fé. I give the one told in Colorado. It may be only a "ghost-story," and it may be true; all that I know is that it is not impossible. According to its teaching, his mother was once respectable and belonged to the politest society in the Indian Territory. When quite a young girl she carelessly fell in love with a handsome Indian chief, and, much to the disgust of her friends, married him and went away into his camp. It must have been a wild life that she led there, for within a year she was separated from him and living with another Indian. It is the same pitiful story for the next five years; she was knocked about from tent to tent and camp to camp. Her enemies say that she liked that kind of life, but her friends know better, and claim that she was ashamed to go home. However it was, she went over to the cow-boys after a while, and it was then that the baby was born, and she met the man, whoever he was, that introduced her into Hoboland. She appeared one night at a hang-out near Denver, and there was something so peculiarly forlorn about her that the men took pity on her and pressed her to stay. This she did, and for some time traveled with the hoboes throughout the districts lying between Cheyenne and Santa Fé. The boy became a sort of "mascot," and was probably the only child in Hoboland who was ever taught to be really good. The mother had stipulated with the men that they should never teach him anything bad, and the idea struck them as so comical that they fell in with it. Though they swore continually in his presence, they invariably gave him some respectable version of the conversation; and while about the only words he knew were curses, he was made to believe they signified the nicest things in the world. He died just as unknowing as he had lived, but it was a cruel death. He and his mother, together with some companions, were caught one night in a wreck on the Union Pacific, and all that the survivors could find of him to bury was his right arm. But that was bravely honored, and, unless the coyotes have torn down the wooden slab, the grave can still be found on the prairies. I cannot leave this division of my theme without saying something about that large army of unfathered children who, to my mind, are just as much born on the road as the less known types. True, many of them are handed over at birth to some family to support, but the great majority of these families are not one whit better than the ambulanters. They train the orphans put into their care, in sin and crime, quite as carefully as the hobo does his beggar boy. These are the children who make up the main body of the class I have been considering, and it seems to me that they increase from year to year. At present the only legitimate career for them is that of the outcast, and into it they go. Few, indeed, succeed in gaining a foothold in polite society. Their little lives form the border-land of my second class, the children driven to the road. II Concerning the children who are forced upon the road there is a great deal to be said, but much of this talk should be directed against the popular belief that their number is legion. Socialists particularly think that hundreds upon hundreds of boys and girls are compelled by hunger to beg and steal for a living. In England I once heard a labor agitator declare that there are a million of these juvenile "victims of capital" in the United States alone. I do not know where the man got his information, but if my finding counts for anything it is deplorably unsound. I cannot claim to have studied the subject as carefully as is necessary to know it absolutely, but in most of our large cities I have given it close attention, and never have I found anything like the state of affairs which even the general public believes to exist. For every child forced by starvation to resort to the road I have met ten who were born there, and nearly the same number who were enticed there. In saying this, however, I do not want to draw emphasis or sympathy away from that certainly existing class of children who really have been driven into outlawry. But it is an injustice to our sober poor to say that they exist in those large numbers that are so often quoted. Not long ago I made it my special business for a while to look into the condition of some of these compulsory little vagabonds in New York city. I picked out those children whom one sees so often pilfering slyly from the groceryman's sidewalk display. It is an old, old trick. The youngsters divide themselves into "watchers" and "snatchers"; the former keeping an eye on the police as well as the owners of the things coveted, and the latter grabbing when the wink is given. The crime itself is not a heavy one according to the calendar, but it is only a step from this to picking pockets, and only a half-step farther to highway robbery. I chose this particular class because I had often noticed the members of it in my walks through the city, and it had seemed to me the least necessary of all. Then, too, there was something in the pinched faces that made me anxious to know the children personally on grounds of charity. The great majority of youthful travelers on the road are comparatively well fed, to say the least, and, much as one pities their fate, he will seldom have cause to weep over their starved condition. But here was something different, and I fancied that I was to get a glimpse into the life of those people to whom the socialist points when asked for living examples of human woe caused by inhuman capitalists. It was not hard to "get in" with the children. Finding that I was willing to play with them at their games in the alleys and on top of their rickety tenement-houses, they edged up to me rather cordially, and we were soon "pals." There was nothing very new in their life, but I was struck with the great interest they took in their petty thefts. In the midst of the most boisterous play they would gladly stop if some one suggested a clever plan by which even a can of preserves could be "swiped," as they called it, and the next instant they were trying to carry it to a finish. They were not what I could call instinctive criminals--far from it; but a long intimacy with the practices of outlawry, though small in their way, had so deadened their moral sense that sneak-thieving came to them almost as naturally as it does to the kleptomaniac. Even in their games they cheated whenever it was possible, and it seemed to me that the main fun was seeing how cleverly and yet boldly they could do so without being detected. I recall distinctly one afternoon when we were playing "Hi spy." A little fellow called Jamie took me aside, and in the most friendly way advised me not to be so "goody-goody." I had been very unlucky in getting caught, and he said that it was because I gave in too quickly. "When ye hear yer name," he continued, "jus' lie low, 'cause like as not the catcher ain't seen ye, 'n' if he has he can't prove it; so ye 'r' all right anyhow. Ye'll always be 'It' if ye don't do something like that; 'n' there ain't no fun in that, is there?" he added, winking his left eye in a truly professional manner. So much for their native endowment. Their accomplishment in thieving, I have no doubt, kept them often from going hungry, notwithstanding the fact that there was honest industry at home, generally that of the mother, while the father's earnings went almost bodily into the publican's till. I found it much more difficult to make friends with the parents, but succeeded in several cases--that is, with the mother; the father I usually found drunk at the saloon. I shall not try to give an account of the squalor and sorrow that I encountered; this has been done in other places by far more able pens than mine; but I cannot forbear making a note of one little woman whom I saw sewing her very life away, and thinking all the while that she was really supporting her hungry children. I shall never forget the picture she made as she sat there by the alley window, driving the needle with lightning-like rapidity through the cloth--a veritable Madonna of the Needle. Her good cheer was something stupendous. Not once did she murmur, and when her brute of a husband returned, insanely intoxicated, she took care of him as if he were the best man in the world. I was careful that she did not hear from me about the tricks of her wayward children. Some day, however, I fear that one of them will be missing, and when she goes to the police station to make inquiries I should rather not confront her. The main reason why hungry boys and girls are found upon the road is drunken fathers. There are also children who, instead of being forced to steal, are sent out into the streets by their parents to beg. From morning till night they trudge along the busy thoroughfares, dodging with cat-like agility the lumbering wagons that bear down upon them, and accosting every person whom their trained eyes find at all likely to listen to their appeals. Late at night, if perchance they have had the necessary luck during the day, they crawl back to their hovels and hand over the winnings to their heavy-eyed fathers. Or, as often happens, if the day has been unsuccessful and the pennies are not numerous enough to satisfy their cruel masters, they take refuge in some box or barrel, and pray to the beggar's Providence that the next day will go better. They come, as a rule, from our foreign population. I have never found one with American-born parents, and in many instances the children themselves have emigrated from Europe, usually from Italy. There is no doubt that they have to beg to live; but when one looks a little further into their cases, a lazy or dissipated parent is usually the one to blame. Then, too, mendicancy is not considered disgraceful among many of our immigrants, and they send their children into the streets of our cities quite as freely as they do at home. They also are mainly at fault for that awful institution which some of our large towns support, where babies are rented to grown-up beggars to excite the sympathy of the passers-by. I looked into one of these places in San Francisco, while traveling with the hoboes, and it was the very counterpart of an African slave-market. A French-Canadian woman, old enough to be the great-grandmother of all her wares, kept it. She rented the babies from poverty-stricken mothers, and re-rented them at a profit to the begging women of the town. There were two customers in the place when I entered, and the old wretch was trying in true peddler style to bring out the good points of four little bits of humanity cuddled together on a plank bed. "Oh, he's just the kind you want," she said to one of the women; "never cries, and"--leaning over, she whispered in a Shylock voice--"he don't eat hardly anything; _half a bottle o' milk does him the whole day_." The woman was satisfied, and, paying her deposit of two dollars, took the sickly thing in her arms and went out into the town. The other could find nothing that suited her, but promised to return the next day, when a "new batch" was expected. Such are the main avenues by which boys and girls are driven to the road in the United States. Hunger, I candidly admit, is the whip in many instances, but the wielder of it is more often than not the drunken father or mother. It is the hunger that comes of selfish indulgence, and not of ill adjusted labor conditions. III [Illustration: THE MODE OF TRAVEL THAT ATTRACTS BOYS.] Of my third class, those who are enticed to the road,--and their number is legion,--I have been able to discover three different types. The old roadster knows them all. Wherever he goes they cross his path, and beg him to stop awhile and tell them of his travels. They seem to realize that they have been swindled--that the road is, after all, only a tantalizing delusion; but they cannot understand why it appeals to so many of their elders, and it is in the hope that these will in the end put them on the right track for the fun they are seeking that they hail them, and cry, "What cheer?" It is a pitiful call, this, and even the "old stager" winces at times on hearing it; but he cannot bring himself to go back on "the profession," and quickly conquering his emotion, he gives the tiny traveler fresh directions. The boy starts out anew, hoping against experience that he is at last on the right route, and plods on eagerly until stopped again at some troublesome cross-road where he does not know which turn to take. Once more he asks for directions, once more receives them, and so the ceaseless trudge goes on. It is mainly at the cross-roads that I have learned to know these children. Notwithstanding my alien position, they have hailed me too, and inquired for sign-posts. I have seldom been able to help them, even in the way that I most desired, but surely there are others who can. The children of this third class that one meets oftenest are what the older travelers call "worshipers of the tough." They have somehow got the idea that cow-boy swagger and the criminal's lingo are the main features of a manly man, and having an abnormal desire to realize their ideal as quickly as possible, they go forth to acquire them. The hunt soon lures them to the road, and up and down its length they scamper, with faces so eager and intent that one is seldom at a loss to know what they are seeking. There are different explanations of the charm that this wild life has for them. A great many people believe that it is purely and simply the work of the devil on their evil-bent natures; others, that it is the result of bad training; and still others, that it is one form of the mimicry with which every child is endowed in larger or smaller degree. I favor the last opinion. In the bottom of their hearts they are no worse than the average boy and girl, but they have been unfortunate enough to see a picture or hear a story of some famous rascal, and it has lodged in their brains, until the temptation to "go and do likewise" has come upon them with such overwhelming force that they simply cannot resist. Each one has some particular pattern continually before his eyes, and only as he approaches it does he feel that he is becoming tough. Now it is "Blinkey Morgan" that fascinates him, and, despite his terrible end, he strives to be like him; then it is "Wild Bill," whoever he may be; and not unfrequently it is a character that has existed only in dime novels, or not even so substantially as that. I remember well a little fellow, about thirteen years old, who appeared in Indian-scout attire one night at a hang-out near McCook, Nebraska. He dropped in while the tramps were cooking their coffee, and seldom has there been such a laugh on the "Q" railroad as they gave on seeing him. It was impolite, and they begged his pardon later, but even his guardian angel would have smiled. He was dressed from head to foot in leather clothes each piece made by himself, he said, and at his belt hung an enormous revolver, which some one had been careful enough to make useless by taking out an important screw. It was in the hope of finding one at the camp that he visited it, but the men made so much of him that he remained until his story was told. It was not remarkably new, for all that he wanted was a chance to shoot Indians, but his hero was a little unusual,--Kalamazoo Chickamauga, he called him. When asked who he was and where he had lived, all that the youngster could say was that he had dreamed about him! I saw him again a week or so later, not far from Denver, tramping along over the railroad-ties with long strides far beyond his measure, and he hoped to be at "Deadtown," as he miscalled Deadwood, in a few days. He had not yet found a screw for his "gun," but he was sure that "Buffalo Charley" would give him one. Of course this is a unique case, in a way, for one does not meet many lads in such an outfit, but there are scores of others just as sincere and fully as innocent. If one could only get hold of them ere they reach the road, nearly all could be brought to reason. They are the most impressionable children in the world, and there must be a way by which this very quality may be turned to their advantage. What this way shall be can be determined only by those who know well the needs of each child, but there is one suggestion I cannot forbear making. Let everything possible be done to keep these sensitive boys and girls, but particularly the former, from familiarity with crime. Do not thrust desperadoism upon them from the shop-windows through the picture-covered dime novels and the flaring faces of the "Police Gazette." It is just such teaching by suggestion that starts many an honest but romantic boy off to the road, when a little cautious legislation might save him years of foolish wandering, and the State the expense of housing him in its reformatories later on. I write with feeling at this point, for I know from personal experience what tantalizing thoughts a dime novel will awaken in such a boy's mind. One of these thoughts will play more havoc with his youth than can be made good in his manhood, and lucky is he whom it does not lure on and on until the return path is forever lost. [Illustration: YOUTHFUL TRESPASSERS.] Something like these children in temperament, but totally different in most other respects, are those lads that one meets so often on our railroads, drifting about for a month or so from town to town, seldom stopping in any of them over a day, and then suddenly disappearing, no one knows where, to appear again, later, on another railroad, frequently enough a thousand miles distant. Occasionally they are missed from the road for over a year, and there is absolutely no news of their whereabouts; but just as they are almost forgotten they come forward once more, make a few journeys on the freight-trains, and vanish again. There are cases on record where they have kept this up for years, some of them coming and going with such regularity that their appearances may be calculated exactly. Out West, not very long ago, there was a little chap who "showed up" in this way, to use the expression that the brakemen applied to him, every six weeks for three years, but this was all that was known concerning him. When asked who he was and where he belonged, he gave such evasive answers that it was impossible to come to any trustworthy conclusion about him. He would have nothing to do with the people he met, and I have heard that he always rode alone in the box-cars. In this last respect he was a notable exception, for, as a rule, these little nomads take great pleasure in talking with strangers, but they are careful not to say too much about themselves. They ask questions principally, and skip from one subject to another with a butterfly rapidity, but manage to pick up a great deal of knowledge of the road. The tramps' theory of them is that they are possessed of the "railroad fever" and I am inclined to agree with them, but I accept the expression in its broader sense of _Wanderlust_. They want to get out into the world, and at stated periods the desire is so strong and the road so handy that they simply cannot resist the temptation to explore it. A few weeks usually suffice to cool their ardor, and then they run home quite as summarily as they left, but they stay only until the next runaway mood seizes them. I have been successful in getting really well acquainted with several of these interesting wanderers, and in each case this has been the situation. They do not want to be tough, and many of them could not be if they tried; but they have a passion for seeing things on their own hook, and if the mood for a "trip" comes, it seems to them the most natural thing in the world to indulge it. If they had the means they would ride on Pullman cars and imagine themselves princes, but lacking the wherewithal, they take to the road. I knew in New York State a boy of this sort who had as comfortable a home as a child could wish, but he was cursed with this strange _Wanderlust_, and throughout his boyhood there was hardly a month that he did not run away. The queerest things enticed him to go. Sometimes the whistle of a railway-engine was enough to make him wild with unrest, and again the sight of the tame but to him fascinating village street was sufficient to set him planning his route of travel. In every escapade it was his imagination that stampeded him. Many a time, when he was in the most docile of moods, some fanciful thought of the world at large, and what it held in waiting for him, would dance across his brain, and before he could analyze it, or detect the swindle, he was scampering off for the railroad station. Now it was a wish to go West and play trapper and scout, and then it was the dream of American boyhood,--a life cramped but struggling, and emerging in glorious success as candidate for the Presidency. Garfield's biography, I remember, once started him on such a journey, and it took years to get the notion out of his head that simply living and striving as Garfield did was sure to bring the same results. Frequently his wanderings ended several hundred miles from home, but much oftener in some distracting vagabond's hang-out in a neighboring city. Fortunately the fever burned itself out ere he had learned to like the road for its own sake, and he lived to wonder how he had harbored or indulged such insane impulses. A large number of these truants, however, have no good homes and indulgent parents to return to, and after a while the repeated punishment seems to them so unjust and cruel that there comes a trip which never ends. The _Wanderlust_ becomes chronic, and mainly because it was not treated properly in its intermittent stage. There is no use in whipping these children; they are not to blame; all that one can do is to busy their imaginations in wholesome ways, watch them carefully, and, if they must wander, direct their wanderings. In many cases this is possible, for the fever breaks out among children of the best birth as well as among those of the lowest; and in these instances, at least, the parents have much to answer for if the children reach the road. I look upon this fever as quite as much of a disease as the craze to steal which is found now and then in some child's character, and it deserves the same careful treatment. Punishment only aggravates it, and develops in the boy a feeling of hatred for all about him. I firmly believe that some day this trouble in so many boys' lives will be pathologically treated by medical men, and the sooner that day comes the better will it be for many unfortunate children. It is a different story that I have to tell of the children decoyed into Hoboland. True, they also are, in a measure, seized with this same _Wanderlust_, and without this it would be impossible for the tramp to influence them as he does; but, on the other hand, without him to excite and direct this passion, very few of them would ever reach trampdom. He happens along at their very weakest moments, and, perceiving his advantage, cruelly fires their imagination with tales of adventure and travel, and before they discover their danger he has them in his clutches. It is really one of the wonders of the world, the power that this ugly, dissipated, tattered man has over the children he meets. In no other country that I have visited is there anything like it. He stops at a town for a few hours, collects the likely boys about him at his hang-out, picks out the one that he thinks will serve him best, and then begins systematically to fascinate him. If he understands the art well (and it is a carefully studied art), he can almost always get the one he wants. Often enough his choice is some well-bred child, unaccustomed, outside his dreams, to any such life, but the man knows so perfectly how to piece out those dreams and make them seducingly real that in a moment of enthusiasm the youngster gives himself up to the bewitching influence and allows the wretch to lead him away. As a rule, however, his victims are the children of the poor, for they are the easiest to approach. A few hours of careful tactics, provided they are in the mood, and he has one of them riding away with him, not merely in the box-car of a freight-train, but on the through train to Hoboland. [Illustration: TELLING "GHOST STORIES."] Watch him at his preliminary work. He is seated on the top of an ash-barrel in a filthy back alley. A crowd of gamins gaze up at him with admiring eyes. When he tells his ghost-stories, each one thinks that he is being talked to just as much as the rest, and yet somehow, little by little, there is a favorite who is getting more and more than his share of the winks and smiles; soon the most exciting parts of the stories are gradually devoted to him alone, but in such an artful way that he himself fails to notice it at first. It is not long, however, before he feels his importance. He begins to wink, too, but just as slyly as his charmer, and his little mouth curls into a return smile when the others are not looking. "I'm his favorite, I am," he thinks. "He'll take me with him, he will, and show me things." He is what the hobo calls "peetrified," which means, as much as anything else, hypnotized. The stories that he has heard amount to very little in themselves, but the way they are told, the happy-go-lucky manner, the subtle partiality, the winning voice, and the sensitiveness of the boy's nature to things of wonder, all combine to turn his head. Then his own parents cannot control him as can this slouching wizard. In Hoboland the boy's life may be likened to that of a voluntary slave. He is forced to do exactly what his "jocker" commands, and disobedience, wilful or innocent, brings down upon him a most cruel wrath. Besides being kicked, slapped, and generally maltreated, he is also loaned, traded, and even sold, if his master sees money in the bargain. There are, of course, exceptions, for I have myself known some jockers to be almost as kind as fathers to their boys, but they are such rarities that one can never count upon them. When a lad enters trampdom he must be prepared for all kinds of brutal treatment, and the sooner he forgets home gentleness the better will it be for him. In payment for all this suffering and rough handling, he is told throughout his apprenticeship that some day he too will be able to "snare" a boy, and make him beg and slave for him as he has slaved for others. This is the one reward that tramps hold out to their "prushuns," and the little fellows cherish it so long that, when their emancipation finally comes, nearly all start off to do the very same thing that was done to them when they were children. West of the Mississippi River there is a regular gang of these "ex-kids," as they are termed in the vernacular, and all are supposed to be looking for revenge. Until they get it there is still something of the prushun about them which makes them unwelcome in the old stager class. So they prowl about the community from place to place, looking eagerly for some weak lad whom they can decoy and show to the fraternity as evidence of their full membership. They never seem to realize what an awful thing they are doing. If you remonstrate with them, they reply: "W'y, you don't think we've been slavin' all this while fer nothing do you? It's our turn to play jocker now," and, with a fiendish look in their eyes, they turn and stalk away. Ten years and more of tramp life have killed their better natures, and all that they can think of is vengeance, unscrupulous and sure. In this way the number of boys in Hoboland is always kept up to a certain standard. Every year a number are graduated from the prushun class, and go out into the world immediately to find younger children to take the places they have left. In time these do the same thing, and so on, until to-day there is no line of outlawry so sure of recruits as vagabondage. Each beggar is a propagandist, and his brethren expect of him at least one convert. IV There is not much that I can say of the children who go to the road voluntarily. I am sure that there are such, for I have traveled with them, but it has been impossible for me to get into their life intimately enough to speak of it intelligently. Even the men constantly in their company can say but little about them. When asked for an explanation, they shake their heads and call them "little devils"; but why they are so, what it is that they are seeking, and where they come from, are questions to which they are unable to give any satisfactory replies. I know about twenty, all told, and, as far as I have been successful in observing them, they seem to me to belong to that class of children which the criminologist Lombroso finds morally delinquent at birth. Certainly it would be hard to account for their abnormal criminal sense on any other ground. They take to the road as to their normal element, and are on it but a short time ere they know almost as much as the oldest travelers. Their minds seem bent toward crime and vagabondage, and their intuitive powers almost uncanny. To hear them talk makes one think, if he shuts his eyes, that he is in the presence of trained criminal artists, and I have sometimes imagined that they were not children, but dwarfed men born out of due time. They undertake successfully some of the most dangerous robberies in the world, and come off scot-free, so that old and experienced thieves simply stare and wonder. The temptation is to think that they are accidents, but they recur so frequently as to demand a theory of origin and existence. They are, I do not doubt, the product of criminal breeding, and are just as much admired in the criminal world as are the feats of some _Wunderkind_, for instance, among musicians. Watch the scene in an outcasts' den when one of these queer little creatures comes in, and you may see the very same thing that goes on in the "artist's box" at some concert where a prodigy is performing. The people swarm around him, pet him, make him laugh and talk, till the proprietor finds him a valuable drawing card for the establishment. The child himself seldom realizes his importance, and, when off duty, plays at games in keeping with his age. The instant business is suggested, however, his countenance assumes a most serious air, and it is then that one wonders whether he is not, after all, some skilful old soul traveling back through life in a fresh young body. Indeed, there is so much in his case that appeals to my sense of wonder that I simply cannot study him for what he is; but there are those who can do this, and I promise them a most interesting field of observation. I know enough about it to believe that if it can be thoroughly explored there will be a great change in the punishment of criminals. These boys have in them in largest measure what the entire body of moral delinquents possesses in some degree; and when these baffling characteristics have been definitely analyzed and placed, penology will start on a fresh course. It may be worth while to say what I can about their physical appearance. The most of them have seemed to me to have fairly well-formed bodies, but something out of the ordinary in their eyes, and in a few cases in the entire face. Sometimes the left eye has drooped very noticeably, and one boy that I recall had something akin to a description I once heard of the "evil eye." It was a gipsy who explained it to me; and if he was right, that a "little curtain," capable of falling over the eyeball at will, is the main curiosity, then this boy had the evil eye. He could throw a film over his eye in the most distressing fashion, and delighted in the power to do so; indeed, it was his main way of teasing people. He knew that it was not a pleasant sight, and if he had a petty grudge to gratify, he chose this very effective torment. Concerning the faces, it is difficult to explain just what was the matter. They were not exactly deformed, but there was a peculiar depravity about them that one could but notice instantly. At times I fancied that it was in the arrangement of features rather than acquired expression of the life; but there were cases where the effects of evil environment and cruel abuse were plain to see. I have sometimes taken the pains to look up the parents of a child who thus interested me, but I could not discover any similar depravity in their countenances. There was depravity there, to be sure, but of a different kind. I believe that the parents of these children, and especially the mothers, could tell a great deal concerning them, and the theorists in criminology will never be thoroughly equipped for their work till all this evidence has been heard. * * * * * The foregoing is but a partial summary of several years' experience with the children of the road. It is far from being what I should like to write about them, but perhaps enough has been said to forestate the problem as it appears to one who has traveled with these children and learned to know them "in the open." Surely there is kindness and ingenuity enough in the world to devise a plan or a system by which they may be snatched from the road and restored to their better selves. Surely, too, these little epitomes of _Wanderlust_, and even of crime, are not to baffle philanthropy and science forever. I feel sure that, whatever may be the answer to the thousand questions which center in this problem, one thing can be done, and done at once. Wherever law is able to deal with these children, let it be done on the basis of an intelligent classification. In punishing them for their misdemeanors and crimes, let them not be tumbled indiscriminately into massive reform institutions, officered by political appointment and managed with an eye to the immediate interests of the taxpayer instead of the welfare of the inmates. The one practical resource that lies nearest to our hand as philanthropic sociologists is the reform of the reformatories. We may not hope to reach in many generations the last sources of juvenile crime, but we are deserving of a far worse punishment than these moral delinquents if, being well born and well bred, we do not set ourselves resolutely to the bettering of penal conditions once imposed. First of all, we must have a humane and scientific separation of the inmates in all these reformatories. Sex, age, height, and weight are not the only things to be taken into consideration when dealing with erring children. Birth, temperament, habits, education, and experience are questions of far more vital importance, and it is no unreasonable demand upon the State that careful attention to each of these points be required in the scheme of such institutions. Put an ambulanter's child with a simple runaway boy, and there will be two ambulanters; associate a youngster with the passion to be tough with a companion innately criminal, and the latter will be the leader. The law of the survival of the fittest is just as operative in low life as in any other. In such spheres the worst natures are the fittest, and the partially good must yield to them unless zealously defended by outside help. It is suicidal to put them together, and wherever this is done, especially among children, there need be no surprise if criminals, and not citizens, are developed. Second, the management of reformatories should be in scientific hands; and just here I am constrained to plead for the training of young men and women for the rare usefulness that awaits them in such institutions. It is to these places that the children I have been describing will have to go, and, with all respect to the officials now in charge, I believe that there are apt and gifted young men and women in this country who could bring to them invaluable assistance, if they could only be persuaded to train for it and to offer it. I do not know why it is, but for some reason these institutions do not yet appeal to any large number of students who intend taking service in the ranks of reform. The university settlement attracts many, and this is one of the finest manifestations of the universal brotherhood which is to be. Meanwhile, there is a moral hospital service to be carried on in penal and reformatory houses. Shall it be done by raw, untrained hands, by selfish quacks, or by careful, scientific students! Must the moral nurse and physician be chosen for his ability to control votes, or to treat his patients with skilled attention and consideration? If the treatment of physical disease offers attractions that call thousands upon thousands of young men and women into the nursing and medical professions, here is a field even more fascinating to the student, and so full of opportunity and interesting employment that it will be a matter of wonder if the supply does not speedily exceed the demand. There is one thing more. Reformatories, planned, officered, and conducted according to the principles of scientific philanthropy, should be stationed, not at the end of the road, but at the junction of all by-paths that leads into it. FOOTNOTES: [1] So long. [2] Live well. III CLUB LIFE AMONG OUTCASTS I One of the first noticeable features of low life is its gregariousness. To be alone, except in a few cases where a certain morbidity and peculiar fondness for isolation prevail, is almost the worst punishment that can befall the outcast. There is a variety of causes for this, but I think the main one is the desire to feel that although he is forbidden the privileges and rights of a polite society, he can nevertheless identify himself with just as definite and exclusive a community as the one he has been turned out of. His specialty in crime and rowdyism determines the particular form and direction of his social life. If he is a tramp he wants to know his partners, and the same instinct prevails in all other fields of outlawry. In time, and as he comes to see that his world is a large one,--so large, in fact, that he can never understand it all,--he chooses as he can those particular "pals" with whom he can get on the easiest. Out of this choice there develops what I call the outcast's club. He himself calls it a gang, and his club-house a "hang-out." It is of such clubs that I want to write in this chapter. I do not pretend to know all of them. Far from it! And some of those that I know are too vile for description; but the various kinds that I can describe, I have chosen those which are the most representative. II Low life as I know it in America is composed of three distinct classes, and they are called, in outcasts' slang, the "Kids," the "Natives," and the "Old Bucks." The Kids, as their name suggests, are boys and girls, the Natives are the middle-aged outcasts, and the Old Bucks are the superannuated. Each of these classes has clubs corresponding in character and purpose to the age of the members. The clubs of the Kids are composed mainly of mischievous children and instinctively criminal children. As a rule, they are organized by boys alone, but I have known girls also to take part in their proceedings. The lads are usually between ten and fifteen years old. Sometimes they live at home with their parents, if they have any, and sometimes in lodging-houses. They get their living, such as it is, by rag-picking, selling newspapers, blacking boots, and doing odd errands fitted to their strength. None of them, not even the criminally inclined, are able to steal enough to support themselves. To illustrate, I shall take two clubs which I knew, one in Chicago, and one in Cincinnati. The Chicago club belonged exclusively to a set of lads on the North Side who called themselves the "Wildcats." The most of them were homeless little fellows who lived in that district as newsboys and boot-blacks. They numbered about twenty, and although they had no officially elected leader, a little fellow called Fraxy was nevertheless a recognized "president," and was supposed to know more about the city and certain tricks than the rest, and I think it was he who started the club. He was an attractive lad, capable of exercising considerable influence over his companions, and I can easily understand how he persuaded them to form the club. For personality counts for as much in low life as it does in "high life," and little Fraxy had a remarkably magnetic one. He drew boys to him wherever he went, and before going to Chicago had organized a similar club in Toledo, Ohio. The club-house of the Wildcats was a little cave which they had dug in a cabbage-field on the outskirts of the city. Here they gathered nearly every night in the week to smoke cigarettes, read dime novels or hear them read, tell tales, crack jokes, and plan their mischievous raids on the neighboring districts. The cave contained a brickwork stove, some benches, some old pots and cans, one or two obscene pictures, and an old shoe-box, in which were stored from time to time various things to eat. The youngest boy was ten and the oldest fourteen, and as I remember them they were not especially bad boys. I have often sat with them and listened to their stories and jokes, and although they could swear, and a few could drink like drunkards, the most of them had hearts still kind. But they were intensely mischievous. The more nuisances they could commit the happier they were; and the odd part of it all was that their misdemeanors never brought them the slightest profit, and were remarkable for nothing but their wantonness. I remember particularly one night when they stoned an old church simply because Fraxy had suggested it as sport. They left their cave about nine o'clock and went to a stone-pile near at hand, where they filled their pockets full of rocks. Then they started off pell-mell for the church, the windows of which they "peppered 'n' salted" till they looked like "'skeeter-nettin's," as Fraxy said. The moment they had finished they scampered into town and brought up at various lodging-houses. They never thieved or begged while I knew them, and not one of them had what could be called a criminal habit. They were simply full of boyishness, and having no homes, no parents, no friends, no refined instincts, it is no wonder that they worked off their animal spirits in pranks of this sort. Sometimes they used to take their girl friends out to the cave, too, and enlist them for a while in the same mischievous work that I have described; but they always treated them kindly, and spoke of them as their "dear little kidsy-widsies." The girls helped to make the cave more homelike, and the lads appreciated every decoration and knickknack given them. Every city has clubs like this. They are a natural consequence of slum life, and to better them it is first necessary to better the slums themselves. Sunday-school lessons will not accomplish this; reading-rooms will not accomplish it; gymnasiums will not accomplish it; and nothing that I know of will accomplish it except personal contact with some man or boy who is willing to live among them and show them, as he alone can, a better life. There are many young men in the world who have remarkable ability, I believe, for just such work, if they would only go into it. By this I do not necessarily mean joining some organization or "settlement"; I mean that the would-be helper shall live his own individual life among these people, learn to understand their whims and passions, and try to be of use to them as a personal friend. If he is especially adapted to dealing with boys, he has only to take up his residence in any slum in any city, and he will find plenty to do. But whatever he does, he must not let them think that he is among them as a reformer. III The club in Cincinnati was of a different kind. It is true that it consisted of young boys, and that some of them were boot-blacks and newsboys, but in other respects they were different. Their club name was the "Sneakers," and their hang-out was an old deserted house-boat, which lay stranded on the river-bank about a mile or so out of town. Some of them had homes, but the majority lived in lodging-houses or on the boat. When I first knew them they had been organized about three months, and a few of them had already been caught and sent to the reform school. Their business was stealing, pure and simple. Old metals were the things they looked for chiefly, because they were the handiest to get at. They had had no training in picking pockets or "sly work" of any particular sort, but they did know some untenanted houses, and these they entered and cut away the lead pipes to sell to dealers in such wares. Sometimes they also broke into engine-houses, and, if possible, unscrewed the brass-work on the engines, and I have even known them to take the wheels off wagons to get the tires. Their boat was their storehouse until the excitement over the theft had subsided, and then they persuaded some tramp or town "tough" to dispose of their goods. They never made very much profit, but enough to keep up interest in further crimes. I became acquainted with them through an old vagabond in Cincinnati who helped them now and then. He took me out to see them one night, and I had a good opportunity to learn what their club was made of. Most of the lads were over fourteen years of age, and two had already been twice in reform schools in different States. These two were the leaders, and mainly, I think, on account of certain tough airs which they "put on." They talked criminal slang, and had an all-wise tone that was greatly liked by the other boys. They were all saturated with criminal ideas, and their faces gave evidence of crooked characteristics. How they came to club together is probably best explained by the older vagabond. I asked him how he accounted for such an organization, and he replied: "Got it in 'em, I guess. It's the only reason I know. Some kids always is that way. The divil's born in 'em." I think that is true, and I still consider it the best explanation of the Sneakers. They were criminals by instinct, and such boys, just as mischievous boys, drift together and combine plots and schemes. I know of other boys of the same type who, instead of stealing, burn barns and outhouses. Young as they are, their moral obliquity is so definitely developed that they do such things passionately. They like to see the blaze, and yet when asked wherein the fun lies, they cannot tell. How to reform such boys is a question which, I think, has never been settled satisfactorily. For one, I do not believe that they can ever be helped by any clubs organized for their improvement. They have no interest in such things, and none can be awakened strong enough to kill their interest in criminal practices. They are mentally maimed, and practically belong in an insane asylum. In saying this I do not wish to be understood as paying tribute to the "fad" of some philanthropic circles, which regard the criminal as either diseased or delinquent--as born lacking in mental and moral aptitudes, or perverted through no fault of his own. Without any attempt to tone down the reproach of criminality, or to account for the facts by heredity or environment, it still remains true that in thousands of cases there is as direct evidence of insanity in a boy's crimes and misdemeanors as in a man's, and I firmly believe that a more scientific century will institute medical treatment of juvenile crime, and found reform schools where the cure of insanity will be as much an object as moral instruction and character-building. IV Club life among the Natives,--the older outcasts,--although in many respects quite different from that of the Kids, is in some ways strikingly similar. There are, for instance, young rowdies and roughs whose main pleasures are mischief and petty misdemeanors, just as among the young boys in Chicago. But in place of breaking church windows and turning over horse-blocks, they join what are called "scrappin' gangs," and spend most of their time in fighting hostile clubs of the same order. They are not clever enough as yet to become successful criminals; they are too brutal and impolite to do profitable begging, and as rowdyism is about the only thing they can take part in, their associations become pugilistic clubs. How these originated is an open question even among the rowdies themselves. My own explanation of their origin is this: Every community, if it is at all complex and varied, has different sets of outcasts and ne'er-do-wells, just as it has varieties of respectable people. In time these different sets appropriate, often quite accidentally, territories of their own. One set, for example, will live mainly on the east side of a city, and another set on the west side. After some residence in their distinct quarters, local prejudices and habits are formed, and, what is more to the point, a local patriotism grows. The east-sider thinks his hang-outs and dives are the best, and the west-sider thinks the same of his. Out of this conceit there comes invariably a class hatred, which grows, and finally develops into the "scrappin' gangs," the purpose of which is to defend the pride of each separate district. In New York I know of over half a dozen of these pugnacious organizations, and they fight for as many different territories. I have seen in one club young and old of both sexes joined together to defend their "kentry," as they called the street or series of streets in which they lived. The majority of the real fighters, however, are powerful fellows between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two. Sometimes they live at home, and a few pretend to do some work, but most of them are loafers, who spend their time in drinking, gambling, and petty thieving. They usually sleep in old tenements and cheap lodging-houses, and in the daytime they are either in the streets or at some dive supported mainly by their patronage. I knew such a place in the city of New York, on the East Side, and not far from the Brooklyn Bridge. It was kept by an Irishman, and he had no customers other than those belonging to a "scrappin' gang" called the "Rappers." There were two rooms--one fronting on the street, and used as a bar-room; the other, in the rear, was the gambling-and "practisin'"-room. Here they came every night, played cards, drank stale beer, and exercised themselves in fisticuffing and "scrappin'." I visited them one night, and saw some of their movements, as they called the various triangles and circles which they formed as strategic guards when attacking the hostile gangs of the West Side. One of them they nicknamed the "V gag," and prided themselves on its efficiency. It was simply a triangle which they formed to charge the better into the ranks of their enemies, and it reminded me strongly of football tactics. That same night they were to scuffle with a West-Side gang called the "Ducks," as one of their members had been insulted by one of the Duck gang. Battle was to be joined in a certain alley not far from Eighth Avenue, and they started out, their pockets full of stones, in companies of two and three, to meet later in the alley. I accompanied the leader, a fellow called the "slugger," and reached the alley about eleven o'clock. He wanted me to give my assistance, but I told him that I could play war correspondent much better, and so was excused from action. And it was action indeed. They had hardly reached the battle-ground before the Ducks were upon them, and rocks flew and fists punched in a most terrific manner. Noses bled, coats were torn, hats were lost, and black eyes became the fashion. This went on for about fifteen minutes, and the battle was over. The Rappers were defeated fairly and squarely, but, as the slugger said, when we were all at the hang-out again, "we mought 'a' licked 'em ef we'd 'a' had 'em over here." Such is the "scrappin' gang." Every large city supports one or two, and London has a score of them. They make some of its districts uninhabitable for respectable persons, and woe to the man who tries to interfere with them. As their members die or grow old, younger fellows come forward, often enough out of the very boys' clubs I have described, and take the place of the departed heroes. This is what rowdies call life. Like the famous _Studenten-Corps_ in Germany, they need some sort of rough excitement, and the bloodier it is the happier they are. They have so much heart in them that no ordinary exercise relieves it, and they institute these foolish fighting clubs. It is possible that some sweet-natured philanthropist might go among them and accomplish wonders. In London the Salvation Army has done some splendid work with these same rowdies, and I know personally several who are to-day respectable working-men. But as for organizing polite clubs among them on any large scale, I think it impossible. V Among the other Natives, club life, as a rule, centers around the saloon, where they gather to exchange news bulletins and meet their cronies. There are varieties of these saloons, corresponding to the varieties of outcasts, and in Chicago there are over twenty, each one of which is supported by a different clique and species; but these are not exactly clubs. The saloons are meeting-places more than anything else, or a sort of post-office. In the main they are very much like any other saloon, except that their _clientèle_ comes principally from the outcasts' world; and about all the life they afford is a boisterous joviality, which seldom takes definite shape. It is proper to say right here that criminal outcasts, as a rule, never form clubs so marked in individuality as the "scrappin' gang." The thief, the burglar, the pickpocket, and other "professionals," although gregarious and friendly enough, do not organize simply for the sake of sociability. When they combine it is more for the sake of business than anything else, and whatever social life they seem to need is furnished them at the saloon or some private hang-out. This is also true to a great extent of all the Natives who have passed their thirtieth year. At that age they are usually so sobered, and have seen so much of the world, that they cannot get much pleasure out of the clubs that the younger men enjoy. The "scrappin' gang" no more appeals to them as a pastime or a source of happiness than it does to an old rounder. They feel happier in simply sitting on a bench in a saloon and talking over old times or planning new adventures. Whatever excitement remains for them in life is found mainly in carousals. Of these I have seen a goodly number, but I must confess that after all they are only too similar to carousals in high life, the only noticeable difference being their greater frequency. They occur just about four times as often as anywhere else, because the outcast, and especially the criminal, is intensely emotional; he can never live very long without some kind of excitement, and the older he grows the more alluring become his drinking-bouts. When his opportunities in this direction are shut off by jail-walls, he improvises something else, which often takes organized form; but it must be remembered that such organizations are purely makeshifts, and that the members would rather sit in some low concert-hall or saloon and have an old-time drinking-bout, if circumstances were only favorable. VI The most interesting of these impromptu clubs is the one called in the vernacular the "Kangaroo Court." It is found almost entirely in county jails, in which petty offenders and persons awaiting trial are confined. During the day the prisoners are allowed the freedom of a large hall, and at night they lodge in cells, the locks of which are sometimes fastened and sometimes not. The hall contains tables, benches, daily papers, and, in some instances, stoves and kitchen utensils. The prisoners walk about, jump, and play various games. After a while these games become tiresome, and the "Kangaroo Court" is formed. It consists of all the prisoners, and the officers are elected by them. The positions they fill are the "judgeship," the "searchership," the "spankership," and general "juryship." To illustrate the duties of these various officials, I shall give a personal experience in a county jail in New York State. It was my first encounter with the "Kangaroo Court." I had been arrested for sleeping in an empty box-car. The watchman found me and lodged me in the station-house, where I spent a most gloomy night wondering what my punishment would be. Early in the morning I was brought before the "squire." He asked me what my name might be, and I replied that "it might be Billy Rice." "What are you doing around here, Billy?" he queried further. "Looking for work, your Honor." "Thirty days," he thundered at me, and I was led away to the jail proper. I had three companions at the time, and after we had passed the sheriff and his clerk, who had noted down all the facts, imaginary and otherwise, that we had cared to give him about our family histories, we were ushered pell-mell into the large hall. Surrounded in a twinkling by the other prisoners, we were asked to explain our general principles and misdemeanors. This over, and a few salutations exchanged, a tall and lanky rogue cried out in a loud voice: "The Kangru will now k'lect." There were about twenty present, and they soon planted themselves about us in a most solemn manner. Some rested on their haunches, others lounged against the walls, and still others sat quietly on the flagstones. As soon as entire quiet had been reached, the tall fellow, who, by the way, was the judge, instructed a half-grown companion, whom he nicknamed the "searcher," to bring his charges against the newcomers. He approached us solemnly and in a most conventional manner, and said: "Priz'ners, you is charged with havin' boodle in yer pockets. Wha' does you plead--guilty or not guilty?" I was the first in line, and pleaded not guilty. "Are you willin' to be searched?" asked the judge. "I am, your Honor," I replied. Then the searcher inspected all my pockets, the lining of my coat, the leather band inside my hat, my shoes and socks, and finding nothing in the shape of money, declared that I was guiltless. "You are discharged," said the judge, and the jury-men ratified the decision with a grunt. A young fellow, a vagrant by profession, was the next case. He pleaded not guilty, and allowed himself to be searched. But unfortunately he had forgotten a solitary cent which was in his vest pocket. It was quickly confiscated, and he was remanded for trial on the charge of contempt of the "Kangru." The next victim pleaded guilty to the possession of thirty-six cents, and was relieved of half. The last man, the guiltiest of all, although he pleaded innocence, was found out, and his three dollars were taken away from him instanter; he, too, was charged with contempt of court. His case came up soon after the preliminaries were over, and he was sentenced by the judge to walk the length of the corridor one hundred and three times each day of his confinement, besides washing all the dishes used at dinner for a week. After all the trials were over, the confiscated money was handed to the genuine turnkey, with instructions that it be invested in tobacco. Later in the day the tobacco was brought into the jail and equally divided among all the prisoners. The next day I, with the other late arrivals, was initiated as a member of the "Kangaroo Court." It was a very simple proceeding. I had to promise that I would always do my share of the necessary cleaning and washing, and also be honest and fair in judging the cases which might come up for trial. Since then I have had opportunities of studying other "Kangaroo Courts," which have all been very much like the one I have described. They are both socialistic and autocratic, and at times they are very funny. But wherever they are they command the respect of jail-birds, and if a prisoner insults the court he is punished very severely. Moreover, it avails him nothing to complain to the authorities. He has too many against him, and the best thing he can do is to become one of them as soon as possible. Other clubs of this same impromptu character are simple makeshifts, which last sometimes a week, and sometimes but a day, if a more substantial amusement can be found to take their place. One, of which I was a member, existed for six hours only. It was organized to pass the time until a train came along to carry the men into a neighboring city. They selected a king and some princes, and called the club the "Royal Plush." Every half-hour a new king was chosen, in order to give as many members as possible the privileges which these offices carried with them. They were not especially valuable, but nevertheless novel enough to be entertaining. The king, for instance, had the right to order any one to fill his pipe or bring him a drink of water, while the princes were permitted to call the commoners all sorts of names as long as their official dignity lasted. So far as I know, they have never met since that afternoon camp on the prairies of Nebraska; and if they are comfortably seated in some favorite saloon, I can safely say that not one of them would care to exchange places with any half-hour king. A little experience I had some time ago in New York will show how well posted the Natives are regarding these favorite saloons. I was calling on an old friend at a saloon in Third Avenue at the time. After I had told him of my plan to visit certain Western cities, and had mentioned some of them, he said: "Well, you wan' ter drop in at the Half in State Street when you strike Chi [Chicago]; 'n' doan' forget Red's place in Denver, 'n' Dutch Mary's in Omaha. They'll treat you square. Jes left Mary's place 'bout a week ago, 'n' never had a better time. Happy all the while, 'n' one day nearly tasted meself, felt so good. There's nothin' like knowin' such places, you know. 'F you get into a strange town, takes you a ter'ble while to find yer fun 'less yer posted. But you'll be all right at Red's 'n' Mary's, dead sure." So the stranger is helped along in low life, and the Natives take just as much pride in passing him on to other friends and other clubs as does the high-life club-man. It gives them a feeling of importance, which is one of their main gratifications. VII [Illustration: A GATHERING OF "OLD BUCKS."] Of the Old Bucks,--the superannuated outcasts,--and their club life, there is very little to say. Walk into any low dive in any city where they congregate, and you can see the whole affair. They sit there on the benches in tattered clothes, and rest their chins on crooked sticks or in their hands, and glare at one another with bloodshot eyes. Between drinks they discuss old times, old pals, old winnings, and then wonder what the new times amount to. And now and then, when in the mood, they throw a little crude thought on politics into the air. I have heard them discuss home rule, free trade, the Eastern question, and at the same time crack a joke on a hungry mosquito. A bit of wit, nasty or otherwise, will double them up in an instant, and then they cough and scramble to get their equilibrium again. [Illustration: MIDNIGHT.] Late at night, when they can sit no longer on the whittled benches, and the bartender orders them home, they crawl away to musty lodging-houses and lie down in miserable bunks. The next morning they are on hand again at the same saloon, with the same old jokes and the same old laughs. They keep track of their younger pals if they can, and do their best to hold together their close relationships, and as one of their number tumbles down and dies, they remember his good points, and call for another beer. The Natives help them along now and then, and even the boys give them a dime on special occasions. But as they never need very much, and as low life is often the only one they know, they find it not very difficult to pick their way on to the end. If you pity them they are likely to laugh at you, and I have even known them to ask a city missionary if he would not take a drink with them. To think of enticing such men into decent clubs is absurd; the only respectable place they ever enter is a reading-room--and then not to read. No, indeed! Watch them in Cooper Union. Half the time their newspapers are upside down and they are dozing. One eye is always on the alert, and the minute they think you are watching they grip the newspaper afresh, fairly pawing the print with their greasy fingers in their eagerness to carry out the rôle they have assumed. One day, in such a place, I scraped acquaintance with one of them, and, as if to show that it was the literary attraction which brought him there, he suddenly asked me in a most confidential tone what I thought of Tennyson. Of course I thought a good deal of him, and said so, but I had hardly finished before the old fellow querulously remarked: "Don' cher think the best thing he ever did was that air 'Charge of the Seventeen Hundred'?" VIII I have already said that, so far as the older outcasts are concerned, there is but little chance of helping them by respectable clubs; they are too fixed in their ways, and the best method of handling them is to destroy their own clubs and punish the members. The "scrappin' gang," for example, should be treated with severe law, whenever and wherever it shows its bloody hand, and if such a course were adopted and followed it would accomplish more good than any other conceivable method. The same treatment must be applied to the associations of other Natives, for the more widely they are separated and thus prevented from concourse the better will it be. It is their gregariousness which makes it so difficult to treat with them successfully, and until they can be dealt with separately, man for man, and in a prison-cell if necessary, not much can be accomplished. The evils in low life are contagious, and to be treated scientifically they must be quarantined and prevented from spreading. Break up its gangs. Begin at their beginnings. For let two outcasts have even but a little influence over a weak human being, and there are three outcasts; give them a few more similar chances, and there will be a gang. I would not have any word of mine lessen the growing interest in man's fellow-man, or discourage by so much as a pen-stroke the brotherly influences on the "fallen brother" which are embodied in neighborhood guilds and college settlements of the present, but I am deeply convinced that there is a work these organizations cannot, must not, do. That work must be done by law and government. Vice must be punished, and the vicious sequestrated. Public spirit and citizenship duly appreciated and exercised must precede philanthropy in the slums. Government, municipal and State, must be a John the Baptist, preparing the way and making the paths straight, ere the embodied love of man and love of God can walk safely and effectively therein. IV THE AMERICAN TRAMP CONSIDERED GEOGRAPHICALLY Some years ago I was sitting, one spring afternoon, on a railroad-tie on "The Dope"[3] when New York Barcas appeared on the scene. There was nothing very peculiar about Barcas, except his map of the United States. Not that he ever set up to be a topographer, or aspired to any rivalry with Johnston, Kiepert, or Zell; but, like the ancients, Barcas had his known and his unknown world, and, like them again, he described the land he knew just as if it was all the world there was. I came to know Barcas's map in this wise: We were both talking about certain tramp districts in the community, and I noticed that his idea of north, south, east, and west was somewhat different from mine. So, in order that our conversation might not be troubled with petty arguments on geographical boundaries, I asked him to map out the country for me according to his "best light"; and this is how he did it. He took out his pencil and drew a line from the Canadian frontier through Chicago to St. Louis, and another line from the Atlantic through Washington to the same point, and called all the territory north of the last-named boundary the East. He drew still another line from St Louis to the Pacific coast, and called all the States north of this and west of Chicago the West. His North comprised all Canada, but he considered the province of Quebec the most prominent tramp territory in this district. His South was all that remained below his equatorial line, but the eastern part of it he nicknamed Niggerland, while the western part, bordering on the Pacific Ocean, he called the Coast. This was the extent of Barcas's geography when I knew him. He seemed to realize that there are other countries in the world besides this one which he and his _confrères_ consider laid out for their own particular benefit; nevertheless, in daily life and conversation the other divisions of the world are so conscientiously ignored for all practical purposes that North America may safely be said to comprise the American tramp's general idea of the earth. He knows well enough that he has brothers in other lands, but he considers them so unlucky in being left to ply their trade outside of his own peculiar paradise that he feels it necessary to ignore them. For in spite of the constitutional Bohemianism of his nature, he is still far from being a cosmopolitan. If he has suffering brethren in other communities, his heart does not throb for their sorrow. No, indeed! He simply says: "Why don't they get out o' those blasted holes and come over here? This is the only country for the tramp." There is a great deal of truth in this, and my purpose in this chapter is to give an account of tramp traits, successes, and failures in this land of freedom. I shall take up the various districts as Barcas indicated them, not, however, because his points of the compass are at all typical or representative. No; Barcas's map is not for general circulation, and for this very good reason it would probably be difficult to find ten vagrants whose views would coincide with his or with those of any other ten idlers. This is a peculiarity of the vagabond, and it must be excused, for it has its _raison d'être_. THE NORTH This district (Canada) hardly belongs to the real American vagabondage. It is true that the hobo crosses the frontier now and then, and makes a short journey into Quebec, but it can scarcely be called a trip on business. It is undertaken more for the sake of travel, and a desire to see "them fellers up in Canady," and the scenery too, if the traveler is a lover of nature, as many hoboes are. As a rule, Canada is left pretty much in the hands of the local vagabonds, who are called "Frenchies." I have never thoroughly explored their territory, and, unfortunately, cannot write as definitely and comprehensively about their character as I would wish to do. However, the following facts are true as far as they go. The main clan of Canadian tramps is composed of French-Canadians and Indians. I have never met a genuine tramp of this class who was born in France proper, yet I can well believe that there are such. The language of these beggars is a jargon partly French and partly English, with a small hobo vocabulary added thereto. Only a very few American tramps can speak this queer lingo. I have met a gipsy now and then who at least understood it, and I account for this on the ground that a large number of the words resemble those in the gipsy dialect. _Pâno_, for instance, means bread in both languages. To be a successful beggar in Canada, one must be able to speak French, for Quebec is one of the main tramp districts, and the local population uses this language principally. The "Galway" (Catholic priest) is perhaps the best friend of the Frenchies; at any rate, this has been my experience. He gives alms ten times where a peasant gives once, and when a vagabond can find a cloister or a convent, he is almost sure to be well taken care of. The peasants, it must be remembered, are about all the Frenchies have after the Galway. To show how wise they are in doling out their charity, it is only necessary to say that the usual Frenchy is content when he gets his three meals a day without working. And as for myself, I can say that I have gone hungry for over thirty hours at a stretch in Canada, and this, too, although I was careful to visit every house that I passed. But the Canadian tramp is evidently satisfied with small rewards, else he could not live long in his chosen district. As I know him, he is a slow-going fellow, fond of peace and quiet, and seldom desirous of those wild "slopping-ups" in American trampdom for which so much money is needed. If he can only have some outcast woman, or "sister," as he calls her, to accompany him on his travels, and to make homelike and comfortable the little tent which he often carries; and if he can have his daily _pâno_ and his usual supply of _dohun_ (tobacco), he is a comparatively happy fellow. He reminds me more of the European tramp in general character than any other human parasite I can think of; and I shall be exceedingly sorry if he ever gets a foothold in the United States, because he is a vagrant down to the core, and this can hardly be said as yet of most American tramps. It is almost impossible to touch his emotions, and he usually looks upon the world as his enemy. He can hardly be called a victim of liquor, but rather the victim of an ill-matched parentage. He is often on the mercy of the world before he knows how he came into it, and it is not wonderful that he should drift into a class where no questions are asked, and where even the murderer is received with some distinction. To reform such a man requires that the social polity itself be permeated by a higher order of ethics than governs it at present--a truth quite as applicable in certain districts of the United States as elsewhere. THE EAST The tramps of this part of the country represent the main intelligence as well as "respectability" of the brotherhood. They also comprise the most successful criminal element. But of course the vocation of the great majority is simply begging. To tell exactly where they thrive, and to particularize carefully, would take a book by itself, and the most I can do is to give a very general idea of the district. New England, as a whole, is at present poor begging territory for those vagabonds who are not clever and not able to dress fairly well. Boston is the beggar's metropolis as well as the New England millionaire's, and, until a few years ago, Bughouse Mary's Tramp Home was as much a Boston institution as Tremont Temple or the Common. One could find there tramps of all grades of intelligence, cleanliness, and manners. And even in the streets I have often been able to pick out the "begging brothers" by the score from the general crowd. But it must not be forgotten that a city offers privileges to beggars which the rural districts deny, and probably, if the police authorities were more diligent than they are now, even Boston could be rid of the great majority of its worst loafers. I must admit, however, that it will be difficult ever to banish the entire tramp tribe, for some of them are exceedingly clever, and when decently clad can play the rôle of almost any member of society. For instance, I tramped through Connecticut and Rhode Island once with a "fawny man."[4] Both of us were respectably dressed, and, according to my companion's suggestion, we posed as strolling students, and always offered to pay for our meals and lodging; but the offer was never accepted. Why? Because the farmers "considered themselves repaid by the interesting accounts of our travels, and talks about politics," etc. My friend was very sharp and keen, and carried on a successful trade in spurious jewelry with some of the foolish country boys, when he was not discussing the probabilities of the presidential election. I am sure that I could travel through New England to-day, if respectably clad, and be gratuitously entertained wherever I should go; and simply because the credulity of the charitable is so favorable to "traveling gentlemen." One of the main reasons why Massachusetts is such poor territory for the usual class of vagrants is its jail system. In many of these jails the order and discipline are superb, and work is required of the prisoners--and work is the last thing a real tramp ever means to undertake. I cannot help looking forward to very gratifying results to trampdom from the influence of the present Massachusetts jail system. For anything which brings the roving beggar into contact with sobriety and labor is bound to have a beneficial effect. New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan are all fairly good tramp States, and all swarm with allowed beggars. The most remarkable feature of vagrancy in New York State is that wonderful town known among vagrants as the "City" and also as "York." This is the most notorious tramp-nest in the United States. I have walked along the Bowery of an afternoon, and counted scores of men who never soil their hands with labor, and beg on an average a dollar a day. Even the policemen of this city are often friends of beggars, and I have seldom met a hobo who was very angry with a New York "bull." As a rule, the police officer, when finding tramps drunk on door-steps or begging, says in a coarse and brutal voice, "Get out!" and possibly gives them a rap with his club, but it is altogether too seldom that the beggar is arrested. One rather odd phase of tramp life in New York city is the shifting boundary-line that marks the charity of the town. Several years ago Eighty-ninth Street was about as far uptown as one could secure fair rewards for diligent begging. Now one can see tramps, on a winter night especially, scattered all along One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, not because this street is the only "good one," but because it is so "good" that better profits are realized than in those farther down. And for clothes, I have always found Harlem more profitable than other parts of the city. New York city is also one of the best places in the country for "snaring a kid"--persuading some youngster to accompany an older beggar on the road. There are so many ragamuffins lying around loose and unprotected in the more disreputable quarters of the town that it is only necessary to tell them a few "ghost-stories" (fancy tales of tramp life) to make them follow the story-teller as unresistingly as the boys of Hamelin marched after the Pied Piper. Almost every third boy that one meets in American vagabondage hails from "York." This accounts for the fact that several tramps of New York birth have the same name, for even the beggar's ingenuity is not capable of always hitting upon a unique cognomen. I have met fully a dozen roadsters having the name of "Yorkey," "New York Bob," "New York Whitey," "New York Slim," etc., which makes it not only the fashion but a necessity, when hearing a city tramp's name, to ask which Whitey, which Yorkey, or which Bob it is, and a personal description is usually necessary before the fellow can be distinguished. Over in New Jersey, I think, there are more tramps to the square mile than in any other State, excepting Pennsylvania. The neighborhood around Newark is simply infested with beggars, who meet there on their way into and out of New York city. They often have a hang-out on the outskirts of the town, where they camp quite unmolested, unless they get drunk and draw their razors, which is more than common with Eastern tramps. It is surprising, too, how well they are fed, when one remembers that they have "battered" in this community for years. It is in Pennsylvania, however, that the tramp is best fed, while I still maintain that he gets more money in New York city. I do not know of a town or village in the Keystone State where a decently clad roadster cannot get all that he cares to eat without doing a stroke of work in payment. The jails are also a great boon to the fraternity. In the majority of them there is no work to do, while some furnish tobacco and the daily papers. Consequently, in winter, one can see tramps sitting comfortably on benches drawn close to the fire, and reading their morning paper, and smoking their after-breakfast pipe, as complacently and calmly as the merchant in his counting-room. Here they find refuge from the storms of winter, and make themselves entirely at home. [Illustration: A "TIMBER LESSON."] Ohio and Indiana, although fairly friendly to tramps, are noted for certain "horstile" features. The main one of these is the well-known "timber-lesson"--clubbing at the hands of the inhabitants of certain towns. I experienced this muscular instruction at one unfortunate time in my life, and I must say that it is one of the best remedies for vagabondage that exist. But it is very crude and often cruel. In company with two other tramps, I was made to run a gantlet extending from one end of the town of Oxford, Indiana, to the other. The boys and men who were "timbering" us threw rocks and clubbed us most diligently. I came out of the scrape with a rather sore back, and should probably have suffered more had I not been able to run with rather more than the usual speed. One of my fellow-sufferers, I heard, was in a hospital for some time. My other companion had his eye gouged terribly, and I fancy that he will never visit that town again. Apart from the "timber" custom, which, I understand, is now practised in other communities also these two States are good begging districts. There are plenty of tramps within their boundaries, and when "the eagles are gathered together," the carcass to be preyed upon is not far away. The other States of the East have so much in common with those already described that little need be said of them. Chicago, however, deserves a paragraph. This city, although troubled with hundreds of tramps, and noted for its generosity, is nevertheless a terror to evil-doers in this, that its policemen handle beggars according to law whenever they can catch them. Instead of the tiresomely reiterated "Get out!" and the brutal club-swinging in New York, one gets accustomed in Chicago to "thirty days in the Bridewell." I know this to be true, for I have been in Chicago as a tramp for days at a time, and have investigated every phase of tramp life in the city. Of course there are thousands of cases where the beggar is not caught, but I maintain that when he is found he is given a lesson almost as valuable as the one over in Indiana. The cities in the East which the vagabond considers his own are New York ("York"), Philadelphia ("Phillie "), Buffalo, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago (here he is very often deceived), Detroit (another place where he is deceived), and Cincinnati. Just a word about the Eastern tramp himself. His language is a slang as nearly English as possible. Some words, however, would not be understood anywhere outside of the clan. His personal traits are great conceit, cleverness, and a viciousness which, although corresponding in the main to the same in other parts of the country, is nevertheless a little more refined, if I may use that word, than elsewhere. The number of his class it is difficult to determine definitely, but I believe that he and his companions are many thousands strong. His earnings, so far as my experience justifies me in judging, range from fifty cents to over two dollars a day, besides food, provided he begs steadily. I know from personal observation that an intelligent beggar can average the above amount in cities, and sometimes in smaller towns. THE WEST Vagabondage in this part of the country is composed principally of "blanket-stiffs," "ex-prushuns," "gay-cats," and a small number of recognized tramps who, however, belong to none of the foregoing classes, and are known simply as "Westerners." The blanket-stiffs are men (or sometimes women) who walk, or "drill," as they say, from Salt Lake City to San Francisco about twice a year, begging their way from ranch to ranch, and always carrying their blankets with them. The ex-prushuns are young fellows who have served their apprenticeship as kids in the East, and are in the West "looking for revenge," _i. e._, seeking some kid whom they can press into their service and compel to beg for them. The gay-cats are men who will work for "very good money," and are usually in the West in the autumn to take advantage of the high wages offered to laborers during the harvest season. The Westerners have no unique position, and resemble the Easterner, except that they as well as the majority of other Western rovers drink alcohol, diluted in a little water, in preference to other liquors. On this account, and also because Western tramps very often look down upon Eastern roadsters as "tenderfeet," there is not that brotherly feeling between the East and the West in vagrancy that one might expect. The Easterners think the Western brethren too rough and wild, while the latter think the former too tame. However, there is a continual intercourse kept up by the passing of Westerners to the East, and vice versa, and when neither party is intoxicated the quarrel seldom assumes very dangerous proportions. Of the States in the Western district, I think that Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and a part of California are the best for tramps. Iowa is usually liked very much by roadsters, but its temperance principles used to be thoroughly hated, as were also those of Kansas. It is needless to say, however, that in the river towns a tramp could usually have all the liquor he could stand. I was in Burlington once when there was a Grand Army celebration, which the tramps were attending (!) in full force; and the amount of "booze" that flowed was something astounding for a "dry" State. Nearly every vagrant that I met had a bottle, and when I asked where it came from, I was directed to an open saloon! A great fad in Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas is to beg from the hotels. I have received hospitality in these places when I could get absolutely nothing at the private houses. This is especially true when the cook is a negro. He will almost always give a beggar a "set-down" (square meal), and sometimes he will include a bundle of food "for the journey." Still another fad when I knew the country was to call at the penitentiaries for clothes. I saw a man go into the Fort Madison "pen" (Iowa) one day with clothes not only tattered and torn, but infested with vermin. When he returned, I hardly knew him, he was so well dressed. Stillwater Penitentiary in Minnesota also had a notoriety for benevolence of this sort, but I cannot affirm this by personal observation. Wisconsin, although not exactly unfriendly to tramps, is nevertheless a "poor" State, because it has no very large city and is peopled largely by New-Englanders. Milwaukee is perhaps the best place for a beggar. The Germans will give him all the beer he wants, and feed him well besides, for they are the most unwisely generous people in this country. Where they have a settlement, a tramp can thrive almost beyond description. For instance, in Milwaukee, as in other Wisconsin towns, he can batter for breakfast successfully from six o'clock until eleven o'clock in the morning, and is everywhere sure of a cup of coffee. I once attempted in Milwaukee to see just how many dinners I could get inside the ordinary dinner-time, and after an hour and a half I returned to the hang-out with three bundles of food, besides three dinners which had already been disposed of. I could have continued my dining indefinitely, had my capacity continued. San Francisco and Denver are the main dependence of tramps in the West. If one meets a westward-bound beggar beyond the Mississippi, he may usually infer that the man is on his way to Denver; and if he is found on the other side of that city, and still westward bound, his destination is almost sure to be "'Frisco," or at least Salt Lake City, which is also a popular hang-out. Denver has a rather difficult task to perform, for the city is really a junction from which tramps start on their travels in various directions, and consequently the people have more than their share of beggars to feed. I have met in the city, at one time, as many as one hundred and fifty bona-fide tramps, and every one had been in the town for over a week. The people, however, do not seem to feel the burden of this riffraff addition to the population; at any rate, they befriend it most kindly. They seem especially willing to give money. I once knew a kid who averaged in Denver nearly three dollars a day for almost a week, by standing in front of shops and "battering" the ladies as they passed in and out. He was a handsome child, and this, of course, must be taken into consideration, for his success was phenomenal. "'Frisco" is even better than Denver, furnishing districts in which tramps can thrive and remain for a longer time unmolested. There are more low lodging-houses, saloons, and dives; and there is also here a large native class whose character is not much higher than that of the tramp himself, so that he is lost among them--often to his own advantage. This difficulty of identification is a help to roadsters, for there is nothing that pleases and helps them so much as to be considered "town bums," the latter being allowed privileges which are denied to strangers. In the estimation of the tramp the West does not rank with the East. The railroads are not so "good"; there are fewer cities; even the towns are too far apart; in some districts the people are too poor; and taking the country as a whole, the inhabitants are by no means so generous. I doubt whether the average gains of Western beggars amount to more than twenty-five cents a day. In "'Frisco" and Denver, as well as in a few other large towns, begging is of course much more remunerative, but in the rural parts the average wage of a beggar is even below twenty cents a day, besides food; at least, this is the result of my observation. In general the Western tramp is rough, often kind-hearted, wild and reckless; he always has his razor with him, and will "cut" whenever there is provocation. The blanket-stiff is perhaps the least violent of all; his long walking-tours seem to quiet his passion somewhat, and overcome his naturally wild tendencies. The ex-prushun is exactly the opposite, and I know of no roadster so cruel and mean to the weak as this young fellow, who is, after all, only a graduated kid. This is not so surprising, however, when one recollects that for years he has been subject to the whims and passions of various "jockers," or protectors, and naturally enough, when released from his bondage, he is only too likely to wreak his pent-up feelings on the nearest victim. After a year or two of Western life he either subsides and returns to the East, or becomes more intimately connected with the true criminal class, and attempts to do "crooked work." Several of the most notorious and successful thieves have been ex-prushuns. Just how many tramps there are in the West it is even more difficult to decide than in the East, because they are scattered over such wide territory. Experience makes me believe, however, that there are fully half as many voluntary idlers in this part of the country as in the East. And the great majority of them, I fear, are even more irreclaimable than their comrades in other communities. They laugh at law, sneer at morality, and give free rein to appetite. Because of this many of them never reach middle age. THE SOUTH Tramp life here has its own peculiarities. There are white loafers known as "hoboes," which is the general technical term among white tramps everywhere, and there are the "shinies," who are negroes. The odd part of it all is that these two classes hardly know each other; not that they hate each other or have any color-line, but simply that they apparently cannot associate together with profit. The hobo seems to do better when traveling only with hoboes, and the shiny lives much more comfortably in his own clan. My explanation of this fact is this: both parties have learned by experience that alms are much more generously given to a white man when alone than when in company with a negro. This, of course, does not apply anywhere but in the South, for a colored tramp is just as well treated in the East and West as a white one. My knowledge of the shinies is very meager, for I was compelled to travel as a hobo when studying vagrancy in the South, and I have never met a member of that class who knew very much about his negro _confrères_. From all that I can gather, however, I think that they resemble very closely the gay-cats, for they do work now and then, although their being on the road is usually quite voluntary, unless their natural laziness can be considered as a force impelling them into trampdom. Their dialect is as different from the usual tramp lingo as black from white, and I have never been able to master its orthography. As the South in the main is only skimmed over by most white tramps, and as a few cities represent the true strongholds of vagrancy, it is unnecessary to give any detailed account of this region. Besides, it is only in winter that many tramps, excepting, of course, the shinies, are found here, and consequently there is not very much to describe, for they go into this part of the country principally to "rest up" and shun the cold weather prevalent in other districts. The chief destinations of wandering beggars in the South are New Orleans, St. Augustine, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, and Atlanta. Several towns in Texas are also popular "resting-places," but usually the tramps in Texas have begged their money in other States, and are there principally for "a great slopping-up," for which dissipation Texas furnishes much more suitable accommodations than any other State in the Union. The usual time for Eastern and Western tramps to start South is in October. During this month large squads of vagabonds will be found traveling toward "Orleans." I once was on an Illinois Central freight-train when seventy-three tramps were fellow-passengers, and nearly every one was bound for either Florida or Louisiana. These two States may almost be called the South so far as hoboes are concerned. New Orleans is especially a tramp-nest, and ranks second to New York in hospitality, according to my experience. In the older part of the town one can find beggars of almost every nationality, and its low dives are often supported by the visiting knights of the road. Begging, as they do, very fair sums of money, and being only too willing to spend it quickly, they afford these innkeepers of the baser sort very fair rewards for keeping up their miserable "hotels." A well-trained beggar can very often average a dollar a day in New Orleans if he begs diligently. But he must be careful not to be arrested, for the jails in the South are man-killing holes in many and many an instance. Even in the East and West several of the county prisons are bad enough, but they cannot compare in filth to some of the miserable cells of the South. Jacksonville and St. Augustine are good hang-outs for tramps, and in the winter such visitors are very numerous. They make a very decent living off the transient tourists at these winter resorts. But success is so short and precarious there that many hoboes prefer New Orleans, on account of its steadier character, and seldom visit the other towns. Besides, to batter around the hotels in St. Augustine one should be respectably clad, and polite in manner and bearing, which, in most cases, involves far too much trouble. The most generous people in the South are the poor, but not the negro poor, who, according to my experience, are by no means large-hearted. Take them in the East or West, and they are friendly enough, but on their native heath they are, as a rule, stingy. I have received much more hospitality from the "poor whites" than from any other people. The negroes, when I asked them for something to eat, would say: "Oh, go and ask the Missis. I can't give you anything"; and when I would call upon the "missis," she was not to be seen. But the poor white would invite me into his shanty, and treat me as well as was in his power. It was not much, I must admit; but the spirit was willing though the pantry was nearly empty. In West Virginia, for instance, I have been entertained by some of the "hill people" in their log cabins in the most hospitable manner. The obvious reason of this is a scarcity of tramps; when they are few, generosity is great, and the few get the benefit. If the students of this particular phase of sociology will only look minutely and personally into the conditions under which trampdom thrives and increases in our country, Barcas's map may yet become famous. Charles Godfrey Leland once wrote an article entitled "Wanted: Sign-Posts for Ginx's Baby." It would seem that his prayer has been answered, and that this unwanted, unprovided-for member of society has found his way through forest and mountains, over rivers and prairies, till now he knows the country far better than the philanthropist who would gladly get on his track. If this topographical survey shall serve to bring him nearer what should be, and what I am convinced aims to be, a source of betterment for him, Barcas will not have lived in vain. FOOTNOTES: [3] The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad--called "The Dope" because it is so greasy. [4] A peddler of bogus jewelry. V THE CITY TRAMP Vagabonds specialize nowadays quite as much as other people. The fight for existence makes them do it. Although a few tramps are such all-round men that they can succeed almost anywhere, there are a great many others who find that they must devote their time to one distinct line of begging in order to succeed. So to-day we have all sorts of hoboes. There are house-beggars, office-beggars, street-beggars, old-clothes beggars, and of late years still another specialization has become popular in vagabondage. It is called "land-squatting," which means that the beggar in question has chosen a particular district for his operations. Of course, a large number of tramps still go over all the country, but it is becoming quite customary for vagabonds to pick out certain States and counties for their homes. The country, as a whole, is so large that no beggar can ever really know it on business principles, and some clever beggars not long ago decided that it is better to know thoroughly a small district than to have only a general knowledge of the entire continent. Consequently our large cities have become overrun with tramps who make them their homes the year round, till America can almost compete with England in the number of her "city vags." There is no large town in the United States that does not support its share, and it is seldom that these tramps are natives of the towns in which they beg. In New York, for example, there are scores of beggars who were born in Chicago, and vice versa. They have simply picked out the city which pleases them most and gone there. In time they become so numerous that it is found necessary to specialize still further, and even to divide the town itself into districts, and to assign them to distinct kinds of begging. It is of these specialists in vagrancy that I intend to write in this chapter. [Illustration: TOMATO-CAN TRAMPS.] The lowest type is what is called in tramp parlance the "tomato-can vag." In New York city, which has its full quota of these miserable creatures, they live in boxes, barrels, cellars, and nooks and corners of all sorts, where they can curl up and have a "doss" (sleep). They get their food, if it can be called that, by picking over the refuse in the slop-barrels and tomato-cans of dirty alleys. They beg very little, asking usually for the stale beer they find now and then in the kegs near saloons. Money is something that they seldom touch, and yet a good many of them have been first-class criminals and hoboes in their day. I used to know a tomato-can tramp who lived for several months in a hogshead near the East-Side docks of New York. I visited him one night when on a stroll in that part of the city, and had a talk with him about his life. After he had reeled off a fine lot of yarns, he said: "Why, I remember jes lots o' things. I's been a crook, I's been a moocher, an' now I's shatin' on me uppers [I am broke]. Why, what I's seen would keep them blokes up there in Cooper Union readin' all winter, I guess." This was probably true. He had been everywhere, had seen and done nearly everything which the usual outcast can see and do, and he wound up his life simply "shatin' on his uppers." No one will have any dealings with such a tramp except the men and women in his own class. He is hated by all the beggars above him, and they "do" him every chance they get. A fair example of this class hatred came under my notice in London, England. I was walking along Holborn one evening when I was suddenly accosted by an old man who wanted me to give him a drink. "I wouldn't ask ye," he said, "'cept that I'm nearly dyin' o' cold. Can' cher help a feller out!" There was something so pitiful about him that I decided to take him into a public house. I picked out the lowest one in the neighborhood. The place was filled with beggars and criminals, but they were all of a higher class than my friend. However, I called for his gin, and told him to sit down. It was soon evident that the old man was an unwelcome guest, for even the bartender looked at him crossly. He noticed this, and began to grumble, and in a few minutes was in a quarrel with some of the men. The bartender told him to be quiet, but he claimed that he had as good a right to talk as any one else. He was finally put out, although I made all the remonstrance I dared. I started to leave too, but was prevented. This made me angry, and I turned on the men, and said: "What right have you fellows to treat me this way? I came in with the old man respectably enough." "Oh, come up 'n' 'ave a drink," said one of the men. "Don't get 'uffy. Come up 'n' 'ave a bitter." Then another said: "Say, was that old feller any relation o' yourn? 'Cause ef 'e was, we'll fetch 'im back; but ef 'e wa'n't, 'e kin stay where 'e is. 'E don't belong in 'ere." "Why is that?" I asked. "Why, don' cher know that 'e ain't o' our class? 'E's a' ole can-moocher. 'E ain't got no right 'ere." "Well, do you mean to say that you own this place, and no one can come in who is not of your choosing?" "The case is jes this, 'n' you know it: it's our biz to do anybody out o' our class." "Would you 'do' me if you had a chance?" "Bet cher life!" I got out safely soon after this, and had gained knowledge for the future. But, hated as he is by the more successful vagabonds, the tomato-can tramp is just as kind-hearted and jovial as any of them. And for fair treatment I will risk him every time. As a rule, he is an old man, sometimes over seventy years of age. He dresses most outlandishly, seldom having any two garments of the same color, and what he has are tattered and torn. His beard and hair are allowed to grow as long as they can, and usually give him the appearance of a hermit. Indeed, that is just what he is. He has exiled himself from all that is good and refined, and is like a leper even to his brethren. It is just such a life as his, however, to which all tramps that drink, as most outcasts do, are tending. It matters not how clever a criminal or beggar a man may be, if he is a victim of liquor, and lives long enough, he is sure to end as a tomato-can tramp. There is a suction in low life which draws men continually lower. It is an inferno of various little worlds, and each has its own pitch of degradation. The next higher type of the town tramp is the "two-cent dosser"--the man who lives in stale-beer shops. In New York he is usually to be found about Mulberry Bend, the last resort of metropolitan outcasts before dropping down into the "barrel-and-box gentry." This district supports the queer kind of lodging-house called by the men who use it the "two-cent doss." It is really a makeshift for a restaurant, and is occasionally kept by an Italian. The lodgers come in late in the evening, pay two cents for some stale beer or coffee, and then scramble for "spots" on the benches or floor. All nationalities are represented. I have found in one of these places Chinamen, Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, Poles, negroes, Irishmen, Englishmen, and "'Mer'cans," and they were all as happy as could be. They beg just enough to keep them in "booze," their food being found mainly at "free lunches." Like the tomato-can tramp, they have little intercourse with beggars above them. By this I mean, of course, that they know they will not be treated sociably outside of their class, and decide very wisely to remain where they belong. They rarely leave a town which they have picked out as a home; and some of them never even get out of their narrow district. In Chicago, for instance, there is a "joint" near Madison Street in which some men simply live day and night, excepting the few hours they spend in looking for the pennies they need. In the daytime they sit on the benches and talk shop, and at night they lie on the floor. There is a watchman who cares for them at night; he sleeps near the door in order to let in any belated beggar. But he first lights his candle, and commands the beggar to show how much money he has. If it is five cents, the price of a mug of beer, he is allowed to enter. In New Orleans I once saw a place somewhat similar, the only difference being that at night ropes were stretched across the bar-room for the men to lean on while sleeping. Some persons fail to note much difference in the lives of the two-cent dossers and the tomato-can tramps, but the two-cent dossers make a sharp class distinction out of their greater privilege. Personally, I should rather live in a barrel or box than in a joint, if only for the sake of cleanliness. The joint is simply a nest of vermin, and cannot be kept clean; whereas, if a man is careful and works hard, he can keep a barrel fairly habitable for himself, and with no other occupants. Still, I am sorry to say that few men who do live in barrels achieve or desire this success. The most unique feature of the two-cent dosser class is its apparent happiness. The men are always funny, and crack a joke as easily as they tell a lie. I remember most vividly a night in one of their joints in St. Louis. All night long some one was laughing and joking, and my questions always met a witty reply. I noticed, for instance, that several of the men were blind in one eye, and I asked the meaning of this. "Ha! ha! Don' cher know! Why, it's 'cause we're lookin' fer work so hard." Another man wanted to know whether I could tell him where he could get a "kid." I asked him what use he had for one. "Oh, prushuns [kids] is val'able; when you've got 'em, you're treasurer of a company." Nevertheless, these men very seldom have boys, because their life is too unexciting, and the lads will not stay with them. A prushun, as a rule, wants something livelier than loafing around saloons and corners, and consequently is rarely found in these two classes. The other types of city vagabondage can be classified as the "lodgin'-house-gang," with the exception of the room-beggar. I must therefore consider them in relation to their different styles of begging rather than living; for when once a beggar can live in any sort of lodging-house, he has a right to belong to the general crowd, no matter what he pays for his bed. The seven-center house, for instance, is considerably lower than the ten-center, but its being a lodging-house is sufficient to separate its inmates entirely from the two classes who live in boxes and beer-shops. And to make the classifying feature more intelligible, I shall give first a short account of the lodging-house in all its grades, omitting only those that are carried on by charity. Beginning with the lowest, there is the seven-center, in which hammocks of a bad order are used as beds. The covering is very often the lodger's coat, unless he happens to have a blanket of his own. In winter there is a large stove in the middle of the sleeping-room, and this keeps things fairly warm. The usual lodger in this house is the town tramp, although the wandering hobo goes there too. I have also seen a few genuine seekers of work there, but never two nights running. One night is usually enough, and they sleep out in preference to mixing in such a crowd as the place shelters. The ten-center is the next grade above, and is probably the most popular of all in the United States. It is built after various models, the commonest being the "double-decker," where the bunks are made of gas-pipe, one right above the other. In this case the bedding is a straw tick and a blanket; that is all, as a rule. Yet I have known sheets to be used. Another model is something like the forecastle of a ship. Around the walls several tiers of bunks are built, sometimes twelve feet high, and in the middle is the "sitting-room," with stove and chairs. Occasionally the only bedding is straw, there being no blanket of any kind. The class of men found in places of this type is hard to describe; the town tramp is there, and so is almost every other kind of vagabond. It is a sort of cesspool into which are drained all sorts of outcasts, and the only way to distinguish them is to know them personally. Young and old, the intelligent and the ignorant, the criminal and the newsboy, all are found in the ten-center. The fifteen-center comes next, and is very much like the ten-center, except that its customers are a little more orderly, and that it furnishes lockers into which the lodgers can put their clothes. This latter point is really the _raison d'être_ of the fifteen-cent lodging-house, according to my experience. At any rate, I have failed to see any other good reason for charging five cents more for the beds, which are usually no better than those in the ten-center. In the other grades, at twenty and twenty-five cents a night a man can have a little room to himself; by "room" I mean a sort of cell without a roof, in which is a cot, a chair (sometimes), and a locker. I slept in one of these houses in the Bowery one night. The office and sitting-room were comparatively cozy, and the lodgers were respectable so far as dress and general manner were concerned. Up-stairs in the sleeping-apartments things were not so pleasant. There was a bad odor about everything, and the beds were decidedly unclean, as are most beds in most lodging-houses. I left word at the office that I wished to be called at seven o'clock in the morning, and my order was distinctly obeyed, for about half-past six I was wakened by a man poking me in the ribs with a long stick leveled at me from over the partition-wall. After the man had poked me with the stick, he said, "Eh, bloke, time to get up." Some tramps consider this style, and it probably is in their cases, for they are accustomed to all sorts of places, and the twenty-five-center is their nearest approach to hotel life. Although I have probably overlooked some exceptional institutions in this general description of lodging-houses, I have nevertheless given a fair account of the usual homes of the "lodgin'-house gang." And, as I said before, the town tramp is mixed up in this gang so promiscuously that to pick him out of the general crowd necessitates a personal encounter. All that I can do now is to portray him in his various guises as a beggar. I shall take four types to do this--the street-beggar, the house-beggar, the office-beggar, and the old-clothes beggar. These are all well-known characters in city vagabondage. [Illustration: A CITY TRAMP AT WORK.] The street-beggar is, I believe, the cleverest all-round vagabond in the world. He knows more about human nature than any other tramp of my acquaintance, and can read its weak points with surprising ease. I used to know a New York tramp of this kind who begged almost entirely of women as they walked along the streets, and he claimed that he could tell, the minute he had seen their eyes, whether it would pay to "tackle 'em." How he did this I do not pretend to know, and he himself could not tell, but it was true that he seldom judged a woman wrongly. Fifth Avenue was his beat, and he knew fully fifty women in that district who were sure to give him something. His main tricks, if I can call them that, were those of the voice rather than of the hand. He knew when to whine and when to "talk straight," and, best of all, he knew when to make people laugh. This is the highest accomplishment of the street-beggar, for when a person will laugh with him he is pretty sure to get something; and if he can succeed in picking out a certain number of "clients," as he calls them, who will laugh with him every week the year round, his living is assured. This is the business of the clever street-beggar; he must scrape acquaintance with enough people in his chosen district to support him. It matters not to him whether he excites their pity or mirth so long as he gets their nickels and dimes. I knew a woman beggar of this sort whose main trick, or "capital," as she called it, was extreme faith in the chivalry of men. She would clutch a man by the coat-sleeve, and tragically exclaim: "How dare you cast me off? Don't you know that I am a woman? Have you no mother or sisters? Would you treat them as you are treating me?" Some men are so squeamishly and nervously chivalrous that they will be taken in by such a beggar every time. Women very often make the keenest street-beggars. They are more original in posing and dressing, and if with their other talents they can also use their voices cleverly, they do very well. Speaking of posing reminds me of a woman who is usually to be found near the Alhambra music-hall in London. She dresses very quietly and neatly, and her entire manner is that of a lady. I believe that she really was one in her day, but liquor has made her a match-vender; and her clever pose and dress are so attractive that people give her three times the value of the matches which she sells them. This match-selling is the main trick of the London street-beggar. It is a trick of defense against the police, and at the same time a blind to the public. People think that men and women selling matches are trying to earn an honest living, and this is true sometimes; but, according to my observation, the majority of match-venders offer one hand to the public for alms, and carry their "lights" (matches) in the other. The business of the house-beggar is obviously to know a certain number of good houses in his district, just as the street-beggar knows a certain number of people in his street or streets. And if he is a mendicant who can deal with women more successfully than with men, he must know just when to visit houses in order that only the women may be at home. If he is a beggar of this style, he usually carries a "jigger"--an artificially made sore, placed usually on an arm or leg. He calls at the front door and asks for "the lady." When she appears he "sizes her up" as best he can, and decides whether it will pay to use his jigger. If it is necessary, he prefaces this disgusting scene by an account of his hardships, and claims that he has been very badly burned. Then he shows his miserable sore, and few women are callous enough to see it without flinching. If they "squeal," as the tramp says, he is sure to be rewarded. Another trick is to send around pretty little girls and boys to do the begging. A child will succeed at house-begging when an able-bodied man or woman will fail utterly, and the same is true of a very old man--the more of a centenarian he looks, the better. But better than any of these tricks is what is called the "faintin' gag." I myself had the benefit of an undertaking of this character in Indianapolis some years ago, and I know it works well. I got into the town one night, and was at a loss to know what to do, until I accidentally met an old hobo who was trying to make his living there as a city tramp. He had been in the place only a few days, and had not yet found his particular district. He was simply browsing about in search of it, and he suggested that we try a certain quarter of the town that he had not visited at all. We did try it, and, after visiting twenty houses, got only two pieces of bread and butter. This, naturally enough, made my partner angry, and he told me to go back to the hang-out while he went on another beat. I waited for him nearly an hour, when he returned with a "poke-out" (food given at the door) and a "sinker" (a dollar). I, of course, was surprised, and asked for details. "Oh, I got 'em right 'nough," he said. "You see, after leavin' you, I was so dead horstile that I was ready for anything 'n' the first house I struck was a parson's. At first he didn't want to feed me at all, but I got into his settin'-room 'n' gave 'im a great story. I tole 'im that I was nearly a-dyin' with hunger, 'n' ef he didn't feed me, the s'ciety agen' cruelty to animals 'u'd prosecute 'im. Then I begun to reel a bit 'n' look faintin'-like, 'n' purty soon I flops right on the floor as ef I was dead. Then the racket begun. The parson called 'Wifey!' an' the both of 'em peppered 'n' salted me for about ten minutes, when I comes to an' looks better. Then they couldn't feed me fast 'nough. I had pie, cake, 'n' a lot o' other things 'fore I wuz done, 'n' when I left the parson give me the sinker, 'n' 'wifey' the poke-out; hope to die ef they didn't. See? That's the way ye got ter catch them parsons--right in the eye." As the old-clothes beggar is only a subspecies of the house-begging class, he deserves mention under the same head. His business, as his name implies, lies principally in looking for old wearing-apparel, which he sells to dealers in such wares. Sometimes he even pays for his food in order to devote his entire time and talents to his specialty. In London, for instance, I know a trio of this sort who live in a cellar where they keep their "goods." I visited their place one afternoon, and one of the men was kind enough to let himself be interviewed about his business. My first question was how he begged. "Well, o' course our first business is to wear bad togs. F'r instance, ef I's beggin' fer shoes I wants to put on a pair thet's all gone, else I can't get any more, 'n' the same when I's beggin' fer coats 'n' 'ats. It's no use tellin' people that you're beggin' fer somebody else. They won't believe it." Then I questioned him as to the sort of garments which were most profitable. "Breeches. We kin sell 'em every time. 'Ats does pretty well too, 'n' ef we get good shoes we kin do a rattlin' business. One o' my pals made seven bob fer a week jes out o' shoes. Wimmenses' togs hain't up ter the men's; an' yet we does fairly well wid 'em too. In 'ats, f'r instance, we does fairly good, 'cause the gals knows where we lives, 'n' they comes right 'ere instid o' goin' ter the dealers. Petticoats is next best when we gets good ones, but we don't very often, 'cause these Whitechapel donners [girls] wants picter-like ones, 'n' we don't always get 'em. I wish we could jes stick ter beggin' fer men's togs, 'cause they 's the best. Jes gimme 'nough breeches, 'n' I won't complain." In American cities also, men's clothing is the most profitable for beggars of this sort; very few tramps ask for "wimmenses' togs." In Germany, however, all sorts of old clothes are looked for, and the city tramps are great competitors of the Jews in this business. An old German Jew once said to me: "I wish these Kunden [tramps] were all dead. They spoil our business right along, because they get their stuff for nothing, and then undersell us. That isn't right, and I know it isn't." In Frankfort-on-the-Main I once knew a Swiss beggar who collected eighteen pairs of shoes in one week, not counting other things that he asked for also. And he claimed that, after trying various kinds of begging, he had found the most money in the shoe business. Of course, all this depends on a beggar's ability to make people believe that he is really deserving, for clothes-beggars, like a number of other specialists, must have some natural adaptation for their chosen calling. This is also true of the office-beggar, or "sticker," as he calls himself. His specialty brings him almost entirely in contact with men, and he must be exceedingly clever to deal successfully with them. A man will argue with a beggar, if he has time, just twice as long as a woman will, and he will also give just twice as much money if he gives anything. So the office-beggar has good material to work on if he understands it. One of his theories is that, when begging of men, the "story" must be "true to nature"; that is, so simple and direct that there is no possibility of doubling on his track. For instance, he will visit a lawyer, tell his story, and then simply hang around as long as he dares. It is this waiting so patiently that gives him his name of "sticker." There are fully a hundred tramps of this sort in New York city alone. They have their separate beats, and seldom leave them unless they are worked out. I know one beggar who never leaves Newspaper Row and Wall Street except for amusement, and he makes, on an average, seventy-five cents a day. And I know another tramp whose business keeps him confined to Broadway between Barclay Street and the Battery, while his home is in the Bowery near Houston Street. Men of this stamp have evidently been lucky in the selection of offices where a certain sum of money will be given every week. Such good fortune is the ambition of every energetic city tramp. He wants something definite every day, week, and month, and as he gets it or fails to get it, rates himself successful or unsuccessful. The aristocrat of city vagabondage is represented by what I call the room-beggar. He cannot be classified with the lodging-house men, because he has little to do with them, except socially, as at the saloon or music-hall, for instance. His home is entirely separated from theirs, it being a room, and sometimes even an apartment, which he rents for himself and family. If he is successful at his trade, and is careful to dress with some nicety, he can scarcely be distinguished from the usual citizen, except by the trained observer; the only mark about him being that peculiar glance of the eye common to all criminals and beggars. The room-beggar has no unique line of trade that I have been able to discover; he goes into anything that pays, and the main difference between him and the majority of the men in the "lodging-house gang" is his greater ingenuity in making things pay. He is the brainy man of the city tramps, and the other beggars know it, and all look up to him, with the exception of the clever street-beggar, who considers himself his equal, as I think he really is. No tramp, for instance, is so clever at the begging-letter "racket," and this means a good deal. To be able to write a letter to a perfect stranger and make money out of it requires a skilled hand, and a man educated in many lines. The public has become somewhat used to this trick, and will not be deceived every time; only men of an original turn of mind can do much with it. It is this originality that is the main talent of the room-beggar. He concocts stories which would do credit to a literary man, and sometimes makes nearly as much money as the daring thief. Women are also found in this class, and do very well at times. In the city of Berlin, Germany, there lived a "lady" of this sort. She had two homes. One was a cellar in a poor quarter of the town, and the other was an aristocratic _étage_ in the West End. She sent letters to well-to-do people of all sorts, in which she claimed to be _eine hochwohlgeborene Dame_ in distress. She invited likely philanthropists to visit her in her cellar in order that they might see how unfortunate her position really was. People went, were shocked, and, as a result, she had her apartment in the West End. For about ten months this woman and her two daughters lived in real luxury, and one of the "young ladies" was to marry in "high society" about the time that the ruse was made public. This is by no means a new trick, and yet people are being continually swindled. Why? Simply because the beggars who undertake it are cleverer than the people fooled by it. That is the only reason. If charitable people would only commit charity to skilled hands it would be much easier to handle beggars. The tramp is a specialist; so why not leave specialists to deal with him? The whole trouble comes of our willingness to be more unpractical in our philanthropy than in our business. There is one more city tramp that I must catalogue. It is the "sponger." His duty in life consists, he thinks, in simply living off the visiting knights of the road. He is a parasite fed by parasites, and hated by all self-respecting beggars. He is found wherever the traveling hoboes congregate, and there is no town in any country that I have visited where he does not flourish. In the Bowery his name is legion, and a hobo can scarcely visit a saloon there without meeting him. The wandering vagabond considers him the "bunco-man" of the beggars' world, and that is a good name. He will do anything to get money from a hobo, but I doubt very much whether he ever begs on his own hook. Exactly how he comes to exist no one knows, but I fancy that he is a discouraged tramp; he has found that he is not a born beggar, and has concluded that the next best thing is to live off men who are. If there were no beggars in the world, he would probably have to work for his living, for he could not steal successfully. As for stealing, few town beggars ever go into that as a business. Of course, they will take things that do not belong to them if they are sure of not being caught, but this safety is so vain a hope that it is seldom "banked on." It is strange that the city tramp is not more of a thief, for probably no one knows more about the town's chances than he. Criminals are always anxious to have some acquaintance in his ranks, knowing only too well that the "town vag" can post them as no one else can. Another thing rather more unpopular among town tramps than is usually supposed is joining a clique. In New York city, for example, there are various gangs of toughs who prowl about the town committing all sorts of depredations and making themselves generally feared. Even the policemen are now and then held at bay by them, and woe to the drunken sailor with his wages in his pockets who falls into their hands. I have seldom found the city tramp in such company. He knows too well the dangers of such crowds, prefers what he calls the "cut-throat principle," or each man for himself. There is too much slavery for him among toughs of the gang order, and he cannot move around as freely as he likes. Then, too, gangs are every now and then fighting one another, and that is usually harder work than the beggar cares for. * * * * * One of the most interesting things in the study of tramps is to get at their own opinions of themselves. To a certain degree they may be called rational beings. There is opinion and method and reason in trampdom,--no doubt of it,--and there are shades of opinion that correspond to varieties of method. The tramp of the prairies, the "fawny man" in New England, the city tramp in the Bowery, each has his point of view. If one catechizes or interviews the last named of these, he says: "I'm a beggar, and I know it. I know, too, that most people look upon me as a bad sort of fellow. They want to catch and punish me, and I don't want them to do it. They are warring against me, and I'm warring against them. They think that I don't know how I should use my life, and I think that I do. Somebody must be mistaken; I think that they are, and I'm doing my best to beat them. If they beat me, well and good; and if I beat them, well and good." This is the talk of the real artist in low life; he is in the vagabond world because it pleases him better than any other. A little different is the point of view of the drunkard beggar: "I'm a fool, and I know it. No man with any sense and honor would live as I do. But the worst of it all is, I can't live otherwise. Liquor won't leave me alone, and as I've got to live somehow, why, I might as well live where I can take care of myself. If people are fools enough to let me swindle them, so much the worse for them and so much the better for me." To change such opinions as these is a hard task. The first can be corrected only when the man who owns it is discouraged. When his spirit is broken he can be helped, but not until then. The second is the result of long suffering through passion. Until that passion is conquered nothing can be done. VI WHAT THE TRAMP EATS AND WEARS I The tramp is the hungriest fellow in the world. No matter who he is,--_Chausséegrabentapezirer_, moocher, or hobo,--his appetite is invariably ravenous. How he comes by that quality of his defects is an open question even in his own mind. Sometimes he accounts for it on the ground that he is continually changing climate, and then again attributes it to his incessant loafing. A tramp once said to me: "Cigarette, it ain't work that makes blokes hungry; it's bummin'!" I think there is some truth in this, for I know from personal experience that no work has ever made me so hungry as simple idling; and while on the road I also had a larger capacity for food than I have usually. Even riding on a freight-train for a morning used to make me hungry enough to eat two dinners, and yet there was almost no work about it. And I feel safe in saying that the tramp can usually eat nearly twice as much as the laboring-man of ordinary appetite. Now, what does he find to satisfy this rapacious craving? There are two famous diets in vagabondage, called the "hot" and the "cold." Each one has its advocates and propagandists. The hot is befriended mainly by the persevering and energetic; the cold belongs exclusively to the lazy and unsuccessful. The first is remarkable for what its champions call "set-downs," that is to say, good solid meals three times a day--or oftener. The second consists almost entirely of "hand-outs" or "poke-outs," which are nothing but bundles of cold food handed out at the back door. Every man on the road takes sides, one way or the other, in regard to these two systems of feeding, and his standing in the brotherhood is regulated by his choice. If he joins the set-downers he is considered at least a true hobo, and although he may have enemies, they will not dare to speak ill of his gift for begging. If, on the other hand, he contents himself with hand-outs, he not only loses all prestige among the genuine hoboes, but is continually in danger of tumbling down into the very lowest grades of tramp life. There is no middle course for him to follow. II Success in vagabondage depends largely on distinct and indispensable traits of character--diligence, patience, nerve, and politeness. If a tramp lacks any one of these qualities he is handicapped, and his chosen life will go hard with him. He needs diligence in order to keep his winnings up to a certain standard; he needs patience to help him through districts where charity is below par; he needs nerve to give him reputation among his cronies, and he needs politeness to win his way with strangers and to draw their sympathy and help. If he possesses these characteristics, no matter what his nationality may be, he will succeed. If not, he would better work than tramp--he will find it much easier and twice as profitable. The poke-out beggar is deficient in every one of these qualities, and his winnings demonstrate it. I made his acquaintance first about ten years ago. I had just begun my life on the road, and as I knew but very little about tramping and nothing about begging, it was only natural that I should fall in with him, for he is the first person one meets in the vagabond world. The successful beggars do not show themselves immediately, and the newcomer must first give some valid evidence of his right to live among them before they take him in--a custom, by the way, which shows that tramping is much like other professions. But the poke-out tramp is not so fastidious; he chums with any one he can, successful or not; and as I had to associate with somebody, I began with him. After a while I was graduated out of his rank, and received into the set-down class, but only after a hard and severe training, which I would not go through again--even for the sake of Sociology. III As a rule, the poke-out beggar has but one meal a day, usually breakfast. This is the main meal with all vagabonds, and even the lazy tramp makes frantic efforts to find it. Its quantity as well as its quality depends largely on the kind of house he visits. His usual breakfast, if he is lucky, consists of coffee, a little meat, some potatoes, and "punk 'n' plaster" (bread and butter). Coffee, more than anything else, is what every hobo wants early in the morning. After sleeping out of doors or in a box-car, especially during the colder months, a man is stiff and chilled, and coffee is the thing to revive him when he cannot get whisky, which is by no means the easiest thing to beg. I have known tramps to drink over six cups of coffee before they looked for anything solid, and I myself have often needed three before I could eat at all. The dinner of the lazy beggar is a very slim affair. It is either a free lunch in a saloon, or a hand-out. This latter consists mainly of sandwiches, but now and then a cold potato will be put into the bundle, and also, occasionally, a piece of pie. After the tramp has had one or two of these impromptu lunches he persuades himself that he has had enough, and goes off for a rest. How often--but on account of bashfulness, rather than anything else--have I done the same thing! And what poor dinners they were! They no more satisfy a tramp's appetite than they would a lion's, but the indolent fellow tries to persuade himself otherwise. I once overheard a typical member of the class discussing the matter with himself, or rather with his appetite, which, for the sake of argument and companionship, he looked upon as a personality quite apart. He had just finished a slim and slender hand-out, had tossed into the bushes the paper bag that held it together, and, when I saw him, was looking up into the sky in a most confidential manner. Soon, and as if sorry he could not be kinder to it, he cast his eyes pityingly on his paunch, and said in a sad tone: "Poor devil! I feel fer y'u--bet cher life I do! But yer'll have to stand it, I guess. It's the only way I know fer y'u to git along." Then he patted it gently, and repeated again his sympathetic "poor devil." But not once did he scold himself for his laziness. Not he! He never does. His supper is very similar to his dinner, except that he tries now and then to wash it down with a cup of tea or coffee. Later in the evening he also indulges in another hand-out, unless he is on a freight-train or far from the abodes of men. Such is the diet of the lazy tramp, and, strange to relate, despite its unwholesomeness and its meagerness, he is a comparatively healthy fellow, as are almost all tramps. Their endurance, especially that of the poke-out tramps, is something remarkable. I have known them to live on "wind-pudding" as they call air, for over forty-eight hours without becoming exhausted, and there are cases on record where they have gone for four and five days without anything to eat or drink, and have lived to tell the tale. A man with whom I once traveled in Pennsylvania did this very thing. He was locked into a box-car which was shunted off on an unused side-track a long distance from any house or place where his cries could be heard. He was in the car for nearly one hundred and twenty hours, and although almost dead when found, he picked up in a few days, and before long was on the road again. I saw him at the World's Fair at Chicago, and he was just as healthy and happy in his own way as ever. In some of the sparsely settled districts in Texas tramps have suffered most appalling deaths by such accidents, but so long as a beggar keeps his freedom I do not believe that even a lazy one starves to death in this country. I know very well that people do not realize this, and that they feed tramps regularly, laboring under the delusion that it is only humane so to do. But although the tramp hates honest labor, he hates starvation still more, and if he finds it impossible to pick up anything to eat, he will either go to jail or work. He loves this world altogether too much to voluntarily explore another of which he knows so little. IV The clothes of the poke-out beggar are not much, if any, better than his food. In summer he seldom has more than a shirt, a pair of trousers, a coat, some old shoes, and a battered hat. Even in winter he wears little more, especially if he goes South. I have never seen him with underclothes or socks, and an overcoat is something he almost never gets hold of, unless he steals one, which is by no means common. While I lived with him I wore just such "togs." I shall never forget my first tramp suit of clothes. The coat was patched in a dozen places, and was nearly three sizes too large for me; the waistcoat was torn in the back, and had but two buttons; the trousers were out at the knees, and had to be turned up in London fashion at the bottom to keep me from tripping; the hat was an old derby with the crown dented in numerous places; and the only decent thing I had was a flannel shirt. I purchased this rig of a Jew, and thought it would be just the thing for the road, and so it was, but only for the poke-out tramp's road. The hoboes laughed at me and called me "hoodoo," and I never got in with them in any such garb. Nevertheless, I wore it for nearly two months, and so long as I associated with lazy beggars only, it was all right. Many of them were never dressed so well, and not a few envied me my old coat. It is by no means uncommon to see a poke-out vagabond wearing a garment which belongs to a woman's wardrobe. He is so indifferent that he will wear anything that will shield his nakedness, and I have known him to be so lazy that he did not even do that. One old fellow I remember particularly. He had lost his shirt somehow, and for almost a week went about with only a coat between his body and the world at large. Some of his pals, although they were of his own class, told him that he ought to find another shirt, and the more he delayed it the more they labored with him. One night they were all gathered at a hang-out near Lima, Ohio, and the old fellow was told that unless he found a shirt that night they would take away his coat also. He begged and begged, but they were determined, and as he did not show any intention of doing as he was bidden, they carried out the threat. And all that night and the following day he was actually so lazy and stubborn that he would not yield, and would probably be there still, in some form or other, had his pals not relented and returned him the coat. As I said, he went for nearly a week without finding a shirt, and not once did he show the least shame or embarrassment. Not long after this experience he got into limbo, and had to wear the famous "zebra"--the penitentiary dress. It is not popular among tramps, and they seldom wear it, but that old rascal, in spite of the disgrace and inconvenience that his confinement brought upon him, was probably pleased that he did not have to find his own clothes. Such are the poke-out tramps of every country where I have studied them, and such they will always be. They are constitutionally incapacitated for any successful career in vagabondage, and the wonder is that they live at all. Properly speaking, they have no connection with the real brotherhood, and I should not have referred to them here, except that the public mistakes them for the genuine hoboes. They are not hoboes, and nothing angers the latter so much as to be classed with them. The hobo is exceedingly proud in his way,--a person of susceptibilities,--and if you want to offend him, call him a "gay-cat" or a "poke-outer." He will never forgive you. V Almost the first advice given me after I had managed to scramble into the set-down class came from an old vagabond known among his cronies as "Portland Shorty." He knew that I had been but a short time on the road, and that in many respects I had not met with the success which was necessary to entitle me to respect among men of his class, but nevertheless he was willing to give me a few pointers, which, by the way, all hoboes are glad to do, if they feel that the recipient will turn them to profit. I met Shorty for the first time in Chicago, and while we were lounging on the grass in the Lake Front Park, the following conversation took place: "Cigarette," he began,--for I had already received my tramp name,--"how long 'v' y'u been on the road?" I replied: "About two months." "Wall, how long d' y'u 'spect to stay there?" "Oh, 's long 's I'm happy." "Ez long ez yer happy, eh? Wall, then, I'm goin' to chew the rag wid y'u fer a little while. Now, 'f yer wants to be happy, here's a little advice fer y'u. In the first place, make up yer mind jes wha' cher goin' to be. Ef y'u 'spect to work fer yer living why, get off the road. Moochin' spiles workin' jes ez workin' spiles moochin'. The two don't go together nohow. So 'f yer goin' to be a bum fer life, never think o' work. Jes give yerself entirely to yer own speshul calling fer 'f y'u don't yer'll regret it. 'N the second place, y'u wan' to decide what kind o' beggar yer goin' to make. Ef yer a thief, 'n' playin' the beggar jes as a guy, why, then y'u knows yer bizness better 'n I do. But ef y'u ain't, 'n' are jes browsin' round lookin' fer a berth, then I wants to tell yer somethin'. There's diffrent kinds o' beggars; some gits there, 'n' some doesn't. Them what gits there I call arteests, 'n' them what doesn't I call bankrupts. Now, wha' cher goin' to be, arteest or bankrupt?" I replied that I was still undecided, since I had not yet learned whether I could make a success on the road or not, but added that my inclination would be toward the "arteest" class. "That's right," he began afresh. "Be an arteest or nothin'. Beggin' 's a great bizness 'f yer cut out fer it, 'cause y'u've got everythin' to win 'n' nothin' to lose. Not many callin's has them good points--see? Now, 'f yer goin' to be an arteest, y'u wants to make up yer mind to one thing, 'n' that is--hard work. Some people thinks that moochin' is easy, but lemme tell yer 't ain't. Batterin', when it's done well, is the difficultest job under the moon--take my tip fer that. Y'u got to work hard all yer life to make boodle, 'n' 'f y'u wan' to save it, y'u mus'n't booze. Drinkin' 's what spiles bums. If they c'u'd leave it alone they'd be somethin'. Now, Cig, that's good sound talk, 'n' you'd better hang on to it." I did, and it helped me as much as anything else in getting in with the real hoboes. I have known them, now, for ten years, and feel abundantly qualified to describe their diet and dress. VI In the first place, they eat three good warm meals every day--breakfast from seven to eight o'clock, dinner at twelve, and supper at six. These are the set-downs[5] in tramp life, and it is the duty of every professional to find them regularly. The breakfast is very similar to the poke-out tramp's breakfast, the main additions being oatmeal and pancakes, if the beggar is willing to look for them. They can be found with a little perseverance. There are also some hoboes who want pie for breakfast, and they have it almost constantly. I once traveled with a Maine tramp who simply would not consider his breakfast complete until he had had his usual piece of apple-pie. And he actually had the nerve to go to houses and ask for that alone. During our companionship, which lasted over a week, he failed but once to get it, and then it was because he had to make a train. The dinner is a more elaborate affair, and the tramp must often visit a number of houses before he finds the various dishes he desires. I remember well a hunt I had for a dinner in St. Louis. A Western tramp was my comrade at the time, and we had both decided upon our bill of fare. He wanted meat and potatoes, "punk 'n' plaster," some kind of dessert (pudding preferred), and three cups of coffee. I wanted the same things minus the dessert, and I had to visit fifteen houses before my appetite was satisfied. But, as my companion said, the point is that I finally got my dinner. He too was successful, even to the kind of pudding he wished. Not all tramps are so particular as my Western pal, but they must have the "substanshuls" (meat and potatoes and bread and butter) anyhow. Unless they get them they are angry, and scold everything and everybody. I once knew a vagabond to call down all sorts of plagues and miseries on a certain house because he could not get enough potatoes there. He prayed that it might be cursed with smallpox, all the fevers that he knew, and every loathsome disease--and he meant it, too. There are a number of hoboes who occasionally take their dinners in the form of what they call the "made-to-order scoff." It is something they have invented themselves, and for many reasons is their happiest meal. It takes place at the hang-out, and a more appropriate environment could not be found. When the scoff is on the program, the vagabonds gather together and decide who shall beg the meat, the potatoes, the onions, the corn, the bread and butter, the tea and coffee, and the desserts, if they are procurable. Then each one starts out on his separate errand, and if all goes well they return before long and hand their winnings over to the cook. This official, meanwhile, has collected the fire-wood and the old tin cans for frying and boiling the food. While the meal is cooking, the tramps sit around the fire on the stolen railroad-ties and compare jokes and experiences. Pretty soon dinner is announced, and they begin. They have no forks and often no knives, but that does not matter. "Fingers were made before forks." Sometimes they sharpen little sticks and use them, but fingers are more popular. The table manners of the Eskimos compare favorably with those of these picnicking hoboes, and I have often seen a tramp eat meat in a way that would bring a dusky blush to the cheek of the primeval Alaskan. It is remarkable, however, that no matter how carelessly they eat their food, they seldom have dyspepsia. I have known only a few cases, and even then the sufferers were easily cured. Supper is seldom much of a meal among hoboes, and mainly because it has to be looked for, during the greater part of the year, just about dark, the time when the hobo is either preparing his night's hang-out, or making arrangements for his night's journey, and the hunt for supper often occasions unpleasant delays. But he nevertheless looks for it if he can possibly spare the time. He considers it his bounden duty to eat regularly, and feels ashamed if he neglects to do it. I have heard him scold himself for an hour just because he failed to get a meal at the proper time, although he really did not care for it. Bohemian that he is, he still respects times and seasons, which is the more surprising since in other matters he is as reckless as a fool. In quarrels, for example, he regards neither sense nor custom, and has his own private point of view every time. But at the very moment that he is planning some senseless and useless fight, he will look for a meal as conscientiously as the laborer works for one, although he may not need it. For supper he usually has about what other people have--potatoes (usually fried) and beefsteak, tea or coffee, bread and butter, and some kind of sauce. For three months of my time on the road I had almost exactly this bill of fare, and became so accustomed to it that I was considerably surprised if I found anything else. I mention these various items to show how closely the tramp's "hot diet" resembles that of most people. A great mistake is made in thinking that these men, as a class, have to eat things both uncommon and peculiar. Some of them do, but all of the set-downers eat about the same things that the respectable and worthy portion of the community eats. In Pennsylvania, the "fattenin'-up State,"[6] or "P. A.," as the hobo calls it, apple-butter is his chief delicacy. I have seen him put it on his bread, meat, and potatoes, and one beggar that I knew wanted it "raw." I happened to be with this man one afternoon in the town of Bethlehem, and while we were sitting on a little bridge crossing the canal on the outskirts of the town, a Pennsylvania Dutchman hove in sight. My pal, being a beggar who liked to improve every opportunity, immediately said to me, in a professional sort of voice: "Keep quiet, Cig, 'n' I'll tackle 'im." The man soon passed us, and the beggar followed. He caught up with him in a moment, and as I had also followed, I managed to overhear a part of the conversation. It was something like this: "I say, boss, can' cher gimme the price of a meal?" "Nein; dat kan ich nit." "Well, can you take me home 'n' feed me?" "Nein." "Well, say; can' cher gimme a cigar?" "Nein"--in anger. "Well, say,"--and he put his arm affectionately on the Dutchman's shoulder,--"let's go 'n' have a drink. Eh?" "Nein." "Well, you old hoosier, you, can you gimme some apple-butter?" Even the Dutchman laughed, but he said, "Nein." Besides the three meals which every hobo has regularly, there are also two or three lunches a day, which are included in the hot diet, although they practically belong to the cold one. The first is taken in the morning about ten o'clock, and is begged at breakfast-time, the second about three or four o'clock, and the third late in the evening. Not all hoboes eat these between-meal "snacks," but the majority beg them at any rate, and if they do not need them they either throw them away or give them to some deserving person, often enough a seeker of work. For although the tramp hates labor, he does not hate the true laborer, and if he can help him along, he does it willingly. He knows only too well that it is mainly the laboring-man off whom he lives, and that it is well to do him a good turn whenever it is possible. Then, too, the hobo is a generous fellow, no matter what else he is, and is always willing to share his winnings with any one he really likes. With the gay-cat and the poke-outer he will have nothing to do, but with the criminal, his own pals, and the working-man he is always on good terms, unless they repel his overtures. As a number of tramps spend considerable time in jails, it seems appropriate to tell what they eat there, also. Their life in limbo is often voluntary, for although a great many hoboes go South every winter, there are others who prefer a jail in the North, and so whatever hardship they encounter is mainly of their own choosing. And since some of them do choose jail fare, it is evident that those particular beggars find it less disagreeable than winter life "outside" either North or South. The usual food in these places is bread, molasses, and coffee in the morning, some sort of thick soup or meat and potatoes with bread for dinner, and bread and molasses and tea for supper. There is generally enough, also, and although I have often heard the tramps grumble, it was mainly because they had nothing else to do. Confinement in county prisons, although it has its diversions, tends to make a man captious and irritable, and the tramp is no exception to this. Occasionally he gets into a jail where only two meals a day are given, and he must then exercise his fortitude. He never intends to be in such a place, but mistakes will happen even in vagabondage, and it is most interesting to see how the tramp gets out of them or endures them. He usually grits his teeth and promises "never to do it again"; and, considering his self-indulgent nature, I think he stands suffering remarkably well. VII What the hot-diet tramp wears is another matter, but a not vastly different one. His ambition, although he does not always achieve it, is to have new togs quite as regularly as the man who buys them with hard cash. He also tries to keep up with the fashions and the seasons as closely as possible. But all this must naturally be regulated by the charity of the community in which he happens to be. If he is near a college, and knows how to beg of the students, he can usually find just what and about all he needs; but if he is in a country district where clothes are worn down to the thread, he is in a hard case. As a rule, however, he dresses nearly as well as the day-laborer, and sometimes far better. There are tramps of this type in New York and Chicago whose dress is almost identical with that of the majority of the men one meets in the streets, and to distinguish them from the crowd requires an eye able to read their faces rather than their coats. Such men never allow their clothes to wear beyond a certain point before begging a fresh supply. And if they are careful, and do not ride in freight-trains often, a suit will last them several months, for they understand remarkably well how to take care of it. Every tramp of this order and grade carries a brush inside of his coat pocket, and uses it on the slightest provocation. On the road I also acquired this habit of brushing my clothes as often as they showed the slightest soil. It is a trick of the trade, and saves not only the clothes, but the self-respect of the brotherhood. Dark clothes are the most popular, because they keep clean, or at least appear clean, for a longer time. I once wore a suit of this kind for nearly three months, and although I used it rather roughly, it was so good at the end of that time that I traded it to a tramp for a coat and vest almost new. The way to make sure of having a serviceable suit is to gather together several coats, vests, and trousers, and pick out a complement from the best and most suitable of the lot. [Illustration: A WESTERN ROADSTER.] I shall not forget an experience of this sort I had in a Western town. I had worked all day with my companion looking simply for clothes, and at night we had six coats, eight vests, four pairs of trousers, and two overcoats. Out of this collection we chose two fairly good suits, but the rest were so poor that we had to throw them away. One of the coats was a clergyman's, and when he gave it to me he said: "It may not fit you very well, but you can use it as an overcoat, perhaps." It was even then too large for me, and I gave it to the tramp, who wore it for nearly a month. His pals laughed at him and called him "Parson Jim"; but he made more money with that coat than he could possibly have made in any other. He posed as a theological student among the farmers, and was most royally entertained. But his luck gave out in a short time, for he went to prison in his clerical habit not long after. Hoboes take most delight in what is called the sack-coat. "Tailed jackets" are inconvenient, especially when one is riding on the trucks of a train; the skirts are liable to catch on something and thus delay matters. It is the inside of a tramp s coat, however, that is most interesting. It is usually furnished with numerous pockets, one of them being called the "poke-out pocket," in which he stows away his lunches. The others are used for brushes, tattooing-tools, combs, white rags, string, and other little notions that may "come handy" to a traveler. But in none of the pockets will there ever be found one bit of paper which might identify the bearer or implicate him in any suspicious work. He is too "foxy" to ever allow his real name to crop out in any telltale evidence on his person, except, perhaps, when he may have been foolish enough to have it tattooed somewhere on his body. He is proudest of his hat and shoes, and with reason. The former is usually a soft black felt, but stiff hats are also _à la mode_, and I have even seen a "stove-pipe" on the road. It was unique, however, and the owner did a good business with it; his "clients" used to feed him simply on account of his oddity. The foot-gear consists generally of laced shoes, but boots have to be accepted now and then. Socks, although much in vogue, often yield to white-linen rags wound smoothly around the feet. This is particularly true among the tramps of Germany. They take long walks, and contend that socks chafe the feet too much. There is truth in this, and while I lived with them I followed their custom to the extent of wearing the rags next to my feet and then drawing the socks over them. And I was very little troubled with sore feet while I did so; but for the one week when I tried to go without the rags I suffered considerably. Overcoats are worn by the hoboes who go South in winter, but tramps who spend the cold months in jail do not need them, and if they beg any, usually sell them. Underclothes in some form or other are worn all the time, not so much for warmth as for cleanliness. Even the cleanest hoboes cannot keep entirely free of vermin, and they wear underclothes to protect their outer garments, changing the former as often as they can, and throwing away or burning the discarded pieces. The tramp's shirt is always of flannel, if he can find it, and very often he wears two, either for the sake of trade or to keep warm. Other garments are doubled also, and one finds men wearing two coats, two vests, and two pairs of trousers. It is by no means uncommon to see a tramp who wears linen and cotton shirts with two or three layers on his back. As one becomes soiled he throws it away, and so on till the three are discarded. There is one more indispensable article of a tramp's toilet, and it is called the "shaver." This is a razor incased in a little sack, generally leather, which he hangs around his neck with a string. It is used for fighting and shaving, and is very good as a "guy" for getting him into jail. I saw how this was done one day in western Pennsylvania. The time was late October, and three tramps who came into town decided that the local jail would be a good place in which to spend the winter. They wanted a ninety-day sentence, and knew they could not get it for simple drunkenness; so they decided to pretend drunk and make a row in order to be sentenced on two charges. They began their brawl in the main street, and flourished their razors in good style. The officers arrested them after a little fight made for appearance' sake, and the judge gave them four months--thirty days more than they expected. Their razors were confiscated, too, but they got others the minute they were released. It sometimes happens, however, that the shavers are not discovered, because the men are not properly searched, and, owing to this lack of careful inspection by officials, rows in jails have often ended seriously. VIII A friend at my elbow, to whom vagabondage is a _terra incognita_, remarks just at this juncture: "You ought to tell just how the tramp gets his three set-down meals a day." I can scarcely believe that in our own country there is any ignorance in regard to this matter. The house in the settled districts that has not been visited by the tramp in search of one of his three meals seems to me not to exist. But if anybody needs enlightenment on this point, the following incident will be of interest. One June day, some years ago, I strolled into the hang-out in a little town in Michigan just as the bells were ringing for dinner. I was a stranger in the place, and as I wanted to find my dinner as quickly as possible, in order to make a "freight" that was due about two o'clock, I asked one of the tramps at the camp whether he knew of any "mark" (a house where something is always given to beggars) in the town. "Well, there ain't many," he replied. "Town's too small and the people's too relijus. The best is that big college building up there on the hill, but they ain't always willin' even there. They go by fits. If they's in the mood, they feeds you, 'n' 'f they ain't, they sicks the dog on you; an' it takes a pretty foxy bloke to know what moods they is in. I struck 'em onc't when I felt dead sure they was in the k'rect one, 'n', by the hoky-poky, I had to look fer a new coat 'for' I left the town--blasted mean dog they got there. But there's another place not far from the old red buildin' where any bloke kin scoff if he gives the right song 'n' dance. It's No. 13 Grove Street. Great ole squaw lives there--feeds everybody she kin; sort o' bughouse [crazy] on the subject, you know--likes to talk 'bout her Sammy, 'n' all that sort o' stuff. Dead cinch, she is. Better hit her up 'n' take a feed. Yer bound to get a good ole set-down." I followed his advice, and was soon at the back door of No. 13 Grove Street. In answer to my knock there appeared a motherly-looking old lady who wanted to know what she could do for me. What a tale I told her! And how kind she looked as I related my sad experiences as a young fellow trying to work his way to a distant town, where he hoped to find friends who would help him into college! "Come right in; we are just at table." Then she called to her daughter Dorothy, a pretty lass, and told her to lay a plate for a stranger. She and the girl were the only persons in the house, and I was surprised that they took me in so willingly. Women, as a rule, are afraid of tramps, and prefer to feed them on the back steps. But I had evidently found an exception, for when I had washed my hands and face and combed my hair on the little porch, I was invited into the cozy dining-room and offered a place beside the hostess. How odd it seemed! I almost felt at home, and had to be on my guard to keep up my rôle as a vagabond. For it was certainly a temptation to relieve myself then and there, and have an old-time chat on respectable lines. I had been so long on the road that I was really in need of some such comfort, but I dared not take advantage of it. So I answered their questions about my home, my parents, and my plans as professionally as I could, and spun my story, not entirely of fiction, however, and they smiled or looked solemn as the occasion fitted. They seemed to take a great interest in my doings, and always had a word of sympathy or advice for predicaments which I fabricated. And how they fed me! My plate was not once empty, and I ate and ate simply out of respect to their politeness. When I had finished they both asked me to rest awhile before taking up my journey again; so I sat in their interesting little sitting-room, and listened to their talk, and answered their questions. Pretty soon, and evidently thinking that it would help me to know about him, the mother began to tell me of a lad of hers whom she had not seen for several years, and as she fancied that he might possibly have traveled my way, she asked if I had met him. I wanted to tell her that I had, if only to give her a mite of comfort, but I knew that it would be more cruel than the truth, and I said "I was afraid we had not met." Then she spoke of certain features of face that we had in common, and asked the girl if she did not think so. "Yes," Dorothy replied, "he reminds me of Sam--just about the same build, too." I could not stand this, and told them I must be on my way. As I was leaving, the old lady asked me not to be offended if she gave me a little book. "Of course not," I replied, and she fetched me a conventional little tract about a prodigal son. I thanked her, and then she advised me to visit a certain lawyer in the town, who, she said, was in need of a helper, and there I might find a chance for an education without looking farther. And as if to prove my right to such employment, while standing on the porch at her side, she laid her motherly hand on my head, and said to Dorothy, with a smile on her kindly face: "The lad has an intelligent head--something like Sam's. Don't you think so?" Both looked sadly and solemnly in earnest, and I stole away, hoping never to see them again until I should know where their Sam might be found. I have looked for him on many a road since that June day, always with the determination that no other "wandering boy" should hear from me of this kind mother's hospitality, and I hope they have him now, for they certainly deserve surcease of sorrow on his account. There are people like this in every town, and it is the tramp's talent to find them, and "when found make a note on." He thus becomes a peripatetic directory for the tramp world, which lives on the working world at a cost which it is worth while to consider. IX That tramps are expensive no one will deny, but how much so it is difficult to decide. I have tried to show that a large number of them eat and wear things which certainly cost somebody considerable money, but a careful census of the vagabond population alone can estimate the amount. No one can tell exactly what this tramp population numbers, but I think it safe to say that there are not less than sixty thousand in this country. Every man of this number, as a rule, eats something twice a day, and the majority eat three good meals. They all wear some sort of clothing, and most of them rather respectable clothing. They all drink liquor, probably each one a glass of whisky a day. They all get into jail, and eat and drink there just as much at the expense of the community as elsewhere. They all chew and smoke tobacco, and all of them spend some of their time in lodging-houses. How much all this represents in money I cannot tell, but I believe that the expenses I have enumerated, together with the costs of conviction for vagrancy, drunkenness, and crime, will easily mount up into the millions. And all that the country can show for this expenditure is an idle, homeless, and useless class of individuals called tramps. FOOTNOTES: [5] In Germany and England the tramps usually eat their set-downs in cheap restaurants or at lodging-houses. They beg money to pay for them, rather than look for them at private houses. [6] It is most interesting to talk with Eastern tramps in the West who are homeward bound. If they have been in the West long, and look rather "seedy," and you ask them where they are going to in the East, they invariably reply: "Gosh! P. A., o' course. We wants to fatten up, we does." And there is no better place for this than Pennsylvania. PART II TRAVELS PART II TRAVELS PAGE I. LIFE AMONG GERMAN TRAMPS 169 II. WITH THE RUSSIAN GORIOUNS 200 III. TWO TRAMPS IN ENGLAND 229 IV. THE TRAMP AT HOME 267 V. THE TRAMP AND THE RAILROADS 291 I LIFE AMONG GERMAN TRAMPS William II of Germany is the ruler of about fifty millions of people. A small fraction comprises the nobility, while the great majority are commoners, and the rest, about one hundred thousand, are roving beggars. His Imperial Majesty is probably well acquainted with his nobles, and he thinks that he understands the commoners, but the tramp who passes his castle now and then is a foreigner at home. Yet he is found in every city, town, and village, and there is hardly a home in the empire which he has not visited. He tramps the public highways as freely and fearlessly as the laborer, and rides on the royal railways as boldly as a king. His business in life is to prey upon the credulity of the charitable, and to steal when the eye of the law is not on watch. In spite, however, of all this publicity, comparatively little is known of his real life and character. Various books and pamphlets have been written about him, but they have usually been grounded on second-hand information, as I have looked in vain for any account of a personal study of tramp life. Being desirous of knowing the real facts in the case, I at first supplemented my reading by various conversations with beggars as they lounged around near my home in Berlin, and occasionally invited some of the more intelligent into my study, and plied them as cleverly as possible with all sorts of questions. But they invariably fooled me, and told the most romantic of tales, believing, probably, that they were what I wanted. Time after time I have said to them, "Oh, come now, give over this story-telling, and let me have something that is really true." But they seemed unable to comprehend my purposes, and, true to their national traits, it was not in them to take part in any scheme which they could not understand. How to get at what I desired was the question. I called at the Bureau of Statistics, hoping surely to find here carefully tabulated statistics of vagrancy; but I was disappointed. Dr. Berthold,[7] who kindly told me all he knew, said that Pastor von Bodelschwingh was the man who had made the best census of trampdom, and he had claimed that there were 200,000 arrests in Germany each year for begging; that 100,000 of them represented irreclaimable vagabonds, 80,000 bona-fide seekers of work, and the remaining 20,000 the maximum number of reclaimable beggars. Dr. Berthold continued: "The only way to know the entire truth about the tramp is to live with him. I had the intention to do this myself, but I delayed it too long, and now I am too old." He was very kind and gave me some valuable hints, but admitted that nothing very definite was known about the wandering beggar. I finally decided to give up these fruitless investigations, and to become a tramp myself in order to achieve my ends. I felt fairly equipped for such an undertaking, having had a two years' residence in Germany, and having also played the tramp in my own country. My plan, however, was not to study the enforced vagrant, but rather the man who wanders because he desires to, and prefers begging to working. And in that which follows I have attempted to describe my experiences with voluntary beggars only. [Illustration: THE FOURTH-CLASS CAR.] Early in April I made ready for the journey. My outfit was a close copy of the fashions in trampdom, my clothes being both old and easy to bear. I took no pass with me, because, in the first place, I could not get a German pass, and, secondly, I was anxious to find out just what experiences an unidentified man must go through. If I were to repeat the experiment I should do differently. Having decided to begin my investigations in Magdeburg, there being various reasons why I should not play the beggar in Berlin, I left my home on the date mentioned, and hurried through the streets to the railroad-station, where I invested a few groschen in a fourth-class ticket. My first afternoon was consequently spent in what very closely resembles the common American freight-car, except that it is windowed and occasionally has planks braced against the sides to serve as seats. The floor, however, or a piece of baggage, is the more customary resting-place. A ride in this miserable box costs two pfennigs the kilometer, and the passengers are naturally of the lower order of travelers, including the tramps, who make almost as much use of fourth-class privileges as our own vagrants do of the freight-trains. My companions on the first trip were a queer lot. In one end of the car was a band playing the vilest music for the few sechser (five-pfennig pieces) occasionally thrown down to them. Their only rival was a little tambourine girl, who danced and rattled her noisy instrument as if her life depended upon her agility, as no doubt it did. The other travelers were market-women, laborers, and journeymen, and a fellow called Peasant Carl, who was more of a tramp than anything else, in spite of the fact that he had a trade. We were soon talking on various subjects, and it was not difficult to lead the conversation to the subject of tramp life. Carl was considerably surprised to find that an American should be _auf der Walze_ (on the road), and needed some proof ere he was convinced that I was a roadster. My old clothes and general forlorn condition were not sufficient, and I was compelled to tell him a story. Once satisfied on this point, he turned out to be a good friend, and among other valuable facts that he generously gave me were scraps from the German tramp vocabulary, which he said might "come handy," since I was a stranger. I found that _Kunde_, or customer, was the general word for vagrant, but as the term vaguely covers the thousands of traveling journeymen in the community also, another term has been invented for the genuine tramp, none other than _Chausséegrabentapezirer_, or upholsterer of the highway ditches. What could be more genuinely, deliciously German? As this dialect is rather unique, and as different from the German language proper as black from white, I am tempted to give a few more words, tabulating them, for comparison's sake, alongside their American equivalents: _German_ _American_ _Tramp_ _Tramp_ _English._ _German._ _Dialect._ _Dialect._ Bread Das Brod Der Kramp Punk. Water Das Wasser Der Gänsewein To beg Betteln Abklappen To Batter. To walk Laufen Tibbeln To Drill. Policeman Der Schutzmann Der Putz The Bull. Gendarmes Gendarmes Der Deckel Village Das Dorf Der Kaff Jerktown. Whisky-flask Die Schnappsflasche Die Finne The Growler. Passport Der Reise-Pass Die Flebbe Hunger Der Hunger Der Kohldampf This vocabulary will give a fair idea of the dialect. It is much more complete than the American, affording, as it does, ample means whereby entire secrecy can be secured in public places. It is spoken by both _Handwerksburschen_ and tramps, and it is my opinion that the former were not the originators, as is sometimes averred, but have rather acquired a fair knowledge of it by associating year after year, on the road, with beggars. On my arrival in Magdeburg, my friend Carl suggested that we go to Die Herberge zur Heimath, a lodging-house somewhat above the common grade, where we could at least have our supper, but where I could not lodge, having no pass. This institution must be distinguished from the ordinary Herberge, or low-class lodging-house, and has a history worth more than a passing paragraph. It is a sort of refined edition of the Salvation Army "shelter," and was founded on religious and humanitarian principles by Professor Perthes of Bonn, whose first enterprise of the kind at Bonn has been so widely copied that at least three hundred towns of Germany now furnish this comfortable and respectable refuge to the traveling apprentice or journeyman, and, if he will conform to its usages and requirements, to the tramp also. Entering the main room of the Heimath, I was surprised to see Carl rap on a table and the men sitting at the same to follow suit. I found out later that this meant "Hello," and that the after knock indicated "All right." Shaking hands is also a customary greeting in German trampdom, but hardly ever in American vagrancy. Tramps also call one another "brother," and use the pronoun "thou" invariably in preference to "you." The inmates of the Heimath, I soon found, were drawn from three classes. First, the apprentice making his first journey, and usually a very stupid fellow. The tramp was here also, but only, I think, to prey upon the Handwerksbursche, for no whisky is sold on the premises, and prayers are held morning and evening, a custom which all true roadsters despise. The rest were men fairly well on in life, who work occasionally and beg the remainder of the time. I counted altogether sixteen recognized beggars (Chausséegrabentapezirer), but made no attempt to make their acquaintance, having decided not to study them in foreign quarters, but to seek them in their real homes. For Die Herberge zur Heimath is not a tramps' nest, although some Germans think so, and as soon as I had had a fair supper, for which I paid three cents, I left with Carl for another domicile. We were not long in finding the Herberge proper, or perhaps improper, where life is seen in all its dirtiest phases. Entering the common meeting-room, and saluting as usual, we sat down at a table where there were other tramps also. I was immediately asked: "Wo kommst Du her? Wo willst Du him? Was hast Du für Geschäft?" I answered these questions as cleverly as I could, and was soon deep in various conversations. Before I had been talking long, I made the acquaintance of a beggar belonging to the class called _Kommando-Schieber_. These fellows beg usually within very small districts, and know every house that is "good" for a meal or a pfennig. My newly made friend was kind enough to instruct both Carl and me in regard to Magdeburg. "This town is rather _heiss_ [unfriendly]", said he, "but if you look out and beg very carefully you can get along. A great trick here now is to tip the _Portier_ of good houses, and thus get the pull on every flat in the building. You've got to look out for the _Putz_, though, for if you're caught, you're sure for twenty-four hours in the _Kasten_ [prison]. Another scheme that works pretty well with us fellows who know the town is to send around begging letters. You can easily make quite a _Stoss_ [haul] if you work the plan well. Still, it's risky for strangers. If you're going to stay here long, you'd better make friends with the _Herbergsvater_. He's a pretty good _Kerl_ [fellow], and if you let him know that you've got a little money, he'll look out for you when the Putz makes his inspection now and then. There's nothing, you know, like standing in with them that are _klug_ [clever], and you can bet that fellow is.... What do you say to a schnapps, brother?" He had earned his drink, for he gave me a great many hints which were necessary to successful begging. One of them was about getting a pass. "Now, if you can scrape a little coin together," he said, "I'll tell you how to get a _Flebbe_ that no Putz can find out whether it's forged or not. You see that fellow over there near the window--well, he looks like a fool, but if you can give him five marks, he'll get you a _Wanderbuch_ that'll pass you anywhere. But don't go at him too clumsily, you know; take the matter easy. Nothing like taking your time, brother, is there?" I agreed that this was orthodox tramp doctrine, and determined to think the matter over, which I did, and came to the conclusion that I might eventually get into more trouble with a false pass than without any. And later experience approved the decision. My first night in this tramp-nest was one I shall never forget. I slept with an old beggar in a bed long since given over to other lodgers, who fought us that night as if we were Frenchmen. And the stench in the sleeping-room was similar to that in a pigsty. Any complaint, however, would have been useless, for the price paid was only three cents, and for that sum of money one could not expect very much. Then, too, the host asked for no _Legitimations-Papier_, and this was an advantage which must be set over against most of the annoyances. Nevertheless, I was glad enough to turn out early in the morning and look for a breakfast, which was soon found, but thoroughly European in quantity. Carl continued begging even after his breakfast, while I remained in the lodging-house talking with some of the inmates. I was surprised to see how fairly well dressed the German tramp is. The men in the Herberge were clad much more respectably than their American _confrère_, and seemed to have a desire to appear as decent as possible. Their intelligence was also very fair, every one being able to read and write as well as cipher. This, however, is not so surprising, for they were by no means young. It is my opinion that the majority of German tramps are over thirty years of age. There are some boys on the road, it is true, but by no means the number found in American trampdom. And I am happy to say that my experience convinces me that their treatment by the elder men is much more humane than in my own country. There is not in the German that viciousness which seems ingrained in the character of the American vagrant. The latter is a more generous fellow, however, than the German, as I learned by practical experience. When some of the tramps returned to the Herberge in the afternoon, I tried their good fellowship by asking several for a sechser with which to buy a cup of coffee. I offered my very sore foot as an excuse for not having myself begged. But they were not touched in the slightest. One fellow said: "If you can't beg your own money, why, you'd better get off the road, for no other Chausséegrabentapezirer will hustle for you." An American beggar would, as a rule, have handed me a penny, if he had it. But these men sat drinking their beer, schnapps, and coffee, utterly incapable, at least then, of a bit of brotherly charity. They had plenty of money, too. During the day nearly every one had begged from ninety pfennigs to one mark twenty, while Carl returned about five o'clock with three marks in hand. I think the usual wage for diligent begging is between one mark fifty and four marks, in addition to the three meals. Of course there are a few who are much more successful. One fellow at the Herberge, for instance, who had been in England and could speak English quite well, claimed that he begged forty marks in one week during the previous winter from the Americans in Dresden. Another vagrant told a story of a man he had met in South Germany on the road with two hundred marks in his pocket, which he had collected in two weeks in Munich. It is a great amusement for the tramp off duty to figure out the possibilities of his calling, and to illustrate the same with stories. There was one beggar in the room who even kept an account of his income and expenses. I saw the record for March, and found that his gains had been ninety-three marks and a few pfennigs, not including the meals which he had had in various kitchens where the servants were friendly. I must say right here, however, that such success is found only in cities. For I sampled the charity of the country time after time, and it is worth a bare living only, or, as Carl was wont to say, "One can't get fat on it." We were convinced of this as soon as we had left Magdeburg and started afoot for Brunswick. Carl begged in every village that we passed through, but he could seldom get more than twenty or twenty-five pfennigs, with numerous slices of bread. I made no attempt to beg money, but visited several houses and asked for food, so that my companions might not suspect me. I was fairly well treated, at least quite as charitably as I would have been in the United States, and I think that, taking the country as a whole, the rewards of begging in Germany are much higher than in either England or America. The people seem bound to give, although they have had beggars among them for centuries. My second night on the road was quite as interesting as the first. I had stopped with Carl and two other men in a little village not far from Brunswick, where there was no Herberge, and only one inn, or _Gasthaus_, as it was called. We asked the woman in charge if we could lodge there for the night, but she was by no means friendly, saying we were unclean. She told us to go to the barn, where we could sleep for a groschen apiece. As there was nothing better to do, we followed her instructions, and spent the night, which was cold for April, on some bundles of straw. I was fairly well repaid for this unpleasant experience by the various conversations which I overheard. One tramp was philosophizing in a maundering way over his life on the road, and what first brought him there. He reasoned that as he was born lazy, the blame should be put on his parents, but he finally concluded that the _Schnappsflasche_ also had had a hand in the business. Another companion said: "Why should I work, when I can beg more than I can possibly earn? Now, if I should follow my trade I could earn about eighteen marks a week. But as a beggar I can beat that by ten marks. No, brother; it isn't all the blame of the Schnappsflasche that we're on the road. I, for one, am here because I can do better than anywhere else. Isn't that so?" And he nudged me for an answer. "Well," I said, "we lads on the road seem to have more money than most laborers, but we seldom have a decent place to lay our heads. For instance, what sort of place is this we're in now?" "Yes, that's true," he returned; "but then we're never sick, always happy, and perhaps we're just as well off as anybody else. You forget that we never work, and that's a great thing in our favor. Those lads who have their homes have to work for them, and don't you forget it. It's my opinion that the home isn't worth the labor." I think this latter opinion is very general in German vagrancy, and is one of its main causes. Liquor, however, is just as much of a curse in Germany as elsewhere, and brings more men into trampdom than is usually estimated. The Schnappsflasche is in nearly every tramp's pocket, and he usually empties it twice a day. It is a wonder to me how he can do it, for the schnapps is almost pure alcohol, and burns the throat terribly. Yet I found just outside of Brunswick a female tramp, nearly sixty years of age, who could empty _Die Finne_ in a single "go," and seemed healthy too. This woman was the only feminine roadster I met during the journey, and I think she is one of the very few. About noon of April 14 I arrived in Brunswick with Carl, who was on his way to Bremen, where he intended shipping as a coal-trimmer to New York, if possible. He was disgusted with Germany, he said, and felt that America was the only place for his nervous activity. He was somewhat surprised, however, as I was too, to find in Brunswick three American negroes who seemed to think quite the contrary of their country. One was an "actor," and the other two were ex-waiters, and they were traveling about the community and getting their living by dancing and singing in the streets and saloons. Charley, the actor, said: "We're doin' pretty well; have our three squares a day, and all the booze we want. Can't do better than that at home." I explained this to Carl, as none of the negroes spoke German; but he could not be convinced that gold was not lying loose in the streets of American cities. In the afternoon his hatred of Germany was not quite so intense, as he begged a mark and a half in about two hours. One man that he visited was a member of "The Society against Begging and Vagrancy," and had a sign to that effect on his gate-post; but Carl found him, it seems, a generous Samaritan. This interested me considerably, for I had heard good reports of this society and its members, as well as of its success in fighting vagabondage. I asked several fellows what they thought of the organization. One tramp claimed that he always visited its members,--at least, those having signs on their gates,--for he was quite as apt to be well treated as not. Others were drastic in their criticisms, and said that the society would let a man starve rather than feed him. Carl, I think, was about right when he said that some members of the society fed vagrants, and some did not, and it was all according to chance. [Illustration: AN AUCTION.] From Brunswick a crowd of tramps, including myself, rode in a fourth-class car to a little station called Peine, in the direction of Hanover. A few of the men remained here in order to take in the _Verpflegung-Station_ until the next day. This station, of which there are about two thousand in Germany, is a place where a man professing to be penniless can have a night's lodging, together with supper and breakfast, for a few hours' work. I moved on toward Hanover with fifteen other men who were bound in the same direction. They all had money, and no love for the Verpflegung-Station. We tramped along at a pace of about five kilometers to the hour--the usual gait of tramps when they are compelled to use the highways. They can beg food enough on the road, and thus the walking is not so disagreeable, for the German roads are superb. At one little village where we stopped for refreshments the crowd took the place by storm, and the people were actually frightened into giving us bread and meat. It is true that the men were rather violent and used threatening language, yet there was no need to fear them, as they could hardly have attempted to do any great harm. For the German tramp, as a rule, though a great talker and "blower," is a coward, after all, and when answered rather roughly usually subsides. At the village of Lehrte we again boarded a train, and rode into Hanover late in the evening. Some of my companions went to the Heimath, but the majority hunted out the common Herberge, and I followed the crowd. I was treated in the same fashion as at Magdeburg, and was asked no questions about a pass. There was great excitement in the Herberge over several little auctions, which the tramps were conducting for their own benefit. Some had coats, vests, and trousers to sell, while others were crying up the virtue of old buttons, collars, cuffs, neckties, and even pocket-books, the latter being found in almost every tramp's pocket. He finds them companionable, he says, whether he has any money or not. Several coats sold for five and ten cents apiece, while trousers brought higher prices. Knives were also on the market, and fully a dozen changed hands. I was struck in these auctions by the absence of Jews. In fact, I met only three during the trip, and they were extremely well dressed. I fancy that a tramp's life hardly offers inducements to men of their predilections. Yet one would think that no work and a fair reward for begging might satisfy even their trading propensities. [Illustration: DANCING AROUND A BONFIRE.] The trip from Hanover to Bremen was uninteresting, with only one incident worth recording. Five of us stopped on Easter night at one of the large bonfires that the peasants had built, just outside of Hanover, to commemorate the great holiday. When we arrived they were carousing most jovially, and seemed only too glad to welcome other companions; so we all took part, and danced around the fire, sometimes with the peasant girls, and then again by ourselves or singly. The peasants took no notice of the fact that we were tramps, and shared their sour milk and brown bread with us as if we were their best friends. One old fellow took such a fancy to Carl that he actually gave him a sechser. I was surprised to see him accept it, for the old man needed it much more than he did. This illustrates very truthfully the utter lack of friendly consideration in the character of the German tramp. One of the American species would have returned the penny with thanks, for he is a generous fellow, and can appreciate other interests than his own. But the Chausséegrabentapezirer has the least tender feeling of any beggar of my acquaintance. Even as a boon companion he falls far below the standard, and would never be tolerated in American trampdom. I can now understand why the great majority of German beggars in America are compelled to "flock" by themselves, and to choose companions from their own ranks. Their selfishness bars them out of the true brotherhood. In Bremen poor Carl suffered a keen disappointment. He found that he could not ship as a coal-trimmer without a pass permitting him to leave the country. I advised him to seek work, and to earn money enough to pay his passage to New York. His trade was not overcrowded, and he had had a chance to labor in nearly every town we had visited, and I knew that he could succeed in Bremen. He finally decided to follow my advice; but the resolution weakened him so that I fear for a week at least he was a sorry-looking fellow. When we separated, he said, "Auf Wiedersehen in Sheekago in '93." Indeed, nearly every tramp that I met intended to cross the ocean in '93, and to take part in Germany's exhibit at the fair. Of course they did not all succeed, but some most certainly did. [Illustration: HUNTING FOR HIS PASS.] While I was sitting in the Heimath in Bremen, who should come in but a policeman and a detective. They passed around among the laborers, journeymen, and vagrants, asking a few questions, and looking occasionally at the men's passes. I was in somewhat of a tremor, and expected to be quizzed also. But, as luck would have it, they passed me by, and I escaped a searching. They arrested one tramp, but he was the only unfortunate I met during my travels. I learned afterward that he was sentenced to two days' imprisonment. An American beggar would have told the judge that he could stand on his head that long, but the German took it more seriously. From Bremen I decided to go south, and compare my experiences in northern Germany with tramp life in the vicinity of Cologne. I left Bremen with seven men on the train, and traveled the first day as far as Osnabrück, where I made an unnecessary halt, for I found nothing new or interesting there. There were plenty of tramps, it is true, but they had no news to impart, except that Osnabrück was a poor town. One youngster could hardly say enough against its hospitality. He claimed that he had even begged of the clergymen, and all that he received were "a few paltry pfennigs." I must admit that the boy was not far from correct in his judgment, for I visited several houses, and all I got was a dry piece of bread, which was given me by an old woman wiser than she was generous. Learning that I was a foreigner, she must needs know all about my ancestors, where I had come from, and where I was going. And then she made me listen to a long account of her boy in Piper City,--she was not sure whether it was in North or South America,--and asked me if I had ever met him. I told her that I had not, and she was nearly dumfounded. She thought that in the United States, "where there were so few people," everybody should know everybody else. I left her to her surprise and chagrin. [Illustration: ON THE ROAD.] The city of Münster was my next stopping-place, and a greater contrast to Osnabrück could hardly exist. At the Herberge I learned that the town was considered one of the best between Hamburg and Cologne. The evidence was certainly convincing, for the tramps had all the liquor they could drink, as well as numerous bundles of food. Two fellows were doing a good business in exchanging their bread and _Wurst_ (sausage) for groschen which others had begged instead of something to eat. I invested a few sechser in these wares, and was most bountifully repaid, receiving half a loaf of bread and two good-sized sausages for two and a half cents of our currency. This custom is very prevalent in German trampdom, and will illustrate the machinery of vagrancy. Some men will beg only for food, while others devote most of their lives to looking for money, and in almost any Herberge, even in the Heimath, these two parties can be found trading as if they were in a market. They scold, "jew," and fight one another while the trade is progressing, but when the bargain is finished good fellowship is again resumed. The joviality in the Herberge after the "market" was as boisterous and companionable as if there had not been the slightest trouble. Even the innkeeper took part, and danced around the room with his guests as if he were as much of a tramp as any of them. I think he had been a roadster sometime in his life, for he entered into the schemes and plans as earnestly as the law allows. Some of the men were discussing the number of charitable families in Münster, and more especially those "good" for money. One man, in order to make his point, enumerated by name the families friendly to beggars. The innkeeper, not agreeing with him, gave his own census of the Münster people, and it was most interesting to hear from his lips just what citizens were worth visiting and what not. Having conducted a tramp hotel in the city for years, he had found it to his interests to gather and dispense information useful to his customers. He could tell exactly what house was "good" for a meal or a hand-out, and could also map out the districts sure to yield pfennigs, groschen, or half-mark pieces. It is needless to say that such a man is invaluable to beggars. They hold him dearer than any other member of the clan, and pay him most liberally for his wisdom by spending nearly all of their money in his inn. This they can afford to do, for without his information and protection they would encounter hardships and difficulties insurmountable. During my stay at the Herberge, the proprietor sent out as many as eight fellows to different parts of the town, well posted and equipped for successful begging. Three of these men returned while I was still there, having averaged three marks and a half apiece in about five hours. If they had worked for this length of time their wage would have been about one mark apiece. The journey from Münster to Düsseldorf is so tiresome afoot, and there is so little of interest lying between the towns, that I made the trip by rail, with three companions bound for Bavaria. These men had been tramping around in northern Prussia for nearly two months, and were thoroughly disgusted with their experiences. This was not surprising, however, for the Bavarian as well as the Saxon tramps think there is no prosperity outside of their own provinces, and, wander as much as they may in foreign parts, usually return to their own fields, feeling that they made a mistake in leaving. Begging in these provinces is also much more remunerative than anywhere else in Germany. Even the religion in Bavaria favors mendicancy, and it is only necessary to stand on a Sunday morning in front of some church to make a very fair haul. The tramps loaf around in the neighborhood of the churches and _stossen_ (tackle) the poor Catholics as they pass in and out, usually getting a pfennig at least. One old roadster, thankful that he had lost a leg in the war of 1870, was unusually successful; but I heard afterward that he had been in the city for years, and probably the people take care of him as a sort of relic. He was rather clever, too, and had formed some sage opinions on charity and poverty. "The poor people," he said, "are the best friends we have. They give ten times where the rich man gives once." This is an indisputable fact. In Cologne, where I arrived on April 21, the tramps were planning trips into southern Germany, Switzerland, and the Tyrol. I had intended to make at least one of these excursions, but I was tired, nauseated, and homesick. I made quick work with the towns of Elberfeld, Essen, Barmen, and Dortmund, and once settled down in Berlin, with almanac and gazetteer before me, found I had been fifteen days _auf der Walze_, had traveled over one thousand kilometers, studied more than seventy towns and villages, and met three hundred and forty-one voluntary vagrants, all of them, however, less voluntary than I. The German tramp, if these experiences justify me in judging him, is a fairly intelligent fellow of not more than average tramp education, more stupid and less vicious than his American _confrère_, and with the traits of his nationality well stamped upon him. He is cautious, suspicious to a degree, ungenerous, but fairly just and square-dealing in the company of his fellows. He is too much of a Bohemian to be a Social Democrat, but has not enough patriotism to be easily fired with enthusiasm for his Kaiser. He loves schnapps and hates what he calls the _verdammte Heiligkeit_ such as Die Herberge zur Heimath seeks to cultivate. He has generally served his three years in the army, but will dodge the recruiting officer by skipping his country whenever possible, if he has not. Besides this pervasive lack of patriotism, he has other dangers for the country. In the February riots in Berlin (1891) he was out in force, not for labor rights as against capital, but lending his shoulder to the wheel which he fondly hoped might turn in the direction of a general overthrow of the existing social state and order. In regard to the public on which the German tramp lives and thrives, it is only necessary to say that it is even more inanely generous than its counterpart in the United States. With all its groans under taxes, military and otherwise, it nevertheless takes upon itself voluntarily the burden of the voluntary vagrant--the man who will not work. This is the more surprising when one recollects that the entire theoretical treatment of beggars in Germany is founded on the supposition that each one is a bona-fide seeker of labor. The community practically says to the culprit: You can make use of our Verpflegung-Stationen, where you can work for your lodging and meals, and have also a half-day to search for work, if you can identify yourself as a seeker of labor. We not only offer this, but also attempt to guarantee you, through the efforts of our philanthropists, a casual refuge in Die Herberge zur Heimath, while you are out of work. And if, through untoward circumstances or through your own carelessness and weakness, you have fallen so low that the Stationen and the Heimath cannot take you in because your identification-papers are irregular, and you appear more of a vagabond than an unfortunate laborer, we then invite you into the labor colonies, founded also by our philanthropists, where you can remain until you have earned good clothes and proved yourself worthy. But if we catch you begging, we will punish you as a vagrant; consequently you would do better to make use of all the privileges we offer, and thus break no laws. This is the theory, and I consider it a good one. But the man who will not work passes through these institutions as freely as the man who will, owing to the lack of determined discrimination on the part of the officers, and the desperate cleverness of the offenders. FOOTNOTES: [7] Dr. Berthold is a well-known statistician, writer, and authority on matters pertaining to German labor colonies. II WITH THE RUSSIAN GORIOUNS I It was not my intention, in going to Russia, to tramp there. I planned merely to see St. Petersburg and Moscow, work for a while on Count Tolstoi's farm at Yasnaya Polyana, and then, after a short trip in the south, return to Berlin. I did all these things according to expectation, but I also made a tramp trip. It happened in this way: I had no more than reached the Russian capital when the tramp was forced upon me. As I jumped into the cab with my friend, who had come to the train to meet me, he pointed out about twenty tattered and sorry-looking peasants, marching by us under police escort. "There go some Goriouns," he exclaimed--"look quick!" I had only to follow the men with my eyes to know that they were Russian tramps. "What are the police doing with them?" I asked. "Oh, they probably have no passports and are to be sent back to their villages." "Are there many tramps in Russia?" My friend laughed. "Thousands of them. You can hardly go into a village without meeting them. They are one of the greatest problems Russia has to deal with." I soon saw also that I could not even approach a church without being accosted by them. They stood on the steps and at the doorway of every one I visited, and invariably begged of me, saying, "Radi Krista" ("For Christ's sake"). Even at Yasnaya Polyana, fifteen miles from the nearest town, and several minutes' walk from a highway, the Goriouns put in an appearance. I was there ten days, and at least one called every morning. They all seemed to know about Count Tolstoi's gospel, and came to his home, sure, at least, of something to eat. On the highway, at some distance from the house, I saw bands of ten and twenty marching by every day, and they often camped at a bridge which I crossed on my walks. This continual meeting the tramp and hearing about him naturally made me curious, and I wondered whether it would be possible to make a journey among them. I knew enough Russian at least to make myself understood, and could understand much that was said to me. The great question, however, was whether, as a foreigner, I should be allowed to make such a trip. I talked with Count Tolstoi one day about the matter, telling him some of my experiences in other countries, and asking his advice. "Why not?" he said, in his jovial, pleasant way. "Of course you will have hard work in understanding their dialects, and you can hardly expect to be taken for one of them, but otherwise you ought to get on easily enough. From your pass and other papers the police will see that you are nothing dangerous, and if anything should happen, all you have to do is to send to St. Petersburg. I should like to make such a trip myself, if I were younger. I'm too old now. Once I went on a long pilgrimage and saw a good deal of the life, but of course you will see much more if you go directly into the tramp class. If you decide to make the trip, I wish you would find out how they look upon the authorities, and whether they really believe in what they call their religion. It ought to be very interesting to talk with them on these topics, and perhaps you will be able to gather some useful material--only you will not be permitted to print it here in Russia"; and he smiled. I finally decided to make a trial trip, and was fortunate in finding a Moscow student who was willing to accompany me for a few days. He had tramped perforce in some of the southern provinces, and being much interested in the tramp class in the Vitebsk government, consented to go with me if I would begin my investigations there. I was fortunate also in having brought a tramp outfit with me. It had already seen service in England, Germany, and Italy, and I had taken it along for work in the fields at Yasnaya Polyana. It was a little better than the usual Gorioun dress, but I should really have been ashamed to put on anything shabbier. My friend the student was clad in a patched university uniform, which all of his class have to wear in Russia, and he looked like pictures I have seen of ragged Union soldiers in Libby Prison. We both had a little money in our pockets, and it was not our intention to beg for anything more than bread and milk, and not even for these things unless it was necessary to make good our pose. We reasoned that the peasants of whom we should have to ask for them needed them much more than we did, and I am glad to say that neither of us on this trip, nor I on others, which were sometimes made alone, asked for much that we did not pay for. Our credentials for the journey consisted of our passports, some university papers, and an open letter which I had received in St. Petersburg from Prince Chilkoff, the Minister of Ways and Communication. It was addressed to the director of the Siberian Railway, but I kept it by me for the sake of identification, and it helped me through many a predicament, although the officials to whom it was presented could never get it through their heads how I, an Amerikanski tramp, could be in the possession of such an almighty document. There were times, I fear, when they were tempted to arrest me as an impostor, but they never did--a good fortune which I can only explain on account of the singularity of the situation. The Russian "system" was evidently not prepared for so weird a creature, and I was allowed to pass as an anomaly. With the Moscow student I tramped for three days in the Vitebsk government, between the towns of Polotsk and Dünaburg, as dreary a stretch of country as is to be found anywhere in our West. It was warm August weather, and the sun came down on us in all its Russian fierceness. There were times when I simply had to get under a tree to keep from sun-stroke. At night we slept out of doors, or in haystacks and barns. The peasants always offered us the hospitality of their cabins, as they do to all tramps, but we could not bring ourselves to put up with the vermin we should have found there. In winter, on the other hand, the Gorioun is glad enough to curl up over their stoves, and I suppose that we also should have been, had the weather been cold. As it was, most of the vagabonds we met slept outside, as we did, and we always had plenty of company. On this trip we met two hundred, traveling in bands and families. They invariably wanted to know where I came from, which is the first question they ask, after the greeting, "Strassvuitye," and I told them the truth on each occasion. "America--America," they would say in their simple way. "What government is that in?" meaning what Russian province. I could not make them understand that it was not in Russia at all, which to them is the entire world, but they called me "the far-away brother," and I was probably considered a new species in their class. I never had the feeling that they accepted me as one of their own,--it would have been strange if they had,--but they, at any rate, dubbed me "brother," and this was as much as I could ask. They always wanted to share their simple fare with me, and I soon saw that there was but little danger in associating with them. II There are two types of tramps in Russia, and they may be classified as the authorized and the unauthorized. The first are the so-called religious mendicants, who are protected by the church and tolerated by the police; the second are the common vagabonds. It is these last who constitute, from the Russian point of view, the tramp problem. The religious beggars are considered an inevitable church class, and are taken care of almost as conscientiously as the priests. The common tramps, on the other hand, are looked upon as a very unnecessary burden, and ever since the conversion of Russia to Christianity, laws have been passed and institutions founded for their suppression and reform. It is estimated that in European Russia alone they number over nine hundred thousand, and in Siberia their class represents an even greater proportion of the population. Their national name among themselves is "Goriouns"--mourners, or victims of grief. The word is an invention of their own, but is supposed to come from the Russian word _gore_, meaning sadness. In Russian proper they are called _brodiagi_. If you ask them why they do not work,--and the great majority are perfectly able to do so,--they reply in the forlornest voice mortal ever heard: "Master, I am a Gorioun--a victim of sorrow." They seem to have accepted the philosophy that a certain number of human beings are foreordained to a life of misery and sadness, and they pose as members of this class. On many of their passports I saw such expressions as "Burned out," "Has lost all his relatives," "Has no home," "Will die soon," "Is possessed of the pitiful spirit," and others of a like nature, which they bribe officials to write, or themselves forge. I could have had similar explanations put on my own passport. There are tramps who make a regular business of this kind of imposture, and it is another evidence of how difficult it is to make even a passport tell the truth. In Germany the same trick is practised by tramps, and in both countries the beggar can buy false passes which the police cannot detect. I saw several in Russia which looked exactly like the genuine thing, and, had I wished to appear to be a Russian, could have bought one any day for ten rubles. In looks and dress the Gorioun acts out to a nicety the story which his papers are supposed to substantiate. Never have I seen such sad faces as these men and women have when begging. At heart they are capable of considerable fun and boisterousness, but they affect a look of despondency, which many of them retain even when off duty. In other respects they resemble very closely the ordinary peasant, or _muzhik_. They all have an immense shock of hair, parted in the middle and chopped off roughly at the edges. The face is generally covered with a huge beard, which gives them a backwoodsman look not always indicative of their character. In America, for instance, they would be taken by tramps for "Hoosiers," but, in their way, they are just as clever and sharp as the hobo who would laugh at them. Indeed, I know of no hobo who can equal them in facial trickery and disguise, and wherever this is the necessary qualification for successful begging they are past masters. Their clothes are invariably rough and patched, and if by some chance they get a good suit it is pawned or sold immediately. The usual peasant shirt or blouse takes the place of a coat, and the trousers are tucked into the boots also in peasant fashion. A tea-pot hangs at the belt, and a bundle, containing all their possessions, is slung over the shoulder. Thus they tramp about the country from village to village, year in and year out, and are always distinguishable from the fact that on meeting a _Gospodinn_ (gentleman), or any one else of whom they can beg, off come their greasy caps, down go their great shocky heads, and they say, "Radi Krista." [Illustration: SLEEPING IN A BARN.] When tramping on the highway, they average about fifteen miles a day, but a great many never make over five. One old man on the Kursk road, between Tula and Orel, told me that he was satisfied if he covered three versts a day,--a verst is two thirds of a mile,--and he expected that it would take him the entire autumn and part of the winter to reach Odessa, whither he was bound. In this respect the Goriouns are like all other vagabonds; they love rest, and if they find a good place, stick to it as long as possible. In the country they make their homes with the peasants, sleeping in summer in sheds and haystacks, and in winter in the peasants' cabins. Plagues though they are, the peasant always gives them shelter, and it very seldom happens that they die of cold or starvation in districts thickly populated. I could have stopped for days in every village I passed through, and the peasants would even have protected me from the police if it had been in their power. Their own life is so hard that it comes natural to take pity on the tramp, and they all have the feeling that favors thus shown prepare a place for them in the heaven of their imagination. Indeed, the Gorioun plays on this feeling in begging of them. I often heard him say, in asking for alms: "It will help you out above"; and his humble friends seemed pleased to be thus assured. Men predominate in the Gorioun class, but in no other country that I have visited are there so many women and families "on tramp." They are all mixed up together, men, women, and children, and no great effort is made to keep even the families intact. I was told by tramps that in the peasants' cabins there is very little separation even between the peasants and the vagabonds, and on cold nights they all curl up in a heap on the tops of the great piles of masonry which serve them as stoves. In large cities they live in lodging-houses and night-shelters. In St. Petersburg these places are found mainly in what is called the "Siennaia," about five blocks behind the Kazan cathedral. There are entire alleyways and courts in this district given up to the Goriouns, and in one house alone, Dom Viazemski, over ten thousand lodge every night. They have the right to return to their planks at any time during the day, and speak of them as their homes--their _dom_. The cost of a "spot" on the benches is thirty-five copecks (about twenty cents) a week, in advance. The life that goes on here is pretty much the same as in lodging-houses everywhere, but there are a few peculiar features to be noticed. In the first place, there is a chief, or _ataman_, of the Goriouns of each room, and he is given the rights and privileges of a bully. He is the strongest and most daring of all, and his companions allow him to play "the almighty act," as the hobo would say, in their confabs and councils. Any tramp who refuses to knuckle down to him is considered either a spy or a rival candidate, in which latter case he must fight it out with fists, and sometimes with knives. If he is successful he takes the ataman place, and holds it until some one else dislodges him. In case he is taken for a spy he is shunned by all concerned, and I was told that every year several men are killed on this suspicion. When an actual raid by the police is planned, the ataman generally gets wind of it beforehand, and all lights are put out before the police arrive. They can then accomplish very little, and while I was in St. Petersburg several of their attempted raids ended unsuccessfully. Another queer custom is the way each man takes care of his boots. In every country the _Schuhwerk_, as the Germans say, is prized, perhaps, more than any other part of the wardrobe, but the reason in St. Petersburg is unique. Thanks to his boots, the Gorioun can be enrolled as a torch-bearer or mourner at funerals, and this is one of his most lucrative employments. The agencies which manage funerals recruit from the tramp class so many mourners for each interment; about thirteen thousand are employed in this way every year. The agencies furnish the suitable clothes and pocket-handkerchiefs--everything, in fact, but the shoes, which the tramp must be able to show on his feet, or he will not be hired. When a funeral is "on," the tramps gather at the Nikolski market, and are selected by an employee of the agency. Those chosen are conducted to the house of the deceased, and there, under a porch, in a shed, or even in the court, ten, twenty, or thirty of them, according to the elaborateness of the funeral, undress themselves entirely, even in the dead of winter, and put on the mourner's garb. Their own clothing is rolled up in a bundle and taken to the cemetery in a basket, where, after the ceremony, it must be put on again. The promised wage for this service is forty copecks a man, but with tips and drinks it usually amounts to a ruble. The St. Petersburg street-gamins have a way of crying out, "Nachel li?" ("Hast thou found it?") to the Goriouns as they file along--an allusion to their daylight torches. Some very funny scenes take place when the boys get too saucy; for the men forget, in their anger, the solemnity of the situation, and, dropping their torches, run after the boys, much to the consternation of the agency and the family concerned. The funeral over and the money in their pockets, they return to the lodging-house for an uproarious night spent in drinking _vodka_. When the last drop is gone, they fall over on their planks senseless, and to see them in this condition makes one fancy he is looking on in a morgue. They lie there as if dead, and the stench in the room could not be worse if they were actually in a state of decay. One would think, under such circumstances, there must be a heavy percentage of sickness and mortality among them, but I think this is not true. I saw a number of crippled and deformed beggars, but otherwise they seemed a fairly healthy lot, and never anywhere have I seen such herculean bodies. Many of them looked as if they could lift an ox, and in one of the few squabbles that I witnessed, they knocked one another about in a way that would have done honor to professional pugilists. However, these knock-down fights are not frequent. For a people so degraded they are phenomenally sweet-tempered; in England and America, tramps with their strength would be measuring it on all occasions. In the lodging-houses, as in the peasants' cabins, men and women are mixed up together, and there seems to be no effort at all to keep them separated. They say that they are married, or "belong to the family," and the _Starosta_ (proprietor) allows them to keep together. Their children--and each couple has its full share--are used for begging purposes; indeed, they are the winning card of the Russian tramp. If they are deformed or crippled, so much the better. The food of these tramps is probably the simplest bill of fare known among European vagabonds. On the road they seldom have more than black bread and milk, and even in towns they are satisfied with the addition of a dish of potatoes. Meat they know very little about, and it almost never occurs to them to spend their money for a good steak; they prefer to buy vodka. Of course there are exceptions to this rule; in every country there are beggars who keep up with the latest styles and indulge in a gourmet's dishes, but they are not common in Russia. There is another trait of the Goriouns to record--their clannishness. In almost every government of the empire they are organized as compactly as a trade-union, and even in St. Petersburg, strict as the police are, they have their peculiar _artel_. It was impossible for me to become a member of these corporations. I should have had to knuckle down very submissively to some ataman, or bully, and this I was not willing to do. It would also have been necessary to learn the different dialects, and I had all I could do to make use of my small Russian vocabulary. Each artel has its own peculiar lingo, and it is almost as hard to learn as Russian itself. Even the native inhabitants know very little about such dialects, and the students who traveled with me had as much difficulty as I did in understanding them. Fortunately, however, the tramps can also speak Russian, and we generally conversed with them in this language. I give here what I learned about their various artels, but it is in no sense an exhaustive report. There are many of which I heard nothing, and it would take a book to describe them all. In Moscow one of the most notorious clans is the so-called "Gouslitzki," or "Old Believers," who came originally from the district of Bogorodsk. They are mixed up with the regular working population of the town and have no particular sign by which a stranger could distinguish them, but their business is entirely criminal. They counterfeit money, forge passports and baptismal certificates, beg and steal, and the police have to keep a continual watch over them. Ostensibly their business is manufacturing trinkets, colored images, and toys, but these are merely subterfuges to gain them the privilege of standing on the sidewalks as hawkers. In their lodging-houses--and there are several supported by them alone--they live under the direction of a head man whom they must obey, and a certain percentage of their day's earnings has to be contributed to a common fund. From time to time this fund is divided equally among all the members of the organization, but it is almost immediately given back as "renewed stock." The Gouslitzki are unlike most of their class in being very parsimonious, and they have the reputation of drinking very little--some not at all. They speak two languages, Russian and a dialect which is practically their mother-tongue. They have been settled in Moscow for generations, and the police find it impossible to drive them out. The "Chouvaliki," another well-known gang, are mainly peasants, but they come also from the Moscow government, being settled in the districts of Veresisk and Mozhaisk. It would be very peculiar in America to see a band of farmers starting off on begging and marauding trips, but this happens in Russia, and the Chouvaliki are of this class. In the census of Russia they are put down as peasants, and they do pretend to work a part of the year, but they are known from Moscow to the Don as the begging Chouvaliki. They go on the road twice a year, and exploit by preference the governments of Tamboff, Voronesh, and so on down to the Don. The Russians call them brigands, and tell frightful stories about their robberies, but the Goriouns spoke of them merely as beggars, and I fancy this is what they are. On returning from their trips, which last sometimes several weeks, they spend in one orgy all the money they have taken in. It is in White Russia, and above all in the government of Vitebsk, farther north, that the tramps form these beggars' organizations. During my journey through the Vitebsk government I heard of them right and left, and it is this district that contributes largely to the criminal population of St. Petersburg. The rich Ukraine is also a notorious haunt. At Kharkoff, for instance, I got into a regular nest of them, called "Tchortoff Gniezda" (Nest of Devils). They live there in dirty little cabins and underground caves, a close community with its ataman and common funds. They start out in the morning on their begging trips, and return at night for debauches, those who have been most successful inviting their _rakli_, or pals, to celebrate with them. There is a careful division, or _douban_, of all the spoils taken in during the day, and each one receives his share, minus the contribution to the common tribe. In Kazan, the Tatar town on the Volga, there is an artel of beggars whose origin goes back to the taking of Kazan by Ivan IV, and they are known all over Russia as the "Kazanskia Sieroty" (the Kazan Orphans). Although Mussulmans, they beg "in the name of Christ" ("Radi Krista"). They will beg even from other beggars if they do not belong to their organization, and consider everybody their prey who is not an "Orphan." They can only be compared to the tramps who exploit the governments of Samara and Saratoff, and those coming from fifteen villages of the districts of Saransk and Insarsk, in the government of Penza. These last, although officially peasants, are all organized into narrow begging corporations, and call themselves "Kalousni," which comes from their dialect word _kalit_, meaning "to reap," or, as they would say, "to beg." In Moscow, on the other hand, the generic dialect term for beggars is "Zvonary," which comes from _zvonit_, also meaning "to beg." The Kalousni, or "Reapers," start out on their begging trips in their wagons immediately after harvest. All of them who can move, excepting the very oldest and youngest, depart for "the work," as it is called. Those who have no blind or deformed children of their own rent them in neighboring villages. The village of Akchenas is the center of this trade, and peasants send their deformed children there to be marketed off. In the Galitzin village, in the government of Penza, amounting to three hundred cabins, five hundred of the inhabitants are peasant beggars; in Akchenas, one hundred and twenty cabins, there are only four persons who are not "Reapers"; in Germakoff, another hamlet of the district, there is not an inhabitant who does not go kalit (begging). The return of these bands to their homes is celebrated by fêtes and orgies. The main one is on November 8, St. Michael's day, when they spend every copeck they have collected. The next trip takes place in winter, and they return to their villages by Lent. The third return is just before Pentecost. Although I did not tramp in Siberia, I traveled there and heard much of the local tramps. They are not so definitely organized as in European Russia,--many travel entirely alone,--but I saw and heard of several categories. On the highway between Ekaterinburg and Tiumen the traveler is accosted by beggars known as the "Kossoulinski." They live exclusively by begging, and in summer sleep out of doors along the route between the towns mentioned. At Ekaterinburg there are also unnamed gangs of young men and little boys and girls who are continually begging of the inhabitants. They are generally the children of deported convicts, or those of peasants who were driven by famine out of neighboring districts. If I could have got into the wooded parts of Siberia I might also have made the acquaintance of that queer product of Siberian prison life, the runaway convict tramp. Early in the spring he makes a dash for liberty, sometimes being shot down in the attempt, and then again succeeding. He runs to the woods and lives there until autumn, when, if there is no hope of getting back to European Russia, he gives himself up and returns to prison again. In the spring, "when the birds call him," as one of his songs pathetically relates, he makes another dash for the trees. Only at night does he venture into the villages, and then merely for a moment to snatch the food left for him on the window-sills by the generous-hearted peasants. He grabs the bread, or whatever it is that they have set out, and then scampers back to the woods like a wolf. III Religious beggars in Russia are a class by themselves. In giving alms to them the average Russian thinks that he is making so much more likely his welcome in heaven, and they, of course, stand by him in the conceit. If you give them a ruble they will swear that you are going to heaven, and even twenty copecks make one's chance pretty good. The most easily distinguished type is what is called the religious lay mendicant. He is always standing around the churches in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and everybody who has visited these cities will recall him. He is generally an old peasant, begging for some village church, and the police or church authorities give him the necessary passes and stamped documents. He stands at a church door or near some shrine, bareheaded and with a little plate in his hand, covered with cloth on which is embroidered the cross. This is a _passe-partout_ wherever he goes, and serves as an excuse for entering restaurants, railway-stations, and other public places. As a Russian gentleman said to me: "You can't drive a man out with the cross in his hand," and he is consequently allowed to go pretty much where he pleases. Unfortunately, however, it is not very difficult to imitate him, and there are a number of Goriouns in Russia, posing as religious lay mendicants. They counterfeit the necessary papers, buy the plate and cross, and then beg with all their might. Occasionally they are discovered and severely punished, but the winnings from this kind of begging are so tempting--sometimes as much as ten rubles, or five dollars a day--that they are willing to run the risk. There are also monk beggars who proceed in the same way as those of the lay order, except that they wear monk costumes. It is consequently not easy for the common tramp to imitate them, but it has been done. Authorized and permitted though these monks are, there is but little need for them to beg, for their convents are almost without exception rich. The more they have, however, the more they want, and so the monks are sent out to beg of poor and rich alike. An amusing story is told of how one of these convents was relieved of some of its superfluous wealth. During the Crimean War Nicholas I borrowed ten million rubles from the Laura monastery at Kieff, and gave in exchange his note like any other mortal. Alexander II, after coming to the throne, made a tour of the provinces and visited Kieff, where, according to custom, the first thing he did was to call at the Laura. He was received by the metropolitan and clergy in great array, and during the ceremony the note of Nicholas was presented to him, of course for payment, on a beautiful plate. He took the bit of paper, read it carefully, and then, holding it high in the air, said in a very solemn voice: "Behold the most touching proof of the patriotism of Russia's clergy when she has need of them! I cannot better thank you than by giving you, as a glorious memento, this autograph of my august father." And that ended the matter for all time. The pilgrims are another type of religious beggar. They also are mainly old peasants, who have made a vow to go afoot to some distant shrine, often a thousand miles away. They take with them only money enough to buy candles to place at the altars where they worship en route, and trust to the mercy of the people they meet for food and shelter. No peasant would refuse them hospitality, and they are taken in whenever they appear. Money is never offered them, because it is known that they will not accept it. All they want is food enough to keep body and soul together, and this they feel free to ask for. These pilgrimages are very frequent in Russia, and are always the result of a vow, made sometimes many years before. Each famous monastery, like the Soloviecki, near the White Sea, the Troitzke, near Moscow, the Laura, at Kieff, and many others, has its days of "grand pardon," which attract pilgrims from the farthest points of the empire. They travel invariably on foot, and occasionally in bands, but the typical pilgrim goes alone. His destination is sometimes even Jerusalem. This is often the case among devoted monks, who make this the last act of a life consecrated to the church. The peasants feed and shelter the pilgrim, and he is one of their main objects of veneration. There is one more class of authorized beggars in Russia--the nuns. These women, with long robes and pointed bonnets, generally travel in couples. They beg on what is called the "contract system." An arrangement is made with a convent by which they are allowed to exploit certain districts, and they agree in return to give the convent a certain percentage of their winnings; all over this amount belongs to them personally. They are taxed according to their ability, the percentage varying from one to three rubles a day. When they are young and pretty, which they sometimes are, they do very well. As a Russian who has often given to them said to me: "You can't give copper to a pretty woman," and they know wonderfully well how to make their attractions tell. They are acquainted with all the "good places," and learn quickly to discern the generous giver. There is no doubt, however, that much is given them without any thought of the church or religion, and it is an open secret in Russia that there is a great deal of corruption among them. I myself saw them in a state of intoxication several times, and their conduct was not at all in keeping with their religious calling. IV Something remains to be said about the causes of vagabondage in Russia and what is being done to suppress it. The religious mendicants must be left out of the discussion, for they are not supposed to be a part of the problem. It is the Gorioun class that the Russians are particularly anxious to be rid of, and it is they who correspond to the tramp class in more Western countries. The love of liquor is the main cause of their degradation. Two thirds could be made respectable men and women if they were free of their passion for drink, and until they are, I see no hope of bettering them. They will even steal from the churches, religious as they are, if impelled by thirst for vodka, and it is simply impossible for an employer to have anything to do with them. In St. Petersburg a large number of them are discharged mechanics and day-laborers, who know perfectly well how to earn their living, but have lost position after position on account of their loose habits. The minute they get a week's wage, they go off and spend it for drink, and then there is no place for them. Besides this strictly individual cause, there are certain economic facts which help to explain the situation. The lowering of railroad fares has started a regular hegira of peasants toward the towns, where they imagine that they are to make their fortunes. We think in America that a great deal might be done to change the lot of outcasts if they could be led back to the country and settled on farms, but Russia teaches us plainly enough that this alone will not suffice. There must be something besides country air and surroundings to offset the attractions and temptations of city life. In Russia it has been found that after the peasant has once experienced these attractions he is never happy on the farm. Over seven thousand peasant tramps are sent away from St. Petersburg every year, but a still larger number find their way back. There is a case on record where a man was sent away one hundred and seven times and returned after each expulsion. When one takes into consideration that the majority of all those thus sent away receive new clothes before leaving, it is easy to see what an expense they are to the town, and the most of them sell their new clothes at the first opportunity. This is one of the weakest points in all the Russian methods with tramps. The police return vagabonds to their villages, expecting them thus to be kept away from city temptations, but the trouble is that they cannot hold them there. They run back to the towns the first chance they get, and then there has to be another expensive expulsion. Lately some of the governors of inland districts have petitioned the police to stop doing this, explaining that tramps thus returned corrupt their village companions. Besides returning a beggar to his village, there are also light punishments. If he is arrested for the first time in St. Petersburg, he is brought before a commission, by which he is questioned and then handed over to a more special committee, before which he must submit to another cross-questioning. If he can prove that he has been driven to beg by poverty alone, he is recommended to the care of the poor authorities of his district. If he has been arrested several times before, he is taken immediately to a justice, by whom he is condemned to a punishment, varying, according to circumstances, from a month's to three months' hard labor in prison. These are only such beggars as have been caught in the act, so to speak, and have papers certifying to their identity. Those who are found without passports are taken in hand by the police alone. If nothing very bad is found against them, they are allowed to go free, if some one will stand sponsor for them; in this case they must send to their home authorities for a passport, and if it is received they can remain in the town for a period of three months. It is possible with good conduct to have this term of probation prolonged to nine months, but after that, unless very good reasons are given, the man must return to his village. There are also reformatory and charitable institutions which seek a regeneration of the tramp on philanthropic grounds. Recently a number of workhouses have been put up in the largest towns, and great hopes are placed in these very praiseworthy undertakings. The present empress has taken them all under her personal protection, and there is every likelihood that they will be well supported. The effort is thus made to offer every tramp a chance to work; they are to serve as a test-house where the Gorioun can show what he really is. He is not compelled to make use of them, but if it should be discovered that he knew about them and still begged, he would be punished very severely. Both men and women are received, and they can earn their daily bread by working for it. Lodging must be found elsewhere, but children can be left during the day in a crèche belonging to the institution. Father John of Kronstadt is credited with having founded the first of these workhouses, but it is only lately that they have become popular. If well managed they ought to do good, for the great question in Russia, as well as everywhere else, is to find out who the really deserving are, and the workhouses can be of great assistance in developing the facts. How much they will aid in lessening the professional vagabondage of the country remains to be seen. If the police--and everybody knows what powers the Russian police have--are unable to accomplish this, it is hardly likely that the workhouses can do much more. Indeed, I fear that nothing can root out entirely this class in Russia. It is too old and settled to give up the struggle without a long resistance, and there are traditions dear to all Russians which will forever aid the Gorioun in his business. A Russian prince with whom I talked about the possibility of getting rid of the tramp class said to me: "It is simply out of the question. We are all beggars, every mother's son of us. The aristocrat begs a smile of the czar, and others ask for honors, positions, decorations, subsidies, and pensions, and it is these beggars who are the most persistent of all. Russia is the land of _na tchai_ ["for tea," like _pour boire_ in French, and _Trinkgeld_ in German], and no laws or imperial ukase will ever make it any different." III TWO TRAMPS IN ENGLAND The British tramp had long been an object of curiosity with me. I felt that I knew his American cousin as well as it is possible to know him by living with him, and I had learned the ways of the German _Chausséegrabentapezirer_. Among my friends in the university at Berlin was a student of philosophy who also regarded the English tramp with interest so great that he was willing to make a tramp journey with me to discover and study him. He doubted somewhat his ability to pass for an undeveloped vagrant, but decided to try it. We suffered, I am proud to say, no diminution of our friendship in this curious comradeship in a new field. One February day we drew up our agreement, and on the same day left for Hamburg. There we took ship for Grimsby, on a boat carrying mainly steerage passengers. Our fellow-travelers were twenty-two homeward-bound sailors, an old woman, and a young girl on her way to London to marry a man with whom she had fallen in love by telegram--at any rate, so she said. We were all cooped up together in a nasty little hole absolutely without ventilation. I felt sorry for the women, and they, in their kind-hearted way, said that they were sorry for me, "because I looked so sick-like." But I anticipate a little. While we were still lying at the dock we had an amusing experience. Just as the gang-plank was nearly ready to be hauled in, two detectives came on board. I was surprised that they had not appeared before; for it is one of Kaiser Wilhelm's strong points to see that none of his young men, or "dear servants," as he calls them, get out of his domain before they have done their duty in his army. The sailors laughed at them, and told them to go home; meanwhile Ryborg and I were supposedly asleep. That there was method in this drowsiness I cannot deny, for Ryborg had no really current pass, and we were both fearful of being detained. We were finally discovered, and when one of the officers asked me if we were sailors, I rather naturally said, "Yes," being half asleep, and having seen that they had not disturbed the true seamen. The man was determined to see my passport, however, and the long sheet of paper amused him considerably. He called it _ein mächtiges Ding_, and I patriotically told him he was right, and that it was about the "greatest thing" he had ever handled. He failed to see the point, and poked Ryborg. Then I quaked a little, but laughed inwardly too, when Ryborg handed him his student's card; for it did seem odd to find a student of philosophy in that miserable den. The detective thought so too, and claimed that he did not exactly understand the situation. "Are you a sailor, a workman, an American, or what?" said the officer. "Ich bin--ein Studierter" ("I am--a learned one"), gasped Ryborg. That settled the matter. The detectives walked off, and we were left for the following thirty-two hours to our North Sea misery, which was of such a character that, when we landed, we vowed never to go to sea again. Grimsby was uninteresting, so we went straight on to Hull. As this was the point where our vagabondage was properly to begin, I soon had my eye on watch for what American tramps call a "town bum." I found one in a main street, and introduced myself thus: "I say, Jack, can you tell us where the moochers hang out in these parts?" "You're a Yank, ain't you?" said he. This I acknowledged, at the same time asking, "Why?" "Because I know a lot of blokes over in your country, an' I'm thinkin' o' goin' over myself. How d' you think I'd like it?" "Tiptop," I answered; "but you know they're givin' the likes of us ninety days in Chicago now." "O-oh, well, p'r'aps I'll go over later," was his rejoinder; and then he told me where the moochers were to be found. "You see thet corner! Well, just turn thet, an' keep hoofin' along till you come to an alley. Go up to the top, then down on your right to the bottom, an' ask roun' there somewhere for Blanket Row. You'll find all the moochers you want there; but look out for the Robert and the Dee [the policeman and the detective]. They'll give you seven days if they catch you moochin'." [Illustration: A LODGING-HOUSE.] We found Blanket Row all right, and, luckily enough, at No. 21, a kip-house (lodging-house), or doss-house, as some call it, nicknamed "The Dog's Home." It looked rather uninviting, and we gazed at it carefully before entering. After a little consultation we made up our minds to go in, so we walked through a long and dirty passage, pushed open a creaky, rickety door, and found ourselves in a smoky, dirty hole containing about fifty moochers. I was greeted with: "Hello, Yank! Where'd you come from?" The voice came from the fire, and I walked over from the door, and found as miserable a specimen of vagrancy as one often sees. I sat down, and told him a long "ghost-story" (yarn), and he returned the favor in the same coin. When he was convinced that I was one of the fraternity, he pointed out various things of interest. "Them fires," said he, "is where you cook your scoff [food]. You can make tea, too, any time you like, provided, of course, you've got the tea. You'll find all the pots, cans, pans, and boilers in that corner; they b'long to the missus, but we use them. Them cupboards over there is where you put your grub, ef you're stayin' here any time; they cost a tanner [six-pence] apiece, but they ain't worth hawkin'. My stomach's the only cupboard I need. That piece o' paper on the wall's the only sort of picter they've got in the place." I looked over at the wall, and saw upon it a notice to the effect that smallpox was in the district, and that persons would be vaccinated free of charge at a place specified. All this while Ryborg was doing his best to play tramp, and the stories he told, the tough way in which he tried to tell them, the half-and-half effects they achieved, and his general out-of-place condition, were almost as interesting to me as the real moochers. I overheard him telling one of the men that he was "a sailor by inclination, but a tough by temperament." One of the tramps had taken a fancy to him, and was determined to be hospitable, so he boiled a large can of tea, and made poor Ryborg drink, drink, drink, till he had actually taken two quarts of the beverage at one sitting. He told me afterward that he had made up his mind, if any more were offered him, to pour it into his pocket, and trust to luck not to get caught. The Dog's Home in the second story consisted principally of beds. The price of each is threepence a night, and this is the common price all over Great Britain, except in the so-called "Models," where a penny more is charged simply for the very deceitful name. I am sorry to say that the house was not much cleaner in the second story than in the first, if the tramps told us the truth. They all agreed in saying that the place was "crummy" (infested with vermin); consequently we decided to sleep elsewhere; for we wanted a good night's rest, and there was nothing especially to be gained by staying there. We lived in the "home" in the daytime, however, and were on the watch for everything of interest. As for the "sweet charity" of Hull, I learned that most of the moochers were satisfied when they could beg a "bob" (shilling) a day besides "scoff," and some seemed happy on fourpence a day. The old men and the young boys were most successful in begging. There were vagrants of middle age, and some much younger, who did fairly well; but they lacked the determined spirit of the grandfathers and the kids. I had noticed this before in America, and suppose it is because the very old and the very young tramps realize that they must rely on their begging for subsistence, while the vagrants of twenty-five and thirty know that they have an alternative in work when luck goes against them, and are consequently less in earnest. My companion and I, being somewhat better dressed than most of the lodgers, were objects of considerable interest. Our hats, peculiarly American in style, were the main curiosities. They proclaimed our nationality wherever we went. Never in my life have I been so bothered with stares. One day I took off my hat in a small crowd of people, and asked a bystander if he saw anything peculiar about it. He admitted that he did not; but still the citizens of Hull guyed me unmercifully, and, for that matter, so did their countrymen elsewhere. [Illustration: AN ENGLISH TYPE.] I had been accustomed in America to dress fairly well when tramping, and the very clothes I was wearing in England had seen service at home and in Germany also; therefore I was quite unprepared for their comical reception by the British. There was only one man in the Dog's Home who appreciated our style, and he was a countryman not so very long out of America. He was a most interesting fellow; had been both workman and tramp at home; but one day bade good-by to Hartford, Connecticut, and decided to go abroad. He came to Glasgow on a cattle-ship, expecting to get a return pass on his arrival, but was deceived, and put ashore with only four shillings in his pocket. Naturally he was angry, and made up his mind to see Scotland, England, and Wales at the expense of Scotchmen, Englishmen, and Welshmen. It was a courageous thing to do, if not a moral one; and, perhaps, it was not so very wicked, for his one ambition seemed to be to see the Tower of London. He had been "on tramp" about two months, had had some interesting experiences, and had become somewhat opinionated. Hearing that he had been in Scotland, I was interested to know whether he liked the country and had learned any of the tramp dialect that one might need there. "To tell the truth, mate," he said, "I was too drunk. You see, I got hold of a fellow in Glasgow who had some boodle, and we chummed it together till the boodle was gone; and the only thing I can tell you about Glasgow or Edinburgh is that they've got a fine pile of stone in Edinburgh, right in the main street, to the memory of that story-writer--you know his name--what is it?" I suggested "Scott," and he went on: "Yes; that's it--Scott. Well, since I've been out of Scotland I've had some hard times, and I'd 'a' been in Ameriky long ago if I hadn't pawned my rubber boots. I tell you, Jack, I'd ruther be lynched in our country than die a natural death over here; and as for moochin' and lodgin', why, I can beg in five minutes in New York more money than I can here in a day. As it is, I'm a little bit of a wonder to some of these fellows, because I'm so dead struck on havin' the pleasures of life. I look for 'em till I get 'em, you know, and so fur I've had my bob a day, besides chuck. And that's more than some of these blasted gay-cats can say. Did you ever in your life see such badly faked bums? They make me think of prehistoric gorillas. Half the time only a few parts of their bodies are covered in, and yet they think they can batter more when togged that way. How's that for bein' bughouse [crazy], eh? Oh, well, you can laugh all you want to; but by the time you've seen two per cent. of what I've seen, you'll say, 'Thet Yank warn't fur from bein' right.'" He promised to have another talk with me at the World's Fair. The fellow was correct about the clothes and the filthiness of the English moocher. Generally he dresses in a way that in America would be thought indecent and in Germany criminal. He is too lazy to clean up, if he had the chance, and harbors vermin as if he liked them. It is not surprising that lodging-houses are so unclean; for if the proprietors of these places should admit only decent tramps, their houses would be left without occupants in a very short time. This is not an attractive theme, but it is one for the practical reformer to treat; for I am convinced that when a man becomes callous in regard to filth, his reformation will be far to seek. And there is nothing that can make a purely temporary vagrant a thoroughgoing one so surely as the inability to keep himself clean in person. One little incident in the Dog's Home is worth telling, for it illustrates a trait that is international among tramps. A kid had in some way offended an older moocher, and the man was on the point of striking him, when the Hartford tramp stepped forward and said: "You wouldn't hit a kid, would you?" The man started back and answered: "Well, I ortn' to, I know; but he plagued me like a reglar little divil." That is a trait in trampdom, and even among criminals, that I have noticed wherever I have been. My own case illustrates it also. I am somewhat smaller than the average man, and I have no doubt that I have often enough offended some of my cronies; but never in all my experience have I had a real row or been struck by a tramp. I remember once quarreling with a vagabond until I became very hot-headed. I was preparing boldly for action, when the great, burly fellow said: "I say, Cigarette, if ye're a-goin' to fight, I'm a-goin' to run." Such sentiment is fine anywhere, and doubly fine when found, as it is so often, in the life of the vagrant beggar. From Hull, Ryborg and I walked to York, visiting nearly every kip-house on the way, as this place is the best for studying English moochers. In the kip at Beverley we learned that Mr. Gladstone was always good for a bob--a statement that I very much doubt; for if it had been widely known, the Grand Old Man would have gone to the workhouse, so numerous are English beggars. Another story told there was that of the "hawker tramp." He had a little girl with him, and the two evidently did a very fair business. "We've just come from Edinbro," said the old man, "and altogether we ain't done bad; but we'd been nowhere 'thout the bible.[8] You see, now'days in England, to beg much of a swag a feller has got to have some sort of a gag, and the hawkin' gag is as good as any. We've had shoe-strings, pencils, buttons, and lots of other things in stock; but all the good they've done us, and all the good they do any moocher, is to get him into a house or pub with a good excuse. When he's once in, he can beg good enough; and if Robert comes along, he can claim that he's simply peddlin'. See? Besides, I've got a license, in order to be safe; it only costs five bob, an' is well worth havin'. If you're goin' to beg much in these parts, you'd better git one, too." This is the "hawkin' gag," and very popular it is, too. In America it has almost exhausted itself, with all the other peddling tricks, excepting always the "mush faker," or umbrella peddler and mender, and the "fawny man," or hawker of spurious jewelry. In England simple and artistic begging is by no means so well done as in America. The English moocher has to resort to his "gag," and his "lurks" are almost innumerable. One day he is a "shallow cove" or "shivering Jimmy "; another he is a "crocus" (sham doctor): but not very often is he a successful mendicant pure and simple. He begs all the time, to be sure, but continually relies on some trick or other for success. On arriving at York, we went at once to Warmgate, the kip-house district, and picked out the filthiest kip we could find. The inmates were principally in pairs; each moocher had his Judy (wife), and each little kid had his little Moll (sister). These children are the very offspring of the road, and they reminded me of monkeys. Yet one has to feel sorry for them, since they did not ask for life, and yet are compelled to see its meanest and dirtiest side. Their mothers, when they are not drunk, love them; and when they are, their fathers have to play mothers, if they are not drunk themselves. Never in my life have I seen a more serio-comic situation than in that York kip-house, where two tramps were rocking their babies to sleep. Moochers--Bohemians of the Bohemians--fondling their babies! I should far sooner have looked for a New York hobo in clergyman's robes. But tramping with children and babies is a fad in English vagabondage. From this I turned to listen to a very domestic confab between a Judy and her mate. She had just washed her face, and made herself really pretty. Then she sat down on a bench close to her man, and began to pet him. This bit of discourse followed: "Just go and get a shave now, Jim. I'll give you a wing [penny], if you will, for the doin' o' 't." "Bah! What's the matter uv my phiz, anyhow?" "Naw; you doan't look purty. I can't love you thet way." "Blast yer love, anyhow! Doan't keep a-naggin' all the time." "Please, now, git a scrape. I'm all washed up. You mought look as decent as I do." "Lemme alone; I'm on the brain [I'm thinking]." "Well, you mought have me on the brain a little more than you do. Didn't I git you out o' bein' pinched the other day?" He looked at her, relented, patted her head, and went for a shave. The surprise to me in all this was the genuine wifeliness of that Judy. She was probably as degraded as womankind ever gets to be, and yet she had enough humanity in her to be really in love. Just a word here as to tramp companionship in England. Among the men, although one now and then sees "mates," he more often meets the male vagabonds alone, so far as other men are concerned. Women, too, do not often ally themselves with other women. But between the sexes partnership is common; though seldom long-lived, it is very friendly while it lasts. The woman is practically the slave of the man; he is the supposed breadwinner, but the Judy does more than her share of the begging all the while. We went by rail from York to Durham, for there was little of interest to be found between the two points. Everywhere it was the cities far more than the country that furnished the most amusing and instructive sights. On the train a rather pleasant-looking man, overhearing our conversation, asked Ryborg who we were. "You'll excuse me," said he, "but your intelligence does seem a little more valuable than your clothes; and would you mind telling me what you are doing in England?" As he seemed a candid sort of fellow, Ryborg began very frankly to tell him our mission, and I took up the story when he was tired. It was difficult for the stranger to express his astonishment. "What!" said he. "Do you mean to say that you've left good homes behind you, and are over here simply to study tramps? What good will it ever do you?" "Well," said Ryborg, "it's one way of seeking the truth." "I declare, you're the rummest pair of fellows I've ever seen," he returned; and he looked after us curiously as we got off the train at Durham. Here we gave the vagabonds a wide berth, on account of smallpox; three tramps had been taken out of a kip-house that very day; so after a night's rest we moved on to Newcastle, stopping for a few hours on the way at the dirtiest kip that we found in England. One of the inmates, a powerful poser as a bully, was terrorizing an old man. "I say, granddad, get me a light, will you? Be sharp, now!" OLD MAN. I'm too rheumatizin'-like. Caan't you get it yerself? BULLY. Naw, I caan't. I waant you to get it. Hustle, now! OLD MAN. I sha'an't do it. I ain't yer Hi Tittle Ti-Ti, an' I waant you to rec'lect it, too. BULLY. See here, pop; what date is to-day? OLD MAN. Fifth of March. BULLY. Well, pop, just twelve months ago to-day I killed a man. So look out! The old man brought the light. [Illustration: A MOOCHER.] Newcastle, from the vagabond's point of view, exists principally in Pilgrim Street. I visited three kips there, saw eighty-four new faces, and learned something about the wages of beggars in England. Four moochers gave me the information. They were quarreling at the time. Number One was saying: "It's a lie. I'd git off the road in a minute ef I could only beg what you say I can. Ef I hustle I can git four bob a day, and I'm willin' to fight that I can, too." Number Two said: "You never mooched four bob in your life; you knaw you're happy when you git ten wing a day. I'm the only moocher in this 'ouse, an' I want you to know it. I beg 'xac'ly five bob in eight hours; an' ef I begged twenty-four hours, 'ow much'd that be?" Number Three here put in: "Tired legs an' 'n empty stomach." Number Four: "Keep still, ye bloomin' idjits!" None of them could beg over two bob a day, and they knew it. There are beggars in England who can average nearly half a sovereign a day, but they are by no means numerous. Most of them are able to get about eighteen pence or two shillings; that is all. Our Newcastle friends told us that the road between there and Edinburgh was not a profitable one. They claimed that the people were too "clanny-like," meaning too stingy. The Durham district they called the "bread and cheese caounty," while Yorkshire was the "pie and cake neighborhood." Accordingly, we took ship for Leith. A fellow-passenger, half hoosier and half criminal, made up his mind that I was a crooked man. "Don't come near me," he said; "you're a pickpocket, an' I can feel it." I said: "How can you tell?" "By your hand-shake and the cut of your phiz." And throughout the trip he continued to regard me as a species of bogy-man, while Ryborg he considered a most reputable traveler. So he was and is; but he made some of his most criminal faces on that same voyage, nevertheless. One of them, I particularly remember, seemed to say, "I can't eat, can't sleep, can't do anything"; and his under lip would fall in a most genuine manner. He was often eloquent in his representations of my ability to pose as a tramp; but I am sure that nothing I can do would so quickly throw even the vigilant off the track as that face of my companion. We went into Scotland without any prejudice; but we had scarcely been in Edinburgh three hours when an English roadster tried to make me believe terrible things of the "Scotties," as he called the Scotch tramps. "The Scotties are good enough to mooch with," said he, "an' ain't bad people in some ways till they're drunk; an' then they're enough to make a cat sick. Why, Yank, they can't talk about anything then but Bobbie Burns. It's Bobbie did this, an' Bobbie did that, till you'd think the sun didn't rise an' set on anybody else. I wish the feller hadn't ever lived." The poor man had evidently never read Bobbie's "Jolly Beggars"; for if he had he would have long since made a pilgrimage to Ayr. Edinburgh can almost be reckoned as one of the best mooching towns in Great Britain, and if I were a beggar casting about for a life-residence, I think I should select this beautiful city, and that from my own personal experience. There is something deliriously credulous in the true citizen, and the university makes it a specially good place for clothes. Our first meal in the town we found at a "refuge" in High Street. We paid a penny apiece for a quart of good thick soup and half a loaf of bread. It was the largest quantity of food I have ever had for so little money; but it should be remembered that it was a charity. Cheap-restaurant living, in both Scotland and England, is more of a theory than a reality. For twopence I have had a dinner at a Herberge in Germany that I could not get in Great Britain for five; and for ten cents I have had _table d'hôte_ with four courses in Chicago that I could not get in London for a shilling. The cheapest restaurants that I know of in the United Kingdom are the cocoa-rooms; but a tramp can live three times as cheaply in the kip-house, if he cooks his own food. Tramps fully realize this, and it is seldom that they go near a cocoa-room. One old moocher said to me, when I questioned him on the subject, "I've been in them places time and again, but I never get my stomach's worth in them"--a statement to which I can add my own similar testimony. When traveling from Edinburgh to Glasgow, the tramp has two routes--one by way of Bathgate, the other by way of Linlithgow. Neither of them is a good begging highway. The people along the road are, as the German tramp would say, _ausgepumpt_. Nevertheless, it must be traveled afoot, for railway fares in Great Britain are much too high for the beggar's purse. Ryborg and I determined this time to separate, he going through Bathgate, and I by way of Linlithgow. In this way we covered more ground, and at the same time Ryborg had the desired opportunity to play the tramp alone. His argument for the experiment ran in this wise: "To save my life, I don't seem to be able to talk with these beggars more than two minutes at a time, and I'm really afraid that I am spoiling your scheme. You see, if they discover that I am not what I pretend to be, our work is in danger; so I'll try this trip alone, and see if I can't get a little more into the tramp spirit." We promised to find each other in front of the general post-office in Glasgow. On the whole journey I found but one interesting moocher, and that a moocheress. She traveled my way for about two hours, and as she smoked my cigarettes she gave me a little of her biography. She had lived just fifty years, did not know when she entered trampdom, had no recollection of her parents, and believed mainly in "booze," as she called it. She prided herself on being a fighting woman, as do a great many of the English Judies. "Why, I'm a reg'lar Charley Mitchell," said she, "when I want to be." "Wouldn't you rather be a John L. Sullivan?" said I, to test her patriotism. "Oh, yes, ef I wuz Amerikin; but I'm English--I'm patriotic, I am." "Then," said I, "you wouldn't want to be Lackie Thompson." "D' you want t' insult me?" said she. "Naw; I wouldn' be anything Scot-like." "How is it, Judy, that you are in Scotland, then?" "Oh, I'm just lookin' fer me mate. I lost him in Edinburgh, an' 's soon 's I find him, I'm goin' back to England." Just before I left her she said: "Tell me how you draw thet smoke in. I've heard thet it's real good; but how d' you do it?" I told her how to inhale the smoke of a cigarette. She tried it, choked, and promised herself by all the gods of her poor heaven never to try it again. English Judies are great smokers, but they use clay pipes, as a rule. Glasgow is the best kip town that we found. Its lodging-houses are known all over Great Britain, and as soon as I was well within the city I asked for a "Burns Home." There are several of these in Glasgow, all belonging to Mr. Robert Burns, who was once a working-man, but is now a wealthy proprietor. He built his homes mainly to make money, but also to furnish poor workmen a cheap and fairly respectable sleeping-place. I stayed at the Watson Street Home, and although there were many workmen in the place, there were also numerous vagabonds. In the "sitting-room" there must have been about a hundred and fifty people, and some of them had been loafing around Glasgow for months. I made friends with one of these old residents, and he did me some good service. He had been in America, had been well treated there, he said, and so wanted to treat me well. I asked him about the industrial intentions of the lodgers at the "home." "Well," said he, "it's hard to tell about all of them. Some of these fellows sit in this room from morning till night, and never are seen to beg a copper; yet they live, too. Others do a little work now and then as 'sandwich-men,' and other little jobs, while there's a few of us do nothing but beg." "Is Glasgow a good town for moochin'?" I asked. "Well, that depends on the moocher. There's enough charity here, and some to spare, if you know how to look for it. I never get over half a crown a day, but I can tell you a dozen places where you can get your dinner. Scoff's always more plenty than money." "D' you mind tellin' what's the main gag in Glasgow just now, for raisin' money?" I queried still further. "Well, I think gettin' vaccinated 's about the best thing goin' just now." "What d' you mean?" "Well, you see, smallpox 's on the boards; the people are scared; bums are likeliest to get the sickness; so it's been arranged that any man who will get himself vaccinated can have a week's kip free. Some blokes've been jagged [vaccinated] two or three times." This same vagabond did me another good turn down near the docks. We were walking along a street when three town tramps came along and guyed my hat. My companion noticed it, and as I had told him that I had been considerably martyrized in this way before, he turned round sharply on the guyers, and thundered out: "Who're you lookin' at? Ef you're tryin' to guy this Yank, you'd better stop. Ef you don't, there'll be a fight." I said: "Let's run, if you really mean that." "Not much! I'm English, you know; and I can knock out any Scotchman that comes around, and I'm in the mood for 't right now." The town bums took him at his word, and left. I said to him: "You English fellows seem to have things pretty much your own way here." "Yes," he answered; "we English fellers know how to bluff. We've been bluffin' the world now for a good many years." "You forget the United States," I could not help interjecting. "Beg pardon, Yank; beg pardon!" Ryborg and I met at the post-office, according to agreement. He had seen so few tramps along the way that he was still in doubt as to his abilities. He remained courageous, however, and I proposed a trip to Dublin. This meant Irish Sea, no appetite, and general ill health. But off we sailed to see Ireland. We stayed nine hours, and then sailed back to Liverpool. On the way I saw more of Ireland in a dear old Biddy than I did in Dublin. She claimed that she saw Ireland in me also--a discernment truly penetrating, considering that the Irish in me died out about two hundred years ago. In Liverpool our tramp work began again in good earnest, and I was fortunate in meeting there an old friend--Manchester Charley. We went around the Horn[9] together a few years ago, and got very well acquainted, as tramps will on such journeys; but we did not expect to meet next in Liverpool, though I knew Charley had left the States for London. He seemed glad to see me, and yet a little ashamed of me, too. My shoes were rather played out, and in other respects, also, I was somewhat below the American tramp grade. Charley noticed this, and his first greeting was, "Shall I get you a new pair of shoes?" I explained the situation as best I could, but Charley could not understand how I could "lower myself so." I told him that I was certainly better dressed than most of the tramps I had met along the road, whereat he laughed most scornfully. "Why, Cig," he said, "the fellers you've been bummin' with are nothin' but skugees [a species of gay-cat]. You haven't seen a first-class hobo yet, I'll bet." That was true, if one takes the American hobo as the standard, and I admitted it. Then he introduced three of his companions, saying: "Here are some of the real article." They were very clever-appearing vagabonds, and very well dressed, too. I acknowledged their vast superiority as politely as I was able to do, and asked Charley how it had come about that I had so missed the genuine beggars, as I had all the while been on the lookout for them. Charley said: "The fact is, there are not many of us in England. Up at London you'll find more than anywhere else, but we ain't anywhere near as strong as you fellers in the States." "Why is this? You certainly ought to be," I returned. "Well," he replied, "this is how it is. The country is full of these half-and-half bums. They go everywhere, and the people get tired of them; so when a really sharp moocher comes along, he has to run his chance of bein' classed with them chaps--that is, if he begs at houses. If he does as I do,--sends letters of introduction,--his luck will probably be better. Here in Liverpool, for instance, we do fairly well at the letter racket; but we could never make a livin' at all if we had to batter the way most beggars do." Later in the day Charley explained matters more fully, and it turned out, as I expected, that he did "crooked work" also, both he and his comrades. I said to him at parting: "I could succeed in England, too, if I wanted to do that sort of business; but that isn't legitimate mooching." "It all depends," he answered. "A tramp ought to do anything he can, and there's no feller so able to dodge the Dee as a bum if he plays the beggar and is a crook besides." This is a fact; but still it is not true hoboing or mooching, this being a beggar only in appearance. Some men do it constantly, I know; but the real tramp, wherever he is found, will rarely go into anything outside of begging and cheating. Thieving he leaves to more experienced hands. Liverpool fairly swarms with the lowest class of tramps, and we many times voted Manchester Charley's testimony correct. They live off any one they can capture, even "visiting brethren," and are cordially hated by them. [Illustration: A REST BY THE WAYSIDE.] We planned to separate in our journey to London, after the manner of our last trip in Scotland. Ryborg was to take his way through Crewe, Birmingham, Warwick, and Oxford; I was to visit Chester, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Bristol, and Bath. We were to meet at the end of a week in Reading, and journey on to London together. My own experiences on the way were very common. I saw only a repetition of what I had become familiar with in the other parts of England: "prehistoric gorillas," a few rather clever beggars, about twenty kip-houses, and more than two hundred vagrants. Nearly half of them, however, were seeking work. Two nights I slept in straw-stacks, and each time I had fully a dozen companions. They called themselves "free dossers," and in one way they were rather amusing--in fact, a new species of tramp: they were determined not to spend a copper of what they begged. It seems that these fellows start out from London early in the spring, and batter all summer. In the autumn they return to London with their swag and spend the winter in some comfort. On their travels they either beg what they need or go without. If they cannot beg a lodging, they sleep in barns, brick-yards, and straw-stacks; and from early in March till late in September they do not squander a single halfpenny that comes in their way. I had never before met this variety of vagabond, and I doubt very much whether they would be allowed to associate with the real American hoboes; for the true tramp likes more generosity among his fellows, and when he meets a stingy brother he is likely to give him a wide berth. Once in Reading, Ryborg and I met at the appointed corner, and he gave the following account of himself: "In the first place, I had a mean road, and saw but few vagabonds. I had only three experiences. The first was not far from Crewe. I was practising to become a beggar, and I tried to smoke a pipe. For a while I made out very well, and accomplished a lot of smoke. I thought I should get on well now in kip-houses. But the second pipe played me a mean trick. I felt bad all over, and staggered along the road most unbecomingly for either a gentleman or a beggar. I gave it up. My second experience was with a crazy tramp. He traveled with me for nearly an hour, and I could find nothing interesting in him except his habit of wetting his middle finger and rubbing it on his cheek-bone. This he did constantly; but though I questioned him carefully, I could get nothing out of him. Finally he got angry with me, and leaned up against a fence till I left him. My last adventure happened when a workman gave me fivepence. He thought I was an honest and unfortunate laborer, and after we had talked awhile he handed me the money, saying very politely, 'Perhaps this will help you on your travels.'" Our first night in London was spent in a German Herberge in the East End. The second night we slept in a Salvation Army shelter in Whitechapel Road. At this last place we paid twopence each for our beds--boxes, I should say. They look like coffins with no bottoms except the floor. Yet they are comfortable enough, considering the price. The blankets are of leather, and if a man keeps his clothes on he can sleep warmly enough. On entering the shelter, we went to the rear of the building, where some of the lodgers were smoking their pipes and recounting their day's experiences. Everything was as orderly as possible, although many of the men were out-and-out vagabonds. I devoted myself to an old man who had a very bad cough. He spoke kindly of the Salvation Army, and had only one complaint to make. "These Salvationers," said he, "forget one thing: they forget that we men are tired. In the meetings they want us to sing 's loud 's ef we'd just got out of bed. They say, 'Come on, men; sing away, be happy--sing, now!' But how 's a man goin' to sing after he's mooched and walked all day, I should like to know? I ain't no enemy of the Salvationers, but I wish they'd remember that we get fagged out." Ryborg and I went into the meeting, and as long as I live I shall never forget the sincerity of its leaders. They were not especially wise or delicate, but they were in earnest all over. One of the "soldiers" handed us hymn-books, and said, "Cheer up, men; better times a-comin'"; and the entire spirit of the meeting was of the same good fellowship. I felt then what I had felt often before, that the Salvation Army, in spite of its many mistakes, is, after all, one of the most consistent agencies for the betterment of the class it seeks to uplift. The leaders of this meeting believed in their hearts that we should be "lost" unless something interposed to "save" us, and they were determined to save us if they could. In other words, the Salvation Army actually believes in hell, and is "hustling" to keep men out of it. We went to bed about ten o'clock, but I slept very little. The lodgers coughed nearly all night, and it was impossible to rest in such a racket; but as some of the men said, it was better than sleeping out. The next two nights of our stay as tramps in London were spent in the Notting Hill casual ward, or "spike," as it is called in tramp parlance. There are twenty-four of these wards in London, and they are well scattered over England at large also. Their object is to afford wanderers a place where they can get food and lodging for a night or two by earning it. The usual work required is stone-breaking and oakum-picking. We had delayed visiting these places until we should arrive in London, as they are all very much alike, and we cared for only one experience of their hospitality. As I knew that this Notting Hill ward is considered one of the best in all England, we went there. Two years before I had visited this ward as a "gentleman." I had a letter from the president of the Board of Guardians, and I was treated most kindly. But on this March evening I went in as a tramp, and, as was to be expected, my treatment was entirely different. We appeared at the door of the ward about half-past seven. A little window was raised, and I stepped forward to state our business. Unconsciously I leaned against the sill of the window, which offended the inspector in charge considerably. "What's your name?" he thundered. Still leaning on the sill, I gave him my name honestly enough. He then remarked to some person inside that we were not accustomed to such places, evidently, and called out, "Stand back, will you!" Back I stood. He cried out again, "Take off your hat!" My hat came off instanter. Still again: "You come in here as if you was a meeleeonary. You're not; you're a casual." I was as meek as could well be. Ryborg was itching to grab the inspector with his long arms. The next question was as to where we had slept the night before. "Straw-stack," I replied. "None of your impudence! You slept out--why don't you say so? Have you got any money?" "A ha'penny, sir." "Hand it in!" In it went. Then I had to tell my trade, which was that of a sailor; and naturally the next question was as to where I was bound. "To Ameriky, sir, if I can ever get there." "You're goin' to tramp it, aren't you?" "Yes, sir; that's my intention"; but for the life of me I could not see how I was to reach America that way. I was so frightened that I would have told him anything he wanted. When he was through with us, a kind-hearted attendant took us in hand, gave us some gruel and bread, a bath, clean night-shirts, and then a cell apiece, in which we slept very well. As there were only four inmates that morning, we were needed for the cleaning up, and so escaped stone-breaking, which I dreaded exceedingly, and were put at various light occupations--or rather I was. Ryborg was the victim of his strength. Our breakfast consisted of the same dish as our supper of the night before. I was soon busy as general fireman, scrubber, knife-cleaner, coal-carrier, dish-washer, and helper of my sister-sufferer, Mrs. Murphy, as she washed her task of towels and shirts. At noon we had pea-soup and bread. I enjoyed it, but Ryborg did not. The poor fellow was feeling badly; he had had to scrub nearly twenty cells, and the bending over incident to such a feat had nearly broken his back. At dinner he said plaintively, "Flynt, I want to go home." "So do I," I replied; "but I fancy we're wanted here till to-morrow morning." This proved to be the case; but he felt better in the afternoon, and got through comfortably, wheeling nearly a ton of stone from some of the cells to the general pile. He earned his keep, if ever any poor prisoner did. I fear I was more shiftless, for about the middle of the afternoon the attendant who was with me at the furnace said: "You might as well rest; just keep your eye on the fires, that's all." It was kind of him; and as I had at least earned my pea-soup and gruel, I took his advice. He was kinder to me, I think, because I gave him a corn-cob pipe which he had had to take away from me the night before. During the day he had asked me several questions about it, and I said: "It's a very decent sort of pipe--coolin'-like, you know." "Doesn't Mark Twain always smoke one o' them pipes?" said he. "Blest if I know," said I; "but I can well think it." "I'm a great friend of Mark Twain," he pursued; "an' I'm a-thinkin' o' gettin' one o' them pipes, jest out of respect for him." "Well," said I, "permit me, in the name of your respect, to present you with my pipe; besides, you've got it, anyhow." He thanked me profusely, and promised to keep it forever. Later in the day he reported it to be just as I had said, "sort o' coolin'-like." And he was a good friend to me all the rest of my stay in the Notting Hill station. On Wednesday morning we were turned loose with our two ha'pennies. We were both so happy that we decided to get off the road that very day. We had been tramps for three weeks, and had walked most of this time fully fifteen miles a day; so we looked up my friend at the Temple, and in a few hours were respectable again. That same day I took my tramp clothes out to the casual ward, and presented them to my friend the attendant. I had told him the day before that I expected to get new togs soon, and he had put in a plea for my old ones. Good luck to him and them! * * * * * Something definite ought to be said here, I think, regarding the character of the English moocher, and as Ryborg is new in trampdom, and as his impressions are likely to be sharper than mine, I have asked him to write out, in a few words, his general opinion of the tramps he met in this three weeks' journey. Most of the tramps we met during our trip in England impressed me as being a trifle insane. There is a peculiar dullness and lack of nervous energy about them that distinguish them very noticeably from the working-men. Still, they have a marked sagacity in getting up tricks to secure their food and lodging, and in getting out of work. Their life, together with ill-nourishing food, would tend to produce a mild form of insanity. There is surely a peculiarity about their mental structure that I have observed nowhere else. They are fond of philosophizing about themselves, and in a comical way. One of the worst vagabonds I saw told me that he considered himself as fine a fellow as any one, and that he had two brothers who were well-to-do, but he could not stick to one thing long enough to lay up money. He said that it never did anybody any good to knock about, unless his mind was so formed that he could learn by it. He did not see that he was not the equal of anybody in perseverance, and he was not able to understand why it was not considered very noble to live by begging and by peddling without a license. Some attribute their pauper condition to a roving disposition; others lay their misfortunes to a cruel fate; but it is very evident that the passion for drink is at the bottom of ninety per cent. of the vagrancy in England. The tramps do not seem at all discontented or unhappy. They complained sometimes that people were stingy, but almost all of them looked well fed. There are a few of them who really want work, but the majority are not very anxious for a job. As one of the men in the kip-house said one day, after there had been a good deal of discussion on the subject: "Well, there's more talk about work in this house than there's doin' of 't." Most of the tramps we met were well informed, and fully half of them had been in America, or the "States," as they say. They also keep up to the times on political issues and pugilistic and police news. In one of the lodging-houses I heard the keeper of the place reading the police news of the week to an interested circle of beggars. I was struck by a remark of one of the fellows, that the sentence of the court was not so severe as one culprit had deserved. They are a very hospitable set to their own kind. I never entered a kip without a seat being offered to me, and in many cases they gave me a bowl of tea and a bit of bread. I never saw any quarreling over the cooking-utensils or the corner of the fireplace. Though they are without doubt the dirtiest and the raggedest and the poorest of men, I was everywhere treated by them with politeness, so far as they understood politeness; in fact, they were often far more courteous than the steamer and other officials under whose charge I came during the journey. These conclusions are identical with my own. Excepting workhouses, casual wards, one or two "ticket systems," and jails, there seems to be no great amount of legal machinery for the treatment of vagrancy in England. The workhouses are places where any one who can prove that he is penniless may be taken in indefinitely. The casual ward has already been explained. The ticket system is simply the issuing of tickets, at police stations, to vagrants in need of food, the tickets calling for so much bread, and perhaps a lodging. Sometimes the ticket must be worked for, and sometimes it is gratis. The jails are mean places to get into, the discipline being severe, and work being exacted of the prisoners. Sentences for begging range from seven days upward, but most of the tramps with whom I talked spoke of seven days as the usual punishment for simple begging, unless the offender could be proved to be an old stager. As regards the punishment of the confirmed beggar in England, there seems to me to be but one thing to say: it is too slight and trivial. The professional beggar should be shut up indefinitely. There are plenty to laugh at this suggestion, I am aware. Well and good. Just so long as they laugh, the beggars will laugh also; and it is my opinion that the beggars will come out ahead. FOOTNOTES: [8] The "bible" is tramp slang for the hawker's little parcel of things which he is supposed to peddle. [9] The Horn is a bit of railway in Iowa, extending from Red Oak southward for about twenty miles, then northwest for twenty more. It is used principally for long trains, as the main line from Red Oak to Pacific Junction is too hilly. IV THE TRAMP AT HOME In an article which appeared in the "Contemporary Review" for August, 1891, I made a first attempt to relate some of my experiences in tramp life in the United States, and endeavored to describe a true knight of the road. It was a short paper, and there was a great deal left unsaid that might have been said, but it was a truthful report as far as it went. To one intimately acquainted with the hoboes I doubt whether the article would have seemed inaccurate, but it was so judged by some critics, and a number of my statements were challenged. Among other criticisms made, it was said that I had mistaken the character of the "American tramp" in three particulars: first, his nationality; second, his numbers; third, his unwillingness to work. It was also assumed that an Englishman was responsible for the supposed false statements. I was in New York at the time, and having ten days at my disposal before leaving for Europe, I decided to retrace some of my old routes and have another view of the situation. This chapter is a report of my experiences on the journey, and I have confined myself to the rehearsal of bare facts without further comment, believing that the reader will moralize and philosophize whenever necessary. It was about five o'clock on the afternoon of a cool September day that I left my friend's home clad as a tramp, and started for the night boat for Albany. I wore an old suit of clothes, a flannel shirt, a good pair of shoes, and a respectable hat. I had paid special attention to the shoes and hat, for it is a piece of tramp philosophy that the two extremities of a beggar are first looked at by the person of whom he is begging. While riding from Harlem down to the landing-place of the steamer, I laughed to myself while thinking how the tramps would envy me my nice head- and foot-gear. I wondered, too, whether I should be allowed to return with these coverings. At the ticket-office I paid one of my three dollars for a ticket on the boat to Albany. I made this heavy draft upon my slight exchequer because I was afraid to beat my way on the railroad between the two cities. I knew of old how roadsters are hated by the residents of both banks of the Hudson River, and not being at all sure that I should be successful in making the journey from New York to Albany in one night as a "dead-beat" on a freight-train, I felt safer in buying a second-class ticket on the steamboat, and beginning my journey in the morning at Albany. I fear that the reader would have laughed at my calamity had he seen me after landing at Albany. Then I was a tramp indeed, for the other two dollars had disappeared from my pockets while I was sleeping with a motley crowd of Italians on some boxes thrown promiscuously about the hold of the steamboat. There was now no possibility of dilettantism. I had to go head over heels into the beggar's life. I am glad now that it was so, but for the moment I was downhearted, for I had leaned on those two dollars as possible friends if my begging courage should fail me at the crucial moment. But this was past, my bridges were burned, so I began my journey in earnest. I sauntered lazily over to West Albany, for it was still early, and arrived as the people were lighting their breakfast fires. I waited until it seemed that the fires should have done their duty, and then began. I visited several houses. Sometimes the man of the house said that his wife was sick, or that he was out of work himself; and sometimes they told me to get out--that they had already fed one tramp. My fifth call was at the home of a German woman who claimed that she had fed beggars in the Fatherland. She invited me in, placed a nice warm breakfast before me, and then we began a conversation in German about life, labor, and beggars. She was sorry for me, and said that I looked too young to be a beggar. I told her a tale. It was one of those stories in which the ghost of a truth still lingers--such as tramps know so well how to tell. I shall never know exactly how much of it she believed, or what she thought of me, as I told her that I was the outcast of a _hochwohlgeboren_ family in Germany. I know, however, that she was sympathetic, and that she took me in, whether she did the same for my romance or not. After breakfast I started for Troy. I knew that I should meet with plenty of loafers during the walk, and I preferred chatting with them on or near the highway. For Albany has a penitentiary. There is not a well-informed tramp in the United States that does not know about that prison; it has punished many a vagrant, and the Albany policemen are no friends to beggars. Syracuse Tom will bear me out in this statement, for he winters in Albany with his kid every year; but he does this simply because he is so well posted. Of course other tramps visit Albany as well, for it is a well-known town for "refreshments"; but only a few can thrive long there by begging only for money. On my way to Troy I found a camp of thirty-three tramps. They were living off the charity of Albany. They had all been in for breakfast, and were now returned to the hang-out to chat and scheme. Some were discussing Albany prisons, its policemen, saloons, and general hospitality. Others had built a fire, and were boiling their shirts in a borrowed kettle to kill the vermin. Still others were planning Southern tours. Some had decided to winter in St. Augustine, some in Jacksonville, and a few were talking of the best routes to New Orleans. One of the fellows recognized me. He must needs know where I had been so long, and why my hands were so white. "Cigarette," he said, "have you been a-doin' time? Where did you get yer white colors?" I told Yorkey that I had been sick, and had been back on the road only a few days. He would not believe me, and I am afraid that he took me for a "crooked man," for he said: "Cig, you've not been in the sick-lugger all this while, and I hain't seen your register for many a day. No, my young bloke; you can't fool me. You've been up a tree, and you can't deny it." I could not convince him of my innocence, so we dropped the subject, and I told him that I was bound for Buffalo, where I had friends who would help me to brace up and get off the road. I assured him that I knew now what a foolish business "bumming" was, and that I was going to make a grand effort to get work. Even this he would not believe, and he insisted that I was going West to some town where I knew that the tramps were going to have a "drunk." He tried to persuade me to go South with him, and claimed that Yonkers Slim was going to meet him in Washington with some money, and that the bums intended to have a great "sloppin'-up" (drinking-bout). I made him understand that I was determined to go West. Then he gave me some advice which was typical. "Young feller, you're goin' to a pretty poor country. Why, when I left Buffalo two weeks ago, the bulls [police] were more than pinchin' the tramps right in the streets, and givin' them ninety days. The only decent thing about a journey up that way is the New York Central Railroad. You can ride that to death. That's the only godsend the country has. Jes let me tell you, though, what towns it cuts through, and then you'll squeal. Now, there's Schenectady. You can chew all right there, but divil a cent can you beg. Then comes Fonda, and you must know what a poor town that is. Then you've got Utica, where you can feed all right, for any fool can do that, but you can't hit a bloke for a dime in the streets without a bull seein' you and chuckin' you up for fifty-nine days in Utica jail. And you must know well enough what that jail is this time o' year--it's jes filled with a blasted lot o' gay-cats [men who will work] who've been on a booze. After Utica there's Rochester, a place that onc't was good, but isn't worth pawnin' now since that gay-cat shot a woman there some time ago. After Rochester, what you got? Buffalo--the most God-forsaken town a bum ever heard of." Here I interrupted my lecturer to say that I had heard of Buffalo as a good "chewing town." He turned upon me fiercely. "What d' you want? D' you only want to chew? Don't you want boodle, booze, togs, and a good livin'? Of course you do, jes like ev'ry genooine hobo. It's only a blasted gay-cat that'll fool around this country now. Cig, you'd better come South with us. Why, las' year the blokes more than sloughed in money around the Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Aug'stine. We kin git there in a week if we ride passenger-trains. You'll hustle for an overcoat if you stay here much longer, an' I'll bet my Thanksgivin' dinner that every bloke you meet up the road is bound South. You'd better foller their coat-tails." I thanked Yorkey, but satisfied him that I was determined to get to Buffalo. "Well, so long, Cigarette," he said, when I left the camp for Troy. Between Troy and Cohoes I found another camp of tramps. Here were forty-two men and boys who were enjoying what tramps term a "sloppin'-up." Some of them had just returned from the hop-country, and had gathered together the fellows in their vicinity, and were now drinking keg after keg of beer. Thirteen kegs had already been emptied. These men seemed well satisfied with their treatment around Troy, and the majority of them had been there for nearly a week. One half-drunken loafer from Milwaukee was so anxious to praise the town's hospitality that he was haranguing some of his comrades most zealously. "I've boozed around this town," he said, "off and on for the last seven years, and I've not been sloughed up yet. There's only one or two bulls in the town that's after tramps, and if a bloke is anyway foxy he can slip them all right. Two years ago I fooled around here for two months, and had my three square meals every day, and booze too, and I was never touched. You can't hustle pennies, o' course, as well as you can down in the City [New York], but you can batter for clothes, chuck, and booze all right enough. I know as many as ten saloon-keepers in the town that'll give me a drink and ask no questions. Yes; Troy's all right, and it's only a rotten gay-cat that 'u'd say it wa'n't. The only mean thing about the town is that it's slow. Us hoboes must be on the march, and it's not in us to fool round a jerk town like this 'un too long. It's tiresome, blokes." A hunt for supper in Cohoes afforded me a great deal of amusement, for I was entertained by an alderman's wife. At any rate, she told me, while I was eating my supper in the large restaurant dining-room, that her husband, eating his supper in a private room on the floor below, was a village father and a hater of tramps. "But don't worry," she said; "he shall not bother you while I'm around. I always feed a hungry man, and I always shall. I can't understand how some people can turn away from the door any one who claims to be hungry. If I should do this, I would expect to be hungry myself before long." A freight-train passed by the house while I was at the table, and my hostess noticed my anxiety to be aboard of it. "Never mind," she said; "there'll be plenty of freights along a little later, and this is a good place to catch them, for there is a grade here, and you can keep away from the station, where you might be arrested." I remembered this woman throughout my journey, and every tramp that I met bound in this direction was advised of her house. I think it would hardly be so good another year. From Cohoes to Schenectady is only a short ride, and it seemed as if I had been asleep in the box-car only a few minutes when Ohio Red, who was with me, cried out, "Cigarette, we're in the yards; let's get out." We slept in a box-car overnight. This is an odd way of resting. The coat, vest, and shoes are taken off, then the shoes are made into a pillow, the vest is laid over them, and the coat is thrown over the shoulders. So sleep most of the tramps during the warm months. After an early breakfast, we went over to the hang-out on the eastern side of the town. Thirteen rovers were already there, cooking a conventional meal. They had begged meat, potatoes, bread, and coffee, and had stolen some other vegetables, besides a kettle, and were now anxiously watching the fire. Two more vagrants, who had been looking for cigar-stubs in the town, came in later. Their pockets were well filled, and they divided equally their findings. This "snipe" chewing and smoking is the most popular use of tobacco in trampdom, and is even preferred to "store brands" of the weed, which are easily begged. About dinner-time a man came out to the camp, and offered every one of us the job of shoveling sand for a dollar and a half a day, the work to continue into November. He might better have stayed away. The tramps told him that they had just left as good a job as that in Buffalo, and were now looking for three dollars a day! At nightfall sixteen tramps, including myself, boarded a freight-train bound west. I was now on the main line of the New York Central, and had no further need to fear any large amount of walking. During the night ride I had an interesting talk with the brakeman at my end of the train. I was in a "gondola" (open car), and he espied me from the top of a box-car, and came down. "Hello, young fellow!" he said. "Where are you travelin' to?" "Just up the road a bit, boss," I answered. "Well, let's go to the other end of the car, where we won't catch the cinders; I've got one in my eye now filin' it to pieces. Can you take it out, d' you think?" he asked. I held his lantern on my arm, and looked for the cinder, which was soon out. Just then the train whistled for Fonda, and the brakeman said: "You want to lay low here, for there's a watchman in the yards. I'll bring you a bit to eat out of my pail after we pull out." He returned, when we were again started, with a parcel of food, and began to speak of the towns up the road. "Utica," he said, "if you intend gettin' your breakfast there in the mornin', is sort of a snide place, this time of the year. You see, the hop-pickers are around there, and the police always arrest a lot of 'em, and you fellows are likely to be jugged too. This town that we've just left, however, is the meanest one on the road. I was comin' through here about a week ago, and didn't know there was a bum on the train. The watchman scouted around, and found three of 'em in a box-car, and yanked 'em all up. If I'd known they were round, I'd 'a' posted 'em about this town, but I hadn't an idea they were there. I hate to see a lad get pulled for ridin' a train, because I've been broke myself, and I know what it is to be on the road. I'll always carry a man on my train if I can. But of course you know that sometimes the con [conductor] is a mean devil, and we can't do anything that'll give him a grudge ag'in' us; if he should see a bum on the train, he might report us. So you see what risks we run. But I've given many a lad a ride, and I'm always willing to be square to a square plug [fellow]." This is a typical kind-hearted Eastern brakeman, and the tramps like him. [Illustration: A DIVISION.] In Utica I made the acquaintance of a roadster called "Utica Biddy." I met him at the tramp camp just outside of the town, near the R. W. & O. R. R. tracks, where twenty-six other loafers were waiting for three of their fellow-travelers to return from the hop-country, in order to help spend their money. Biddy is one of the best-known tramps on the New York Central, and he gave me more information about the districts around Syracuse and Utica than I could possibly have accumulated single-handed. While riding in a box-car from Utica to Syracuse we had a long conversation, and the following is the substance of what he told me: "I've been a bum on the division of this railroad from Albany to Syracuse for the last four years. I've had my three squares every day, and in winter I've had a bed every night. I know you'll hardly believe this, for some of you beggars come up to this country and curse it because you don't get on the spot what you want. Now, I'll give you a few pointers about these towns. We've just left a town [Utica] where I can go to over a score of houses and get a square meal whenever I want it. Of course I was born there, and that may make a bit o' difference, but I can do the same in Rome, Albany, and Syracuse. I've been on this beat so long and have watched my chances so carefully that I know now just where to go when hungry. I hear a great many tramps kick about Utica, its policemen and snide houses. But if a lad will just knuckle down for a month or so and hunt out the good houses, make himself acquainted with the tough policemen and keep out of their way, find good barns for a doss at night, and make a business of bummin' carefully, there's not a town on the Central that ain't good. The trouble with you strange blokes is this: you come up here, booze, draw your razors when you're drunk, do too much crooked work, and o' course the people get hostile. Why, see how many lads are workin' my racket over in Pennsylvania. You know yourself that on the Pennsy [Pennsylvania Railroad] line there are tramps who not only bum within a division, but inside of subdivisions, and can chew whenever they like. But they do this 'cause they're foxy and have had their boozin' knocked out of them. Now, those lads that we left back in Utica will more than likely get sloughed into jail when they get to boozin'. You can't expect the people to stand such stuff as that. And these are the kind of fellows, too, who jigger our ridin' on this railroad. They get drunk, and if they want to ride and can't find an empty car, they break a seal [a car seal], and then there's the devil to pay about the tramps tryin' to rob the cars. If the bums would only keep sober once in a while, there wouldn't be a tramp pinched once a month. The bulls around here don't care to yank a tramp unless they have to. But what can they do when they find a bloke paradin' the streets with a jag on? They pull him in, o' course, or else the people would kick. I'll gamble that he wouldn't be touched, though, if he were simply huntin' a meal." In Syracuse, Biddy, in order to prove his acquaintance with the town, told me of a house where I was certain of getting something to eat. I followed his instructions, and got exactly what I went for--a good dinner. The great excitements in Syracuse, I found, were a big drunk and the State fair. I have never seen such a number of tramps together at one time. Between De Witt and Syracuse there was a camp of fifty, and there were twenty empty beer-kegs lying around in the grass. Some of the fellows were sick, others had sick clothes, and many of the rest were in fine shape for a free fight. There were two well-dressed tramps whom I immediately recognized as "fawny men"--fellows who sell bogus jewelry for more than it is worth. One of these men was a notorious roadster of American birth, who, for purposes best known to himself, went by the name of "Liverpool George." He is the most successful fawny man that I have ever met. He earned twenty-two dollars in one day at the fair by selling for two dollars apiece rings which can be bought in Buffalo for two dollars a dozen. The tramps call this worldly success. Before I left Syracuse there came to the camp another batch of tramps numbering sixteen. They had just returned from the hop-country, and their money was well poised for another "shot at the growler." During my stay of three days at the camp and vicinity, the men were intoxicated almost all the time. They would even go into town half drunk to look for something to eat. Yet I heard of no arrest while I was there. About a mile from the hang-out, and east of Syracuse, there were two barns in which the tramps slept. It was most amusing to see the loafers returning to their nests in the hay-loft night after night. Sometimes I listened to comical tales until the early hours of the morning. I was also the spectator of a number of fights. One particular barn where I spent two nights, near Syracuse, was a regular arena for fisticuffing and squabbling. The men were so cross and ill-tempered after their recent galas that they would quarrel on the slightest pretext. One fellow gave his companion a black eye because he told him that he "ought to hustle better togs" (clothes). Another poor excuse for a knock-down was that a fellow had said that "tramps were bughouse" (crazy). The journey from Syracuse to Buffalo was very prosaic. I rode from Syracuse to Rochester with a kid and two colored tramps. The boy was in search of his "jocker," or protector, whom he had lost in Albany. From various registries at watering-tanks, he expected to find him in Canal Street, Buffalo. At Port Byron a female tramp, with her companion, Milwaukee Jim, entered the box-car in which we were riding. I learned from him that I must be very careful in my conduct at Rochester. I decided to leave the town as quickly as possible after arrival. On the eastern outskirts of the place I met a gang of twenty-three tramps walking to Fairport, ten miles distant, in order to escape any possible arrest in the Rochester railroad yards while catching a freight-train bound east. Between Rochester and Churchville I found still another frightened crowd numbering twenty-seven. They were waiting for nightfall before entering the city to board a train for Albany. [Illustration: ASLEEP IN A FREIGHT-CAR.] The kid continued with me on the journey to Buffalo, and I enjoyed a talk with him in the car about his life on the road and what inducements it offered. He was only sixteen years of age, but as bright and well versed in tramp lore as many an aged roadster. He became interested in tramp life in the Illinois Reformatory. Some of his companions at the school, who had been with tramps, told him of their experiences, and he never rested until he had satisfied himself with his own. "It ain't such a bad lot," he said; "I chew every day, get a big swag of booze once in a while, and when I'm travelin' with Slim [his protector] I have a purty excitin' time." The boy found his man in Canal Street, just as he had expected. Buffalo did not interest me. There was nothing new in the tramp line. I counted sixty-seven roadsters, and found that there was plenty to eat and drink and a little money also, if looked for very diligently in the main streets and offices; but there was nothing unique. My journey, when I arrived in Buffalo, had extended over three hundred miles (from Albany). I had had three meals every day, excepting the loss of a dinner while traveling from Rochester to Buffalo, and I had met three hundred tramps, who had probably had their meals just as frequently as I had had mine. This number does not include, of course, those who may have been traveling behind or before me, so that, not counting men who were certainly on the road, but out of my sight, here was a voluntary vagrant for every mile of the road between Albany and Buffalo. Further, I did not see a train going west on the Central Railroad that was not carrying at least one tramp, and I often saw a car passing by which appeared simply alive with dead-beats. The reader must remember withal that New York State is by no means such good tramp territory as certain other States. Pennsylvania supports three times as many vagrants as New York will tolerate. Two extenuating statements ought to be made. In the first place, the Central Railroad is a very easy one to beat, and probably half of the tramps that I met were "residents" of other States. Secondly, a great many tramps loaf around the hop-country in the vicinity of Syracuse and Utica during the early autumn, in order to drink at the expense of the too light-hearted hop-pickers. The nationality of these men, so far as I could judge from pronunciation, some of their own statements, and their professional names, was almost entirely American. I met one German loafer called "Dutchy," and he was the only recognized foreigner that I found. The others may have had parents born in other countries, but they themselves were certainly Americanized. A good test of a tramp's nationality is his professional name. For every genuine hobo couples the name of his birthplace with whatever other name he chooses, and the reader will find, if he will visit watering-tanks or other available stationary railway property in his vicinity, like section-houses, shanties, etc., where tramps "sign," that the names registered there indicate, in the great majority of cases, a birthplace in the United States. My return journey to New York is worthy of comment only because its quick performance may possibly interest the reader. I was desirous of learning how quickly a tramp can make a journey if he desires; and it being to my interest to be in New York at an early date, I decided to forego any specific study of tramp life on the Erie Railroad and simply to hurry over its tracks, if haste should prove possible. I left Buffalo for New York on the night of the 16th, and arrived on the morning of the 19th, although I took a very circuitous route. I traveled from Buffalo to Corry, Pennsylvania, over the W. N. Y. & P. R. R., and from Corry I rode to Binghamton over the Erie road. From this place I made a detour to Voorheesville, and then down the West Shore route to Weehawken, in order to confirm certain rumors that I had heard of its hostility to tramps. The entire trip was very tiresome and difficult, because, in order to travel rapidly, I was compelled to ride on top and on the bumpers of freight-trains, and on the trucks of passenger-trains. My companion, Pennsylvania Whitey, and I rode after the latter fashion from Elmira to Binghamton. It was a terrible ride. We made the mistake of getting on the trucks of the rear car--a Pullman sleeper--instead of a baggage-car. In doing this we suffered almost beyond description. The gravel and dust flew about our faces until the exasperation and pain were fearful. When I arrived in Binghamton my eyes were filled with dust, and I suffered with them for days after I arrived in New York. There are tramps, principally in the West, who are much more skilful truck-riders than I can claim to be. But then they have to excel in this mode of traveling, or they could not get over the country. In the far West the brakemen have no scruples about throwing tramps off freight-trains. In the East more civilized customs prevail, and the tramp is politely asked to "jump off after the train has stopped." Because railroad civilization is so backward in the West, the tramps have invented a seat which greatly aids their truck-riding. They call it a "ticket," but it is simply a small piece of board, with two cleats nailed on one side, which fit over a rod and keep the seat firm. Some of these tickets are quite elaborate, and are made to fold into a coat pocket. The journey from Voorheesville to Weehawken proved interesting. My friend Whitey and I left Voorheesville for Coeyman's Junction on a local freight-train. We were on a flat-car, and entirely open to view, but were not once molested. During the ride I got a cinder in my eye, which my companion could not find. The pain was intense, and when we stopped next at a small station we jumped off in order that Whitey might inspect it more conveniently. He was still unsuccessful, and the station-master, standing by, beckoned me toward him and offered to take the cinder out, which he did very skilfully. The train was just ready to start when he called out, "Boys, don't miss your train." We followed his advice. [Illustration: RIDING ON THE BUMPERS.] From the Junction down to Weehawken we underwent many trials. We left Coeyman's with fifteen other tramps on a through freight-train. All of us were huddled together on a flat-car, and of course the brakeman saw us. After finding out that none of us had any money to give him in aid of his collection for a "pint" (of whisky), he said: "You lads want to look out at Kingston. It's all right until Catskill, but you'll get collared at Kingston unless you're careful." The minute the train slackened its speed at the hostile town, the roadsters jumped off _en masse_. Whitey suggested that we separate from the crowd, run around to the other end of the railroad yards, and catch the train again when it came out. We arrived there just in the nick of time, and rode away again triumphant. The next stop was Newburg, and just before we arrived the brakeman again warned us. "Look out here," he said, from the top of a car; "if you get pinched here, you're sure for the Albany pen." We left the train again, and manoeuvered in the same way as at Kingston. Again we traveled on without fear until nearing Haverstraw, and then came that same warning from the top of a car: "Look out, you lads down there on the bumpers; Haverstraw is a hostile town." This was sickening. I had not complained before, but now I told Whitey that if ever I arrived in Weehawken safely I should forever forbid myself to tramp near the Hudson River. We were eventually successful in passing Haverstraw, and then the brakeman assured us that there was a safe route into Weehawken. His words proved true, and we arrived there at three o'clock in the morning. The puzzling question that I put to Whitey now was how to get over to New York without a cent of money. He told me not to worry, and that he would "work it all right." He spoke the truth, for we slipped into the ferry-house from the West Shore Railroad yards, and so eluded the sleepy gate-keeper. When we were on the ferry-boat I noticed four more tramps that I had met in Syracuse, and of course there was a general laugh. On landing at Jay Street, Whitey asked me where I was going. I told him that I was afraid we must part company, and that I should have to walk up to Harlem. "I hate to see you do that," he said, "for it's ag'in' the tramp natur' to like to hear of drilling [walking]. If you'll wait for me up here on Broadway, I'll go over to the post-office and hustle your car-fare." I thanked him, and waited on a corner for about five minutes, when, true enough, he returned with sufficient money for car-fare and slight refreshments over in the Bowery together. "Whitey, so long," I said; "be good to yourself." "So long, Cigarette; hope I'll see you again." I left him standing in front of the Old Tree House, our ways henceforth forever separate, but as kindly sentiments inhabiting our bosoms as ever fell to the lot of knights of the road. * * * * * For every voluntary vagrant there is a voluntary taxpayer, and in the persons of these three hundred tramps I met three hundred voluntarily taxed citizens of the State of New York. V THE TRAMP AND THE RAILROADS Five years had elapsed since my last journey with the hoboes--indeed, since I had so much as seen them. Study and recreation took me to Europe in the autumn of 1893, and I did not return to this country till the spring of 1898. Newspaper clippings containing accounts of the movements of the hoboes, and stories about their life, occasionally reached me, and once there came an invitation to be present at an Anti-Tramp Congress, but beyond this I heard very little about my old companions of the road. I always thought of them, however, when I saw the European vagabond trudging along on the public turnpikes, and wondered whether they were still permitted to travel on the railroads in their "side-door Pullmans" (box-cars) as they had done, and as they taught me to do when I was among them. In eastern Prussia I once stopped to talk with a foot-sore old wanderer on the _Chaussée_, and told him of the way the American tramp travels. "Ach, how beautiful that must be!" he exclaimed. "And to think that they would probably hang us poor fellows here in the Fatherland if we should try to ride in that fashion! In truth, son, a republic is the only place for the poor and outcast." There had been rumors, while I was still on the road, that a day of reckoning was coming between the railroad companies and the tramps, and that when it arrived, the hobo, like the _Chausséegrabentapezirer_, would take to the turnpikes. Life in Hoboland is so precarious that it comes natural to the inhabitants to be on the watch for impending catastrophes, and I remember that I also believed that the railroad companies would eventually stop free riding as the tramp practised it. It did not seem natural that a class of people with so little influence as the tramps should be allowed to enjoy such a privilege long; and although I learned to ride in freight-cars with as much peace of mind and often more comfort than in passenger-coaches, there was always something strange to me in the fact that I never bought a ticket. During my first trip in Hoboland, which lasted eight continuous months, I must easily have traveled over twenty thousand miles, and there were not more than ten occasions during the entire experience when any payment was demanded of me, and on those occasions the "medium of exchange" consisted of such things as pipes, neckties, tobacco, and knives. Once I had to trade shoes with a brakeman merely to get across the Missouri River, a trip which ordinarily would have cost me but ten cents; but as that was the very sum of which I was short, and the brakeman wanted my shoes, the only thing to do was to trade. Had any one told me, as I was leaving Europe, that a week after my arrival in this country I should be "hitting the road" again, I should not have believed him. Civilization had become very dear to me in the interval that had elapsed since my last tramp trip, and it seemed to me that my vagabond days were over. Once a vagabond, however, like the reserve Prussian soldier, a man can always be called on for duty; and it was my fate, a few days after setting foot in my native land again, to be asked by the general manager of one of our railroads to make a report to him on the tramp situation on the lines under his control. For three years he had been hard at work organizing a railroad police force which was to rid the lines under his control of the tramp nuisance, and he believed that he was gradually succeeding in his task; but he wanted me to go over his property and give an independent opinion of what had been done. He had read some of my papers in the "Century" on tramp life, and while reading them it had occurred to him that I might be able to gather information for him which he could turn to good account, and he sent for me. "On assuming management of these lines," he said to me in the conversation we had in his office, "I found that our trains were carrying thousands of trespassers, and that our freight-cars were frequently being robbed. I considered it a part of my business as a general manager to do my utmost to relieve the company of this expense, and I felt that the company owed it to the public to refuse to harbor this criminal class of people. In a way a railroad may be called the chief citizen of a State, and in this tramp matter it seemed to me that it had a duty as a citizen to discharge to the State. "There are three conspicuous reasons that have deterred railroad people from attacking the tramp problem. First, it has been thought that it would entail a very great expense. Our experience on these lines has shown that this fear was not warranted. Second, it has been thought that no support would be given the movement by the local magistrates and police authorities. Our experience shows that in a great majority of cases we have the active support of the local police authorities and that the magistrates have done their full duty. Third, it was feared that there might be some retaliation by the tramps. Up to date we have but very little to complain of on that score. From the reports that I get from my men, I am led to believe that we are gradually ridding not only the railroad property, but much of the territory in which it is situated, of the tramp nuisance; but I should like a statement from you in regard to the situation, and I want to know whether you are willing to make a tramp trip and find out for us all that you can." It was a cold, bleak day in March when we had this conversation, and there was every inducement to postpone a journey such as the general manager suggested; but I was so impressed with his seriousness in the matter, and so thoroughly interested in what he had done, that I agreed to begin the investigation at once. It seemed to me that a man who had written so much about the tramp problem ought to be willing to do what he could to help the community solve it, especially when he was to be reimbursed for his work as liberally as I was to be; and although I suffered more on this particular journey than on any other that I have made, I shall never regret having undertaken it. Before starting out on my travels a contract was drawn up between the general manager and myself. It secured to me a most satisfactory daily wage, and to the general manager weekly reports as long as I was out on the road, with a final statement when the investigation should be finished. On no previous journey in Hoboland have I been such an object of curiosity to the tramps as on this one when writing my weekly reports. I was dressed so badly that I could write them only in lodging-houses where vagabonds sojourn, and it usually took me a full half-hour to finish one. It availed nothing to pick out a quiet corner, for the men gathered about me the minute they thought I had written enough, and they thought this before I was half through. If they had been able to decipher my handwriting I should probably have received pretty harsh treatment, but as they were not, they amused themselves with funny remarks. "Give 'er my love," they said. "Writin' yer will, are ye, Cigarette?" "Break the news gently." And they made other similar remarks which, if I had not been forced to write, would have smothered any literary aspirations that a lodging-house is capable of arousing. As it was, I managed to send in my reports more or less regularly, and faulty though they must have been, they served their purpose. They told the story of the tramp situation on about two thousand miles of railroad property, situated in five different States. The reports of the first month of the investigation pertained to tramps on lines in the neighborhood of the property I was investigating. I had not been an hour on my travels when it was made very plain to me that my employer's police force was so vigilant that it behooved me not to be caught riding trains unauthorized on his lines. Every tramp I met warned me against this particular road, and although a clause in my contract secured me the payment by the company of all fines that might be imposed upon me as a trespasser, as well as my salary during imprisonment, in case I should find it useful for my purposes to go to jail, I found it more convenient for the first month to wander about on railroads which I knew tramps could get over. I reasoned that the experience was going to be hard enough anyhow, without having to dodge a railroad police officer every time I boarded a train, and I knew that the trespassers on neighboring lines would be able to tell me what was the general opinion in regard to my employer's road as a tramp thoroughfare. All whom I interviewed spoke of it as the hardest railroad in the United States for a tramp to beat, and I could not have learned more of the tramps' opinion of it had I remained exclusively on the property. The roads that I went over crossed and recrossed my employer's road at a number of places, and I was frequently able to see for myself that it is a closed line for trespassers. It may interest the reader to know how I lived during the time I traveled as a tramp. Except on one occasion, when my funds gave out, I paid my way regularly so far as food was concerned. A friend sent me a postal order for a few dollars nearly every week, and I managed to live rather comfortably at lodging-house restaurants. Occasionally I would meet a pal of former years, and if he had money, or found that I had, nothing would do but we should celebrate meeting each other again, and at such times my friend in the East got word that my remittance must be hurried up somewhat; but, as a general thing, I dined fairly well on two dollars a week. For sleeping-quarters I had bunks in lodging-houses, benches in police stations, and "newspaper beds" in railroad sand-houses. I chose one of these places as circumstances suggested. If there was nothing to be gained in the way of information by going to a sand-house or a police station, I took in a lodging-house, if one was handy. Once I slept in the tramp ward of a poorhouse, and never had I spent a more disagreeable night. A crowd of tramps to which I had attached myself had used up their welcome in a town where there were three police stations, and it had been arranged that on the night in question we should all meet at the tramp ward of the poorhouse. A negro was the first one to get there, and a more frightened human being than he was when the rest of us put in an appearance it would be hard to imagine. We found him in a cold cellar, absolutely without light and furnished with nothing but an immense bench, about four feet wide, four feet high, and ten feet long. In Siberia itself I have never seen a gloomier hole for men to pass a night in. "I turned up here 'bout five o'clock," the negro said, "'n' they sent me to the smokin'-room, where them luny blokes was smokin' their pipes. I never knew before that they sent luny people to poorhouses, 'n' I couldn't understan' it. I told one of 'em what I was there for, 'n' he told me that this cellar down here has ghosts in it. Well, o' course, I ain't 'feard o' ghosts in most places, but, by jiminy, when the keeper came 'n' put me down here 'n' left me in the cold 'n' dark, somehow or other I got to thinkin' o' that luny bloke's stories, 'n' I jus' had to holler. W'y, I never felt so queer before in my life. Suppose I'd gone crazy; w'y, I could 'a' sued the county for damages, couldn't I? Don't you ever soogest any more poorhouses to me; I don't wonder people goes crazy in 'em." When the crowd first saw the negro he was shouting at the top of his voice: "Spirits! spirits! There's spooks down here!" We all spent a most miserable night in the cellar, and I doubt whether any one of us would willingly seek shelter there again. Indeed, when the first month of my investigation was over, and war had been declared with Spain, it seemed to me that I had gone through so much and was so hardened that I could go to Cuba and worry through all kinds of trouble. I have since regretted that I did not go, but, at the time, I had become so interested in the work that, when I returned to my employer for further orders, and he said to me, "Well, now that you have satisfied me in regard to the attitude of the tramp toward the company's property, suppose you satisfy yourself concerning the attitude of the company toward the tramp," I readily fell in with the suggestion. To make my final report complete it was obvious that I ought to get an insight into the workings of my employer's police force, and for the second month he gave me permission to travel on freight-trains, engines, and passenger-trains, and a letter introducing me to the different employees of the company with whom I was likely to come in contact. With these credentials I was able to circulate freely over the property, to inquire minutely into the work of the police department, to meet the local magistrates, and particularly the jail- and workhouse-keepers. It was also possible for me to make an actual count of the trespassers who were daring enough to attempt to travel on this closed road. This work was not so tedious and dangerous as that of the first month, and there were more comforts to be enjoyed; but I had to be up at all hours of the night, and the bulk of my time was spent in train-riding. After thirty days of almost constant travel I was convinced, first, that the tramps had told the truth about the road, and that it is exceedingly difficult to trespass on it with impunity; second, that although the police force is not perfect (none is), it was doing exceptionally good work in freeing the community of tramps and beggars. It differs from ordinary railroad police forces in that it is systematically organized and governed. In dealing with tramps and trespassers the plan is to keep up a continuous surveillance of them, and they are taken off trains one by one, day after day, rather than in squads of fifty and sixty, with no more effort in this direction for weeks and sometimes months, as is the prevailing custom on most railroads. There is consequently very little crowding of magistrates' courts and jails, and the taxpayers are not forced to board and lodge a great collection of vagabonds. I was also impressed with the fact that the force is on friendly relations with municipal and village police organizations along the road, and has the respect of communities formerly at the mercy of a constantly increasing army of hoboes. So much for my personal experience and finding in this latest investigation in "trampology"; it was as interesting a tramp trip as I have ever made, and I learned more about the best methods to employ in attacking the tramp problem in this country than on any previous journey. It is now my firm belief that, if the tramps can be kept off the railroads, their organization will become so unattractive that it will never again appeal to men as it has done in the past. No other country in the world transports its beggars from place to place free of charge, and there is no reason why this country should do so. The custom has grown up in the United States during the last thirty years. Before the Civil War there were comparatively few tramps in America, and practically no railroad tramps. After the war there suddenly appeared on the scene a large class of men who had become so enamoured of camp life that they found it impossible to return to quiet living, and they took to wandering about the country. Occasionally they worked a little to keep themselves in "pin-money," but by 1870 hundreds of them had given up all intention of working, and had founded the organization known to-day as the "Hobo-Push." By that year, also, they had discovered that our turnpikes, particularly in the West, were very poor roads to travel on, and they began to walk on the railroad-track. If, at this time, the railroad companies had had laws passed, such as are in force to-day in Great Britain and on the Continent, forbidding everybody but an employee to walk on railroad property, except at public crossings, we should have learned, ere this, to obey them, and the railroad tramp would not have been developed. These laws not being enacted, however, it was not long before it became very clear to the tramp that it would be much more comfortable to sit in a box-car and ride, than to "drill" (walk) over the ties. An appreciation of this character is acted upon very soon in Hoboland, and by 1875 the majority of the professional vagrants were taking lessons in jumping on and off moving freight-trains. The trainmen, partly because they thought that many of these trespassers were deserving but penniless out-of-works, and partly on account of the inborn willingness of every American to help a man in unfortunate circumstances, made practically no serious effort to keep the tramp off their trains, and by 1880 the latter was accepted by railroad companies as an unavoidable nuisance on railroad property. [Illustration: A BRAKEMAN ON A FREIGHT-TRAIN COLLECTING FARES.] To-day it is the boast of the hoboes that they can travel in every State of the Union for a mill per mile, while in a number of States they pay nothing at all. On lines where brakemen demand money of them, ten cents is usually sufficient to settle for a journey of a hundred miles, and twenty cents often secures a night's ride. They have different methods of riding, among which the favorite is to steal into an empty box-car on a freight-train. At night this is comparatively easy to do; on many roads it is possible to travel this way, undisturbed, till morning. If the train has no "empties," they must ride on top of the car, between the "bumpers," on one of the car ladders, or on the rods. On passenger-trains they ride on top, on the "blind baggage," and on the trucks. Taking this country by and large, it is no exaggeration to say that every night in the year ten thousand free passengers of the tramp genus travel on the different railroads in the ways mentioned, and that ten thousand more are waiting at watering-tanks and in railroad yards for opportunities to get on the trains. I estimate the professional tramp population at about sixty thousand, a third of whom are generally on the move. In summer the entire tramp fraternity may be said to be "in transit." The average number of miles traveled daily by each man at this season of the year is about fifty, which, if paid for at regular rates, would cost, say, a dollar. Of course one should not ordinarily pay so much to ride in a box-car as in a passenger-coach, but the ordinary tramp is about as comfortable in one as in the other, and, on the dollar-a-trip basis, he and his 59,999 companions succeed in getting out of the railroad companies sixty thousand dollars' worth of free transportation every day that they all travel. Multiply this figure by a hundred, which is about the number of days in a year when all trampdom "flits," and you have an approximate idea of how much they gain. Another serious loss to the railroads is that involved in the disappearance of goods undergoing transportation, and in claims for personal injuries. Some tramps steal, and some do not, but every year considerable thefts are made from freight-cars, and tramps, or men posing as such, are generally the guilty parties. Professional thieves frequently become tramps for a time, both to minimize their guilt and to elude capture, and the probability is that the majority of the greater thefts are committed by them. Tramps proper are discouraged thieves, and I have seldom known them to steal anything more valuable than fruit from freight-cars and metal from idle engines. In a year's time, however, including all the thefts committed by both tramps and professional thieves, a very appreciable loss results to the railroads, and I can recall, out of my observation, robberies which have amounted to several thousand dollars. That railroad companies should have to reimburse trespassers for the loss of a hand or foot while riding unauthorized on trains will strike every one as a very unjust tax on their resources, but such claims are constantly made. Let us say, for example, that a young boy who has been stealing his way on a freight-train loses a leg. There is a type of lawyer who at once takes up a case of this sort, going to the boy's parents or relatives and suggesting to them the advisability of claiming damages, asserting his readiness to serve them in the matter. "All right," says the father; "get what you can." In court the lawyer draws a horrible picture of these engines of death, the railroads, showing how they are constantly killing people. If the boy's father is poor, this fact is also brought graphically to the attention of the jury, and the wealth of the corporation is described as something enormous. If the lawyer manages his case cleverly, making out that the boy was enticed on to the freight-train by the trainmen, or that he fell under the wheels through their carelessness, there are but few juries that will refuse to give the father at least enough damages to pay the lawyer's fee and the doctor's bill, and then there is a celebration over having "squeezed" another railroad company. For a private person to be compelled by a court to pay damages to the father of a boy who fell from an apple-tree in the private person's orchard, where the lad was an obvious trespasser and thief, would be considered an outrage. I bring out these facts about the losses to the railroads in some detail because the public is really the railroad company, and consequently the sufferer. To tell all that the country at large suffers from the free railroad transportation of tramps would take me beyond the limits of this chapter, but there are a few points which must be noted. In the first place, the railroads spread the tramp nuisance over a much greater stretch of territory than would be the case if the tramps were limited to the turnpikes. There are districts in the United States which are so difficult to reach by the highroad, on account of unprofitable intermediate territory, that the hobo would never attempt to go near them if it were not easy for him to get over the disagreeable parts of the journey in a box-car. Take the trip from Denver to San Francisco, for instance. There is not a vagabond in the country who would undertake to walk across the American Desert merely to reach "'Frisco," and if walking were the only way to get to that city it would be left largely to "coast beggars." As matters now stand, however, you may see a beggar one day in Fifth Avenue in New York city, and a fortnight later he will accost you in Market Street in San Francisco. Many tramps can travel as rapidly as the man who pays his way, and I have known those who could even "hold down" the Chicago Limited from Jersey City to Chicago without a break. All this contributes to the difficulty of locating and capturing the dangerous characters of tramp life; and, as I have said, many professional criminals, who have nothing to do with beggars in other quarters, mix with them in freight-cars. A remark, in this connection, of Mr. Allen Pinkerton is popular in Hoboland. He is reported by the hoboes to have once said, in a conversation about the capture of criminals, that he thought he could catch, in time, almost any kind of criminal except the tramp, and him he could not catch because it was so difficult to locate him. "One day he is in a barn, the next in a haystack, and the next Heaven only knows where he is, for he has probably got on to the railroad, and there you might as well look for a lost pin." The railroads also help to keep the tramp element in our large cities. It very seldom settles in the country, and not for any length of time in provincial towns. New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Buffalo, Baltimore, New Orleans, and other like places are its main strongholds. The more the criminal element of a country fastens itself upon its cities, the harder it is to break up, and in the United States this is what is taking place. Chicago, for instance, is as much a center in the criminal as in the business world, and almost every freight-train entering it brings a contribution to its criminal population. Even without railroads the tendency of crime to predominate in towns would exist; evil-doers feel more at home in city streets and haunts than in the country; but their present strength in our cities is largely due to the free transportation they get from the railroads. Another striking fact is that out-of-works who beat their way on freight-trains very easily degenerate into professional vagabonds. I have traveled with men who, in six months' time, had become voluntary vagrants merely because their first stolen rides, while in search of work, had demonstrated to them how easy it is to manage without working and paying their way. The average unemployed man in the United States goes from one large city to another, rather than, as is the custom in Europe, taking in the intermediate towns and villages, where there is no such likelihood of the labor-market becoming congested. In a few weeks, unless he is a man of very strong character, he learns to travel merely for travel's sake, and develops into a "stake-man," who only works long enough to get a "stake" and then go off on a trip again. Among the so-called unemployed in this country there are thousands of this type, and they are the result of this love of side-door Pullman excursions. [Illustration: A TRAMPS' DEPOT.] There is one more fact which cannot be overlooked--the temptation which the railroads have for a romantic and adventuresome boy. A child possessed of _Wanderlust_ generally wanders for a while, anyhow, but the chance he now has to jump on a freight-train and "get into the world quick," as I have heard lads of this temperament remark, has a great deal to do in tempting him to run away from home. Hoboland is overrun with youngsters who have got there on the railroads, and very few of them ever wander back to their parents. Once started "railroading," they go on and on, and its attractions seem to increase as the years go by. Walking has no such charms for them, and if it were their only method of seeing the world, the majority of those who now keep on seeing it, until death ends their roaming, would grow tired. The railroad, however, makes it possible for them to keep shifting the scenes they enjoy, and, in time, change and variety become so essential that they are unable to settle down anywhere. They are victims of what tramps call the "railroad fever," a malady for which a remedy has yet to be prescribed. * * * * * Can the tramps be driven off the railroads? It was to satisfy my own curiosity in regard to this question, and to find out how successful my employer, the general manager, had been in his attempt to answer it in the affirmative, that I undertook the investigation which I have described. Previous to his efforts to keep tramps off railroads, it had been thought, as he has stated, that it was cheaper to put up with them than to pay the bills which a crusade against them would occasion. It has at last been demonstrated, however, that they can be refused free transportation, with a saving of expense to the company, and with great benefit to the community; and the time has come when the public should demand that all railroads take a similar stand in regard to this evil. If all the companies would take concerted action, in a few years very few tramps, if any, would try to beat their way on trains; an appreciable number would give up tramping entirely, because their railroad privileges are to many the main attraction of the life; a few would try to become professional criminals again, partly out of revenge and partly because tramping on the turnpikes would be too disagreeable; and a large number would take to the highways, where some at least might be made to do farm-work. The reader may take exception to the third possibility, and think that great harm would come of an increase in the professional criminal class; but, as I have said, tramps are really discouraged criminals, and a return to the old life, of which they had made a failure, would only land them in the penitentiary. It is probably impossible ever entirely to eliminate the vagrant element in a nation's life, and no such hope is held out in connection with the reform advocated in this article; but this much is certain: had all the railroads been as closed to tramps, during my first excursions into Hoboland, as one of them has recently become, one man, at least, would not have attempted any free riding, and would not have found so many tramps to study. PART III SKETCHES PART III SKETCHES PAGE I. OLD BOSTON MARY 317 II. JAMIE THE KID 336 III. ONE NIGHT ON THE "Q." 355 IV. A PULQUE DREAM 366 V. A HOBO PRECEDENT 372 I OLD BOSTON MARY On the southern outskirts of the city of Boston, hidden away in a field, and reached by streets that gradually degenerated into straggling lanes, stood until a few years ago an old shanty, noted for nothing but loneliness and spooks. No one in the neighborhood knew to whom it belonged or what was its history. It was almost too forlorn to be interesting, and few went near it. The children in the district claimed that queer noises were heard in the shanty at night, and their mothers threatened them with its sheltered ghosts when they were especially naughty. But this was the extent of the shanty's reputation in its own parish. Its history, or at any rate so much of it as is known, is anything but romantic. When first built, it belonged to a "Paddy" on the railroad; and after various generations of this proprietary family had passed on to the better quarters that Boston provides for its ambitious Irish citizens, it became so dilapidated and forlorn that it was turned over to some cows pastured near by, as shelter for stormy days. It was still used for this purpose, I am told, when Old Mary rented it. How she discovered it, and why it attracted her, are questions which even her best friends found difficult to solve. But there was something about it which appealed to her, and for several months she lived her queer life in this uninteresting old building. Her neighbors knew almost nothing about her, except that she was an eccentric old woman, and that she harbored a strange class of friends who might with greater propriety have lodged in the city almshouse. But otherwise she was a foreigner in her own province, and no one could tell what she did or how she lived. Strange, too; for in some respects this old creature was a most notorious character, and had perhaps as many acquaintances and friends as any citizen of Boston. Almost every evening, after dark, had there been curious eyes on watch, stragglers of many sizes and conditions might have been seen wending their way, stealthily and cat-like, to her shanty, and ears alert might have heard a queer password tapped on the wooden door, which, as of its own free will, swung back on noiseless leather hinges, and, closing, hid the strangers from view. This went on night after night, and no resident of the neighborhood knew or cared much about it. Whatever was done in the shanty passed off so quietly and unobtrusively that public curiosity was not awakened. My first knowledge of the place was on this wise: One afternoon, while studying tramp life in New York, I dropped in for a moment at a popular resort of vagabonds in the Bowery. I had already had several months' experience in their company, and was casting about for some new feature or phase of the life; naturally enough, I turned to the saloon to hear of something which would put me on a fresh track. As luck would have it, I chanced to overhear two Eastern beggars discussing the customs and institutions of Boston. Their conversation interested me, and I drew nearer. During their talk, reference was made to Old Mary's place, which I had never heard of elsewhere, and I determined to see it. It was not long before I had found a companion and persuaded him to accompany me to Boston. He also had heard of the place, and was fairly well acquainted with its mistress, who, he declared, had been a well-known hobo out West some years before. Her history, as he recollected it, and which I know now to be quite true, was something like this: About forty years ago, a Gipsy girl in England, who had wandered about with her tribe through France as well as Britain, came to America, hoping to find her Rom friends here strong enough to afford her society and protection. But for some reason she failed to meet with the welcome she had expected, and as there was nothing else in the New World more akin to her old life than the tramp's peripatetic existence, she joined the brotherhood, and for over thirty years was recognized as a full-fledged member. Her specialty, the hobo said, was "ridin' the trucks"; and in this dangerous business she became an expert, and was probably the only woman in the world who ever made a practice of it. It may surprise some that a woman reared in Gipsy society, and accustomed to the rigorous social divisions which obtain there, should ever have entered trampdom, composed almost entirely of men. It must be remembered, however, that there are women in all classes of society who are men's women, not women's women, and at the same time none the worse for their peculiarity. There is a certain comradeship in their relations with men which even a stunted sense of honor will not abuse, and which adds piquancy to their friendship. The Gipsy girl was one of these, and had her friends as well as her lovers. The lovers failed as she grew older, but this strong-souled companionship stood her in good stead, and held the friends she made. She who had been so poorly cared for all her life long had developed somehow a genius for taking care of others, and so, after thirty years of hard riding and hard faring of all sorts, her head not quite clear about a good many things that human justice calls crime, she set up a poor, miserable home for the brotherhood of tramps. It was a crazy idea, perhaps, but the woman herself was pretty well "crippled under the hat," my friend declared, and was known from Maine to California, in true tramp dialect, as "Bughouse Mary," or, as politer folk would say, "Crazy Mary." She settled herself at first in a tumble-down old tenement-house in the very heart of Boston, and her place soon became known--too well known, in fact--to certain officious and official personages who had on more than one occasion found dangerous characters sheltered there. After some weeks she thought it necessary to move on, and pitched her tent on the spot already described. It was here that my companion and I first tested her sisterly welcome. A town tramp put us on the right road, and gave us explicit directions. He advised us not to go by daylight, and asked, "Does you blokes know the rules out at Mary's? I guess she'd take you in anyhow, but mos' the blokes, when they goes out there, takes along a handful o' terbakker an' a chunk o' beef or somethin' else ter chew. She allus 'xpects her half, too. It's a sort o' law out there, 'n' p'r'aps you lads 'u'd better do as I tells ye." We followed his advice, and I looked for some beefsteak, while my companion found the tobacco and bread. About nine o'clock we started, and spent fully an hour in finding the place. At the door, as we knew of no especial knock, I whispered through one of the cracks the word "Hobo," knowing that this was the usual tramp call. We soon heard a queer voice asking our names. "Cigarette," I replied. "What Cigarette?" asked the voice. I assured her that it was the Chicago brand. This was sufficient, and the door opened far enough to allow us to squeeze through, and we were in the famous Boston hang-out. The first attraction, of course, was Mary herself, and she was well worth a longer pilgrimage. I shall never forget the picture she made, as she stood in the middle of the floor surrounded by her pals, and welcomed us to her shanty. Her figure, although naturally strong and straight, looked cramped and bent, and had certainly suffered from long exposure and the hardships of truck-riding. Her dress, although picturesque in some particulars, looked just as tattered and worn out as did her poor old body. The original cloth and color of the skirt, if indeed it had ever had any, were disguised by fully a dozen different patches sewed on with coarse, straggling, Gipsy-like stitches. In place of a waist she wore an old coat and vest, given to her, as I afterward learned, by a clergyman. The coat was soldier's blue, and the vest as red as a robin's breast. A strange costume, it is true; but as I looked at her, it seemed, after all, a fitting one for such a unique being. The head that topped the costume was most interesting of all: a certain pose in moments of enthusiasm, and a certain toss at the climax of some story relating her early triumphs, gave it an air of wild nobility such as one sees in high-bred animals; and when, in the consciousness of her weakened powers, it dropped sadly on her breast, with the ragged gray locks streaming out in all directions, one could not escape the sense of fallen greatness in the gaunt bowed figure and the tortured face. Naturally she looked crazy, but I wished at the time that if crazy people must really exist, they might look like her. Her eyes were her most intelligent feature, and even they at times would become glazed and almost uncanny. They were the most motherly, and also the wickedest, I have ever seen on the road. This sounds paradoxical, I know, but as I have heard other men describe them in the same way, I think I must be right. And when she looked at me I felt that she was piercing my character and history in every possible corner. I have no doubt that she intended to impress me in this way. It is a Gipsy trick, and she evidently had not forgotten it. [Illustration: OLD BOSTON MARY'S SHANTY.] But queer and crazy as Old Mary appeared, she was nevertheless quite in harmony with her environment; for of all the odd hang-outs I have visited, hers was certainly the oddest. The shanty itself was in many respects just as the cows had left it, and the only furniture it contained was a stove, a few old benches, a greasy lamp, a supply of blankets, and a cupboard containing one or two frying-pans and some polished and renovated tomato-cans. These were all that the old Gipsy had been able to gather together, and it had cost her many days of fortune-telling to collect even these. But, fortunately, it was not for such things that the beggars visited her. What they wanted was simply a place where they could be away from the police, and in the company of Old Mary, whom they looked upon as a sort of guardian angel. On the night in question she had as guests men who represented nearly every kind of vagabondage. The "blanket-stiff," the "gay-cat," the "shiny," the "Frenchy," and the "ex-prushun" were all there. Some were lying on the floor wrapped in their blankets; some were mending their coats and darning their socks; while others were sitting around the stove playing a quiet game of poker, using as an "ante" pieces of bread which they had begged. In a corner there were still others who were taking off their "jiggers," reminding one of that famous _cour des miracles_ which Victor Hugo has described in "Notre Dame"; for the jiggers were nothing but bandages wound around the legs and arms to excite the sympathy of credulous and charitable people. Mary was exceedingly kind in her welcome to both my comrade and myself; but on learning that I was really the Chicago Cigarette she was a little partial to me, I think, and made me sit down on a bench, where we talked of various things and people, but especially of a St. Louis beggar called "Bud," who had spoken to her of a Cigarette with whom he once traveled. Learning that I was the very same, and that we had at one time made a long journey in the West, she wanted to know just when I had seen him last, how he looked, and what he was doing. I could easily see, from the passionate way she spoke of him and her eagerness for late news concerning his whereabouts, that he had once been a pal of hers, and I had to tell her as gently as I could that the poor fellow had been starved to death in a box-car in Texas. Some one had locked him in, and when the car was shunted on to an unused side-track, far away from any house or station, his fate was settled. Try as one will to get out of such a predicament, there is no hope unless one has a large knife and strength enough to cut through the walls. Poor Bud was without both, and he died alone and forsaken. I had heard of the accident from a man who was in the neighborhood where it happened; and thinking that the best thing I could tell Old Mary would be the truth, I stammered it out in a most awkward fashion. I knew well enough that she would cry, but I hardly expected to see the sorrow that my story occasioned. It was almost indescribable. She wept and moaned, and swayed her old body back and forth in an agony of grief, but not once did she speak. I tried my best to comfort her, but it was of no use. She had to suffer, and no one could help her. I felt so bad that I almost started to leave, but one of the men told me that she would be all right pretty soon, and I waited. True, she did become calmer, and in about an hour was enough herself to talk about other matters; but there was a grief still in her eyes that was most pitiful to see. And I shall always remember her strange and inarticulate agony. It showed, not a comrade's bereavement, nor yet the heart-wound of a motherly nature merely, but a phase of emotion belonging to younger hearts as well. I think also that there was a Gipsy strain in her suffering which I could not comprehend at all. When fairly aroused from her sadness, she asked for our bundles of food, and made the men playing cards on the stove move away, that she might light a fire and cook our meal. While she attended to these things, I passed around among the tramps. The place hardly coincided with my expectations. I had looked forward to a rough hang-out, where there would be more fighting and cursing than anything else, but I found nothing of the kind. The men conducted themselves very respectably, at least while Mary was looking on. There were a few harsh words heard, of course, but there was none of that vulgarity that one would naturally expect, for the hostess forbade it. Not that she was a woman who had never heard bad words or seen vulgar sights, but there was something about her which certainly quieted and softened the reckless people she gathered together. What this was I cannot say, but I think it was her kindness. For if there is anything which a tramp respects, although he may forget it when it is out of his sight, it is gentleness, and it was this trait in Old Mary's character which won for her the distinction and privileges usually accorded the mistress of the house. She did everything she could to make her shanty comfortable and her guests happy. For example, one man had a sore foot, and while the meat was frying she bandaged it most tenderly, making her patient lie down on a blanket which she took from a cupboard. Others wanted string or tobacco, and she invariably supplied them. She gave each one the impression that she was really interested in him; and to know this is exactly as pleasant to a tramp as it is to any other human being. When our supper was ready, Mary handed me a little pail, and said: "Cig, you'd better run out 'n' hustle some beer. You kin find it 'bout half a mile up the road, ef you give the bloke a good story. But don't let the bulls catch ye. I don't wan' cher ter git sloughed up." I took the pail and went in search of the beer, which I found at the place she spoke of. On my return she had the meat and bread placed on a shingle, and my companion and I, together with the hostess, sat down on a bench and had a most satisfying meal. During the repast Mary talked a good deal on numerous subjects, and commented on tramp life in various communities. She gave but little evidence of being crazy, but her mind would wander once in a while, and she would say in a dreamy sort of way, "Oh, Cig, this sort o' bummin' hain't like the old times. Them was the days fer beggars." Those old days, I suppose, were when she first came to this country; and I have been told that a beggar's life in that period was, if not more profitable, at any rate more comfortable. I also heard her mumbling and calling herself "bughouse," and with the word her old head would fall humbly on her breast. But her kindness was so sound and steadfast that this occasional lapse into her inane mumbling did not much impress me. She kept asking if I were having enough to eat, and offered to cook more meat if I were not. When we had finished, she handed me a new clay pipe, gave me some tobacco which was of a better brand than that which my companion had begged, and then told me to smoke my "vittals stiddy." We sat there for nearly an hour, not saying much, and yet knowing fairly well what each one was thinking. There is something in tramp nature which makes these silent conversations easy and natural. At twelve o'clock we prepared for sleep. Mary was now at her best, and the way she assigned each man his place was worthy of a general. As we had to turn out about half-past four in the morning, so that all would be quiet before people were astir, I was glad enough to have a rest. The most of the men took off their coats and shoes, making of the former a blanket and of the latter a pillow, said, "Pound yer ear well," to their nearest neighbors, and then the candle was put out. Mary had a corner entirely to herself. I had been asleep for about three hours, I think, when I was awakened by a light shining in my face, and a hand passing over a tattoo mark on my right arm. I started up, and saw Mary kneeling beside me and inspecting the "piece" very closely. Noticing that I was awake, she whispered: "Come out o' the shanty with me fer a minnit. I wants ter ask ye somethin'." I rose and followed her quietly out of the building to a small hollow not far away. "Now, Cig," she said, "tell me the truth. Did Bud croak down in Texas, dead sartain?" I assured her that I had told her the truth. "Well," she replied, "then the whole game is up. Ye see, Bud was a Rom, too, 'n' we use' ter be great pals. Fer nigh onter a tenner we bummed this kentry together 'n' never had a fight. But one day Bud got jagged, 'n' swore I had n' be'n square to 'im. So we had a reglar out-'n'-outer, 'n' I hain't seen 'im sence. I's sorry that 'e's croaked, fer 'e was a good bloke; yes, 'e was--yes, 'e was--" Here the poor creature seemed to forget herself, and I could hear her saying, "Bughouse--bughouse." I recalled her to consciousness, and said that I must leave, as it was nearly time for her to close up shop. She wanted me to promise to meet her on the Common in the afternoon, where she did most of her begging, and handed me a quarter to "keep me a-goin'" till then. I returned it, and told her that I had to leave Boston that morning, but would gladly visit her again some day. And I certainly intended to do so. But the natural course of events took me out of vagabondage soon, and it was not until quite recently that I heard any more of Bughouse Mary. A short time ago, while seeking some special and late information regarding tramp life in the large cities, I chanced upon an old friend of Mary's, whom I plied with questions concerning her whereabouts and fate. It was a long time before he would give me anything I could call a straight story, but at last, finding I had been, years before, one of the brotherhood, with hesitation and real sorrow he told me what follows: "I wuz drillin' one day, 'bout two months 'go, on the Boston 'n' Albany road, 'n' hed jes got into a jerk town [a village], where I battered [begged] fer some dinner. It begun to rain arter I'd chewed, so I mooched down to the track 'n' found a box-car where I stopped fer a while. I wuz waitin' fer the 'xpress, too, so the wettin' wa'n't much uv a bother. Waal, I'd be'n in the car a few minnits, when I got all-fired sleepy, 'n' ter save me gizzard I c'u'dn't keep me eyes open. So I jes lay down 'n' pounded me ear [slept]. I'd be'n a-poundin' it, I guess, fer 'bout two hours--fer 't wuz 'bout five 'clock when I begun, 'n' 't wuz dead dark when I got me peepers open--when I heerd somebody pushin' away at the car door to beat the divil, 'n' o' course looked out; an' there on the groun' wuz one o' the funniest bums y' ever see--long, flyin' hair, big gray eyes, coat 'n' vest, 'n', ez sure 's I'm a moocher, a skirt too, but no hat. Course I was int'rested, 'n' I jumps down 'n' gives the critter a big stare plump in the face, fer I had the feelin' I'd seen it afore somewheres. See? An' it sort o' answered, fer it seed I wuz koorios. 'I say, blokey, kin yer tell me when the flyin' mail passes through these yere parts? I wants ter make it, ef it do.' Then I knew who 't wuz, fer ye kin tell Old Mary ev'ry time when she begins to chew the rag. I tole her that the mail come through 'bout twelve 'clock, 'n' then asked her where her hat wuz. "'Waal, blokey,' she said, 'I hain't a-wearin' them air t'ings any more. I say, air yer right k'rect that the flyin' mail comes through these yere parts?' I guv it to her dead straight, 'n' tole 'er I wuz sartain. Then I asked, 'Mary, ain' cher recognizin' common peoples any more? Don't chu know old Tom?' Ye sh'u'd 'a' seen 'er look! She put 'er old bony han's on me shoulders, 'n' stuck 'er old phiz clos't ter mine, 'n' said, 'Who be ye, anyhow? I's gettin' sort o' old-like 'n' bughouse, 'n' I can't call yer name. Who be ye? 'n' kin ye tell me ef I kin make the flyin' mail?' I tole 'er who I wuz, 'n' ye sh'u'd 'a' seen 'er! Ye see, I's summat younger than 'er, 'n' she jes treated me like me old woman. It made me feel sort o' queer-like, I tell ye, for I use' ter like the old gal in great style. "Waal, we had a good talk, as ye kin well 'xpect, but she kept askin' 'bout that blasted flyin' mail. I did n' wan' ter ride it that night, 'cause she wuz purty bughouse, 'n' I felt she'd get ditched ef we tried it. So I jes argeyed with 'er, 'n' did me best ter make 'er stay where we wuz; but I might jes 's well 'a' tried to batter a dollar in the place. She was simply stuck on pullin' out that night. I asked 'er why she didn't go back to Boston, 'n' she said, 'Boston! W'y, I's got the mooch out o' Boston. Ye see, Tom, I got ter tellin' fortunes, 'n' the bulls snared me, 'n' his Honor tole me to crawl. I did n' go at first, but arter a bit it got too hot fer me out at the shanty, 'n' I had ter mooch. So here I be, 'n' I guess I'm a' right; but I 's bughouse--yes, bughouse'; 'n' she kept a-squealin' that word till I wuz sick. But she wuz bughouse, dead sure. An' I guess that's why she wuz on the road, fer when I use' ter know 'er she wuz too cute ter let any bull get roun' her; anyhow, no Boston bull c'u'd 'a' done it. P'r'aps a Chicago one might, but he's all eyes anyhow. "Waal, ez I wuz sayin', I tried ter keep 'er from ridin' the mail, but 't wa'n't no use. So I made up me mind that I'd go with 'er 'n' help 'er along. An' when the train whistled roun' the curve, I got 'er over to the tank, 'n' made 'er lay low till the train wuz ready. Waal, the train had come, 'n' I looked it over to find a blind baggage, but I c'u'dn't. So I says to Mary, 'We've got to truck it.' She got horstile 's the divil when I tole 'er that. 'Truck it!' she said. 'Course we'll truck it. What else d' ye 'xpect us to do? I use' ter ride out West as well as any o' ye, but I's gittin' old 'n' sort o' bughouse--yes, I is.' The train wuz mos' ready to pull out, 'n' the con wuz swingin' his lantern, so I took 'er hand 'n' got 'er into the baggage-car trucks. 'Get in carefully,' I said, ''n' be sartain ter hang on to the right rod.' She clumb in 'tween the wheels, 'n' fixed 'erself with 'er back to the engine. It would 'a' made ye cry to hear 'er beggin' me to look out fer 'er. 'Don't leave the old gal, will yer, blokey?' I tole 'er I w'u'dn't, 'n' got in alongside her jes ez the whistle blew; 'n' away we went, ridin', fer all either on us c'u'd tell, to the divil. 'T wa'n't no time to think 'bout that, though, fer I had to remember the old gal. I didn't dast ter hold 'er, fer I'd 'a' fallen meself, so I jes had to holler at 'er, 'n' be sure that she hollered back. I kept a-bellerin', 'Hang on, Mary, hang on!' 'n' she kept sayin', 'I will, blokey, I will!' She meant, o' course, that she'd do her best, but arter a few minnits I see clear 'nough she'd never pull through. The way the wind 'n' the gravel 'n' the dirt flew round our faces, 'n' the cramps that took us, settin' so crooked-like, wuz 'nough to make bigger blokes 'n she give up, 'n' don' cher forget it. An' to make things worse, her hair blew all over me face, 'n' matted down me eyes so I c'u'd hardly see. I das'n't brush it away, fer I'd tumbled sure. The gravel cut me face, too, 'n' onc't a good-sized stone hit me lips such a rap that I c'u'd feel the blood tricklin' on me chin. But worse than all, Old Mary got to screamin', 'n' I c'u'dn't see her fer her hair. She screamed 'n' screamed, 'The flyin' mail--oh, I say--the flyin' mail,' an' 'er shriekin' 'n' the rattlin' o' the wheels made me nigh bughouse, too. I called out ev'ry few minnits to keep 'er down to bizness, 'n' I got one more answer sayin' she was doin' 'er best. An' then some o' her hair flew in me mouth, 'n' try me best I c'u'dn't get it out, 'n' I didn't dast ter take me hands off the rod. So I c'u'dn't see 'er or speak to 'er any more. See? I heard 'er screamin' agen, 'Oh, I say--the flyin' mail--flyin'--bughouse,' an' then nothin' more. I c'u'dn't say nothin', so I jes made a big noise in me throat to let 'er know I wuz there. By 'n' by I heerd it agen,--'Bughouse--flyin' mail--blokey,'--an' agen I lost 'er. I wuz nearly bughouse meself. Ef that train hed only hauled up! Ef I hed only kept 'er from ever gettin' on to it! I c'u'd n' hold 'er, I c'u'd n' speak to 'er, I c'u'd n' see 'er, an' all the divils wuz dead agen' us. An' she wuz gettin' wilder ev'ry minnit. I shook me head up 'n' down, back'urd 'n' for'ard--'t wuz all I c'u'd do. Once agen she begun her screaming 'Oh, I say, the flyin' mail--flyin'--flyin',' an' then I said the biggest thankee I ever said in me life fer bein' blinded in me eyes; fer when her old hair hed swished away, 'n' me eyes wuz free agen, I wuz hangin' on alone, 'n' the wheels hed carried me far away from where the old gal wuz lyin'. I c'u'dn't help it, Cig--no, I c'u'dn't; 'n' you mus' tell the other blokes that I done my best, but 't wa'n't no use--I done my best." The tremor of the tone, the terror lest I should think he had not been faithful to his awful trust, told better than words that his tale was true, and that he had done his best to save the poor wrecked life so confidingly placed in his care. But the end was not unfitting. The "flyin' mail," the cramped and painful ride, the pelting storm, the dust and gravel, the homeless goal--what could be more symbolic of Old Mary's career! And on the wings of steam and wind her Gipsy spirit went flying--flying. [Illustration: OLD BOSTON MARY.] II JAMIE THE KID It was my last night in San Francisco, and I could not leave without saying good-by to Old Slim. His place was almost empty when I strolled in, and he was standing behind his greasy bar counting the day's winnings. The _adios_ was soon said, and I started for the street again. I had hardly left the bar when the door suddenly squeaked on its rickety hinges, and a one-armed man came in with a handsome kid. He was evidently dying of consumption, and as he shuffled clumsily across the floor, with the boy following solemnly at his heels, I fancied that he wanted Slim to help him into a hospital. He called for his drinks, and asked Slim if he knew of any one "bound East" the next day. "W'y, yes," Slim replied; "that young feller right back o' ye leaves ter-morrer: ain't that right, Cigarette?" The man turned and looked at me. Grabbing my hand, he exclaimed: "Well, I'll be jiggered! Where d' y'u come from? Don't remember me, eh! Wy, you little beggar, have you forgotten the time we nearly croaked in that box-car jus' out of Austin--have you forgotten that?" and he pinched my fingers as if to punish me. I scrutinized him closely, trying to trace in his withered and sickened face the familiar countenance of my old friend Denver Red. "Yes, that's right, guy me!" he retorted nervously. "I've changed a little, I know. But look at this arm,"--pushing back his sleeve from the emaciated hand,--"that crucifix ain't changed, is it? Now d' you know me?" There was no longer any reason for doubt, for down in Texas I had seen New Orleans Fatty put that same piece on his lonely arm. But how changed he was! The last time we met he was one of the healthiest hoboes on the "Santa Fé," and now he could just barely move about. "Why, Red," I asked, "how did this happen? You're nearly dead." "Sleepin' out done it, I guess," he answered hoarsely. "Anyhow, the crocus[10] says so, 'n' I s'pose he knows. Can't get well, neither. Be'n all over--Hot Springs, Yellarstone, Yosem'ty, 'n' jus' the other day come up from Mex'co. Cough like a horse jus' the same. But say, Cig, drink out, 'n' we'll go up to Jake's--'s too public here. I've got a lot to tell you, 'n' a big job fer you, too; 'll you come? A'right. So long, Slim; I'll be in agen ter-morrer." We were soon seated in a back room at Jake's. The boy stretched himself on a bench, and in a moment was asleep. "Purty kid, ain't he?" Red said, looking proudly at the little fellow. "An' he's a perfect bank, too, 'f you train 'im right. You oughter seen 'im over in Sac[11] the other day. He drove some o' them Eastern stiffs nearly wild with the way he throws his feet. Give 'im good weather an' a lot o' women, 'n' he'll batter his tenner ev'ry day. They get sort o' stuck on 'im somehow, 'n' 'fore they know it they're shellin' out. Quarters ev'ry time, too. He don't take no nickels--seems to hate 'em. A Los Angeles woman tried 'im once, 'n' what d' you think he did! Told 'er to put it in an orphan 'sylum. Oh, he's cute, bet cher life. But, Cig,"--and his voice dropped to a lower pitch,--"he's homesick. Think of it, will you, a hobo kid homesick! Bawls like the devil sometimes. Wants to see his ma--he's only twelve 'n' a half, see! If 'e was a homely kid, I'd kick 'im. If there's en'thing I can't stand, it's homely bawlin' kids. They make me sick. But you can't kick him--he's too purty; ain't he?" and he glanced at the slumberer. "You pull out at seven, do you?" he asked, after a pause. "Well, Cig, I'm mighty glad it's you I found at Slim's. I was hopin' I'd meet some bloke I knew, but I feared I wouldn't. They're mos' all dead, I guess. Bummin' does seem to kill us lads, don't it? Ev'ry day I hear o' some stiff croakin' or gettin' ditched. It's a holy fright. Yer bound fer York, ain't you, Cig? Well, now, see here; I've got an errand fer you. What d' you think 't is! Give it up, I s'pose! Well, you see that kid over there; purty, ain't he?" and he walked over to the bench and looked into the lad's face. "Pounds his ear [sleeps] like a baby, don't he?" and he passed his hand delicately over the boy's brow. "Now, Cig," he continued, returning to his seat, "I want--you--to--take--this--kid--back--to--the--Horn. That's where he lives. What d' you say?" There was only one thing I could say. A few months more at the outside and Red would be gone, and it was probably the last favor I could do him in payment for the many kindnesses he had shown me in the early days. "If en'thing happens to 'im, Cig, w'y, it's got to happen, I s'pose; but he's so dead stuck on seein' his ma that I guess he'll be purty foxy. I'd take 'im myself, but I'm 'fraid I can't pull through. It's a tough trip 'tween here 'n' Omaha, 'n' I guess he'll be safer with you. I hate to let 'im go at all, but the devil of it is I ain't got the nerve to hang on to 'im. You see, I'm goin' to croak 'fore long--oh, you don't need to snicker; 't's a fact. A few more months 'n' there'll be one less hobo lookin' fer set-downs. Yes, Cig, that's straight. But that ain't the only reason I'm sendin' the kid home. I oughter sent 'im home 'bout a year ago, 'n' I said I would, too, 'f I found 'im. I lied, didn't I? Ye-es, sir; 'bout twelve months ago I told his mother I'd fetch 'im back 'f I collared 'im. How's that fer a ghost-story, eh? Wouldn't the blokes laugh, though, if they'd hear it? Denver Red takin' a kid home! Sounds funny, don't it? But that's jus' what I said I'd do, 'n' I wasn't drunk, nuther. Fill up yer schooner, Cig, 'n' I'll tell you 'bout it." He braced himself against the wall, hugged his knees, and told me what follows. "You know where the Horn is right 'nough, don't you? Well, 'bout a year 'n' a half ago I got ditched there one night in a little town not far from the main line. 'T was rainin' like the devil, 'n' I couldn't find an empty anywheres. Then I tried the barns, but ev'ry one of 'em was locked tighter 'n a penitentiary. That made me horstile, 'n' I went into the main street 'n' tackled a bloke fer a quarter. He wouldn't give me none, but 'e told me 'f I wanted a lodgin' that a woman called College Jane 'u'd take me in. Says he: 'Go up this street till you strike the academy; then cross the field, 'n' purty soon you'll find a little row o' brown houses, 'n' in No. 3 is where Jane lives. You can't miss the house, 'cause there's a queer sign hangin' over the front door, with a ball o' yarn 'n' a big needle painted on it. She does mendin'. I guess she'll take you in. She always does, anyhow.' Course I didn't know whether he was lyin' or not,--you can never trust them hoosiers,--but I went up jus' the same, 'n' purty soon, sure 'nough, I struck the house. I knocked, 'n' in a minnit I heerd some one sayin', 'Is that you, Jamie?' Course that wasn't my name, but I thought like lightnin', 'n' made up my mind that 't was my name in the rain, anyhow. So I says, in a kid's voice, 'Yes, it's Jamie.' The door opened, 'n' there was one o' the peartest little women y' ever see. "'Oh, I thought you wasn't Jamie,' she says. 'Come in--come in. You must be wet.' [Illustration: BEATING A PASSENGER-TRAIN.] "I felt sort o' sheepish, but went in, 'n' she set me down in the dinin'-room. Then I told 'er a story. One o' the best I ever told, I guess--made 'er eyes run, anyhow. An' she fed me with more pie 'n' cake than I ever had in my life. Reminded me o' the time we thought we was drunk on apple-pie in New England. Well, then she told me her story. 'T wa'n't much, but somehow I ain't forgotten it yet. You see, she come from the soil, 'n' her man was a carpenter. After they'd be'n West 'bout six years he up 'n' died, leavin' her a little house 'n' a kid. She called 'im Jamie. Course she had to live somehow, 'n' purty soon she got a job mendin' fer the 'cademy lads, 'n' she boarded some of 'em. That's the way she got her monikey[12]-see? Well, things went along purty well, 'n' she was 'spectin' to put the kid in the 'cademy 'fore long. H-e-e-e didn't like books very well--hung around the station mos' the time. Sort o' stuck on the trains, I s'pose. Lots o' kids like that, you know. Well, to wind up the business, one night when he was 'bout 'leven year old he sloped. Some bloke snared 'im, prob'ly, an' ever since she's be'n waitin' 'n' waitin' fer 'im to come back. An' ev'ry night she fixes up his bed, 'n' 'f anybody knocks she always asks, 'Is that you, Jamie?' Funny, ain't it? Well, somehow the bums got on to 'er, 'n' ever since the kid mooched she's be'n entertainin' 'em. Gives them his room ev'ry time. An' she always asks 'em 'f they know where he is. She asked me too, 'n' made me promise 'f I found 'im that I'd send 'im home. Course I never 'spected to see 'im, but I had to say somethin'. "Well, sir, six months afterward I was sittin' in Sal's place in K. C.,[13] when who should come in but New York Slim. He called me out, 'n' says, 'Red, wanter buy a kid?' As it happened, I did want one, so I asked 'im how much 'e wanted. He took me over to a joint 'n' showed me that kid over there on that bench. 'Give you a sinker [a dollar],' I said. He was satisfied, 'n' I took the kid. "Well, sir, as luck would have it, 'bout a week later the kid got so stuck on me that he told me his story. I didn't know what to do. He didn't wanter go home, 'n' I didn't want 'im to. Course I didn't tell 'im nothin' 'bout seein' his ma--that 'u'd 'a' spoiled everything. Well, I didn't say nothin' more 'bout it, 'n' we come out here. I've had 'im now fer 'bout a year, 'n' I've trained 'im dead fine. Wy, Cig, he's the best kid on the coast--yes, he is. But, as I've be'n tellin' you, he's homesick, 'n' I've got to get 'im back to the Horn. I'm 'fraid he won't stay there--he's seen too much o' the road; but I'll croak jus' a little bit easier from knowin' that I sent 'im back. I'd like it 'f he'd stay, too; 'cause, to 'fess up, Cig, I ain't very proud o' this bummin', 'n' 'f 'e keeps at it 'e'll be jus' like me 'fore long. So when 'e wakes up I'm goin' to lecture 'im, 'n' I don't want you to laugh. May help, you know; can't tell." Two hours later we were in the railroad yards waiting for my train to be made up. There were still about fifteen minutes left, and Red was lecturing the kid. "See here, kid," I heard him saying; "what's you learnt since I've had you--en'thing?" "Bet cher life I has!" the little fellow returned, with an assumed dignity that made even Red smile. "Well, how much? Rattle it off now, quick!" The boy began to count on his fingers: "Batterin', one; sloppin' up, two; three-card trick, three; an'--an'--that song 'n' dance, four--four; an'--an' enhalin' cig'rettes, five--five--" Here he stopped and asked if he should take the next hand. "Yes, go on; let's have the hull of it." "Well, then, I knows that cuss-word you taught me--that long one, you know; that's six, ain't it? Oh, yes, 'n' I knows that other cuss-word that that parson told us was never forgiven--remember, don't you? Well, that's seven--seven. I guess that's about all--jus' an even seven." "You sure that's all, kid?" "Well, darn it, Red, ain't that enough fer a prushun? You don't know much more yerself--no, you don't, 'n' you's three times old's I am"; and he began to pout. "Now, kid, d' you know what I wants you to do?" "Bet cher life I do! Ain' cher be'n tellin' me fer the las' year? You wants me to be a blowed-in-the-glass stiff. Ain't them the words?" "No, kid. I've changed my mind. Yer goin' home now, ain' cher?" "Jus' fer a little while. I'm comin' back to you, ain't I?" "No, you ain't, kid. Yer goin' home fer good. Cigarette's goin' to take you, 'n' you mustn't come back. Listenin'?" "Say, Red, has you gone bughouse? I never heerd you talk like that in my life." "See here, kid,"--and there was a firmer tone in his voice,--"we ain't foolin' now--understan'? An' in about five minnits you'll be gone. Now, I wants you to promise that ye'll ferget ev'ry darn thing I've taught you. Listenin'?" The kid was gazing down the track. "Listenin'?" Red cried again. The kid turned and looked at him. "Can't I enhale cig'rettes any more? Has I got to ferget them, too?" "Well, kid, you _kin_ tell yer mother that I says you kin do that--but that's all. Now, 'll you promise?" "Gosh, Red, it'll be hard work!" "Can't help it--_you got to do it_. You don't wanter be like me. You wanter be somethin' dead fine--'spectable." "Ain't you somethin' dead fine? I heerd 'Frisco Shorty say onc't you was the fliest bloke in yer line west o' Denver." "You don't understan', kid"; and he stamped his foot. "I mean like yer mother. Listenin'? Well, 'll you promise?" The kid nodded his head, but there was a surprise in his eyes which he could not conceal. The train was at last ready, and we had to be quick. "Well, Cig, so long; take care o' yerself. Be good to the kid." Then he turned to the boy. It was the tenderest good-by I have ever seen between a prushun and his jocker. A kiss, a gentle stroke on his shoulder, and he helped him climb into the box-car. The last we saw of Red, as we stood at the door while the engine puffed slowly out of the yards, he was standing on a pile of ties waving his hat. Six months afterward I was told in the Bowery that he was dead. The journey to the Horn was full of incident. For six long days and nights we railroaded and railroaded, sometimes on the trucks and the blind baggage, and again lying flat on top, dodging the cinders as they whizzed about our heads, and the brakeman as he came skipping over the cars to tax us for the ride. It was hard work, and dangerous, too, at times, but the kid never whimpered. Once he wanted to, I thought, when a conductor kicked him off the caboose; but he faked a professional little laugh in place of it. And he also looked rather frightened one night when he nearly lost his grip climbing up the ladder of a cattle-car, but he was afterward so ashamed that it was almost pitiful. He was the "nerviest" child I ever traveled with. Even on the trucks, where old natives sometimes feel squeamish, he disguised his fear. But he was at his best at meal-time. Regularly he would plant himself before me in waiter fashion, and say: "Well, Cig'rette, what's it to be? Beefsteak 'n' 'taters 'n' a little pie--'ll that do?" Or if he thought I was not having enough variety he would suggest a more delicate dish. "How'll a piece o' chicken taste, eh?" And the least eagerness on my part sent him off to find it. It was not, however, an entirely one-sided affair, for I was in his service also. I had to protect him from all the hoboes we met, and sometimes it was not so easy as one might think. He was so handsome and clever that it was a temptation to any tramp to snare him if he could, and several wanted to buy him outright. "I'll give you five balls fer 'im," one old fellow told me, and others offered smaller sums. A Southern roadster tried to get him free of cost, and the tales he told him, and the way he told them, would have done honor to a professional story-teller. Luckily for me, the kid was considerably smarter than the average boy on the road, and he had also had much experience. "They's got to tell better short stories than them 'fore they get me!" he exclaimed proudly, after several men had tried their influence on him. "I'm jus' as cute as they is, ain't I? I know what they wants--they think I'm a purty good moocher, 'n' they'll make sinkers out o' me. Ain't that it?" None the less I almost lost him one night, but it was not his fault. We were nearing Salt Lake City at the time, and a big, burly negro was riding in our car. We were both sleepy, and although I realized that it was dangerous to close my eyes with the stranger so near, I could not help it, and before long the kid and I were dozing. The next thing I knew the train was slowing up, and the kid was screaming wildly, and struggling in the arms of the negro as he jumped to the ground. I followed, and had hardly reached the track when I was greeted with these words: "Shut up, or I'll t'row de kid under de wheels." The man looked mean enough to do it; but I saw that the kid had grabbed him savagely around the neck, and, feeling sure that he would not dare to risk his own life, I closed with him. It was a fierce tussle, and the trainmen, as they looked down from the cars and flashed their lanterns over the scene, cheered and jeered. "Sick 'em!" I heard them crying. "Go it, kid--go it!" Our train had almost passed us, and the conductor was standing on the caboose, taking a last look at the fight. Suddenly he bawled out: "Look out, lads! The express 's comin'!" We were standing on the track, and the negro jumped to the ditch. I snatched the kid from the ground and ran for the caboose. As we tumbled on to the steps the "con" laughed. "Didn't I do that well?" he said. I looked up the track, and, lo and behold! there was no express to be seen. It was one of the kind deeds which railroad men are continually doing for knights of the road. As we approached the Horn the kid became rather serious. The first symptom I noticed was early one morning while he was practising his beloved "song 'n' dance." He had been shaking his feet for some time, and at last broke out lustily into a song I had often heard sung by jolly crowds at the hang-out: Oh, we are three bums, Three jolly old bums, We live like royal Turks. We have good luck In bummin' our chuck. To hell with the man that works! After each effort, if perchance there had been one "big sound" at all like Red's, he chuckled to himself: "Oh, I'm a-gettin' it, bet cher life! Gosh! I wish Red was here!" And then he would try again. This went on for about half an hour, and he at last struck a note that pleased him immensely. He was just going to repeat it, and had his little mouth perked accordingly, when something stopped him, and he stared at the floor as if he had lost a dime. He stood there silently, and I wondered what the matter could be. I was on the point of speaking to him, when he walked over to the door and looked out at the telegraph-poles. Pretty soon he returned to the corner where I was reading, and settled down seriously at my side. In a few moments he was again at the door. He had been standing in a musing way for some time, when I saw him reach into his inside coat pocket and bring out the tattered bits of pasteboard with which he did his three-card trick. Unfolding the packet, he threw the paper on the track, and then fingered over each card separately. Four times he pawed them over, going reluctantly from one to the other. Then, and before I could fancy what he was up to, he tossed them lightly into the air, and followed them with his eye as the wind sent them flying against the cars. When he turned around, his hands were shaking and his face was pale. I cruelly pretended not to notice, and asked him carelessly what was the matter. He took another look at the world outside, as if to see where the cards had gone, and then came over to the corner again. Putting his hands in his trousers pockets, and taking a long draw at his cigarette, he said, the smoke pouring out of his nostrils, "I'm tryin' to reform." He looked so solemn that I did not dare to laugh, but it was all I could do to keep from it. "D' you think I'll make it go?" he asked, after a pause, during which his feet had tried to tempt him from his good resolution, and had almost led him into the forbidden dance. Almost every hour from that time on he asked that same question, and sometimes the childish pathos that he threw into his voice and manner would have unmanned an old stager. The last day of our journey we had a long talk. He was still trying to reform, but he had come to certain conclusions, and one of them was that he could not go to school any more; or, what was more to the point, that he did not see the need of it. "Course I don't know ev'rything," he explained, "but I knows a lot. Wy, I kin beat Red figgerin' a'ready, an' I kin read things he can't, too. Lots o' words he don't know 't I does; an' when he's drunk he can't read at all, but I kin. You oughter seen us in Cheyenne, Cig"; and the reminiscence made him chuckle. "We was both jagged, 'n' the copper served a paper on us, _'n' I had to read it to Red_. Ain't that purty good? Red said 't was, anyhow, 'n' he oughter know, oughtn't he? No, I don't think I need much schoolin'. I don't wanter be President of the country: 'f I did, p'r'aps I oughter know some more words; but seein' 's I don't, I can't see the use o' diggin' in readers all the while. I wish Red had given me a letter 'bout that, 'cause ma 'n' I'll get to fightin' 'bout it, dead sure. You see, she's stuck on puttin' me tru the 'cademy, 'n' I'm stuck on keepin' out of it, 'n' 'f we get to scrappin' agen I'm afraid I won't reform. She'll kick 'bout my smoking too; but I've got her there, ain't I? Red said I could smoke, didn't 'e--h'm? Tell you what I guess I'll do, Cig. Jus' after I've kissed 'er I'll tell 'er right on the spot jus' what I kin do. Won't that be a good scheme? Then, you see, she can't jaw 'bout my not bein' square, can she? Yes, sir; that's jus' what I'll do"; and he rubbed his tattooed hands as if he had made a good bargain. The next morning, just as the sun was rising over the prairie-line, our train switched off the main road, and we were at last rolling along over the Horn. The kid stood by the door and pointed out the landmarks that he remembered. Ere long he espied the open belfry of the academy. "See that cup'la, Cig!" he cried. "Dad helped to build that, but 'e croaked doin' it. Some people says that 'e was jagged, 'cause 'e tumbled. Ma says the sun struck 'im." A few minutes later the train stopped at the watering-tank, and my errand was done. There was no need to jocker the boy any longer. His welfare depended upon his mother and his determination to reform. He kissed me good-by, and then marched manfully up the silent street toward the academy. I watched him till the train pulled out. Thus ended one of the hardest trips of my life in Hoboland. * * * * * One warm summer evening, about three years after leaving the Horn, I was sitting in a music-hall in the Bowery. I had long since given up my membership in the hobo fraternity, but I liked to stroll about now and then and visit the old resorts; and it was while on such an excursion that I drifted into the variety show. I watched the people as they came and went, hoping to recognize some old acquaintance. I had often had odd experiences and renewal of friendships under similar circumstances, and as I sat there I wondered who it would be that I should meet that night. The thought had hardly recorded itself when some one grabbed my shoulder in policeman style, and said, "Shake!" I looked around, and found one of the burliest rowdies in the room. He turned out to be a pal that I had known on the New York Central, and, as usual, I had to go over my remembrances. He also had yarns to spin, and he brought them so up to date that I learned he was just free of a Virginia jail. Then began a tirade against Southern prisons. As he was finishing it he happened to remember that he had met a friend of mine in the Virginian limbo. "Said 'e knew you well, Cig, but I couldn't place 'im. Little feller; somethin' of a kid, I guess; up fer thirty days. One o' the blokes called 'im the Horn kid, 'n' said 'e use' ter be a fly prushun out in the coast country. Old Denver Red trained 'im, he said. Who is he? D' you know 'im? He was a nice little feller. W'y, what's wrong, Cig? You look spiked [upset]." I probably did. It was such a disappointment as I had hardly imagined. Poor kid! He probably did so well that his mother tried to put him into the academy, and then he "sloped" once more. I told the tramp the tale I have just finished. He was too obtuse to see the pathetic side of it, but one of his comments is worth repeating: "You can't do nothin' with them kids, Cig. After they's turfed it a bit they're gone. Better let 'em alone." But I cannot believe that that kind-hearted little fellow is really gone. Whoever meets him now, policeman or philanthropist, pray send him back to the Horn again. FOOTNOTES: [10] Doctor. [11] Sacramento. [12] Nickname. [13] Kansas City. III ONE NIGHT ON THE "Q" If there is any one thing that the hobo prizes more than another it is his privilege to ride on the railroads free of charge. He is as proud of it as the American is of his country, and brags about it from morning to night. Even the blanket-stiff in the far West, who almost never sees the inside of a railroad-car, will wax patriotic when on this subject. And well he may, for no other country in the world provides such means of travel for its vagabonds. From Maine to "'Frisco" the railroads are at the tramp's disposal, if he knows how to use them, and seldom does he take to the turnpike from any necessity. [Illustration: A RIDE ON A TRUCK.] There are, however, some difficulties and trials even in his railroad life. When he rides a "passenger," for instance, either on top or between the wheels, he encounters numerous dangers and hardships, and it is months before he knows how to meet them heroically. Even on freight trains his task is not so easy as some people think. A man must train for such work, just as a pugilist trains for a fight, and it is only when he is a real artist that he can enjoy it. The main difficulty in riding freight-trains is with the brakeman. No matter where the hobo goes, he runs the risk of meeting this ubiquitous official. If he is on the "bumpers," the brakeman is usually "guying" him from the top of a car; and if he goes "inside," so too does the brakeman. Even at night the "brakey" and his free passenger are continually running up against each other. Sometimes they become fast friends. The tramp will help put on the brakes, and the brakeman will help conceal the tramp. But there are other times when things are different. The brakeman tries to "ditch" the tramp, and the latter tries to "beat" the brakeman. On such occasions something happens. Usually the brakeman "gets left." The hobo is too clever, and beats him at his own game. But now and then even the hobo falls into a trap. Of course he gets out sooner or later, but while in it he is an interesting study. When free again, he usually tells his cronies all about it, and they pity or applaud him, as the case may be. But once in a long while the trap he falls into turns out such a joke that he says nothing about it, out of respect for the profession. He hates to be laughed at just as much as other people, and no matter how good the joke is, he keeps it to himself if it will tell against him. I happen to know of just such a joke. It has been kept quiet now for a number of years, but I think that it can do no harm to tell it, since I was one of the sufferers. One night I chanced to be in Galesburg, Illinois, situated on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. I was with a hobo called "Elmira Fatty," and we were on our way to "Chi," or Chicago, as polite people call it. We had just come in from the West, where we had spent some time with the blanket-stiffs, and as far as Galesburg we had had no misfortune or bad luck to report. In fact, from Salt Lake City on everything had gone just as we had planned, and we were hoping that night that nothing might interfere to prevent us from arriving in "Chi" the next morning. We expected to travel on a freight-train that was due in Galesburg about nine o'clock. It was a mean night for traveling, for the rain came down in torrents and the wind blew most exasperatingly. Nevertheless, we wanted to push on if practicable, and about half-past eight went over to the railroad yards to wait for the freight. It came in on time, and Fatty and I immediately took different sections of it in search of an "empty." He looked over the forward part, and I inspected the cars near the caboose. We met again in a few minutes, and reported that "there wasn't an empty in the whole line." "Wy," said Fatty, "it's nothin' but a ---- ole steer-train! Ev'ry blasted car is full of 'em." I suggested that we wait for another, but he would not listen to me. "No, sir. If we break our necks, we'll ride that train." "But where are you going to ride?" I queried. "On top, o' course." I knew that it was useless to argue with him, and followed him up the ladder. We sat down on the top of a car, with the rain simply pouring down upon us. Pretty soon the whistle tooted and the train started. As we pulled out of the yards the brakeman came over the train, and espied me instantly. "Hello, Shorty!" he said, in a jovial way. "Where you goin'?" "Oh, just up the road a bit. No objections, have you?" "No, I guess I ain't got no objections. But say, you lads are big fools." "Here, here!" said Fatty, angrily. "Who you callin' fools?" "I'm callin' you fools, 'n' y' are, too." "See here," continued Fatty; "if you call me a fool agen I'll put yer face in--I will, by gosh!" and he stood up to make good his threat. "Don't get 'uffy; don't get 'uffy," said the brakey, soothingly. "Lemme tell you somethin'. See them hay-boxes over there on the corner o' the car?" "Hay-boxes!" exclaimed Fatty, and he looked at me in surprise. "Come over 'n' look at 'em." We followed him to the end of the car, and there, true enough, after he had lifted the lid, was a most comfortable hay-box, nearly full of nice soft hay. Fatty was almost wild with delight, and patting me on the back, said: "W'y, Cig, this is a perfect palace-car, ain't it! Gosh!" The brakeman held his lantern while I got into the box. The opening was not very large, hardly more than a foot wide--plenty large enough for me, it is true, but I was much smaller than Fatty. When he tried to get in there was some trouble. His head and shoulders went through all right, but then he stopped, for his paunch was the broadest part of him, and he complained that "it pinched ter'bly." Exactly what to do was a poser, but finally he nerved himself for another squeeze. He twisted, slipped, and grunted, and at last had to beg me to hold his head and steer him, so helpless had his exertions made him. I guided him as best I could, and pretty soon he came "ka-plunk," as he called it, on the hay. The brakey closed the lid and left. Fatty had hardly settled himself before he began to wonder how he would get out in the morning. "By gosh!" he said, "p'r'aps I'll jus' have to stay here, 'n' they'll carry me right over to the stock-yards. Wouldn't I be a great steer, eh?" But I was too tired to speculate, and in a few minutes was asleep. What Fatty did for the next fifty miles I can't say, but in about two hours he cruelly awakened me and asked for a match. "Why, you're not going to smoke here?" I said. "Cert," he crisply replied. "Why not?" "You'll set the place afire, with all this loose hay about." "Set yer gran'mother afire! Gimme a lucifer." I told him I had none, and then he wanted me to get out and ask the brakey for one. I did not want to do it, but I felt sure that he would trouble me all night unless I did, so I consented to go. But, lo and behold! when I tried to lift the lid it would not lift. "Fatty," I said, "we're ditched." "Ditched yer gran'mother! What's the matter?" "This lid won't move." "Lemme get at it." Fatty weighed two hundred and fifty pounds,--"punds," he called them,--and he put every one against that lid. It squeaked a little, but still would not lift. "Fatty," I repeated, "we're ditched." But he was determined not to give in, and lay on his back to kick the lid. He reasoned that that ought to mean fifty pounds more, and if three hundred "punds' couldn't budge the thing, then something was going to happen. He kicked and kicked. The lid squeaked a good deal, but was as stubborn as ever. Then you should have heard Fatty scold. He scolded everybody, from the president of the road down to the humblest switchman, and then, as if he had not done enough, said: "By gosh, Cig, we'll prosecute 'em! This is simply scandalous! Tramps can't ride this way, and they ought to know it. Yes, sir, we'll prosecute 'em." Then he began to swear, and never in my life have I heard such maledictions hurled at poor erring railroad officials. Soon even cursing tired him, and he tumbled back on the hay exhausted. After he had rested a bit, a new phase of the situation presented itself to him, and he felt around in the box to see how much hay there was between us and the steers. "There ain't much, Cig," he whined; "---- little; an here we are locked in! By the hoky-poky, I'd like to git hold o' that brakey's throat! I'd squeeze it, take my tip for that. An', by gosh, if them steers kill us, he'll croak for it, an' don' cher forget it!" "Steers!" I exclaimed. "What do you mean, Fatty!" "Wy, don' cher know them steers is right under us?" "Well, what of that?" "W'y, they've got horns--big ones, too." "Well, what of that, Fatty?" "Wy, you fool, we ain't got any." "But, Fatty, what does that matter?" "Matter! Matter! Ain' cher got no sense? Don' cher know nothin'? Ain' cher never heard o' steers hookin' a bloke before? You must be a tenderfoot." Then I grasped the situation. We were at the mercy of those Texas steers! Soon I heard Fatty saying, in a most pitiful voice: "Cig, I guess we'd better say our little prayers right now, 'cause if we get to sleep we'll forget all about it. So you begin, 'n' while yer chewin' the rag I'll watch the hay." He wanted me to pray, and actually thought that that was the only thing that would save us. He always was a religious fellow in great emergencies, and his scheme did not much surprise me; but as I knew of no prayer fitted for such an occasion, I told him so, and added that even if I did know one I should prefer to leave it unsaid, considering the circumstances. "We had no business letting the brakey lock us in here, and you know it, too. So we'll have to get out the best way we can." This bravery was a little faked, but I thought it best to keep as cool as possible, for Fatty was continually fuming and scolding. And every few minutes he would feel around in the hay, and then say, most forlornly: "Cig, them pokers is gettin' nearer. Prepare to die." Once I thought he was joking, and told him to stop if he thought he was scaring me. "I ain't tryin' to scare you," he whined; "I'm simply tellin' you the truth." This was certainly alarming, and I almost confessed my fear. But I managed to control myself, and persevered in my artificial boldness. "Well, Fatty, let's die game, anyhow. If the horns come up here we can kick at them, and perhaps the steers will be frightened. Can't tell, you know." "No, that won't work," he replied hopelessly, and he measured the hay once more. This time his hand struck the thin and widely separated slats, the only barriers between us and the steers. We both knew that if the horns ever came through them, we would be done for. "We're gone, Cig," Fatty continued; "no doubt of it. But, jus' the samey, I'm goin' to pound my ear, anyhow. I'd rather die asleep than awake. So, so long, Cig; if you croak first, I'll pray for you." Then, much to my surprise and indignation, he curled into a big ball and "pounded his ear." I remained awake for a while longer, listening to the steers chewing away at the hay. But, in spite of the nearing danger, I became sleepy, too, and was soon lying beside Fatty. In the morning, about half-past five, we awoke simultaneously. I felt around in the box, and the hay seemed almost gone. "I wish that I'd died in the night," said Fatty, angrily. "Now I've got to go when I'm awake." The train began to slow up--perhaps we were to be saved, after all. It came to a full stop, and we could hear footsteps. Some one was walking along the path near the track. "Shall I holler?" asked Fatty. "Perhaps it's a policeman," I returned, "and that means thirty days in the Bridewell. Wouldn't you rather die?" "But p'r'aps 't ain't!" And he called through one of the cracks, "Hobo! Hobo!" Luckily it was a hobo. "Come up here," cried Fatty, "'n' unjail us, for heavin's sake. We're locked in the hay-boxes; climb on top 'n' loose the cover." We heard him quickly obeying the call. He climbed up the ladder, loosened the latch, and seemed to wonder at our eagerness to leave such a nest of comfort. Fatty was helped out immediately, although we were still six miles from "Chi"; but I made him wait while I looked to see just what danger we had escaped. There is so much compensating consolation in a view of perils safely passed. There was still a fair amount of hay in the box. I rooted down to the slats for a last look at our tormentors, and there, right before me, stood those awful beasts, wild and fresh from the fields of the Lone Star State. There were nearly twenty of them, I should say, but not a single one had a horn! Fatty sneaked off to the watering-tank, and I waved adieu to him from the top of the car. His face wore the grimmest of grins, and his last words were, "If you ever tell this joke at the hang-out, Cig--" And I never have. IV A PULQUE DREAM The freight had just pulled out of Querétaro, and Barcas and I were lying on the floor of the car near one of the side doors, commenting on the landscape. We were on our way to the city of Mexico, and it was my first visit. Barcas had been there before, three times, he said, and as the train drew nearer the town he fell to telling me of what I should see and how I should act. I was still quite a tenderfoot in Hoboland, and needed Barcas's instruction. He had just finished a very comprehensive explanation of the Spanish language and its uncalled-for differences, as he thought, from his mother-tongue, and was beginning to describe certain hang-outs that he was sure I would like, when the train stopped again for a moment at a little station. Some half-breed Indians were standing on the platform, sharing the contents of a green bottle. It was being passed around for another "draw" when Barcas happened to notice it. "See that, Cig?" he said, tapping me quickly on the shoulder. "That's pulky [pulque]. I mus' tell you 'bout that, too." The train started just then, and he waited until it was well under way. It was rolling along at a lively pace, and the brakes were rattling as they only can over a Mexican railroad. Barcas had to use the very top of his voice, but he chattered on, just the same. "Yes, Cig, that's the most important thing this side the line. Course the langwich's important, too, 'n' y'u got to learn it, but y'u mus' understan' pulky first. If I'd understood it when I was down here in '78, I'd never got into trouble, at all. Shorty 'n' Slim was with me, 'n' a lot o' other blokes that I don't rek'lect. But we was sixteen altogether. I'd never been here before, couldn't even say _adios_, so I thought I'd jus' look roun' a bit. An' for nigh on to a month we had a rip-snortin' time--drunk ev'ry day, 'n' so much to chew that I actually had to let my belt out a couple o' notches. An' we learned the langwich, too; by gosh! I could say ev'rythin' I wanted to. Course I didn't wanter say very much, I was so jagged, but I said enough, anyhow--see? "Well, this went on for pretty nigh a month, as I said, 'n' we was sloppin' up ev'ry day--but not on whisky. We went on the principle, do in Rome as the Dagoes does; so we drunk what them Indians was drinkin', pulky--mighty fine drink, too. Ain't had such dreams in a tenner as I had then. It jus' makes you feel 'appy all over, 'n' I use' to dream the whole twenty-four hours. Once I thought I was the pres'dent o' the New York Central--hope to die 'f I didn't. An' my pal he woke me up one night 'bout twelve o'clock 'n' told me that he was the Emp'rer o' the North Pole. An' the rest of 'em was jus' about as bad. We all thought we was kings 'n' queens 'n' royal flushes. Even tried to play poker with oursel's, 'n' I was the jack-pot for a while. "Well, one afternoon we was specially stuck on ourse's, 'n' went paradin' roun' the hang-out as if we was the high-monkey-monks of ev'rythin'. An' pretty soon a bloke called Curly soogested that we go over 'n' steal some more pulky at a Mexy's shanty clos't by. We was jus' drunk 'nough to do it, 'n' piled over there 'n' drunk ev'ry drop we could find. An' when we was through there wasn't en'thin' too good for us. We all thought we was royal families, an' a bloke called Red thought he was the chief of all. He was a big fella, 'n' that prob'ly swelled his head--see? Well, Red swaggered about for a while, 'n' then all of a sudden he swung his arms up Indian fashion, 'n says, 'Blokes, let's take the town.' He meant the city o' Mexico, the place we're goin' to see. Well, somehow or other it jus' struck us as a grand idee, 'n' we whooped 'n' hollered 'n' swore we'd foller 'im. Pretty soon we started. I was so jagged I could hardly keep on me pins, but that didn't matter; I was goin' to help take the city or break my neck. "It took us nearly four hours to reach the town, though it was only a mile away. We'd go a few steps, y'u know, 'n' then sprawl all over oursel's. I have to laugh now when I think of it. An' once we locked arms, thinkin' we could go it more steady-like. 'Fore we'd taken ten steps we tumbled ka-plunk, jus' like dominoes when y'u set 'em up in a row 'n' then knock the firs' one down. Well, that's the way we went, 'n' y'u should 'a' seen us when we struck the town. We looked 's if we'd drilled two thousand miles, 'n' was blowin' 'n' a-puffin' like an injin in a snow-bank. So o' course we had to rest a bit, 'n' while we was a-doin' it Red gave us instructions. "'Now, blokes,' says he, 'you want to do yer best. 'Member yer all 'Mericans, 'n' that yer fightin' Mexies. If we lick 'em it'll go up in history, dead sure. An' I'll bet a sinker it'll beat that Bally Klavvy bizness if we do it well. So put in yer best licks, 'n' keep yer eyes on me.' Then he told us who was of'sers 'n' who wasn't. I was nothin' but a sojer, a private, but he made my pal, the Emp'rer o' the North Pole, he made him firs' leftenant, so I didn't mind much s' long 's he was somethin'. "Well, 'bout half-pas' seven in the evenin' we was ready 'n' still pretty jagged, too. But Red said we oughter begin, so we started single file for the insides o' the town. The only weapons we had was a few ole razors 'n' our fists, but we was so bughouse we cal'lated they oughter do the biz. Red said the Mexies was cowards, anyhow, 'n' that we could do 'em easy enough; but he told a big whoppin' lie, 'n' we foun' it out, too, 'fore we'd been scrappin' twenty minnits. The firs' street we struck where there was many people we begun fightin', 'n' for a few minnits we did well. We knocked down ev'rybody we saw, 'n' was so stuck on oursel's that Red said, 'Now, let's go to the prison 'n' free the priz'ners.' That fired us,--a big scheme,--'n' we piped off for the jail. But we hadn't gone more 'n two blocks when we was all sewed up. Seemed 's if ev'ry jay in the town was against us, 'n' I couldn't see en'thin' but heads 'n' heads. Looked 's if the whole world was there--see? Red wouldn't give in, though, 'n' knocked a policeman into a cocked hat. That started the rest of us. We slashed right 'n' left with our razors, 'n' I put my fist into more Mexies' faces than y'u can figger up. It reminded me o' the time I got into that scrap with the bulls [policemen] in Chi [Chicago]. An' all the while Red was gettin' fiercer. "'Come on, blokes,' I heard him hollerin'; 'we'll make history 'fore we're done. Come on; knock 'em down, 'n' keep yer eyes on me.' Then he waded into that crowd for all he was worth, 'n' he did it well, too. But they was too many for us; as soon as one would tumble down another would step into his shoes, 'n' o' course that beat us. "Well, in a few minnits there was only five of us left, 'n' Red saw 't wa'n't' no use to keep on, so he bellered out, 'Make a break, anyhow, 'n' perhaps we'll give 'em the slip.' You should 'a' seen 'im then! He started right plump for the crowd, wavin' his knife 'n' swearin' like the devil. How he ever got through I can't tell, but he did, 'n' they ain't caught 'im yet. The rest of us was so played out that we had to s'render uncondish'nully on the spot. We thought, o' course, that they'd treat us like priz'ners o' war, else we'd kept on scrappin' till we croaked. But them hoosiers couldn't see the thing in that way, 'n' actually wanted to lynch us. But some cool-headed bloke got 'em out o' doin' it, 'n' made 'em take us to the jail, where we stayed jus' one year. You see, the judge gave us ten months apiece, 'n' we had to wait two months for trial. "That's the way we captured the city o' Mexico, 'n' lemme tell y'u, Cig, if you 'n' pulky fall in love down here, don't you try any funny work, 'cause it's jus' like a woman, pulky is. It tempts you 'n' then leaves you in the soup." He had no time for further comment, for the engineer was already blowing his whistle, and the lights in the yards could be seen. But Barcas did not postpone action long. At the first joint we visited he illustrated the effects of pulque in a manner even more vivid than his story. The next morning I had to make a heavy draft on my small exchequer to free him from limbo. V A HOBO PRECEDENT The trouble began in this way: Ohio Slim had made up his mind to reform and go home. He was lying in jail in western Pennsylvania at the time, in company with Chicago Bud and several other cronies. Bud was his chum, and Slim told him of his decision. This was his first mistake. When a tramp wants to reform he should say nothing about it to anybody, but scamper from the road as fast as his legs will carry him. Slim knew this perfectly well, but he was so tickled to find that he had nerve enough to make the resolution that he was obliged to tell his pal. Bud did not exactly see the point of it all, but he patted him on the back just the same and wished him good luck. Then Slim made friends with the Galway (the Catholic priest) who visited the jail on Sundays, and asked him to write a letter to his parents, explaining his yearning for home and stating that he needed five dollars to get there respectably. The good man did all this, and in due time the money came. Slim cautiously asked the Galway to keep it for him until he was free. The day of release arrived at last, and the men marched out of their cells pale but hopeful. Slim, of course, looked up the Galway immediately. He got his money, and then returned to the park where the men were waiting to bid him good-by. Just before separating from them, he called Bud aside and had a few last words with him. "I'd like to give you more, Bud," he said, as he handed him a fifty-cent piece, "but I've only got enough for my ticket and a dinner on the way--understand, don't cher?" Bud did not want to take the money, but Slim pressed it upon him, and then they parted, Slim starting for the railway-station, and Bud, with a few pals, for a saloon. They never expected to meet again. But the best-laid plans of mice and men go wrong just as easily in Hoboland as anywhere else. Poor Slim simply could not get to the station. He stopped at every saloon on the way, and by the time the train was ready to leave, his money was half gone and he was don't-care drunk. I got a glimpse of him in the afternoon as he stood, or rather staggered, in front of a billiard-hall. He was singing some verses of the song "Gwine Home." His voice was all in his nose, and he wheezed out the words like a tired-out barrel-organ. But he was clever enough not to be too uproarious, and later in the afternoon laid himself away in a brick-yard. The next morning he was sober. Meanwhile Bud and a pal, called "Rochester Curly," had also got drunk. They invested the fifty cents in whisky well called "rot-gut," and it unhinged their brains. At night they were so bad that when a little policeman tried to arrest them they both took it as an insult, and drew their razors. The officer called for assistance, and after a severe tussle, in which Bud had his head badly bruised, they were landed at the police station. The next morning the magistrate gave them ninety days apiece. How Bud ever learned of Slim's conduct remains a mystery to this day. The Galway did not tell him, I did not, the other men had left town, and neither he nor Curly saw Slim in the streets, but he got wind of it just the same. Possibly a city tramp told him. "If I ever meet that fella again," he said to some friends who visited him in the jail the following day, "I'll break his head into sixty-seven pieces. Wy, I wouldn't have treated a dog that way. I don't care if he did want to reform; he had no right to change his mind without divvyin' that boodle. Fifty cents! H'm! He wanted all the good booze himself, that's what was botherin' him. But he'll suffer fer it, take my tip fer that. He knew well enough that Curly an' me would drink rot-gut if we couldn't get anythin' else, 'n' he was jus' mean enough to let us do it. Oh, I'll teach him such a lesson when I find him that that thing won't happen again in this country. If he'd been square, Curly 'n' me wouldn't be where we is now." Everybody knew that Bud was a man of his word, but fancied, none the less, that his wrath was more the result of his bruises than of any deep-seated hatred of his old comrade. Slim had in the meantime looked up the Galway again and confessed his behavior. He was so sincerely penitent that the good man bought him a ticket out of his own pocket, and sent him home. He stayed there for just three months. Some days he did very well, hardly swore, and then, without the slightest notice, he would break through all restraints and go on a terrible tear. He had been too long on the road; he could not conquer the wild habits that he had formed; they had become an everlasting part of him; and, one day, when his people thought he was doing better than ever, he stole away and wandered back to his old haunts. They never saw him again. This, I believe, is a straightforward account of the quarrel, and both Bud's friends and Slim's tell the same story. It is what happened after this that divides them into parties. I did not see the fight myself, but I have heard it described so often that I believe I can do it justice. It took place one cold autumn night, nearly two years after the quarrel, in a barn not far from Newark, New Jersey. Some twenty hoboes had gathered there for the night, and Bud was among them. His friends say that he was in a most peaceable mood and with no thought of Slim in his mind, but they do admit that he had been looking for him ever since the separation. It was almost time to blow out the candle, and several of the men had already selected their nooks in the hay. Suddenly the door squeaked on its rusty hinges, and three newcomers walked in. The tallest one was Slim. He recognized Bud immediately, walked up to him as to an old pal, and said, "Well, Bud, old socks, how are you? S'pose you didn't expect to see me again? I couldn't make it go, Bud; liquor wouldn't leave me alone. But shake, anyhow," and he held out his hand. It was certainly a friendly greeting, but Bud returned it with a blow in the face which knocked Slim off his feet. He was so stunned that all he could do was to lie there and exclaim against the surprise Bud had been keeping for him. "W'y, Bud, have you gone bughouse? Don't cher know that I'm Slim? What cher knockin' me about that way for?" "Get up out o' that, you long-legged devil, you!" cried Bud, in a sudden rage. "Mean to tell me that you's forgotten how you did me 'n' Curly with yer rotten fifty cents? Well, you'll 'member it 'fore you get out o' here. Stand up till I put cher face in fer you!" Slim was not a coward, and got up and squared for the row. Then Bud decided that he preferred to fight with razors, and drew one from under his shirt-bosom. This was serious, and the crowd gathered around and asked for explanations. Both men gave their separate accounts of the trouble. All agreed that Slim had been greedy, even he himself, and he offered to beg Bud's pardon; but the majority claimed that the offense could not be settled that way, and the fight must consequently go on. Nevertheless, several tried to stop it, and argued earnestly with both men. Slim was willing enough not to quarrel further, but Bud would hear of nothing but satisfaction. "I said I'd do that fella," he cried to those trying to pacify him, "and I will. Jus' let me alone; if you don't, you'll get the worst of it." It was no use to argue with him while in such a mood, and he threw off his coat. Slim did likewise, and a friend lent him a razor. A Canadian was chosen for referee. "Is this thing for a finish?" he asked, as he examined their razors. "'T is 'f I can make it so," said Bud, doggedly. "And you, Slim?" queried the Canadian, further. "Well," Slim replied, in his slow and measured way, "I guess I'll do my share; but before the show begins I jus' want to ask you a question, Bud. Ain't got any objections, have you?" "No; but be spry about it," snarled Bud. "Well, now, Bud, d' you 'member the time when I took thirty days fer you down in Alabama so that you could go off 'n' cure yer diseases? 'Member how we worked it, don't cher--how I walked in to see you to let you walk out in my togs? Guess y' ain't forgotten that, have you?" "What's that got to do with this circus?" Bud sneeringly returned. Slim looked at him steadily, and his friends say that Bud winced; but that was all it amounted to, for in a minute the referee was calling them to action. "Get ready," he commanded, handing them their razors. They pushed the blades back against the handles and held them tightly with their fingers, leaving the edges bare. "Y' all right?" asked the Canadian. "I am," Bud answered. "Here, too," drawled Slim. "Then drive away," the referee shouted, stepping back at the same time out of harm's reach; and the crowd followed his example. Both men were trained "cutters," and it is said that there has not been another such exhibition of skill of this sort in Hoboland in the last ten years. There were three rounds. The first was merely preliminary. Each studied the tactics of the other and noted his weak points. It is reported that Slim was not in the best of form, and that even the referee, on seeing him parry, advised him to demand a fight with fists; but it was too late. He had warmed to the work, and, handicapped or not, he intended to see it through. Slash, slash, slash, went the razors, but all that one heard was the tiptoeing backward and forward of the fighters, as they charged or defended. A half-minute rest, and the third round began. Both Bud and Slim were badly cut, and their faces showed it, but Slim's pals claim that Bud was getting the worst of it. They say that he was misjudging his reach more and more, and that a wound over his right eye damaged his sight. This may be true; at any rate, one of Bud's cronies, who was holding the candle, suddenly dropped it. Whether Bud sprang quickly for Slim's neck or was lively enough to make a pass at him while he was unguarded, I cannot say, but when the candle was lighted again Slim lay on the floor, mortally wounded. He died that same night in a Newark hospital. Bud carries to-day a useless right arm and a blind eye. He is the proprietor of an outcasts' saloon in St. Louis, and sometimes when in his cups he brags of the deed done in the barn. But no one has ever heard him tell that incident of the story which, if not accident as well, made a dark deed forever darker. PART IV THE TRAMPS JARGON PART IV--THE TRAMP'S JARGON Almost the first thing that one remarks on getting acquainted with tramps is their peculiar language. In every country where they live they have dialects of their own choosing and making, and the stranger who goes among them must learn to speak these before he can associate with them on terms of intimacy. Indeed, the "tenderfoot" in tramp life, the beginner, is recognized by his ignorance of the "lingo." The way he carries himself, shakes hands, and begs are also signs by which the "professional" determines the newcomer's standing in the brotherhood; but they are not so unmistakable as his use of the tramp dialect, and it is seldom necessary to talk with him for more than a few minutes to discover how long he has been on the road. On starting out on my first trip among the hoboes, I thought that I had provided myself with a sufficient number of words and phrases to converse with them more or less as one of their own kind; but I soon discovered how little I knew of their language. My stock of slang consisted of expressions taken from dictionaries and acquired in association with gamins of the street, and I was naïve enough to think that it would suffice for companionship with the regular tramps. It is true that the hoboes make use of a great deal of slang that is popular in the streets and not unknown to "respectable" people, but for social intercourse they rely mainly on their own jargon. In Germany, where the police collect tramp and criminal slang into dictionaries, in order that they may be able to understand the conversations of the _Chausséegrabentapezirer_ and _Gauner_, it is less difficult for one to pick up the local tramp lingo; but in the United States there is no dictionary sufficiently up to date to give the beginner much assistance. Martin Luther was one of the first in Germany to take an interest in collecting the vagabond's "cant" phrases. He published in Latin a small volume, called "The Book of Vagabonds," which includes all the tramp slang he could pick up; and ever since the publication of this interesting little work, which is now very rare, German philologists and policemen have printed, from time to time, supplementary dictionaries and glossaries. In all Continental countries the Hebrew and Gipsy languages have been levied upon by the tramps for contributions to their dialects, and even in England the tramp jargon contains a number of words which have been imported from Germany, Bohemia, Russia, and France. In this country, on the other hand, the tramps have relied largely on their own ingenuity for cant phrases, and they often claim that expressions thus invented are much more forcible and succinct than any that they might have borrowed from foreign languages. They think that a good word is as much the result of inspiration as is a successful begging trick; and they believe, furthermore, that America is entitled to a cant language of its own. It is easy to see how this dialect originated. It came into existence primarily as a means of talking in public without being understood by others than those intimately connected with the life. It is also true that some of the words have sprung from those necessities of expression which ignorance and lack of education could not supply. In the United States, as a general rule, thanks to reformatories and prison libraries the majority of tramps are fairly well read, and can speak English with considerable correctness; but it often happens that they have thoughts and feelings which their faulty vocabularies cannot make clear, and they are obliged to invent their own words and phrases. Take the word "bughouse," for example. As it is now used it means actually crazy, and when first used it signified a state of mind bordering on insanity; but it was not invented for purposes of secrecy. Old Boston Mary was the originator of it. Sitting in her little shanty one day, and talking with some tramps seated about her, she exclaimed suddenly: "Blokes, I'm bughouse." Asked what she meant, she said: "I'm losin' me brain." It hit off exactly her poor, failing condition, and the word went like a flash all over America. To-day it is the most popular word in the lingo for the ordinary word "insane." "Crippled under the hat" is also heard, but "bughouse" supplants this expression on all occasions when men talk to their fellows, and not to the public. It is most interesting to ferret out the origin of these words. Many of them are so old that no one remembers exactly how they came into popularity, and even about words more or less modern there are different explanations; but I have succeeded in a number of cases in getting fairly trustworthy stories. In Chicago I met, one day, the man who, according to report, was the first to use the tramp word for a Catholic priest, "Galway." He was nearly eighty years old when I saw him, but remembered very distinctly how he came by it. "I was batterin'," he said, "one moon [night] on the Dope [Baltimore and Ohio Railroad], an' a stiff 'e says: 'Blokey, squeal at that house over there--it's a priest; he'll scoff ye.' I goes over 'n' toots the ringer [bell]. The baldy [old man] 'e comes himself, 'n' asted what I wanted. 'I'm starvin', father,' I yapped, 'n' begun to flicker. 'Go 'way, you lazy man,' 'e said; 'I've fed ten like you since noon.' I was horstile. I dunno how the word come to me, but I yapped it in his phiz: 'Y' ole Galway, you, yer an ole hypocrite'; 'n' then I mooched. Lots o' words comes to me that way when I'm horstile." "Punk" is another interesting word. Some say that it comes from the French word _pain_, and immigrated to the United States from Canada, where the hoboes had heard their Canadian _confrères_ use it; and this may be the case. Certainly it is as near the French pronunciation as the average vagabond can come. But a more natural explanation is that punk being dry, and bread, particularly that given to tramps, being also often dry, the resemblance of the two impressed itself on some sensitive tramp's mind. The disgust with which beggars frequently speak the word helps to substantiate this theory. "Flicker," meaning to faint, comes from the flickering of a light, "battering" (begging) from knocking at back doors, and "bull" (policeman) from the plunging, bullying attitude of these officers when dealing with rowdies. A number of words used by tramps are also in vogue among criminals, who are even more in need of a secret language than are vagabonds. It must be remembered, however, that in America at least, and to some extent in other countries as well, a great many tramps are merely discouraged criminals, and it is not unnatural that they should cling to expressions which they found valuable when they were more intimately connected with criminal life. Even as tramps they are continually making the acquaintance of criminals, and it is one of their main delights to be seen in the company of notorious thieves and burglars; they enjoy such companionship as much as certain "middle-class" people enjoy the society of "aristocrats." The word "elbow," meaning detective, is one of the slang terms common among both hoboes and criminals. It comes from the detective's habit of elbowing his way through a crowd, and it is the gloomiest word, as I heard a hobo once say, that the outcast ever hears by way of warning. Be he beggar or thief, a shiver invariably runs down his spinal column if a pal whispers or shouts "Elbow" to him while he is "at work" in a public thoroughfare. The word "finger," which is synonymous with "bull," has very nearly, but not quite, the same effect, because the finger is in uniform, whereas the elbow prowls about in citizen's clothes. "Finger" comes from the policeman's supposed love of grabbing offenders. "They like to finger us," a hobo said to me, one night, in a Western town where we were both doing our best to dodge the local police force. "Some people calls 'em the eye o' the law, but that ain't what they is; they're the finger o' the law." "Revolver," or "repeater," is both a tramp and a criminal term for the professional offender, the man who is continually being brought up for trial. "Lighthouse" is one of the most picturesque words in the lingo. It means a man who knows every detective of a town by sight, and can "tip them off" to visiting hoboes and criminals. As mariners at sea look for the beacon light which is to guide them safely into harbor, so tramps and criminals look for their "lighthouse." He is one of the most valuable acquaintances in the outcast world, and more advice is taken from him than from any other inhabitant. Such expressions as a "yellow one" for a gold watch, a "white one" for a silver watch, a "leather" for a pocket-book, and a "spark" for a diamond, explain themselves, and I have heard them used by others than those in criminal life; but they are distinctly lingo terms. "Flagged" is a word which is not so clear, although it has been taken from the railroader's parlance. It is used a great deal by pickpockets, and means that they have allowed a certain person whom they intended to victimize to pass on unmolested. It comes from the flagging of a train, which can be either stopped or made to go on by the waving of a flag. The person "flagged" seldom knows what has taken place, and every day in city streets people are thus favored by gracious "dips," or pickpockets. The dip's companion, the one who bumps up against the victim or otherwise diverts his attention while the dip robs him, is called the "stall." "Just broken out" and "squared it" are phrases which very few would understand on hearing them spoken by tramps and criminals in public. The man who has "just broken out" is not, as I thought when I first heard the words, one who has escaped from limbo, but rather one who has newly joined the fraternity. The term is used in the sense in which it might be applied to an epidemic. _Wanderlust_ (love of tramping, thieving, drunkenness) is the disease with which the newcomer in outcast life is supposed to be afflicted, and on allying himself with the brotherhood, the malady is "officially" recognized as having appeared, or broken out. "Squared it" I took to mean that a bargain or a quarrel had been settled, but I was again mistaken. It signifies that a tramp or criminal has reformed and become respectable. One who leaves the "road" for this reason is said to have "squared it," because he has settled his account with the brotherhood--he has finished with it. The word "dead" is practically synonymous with "squared it." In using it the tramp does not mean that the pal of whom he is speaking has departed this life; "croaked" is the term for that. "Dead" means that he has left the fraternity and is trying to live respectably. On one of my tramp trips I was entertained at supper by a carpenter in Detroit, and during the meal he confessed that he used to belong to my "push," the tramp brotherhood. "I've be'n dead now about ten years," he said, "I learned my trade in the pen, 'n' when I got out I decided to square it. I was petered out." On leaving his house he cautioned me not to say anything to the "'boes" (hoboes) about his being my "meal-ticket." This is a tramp term for a person who is "good" for a meal, and the carpenter did not care to have this reputation. When a man denounces to the police a beggar who has accosted him in the street, the latter, in relating the experience at the "hang-out," says that the "bloke beefed" on him (gave him away). In Cincinnati, one day, I met an old tramp acquaintance who had been given away by a pal. He had just come out of prison when I saw him, and looked so poorly, even for a recently discharged convict, that I asked him for an explanation. "Oh, it was a soaker [a sickening experience], Cig," he said. "Mike, my pal, he beefed [turned state's evidence], 'n' the screws [prison officers] they did me dirt from the start. Got the cooler [dark cell] ev'ry time I did en'thin'. Had fifteen days there twice. It was that killed me. But wait till I catch that gun Mike. It'll be his last beef if I ever find him." "Gun" means practically what "bloke," "stiff," and "plug" do--a fellow; but there is a shade of difference. It comes from the verb "to gun," to do "crooked work." Consequently a "gun" is more of a professional thief than is the "bloke." "Mug," on the contrary, is the exact equivalent of "bloke," but the verb "to mug" implies photography. In some cities suspicious characters are arrested on general principles and immediately photographed by the police authorities. Such towns are called "muggin' joints," and the police authorities "muggin' fiends." Some tramp words are popular for only a few years, and are then supplanted by others which seem to make the thing in question more vivid and "feelable." Not so very long ago, "timber" was the favorite word to describe the clubbing given to tramps in certain "horstile" towns. A hobo has recently written me that this word is gradually giving way to "saps," because the sticks or clubs used in the fracas come from saplings cut down for the purpose. On account of this continual change it is difficult to keep up with the growth of the language, and in my case it has been particularly so because I am not regularly in the life. If one, however, is always in the way of hearing the latest expressions, and can remember them, there is not much else in the language that is hard. The main rule of the grammar is that the sentence must be as short as possible, and the verb omitted whenever convenient. As a general thing the hoboes say in two words as much as ordinary people do in four, and prefer, not only for purposes of secrecy, but also for general intercourse, if in a hurry, to use their own lingo. How many words this lingo contains it is impossible to say absolutely, but it is my opinion that during the last twenty years at least three thousand separate and distinct expressions have been in vogue, at one time or another, among the tramps and criminals in the United States. The tramp who wrote to me concerning the word "timber" added the information that for practically everything with which the hobo comes in contact he has a word of his own choosing, and if this is true, then my estimate of the number of words that he has used during the last two decades would seem to be too small; but I am inclined to think that my correspondent gives the hobo's inventive powers more credit than is due them. It is not to be denied that he has a talent for coining words, but he has also a talent for letting other people do work which he is too lazy to do, and my finding is that, although he has a full-fledged lingo, he is continually supplementing it with well-known English words which he is too lazy to supplant with words of his own manufacture. When detectives and policemen surround him, and it is necessary to keep them from understanding what is being discussed, he manages to say a great deal without having recourse to English; but it is a strain on both his temper and lingo to have to do this, and he gladly makes use of our articles, conjunctions, and prepositions again when out of ear-shot of the eavesdropping officers. So far as I know he has not yet attempted to write anything exclusively in his jargon which can be termed tramp literature; but he knows a number of songs which are made up largely of tramp words, and his stories at hang-outs are almost invariably told in the lingo, or, at any rate, with so little English interspersed that a stranger would fail to appreciate the most interesting points. Nevertheless, it is one of the regrets of the hobo that his dialect is losing much of its privacy. Ten years ago it was understood by a much smaller number of people than at present, and ten years hence it will be known to far more than it is now. There are hundreds of "stake-men" and "gay-cats" on the road to-day where there were dozens a decade ago, and they are continually going and coming between civilization and Hoboland. The hobo dislikes them, and, when he can, refuses to associate with them; but they pick up his jargon whether he will or no, and on leaving the road temporarily in order to get a "stake," they tell the world at large of what they have seen and heard. In this way the secrets of Hoboland are becoming common property, and the hobo is being deprived of a picturesque isolation which formerly few disturbed. At present he likens himself to the Indian. "They can never kill us off the way they have the Injuns," a hobo once said to me, "but they're doin' us dirt in ev'ry other way they can. They're stealin' our lingo, breakin' up our camps, timberin' us, 'n' generally hemmin' us in, 'n' that's what they're doin' to the Injuns. But they can never croak us all, anyhow. We're too strong for that, thank God!" No, Hoboland can never be completely depopulated. It will change with the years, as all things change, but it is impossible to wipe it off the map. As long as there are lazy people, discouraged criminals, drunkards, and boys possessed of _Wanderlust_, Hoboland will have its place in our social geography, and a jargon more or less exclusively its own. GLOSSARY The following collection of tramp words and phrases is not intended to be at all exhaustive. I have merely explained the slang used in the text, and added certain other words which I thought might interest the reader. BALDY: an old man. BALL: a dollar. BATTER: to beg. BEEFEr: one who "squeals" on, or gives away, a tramp or criminal. BLANKET-STIFF: a Western tramp; he generally carries a blanket with him on his travels. BLIND-BAGGAGE: the front end of a baggage-car having no door. BLOKE: a fellow; synonymous with "plug," "mug," and "stiff." BLOWED-IN-THE-GLASS STIFF: a trustworthy "pal"; a professional. 'BO: a hobo. BRAKEY: a brakeman. BUGHOUSE: crazy. BULL: a policeman. BUNDLE: plunder from a robbery. CHEW: to eat or "feed." CHEW THE RAG: to talk. CHI (pronounced "Shi"): Chicago. CINCIE: Cincinnati. CON: a conductor. COOLER: a dark cell. COP: a policeman. To be "copped" is to get arrested. A "fly-cop" is a detective. CRIB: a saloon or gambling-place; more or less synonymous with "joint" and "hang-out." CROAK: to die, or to kill. CROCUS: a doctor. CROOK: a professional criminal. "Crooked work" means thieving. DEAD: reformed. A "dead" criminal is either discouraged or reformed. DICER: a hat. DIP: a pickpocket. DITCH, or BE DITCHED: to get into trouble, or to fail at what one has undertaken. To be "ditched" when riding on trains means to be put off, or to get locked into a car. DOPE, THE: the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. DOSS: _noun_, sleep; _verb_, to sleep. DOSS-HOUSE: a lodging-house. DUMP: a lodging-house or restaurant; synonymous with "hang-out." ELBOW: a detective. FAWNY MAN: a peddler of bogus jewelry. FENCE: a receiver of stolen goods. FINGER: } FLATTY: } a Policeman; synonymous with "bull." FLAGGED: when a man is said by criminals or tramps to be "flagged," it means that he is permitted to go unmolested. FLICKER: _noun_, a faint; _verb_, to faint or pretend to faint. GAG: any begging trick. GALWAY: a Catholic priest. GAY-CAT: an amateur tramp who works when his begging courage fails him. GHOST-STORY: any statement or report that is not true. When told to young boys it means a "faked" story of tramp life. GRAFT: a line of business; synonymous with "spiel." GRAFTER: a pickpocket. GUN: a fellow; more or less synonymous with "bloke," "stiff," "mug," and "plug." GUY: a fellow. HAND-OUT: a bundle of food handed out to a beggar at the back door. HANG-OUT: the hobo's home. HIT THE ROAD: to go tramping. HOBO: a tramp. Derivation obscure. Farmer's "Americanisms" gives: "HO-BOY, or HAUT-BOY: a New York night-scavenger." HOISTER, or HYSTER: a shoplifter. HOOSIER: a "farmer." Everybody who does not know the world as the hobo knows it is to him a "farmer," "hoosier," or outsider. HORN, THE: a triangular extension of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, running from Red Oak, Iowa, southwest some twenty miles, and then northwest to Pacific Junction on the main line. HORSTILE: angry, unfriendly, hostile. JIGGER: a sore, artificially made, to excite sympathy. JIGGERED: "done," beaten. When used as an exclamation, as in "I'll be jiggered," it means "I'll be damned," or words to that effect. JOCKER: a tramp who travels with a boy and "jockers" him--trains him as a beggar and protects him from persecution by others. JOINT: practically, any place where tramps congregate, drink, and feel at home. KIP-HOUSE: a lodging-house. KIP TOWN: a good lodging-house town. LEATHER: a pocket-book. "To reef a leather" means that the pickpocket pulls out the lining of a pocket containing the "leather"; this is frequently the best way of capturing a pocket-book. LIGHTHOUSE: one who knows every detective by sight, and can "tip him off" to his comrades. MAIN GUY: the leader. MARK: a person or house "good" for food, clothes, or money. MEAL-TICKET: a person "good" for a meal. MONIKEY: the tramp's nickname, as "New Orleans Blackie," "Mississippi Red," etc. MOOCH: to beg; also, to "light out," "clear out." MOOCHER: a beggar. This word is the generic term for tramps in England. MUG: _noun_, a fellow; _verb_, to photograph. MUSH-FAKIR: an umbrella-mender. The umbrellas which he collects are frequently not returned. OFFICE: to "give the office" is to give a signal to a confederate. It is usually done by raising the hat. ON THE HOG: on the tramp; also, "busted," "dead broke." P. A.: Pennsylvania. PAPER: stocks and bonds. PEN: a penitentiary PENNSYLVANIA SALVE: apple-butter. PENNYWEIGHTERS: jewelry thieves. PETER: a safe thief. "Knock-out drops" are also "peter." PHILLIE: Philadelphia. PLUG: a fellow; synonymous with "bloke" and "stiff." POKE-OUT: a lunch; synonymous with "hand-out." POUND THE EAR: to sleep. PRUSHUN: a tramp boy. An "ex-prushun" is one who has served his apprenticeship as a "kid" and is "looking for revenge," _i. e._, for a lad that he can "snare" and "jocker," as he himself was "snared" and "jockered." PUNK AND PLASTER: bread and butter. PUSH: a gang. Q.: the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, popularly known as the C. B. & Q. QUEER, THE: counterfeit money. REPEATER, or REVOLVER: an old-timer; a professional criminal and a "blowed-in-the-glass" tramp. RINGER: a bell. RUBE: a "hoosier," or "farmer." SAPS: a clubbing with weapons made from saplings; synonymous with "timber." (See below.) SCOFF: _noun_, food, "nourishment"; _verb_, to "feed," to "gorge." SCRAPPER: a victim of either tramps or criminals who "puts up a fight." SCREW: a prison turnkey. SET-DOWN: a square meal. SETTLED: in prison. SHACK: a brakeman. SHATIN' ON ME UPPERS: to be "shatin'" on one's "uppers" is to be "dead broke." SHOVE: a gang. SHOVER: a man who passes counterfeit money. SIDE-DOOR PULLMAN: a box-car. SINKER: a dollar; synonymous with "ball." SLOPE: to run away. SLOPPING-UP: a big drunk. SNARE: to entice a boy into tramp life. SNEAKS: flat or house thieves. A bank sneak is a bank thief. SNIPE: cigar-butts--the favorite tobacco among hoboes. SONG AND DANCE: a begging story or trick. SPARK: a diamond. SPIEL: something to peddle. Hoboes often carry needles, pins, court-plaster, and the like. On meeting one another, they ask: "What's your spiel?" ("What are you hawking?") (See "graft.") SPIKED: upset, chagrined, disappointed, disgusted. SQUEALER: one who gives away the gang. STAKE-MAN: a fellow who holds a position only long enough to get a "stake"--enough money to keep him in "booze" and tobacco while he is on the road. The tramps call him a "gay-cat." STALL: the pickpocket's companion. STIFF: a fellow; synonymous with "bloke" and "plug." SUCKER: a victim of both tramps and criminals. THROW THE FEET: to beg, "hustle," or do anything that involves much action. TIMBER: a clubbing at the hands of the toughs of a town unfriendly to tramps. (See "Saps.") TOMATO-CAN VAG: the outcast of Hoboland; a tramp of the lowest order, who drains the dregs of a beer-barrel into an empty tomato-can and drinks them; he generally lives on the refuse that he finds in scavenger barrels. TOOT THE RINGER: ring the bell. TURF: the road, or low life in general. TURF IT: to be on the road. YAP: _noun_, a farmer or "hoosier"; _verb_, to say or to tell. YORK: New York city. 
45412	----	Transcriber's Note Certain typographical features, such as italic font, cannot be reproduced in this version of the text. Any italicized font is delimited with the underscore character as _italic_. Any "small cap" text is shifted to all uppercase. There are two footnotes, which have been repositioned to follow the paragraph in which they are referenced. Illustrations, of course, cannot be provided here, but their approximate positions in the text are indicated as: [Illustration: caption] Please consult the more detailed notes at the end of this text for the resolution of any other issues that were encountered. "BROKE" _THE MAN WITHOUT THE DIME_ [Illustration: _As Himself_] [Illustration: "_Broke_" _THE AUTHOR_] "BROKE" _THE MAN WITHOUT THE DIME_ BY EDWIN A. BROWN ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS [Illustration] CHICAGO BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY 1913 COPYRIGHT, 1913 BY BROWNE & HOWELL COMPANY _Copyright in England_ _All rights reserved_ PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1913 THE · PLIMPTON · PRESS NORWOOD · MASS · U·S·A TO THAT VAST ARMY, WHO, WITHOUT ARMS OF BURNISHED STEEL, FIGHT WITH BARE HANDS FOR EXISTENCE THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED _What in me is dark Illumine, what is low raise and support;. That to the height of this argument I may assert eternal Providence And justify the ways of God to men._ --MILTON CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTORY xi I MY ITINERARY AND WORKING PLAN 3 II THE WELCOME IN THE CITY BEAUTIFUL TO ITS BUILDERS 8 III CHICAGO--A LANDLORD FOR ITS HOMELESS WORKERS 28 IV THE MERCIFUL AWAKENING OF NEW YORK 42 V HOMELESS--IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 48 VI LITTLE PITTSBURG OF THE WEST AND ITS GREAT WRONG 57 VII "LATTER-DAY SAINTS" WHO SIN AGAINST SOCIETY 62 VIII KANSAS CITY AND ITS HEAVY LADEN 71 IX THE NEW ENGLAND "CONSCIENCE" 82 X PHILADELPHIA'S "BROTHERLY LOVE" 95 XI PITTSBURG AND THE WOLF 104 XII OMAHA AND HER HOMELESS 117 XIII SAN FRANCISCO--THE MISSION, THE PRISON, AND THE HOMELESS 123 XIV EXPERIENCES IN LOS ANGELES 136 XV IN PORTLAND 144 XVI TACOMA 160 XVII IN SEATTLE 164 XVIII SPOKANE 172 XIX MINNEAPOLIS 178 XX IN THE GREAT CITY OF NEW YORK 183 XXI NEW YORK STATE--THE OPEN FIELDS 197 XXII THE LABORER THE FARMER'S GREATEST ASSET 207 XXIII ALBANY--IN THE MIDST OF THE FIGHT 218 XXIV CLEVELAND--THE CRIME OF NEGLECT 223 XXV CINCINNATI--NECESSITY'S BRUTAL CHAINS 244 XXVI LOUISVILLE AND THE SOUTH 256 XXVII MEMPHIS--A CITY'S FAULT AND A NATION'S WRONG 279 XXVIII HOUSTON--THE CHURCH AND THE CITY'S SIN AGAINST SOCIETY 288 XXIX SAN ANTONIO--WHOSE VERY NAME IS MUSIC 296 XXX MILWAUKEE--WILL THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIALISM END POVERTY? 305 XXXI TOLEDO--THE "GOLDEN RULE" CITY 310 XXXII SPOTLESS DETROIT 314 XXXIII CONCLUSION 318 XXXIV VISIONS 328 APPENDIX 339 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Author--As Himself and "Broke" _Frontispiece_ PAGE A half-frozen young outcast sleeping in a wagon-bed. He was beaten senseless by the police a few minutes after the picture was taken 3 A familiar scene in a Western city. The boy is "broke" but not willing to give up 8 A Municipal Lodging House. An average of seventy men slept each night in the brick ovens during the cold weather 16 At a Denver Employment Office. Many of these men slept in the brick ovens the night before 24 "Stepping up a little nearer to me he drew more closely his tattered rag of a coat" 32 Huddled on a stringer in zero weather 32 Just before Thanksgiving, 1911, leaving the Public Library, Chicago, after being ejected because of the clothes I wore 40 Municipal Lodging House, Department of Public Charities, New York City 42 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Registering Applicants 48 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Physicians' Examination Room 64 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: "Now for a good night's rest" 64 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Favorite Corner, Female Dormitory 80 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Men's Shower Baths 96 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Female Showers and Wash Room 96 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Men's Dining Room 112 "The small dark door leads down under the sidewalk and saloon." San Francisco Free Flop of Whosoever Will Mission 128 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Women's and Children's Dining Room 144 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Male Dormitory 184 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Female Dormitory 184 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Fumigating Chambers--loading up 192 Municipal Lodging House, New York City: Fumigating Chambers--sealed up 192 "I would have continued to ride on the top as less dangerous, if I had not been brutally forced on to the rods" 268 "I finally reached a point where I was hanging onto the corner of the car by my fingers and toes" 268 Riding a Standard Oil car 272 "After becoming almost helpless from numbness by coming in contact with the frozen steel shelf of the car I stood up and clung to the tank" 272 A sick and homeless boy with his dog on guard. He is sleeping on a bed of refuse thrown from a stable, with an old man lying near him 288 Waiting to crawl into a cellar for a free bed, unfed, unwashed. Fully clothed they spend the night on board bunks, crowded like animals 320 _INTRODUCTORY_ _I was born on the 28th day of April, 1857, in the village of Port Byron, Rock Island County, Illinois. The waves of the grand old Mississippi sang my lullaby through a long and joyful childhood. So near at hand was the stream that I learned to swim and skate almost before I was out of kilts. My father, A. J. Brown, at that time was the leading merchant and banker in the town. We were an exceedingly happy and prosperous family of six._ _My father died when I was seven years of age. My mother, a woman of exceptionally brilliant intellect and lovable character, has been with or near me almost all my life. She died in 1909 at the ripe age of eighty-four._ _When a boy in my teens I attended school in Boston, where I spent four years. In the early eighties I moved to Colorado and have lived there ever since. In 1897 I was married, and the intense interest and sympathy my wife has shown in my crusade for the homeless has been one of my greatest encouragements. With no children for company, it has meant a great sacrifice on her part, for it broke up our home and voluntarily separated us for nearly two years._ _I have often wondered why I should have been the one to make this crusade, for all my life I have loved solitude, and have always been over-sensitive to the criticism and opinions of others. My mission is not based upon any personal virtue of goodness, but I have been inspired with the feeling that I had taken up a just and righteous cause, and the incentive of all my efforts has ever been that of compassion--not to question whether a hungry man has sinned against society, but to ask why he is not supplied with the necessities of existence._[A] [A] The author asks forbearance for the direct personalities contained in the Introductory, which has nothing to do with the writer's appeal, and it is simply given as a reply to many inquiries. _I am trying to solve these questions: Are our efforts to help the unfortunate through the medium of our "Charities," our "Missions," and our churches all failures? Why is crime rampant in our cities? Why are our hospitals, almshouses, our jails, and our prisons crowded to overflowing? And these questions have resolved themselves for me into one mighty problem: Why is there destitution at all,--why is there poverty and suffering amidst abundance and plenty?_ _I am convinced that poverty is not a part of the great Eternal plan. It is a cancerous growth that human conventions have created and maintained. I believe it was intended that every human being should have food and shelter. Therefore I have not only asked "Why?" but I have tried to find the remedy. My crusade has been constructive and not destructive._ _My mission is not to censure but to disclose facts. I am without political or economic bias._ _I shall ask my reader to go with me and see for himself the conditions existing in our great cities,--to view the plight of the homeless, penniless wayfarer, who, because of the shortsightedness of our municipalities, is denied his right to decent, wholesome food and to sanitary shelter for a night. And my concern is not only the homeless man, but the homeless woman, for there are many such who walk our streets, and often with helpless babes at their breasts and little children at their sides. And after my reader has comprehended the condition that I shall reveal to him, I shall ask him to enlist himself in the cause of a Twentieth Century Free Municipal Emergency Home in every city, that shall prove our claims to righteousness and enlightenment._ _To-day there is everywhere a growing sense of and demand for political, social, and economic justice; there is a more general and definite aim to elevate the condition of the less fortunate of our fellow-citizens; there are united efforts of scientific investigators to discover and create a firm foundation for practical reforms. I am simply trying to show the way to one reform that is practical, feasible, and--since the test of everything is the dollar--good business._ _If I can succeed in showing that old things are often old only because they are traditional; that in evolution of new things lies social salvation; that the "submerged tenth" is submerged because of ignorance and low wages; and that the community abounds in latent ability only awaiting the opportunity for development,--then this volume will have accomplished its purpose._ _I am determined to create a systematic and popular sympathy for the great mass of unfortunate wage-earners, who are compelled by our system of social maladjustment to be without food, clothing, and shelter. I am determined our city governments shall recognize the necessity for relief._ _Let me not be misunderstood as handing out a bone, for an oppressive system. "It is more Godly to prevent than to cure."_ _In these pages I shall undertake to show by many actual cases that the so-called "hobo," "bum," "tramp," "vagrant," "floater," "vagabond," "idler," "shirker," "mendicant,"--all of which terms are applied indiscriminately to the temporarily out-of-work man,--the wandering citizen in general, and even many so-called criminals, are not what they are by choice any more than you or I are what we are socially, politically, and economically, from choice._ _I shall call attention to the nature and immensity of the problem of the unemployed and the wandering wage-earner, as such problem confronts and affects every municipality._ _We find the migratory wage-earner, the wandering citizen, at certain seasons traveling in large numbers to and from industrial centers in search of work. Most of these wandering wage-earners have exhausted their resources when they arrive at their destination, and are penniless--"broke." Because of the lack of the price to obtain a night's lodging, or food, or clothing, they are compelled to shift as best they may, and some are forced to beg, and others to steal._ _For the protection and good morals of society in general, for the safety of property, it is necessary that every municipality maintain its own Municipal Emergency Home, in which the migratory worker, the wandering citizen, can obtain pure and wholesome food to strengthen his body, enliven his spirit, and imbue him with new energy for the next day's task in his hunt for work. It is necessary that in such Municipal Emergency Home the wanderer shall receive not only food and shelter, but it is of vital importance that he shall be enabled to put himself into presentable condition before leaving._ _The purpose of each Municipal Emergency Home, as advocated in this volume, is to remove all excuse for beggary and other petty misdemeanors that follow in the wake of the homeless man. The Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home must afford such food and lodging as to restore the health and courage and self-respect of every needy applicant, free medical service, advice, moral and legal, and help to employment; clothing, given whenever necessary, loaned when the applicant needs only to have his own washed; and free transportation to destination wherever employment is offered. The public will then be thoroughly protected. The homeless man will be kept clean, healthy, and free from mental and physical suffering. The naturally honest but weak man will not be driven into crime. Suffering and want, crime and poverty will be reduced to a minimum._ _In looking over the field of social betterment, we find that America is far behind the rest of the civilized world in recognizing the problems of modern social adjustment. We find that England, Germany, Austria, France, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway, and other nations have progressed wonderfully in their system of protecting their wandering citizens. All these nations have provided their wage earners with old-age pensions, out-of-work funds, labor colonies, insurance against sickness, labor exchanges, and municipal lodging houses._ _Because of the manifest tendency to extend the political activities of society and government to the point where every citizen is provided by law with what is actually necessary to maintain existence, I advocate a divorce between religious, private, and public charities, and sincerely believe that it is the duty of the community, and of society as a whole, to administer to the needs of its less fortunate fellow-citizens. Experience with the various charitable activities of the city, State, and nation, has proven conclusively to me that every endeavor to ameliorate existing conditions ought to be, and rightly is, a governmental function, just as any other department in government, such as police, health, etc. The individual cannot respect society and its laws, if society does not in return respect and recognize the emergency needs of its less fortunate individuals. Popular opinion, sentiment, prejudice, and even superstitions, are often influential in maintaining the present-day hypocritical custom of indiscriminate alms giving, which makes possible our deplorable system of street mendicancy._ _The object of the personal investigation and experiences presented in this volume is to lay down principles and rules for the guidance and conduct of the institution which it advocates._ _The reader has a right to ask: How does this array of facts show to us the way to a more economical use of private and public gifts to the needy? Are there any basic rules which will help to solve the problem of mitigating the economic worth of the temporary dependent? I shall give ample answers to these queries._ _In the hope that the facts here presented may bring to my reader a sense of the great work waiting to be done, and may move him to become an individual influence in the movement for building and conducting Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Homes throughout our land, I offer this volume in a spirit of good-will and civic fellowship._ _E. A. B._ _Denver, September, 1913._ [Illustration: _A Half-frozen Young Outcast Sleeping in a Wagon Bed. He Was Beaten Senseless by the Police a Few Minutes after the Picture Was Taken_] "_Broke_" CHAPTER I MY ITINERARY AND WORKING PLAN "_The heart discovers and reveals a social wrong, and then demands that reason step in and solve the problem._" It was in the Winter of 1908-9 that a voice in the night prompted me to take the initiative for the relief of a great social wrong--to start on what to me was a great constructive social reform. As mysterious as life itself was the following of that voice for three years. I realized fully the importance of actually putting myself in the place of the penniless man to gain the knowledge and fully grasp all that life meant to him. It came clearly to me that the shaking of hands through prison bars, and the regulation charity inquisition and investigation was idle and useless. Overcoming a sensitive dread of being looked upon as an eccentric poseur, I purchased a workingman's suit of blue jeans, coarse shoes, and slouch hat, costing about four dollars, and became a voluntary wandering student in the haunts of the homeless and penniless. I did not intend at first to investigate further than my own home city, Denver, but the demand reaching out, I felt compelled in the months of February and March, 1909, to visit Chicago, New York, and Washington. My visit to those cities being made exceedingly prominent by the Associated Press I received on my return home over one thousand letters from all parts of the country, and not a few from the Old World. I awakened to the fact that my plea for a Municipal Emergency Home for the city of Denver had become a national--yes, a world wide--issue. Many of these letters,--from the North, the East, the South and the West,--bore invitations to come and investigate the condition of the homeless among them. With such appeals I could not throw off the responsibilities which I had assumed, in trying to make the world a little better for having lived in it. As the importance of my project grew upon me, my first thought was to obtain aid from influential institutions or individuals as a speedy way of realizing my dreams; but on second thought I realized fully that that was not in accord with my plan, for my institution was to be a governmental institution, and was to be created and maintained through that paternal medium. However, as an investigator I determined to test the heads of the great foundations, and the mighty masters of finance, to feel their attitude toward unemployment and governmental ownership and agencies for the betterment of social conditions. There were many champions of the crusade against tuberculosis and the white slave traffic, educational promoters, but the homeless, exposed, suffering, and penniless man or woman, boy or girl, standing ready to be employed, found no recognition nor were considered in their well-intentioned schemes. They could not see, or would not see, beyond their own useless, wasted efforts in meeting our problem of destitution. My plan was brought to the notice of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which recognized my work as coming within the bounds of the law to the extent of granting me free railroad transportation, but left it optional with the railroads to give it or not. In my demands the New York Central absolutely ignored my request. The Pennsylvania--with smooth abuse--slapped me on the back and wished me good luck and God-speed, but could not think of carrying me for nothing. The Gould and Harriman lines were always generous, and a number of other roads occasionally. It was a one-man, shoulder-to-shoulder battle. I carried no credentials. My plan of procedure was to go first to the leading hotel of each city I visited, because, after my investigations, I wanted to meet the leading people of that city. Arriving at my hotel I would don my emblems of honest toil--the blue jeans--and would make my study of the status of the homeless workingman of that particular city,--a study which held a message, and a message which usually startled the city. If an extended study, I usually lived at a workingman's neat boarding or lodging house, where one in workingman's clothes could walk in and out without comment. Armed with the array of facts I had collected, carrying my appeal for the Emergency Home, I would meet the various progressive civic societies of the city, and as far as possible leave something tangible in the minds of the members of "emergency home committees." This plan I always carried out to the letter except, as described in my narrative, in my Hudson River study and in Cleveland, as well as my study from Cleveland to Memphis, Tenn. Yet after all, while I might enter in the life of the penniless and endure temporarily their privations, I could only assume on my part for I knew that at a moment's notice, in case of accident or sickness, by revealing my identity every care and comfort would be given me. Consequently I was free from that mental suffering which is even greater than the physical suffering only those can understand who toil alone, homeless, penniless, and friendless in the world. After my first visit to Chicago, New York, and Washington in 1909, I made a visit in the same year to Pueblo, Kansas City, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Omaha, and Salt Lake City; and in the Winter of 1910, I visited San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Tacoma, Seattle, Spokane, and Minneapolis. This was followed by investigations through the South, which really ended my crusade in the Spring of 1911, although I made a brief study of conditions in Milwaukee, Toledo, and Detroit during the following Winter of 1911-12. CHAPTER II THE WELCOME IN THE CITY BEAUTIFUL TO ITS BUILDERS "_And the gates of the city shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there._"--REV. 21:25. On a bitter winter night, when the very air seemed congealed into piercing needles, as I was hurrying down Seventeenth Street in the City of Denver--the City Beautiful, the City of Lights and Wealth,--a young man about eighteen years of age stopped me, and asked in a rather hesitating manner for the price of a meal. At a glance I took in his desperate condition. His shoes gaped at the toes and were run down at the heels; his old suit of clothes was full of chinks soiled and threadbare, frazzled at ankle and wrist; his faded blue shirt was open at the neck, where a button was missing, and where the pin had slipped out that had supplied its place. His face and throat were fair, and he was straight and sound in body and limb. [Illustration: _A Familiar Scene in a Western City. The Boy Is "Broke" But Not Willing to Give Up_] "You look strong and well," I said to him, "why must you beg? Can't you work for what you eat? I have to." His big, honest eyes took on a dull, desperate stare, as though all hope was crushed. "This is the first time I have ever asked something for nothing," he said, "and I don't like to do it now, but I have been in Denver two days and I can't find a job. I am hungry." The last words trembled and he turned as though about to leave me. I stopped him. "Wait a moment; I did not intend to turn you down. I am hungry myself; let us go across the street to the restaurant and get our dinner." I had made up my mind to study this strong, able-bodied boy, who was workless, homeless, penniless, and suffering in our city beautiful, which is famous for its spirit of Western hospitality and even displays it as soon as you enter its gate by a great sign, "WELCOME." As we sat at the table he told me that his home was on a farm back East, that he and his stepmother didn't get along very well, that his own mother died when he was ten years old and his stepmother had not been kind to him, but that he and dad were always great friends and had continued so up to the time he went away. "I promised myself," he continued, as his hunger was appeased, "that as soon as I was old enough I would go West. I thought there were great chances for a young fellow like me out here, and so I worked and beat my way, and here I am to-day without a cent in my pocket. I have five dollars to my credit in the bank back in the old town near our farm, and if I knew anybody here I could get that money, pay my employment-office and shipment fee, go down to some works in Nebraska, and be at a job to-morrow," and he looked down in deep dejection. "Well my lad," I said, "cheer up; all life is before you. Meet me to-morrow and we will see what can be done." On the following day I took him to my bank, signed a bit of paper, and the banker gave him the five dollars. As we left the bank and started down the street, he took an old brass watch out of his pocket and offered it to me. "I want to give you something to show my appreciation of your kindness to me," he said. "Here is a watch the pawnshop man wouldn't give me anything on, but it keeps good time, and you are welcome to it if you will take it." "No, I will not take it; you will need it when you get down on the works," I said. "Where did you sleep the night before I met you?" His face flushed and he hung his head. "Was it not in the city jail?" "Yes, and it was the first time I was ever in a jail in my life." I did not question him further, but to-day I can not quite understand why he was not detained there the usual thirty days for the unforgivable crime of being homeless, as that was the way Denver had of treating her destitute visitors. Then he looked up with the true spirit of conquest in his eyes. "I'll tell you what I am going to do the first thing; I am going to get a clean, new suit of underclothing, then I am going to take a bath, and then get my shipment." "Come on, my boy," I replied, and took him to a cheap store to buy his clean underwear. Afterward we went into a barber shop where he took his bath. Denver did not then have its public bath--the beautiful public bath later built through the efforts of the Denver Woman's Club. I waited to go with him to the employment office to get his shipment. When this was accomplished, we shook hands in a good-bye, and I wished him God-speed. Two weeks later I received a letter in which he said: "I have a place to work here on a farm at big wages, with one of the best men in the world, and I am going to stay and work and save my money to help dad back on the old farm to pay off the mortgage. It is nearly paid off now and the farm will be mine some day." After that incident I was haunted. The picture of that boy freezing and starving so far from home was constantly with me, and yet, I thought, how much more pitifully helpless a woman or girl placed in the same position. I fell to wondering about the many other boys and men and women who were homeless, and of what becomes of the homeless unemployed in our city. I knew I was not alone in this incidental help I had begun; there were hundreds of men and women helping cases just like this case of my boy. And thus I set out on my crusade. Taking my initiative step into the forced resorts of the homeless of Denver, I one night drifted into one of the big beer dumps where they sell drinks at five cents a glass which costs a dollar a barrel to manufacture. Many men were in the place seeking shelter and a snack from the free lunch counter. Twenty-five stood at the bar drinking enormous schooners of chemicals and water under the name of beer containing just enough cheap alcohol to momentarily dull and lighten care. Not a few were drinking hot, strong drinks, which more quickly glazed the eye, confused the brain, and loosened the tongue. A few had already crept into the stifling odors of the dark rear rooms and had dropped down in the shadowed corners with the hope of being allowed to spend the night there. These rooms in earlier days had been "wine-rooms," where the more "polite" and prosperous had gathered, but who took the "wine-room" with them further up town as the city grew. Among the many gathered around the big warm stove was a man whose appearance told too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly with him. Stepping up to him I said in a tentative way, "Have a drink?" "No, I am not a drinker." I then asked, "Can you tell a fellow who is broke where he can get a free bed?" He looked at me with an amused smile. "You are up against it, too, are you, Jack? Well, I am broke, too, and the only free bed I know of is the kind I am sleeping in, and that's an oven at the brick yards. A lot of us boys go out there during these slack times." "An oven at the brick yards!" I said in astonishment. "How do you get there?" "Well, you go out Larimer Street to Twenty-third, then you turn out Twenty-third and cross Twenty-third Street viaduct. It's about two miles. You'll know the kilns when you come to them; you can't miss them. But don't go before eleven o'clock; the ovens are not cool enough before that time." "To-night I sleep in an oven at the brick yards," I said to myself, with cast-iron determination. It was a very cold night, but at eleven o'clock I started out Larimer Street to find my free bed. Having crossed the Twenty-third Street viaduct I was lost in darkness; there were no lights save in the far distance. I stumbled along over the frozen ground, fearing at any moment an attack, for Denver is not free from hold-ups. I could hear men's voices, but could see nothing. It was not a pleasure-outing except as the thrill caused by the swift approach of the unknown may be pleasurably exciting. Finally the lights of the brick yard shone upon me with its great, long rows of flaming kilns. I had arrived at my novel dormitory. Stepping up to a stoker at work near the entrance, I asked: "Can you show a fellow where he can find a place to lie down out of the cold?" He raised his head and looked at me, and said, "I'll show you a place." Leaning his shovel against the kiln, and picking up his lantern, he said, "Come with me." He paused at a kiln. "Some of the boys are sleeping in here to-night." I followed as he entered the low, narrow opening of a kiln and raised his light. We were in a round oven or kiln about forty feet in circumference. By the light of his lifted lantern I counted _thirty men_. "There are about seventy sleeping in the empty kilns to-night; I think you will find a place to lie down there," he said, as he pointed to a place between two men. I at once lay down, and with a "Good-night" he left me to the darkness and to the company of those homeless sleepers, who, in all our great city, could find no other refuge from death. The kiln was so desperately hot that I could not sleep, and habit had not inured me to that kind of bed. Had I been half-starved, weak, and exhausted, as were most of my companions, I, too, could have slept, and perhaps would have wanted to sleep on forever. No one spoke to me. I endured the night by going at intervals to the kiln's opening for fresh air. It was then when I looked up into the deep, dark, frozen sky, that I thought what a vast difference there is in being a destitute man from choice and a destitute man from necessity. At four o'clock the time for a fresh firing of the kilns, we were driven from the great heat of that place out into the bitter cold of the winter morning. Very few of the men had any kind of extra coat, but, thinly clad as they were, they must walk the streets until six o'clock, waiting for the saloons or some other public places to be opened. Their suffering was pitiful. I afterward learned that many of these men, from this exposure, contracted pneumonia, and from this and many other exposures filled to overflowing the hospitals of the city. During the entire week I followed up my investigations. I found men sleeping in almost unthinkable places; in the sand-houses and the round-houses of the railroad companies, when they had touched the heart of the watchman. I asked one of the railway men why the companies drove them away from this bit of comfort and shelter. "Because they steal," was his reply. "What do they steal?" I asked. "Oh, the supper pail of the man who comes to work all night, an old sack worth a nickel, a piece of brass or iron, or part of the equipment from a Pullman car, or anything they can sell for enough to buy a meal, or a bed, or a drink." "Do they steal those little things because they are hungry?" I questioned. "Oh, I don't know," he said with a shrug. "They are often so successful in not being detected, I expect that has made them bold. Some may have been hungry," he said, after a thoughtful pause. "Work has been scarce and hard to find, you know." "Yes," I replied, "they have, no doubt, tramped the streets for many a day, footsore, dirty, ragged, and penniless and worst of all, discouraged and desperate. They must have clothing and food as well as a place to sleep. Without this they must suffer and die. They are haunted by this fear of death, knowing well what hunger and exposure means and the utter impossibility of securing work with their ragged appearance." "Yes, I know," said the man, patiently listening to my growing realization of their desperation. "When they become bolder and break into a freight car to steal something, if not of much real value, or something to eat, they are usually caught and thrown into jail. But they can't stop to think of that, I suppose; the poor devils have got to live. You mustn't give me away," he added confidentially, "but I know a special agent for a big railroad company who made a boast of the number of men he had sent to the reformatory and put in the penitentiary the past year." [Illustration: _A Municipal Lodging House. An Average of Seventy Men Slept Each Night in the Denver Brick Ovens during the Cold Weather_] I slept, or rather endured, the next night, with thirteen men who were sleeping in a box car on a bed of straw. Some were smoking. Is it any wonder that many thousands of dollars' worth of property are destroyed by fire in one night? I found men asleep in vacant houses with old rags and paper for beds. They also smoked, and endangered not only this house but the entire city; besides, they often robbed the house of everything available, to satisfy their hunger. I found them sleeping in the loft of barns, the only covering the hay under which they crawled. I found them under platforms of warehouses with pieces of dirty old gunnysacks, or a piece of old canvas for a covering. I found them curled down in the tower of the switchmen, in empty cellars, in vat-rooms in breweries, in hallways, driven from one to the other, and some "carrying the banner"--walking the streets all night. I found them in the rear-ways of saloons, on and beneath their tables, and last, but not least, in that damnable, iniquitous hole, the bull-pen in the city jail. A few short years ago--the date and name is of no moment--a young man eighteen years of age was shot to death by a policeman in Denver. I went to the morgue and looked on the white, silent face of the murdered boy. His mother wired, "Can't come to bury him; too poor." And so he was laid in a pauper's grave; no, not a pauper's grave, but a criminal's. I have noticed in my investigations in all the police systems of our various municipalities--I exempt none--that where someone has been murdered, or a sick man has been thrown into jail and his life taken there, or some other outrage has been committed by their wicked policies, they always try to blanket the wrong by making a public statement that the victim had "a record" and was well known to the police. According to the newspapers, this young man's diary showed that he had been in the State seventy-four days and out of the seventy-four days he had worked sixty-four; but--convincing proof of his outlawry--they found on him a match-safe that a man declared had been stolen from him. As I looked on that dead boy's face I seemed to read, above all else, kindness. Had he been kind to someone; in return, had this match-safe been given to him? Hundreds of times have I seen these tokens of appreciation given: match-safes, knives, and even clothes from one out-of-work man to another--even an old brass watch that the pawnshop man considered of no value. The match-safe may have been given to this young fellow by a hardened criminal with whom circumstances had forced him to associate. "He ran from the officer." If you, my reader, had ever been forced, as a lodger or a suspect, to spend a night in a western city jail, you would take the chances of getting away by running rather than face that ordeal again. I was so deeply impressed by the injustice of this legal murder that, under a _nom de plume_, I wrote a letter of defense for the boy to his mother, a copy of which I sent to the press. It reached the governing powers of the city, but not the public. Almost immediately the officer was arrested, tried,--and acquitted. After my investigations in Denver had revealed such startling conditions of those who must toil and suffer, my first impulse was to fly to the Church. I thought I had reason to believe the Church stood for compassion, mercy, and pity. I approached, therefore, several of our leading clergymen. My first appeal was to the pastor of the Christian Church, and his reply was: "My friend, if you succeed in getting a free Municipal Emergency Home for Denver, you will build a monument for yourself." To this I answered: "I have no desire to build a monument; I want our city to build a shelter for those who may be temporarily destitute among us." Another, a Baptist, asked if it were Christian. I turned from this reverend gentleman with the belief that in his study of the Scriptures he had omitted the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, in which, I believe, the substitution of the word love for charity is conceded correct by the highest authority. To another, a Methodist, I said, "Won't you speak a word to your people that an interest may be aroused to relieve the hardships of those who toil, who happen to be without money, and have no place to rest?" With a forced expression, he replied, "I don't believe in the homeless and out-of-work. I have found them undeserving and dishonest." I could only ask what our Savior meant by "the least of these," and reminded him that the last words Christ spoke before His crucifixion were to a thief. I then made my way to the home of the Presbyterian pastor of the largest and most influential church in the city. I did not succeed in seeing the leader of this ecclesiastical society, but as I passed, I could look into the basement of the brightly lighted church, and I saw approximately fifty Japanese being taught--aliens who did not want our religion, but did want our language and modern ideas. Going to the president of the Ministerial Alliance, I asked to be heard, but they had no time to listen. I then went to the Y. M. C. A. and the president said, "You can't expect every fellow to throw up his hat for your concern." Paradoxical as it may seem, the only three societies whom I asked for aid, who turned me down, were the Ministerial Alliance, the Bartenders' Union, and the Y. M. C. A. Later, the Women's Clubs, Labor Councils, and the Medical Societies were my warmest friends. I then went to those in authority in the administration of our city, and among the many objections raised to my plea, the first was there were other things that needed attention more. For instance, there were overcrowded hospitals, which must be enlarged. The sick, I was told, were lying on the floors, and several children were being placed in one bed, just as they are doing in Chicago to-day. Then it was declared we would pauperize the people; we would encourage idleness instead of thrift. My investigations had taught me how useless it is to talk ethics to a man with an empty stomach. The Municipal Emergency Home I believed would encourage thrift instead of idleness. And then our chief executive declared that something effectual should be done to keep out of our State the army of consumptives who come to Colorado. I could hardly see how that would be quite just or right. But I could see, I thought, how the Municipal Emergency Home, rightly built and conducted, with its sanitary measures would be a mighty influence in our combat against the great white plague. Then the all-powerful declared the city could not afford it--the old cry of every city administration, where the political boss and machine politics rule, when it comes to creating an institution that is not in tune with their policies. Being abruptly asked what I knew about Municipal Emergency Homes, I was forced to confess that I had no knowledge whatever. I realized the need of information. I did not even know there was in existence on this whole earth of ours such an institution as I was asking Denver to build. * * * * * I have been greatly misunderstood in regard to the class and character of the destitute for whom I am asking favor. That I can now clearly explain, for what I found true in Denver in a small way I found true in every other city I visited. I classify them in two groups,--the unfortunate and the itinerant worker. Ninety per cent., taken as a whole throughout our country, are of the latter. The former and smaller percentage are chained by habits of vice, which our social system has forced upon them, or are physically weak, made so, many of them, in our prisons. And while, first, my plea is for the upright wage-earner, I am broad enough to feel that if we have been criminally thoughtless and negligent enough to allow social evils to exist and make derelicts and dependents, we certainly ought to be honest enough to stand the consequences and give them at least a place of shelter. But the 4,000,000 homeless, honest toilers with us to-day affect the welfare of every home in our nation. They are an important force and factor in society. A moment's reflection will show us quickly hundreds of good reasons why many of them at times should be moneyless and shelterless. As I throw back the curtain on these stories of human interest, I trust we may all of us catch forcibly the evident need of not sitting idly by, supinely asking a good God to help us, but rather of letting our petition in word and act be a living prayer in helping Him. The boy whom I met on our Denver street, whose condition I have described, can justly go to the Lord and complain, as well as proclaim to the world, that the City Beautiful held no welcome for him while in need of life's direst necessities. It is not to be wondered at that the so-called Christian people of the City and County of Denver have forgotten that it is not enough to have a twenty-five thousand dollar Welcome Arch of myriads of sparkling lights, heralding to the world its hospitality to those entering its gate, and then forget their Christian duty to their fellow-men in need, for the City and County of Denver has been in a political turmoil and has been concerned not so much with the preservation of human rights as with the preservation of property rights. There is no other city in the region of the Rocky Mountains that could better afford to give a real welcome to the wandering citizen, the harvester and the builder, than Denver. A city whose tax payers have permitted waste and extravagance to the extent of hundreds of thousands of dollars, in the expenditure of the tax payer's money, surely could afford to create and maintain an institution where the wandering citizen, the homeless wage earner, may find a Christian welcome and humane care. If this boy should have attempted to go to the local charity organization, and had not been told that the Society did not help "floaters," as I have known men in other cities to be told, he would undoubtedly have been informed, after going through a humiliating inquisition, that his case would be investigated and if found worthy relief afforded to him after such investigation. Imagine a hungry, homeless, penniless man, who must have whatever help he can get immediately, being told that his case will be investigated and relief afforded at some later date! What is a man in this condition to do? Did not the charity organization to whom the tax payers give money for the express purpose of relieving the needy and distressed, compel this very individual to beg, to accost the citizens on the streets who have already subscribed for his relief, and to still continue to beg from them? Does not such a charitable organization, by the acquiescence of the citizens of the city, put a premium on this hungry, homeless man to go and shift for himself as best he may, either by accosting citizens who have already been burdened by his relief, or by stealing, robbing, and if necessary demanding a life, to satisfy the needs whereby his existence may be made possible? [Illustration: _At a Denver Employment Office. Many of these Men Slept in the Brick Ovens the Night before_] It is time that the citizens of the City and County of Denver, and for that matter, of all other municipalities of the United States, shall awaken to the call of duty in their respective communities in dealing rightly with those who are their wards, if they desire to minimize instead of increase the evils of pauperism brought about by indiscriminate alms-giving. A great many times, through political intrigues, we find people at the head of charity organizations in our cities that have no business to be there. Their appointment to such places, in many instances, is purely political, and they are, therefore, not competent to dispense the money subscribed by the tax payers of the community. Very often only those individuals can receive consideration at the hands of such officials who bring a letter of introduction, or have some personal political "pull," while an honest and deserving man, coming from some other portion of the City or State, without any acquaintance whatsoever in the community in which he finds himself stranded, may receive no consideration whatever at the hands of such so-called administrators of public charity. It has been conclusively proven that the charitable endeavors of our so-called charity organization societies are extremely unscientific, wasteful, and have a detrimental and pauperizing effect in-so-far as the work of the charitable is devoted to reclamation and not to prevention, which is also one cause for its failure. Consider a moment one startling fact evidencing the spirit shown by organized charity in its effort so evidently to refrain from helping the needy: I found during my personal investigations that the societies keep _banking hours_ from nine to five o'clock, and are closed at noon on Saturdays! From noon on Saturday to nine on Monday, is it not possible that some needy one in distress may need help? Readiness on the part of the private citizen to subordinate personal interests to the public welfare is a sure sign of political health; and readiness on the part of public officials to use public offices for private gain is an equally sure sign of disease. Every municipality, by reason of its organization, supported by all of its citizens, ought to supply all communal needs, instead of permitting certain special interests under the guise of "religious" and "charity" organizations to administer to the needs of the less fortunate members of the community. There are two very important facts that occupy the center of the stage of our complex civilization, to which all other facts are tributary, and which for good or ill are conceded to be of supreme importance. They are the rise of scientific and democratic administration of all the needs of the people, and the decline of private, special interests, clinging to the preservation of property rights as against human rights. Determined is the demand of the people for a controlling voice in their destinies. The disinherited classes are refusing to remain disinherited. Every device within the wit of man has been sought to keep them down, and all devices have come to naught. The efforts of the people to throw off their oppressors have not always been wise, but they have been noble, self-sacrificing. The report of charities and corrections at Atlanta for 1903 states that from among thirty of the leading cities of our nation, Denver is the only city reported as being severe toward its toilers, particularly toward that class which it is pleased to call "beggars" and "vagrants." Personal observation, however, proved to me that many other cities in the list were equally as cruel, and yet it is astounding to note in this report that the arrests in Denver for the crime of being poor--begging and vagrancy--which has undoubtedly correspondingly increased with the city's growth in the following years, was 6763, while New York City's for the corresponding crime, and same period of time was, for begging, 430; for vagrancy, 523; and Chicago, for begging, 338; for vagrancy, 523. This is approximately Denver's ratio with all of the other cities in the report. CHAPTER III CHICAGO--A LANDLORD FOR ITS HOMELESS WORKERS "_These hints dropped as it were from sleep and night let us use in broad day._"--EMERSON. On a stormy night in February, 1909, I arrived at the Auditorium Annex in Chicago. Donning my worker's outfit and covering my entire person with a large, long coat, unnoticed I left the hotel. Leaving the coat at a convenient place, I appeared an out-of-work moneyless man, seeking assistance in this mighty American industrial center. I made my way down Van Buren Street. Though the hour was late, there were many people abroad and almost every man, judging from his appearance, seemed to be needy. Stepping up to one on the corner of Clark Street, who seemed to be a degree less prosperous than all the rest, I said, in the language of the army who struggle: "Say, Jack, can you tell a fellow where he can find a free flop?" He raised his hand and pointed toward a stairway which led up over a large saloon, "You can flop on the floor up there for a nickle." "But I am up against it right, pal. I am shy the coin for even that to-night." Stepping up a little nearer to me and drawing more closely his tattered rag of a coat about his frail, half-starved body, he replied: "Honest to God, Shorty, I have only a dime myself, but say, this is a fierce night to carry the banner. If you don't get a place, come back. I can get along without my 'coffee and' for once." There are many places in Chicago where a poor man can get a strengthless cup of coffee and rolls for a nickle. One-half of this man's dime he proposed to spend for this supper, and the other half he would give me to provide the "flop" on the floor he had told me of. He continued, "I am in line for a pearl-diver's (dishwasher's) job to-morrow. That means all a fellow can chew anyway. I can do better work than that, but when a fellow is down on his luck--but say, Shorty," he added abruptly, as we moved to part, "if you don't have a windfall like the Annex, Palmer, or the First National Bank, go over on the West Side; you'll find a free flop, and maybe between the sheets, and maybe a bath and supper; but look out for bulls and fly cops, and don't go too often, for you're liable to be arrested and sent to the Bridewell. I have been out of a job for two weeks. I have been to the flop several times, and I am afraid to go any more. I have had so little to eat lately, and from all I hear, I don't think I am strong enough for the battle of a workhouse; besides, I have never been in. Well, never mind, old man, you can find the place. It's on Union Street, just off of West Madison, called 'The City Lodging House.'" How those last three words thrilled me! I who in fancy for months had been building a Municipal Emergency Home, rounding out and perfecting in my mind all of its wonderful possibilities! There was then such an institution in the world, and here in Chicago, and in a moment's time I was to grasp the tangible fact! As I made my way toward my destination I saw evidence of the brutal police system, so notoriously obvious throughout our entire country. I had seen a half-starved, homeless man knocked down on the streets of a Western city by an ignorant, rum-befouled bully of a policeman, simply because he stood a little too far out on the sidewalk, and with a desire to learn something of the spirit of the police force of Chicago, I made my way to the Desplains Street Police Station, although possessed with a foreboding that I might be arrested, and subjected to some insult or abuse. With a thumping heart under a false air of complacency I entered and asked the Captain where I could find a free bed. He looked pleasantly enough upon me, and in words which held a tone of pride that he could do so, replied, "Why, yes, go to our Municipal Lodging House," and turning to a subordinate, said, "Show this man the direction to North Union Street." The under officer pointed out the proper course, and I was soon lost in a maze of brilliant, scintillating, cheap saloon, café, and playhouse signs along West Madison Street. The half-hidden, frost-covered windows of restaurants were filled with tempting, wholesome food. The sparkling bar-room signs were a guide to warmth and temporary shelter. I reached North Union Street, and looking down an almost black street with occasionally a dim distant light, I saw no sign guiding the homeless man or boy, woman or girl, to Chicago's gift to its penniless toilers. With fear and difficulty I found an old shell of a building. Arriving too late for a bed, I was allowed to lie down with sixty others, from boys of fifteen to old men of seventy, on the floor. In the foul air, unwashed, unfed, with my shoes for a pillow, with aching limbs, I endured, until daybreak, the sufferings which the temporarily homeless wanderer must suffer often many days until, if he does not find himself in some one of the other public institutions, he finds work and can again enjoy the comforts of a bed. And yet, how much this all meant to me! I did not sleep a moment of the night, yet above the dark side of it all, I caught the bright light of the golden thought behind this institution, for the establishment of which the City Homes Association, whose president was Mrs. Emmons Blaine, took the initiative, and which Raymond Robins worked into a tentative establishment. * * * * * Several years have passed since my first experience in Chicago. At that time I was deeply impressed with the fact that the city had not forgotten. My criticism was extremely friendly. The superintendent wrote, thanking me for my investigations, saying he believed it would help promote better things in Chicago in caring for its homeless workers. But I was disappointed. To-day you walk through West Madison Street to Union Street, to Chicago's free "flop." On your right you will notice a magnificent new railway station, which, its owners boast, cost twenty-five millions of dollars. Possibly at the very doorstep of this marvelous terminal, destitute men will ask you for help. And a little further along, should you glance up at No. 623, you will read this sign, "The Salvation Army will occupy here a new six-story fireproof hotel, to be known as the Workingman's Palace. Rates 15 cents to 30 cents per night, $1 to $2 per week." [Illustration: "_Stepping Up a Little Nearer to Me He Drew More Closely His Tattered Rag of a Coat_"] [Illustration: _Huddled on a Stringer in Zero Weather_] You have reached Union Street, and you enter the same dark old street and the same old makeshift of an old building which thirty-five years ago was a police station and later a storeroom for city wagons, until made into a "Municipal Emergency Home." This shell accommodates only two hundred and fifty men, and on many a night during the last winter it has sheltered five hundred men, besides as many more in the "annex." There are four thousand in Chicago every winter's night without a bed or the money to buy a bed. There are five thousand men in Chicago who are willing to work ten long hours a day for a dollar a day, and this lodging-house can furnish two hundred men a day at that wage. Last year the ice companies, the street railway companies, and the packing-houses paid $1.75, and this past winter only $1.50, and out of that these men paid $4.50 a week for board. That these men are willing to work for such wages shows that a large proportion who seek this free shelter are honest workers. The chief of police gave orders and notice that men would no longer be sheltered in the police stations, and yet on one winter day an official of the Emergency Home marched sixty-eight down to a station and demanded they be taken in. Follow this official through the institution and he will show you how he stores men away in every nook available, even allowing many to sit up all night on the stairs. He will show you how men lie down under and between the cots of those who are fortunate enough to get a cot itself. He will show you in one end of the dormitory, on filthy blankets and mattresses, men huddled and packed like swine, and he will tell you that in the morning these men receive a certain portion of a loaf of bread and a cup of a decoction called coffee; and yet those men are willing to go out and work in the storm and cold for a dollar or a dollar and a half a day. What a commentary on the humanity of a city that is willing to see this strength crippled! What a lack of ordinary business foresight to ignore the conservation of this human force! You will find in this Municipal free "flop" of Chicago no department for women. Thank God for that! You will find no separation of the sick from the well; you will find no medical examination other than vaccination. Such a lodging-house is an institution driving men into intemperance, filling our hospitals, and spreading with frightful fatality the white plague. Those who come from abroad to learn of Chicago, and what it has done and is doing to banish destitution and its specter of homeless suffering from its streets, may first visit the public institutions representing a city's intelligence--the Art Institute, standing for its culture; its churches, charities and hospitals, representing its humanity. But they should also follow the course I traveled, to Chicago's so-called Municipal Lodging House, even though it will mean a sad reflection upon a city's care for its homeless workers. * * * * * Chicago is considered one of the greatest railroad centers of America; it is the hub of the fly wheel, East and West, North and South, of a mighty railroad industry. The old proverb, that "all roads lead to Rome," can certainly be applied to this of the greatest, most remarkable of all modern industrial phenomena--the Metropolis without a peer. It is estimated that there are over half a hundred different railroad lines running in and out of the city, all bringing their quota of human energy and activity to be molded into the great mass of industrial humanity of the greatest of industrial giants--Chicago. A very prominent railroad official of a Western railroad declared that the railroad "in a way may be called the chief citizen of the State." If this statement be true, one cannot but acclaim that a mighty responsibility rests upon it. First of all it means that a transformation of heart and system must take place toward the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner,--an absolutely different method and a cessation of the present inhuman brutality. The one wonderful and most hopeful sign of our day is that members of the great human family are beginning to recognize, in all phases of human endeavor, that our social life is absolutely dependent upon the co-operation and social service of one another. While the writer has a strong indictment to offer against the managements of the various American railroads in dealing with the more unfortunate members of society, nevertheless one cannot accept the already popularized beliefs that "the railroads lack the spark of human kindness." The extent of what so-called charitable experts are pleased to call the "vagrancy" of the homeless, wandering wage-workers in the United States, can easily be determined by the industrial and economic conditions existing throughout the country. The demand for laborers of all kinds continuously fluctuates in all industries and localities. The majority of the homeless, wandering wage-earners are unskilled laborers, and because of their unorganized condition they are the reserve of that great standing army which is being maintained through the unjust, inhuman, and wasteful economic system, that pushes human beings down to the lowest level. Most American railroads are to blame for the industrial conditions in which the unskilled laboring class finds itself. They offer starvation wages, shelter under unsanitary conditions, and permit the "canteen" and "padroni system" to pilfer, rob, and exploit the men working on the sections. And after the job at which they have been employed has been completed, they are left stranded whereever they have finished their work, instead of being given transportation to the nearest city or place where other work can be obtained. Hundreds of thousands of able-bodied, economically useful citizens of the country are being put to immature death by the railroads of America, and an equally appalling number are being maimed and crippled by "accidents," and thereby made dependent charges on an already overburdened community. From among the victims of the present-day railroad system (for it is a system) by which men are being crippled, maimed, and killed, there is a silent but earnest appeal, from the builders of our cities, the harvesters of the nation's crops, the miners of the nation's resources, the scholars and teachers of the future republic, for a more scientifically humane treatment, and for a guarantee that "Life, Liberty, and Happiness" shall not be a by-word but a living reality. The great public, that pays the "freight," and even the officials of the American railroad systems themselves, are awakening to a realization of the fact that the torn-out rail, the misplaced switch, the obstructing tie, the burned bridge, the cut wire, petty thefts, and air-brake troubles, are all too often the result of retaliation for the inhuman abuse of the homeless, wandering wage-earner. Even that portion of the great public that rides "the velvet" are beginning to demand more protection, for their own self-preservation. The spirit of the various commonwealths of the Union to co-operate and demand by legislative provisions for safety is steadily on the increase. Thousands of wandering wage-earners in search of work are killed on American railroads, because society as a whole, and the railroad as a public carrier in particular, are ignorantly uninterested in the welfare of the less fortunate members of society. The number of so-called "trespassers" killed annually on American railroads exceeds the combined total of passengers and trainmen killed annually. From 1901 to 1903, inclusive, 25000 "trespassers" were killed, and an equal number were maimed, crippled, and injured. From one-half to three-quarters of the "trespassers" according to the compilers of these figures were "vagrants," wandering, homeless wage-earners in search of work to make their existence possible. Let us examine the economic loss and the financial cost to the railroads alone, not considering the loss to the community of the so-called "vagrants" killed and injured. Even the railroads are unable to give accurate figures on this matter. Sometimes the trains stop and pick up the injured and dying victims of their system, and bear them to hospitals, where the hospital and burial charges must, in most cases, be paid or guaranteed by the railroads. In many of the States of the Union, a number of law-suits have been successfully fought against railroads by so-called "vagrants" who have been thrown off a fast-moving train and injured, or maimed. Think of the barbarous orders of a railroad superintendent, to push or throw people from a fast running train, or leave them on the vast plains of the West in a desperate blizzard, as I have seen done. How much cheaper would it be for the railroads to furnish these less fortunate members of the working-class with transportation to their respective destination, the nearest place where work is possible for them, and thereby suffer fewer depredations, petty thefts, delays to traffic, hospital and burial charges, and other expenses. How much would the respective communities, and society as a whole, be the gainer, were the State, the municipality, to assume the expense for the creation and maintenance of Municipal Emergency Homes, and thereby make it possible for the homeless, wandering wage-earner to receive the hospitality of the community and be furnished with those necessities upon which human life depends, thus co-operating with the railroads, reducing vice, crime, and pauperism, and abolishing the existence of burdensome public charges. In addition to the Municipal Emergency Home, provided with up-to-date sanitary facilities, the respective communities should furnish transportation to those desiring to leave for other parts of the country where work can be obtained or may await them. Such a Municipal Emergency Home ought to be the clearing-house for employers of labor and employees alike. Instead of the unemployed being exploited by the grafting employment bureaus existing in the various cities, the business men, the men who need help, and the railroads especially, could make their drafts for workingmen on such Municipal Emergency Homes, which would be always in a position to assist them, while at the same time assisting the honest laborer who seeks work to sustain himself and make existence possible for those dependent upon him. One of the greatest remedial agencies in solving this very serious problem is pre-eminently that of governmental and railroad co-operation, by which the land shall be taken out of the hands of the speculator, and reclaimed for those who desire to make immediate use of it and to live upon the fruit of their toil. Thus the many thousands of homeless, wandering American wage-earners, the itinerant and occasional helpers in our agricultural industry, as well as the casual, unskilled laborers of our cities, could be given a real lift on the road to economic independence. In most of the European countries, the so-called crime of "stealing a ride" is almost unknown, because there the governments have established a chain of Municipal Emergency Homes where the itinerant workers are reasonably well taken care of,--provided not only with necessary food, shelter, and clothing, but given transportation to the nearest point where employment may be secured. [Illustration: "_Just before Thanksgiving, 1911, Leaving the Public Library, Chicago, after Being Ejected Because of the Clothes I Wore_"] Would it not be a wise financial move on the part of the American railroads, while they are investing millions in useless and superficial adornments on fifty-million-dollar terminals, to consider the advisability of building an Emergency Home in every station where the wandering, homeless wage-worker can find comfortable shelter and be given food to strengthen him on his way toward honest employment without having to "beat" the railroads? American railroads will be forced sooner or later to see that it is up to them to take care of the homeless, wandering wage-worker, or the homeless, wandering wage-worker will take care of the railroads. CHAPTER IV THE MERCIFUL AWAKENING OF NEW YORK "_I said, I will walk in the country. He said, walk in the city. I said, but there are no flowers there. He said, but there are crowns._" In New York I repeated my Chicago plan. I left the Waldorf-Astoria at ten o'clock, dressed in my blue jeans and with my cloak covering my outfit until I could reach unobserved a place to leave it. The police were courteous and directed me to New York City's "House of God." [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, Department of Public Charities, New York City_] Before entering I stepped back and looked at the wonderful building, beautifully illuminated. As I stood there with a heart full of thankfulness for this gift to those in need, I saw a young girl about fifteen years of age approach the woman's entrance. Her manner indicated that this was her first appeal for help. She hesitated to enter and stood clinging to the side of the door for support. At my right was the long dark street leading to New York's Great White Way; on my left the dark East River. I could see the lights of the boats and almost hear the splash of the water. As she raised her face and the light fell upon it, I read as plainly as though it were written there, those lines of Adelaide Procter's: "The night cries a sin to be living And the river a sin to be dead." Then the door opened and I saw a motherly matron take the girl in her arms and disappear. This incident brought to me a startling revelation. This home was a haven between sin and suicide. The night I slept in New York's Emergency Home I was told a mother, with seven children, one a babe in arms, at one o'clock in the morning, had sought shelter there. And as the door was opened to receive her, she said, in broken, trembling words, "My man's killed himself--he's out of work." Many men were seeking admission. I entered with the rest. At the office we gave a record of ourselves, who we were and where we were from, and what our calling was. Then we were taken into a large and spotless dining-room, where we were given a supper of soup, and it was real soup, too, soup that put health and strength into a man's body and soul. We also had coffee with milk and sugar, hot milk, and delicious bread and butter, as much as anyone wanted of it. After supper we were shown to a disrobing-room, where our clothes were put into netted sanitary trays and sent to a disinfecting-room. In the morning they came to us sweet and clean, purified from all germ or disease. From the disrobing-room we went into the bathroom where were playing thirty beautiful shower-baths of any desired temperature, and each man was given a piece of pure Castile soap. As we entered the bath a man who sat at the door with a pail of something, gave each one of us on the head as we passed him, a paddle full of the stuff. I said to the attendant, "What is that for?" "That's to kill every foe on you," he said, with an emphasis that was convincing. As he was about to give me another dose, I protested. "That's enough; I have only half my usual quantity tonight." But I got another dab nevertheless. After our bath and germicide, we were shown into a physician's room, where two skilled physicians examined each man carefully. The perceptibly diseased man was given a specially marked night-robe and sent to an isolation ward, where he received free medical treatment. Those who were sound in health and body, were given a soft, clean night-robe and socks, and were taken in an elevator up to the wonderful dormitories. I was assigned to bed 310. There were over three hundred beds in this dormitory, accommodating more than three hundred men. They were of iron and painted white, and placed one above the other, that is, "double-deck," and furnished with woven wire springs. The mattresses and pillows were of hair, and exceedingly comfortable. The linen was snowy white. I had been in bed but a short time when an old man about seventy years of age took the bed next to mine. As he lay down in that public place I heard him breathe a little prayer, ever so softly and almost inaudibly, but I heard it--"Oh, God, I thank Thee!" And I said to myself, "That prayer ought to build a Municipal Emergency Home in every city of our land." It came to me then what a great and wonderful social clearing-house it was or could be. I did not sleep, I did not want to sleep, but lay there taking mental notes of the soul's activity. The room was quiet and restful except for the restless man who silently walked the floor. As he came over near me I said to him, "Man, what is the matter?" He came close to my bed and said, with a hot, flushed face, "I was not considered a subject for the isolation ward, but I am on the verge of delirium tremens. Feel my pulse, isn't it jumping to beat the devil?" I felt his pulse; it was jumping like a trip-hammer. But in the way of assurance I answered, "No, your pulse is normal." "Have we been up here four hours? They gave me some medicine downstairs to take every four hours, and if I was restless, I was to send down for it and take a dose." "No, I think we have been up here about two hours. You might send down for it, and if it is a good thing to take a full dose every four hours, you might take a half-dose in two hours." He hesitated for a moment, then agreed. I advised him to cut out the drink, and he went to the attendant for his medicine, received it, and slept like a babe until dawn. There is an attendant in each dormitory all night long, and he must report to the office by telephone every hour, not being allowed to sleep one moment on duty. A few days later, after my visit was made public, I received many letters at my hotel, and among them was one from this man. He thanked me for my bit of advice to cut out the drink, and said that he had braced up and had not drunk a drop since that night, and that he had determined to be a man and fill a man's place in the world. His resolution was not due to my advice at all. It was due to the influence of "God's House," to New York's Municipal Emergency Home, and had turned him back to his true inheritance. At six o'clock in the morning we were called. Every man took the linen from his bed and put it in a pile where it was all gathered up and taken afterward to the laundries. Every day fresh and spotless linen is supplied. We then went down and dressed and were given our breakfast--as fine a dish of oatmeal as I ever ate, and again most delicious hot coffee with milk and sugar, bread and butter. And again every man had abundance. I said to a boy who sat on my right, "How do you feel this morning?" "I tell you I feel as if someone cared for me," he answered, "I feel like getting out and hustling harder than ever for a job to-day." This Municipal Emergency Home of New York's is absolutely fire-proof and accommodates one thousand men and fifty women. The health of its occupants is more guarded than at the most costly private hotels. The ventilation is by the modern forced-air system, in which every particle of air is strained before entering the dormitories. The humane consideration of the comfort of the broken and weary wayfarer is always in evidence, and speaks volumes for New York's intelligence. There are no open windows on one side, freezing one portion of the sleeping-hall, while the other may be stifling with the heat. The method of fumigating is of the best, as it does not injure in the least the leather of hat, suspender, glove, or shoe, or weaken the texture of the cloth. The sick man's nightclothes are not even laundered with the well man's clothing. The size, and degree of careful detail, of this wonderful home was an outgrowth of the awful and fatal unsanitary old police station lodgings, and yet the Commissioner of Police of New York recently told me that notwithstanding the extensive character of the institution, it was often pitifully inadequate, especially during the winter months. New York already needs at least four such homes. CHAPTER V HOMELESS--IN THE NATIONAL CAPITAL "_What is strange, there never was in any man sufficient faith in the power of rectitude, to inspire him with the broad design of renovating the state on the principle of right and love._" --EMERSON. It was late in the afternoon when I arrived at the Nation's Capital, and rode to my hotel between tiers of newly erected seats, and banners and flags and festooned arches, and myriads of many-colored lights which soon were to burst forth in royal splendor. Already the prodigal display, costing half a million dollars, to inaugurate a president, was nearing completion. Already people were coming from far and near, spending five million more. [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Registering Applicants_] The New Willard hotel had assumed that air of distinction it always does just before a happening of some national import. In the faces of the handsome men I saw and read the character of decision and intellect, and the many beautiful ladies, gowned in fabrics of priceless value, made an exceedingly pleasant study; and with this vision before me I was proud to be an American. But I had not come to study this side; it was "the other half" I wanted to know. I wanted to learn how our Capital helps its poor, how a man out of work, penniless, and homeless, is cared for in Washington. At about ten o'clock I went to my room to change my evening clothes for my workingman's outfit. Walking down the stairs and slipping out a side door, I was not noticed, and was soon lost in the avalanche of humanity on the streets. I asked of the first policeman I met where I could get a free bed, and he looked at me seemingly in surprise and said, "A free bed?" then continued, "Go to the Union Mission." I asked, "Do they charge for a bed there?" and he replied, "Yes, 10 or 15 cents." "But I haven't even that tonight," I answered. Then he seemed to remember that Washington had a municipal lodging house, and told me I would find it on Twelfth Street, next to the police station. I asked two other policemen with similar results, and started in search of my desired object. I looked down Pennsylvania Avenue, a blaze of lights, and for one mile I could see and read guiding signs of theaters, breweries, hotels, and cafés. Presently I came to Twelfth Street, dark and gloomy, but there was no sign as in Chicago to guide the homeless man or woman, boy or girl, to the door of the free home. It was with difficulty I found it. There was a three-cornered box over the door, intended for a light, but it was not illuminated. Through smoke-dimmed windows there came a feeble light by which I could just discern the words, "Municipal Lodging House," and on the door the inscription, "To the Office." Before entering I stepped back into the street and looked up at the building. It was an old three-story brick building, with no sign of a fire escape. I entered and found myself in a low and very narrow passageway. I applied to the "office" through a small window-door for my bed. There was an honest-faced, comfortably dressed young man just ahead of me, who gave his occupation as machinist, received his bed check, and passed on. When I stepped to the window and asked for a bed, I received no word of welcome from a woman seated at her desk, her demeanor being decidedly unwelcome. Abruptly a man's voice asked from within, "Are you willing to work for it?" I replied earnestly that I was. The woman then snatched up a pen and asked, "Were you ever here before? Where were you born? Where do you live? What is your business?" My answers apparently being satisfactory, she thrust me a bed check, and said something about a light and something else which I did not understand, and slammed the door in my face. I stepped along and found myself in the woodyard among piles of wood, saws, sawbucks, and sawdust. I tried several doors, and finally found one that admitted me. A narrow flight of stairs let me to a bathroom, where a number of men were already trying to get a bath. There were two attendants, one who was working for his bed and breakfast, and the other, I judged a paid attendant. I was told to go into a closet and strip, and to hang on a hook all of my clothes except my shoes and stockings and hat. Having done this, I stepped out into the bathroom. It was heated by a stove, which emitted no heat, however, as the fire was almost dead. There were two bathtubs, and six of us were standing nude in that cold room waiting each for his turn. The boy working for his bed made a pretense with a mop of cleaning the tubs after each bather, but left them nasty and unsanitary. I got into about six inches of water, and hurriedly took my bath, because of the others waiting. I did not want to wash my head, so omitted that, but just as I got out of the tub the Superintendent came in and said, "You haven't washed your head yet; get back in there and wash your head." I immediately and meekly complied. Shivering with the cold, I got out, was given a towel to dry myself, and then a little old cotton nightshirt with no buttons on it. Several of us being ready, we were led by the Superintendent up another flight of narrow stairs, through another long hall, and up two more series of steps to a small dormitory. I would have suffered with the cold if I had not seized an extra blanket from an unoccupied bed, and I slept very little. I was afraid to go to sleep, for if the building had taken fire not one man could have escaped. So I lay and took mental notes and soul thoughts of my companions and surroundings, and of all I had seen and heard since I left Denver. I heard one boy say to another, "I tell you, I'm hungry. I could eat a mule and chase the rider up hill. Did you have any supper to-night?" And the other boy replied, "A policeman gave me a dime. What do you think of that? And I got two scoops of beer and the biggest free lunch you ever saw, and I feel fine." I heard a man say to the one next to him, "Do you think this place will be pulled to-night?" and the other answered, "Why, no; what makes you think so?" The first one said, "They pulled the Union Mission one night for vags, but I don't think they will pull this place, because it's a city lodging house." Comforted by that thought, they both fell asleep. During the night a frail boy, with no clothing except the thin nightshirt, went to the toilet, down the long cold halls and stairways, into the still more cold woodyard. When he returned he had a chill, and as he lay down I heard him groan. I said, "What is the matter, boy?" and he replied, "I have such a pain in my side." Just at daylight we were called, went down into a cheerless room, and were given our clothes, then on down to the cramped dining-room, with scarcely any fire, where we were huddled together, thirty of us, whites and blacks. Here we waited one hour for breakfast, and then we were driven out into the woodyard for some reason we could not find out, and waited another half-hour until breakfast was called. During that long wait almost the entire conversation was about work and where it could be found. We went in to breakfast and sat down to a stew of turnips and carrots, in which there was a little meat. In mine there were three pieces of meat about as big as the end of one's thumb. There was some colored sweetened water called "coffee," and some bread. I did not care for mine, but the other men and boys ate ravenously. When the boy on my right had finished his, I said, "Ask for some more." He replied, "It wouldn't do no good; they only allow one dish." Then a hollow-eyed, thin-handed man on my left said, "Are you going to eat yours?" I said, "No," and he eagerly asked if he could have it. I said, "You most certainly can," and then he asked me if I was not well. It was the first word of kindness I had received. He took the dish and emptied it all into his, but glancing up I caught the appealing look of the boy opposite. He took the boy's empty dish, putting part of it into his dish, and the boy ate as though he had had nothing before. Having finished breakfast, and while we were waiting to be assigned to our work, the door between our room and the inner room was left open for a moment, and we saw the Superintendent seated at a well-appointed table with flowers upon it, a colored man waiting upon him. One of the boys looking in said, "Oh, gee, look at the beefsteak," and then another boy looked at me, and said, "You see how Washington treats the out-of-work, and this place is self-supporting, or more than half-supporting." And then a boy who had come early and worked his two hours for that bed and that breakfast, gave us a cheerful good-bye and started off to walk seven miles to begin work on a farm, a place he had secured the day before. We waited to be assigned to our work. I wanted to saw wood, the wood looked so clean and inviting, and, too, I had sawed wood when I was a boy on the farm, and knew how; but I was not allowed to do so, and was given the task of making the beds. It was rather repellant to me at first, but I thought of those far down through the years of the past, a great deal more worthy than I, who had done things much more humble for humanity's sake. I can assure the honest man and boy who slept beneath those coverings that night that I had tried my best to make them comfortable, although the linen was not changed, nor the blankets aired. Some of the men scrubbed, and some swept the floors and stairs; some worked about the dining-room; others sawed wood. While waiting in the woodyard for breakfast, I jokingly said, as we looked at the wood, "What's the matter of getting out of here? Then we won't have to work." And one replied, "We can't, we are locked in." To prove if this was true I stepped to the door and found it as he said. We were locked in and could not have escaped in case of fire or accident if we had tried. There is a sign, sometimes seen to-day in the dance halls of our Western camps, "Don't shoot the pianist, he is doing the best he can," and so with the Superintendent of Washington's Municipal Lodging House, under the conditions he may be doing the best he can. Work is always a grand thing. The floors and stairs were clean, also our food and dishes. He impressed me as being the right man in the right kind of a place. But the Washington Federal Lodging House is only a suggestion of such an institution. As the house now stands it is the lodger, the workless man and boy, who keeps the floors and stairs and windows clean. They do it willingly, but they should be treated fairly for their labor. Not one should be allowed to go to bed hungry. He should be given a clean, warm bed to sleep in, and a good wholesome breakfast, and all he can eat. He should be given a pleasant welcome, an encouraging word, and a cheerful farewell,--it means so much, and costs nothing. I did not stay to see the inauguration. Somehow Washington had lost its brightness, and the grand men and beautiful women their interest. I had read almost every week for a number of years of "T. R.," and of his democratic way of walking on Sunday morning to church, and then I fell to wondering why he never walked to a few other places in Washington, which were only a stone's throw from his home. But one with great cares cannot be blamed for thoughtlessness in "little things." I did not go to church as I intended. I spent the morning asking the press to appeal to the city of Washington, where Lincoln and Washington lived, thought, and acted, the city of love, charity and freedom, not to let another day pass until they had started a movement and sent a delegation to inspect and to copy the Municipal Lodging House of New York, that they, too, might build one, to be the example of our country. CHAPTER VI THE LITTLE PITTSBURG OF THE WEST AND ITS GREAT WRONG "_Even the night shall be light about me._"--PSALMS 139:11. In Pueblo, Colorado, I discovered they were finding men dead in an ash-dump of a railroad company. Pueblo, called "The Little Pittsburg of the West," is distinctly an industrial city. It naturally attracts thousands of workingmen during the course of the year, and when the demand for labor is supplied, it follows that many men will congregate there, willing to work but often unable to find employment immediately. The great ash-dump, about a fourth of a mile in length, afforded warmth to the destitute homeless man, who had his choice between this exigency and the city jail. Men would lie down on the warm cinders, and while they slumbered, the poisonous gases would asphyxiate them. The death of their brother workers had made men cautious and when I was there they no longer crawled out upon the ashes, but lay down on the edge of the dump, where the ground held a certain degree of warmth. I joined the miserable group one night, and as I lay there, and the night grew cold and dark and still, I could see, like serpents, the tongues of blue poisonous fumes leap from crack and cranny. I stood the exposure to the limits of endurance, and then crept away to that other humane expression of Pueblo--its only "Municipal Emergency Home," the "Bull-pen" in its old bastile. It was midnight as I entered, and a man hearing me in the hall came out of an office and looked at me inquiringly. Finally he asked: "What do you want?" "I would like a place to sleep." "Come this way and go through yonder," he said, pointing the way to the jailer's office. I went as directed. As I entered, the jailer, who was asleep in a large reclining chair, awoke and greeted me pleasantly enough. "Good-evening. What can I do for you?" "Can you show a fellow where he can lie down?" He immediately got up, and picking up his bunch of keys, said, "Follow me." I followed him through two huge iron-grated doors, to another door which opened into a great dungeon cell,--Pueblo's first open portal in creating the criminal and crime. Huge chains with great iron balls attached were lying in the passageway leading to the cell. As the jailer swung back the monstrous iron door, he said: "I think you will find a place there. If the hammocks are all taken, you can lie on the floor." The great key was turned, and I was in Pueblo's "Municipal Emergency Home." With the first dreadful feeling of suffocation and nausea caused by the foul air and the odor of unwashed bodies and open drains, and the awful fear of fire as I realized the impossibility of escape from behind so many iron-bound doors in the old rookery of a building, I would have begged to be released, but neither the jailer nor anyone else appeared until six o'clock the next morning. I therefore had to endure, and after I had finally adjusted myself to the frightful conditions around me, I was able to make my observations. There were twenty canvas hammocks, all of unspeakable filthiness, hung one above the other, on iron frames. There was no pretense of bedding. The occupants covered themselves with their old ragged overcoats, if they happened to have any, and those who were not so fortunate, simply shivered in their rags. The cots were all taken and an old man some seventy-five years of age lay on the concrete floor, which was covered with tobacco juice and the expectorations of diseased men. Vermin were running over the floor and on the tin dishes left there from the last night's supper. Water from the toilet of the women's department above had run down the wall, and under this old man now sound asleep, and on into the waste basin. I walked back and forth in my horror for some time, passing in front of the hammock beds and finally a man raised his head and, evidently thinking I was walking for warmth, said: "Friend, you will find it warmer over there by the steam pipes." I wonder why he called me "friend"? A spirit of kindness from one man to another, in a place like that! Think of it! I spent the entire night walking the floor or sitting on an old battered, inverted tin pail, studying the wretched inmates of the dirty, desolate cell. I saw a man get up, and with outstretched hands, feel his way to the drinking place. I went over and helped him. He was totally blind. He told me he had once been kept in that place seventeen days. A one-legged man who had gotten up, hobbling without his crutch, helped him back to bed. Never was sound sweeter to my ears than the rattle of the jailer's keys when he came to let me out. He kindly asked me to stay to breakfast, but I did not accept. I was only too glad to escape to my hotel, to wash out the material evidence of contact with the foulness gathered on that most miserable night. Mayor Fugard, who had been in office only two weeks, had already made an appeal for a new City Hall and City Jail, and I felt it was a courtesy due him to call upon him before going to the press with my story. When I told him I had paid a visit to Pueblo's two city lodging places, and had spent a night in the "Bull-pen," he threw up his hands and exclaimed: "Good heavens! You have more courage than I have. I am glad you have come to our city and I am glad you have investigated conditions just as you did. I want you to take your report to every paper in the city, for I desire everyone to know the conditions of these places, just as they are." When I left Pueblo, I called on him to say goodbye, and he took me by the hand and said: "You may quote me to the public, through the press, as saying that, as soon as possible, Pueblo will abolish the 'Bull-pen' and will yet have a Free Municipal Emergency Home that she will not be ashamed to own." CHAPTER VII "LATTER-DAY SAINTS" WHO SIN AGAINST SOCIETY _When I lie down I say when shall the night be gone, and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day._--JOB 7:4. AS Elizabeth Barrett Browning sang of Florence, so one may sing of Salt Lake City. "Like a water lily resting on the bosom of a lake," so rests the lovely Zion, reposing in a valley of green fields, trees and flowers and fruits, with placid lakes and flowing crystal streams; surrounded by soft gray mountains, rugged, clear cut, grand, their peaks covered with perpetual snow beneath whose surface lie untold millions of precious metals. Besides precious metals, Salt Lake City has coal, oil, and salt, and an unsurpassed valley in agricultural fertility. Looking down upon the metropolis of Utah, one might almost fancy it a great sleeping town among its green trees, but I can assure you it is not so. Enter its gate and you will find it a veritable beehive of commercial industry, a city of a hundred thousand people, fast expanding, and becoming one of the great railway centers of the Western empire,--a city calling for the workers and many of them, for it is just the "hewers and drawers" that Salt Lake needs and must have. In Boston, I once stopped in Scolly Square and listened to a number of Mormon missionaries expounding their doctrine. They were not, as many might imagine, old men with long gray beards, but were young men of perfect physical manliness, with the clear-cut eyes of those who lead temperate lives. They talked of Moses and the prophets, and in the midst of the talk, a well-dressed young man standing next to me interrupted by crying out, "Don't talk to us of the Blessed in Heaven, and those canonized by the church! Give us a little practical religion. Tell us what privileges Salt Lake City offers to the man who is poor because he must work with his hands. Has Salt Lake City abolished any of the social evils that pauperize her people? Has she driven out the corrupt political machine? Has she established a municipal building to offer to temporarily homeless people shelter and food as a safeguard against the jail? Has she created a public bath, an emergency hospital, a free employment bureau? Tell us of a Christianity such as this, and we will listen." The Mormon Elders seemed stunned into silence, and as the young man turned to leave, he addressed me, saying: "My God! How I suffered in that city! I am a printer by trade. I became destitute looking for work while there and suffered not only from hunger and exposure, but I was arrested and thrown into jail as a vagrant, simply because I was homeless, helpless, and penniless!" It was during the first week in November that I left for Zion. On my journey I was obliged to stop over at a station called Green River, about one hundred and fifty miles east of the city. The weather was cold and raw, there was no fire in the station, and I felt extremely uncomfortable. In the distance a dim light was visible, and I started to find out what it might offer of comfort, and possibly breakfast. On my way, I encountered six young fellows just crawling out of a warehouse in which was stored baled hay, on top of which they had been trying to rest. They were all thinly clad; their teeth chattered with the cold, and they shivered until their bones seemed to fairly rattle. They, too, went with me to the light which revealed a cheap restaurant. It was only a board shack but there was a stove in there touched with a deep, ruddy glow, and hot coffee and rolls was to be had for ten cents, and much more if one had the price. [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Physicians' Examination Room_] [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City "Now for a good night's rest"_] Seated at the table, one of the boys looked up to me and said, "Do you know where a fellow can get a job around here?" He told me they had been working just over the border in Colorado, in and around Grand Junction and Delta in the fruit belt, for the past six weeks. "I thought I had a place for the winter. A ranchman said he would keep me at good wages, and I felt I was fixed, but the fellow who lived with him last winter returned and he took him back. Us fellows are on our way to Salt Lake City, but I am told just now that the harvest having closed, the town is full of idle men looking for work, and I thought if I could strike a job here I would stay." "If you have been working steadily for six weeks in the fruit belt, I presume you have plenty of money to tide you over, and you will soon be in some place where you are needed?" "No, we haven't, that is the trouble, and we must walk or beat our way to Salt Lake, although we have been working every day possible. We were paid two dollars a day. It cost us a dollar a day to live. We lost a great many days by stormy weather. Peaches could be picked only at a certain degree of ripeness, and often on pleasant days we would be obliged to wait for the fruit to reach that state, to be accepted by the packers. So we haven't much money left. Our clothes are worn out, and must be replaced. You can easily see how necessary it is for us to save the little left of our earnings." I knew every word this boy was telling was true, for the Fall before, I had picked fruit for two weeks near Grand Junction to satisfy myself what it meant to toil in an orchard,--to see what it meant to the orchard owner, and what it meant to the railroad in transporting that fruit. Thus, I knew, from personal experience, that the worker who garnered the harvest for the people, filled just as important a place as the orchard owner or the railroad company. "Last night," the boy continued, "I tell you we were tired and hungry when we reached here. We walked twenty-five miles yesterday and each of us fellows chipped in fifteen cents, and we bought three loaves of bread, a piece of meat, some vegetables and coffee. We went down by the railroad track just below town and made one of the finest 'Mulligans' you ever saw. Didn't it smell good, that cooking 'Mulligan' and hot coffee! And it was almost done when a fly cop of the railroad company came along and shot our cans all full of holes and drove us away, declaring we were camped on 'private property,' the right-of-way of the railroad company. We were robbed with all the pitilessness that would be shown a hardened criminal!" His face took on a look of fierce, piercing hatred. Those boys had been creating dividends for that railroad, and they knew it; and every one of them should have received free transportation to Denver, Salt Lake, or to some source of labor, instead of abuse and persecution. I looked out of the window and saw my train coming into the town, and I ran to catch it, and left my little company of toilers waiting and watching for an opportunity to beat their way on a freight to the "City of Saints." After reaching Salt Lake, I looked down, from the window of a fashionable and exclusive hotel, in the heart of the beautiful city, upon Salt Lake's shame,--down upon dens of vice and iniquity that would put to shame many cities who boast of no moral standing whatever. I found the boy's report was true. The city was filled with men idle after the summer and autumn work, which the early coming winter and sudden cold weather had closed down. I drifted around among these idle men and talked to a great many. I found a vast number temporarily homeless, and out of money, suffering. Why was it? Industry seemed to be at its height, a great deal of building was going on; in fact, there seemed to be work of every sort for everyone. The reason was very evident. Employment could not be obtained at any of the employment offices without money. It was the universal statement among the homeless penniless men that not one employer would stake a man to live until pay day. In the evening I put on my worker's outfit, and set out to look for a free bath and bed. I asked the first officer I met where the public bath house was, as I was "broke." He looked at me in astonishment, and then replied, "I'll tell you, Salt Lake is a little shy on free baths just now. You might go down to the Jordan River, but it's pretty cold this time of the year." Then I began to look for a bed, and asked another policeman where the City Lodging House was, as I was in need of shelter. He raised his hand and pointed through the alley to a bright light, the City Jail. And so in this city, amidst the "Latter-Day Saints," men are compelled to lose their self-respect, and seek shelter in a vermin-infested city jail, or else become a common "Moocher." I did become a mendicant and went to the Y. M. C. A., but they could do nothing for me. I was about to enter the Salvation Army, when the lights went out and the place closed for the night. I then joined a group of young fellows (who, by the way, had also come from the Grand Junction fruit district), and I asked them, "Boys, if you are busted, where are you going to sleep?" They answered, "In a 'side-door Pullman' in the railroad yards." Inviting myself, I said, "I am with you." These young men were all strong, healthy fellows, except one who was slight and delicate, whose large eyes seemed to hold a strange, intense light. There was the red glow of fever in his cheeks and when he coughed I caught a glimpse of a crimson stain. One of his pals was thoughtful of him that night. He had a little money and he slipped it to the boy, who was sheltered from the first penetrating cold of the early winter for one night at least, and had a warm supper, bed, and breakfast. Reaching the dark and gloomy railroad yard, we stealthily threaded our way among the cars, fearful of arrest from the yard watchman, looking for a car which possibly might contain some straw. Finally we found one. The odor was that of a car in which hogs had recently been shipped. Soon the half-starved, body-wearied boys were sound asleep, but for me, sleep was impossible,--I was perishing with the cold. It was a marvel how they could sleep at all. It was obvious that they were suffering and only getting fitful snatches of sleep, which their restlessness plainly showed. The only reason they really kept from freezing was because they were huddled closely together. In a short time I realized that my experience would be dangerous to health if I remained longer, and I slipped out and away. As I walked up that great long broad street of the city, I thought a great deal about Salt Lake and its people. I wondered if there was any deep moral, humanely reasoning love there. I wondered if its citizens' love for their brothers in this great republic would much longer allow those conditions to prevail. I wondered how they could be made to see that they needed these itinerant workers for the upbuilding of their city and the State, and if Salt Lake and Utah could be induced to do their share toward offering these men a decent welcome and a refuge until they could be placed at honest work. CHAPTER VIII KANSAS CITY AND ITS HEAVY LADEN "_All religions are beautiful which make us good people._"--AUERBACH. Just before the opening of the great harvests of Kansas, I reached Kansas City. Ten thousand men had congregated there in anticipation of work. The season was late and the harvest would not begin for a week or ten days. The men must be right at hand. While all of them could be classed as homeless, migratory wage-earners, they were not all penniless by any means. Only a small percentage of them were without actual means of subsistence, although there were probably a thousand of really penniless men in Kansas City when I reached there, men who must beg, or steal, to make existence possible. By actual experience I soon found that immediate work was unobtainable. On the eve of my first night in the city I sat with a number of unfortunates on the projection of the foundation of the Salvation Army Hotel. Beside me was a stout young man of good manner and with a pleasant, open face. Turning to him in a casual way, I said, "Where can a fellow find work?" "I don't know, unless you get a job down on the railroad," he replied. "I live in Indianapolis. I'm out here to work in the Kansas harvests, but I'm sorry I started so soon for I'm here about two weeks in advance of the work. It has been such a cold, late Spring." Just then a police officer came down the street--it is remarkable how unpleasant a drink or two will make a policeman,--and rapped us up with the ingratiating command to "Move on!" After the officer had passed, I again took a seat, but the boy remarked, "You had better not sit down again. He may return any moment, and he'll club you. He clubbed me yesterday and I haven't gotten over it yet." So we got up and walked toward the Employment Office to investigate the work he had spoken of, and as we walked I noticed that my companion limped,--the result of the "clubbing" he had received from the policeman. I could not help thinking of his needs and his situation. Seeking to draw him out, I asked as if I sought to have him treat, "Have you the price of a beer?" "No," he replied, "if I had I would buy something to eat." "Are you hungry?" With a forced laugh he replied, "Yes, I spent my last dime last night for a meal. I held it in my hand so long it had grown rusty but I had to let it go at last." Putting my hand in my pocket and pulling out a silver dollar, I laughingly remarked, "Well, I'm not broke, but I will be when this little lump of sugar is gone. I'll tell you, Jack, I'm a believer in combines, the kind of combine that a hundred cents make, and we'll go shares on this one." I wish all Kansas City could have seen the expression of hope that lit up that starving lad's face. My sharing with him was something more substantial than the sermon or inexpensive advice usually handed to the starving man. "Well," I said, "we're partners now, and we may as well be broke as to have only this, so let's go and eat it." I led him away from the neighborhood of the City Hall and the City Jail, and the Board of Health and the Helping Hand Mission, and out of all that black and heartless region, to where we could get a clean meal without being poisoned by some cheap slum eating house. We talked as we went along, and I asked him where he had spent the previous night. "Down in the yards in a freight car, and it rained nearly all night. The car leaked, and at about two or three o'clock in the morning it grew very cold. I suffered a lot. I was afraid of being arrested, for we're not allowed to sleep in the yards. But the watchman was decent and let me stay until daylight." I had heard of the "Helping Hand" Mission Lodging House, known to those who are forced into it as the "House of Blazes," and I asked him why he had not gone there. "There was no room," he replied. Coming from the chop-house we went to an employment office, where we read upon the blackboard: "Wanted--Fifty men in Oklahoma, $1.35 a day, free shipment." We stepped inside for further information and found that board would be three dollars and a half a week. The boy studied for a moment and then said: "Let's go." "You go," I replied, "you are strong enough for the work, but I'm not. I may meet you down that way when the harvest opens." "I think I will go," he replied. "It's hard work, ten hours a day, and if I lose two days out of the week by bad weather or sickness or a hundred other reasons, or buy a few things I've got to have, I will be in debt to the company at the end of the week. But it's better than to stay here and beg or starve. Some fellows can 'mooch' but that's one thing I've never got low enough to do, and I hope I never will. It's only a bare existence there, but as you say, the harvest will soon be open. I'll go." Suiting the action to the word, he went in, obtained his transportation, and on coming out, shook my hand with both his own while he earnestly said good-bye and begged of me to be sure to meet him again if possible. He started off, and as he reached the first corner on his way to the depot, he stooped down and rubbed his knee as if in pain, but cheerfully, and with a final wave of farewell, he straightened up and disappeared. But he could not disappear from my thoughts, this starving and shelterless boy, down and out, ill-used, yet ever ready at the first suggestion of hope to rush again into life's battle. And so I have related this incident of meeting him at length, although it was nothing in comparison with some of the terrible things I learned that afternoon. In fact, rarely in any city, have I seen so much human misery publicly exposed, and in so small a space, as I did there, around the block bounded by Main and Delaware, and Fourth and Fifth Streets. I saw men driven like animals, eight at a time, into the bull pen of the city jail. When night fell and the streets were ablaze with light I was still walking about and observing. I felt in my pockets. The last cent of my dollar was gone. The chop-house had left me broke. So I began to inquire where the homeless and penniless could find shelter. In the main, I found that conditions were the same as in Denver, except that Kansas City had the "Helping Hand" institution, to which I have referred,--an ostensibly "religious" institution, backed up in its operations by the co-operation of the city authorities. Recalling what I thought I knew about this institution, it required some courage to trust myself to its tender mercies, but I determined to try it and learn about the actual conditions existing there. I went first to their religious service, where I heard an exceptionally able address on the features of Christ's humanitarianism, and on the wonderful merit which there was in the application of the "square deal" principle between man and man, individually and collectively. The house was filled with a large number of men whose broken appearance told only too plainly that the world was not dealing kindly and "squarely" with _them_. When the speaker had ended his address the men were asked to come forward and thereby signify that they had accepted the teachings of Christ as they were interpreted by the preacher. Not a man stepped forward. That night, as a destitute workingman, at this same place I asked for a bed. I was told I could have one but was expected to do two hours' work for it. "I am perfectly willing to do so," I replied. The office was caged in by a heavy iron wire as though to be protected from thieves. The man at the desk said: "Well, leave me your hat, and when you have done your work in the morning you will get it." I humbly handed him my hat, and numbering it he threw it on a pile of many others. He was obviously holding my hat as a ransom, fearing to trust my honor. I was given a bed check corresponding to the number of my hat, and told to go upstairs. A man sat at a desk on which an old, smoky kerosene lamp was burning. He showed me into a room in which _one hundred and sixteen men_ were sleeping. He did not turn up the light, even for a moment, so that I might see the kind of a bed I was getting into. He explained this by saying he feared to awaken the dead-tired, half-starved individuals on the bunks. As a result I was afraid to get into my bed at all, but laid down on the outside of the covering and stayed there all night. Not a word had been said about supper or a bath. The odor of the hundred unwashed bodies was nauseating. There was the usual consumptive and asthmatic coughing, and the expectoration upon the floor; there were no cuspidors, and the air was stifling. Not far from me I heard a young man moaning, and every few moments he would exclaim, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" I went to him and asked: "What is the matter?" "Oh, I am suffering from inflammatory rheumatism," he groaned. I felt of his arms and hands, and found them burning hot and swollen hard from his elbows to his finger-tips. "Can't I go out and get something for you?" I anxiously asked. "I don't know what to tell you to get. I need a doctor." I called an attendant. The sufferer asked if he could get a doctor from the city hall across the street. "No, not until nine o'clock to-morrow morning," was the answer. The man had two rags about twelve inches long and three inches wide. All night long, at intervals of every twenty or thirty minutes, he went to the water faucet, wet these rags, and bound them upon his arms. I thought by contrast of New York City's wonderful Municipal Emergency Home, and of the kind medical treatment given at any hour of the night to its inmates. On arising in the morning we went down-stairs and waited an hour for our breakfasts. We could see our hats piled up behind the iron bars. When the long wait was over, we were given a breakfast consisting of dry bread, stewed prunes, and some liquid stuff called coffee, without milk or sugar. What a hungry man would eat at that table, if he had been able to stomach it, wouldn't amount to a value of over three cents a meal. While we ate we were supposed to refresh ourselves spiritually by reading the religious mottoes on the wall. "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest," "Blessed are the Merciful," "He came to preach deliverance to the captives," and "When did you write Mother last?" After that so-called breakfast I was sent to work in the long, poorly ventilated room, in which the hundred and sixteen men, unwashed, diseased, and foul, had slept the previous night. I worked two long hours making beds and cleaning floors, in payment of the three-cent meal I could not eat, and the bed I dared not get into. The Mission people valued our meal at ten cents, and our beds at ten cents, and we were paying for it at labor at ten cents an hour, while at every other place in the city employers and the municipality were paying twenty and twenty-five cents an hour for common labor. The boys who had paid their ten cents for a bed sat out in the office, and stood a chance of getting a job at twenty or twenty-five cents an hour at the labor bureau, but the boys whose hats were held as a ransom had no such opportunity. It was not a "square deal." And right there I saw one instance of its demoralizing tendency. In the room where I was at work a young boy was dressing himself. He looked up at a coat and hat which hung by the door, and asked me, with an innocent look: "Whose hat is that?" "I don't know." "Do you think it's a tramp's?" "I don't know, but I wouldn't take it if I were you." After a moment's thought he said: "I've got a job this morning if I can get there, but I can't stay here for two hours and get it." In a few minutes I noticed that the boy and hat were both gone. I suppose he thought it a fair exchange since he had been compelled to leave his own in the office, and who will say it was not? The floors were filthy, the beds rotten. The blankets were stiff and the sheets ragged; they were both contaminated with all the filth of diseased and unwashed men. I don't believe the blankets had been changed for years or the sheets for weeks. It seemed to be the custom of the superintendent of this place to keep up a show of cleanliness by making the men and boys do the scrubbing for nothing. When a bed is to be looked at by a "charitably inclined" visitor, clean pillow slips and sheets are put on, but they are for exhibition purposes only. As for the beds that are actually in use, they are well worth the immediate attention of the Kansas City health authorities. [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Favorite Corner, Female Dormitory_] Only the real inmates, and not the casual visitors, can know the "Helping Hand" for what it is in practice. Morally, it is a breeder of crime, and not an aid in any way to the recovery of self-respect. The only commendable feature about it is the Labor Bureau run in connection,--an adjunct that every Municipal Emergency Home should have. Such a Bureau is proof that the cry of men not wanting to work is a false cry. I wish those who pay heed to it could have seen the object lesson that morning when those hundreds of middle aged men, young men and boys, almost tumbled over one another in their eagerness to reach the window and get the jobs of carpet-sweeping, dish-washing, store-clerking, stenography, and other kinds of work that were being given out. Can such a rich city as Kansas City afford with impunity to neglect its duty to its "hewers of wood and drawers of water?" CHAPTER IX THE NEW ENGLAND "CONSCIENCE" "_See to it only that thyself is here,-- and art and nature, hope and dread, friends, angels and the Supreme Being shall not be absent from the chamber where thou sittest._"--EMERSON. Studying in Boston--as is said of Paris--is being born in Boston. When a boy in my teens I spent four years there, and those four years awakened in me the brightest dreams and brightest hopes for a successful future. After thirty years, I am again in this renowned center of intellectual culture as a student, but this time as a social student in pursuit of knowledge of how our "Modern Athens" cares for the honest, out-of-work, penniless, homeless worker. At half-past ten at night, in search of a free bed, I made my way down to a building, at least seventy or more years old, looking for Boston's Municipal Lodging House, "The Wayfarers Lodge," better known as "The Hawkins Street Woodyard." (Boston is rather given to pretty names. They have a Deer Island also.) My reception was not at all encouraging for a destitute man. I was not even asked if I was hungry, but was shown at once into a bath-room, located down in the cellar, which was dark and uninviting. After my bath I put on a nightshirt taken from a basket, and carrying my hat, shoes, and stockings in my hand, I climbed two flights of stairs to the dormitories, leaving the rest of my clothes to be fumigated, as I supposed, but I doubt very much if that was done, as they had none of the purified odor of thoroughly disinfected clothing I had noticed in New York. There was no sign of medical inspection, nor any attempt at separation of the sick from the well. I should judge one hundred men to have been in the two dormitories that night. There were boys not more than fifteen years old sleeping by the side of men of seventy. The beds were shoved absolutely tight together, which gave the appearance of all sleeping in one bed. When it became necessary for any one of them to get up during the night he was forced to crawl over the next men or over the head or foot of the bed. As there were no cuspidors, the men expectorated into space without thought or care of where it fell. Two men came in and took beds next to mine. The one on my right was an intelligent workingman, the one on my left was a drunkard with a horribly offensive breath from disease and rum. The beds had no mattresses,--a blanket was simply thrown over the woven wires,--and as I sank down on one, it became a string beneath me. A blanket was our only covering, and the pillows, filled with excelsior, were as hard as boards. I said to the man on my right: "Did you have any supper to-night?" "No, I didn't, and I feel pretty weak and hungry. I spent my last thirty cents this morning for a breakfast, and what do you think I got for it? I got a piece of beefsteak four inches square so tough I could scarcely eat it, and some potatoes fried in rancid lard." I made no reply and the exhausted and half-starved man fell asleep. "I wish I had a couple of drinks of whiskey," said the man on my left. "Oh," I replied, "you don't want much; one drink would do me." "Yes, but I've got beyond that," he said; "it takes a good many drinks to do me, and they can't come too fast, either." Then, with a sigh, he added, "My dear old Daddy, God bless him, I have one thing to blame him for. He taught me to drink, and here I am in this charity business--a drunkard." And he, too, turned over and fell asleep. But I could not sleep; asthmatics and consumptives were coughing constantly, and the wreckage around me was too much for my sympathies. The coming of the daylight through the windows was a welcome sight. I got up and went to the drinking place, and asked a burly looking attendant if it was time to get up. "Naw, taint!" he snapped, with a wicked scowl. When I went back to bed I saw this man lock the two doors leading from our dormitory to the outside toilet rooms, and for half an hour the men were obliged to use the basin at the drinking place for sanitary convenience! When the doors were finally unlocked, supposing it to be the signal for us to get up, I went with hat and shoes in my hands and sat down in a chair by the door. When the attendant to whom I had spoken earlier, came up the stairs and saw me there, without a moment's warning he seized me by the wrists, jerked me to my feet, and giving me a shove thrust me in a most brutal manner through the door, exclaiming: "Now, will you stay in there until you are told to come out?" I shuddered to think what would have happened if I had been a half-starved boy, and had resented that man's insult. Doubtless I would have been beaten into insensibility. Finally, after another half hour, he yelled from the doorway: "Hey, there, you fellers, get up and get out of here!" Quickly we obeyed and were driven down into the cellar. From there we were driven to the woodyard, where we were made to saw wood for two hours. The strong men sawed their stint in much less time than the weak ones. For the latter it must have meant two long hours indeed, weakened as many of them were by a chronic hunger and disease, and having gone supperless to bed and being as yet without breakfast. When I had finished paying for my "entertainment," I was again driven into a place to put my saw and saw-buck away, and then I was allowed to go to breakfast into a cheerless, overcrowded room; even at this stage of the game I was driven to three different places before I was allowed to be seated. They brought me some bean soup with beans swimming in it, so bitter with salt I could not eat it; a water cracker so hard I could not bite it, and a dirty slice of bread, that one of the indigent, but willing workers, carried in his soiled hands and dropped by my plate. A very hungry looking young man who sat beside me tasted his soup and exclaimed: "I'm hungry, but I'll beg or steal before I'll eat this stuff." We both got up and left the "Hawkins Street Woodyard" in disgust; he going down the street for breakfast, and I in another direction to my hotel. During this, my social study, I have received many letters from the itinerant worker.[B] [B] See worker's letter in the Portland story, Chapter xv. I may add that I did not investigate Boston's Associated Charities, but I did catch a suggestion or two that as far as helping the temporarily out-of-work and destitute toiler, both man and woman, they were inadequate and their good qualities did not exceed the "Hawkins Street Woodyard." * * * * * Dressed in my garb of a worker, which encourages confidence because it excites sympathy, on another day, on the Boston Common, I was attracted by two idle men sitting on a nearby seat, one an Irishman and the other a Swede. They seemed to be feeling about as good as cheap Boston beer could make them, and the Irishman in an earnest yet jovial way was trying to convince the Swede that the world was flat instead of round. I dropped down on the seat beside them, and just then the Swede saw a man he thought he knew, and abruptly left us. I turned and said to the Irishman in a tentative way, "Where can a fellow find a job?" He replied, "Do what I'm doing. I'm an actor, and I'm playing the drunkard's part in 'The Price of a Man's Soul,' every night, over at Hell's Corner on Tremont Street." This answer naturally surprised me; but without a trace of astonishment, and with seeming indifference, I said, "I am with you, friend, for that is a part in which I sparkle; but on the square, what do you do for a living?" "Well, I'm a barber, and as fine a barber as ever held a razor. I owned a big shop once, and I hired twenty men, but it went when I went. I am so low down now, no one wants me. Oh, occasionally I'll get a job in one of the cheap places. I worked two hours last night in Cambridge, and two the night before in Chelsea." Then with sudden digression, I said, "Where can a fellow get a bed and something to eat if he's broke?" "You can go down to the Hawkins Street Woodyard. But don't go there unless you have to!" And he described its wretchedness, which I knew from my own experience. The man was truthful on that point, and I believed in him. I laughingly said, "What's the matter with going down to the 'Island'?" "Well, I can tell you all about those places. I have done time in all of them. One day in Charles St. Jail, one week at Tewksbury, and forty days at Deer Island." "Can a man with no crime but poverty go there and get work, and be paid for it?" He laughed sardonically. "You can get work all right, but your pay is tough board and abuse. They'll probably set you to digging graves at Tewksbury. They die over there like sheep with a plague." "But what of Deer Island?" "Well, I'm a barber, you know, and they put me in the barber department. One day two of the prisoners, also doing my kind of work (all men who come there have to be shaved), were two minutes late coming in from the yard to work. That made the attending officer mad, and he said, 'I'll fix 'em!' and he forced those men for hours to stand with their faces to the wall with their hands over their heads. It was a question of obey or be thrown into a dungeon perhaps for days. I saw that punishment inflicted many times, and I saw men fall from exhaustion and pain and be dragged out. Where they were taken, I don't know, and many of them were old men, too. "One day I was sent over to the hospital to trim, as I was told, a young woman's hair. I took only my shears and comb. On arriving there I found a young woman with a head of hair that shone like silk, and fell three feet down her back. She was in tears and begging that it might be spared. She was only there for thirty days and it meant leaving the place doubly disgraced. But the Matron declared she had seen a louse in her hair, and her word went. When I came in she asked me if I had brought the clippers. I said, 'No.' She ordered me to go and get them. Feeling sorry for the girl I told her it wasn't necessary to cut the hair. I could clean her head perfectly without cutting off a single hair. At this the Matron said, 'Are you an officer or a prisoner here? Get your clippers and do as you are told, and quickly!' I knew what it meant to be disobedient. I saw before me the dungeon-inferno. I left the girl crushed and sobbing, and that wealth of hair almost worth its weight in gold upon the floor. "There was a mutiny among a few of the men, demanding a change in their food. They were working all day for nothing but that food, but because of their demand, they were thrown into the dark dungeon, fed on bread and water for ten days, and I saw some of those men, as they came out from the darkness into the light, faint on the prison floor. One of them was an old man with a long, snow-white flowing beard, and you know how proud an old man is of a beautiful beard. Well, I was ordered to cut it off and he pleaded as the young woman did for her hair, but in vain. He said to me, 'This is my first time on the Island. My wife knows I am here, but my children don't. Wife has forgiven me, and I am to leave in a few days, and I had looked forward to such a happy home coming, but they won't recognize me now, and this puts upon me a double infamy. All of my friends know I am here. I did not mean to be uncivil, I meant to do right, but I was drawn into the revolt, not realizing I was doing wrong which would put us in the dungeon. I feel so weary and broken. I wish now more than ever that my prayer in the dark dungeon had been answered, for I prayed many times in there, that when the light came to me again it would be the light from that land of Him who said, "I was sick and in prison and ye visited me."'" I looked in wonder at the man speaking to me, scarcely believing him. He noticed my expression and said, "Those were his words, his very words. I remember them for they impressed me." "Is this true?" I asked. "Is there a law in Massachusetts allowing a man to be condemned and thrust into a dungeon for ten days for a petty offense like this?" "I have not told to you one hundredth part of the suffering I saw at Deer Island. The cells there are absolutely dark. There is a small slide in the door where the doctor peeps in to see if a man is dead, or gone mad." "If he is dead, what then?" "Well, if he has no friends, he is put into a box and carried just over the hill to the burying plot called 'The Haven.'" I was so touched by this man's story, I could listen no longer. I got up and took him by the arm and said, "Let's cut out our fault." He replied, "I'll have to, I guess, for its cutting me out." I strolled on up the Common, and thought of all it meant, "The Haven" over the hill. This man told me he had been a citizen of Boston all his life. Who would believe this story of a destitute old floatsam cast up from the wreckage of America's temple of Elegance? Had he told me the truth or a lie? I have many reasons to believe every word he told me was true, but there is no man who can verify this story, except the man who has done forty days at Deer Island. In a conventional visit to the Island, I looked into the men's prison just far enough to see tier upon tier of small cells in which all the prisoners are locked for twelve hours of every day. The dungeons I did not see as they are never open to visitors. It was a clear beautiful day. Blue sky and blue sea, all around, white ships sailing by, the men working in the fields, the women busy in the sewing rooms, all inspired me to think that Deer Island could be made a place of hope and cheer. But that vision was far from the reality. The prisoners kept a funeral silence, happiness or hope was not for them. Even their work was stolen from them. I said to one intelligent looking man who was working in the garden, "It helps a fellow to come down here, doesn't it?" He answered, "Yes, if we are not made physical wrecks by the treatment we receive, it does help us. But then, when our time is up, we are disgraced and thrown back helpless into the same old slums of the city, just as before." The Penal Commissioner of Boston told me that he could use thirty beds a night in a Municipal Emergency Home, just to accommodate the men and women who were daily discharged destitute from Deer Island. While Boston has done much for its poor, its sick, and its children, there still remains the problem of the utterly down and out, the shelterless and moneyless, but honest, workers. Can Boston allow New York to excel it in caring for it shelterless workers? I hear the cry, "Where can we get the money?" When you ask that question you are putting a price on a man's soul. I wish some goddess of gentleness would touch the hearts of those "munificent" and "public spirited" citizens who founded the Boston Public Library, that they might also build a Municipal Emergency Home, and ornament its frieze with a perpetual beauty of words, "Dedicated to the advancement of the Commonwealth and Humanity." I am not without historical sentiment. I love local antiquities, if they can be mine to enjoy without oppression. Boston has old burying grounds and churches worth millions and millions of dollars. The dead have rested there a long time. Why not build for the living who have nowhere to lay their heads, a Municipal Emergency Home that would be a living force for the upbuilding of the morals and economic security of the commonwealth? CHAPTER X PHILADELPHIA'S "BROTHERLY LOVE" "_Hast thou Virtue? Acquire also the graces and beauties of Virtue._" --FRANKLIN. I had read that Philadelphia's hospitality was her great virtue, and that it was characteristic of her people to bestow upon the stranger and the homeless--who are and who come within her gates--a blessing of care and kindness nowhere else known,--to make them feel that at last they have found a haven. The first Philadelphia police officer I met I asked several questions about the city. His manner toward me was a surprise. He seemed very willing to talk with an apparently homeless man. We spoke of a number of things, among them the Philadelphia Coat of Arms which ornamented his hat, representing the shield of honor and the scales of Justice. I said, "It is beautiful and stands for a high ideal." He replied doubtfully, "Yes, if it is carried out." I then strolled down to the corner of Eleventh and Race Streets, and seeing another policeman I approached him with the question: "Where can a fellow get a free bed?" He looked at me in surprise. "I don't know. You might go down to the station house on the next corner. They may give you a bunk." I walked slowly down to the station house. Was it possible that in that great city of "Brotherly Love," its police could not direct a destitute man or woman, boy or girl, to a place of rest, to a home of shelter,--to be fed and given comfort and good cheer,--except to a jail and behind iron bars? I entered the station where there were a number of men around the desk. I asked the Captain where a penniless man could get a free bed. He asked, "Haven't you the price of a bed?" "No, I have not a penny in my pocket." "Well, I'll give you a cell," he said, and opened a register to write my name. I asked, "Is there not a place in the city where a man can work for his supper, bed, and breakfast?" "None that I know of," was the answer. Then an officer said, "You can go down to the Galilee Mission." I asked where it was, and they directed me. Just as I turned to go the policeman nearest to me handed me a dime. [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Men's Shower Baths_] [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Female Showers and Wash Rooms_] I started as directed, down to Winter and Darian Streets, to the Galilee Mission. I had proceeded but a short distance when I saw standing on a corner one of the great army of workers. His appearance told me plainly what he was,--his hands were calloused, and his half-worn shoes were covered with a white viscous substance, and a dim mist of lime dust clouded his entire person. I stepped up to him and asked where I could get a free bed. "Don't know of such a place in the city, but you can get a bed at the Lombard Street woodyard by working three or four hours for it. But don't go there unless you have to--they won't treat you right." I thanked him and went on down to the Mission. As I approached it, one of the followers of the Mission, with a Bible or hymn-book under his arm, was at the door in an altercation with one of the great army of unfortunates. The man had an honest face, but the glazed eyes told he had been drinking. I heard the attendant say, "Now, you get out of here or I'll fix you! I'll have an officer here in a minute, and he'll land you in jail in pretty quick time." The man was at the drinking faucet at the side of the building. "I haven't done anything. All I'm doing is getting a drink of water." What the trouble was, I do not know, but what I saw was a seemingly peaceable man abused, thrown out on the street, with the threat hurled after him of police and prison. I stepped around to another one of the attendants at the door, and I asked if I could get a free bed there. He said in a hard way, "No, you can't." "I am willing to work for it." "Well, I don't know whether there's any left. If there is by half-past nine or ten you can have one, but you understand you'll have to work for it." I said, "I am not very strong. Will the work be hard?" "If you're sick why don't you go to the hospital?" "I'm not sick enough for that." "Well, I'll tell you one thing, if you get a bed here you'll have to work good and hard for it whether you're sick or well." "Could I get anything to eat before going to bed?" "No, you can't," he answered. I then strolled down to the "Friendly Inn," supposedly a shelter for destitute men, located on Ninth and Walnut Streets. I asked a pleasant looking young man behind the desk if I could get a free bed. He told me they had no free beds nor any work to do to pay for one, but added, "I have no authority, but if you will wait until half-past ten o'clock, the Manager will be here and he may give you one." Remembering my brief encounter with the workingman on the corner, I did not wait but started for the "Lombard Street woodyard." After reaching Lombard Street I walked for half a mile, and for the entire distance the street was crowded with people, but I did not see a white person until I reached the woodyard. The thrift of the colored people of Philadelphia was markedly noticeable. Saloons were rare in the neighborhood. Their homes were comfortable, they were well dressed and seemingly happy. I came to a large four-story substantial brick building with a small iron porch at its entrance. There was an iron balcony out from each window and over the entrance door, and on the rear a similar row of balconies, but no fire escape that I could discover. If the building had not been so large it could have been readily taken for a police station, there were so many policemen about the place. I entered and found myself in the presence, except for the policemen, of the first white man I had seen on Lombard Street. A kindly appearing gentleman asked me a number of questions, and among them if I was sick. My answer apparently satisfactory, he said, "You will have to work for your lodging here." I asked, "How long?" He replied, "Three or four hours." I was then ordered to take a bath, which was compulsory, and was perfectly right and a good thing. Water, however, does not cost much. After the bath I was shown into a large dormitory, thoroughly ventilated and immaculately clean (made and kept so by homeless workers) containing fifty beds, of which thirty were occupied that night. The beds were very clean and comfortable, except the pillows, which were pretty thin and hard. I judged they were stuffed with cotton, and cotton gets into a lump sometimes. Some of the men coughed all night. At four o'clock, for some reason, one-half of the men were called, and why they were called at that hour I could not learn. At five o'clock the rest of us were called. I had slept in a clean ten-cent bed for six hours, and was then driven out. For the spirit to drive is also evident there. When we went into breakfast there was some bread and spoons on the table. We had no need of a knife and fork, as we had nothing to use them for. We were then given a plate of bean soup and a cup of stuff called coffee. The soup had a nasty taste, like rancid lard or strong butter, and the material called coffee was luke-warm, and nauseating. It had not the slightest flavor, taste, or strength, and we were not given sugar or milk. This was our breakfast. I could not eat or drink a mouthful, and I was not the only one, for there were others of the half-starved boys and men at that table who ate nothing, and those who did eat forced it down, and made faces while doing so. Now, this was not because I was used to Bellevue-Stratford fare, for I have roughed it throughout the West in mining and cow camps, and know good coarse food from nasty coarse food. We then went down in the reading-room, a sort of chapel, where there was a rostrum with an organ and a pulpit on which was a carved cross. The room was filled with chairs. At one end was a large table covered with old magazines and papers. Did you ever notice how charity people think old magazines are good enough for a poor man no matter how bright mentally he may be, or how much he loves to keep up with the times? We were told we would have to wait until half-past six before going to work. I almost fainted from hunger, and was suffering terribly with a headache. I went down to the door and asked if I could go out, saying I would return. I was told, no, I could not. In this chapel I was virtually imprisoned, to be kept there and turned loose at the will of its superintendent. There were two big well-fed policemen sleeping on the chairs, and I fell to wondering what they were there for, and what they had had for breakfast. I wondered if they were there to watch us, and I said to one boy in a tentative way, "What's the matter of us making a sneak?" He replied, "No, I won't, for I promised I would work, and if they catch you trying to make a sneak, they'll throw you in jail." Then I wondered what the large kindly man at the desk, who did not have to wash or scrub floors or saw wood, had had for breakfast, and what the other big good-natured attendant had had, whose only business was to boss the "under dog." I also wondered what the other members of the society of organized charities had had for breakfast, and if they were driven out of bed at four or five o'clock in the morning to eat it. At six-thirty we were put to work. A number of us were sent to the woodyard and several of us were put to washing, cleaning, and scrubbing the floors and stairs. I was set to washing, and I asked the "boss" attendant, "How long will I have to work?" He replied, "three or four hours," the same as the attendant had told me at the door when I entered. However, after working from half-past six until twenty-five minutes to nine--kept in there just at the time when I ought to have been out looking for work--I was allowed to go. As I was leaving I said to a boy about fifteen years of age, "Are you going now?" He said, referring to the attendant, "He's not told me that I could go. These people treat a boy mighty mean here. They worked me from half-past six yesterday morning until four-thirty in the afternoon." "Why didn't you leave after you had worked for your bed and breakfast?" "Well, it was so near dinner time, and I won't beg or steal, so I waited for the cheap dinner, and they worked me, as I told you, until four-thirty in the afternoon, but I am going to try to get a job to-day, if possible." Does Philadelphia need a Municipal Emergency Home? Philadelphians, you, too, send your delegation to New York and inspect their new Municipal Emergency Home, that you, too, may have one even surpassing that New York Home, or at least turn the one you have into a humane one, for you cannot afford to have New York surpass you in its humanitarian activities. Keep the great reputation you have of "Brotherly Love" and "Hospitality," and if you do, your lives and your city will continue resplendent, and this new refuge will speak in wonderful language the praise of "The City of Homes." CHAPTER XI PITTSBURG AND THE WOLF "_I resolved that the wolf of poverty should be driven from my door._"--ANDREW CARNEGIE. Our train was late, and would not reach Pittsburgh until noon. The porter had given me a pillow, and while we were sliding smoothly down that great tongue of land between the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers, where in 1754 stood an old French fort, and where to-day stands Pittsburg, the greatest industrial city of our nation with its population of 750,000 souls, I fell into a half wakeful reverie. I was thinking of its steel, and its iron, its glass, its coal, and its oil, of the mighty fortunes created there by the sweat of the working masses; of the few who had made those great fortunes, of the struggle, the worry, until the treasures of the earth were theirs, until they possessed gold and silver, and houses and lands, through the exploitation of those who must toil. We think or used to think of men who from poverty had achieved great wealth, that they were self-made and worthy of great honor, but that idea seems to be growing less significant nowadays. I thought of the scandals that are rife, and that have come to us from time to time from the great Iron City, and I saw that achievement had left in many cases, indelible marks in a wreckage of mutilated homes and lives. Then my dream changed to the blue jeans, to the great industrial army of bread winners who filled just as great a place of import in the building up of the city, and of its great fortunes, as did the few who exploit them. I thought, too, of their battles of the past for equity and justice, and of the one at that time going on at McKee's Rocks; I thought of the lives sacrificed in such battles, of the contention and agony, of the suffering of body and mind for life's simple necessities, and all to keep together humble homes, to protect the manhood of honorable American citizens, and to insure the safety of little children, to make a living wage possible. We were nearing the city. Surely, I thought, this great city, with its vast wealth, must abound in privileges to labor. I have heard that people who achieve great wealth do not always forget. My first impulse was to pass right through without trying to investigate conditions in Pittsburg, for I had received many wounds of late from those in charge of "charitable" institutions. I had been misunderstood and severely criticised, called a seeker after notoriety, and my motives had been questioned. All because I dared to prove to the world that the institution maintained and assisted by private charity, especially the methods of the charity organization society, cannot stand the test of an honest and impartial investigation. I was weary in mind and body, and had almost lost sight of what had stood out before me as duty. The silent voice which had been leading me on was scarcely perceptible. I had been reading Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables," and I held in my hand this great masterpiece. Aroused from my lethargy I opened the volume and read, "A man should not recoil from the good he may be able to do." I looked, and my wounds were healed, and thus I stopped in Pittsburg. I found a neat room in a respectable neighborhood, where a man in working clothes could walk in and out without comment. Soon I was on the street, an unemployed, destitute workingman, except, as I discovered afterwards, that I had in one of the pockets of my overalls a penny. My first object was to look for work. Inquiring I found that it was estimated, on good authority, that there were 50,000 unemployed men in Pittsburg and its environs at that time. At McKee's Rocks alone there were 8,000. I went first to Pittsburgh's Street Railway Company, where I found one hundred and fifty young men in line putting in their applications for work at twenty-four cents an hour. If those applications were accepted, the men were obliged, and were willing, to work one whole week for nothing to become qualified. I did not file an application. I picked up a paper and read: "Ten men wanted as supers at a theater. Apply at the stage door entrance." I went to the place, and found fifty men waiting, although it was an hour before the appointed time. There were men of all ages and types, from some scarcely more than boys to old men of seventy. I talked with a dozen who had prospective work in sight and were willing to do anything to tide themselves over until their positions were secured. One man said, "I have a place in a wholesale grocery open for me the first of next week, and although this work will only pay fifty cents a performance, it will buy me enough to eat, and I can sleep any place until I get my job. I hope they will choose me." Then the manager came out and chose his ten men, the largest, roughest of the lot. I was not among them, and the boy who was going to work in the wholesale grocery was still on the street. The men selected were as pleased as though they had received a Christmas gift that would not wear out, and one big, rough, tough looking fellow, with almost tears of joy in his eyes, said, "Who would have tought dey would have taken me wid dis front on?" as he looked down at his soiled and ragged clothes; and another just as happy replied, "What do ye tink dey want? A fellow with balloons on his legs and a cane? Naw, dey want a feller that can do somethin'." I then drifted around among the employment offices, and found a little army looking for, and getting, shipments to work. As I strolled about, I found a carpenter's rule, which I picked up and slipped in the upper side pocket of my jumper. Strolling along a little further I saw on the sidewalk a bright new nail. I don't know why I did it, but I picked it up also, and put it into the lower pocket on the other side. The night was coming down and I was very tired and hungry. I began, as an indigent man, to look for a place of rest and a meal, the latter a thing I never missed on these investigations, but often had to postpone for long periods. I was perfectly willing to work for that privilege if I could find such a place. I was compelled to try the so-called "Christian Missions," and they made a good starting point for my investigations,--investigations which proved to me that they prey upon the gullible with a pretense of helping the homeless. I went first to the Salvation Army and asked for a bed. The attendant told me he could not give me one as their lodging house was run for profit and not for charity. "I am willing to work for it. Have you no such place." "We have," was the answer, "but it is closed." Then I went to the old Liberty Mission on Fourth Street and I read the following inscription over the door, "The man who belongs nowhere belongs here." Prayers were being said on the inside, and the doorway was blocked by a desk behind which sat a negro. I asked if I could get a free bed. He answered, "You can for ten cents." Still on the street, I made my way to the Volunteers of America on Second Avenue, made an appeal for a bed, and was flatly denied that comfort unless I had twenty-five cents to pay for it. So, touched by the lack of hospitality offered by "Christian" institutions in Pittsburg to an indigent man, I looked straight at this Volunteer, and said earnestly, "Is there no place in all this great city where a destitute man can find an asylum for only one night?" and started for the door. I think my ardent manner created a little suspicion, for he called me back and said, "You might ask the Captain; he is out there holding service in the street." I stepped out just as they concluded their service. I addressed one of the followers and asked for the Captain. "He has just gone," was the answer, "but what do you want of him?" "I am without means, and I wanted to know if he would give me a bed for the night." The follower said, "No, I don't think we can, but I can give you work. Do you want work?" "I do, where is it, and what is it?" The work proved to be driving one of their wagons four miles out in the country. "And what do they pay?" I asked. "I don't know." I said, "It is late and I am tired, and I want to be taken care of just for to-night. I may find work at my trade to-morrow. Do you see?" He replied with a sneer, "Oh, yes I see," and abruptly turned his back upon me and went in to pray. All that was left for me was the public park. Pittsburg has no breathing spots, squares, or parks down in the city, although there is a large fine park, I am told, several miles out. Just across the Allegheny River in Allegheny City (Greater Pittsburg) is a beautiful park with many statues, fountains, flowers, and trees; but I must cross the bridge and the toll was one cent. I reached down in my jeans for my last penny, paid my toll, and went over. How lucky I was in having that one last penny! It was one of the places where "the penny counts." I had been told during the day that one of the inducements offered to Allegheny City for coming into Pittsburg was that this toll, a mighty revenue, would be abolished, but as yet it still exists. What a night of midsummer beauty it was! No singer ever sung, or artist ever portrayed, a fairer scene! I was very tired and hungry, and dropped down on a seat to rest. "And the cares that infest the day seem to fold up their tents like the Arabs and as silently steal away." I could have dropped to sleep and slept with the peace of a little child; with no covering but the boughs of the green trees, with no watcher but the stars in the sea of blue above me, with no company but the song of the night bird that could sing all night. Many people were seated on the benches. Near me were two men. I drew a little nearer to them and engaged them in conversation. "Are you out of a job, too?" one of them asked. "You can't remain here all night, if you are thinking of sleeping in the park, for the police will drive you out. This would be a fine place to rest, wouldn't it? We would like to remain here until daylight. We have work promised us at Homestead. We might as well walk out there to-night, and go before we are told to go." The last words were to his partner. They turned to me again saying, "Good-night, old man, hope you'll have luck," and were gone. I then walked a long way up the park, noticing that already it had been cleared of its weary ones, that they had been driven from these haunts of nature back into the black holes of the city. I saw but one old white-haired man sitting with his head in his hands, sound asleep. I stepped up to him, and touching him, said, "Why don't you lie down on the bench and sleep; you would rest so much more comfortably?" He awoke with a startled look, and said, "I am afraid." "Afraid of what?" In a frightened manner he replied, "I don't know." I knew he was afraid of the police. "I don't think anyone will trouble you." He laid his old, exhausted, worn-out frame down upon the seat, and was almost immediately lost in the slumber he so needed. I had left him but a moment when I saw a policeman in the distance who stopped and viewed me closely, then turned and went in the direction of the old man. I was inclined to follow him, but I did not dare, nor could I wait to see the pathetic finish. I strolled back down the park and saw by a light in a distant tower that it was midnight. The park seemed utterly deserted but for a dog sleeping under a bush. I went back to the gate by which I had entered, and sat down near it. Between there and the bridge was the part of the city given over to dens of vice, which are open all night, among them being scattered places of legitimate business which are open only in the light of day, and in the night afford a deeper shelter for crime and the criminal. I took a seat near the entrance thinking that I would wait until an officer came along, and get an actual example of his treatment to a man in my position. [Illustration: _MUNICIPAL Lodging House, New York City Men's Dining Room_] The moon was setting behind the towers of the city. The shadows were lengthening; that part of the city near at hand looked grewsome. The park was silent and somber. As I waited I saw two men standing in the shadow just outside the park; from their manner, I knew they were discussing me. Presently they started through the entrance toward me, and as they did so one of the men put his hand in his lower coat pocket. Half protruding from the pocket I caught the gleam of a revolver. As they approached, my heart for a moment seemed to stand still. I did not dare to run or cry out. I simply arose and stood behind the bench. They walked rapidly and directly toward me. When they came near enough to observe me closely they stopped. Then one of them said in a disgusted manner, "I told you so; it's only a hobo," and they hurriedly turned and left me. I had to get back to Pittsburg, and learn what it means to the fullest to be a homeless man in this great industrial center. It came to me that I had spent my last penny coming over. How could I get back? Surely it was the place where the penny counts! During the day I had been told that the only free crossing between Pittsburg and Allegheny was the railroad bridge, used by the railroad employees. I must find that. In spite of my startling experience, I was compelled to thread the gloom of this black part of the city to find the bridge. I found it and started to walk the ties, fearing at any moment that the headlight of a fast approaching train might flash upon me. Suddenly I slipped on an oiled tie, falling. In the darkness I threw out my hand, clutching an iron rod. In my stumble I discovered for the first time that two planks had been laid on the side of the bridge where one could safely walk. With a feeling of relief and security, I quickly stepped upon them, and the rest of my walk upon the bridge was filled with a feeling of gratitude for my escape. Shortly after crossing the bridge, I saw a policeman and asked him where I could get a free bed, or if I would be allowed to sleep in the park. He gave me a severe look and in a harsh manner said, "No, there is no free beds in this town, and you can't sleep in the park, either." I said I knew some people on Fifth Avenue who, perhaps, would take me in, but I did not care to trouble them at that hour. I asked him the way to the Avenue and he directed me. I had gone scarcely half a block when he commanded me to stop. He came up to me and said roughly, "Who are you, anyway? I don't believe you have a place to go." I replied that I was an honest man. "What is your business? What do you do?" were his next questions. With no other thought, except that I must answer something, I told him that I was a carpenter. He started to search me and all he found was the carpenter's rule and the nail which I had picked up the previous day. After that process, which by the way was quite illegal, he softened toward me somewhat and said, "Well, you seem to be an honest man, and if you have no other place to go you can go to the city prison," and pointing to a bright light some distance down an alley, added, "It is over there. They'll give you a cell." With his eye upon me, in spite of some hesitation I had to go as he directed. I reached the prison and entered, and, as I had done in other cities, asked for a place to lie down until daylight. I was asked no questions. The night sergeant simply said, "Come this way," and he locked me in a cell which, although it was not of the bull-pen type, was little better than one in its general appearance and condition of uncleanliness. The only places in it where I could lie down were the floor or an iron slab which partly covered the lantine. I could hear the groanings of the unfortunate men and women who, for reasons of their own, were compelled to spend their nights in prison. I could hear other prisoners appealing to the jailers for medical aid, water, or release from their cells. One young fellow in a cell opposite mine, for about two hours hung in one position to the bars of his cell in an endeavor to attract some attention. Every little while I heard the crying of a young girl, one who had "forgotten her mother and her God." Never in any prison did I feel such oppression. I came near swooning. The thread of endurance as I lay on the stone floor snapped, and the darkness that came upon me brought forgetfullness. My sleep was of short duration. Long before daylight I asked to be released. The jailer, who seemed to hold a spark of humanity, said, "I wouldn't go out if I were you for the police are liable to pick you up." Shortly after dawn I was released. Taking my belongings from my lodging house I left for more comfortable quarters. After a refreshing bath and a restful sleep I interviewed the Mayor of Pittsburg and the members of the City Council, and gave an interview to the newspapers. On the following morning, while passing by a newspaper office, I noticed on the bulletin board a headliner reading: "Free beds for the homeless poor of Pittsburg." CHAPTER XII OMAHA AND HER HOMELESS "_A good mayor is useful; a man should not recoil before the good he may be able to do._"--HUGO. In the Antelope State, on the Big Muddy River, on a plateau rising from the west bank of the river is built the city of Omaha, the metropolis of the State, with a population of 150,000 people. Omaha was called the "Gate City" on account of its important commercial position when it was founded in 1854. It was one of the first to breathe of the mighty progress of civilization in our great West; and, like all of our growing Western cities, is eminently an industrial center--meat packing, breweries, smelters, machine shops, brick yards,--and it is an important railway center. Because of all of this, it continually beckons through its portals a vast number of the army of the seekers after work. Omaha, too, boasts of its culture and humanity, and of a social distinction around which cluster names which in the years to come will be intimately connected with the history of the country. I reached Omaha on a Sunday morning in September. What a gloomy day for the penniless toiler this God's day is, in the great city, when unwashed, unfed, and homeless, he walks the streets! All places for obtaining work are closed and he can simply drift until Monday morning, when industrial activity is resumed. I found the city of Omaha spending thousands of dollars for the entertainment and amusement of visitors to the annual convention of a great fraternal organization. While its stores and blocks and public buildings had been placed on dress parade with gaudy decorations, and while the glad hand of hospitality was stretched out to these guests from thousands of its citizens, there was no welcome for the honest laborer who might happen to be homeless and penniless within its gates, and no provision for him but the filthy concrete floor of the huge steel cages, beneath the crumbling plastered walls of the city jail. I walked down the darker streets in the lower part of the city where the out-of-work are forced to gather. In Boston I thought I had never seen such a gathering of human misery as I found on Boston Common, but nowhere have I found that condition so evident in a smaller way than in Omaha. Approaching a policeman, I asked for the public baths. It was my first test to find out what our Western cities were doing to provide that great sanitary necessity. I was told there was "nothing doing," and the policeman glanced significantly towards the "Big Muddy." I do not know of a single public bath west of Chicago except in Denver. I then decided to try for the first time the Young Men's Christian Association, which poses as an institution assisting those needing help, and which is supported by benevolently inclined contributors and its income enhanced in the same way. When I applied at the Omaha Y. M. C. A. for a free bed and bath, a most affable, well-dressed, neat-looking clerk behind the desk assured me nothing would give him greater pleasure than to accommodate me, but their beds and rooms were fixed up "pretty nicely," in fact, too nicely to be given away. Then I asked for a bath, and he assured me that was a member's privilege only. I then sought the Salvation Army. My answer there was to the effect that if they gave fellows like me free beds they would be overrun every night. Next I went to the Union Gospel Mission on Douglas Street. The door to the lodging house upstairs was locked. Downstairs a gospel meeting was being held. I waited until the meeting was concluded. The dormitory was not open, there were bright lights there, and people were going to their beds. I approached the attendant, who was closing the door, and asked him if he would give me a bed. He kept right on closing the door in my face, meanwhile saying that he wished that he had a free bed himself, that he slept in the street when he hadn't "the price." I then applied to members of the Volunteers of America. They could do nothing for me as they had no lodging house, but thought I might find shelter at the City Mission. I went there and found the place locked and dark. It was a reception about as cordial as that which I received once at Genoa where I went to visit the birthplace of Columbus. After standing on tiptoe reaching up and ringing the bell of that curious house for about five minutes a barber stepped out of the house next door and said in a mixture of Italian and broken English: "Eh, Miestro Colombo, eh not-a-to-home. No ring-a-de bell so damn-a loud. Miestro Colombo eh dead, all a-right dead,--yes-a-four hundred years!" Later with two or three other "down and outs," I lay down on the grass in Jefferson Park. Very soon a policeman came along and drove us out. "How many times have I got to tell you fellows to get out of here? Now, _get_ out of here!" A short time afterward I met another policeman and asked him where I could get a free bed, telling him I was broke. He looked at me rather savagely and said, "You can't get nothing like that in this town." Then he added, "You might go to the city jail, but it is chock full now that the car strike is on." By this time it was midnight. From down in the lower part of the city I saw a man standing listlessly on the curbing. In a moment he sat down. I strolled along and sat down beside him. He was penniless, starving, had eaten nothing since morning, and had no place to rest, but he was not hopeless. In fact, he was in a rather happy mood, for he had a place to work ten miles out in the country, on a farm for one dollar and a half a day and board, and if he made good it would be an all winter job. Soon after daybreak he was going to start out. When I told him I, too, was without a place to sleep, he told me I was welcome to his blankets which he had down in an old shed under the tracks where the owner had let him spread them down the night before. He doubted, however, whether I could stand it. "I tried it last night, but if there was one I believe there were ten thousand rats infesting the place. I was fearful of losing myself for one minute for fear they might attack me, and so I spent the night just as I am spending this one. The farmer did not want me to come out until Monday morning, although I wanted to go out Saturday with him when he hired me." Thoroughly tired out, I bade my hopeful midnight acquaintance good-night, and sought my hotel. As I lay in my comfortable bed I thought of the homeless, moneyless ones who belonged to Omaha that night and who were shelterless and hungry. The next day I visited the City Jail. There I found eight ten-by-ten cells, the bull-pens. Crowded into a single one of these, I counted fourteen men. The shocking closeness of the place was stifling, and I hurried out. I saw, far up the street, a great mob pressing down, and as soon as I got within hearing and seeing distance, I made out two men driving a team of horses hitched to an old wagon partly filled with potatoes. The men were driving directly down the car track, hindering the traffic of the cars. Two policemen stood back of these men trying to get hold of the lines, and they were beating them or trying to beat them into insensibility. The men's shirts were torn into shreds and the blood ran down over their faces and over their clothes to the bottom of the wagon. I did not find what the trouble was about, but it was as though I had caught a leaf from those other days of social unrest, when the poor of France cried for bread, and the thoughtless paid so dearly for their folly. There was no place for a homeless man in Omaha that night--not even in the city jail. A strike was on. CHAPTER XIII SAN FRANCISCO--THE MISSION, THE PRISON, AND THE HOMELESS "_Liberty to the captive, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound._"--ISAIAH 61:1. Having received many letters from the Pacific Coast inviting me to come that way, and having heard what a Mecca for the itinerate worker it was, I felt impelled to investigate the "Commercial Emporium" of the Western shore. I had already made my appeal to Salt Lake City, so I went directly through from Denver to the "Golden Gate." I arrived in San Francisco, one of the most wonderful and beautiful cities in all the world, on Monday, February 8, and began at once my serious study of the problem I had come to investigate--the problem of the man who works but who may be playing in hard luck; the penniless man temporarily out of a job; the unfortunate boy seeking work far from home. I found the wheels of progress and industry in the city exceedingly active and bright; yet I found a great many men out of work. The employment offices were crowded to overflowing. I found the men at the head of these institutions perfectly willing to get a man a job at thirty dollars a month, for a fee of two dollars and a half, or fifteen dollars a month for a fee of one dollar and a half, but they refused point-blank to tide a man over, that is, to trust him for the fee until he drew his first pay. I stood one morning in one of the employment offices in this great city and counted there two hundred workingmen, looking for work. By my side was a boy, hungry, homeless, penniless, who could not go to work because he had not the price to pay for that privilege. Until he could get the price, he must beg, steal, or continue to starve. His shelter two nights before had been divided between the doorway of a freight house and the city prison, and the previous night in a "free flop" mission. "I am not clean," he said, "I am soiled and ragged and no one wants me around," and added, "God, if I could only get rid of the things that were given me last night, without money and without price." I said to him, "Go to the public bath," and he asked with an expectant look on his face, "Where is it?" I replied, "I don't know," and he said, "Even though I took a bath, these are the only clothes I have, and they must be cleaned." I did just what ten thousands of the good citizens of San Francisco are doing every day, I helped the temporal needs of that boy; but it was a wasted effort, and I knew it, for the next night he may have fared doubly worse than this one. The boy told me a bit of his life's history and the reason for his condition. He told it in such a clear, straightforward way, he impressed me that he was telling the truth. "My father is a merchant in Ohio and fairly well-to-do. I had a position in one of my home town banks as assistant teller and bookkeeper, getting seventy-five dollars a month. Although I am but eighteen years of age I felt I was capable and ought to be earning more money. The institution I was working for felt they could not afford to raise my wages, and having a friend coming West, and also having that dream for the West, all of us Eastern boys have, and having fine letters of merit, I thought I could better myself, and I left, coming directly through to San Francisco. My ticket, however, was good to Los Angeles. "After spending ten days here, I found it was impossible to get work in my line of business even though I offered to take much less than I was getting at home. Realizing that my money was fast slipping away, I went on to Los Angeles, where I found even a more discouraging condition than here. "I made up my mind I would endure anything before I would ask assistance from home, and so I filled my letters with tales of prosperity and wonderful prospects. But finally, my money was all gone as well as my personal effects, including two hundred dollars worth of fine clothes, which the pawnshops got for a few dollars. My chum had returned East, and then I began to look for anything to do. I started into the country. The hardships I have endured in trying to live and find work in the California cities would fill a book, but the hardest experience of all was at Santa Anna, where I was arrested and thrown into the Santa Anna jail for ten days, for illegally attaching myself to the Santa Fe Railway, and aimlessly wandering about with no visible means of support, and no objective place in view. I lost my hat the afternoon I was arrested in Santa Anna, and when I left the sheriff gave me this one. It was a pretty good 'lid' when he gave it to me. And so I made my way back here, and if I don't strike something to do to-morrow I am going into the army. They will have to write Dad and get his consent. They will take care of me until they hear from him. Goodbye, old man, thanks to you, I am all right now until I hear from home." Here was a young man, strictly temperate, without one visible evil habit, a young man of brain, brawn, grit; just such boys as California wants, needs, and should help and keep, and it had no place for him! The rest of that day I tramped the streets looking for work, and I inquired at a hundred places, I think, where work was going on, but all places seemed filled and no one seemed to want me--at least not that afternoon. At several restaurants they offered to let me help wash dishes for something to eat. I could have begged, it is true, without being arrested, as the labor Mayor at that time was in every sense a humanitarian, and soon after taking office had issued a mandate to his police department to molest no one on the street asking alms. When remonstrated with, he said, "We may be imposed upon many times, but I would rather help twenty dishonest men than turn down one honest one." The spirit of alms-giving in San Francisco was markedly noticeable, and I asked a man whom I saw hand a dollar to a man who asked for aid, why that spirit was so active. He replied, "If you had been here and gone through the terrible earthquake with us, you would fully understand. We were all dependent on one another at that time. We have all realized what it means to be homeless. We have not forgotten." This observation seemed to apply only to the Mayor's order and to the citizens in general as I met them on the street; for I found the religious bodies of an entirely different nature,--those at least, with which I came in contact, not being remarkably generous. The night was coming down. It was exceedingly ominous to a destitute man. It had begun to storm, with a commingling of rain and snow, and a chilly blast from the ocean. Myriads of lights came out like a burst of good cheer from the Ferry House to Golden Gate Park, but they held no warmth for the penniless, thinly clothed man. The restaurant windows seemed to glow with good things. I saw many, very many boys and men, and occasionally a poorly clad girl, stand and look longingly at the tempting viands. I saw one young fellow down on Third Street standing before a cheap but exceedingly clean restaurant, whose windows were filled with tempting, wholesome food. I stopped and watched him. Among the passing crowd was a workingman with a dinner pail. The young man reluctantly, it seemed to me, asked of him a dime. The workingman strode on, but had gone only a few steps when he turned back. Stepping up to the young fellow, he put his arm about his shoulder and said, "What would you do with the dime if I gave it to you?" The penniless man's face beamed with joy and appreciation of the sympathy shown, as he said, "I would buy something to eat." The workingman gave him a quarter, a part of his day's wages, and the hungry man entered the restaurant, and ate as though he had been denied that blessing for a very long time. The workingman, as he went his way, I heard whistling far down the street. [Illustration: "_The Small Dark Door Leads down under the Sidewalk and Saloon. San Francisco Free-flop of Whosoever-Will-Mission_"] In this incident I saw in imagination the spirit of San Francisco's beautiful Municipal Lodging House, with its food, shelter, bath, and medical attention, building up of character, good citizenship, and making for good government. I felt that the spirit of kindness shown by that workingman would be the crowning virtue of this new and wonderful Home. It was getting late. I was very tired, and knew I must find shelter from the storm. I would not ask of anyone on the street the price of a bed. Someone out of pity might give me money he actually needed for himself. I decided to seek first some of the Good Samaritan institutions which make a business of helping the needy. But where they were I could only find out by inquiring of the policeman. I must approach them with all that dread and terror excited by the expectation of evil which all destitute men in our American "cities of liberty" come to look for at the hands of the police. I approached an officer and asked him, "Can you tell a fellow where he can get a free bed?" He did not look at me suspiciously; he did not take the law in his own hands by questioning me on the street; he simply placed his hand on my shoulder in a kindly way and said, "Right here is Kerney Street. Keep right down Kerney until you come to Pacific,--you can't miss Pacific Street,--and you will see the 'Whosoever Will' Mission. They have some kind of a 'free flop' there, but if they don't take care of you, go to the city prison." It was eleven o'clock when I approached the "Whosoever Will" Mission. The meeting had just closed. I counted twenty men and boys standing on the street outside of the place. I slipped up to one of the boys and asked where the "free flop" was. He said, "About a block down the street." I asked him, "What is the show for getting a free bed?" "Mighty poor," he replied, "us fellows all got left. If you want a bed you have got to be here and go to the meeting and if you are lucky enough to get a ticket you can get a bed." Just then I glanced through the door and read an inscription, "He that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out." In making a closer study of this institution, I found it in appearance a veritable Cleopatra's Needle literally covered with quotations inside and out. I then asked where the lodging house was, and if he thought a man would stand any show of getting a bed without a ticket. He replied, "You might try," and directed me to the "free flop" a block down the street on the corner. There I encountered about twenty more men standing idly about. Seeing a light through a door, I entered, believing I was entering the "free flop," but found myself in a negro saloon frequented entirely by colored men. I went out again into the crowd, and stepped up to a thin, emaciated boy, a boy evidently dying with some lingering malady. I asked him where the "flop" was, and he pointed down to the sidewalk and said, "It is under here, the entrance is there at the corner." I slipped over to it, and found a very narrow and almost precipitous stairway leading down under the sidewalk and into a basement under the saloon. This stairway was absolutely gorged with human beings seeking shelter. After seeing that the sick boy had entered last and that I might force him back into the night, I entered, and when it was discovered, before I had scarcely gotten into the place, that I had no ticket, a big bully violently thrust me toward the door and in a loud voice shouted, "Get out of here," and almost threw me up the "golden stairs" and back into the street. Here I found a number of boys and men who, like myself, lingered about ticketless and shelterless. I said to one of them, "What are we going to do for a bed?" He replied, "I'll tell you; you can get in if you will drop down that manhole, and once in you'll be mixed up with the crowd and won't be noticed. I let three fellows in that way the other night. It's mighty heavy but I'll hold it up till you drop down if you want to try it. But, say, I want to tell you if you ain't got nothing on you, and you don't want nothing on you, you'd better try the lumber yard. It isn't so warm as down there, but it's a great deal cleaner. That's where I'm going." I was determined, however, to see this one free lodging house of San Francisco, but I hesitated for just a moment. I wasn't quite sure where I might land, and if I was discovered neither was I quite sure that I might not be murdered. But my fear quickly passed and I said, "All right, lift her up," and down I went. I did not have far to drop, and found myself in that portion of the "heavenly flop" under the negro saloon where hell overhead was already making the night hideous. Between the cracks in the old board floor I could see the light of the saloon shining through. I made no attempt at trying to get a bed. All I wanted was to make a few notes and get out. The room where I found myself was filled with double board bunks, the upper bunks coming so near the ceiling, or floor of the saloon above, that a man could just crawl into them. Some of these poor objects were making an attempt to get a bath from a shower in a corner, but even if they succeeded in getting this excuse for a bath, they were obliged to crawl back into their filthy clothes or onto the still more filthy bunks. Some men, under the sidewalk, I saw spread out old newspapers on the boards, and lie down unwashed and unfed in their wretchedness. Slipping out as quickly as possible, unnoticed, I reached the street. The night air and open street was as a pleasant dream which follows the waking hours of one who suffers. At the Salvation Army the attendant told me he was not authorized to give anything away, and all that was left me was the old city prison. Threading up an alley, I found myself at the Old Bastile of San Francisco. The keeper at the door said he would allow me to lie down in the cell house, but first he must be assured I had neither knife, gun, or razor upon me. Satisfied I was not an escaped lunatic, or a desperado with an arsenal concealed about me, I was turned over to the turnkey, who led me to the chamber of horrors, a long room about sixty by thirty feet. In the center was a row of large cells, or "drunk tanks," in which were being thrown the unfortunates of both sexes in all degrees of insanity, from the raving delirium tremens to the semi-idiots, the fighting drunks, the laughing drunks, the sick drunks and the sleeping drunks. The jailer pointing to a pile of blankets, said, "Take one of those and find a place to spread it down." The lodgers were allowed to lie down on the stone floor in the narrow passage which surrounded this row of cells. The passage was so narrow that they had to lie in single file, which left just space enough to walk between them and the cells. I seized a blanket; there seemed to be just one space left. If you have ever been in an insane asylum, or in a cell house of your States prison, where some unusual sound startles and terrifies the inmates, you can frame some idea of what it means to sleep around the "drunk tanks" in the city prison. Women with disarranged clothing, and disheveled hair, were pleading and babbling, and begging to be released, declaring they could not breathe, and in piercing tones crying that they were suffocating. Strange as it may seem, these women this night were more or less refined in voice and language, and the most vile and vulgar epithets hurled at them by the men derelicts in the adjoining cells met with no response. Men raved and fought, and cursed and groaned. The jailer was kept busy separating them. As he was forcing an aggressive prisoner from one cell to another, the toe of the unfortunate caught me in the side, which left me a sore and stinging remembrance of that awful night for several days. When the call came to the lodgers to get out, it was like a voice from the immediate presence of God. We were each given a piece of bread and a cup of stuff called coffee. The jailer, George McLaughlin, was a man of cast-iron decision and gruffness, yet under the most trying circumstances his actions toward these troublesome unfortunates were exceedingly kind. As we drifted out of the Old Bastile, he gave us each a word of good luck and a cheerful farewell. It was a jail, yes, and no man can ever sleep in a jail and keep his self-respect, but we were welcome and not cast out. San Francisco is at work. She has sent her delegation to New York City to inspect its beautiful and wonderful Municipal Lodging House. The delegates returned completely won over to the idea. San Francisco will soon have its Emergency Municipal Home. CHAPTER XIV EXPERIENCES IN LOS ANGELES "_Ye are not of the night nor the darkness._"--I THESSALONIANS 5:5. On one of Los Angeles' perfect winter Sabbath mornings, I was idly strolling down the street, when a breezy, pleasant faced woman appeared, looked at me closely and then asked if I was homeless. The genial little lady urged me with a great deal of force to come to the institution in which she was interested, and where, she assured me, I would be well fed and sheltered as long as I chose to stay. So pleasant was the description of her home, her welcome so genuine, I rejoiced in the thought that here in hospitable Los Angeles was provided an emergency home for those with whom untoward circumstances had not dealt kindly. I was interested at once in the invitation so kindly extended to me, and I asked the good woman how I would get to the "home." She began by telling me which street-car to take. I said, "Just give me the street and number and I will walk." She answered, "I can not do that very well." She explained to me that she would give me carfare but was not allowed to do so. There was another woman a little further down the street who could and would give me the required nickel. Walking on down the street, I was told by a man standing on the sidewalk that there had been several women on the corner urging men to come out to a free home, and giving out carfare, but they would not return until the next Sunday morning. Following the woman's directions, I took a car. After riding what I supposed to be about two miles, I asked the conductor if we were nearly there; he laughingly replied, "We haven't started yet." And then I found that this "home" was nearly four miles from the place where laborers congregated in the heart of the city. A four-mile walk--a pleasant prospect for a hunger-weakened man, perhaps ill as well! On finally reaching the place, I found it an institution of some kind of religious enthusiasts. There were many there. It was one of their feast days, and the end of the dinner was near at hand. I was given a cordial welcome, and handed a plate of potatoes and beans. Tea, coffee, and meat I learned they regarded as sinful, smacking too much of the flesh. This plate of potatoes and beans, the leader declared, was sanctified food. On this feast day there had been a shower of pies and cakes, but the sanctified pie had run out. We were invited to remain to a four-hour feast of religious worship, which would be followed by another feast of edibles. As this latter attraction was referred to many times, we had reason to believe a regular Belshazzar was in store for us. Out in a sort of shed, after four long hours of religious praise, in a din of sound of voice and song, beneath swinging collections of crutches and pipes and bottles, we were called to the promised supper. Back into the banquet hall? Oh, no! But we carried the backless benches in from the shed, and placed them in a row along by the back or kitchen door of the house. I noticed there were only about half seats enough for the guests, so that one half stood while they waited, and it was nearly an hour from the time we began to gather for the much heralded "full meal" before we were served. The weather had changed. At the going down of the sun, in southern semi-tropical climes in midwinter, there is a penetrating chill in the air. Cold mist and rain is of frequent occurrence. With the fast falling night had come a chilling fog cloud. It was an appalling, an appealing, a heart-rending, cruel sight, this company of two hundred and fifty men. There were no women among them. As these destitute men stood there, half-clothed, enveloped in the vapor of the coming night, I read, on almost every face, despair and hopeless grief. I judged that a great many of them were tubercular, or the thin emaciated faces may have been evidences of exposure and want. I, too, was suffering with the cold, and I turned to a strong, healthy young fellow near me and said to him, "That cup of hot coffee will receive a hearty welcome." Just then an attendant came out of the kitchen with a very large pitcher and filled it with cold water from the hydrant. My interlocutor turned and laughingly remarked, "Jack, there is your hot coffee!" Then the chief leader of this spiritual beneficence appeared, rubbing his hands together, and said to a visiting brother as he glanced down the line, "Isn't this glorious?" After more prayer, they came to us bringing what they called sandwiches, one for each man. These "sandwiches" were two very thin slices of bread, between which they had put a touch of some sour sort of sauce, and with each one was given a _cup of cold water_. A gaunt, sunken-eyed man, with white trembling hands, said to me, "I am afraid there won't be enough to go around and we won't get any." But we got ours, and he swallowed it almost in a mouthful. I held mine waiting for an excuse to give it to him, and soon he asked me, "Aren't you going to eat yours?" I replied, "No, I do not like the sauce between the bread." I shall never forget how eagerly the thin hand grasped the slice, as he exclaimed, "I would give a fortune, if I had it, for a cup of hot coffee!" And then some hungry wretch spoke up, saying, "If Christ was on earth today, I think he would have changed that cup of cold water, given in his name, to hot coffee." I asked this starving man if he could not find work, and if he had no trade. "Yes," he answered, "I am a lather, but since they use the steel laths it is hard for us to get the work we formerly did. Besides," he continued, "I am not young any longer nor strong enough to keep steadily at work as I once could, even though I now had the work to do. I came down here believing I could get work, easy work, out-doors in the fruit and orange groves, which would be beneficial to my health, but the fruit trust hire all Japs because they can get them cheaper, and, even though I have offered to work as cheaply as they do, they will not hire me." The day was done and this little drift of the flotsam and jetsam of Los Angeles floated back to the city to buffet with chance and luck for a place to sleep. When I first arrived at the "institution," I asked for the privilege of staying until I could help myself. The attendant told me he would see me after the service. As nothing was said to me again nor any of us urged or asked to remain, and being obliged to find something to eat, I left. As we went away, each man was offered a nickel for carfare, and I said to the helper who doled out the nickels, "Will you give me another to come back on? I must go to the city to look for work." But I found he couldn't think of such a thing. No doubt, on the minds of the gullible rich and charitably inclined who contribute to such institutions, the report of this feast day and of the great number "fed" must have made a great impression. These people were teaching Christ, too, as they understood or pretended to understand Him. On this day, if they had found one man of character strong enough to accept and follow the beautiful Christ Life, was it not worth while? From their standpoint, yes, but they overlooked utterly the sin of continuing the pauperization of those two hundred and fifty men, by their makeshift charity. During their four hours of praise and prayer and "testimony," not one single word was said about the causes that compelled those men to be there. Nor a single remedy was mentioned to change conditions, nor a word uttered against the methods used by religious societies, missions, single and associated charities, prison associations, societies for the prevention of crime and mendicancy, in their dealings with mendicancy. It was after dark when I again reached the city. The rain had ceased, and the myriads of scintillating lights filled the city with a glow of splendor. I began my testing of the generosity of the city of Los Angeles toward its destitute homeless. As in other cities, I met with rebuffs at all of those institutions and religious bodies ostensibly existing for the sole purpose of helping the homeless. I tried all that I had heard of or that the police knew anything about. Finally, as I had been in other cities, I was driven to the Municipal building provided for law-breakers and criminals. As I sat there waiting for the jailer to lock me in, I thought of the frightful night spent in the bullpens of other places,--of the nerve-racking night when I came so near swooning in the city prison of Pittsburg, and last but not least, of that madhouse, the Old Bastile of San Francisco. As I heard the clang of iron doors, and in the distance the cursing of men and the cry of lost women, I said to myself, "I don't think it necessary for me to go through this terrible trial to bring before the good people of Los Angeles the need of a Municipal Emergency Home," and I quietly crept away. On the following Sunday, I addressed the Y. M. C. A., and I told them of my experiences in Los Angeles. I spoke of going first to one very prominent institution and of being denied any of its privileges for less than thirty cents, in real money. I did not give the name of the establishment and when I had finished, one of the officers of this body got up and said, "If Mr. Brown had come here he would have been taken care of." I replied, "This was the first place I came to." After they had caught their breath, he haltingly said, "But Mr. Brown, you did not see the right man." I found in Los Angeles, as in every other city that I visited, that the Y. M. C. A. is nothing more nor less than a rich men's club. I found men worth a great many thousands of dollars rooming there. They paid from thirty to fifty dollars a month for their rooms. And I found boys on small salaries also living there but living on one and two meals a day, in order to be able to pay their paltry room rent. CHAPTER XV IN PORTLAND "_To live honestly by one's own toil, what a favor of Heaven!_"--HUGO. "Dell me, vhere I find me a lawyer?" In broken accents, these words came to me from a German laborer who stepped up to me out of five hundred unemployed men who thronged Second Street in the vicinity of the labor bureaus. "I am a lawyer," I responded; "what is the trouble?" With an amused expression, eyeing closely my blue jeans, he said, "You vas not a lawyer." "No," I answered, "I am not a lawyer, but tell me your name, and what is your trouble, and perhaps I can find you one." [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Women's and Children's Dining Room_] "My name is Steve Goebel. Vell, I dell you, I go there," pointing to the employment office near at hand, "seven days ago, und I pay two tollars for a job at lumber camp Rainier, fifty, maybe seventy, mile avay. I pay my fare out there. I vork six days und six hours for vun seventy-five a day, ten hour a day, den dey dell me dey no vant me no more. I work so hard in rain und vet, und I vear mein clothes out, und I pay five tollars a veek board. Vhen dey dell me dey no vant me no more dey offer me dhree tollars for my six days und six hours' work. I owe the commis, vhat you call it, fifteen cents for leedle tobac. Den dey take from me vun tollar hospital fee und dhree tollar poll tax, they say, or road tax, und offer me dhree tollar. I not take dot dhree tollar,--somevun dey rob me. I hafe leedle money. I come back part vay on boat, as far as my leedle money bring me, den I valk back here. I dell the office how I get treated und dey says nefer mind, ve get you anoder job, but I say I valk all night, I am hungry, den dey give me den cents for breakfast." I took this man to the office of the City Attorney and left him there to tell his story. I afterwards repeated the story to one of the leading newspaper writers of the city. He looked at me very earnestly, and said, "Do you think there will be a thing done about it?" I looked at him without reply, and he continued, "There won't be a thing done. There is no law for the poor man here." The man had been robbed in as low and cowardly a manner as only a most depraved degenerate could be guilty of. Portland had helped to make that man destitute, and now he is forced to beg, steal or starve, until he finds another job, or perhaps, through desperation takes his life. Similar experiences in Portland have forced a great many to do that very thing. Several men have been found dead in a pretty green square in the heart of Portland's breathing spot, called the Plaza, and postmortem examinations have revealed nothing in their stomachs. And these tragedies have taken place almost within a stone's throw of the Associated Charities. A great pile of water and pitch-soaked blocks of kindling wood was piled in front of No. 10 North Second Street, a Jap restaurant. Some of the blocks were so heavy it was with difficulty they could be carried even singly. The wood belonged to the Japs. An old man, an American, some sixty odd years of age, was carrying it in. I asked him if he did not want a helper. He said, "I would like a helper but there is so little in it and there is not enough for two. I am carrying this all in for thirty cents and it will take me, I think, three hours." This old man had a good, kind face, and his clothes, though worn, were clean. He continued, "I have been playing in a little hard luck of late and must get all out of my work possible." I then asked him if he had breakfasted. He had not. I said, "I have a little money, come and have some breakfast and carry in the wood afterward." He said, "No, I won't take your money, I will soon be through here and get my pay." I was seated in Tragedy Square (the Plaza), near a neat, well-dressed young man, and while sitting there two young girls about sixteen or seventeen years of age came out of a door across the street, and passed through the Square. The young man remarked: "Do you see those two young women? They have just come out of the Woman's Department of the Free Labor Office. You can tell from their appearance they are honest girls, but they would sell all that is dear to them, even their purity, for something to eat and a place to sleep. I may be wrong but from their appearance I feel it is true." Stunned as by a blow, at the words from the lips of this stranger, with noticeable feeling I said, "That can't be possible. In this city of wealth, whose citizens boast of their refinement, their reasonableness, and their kindliness!" "I know whereof I speak," he answered, "for I have a girl friend whom I have been helping for over a year. Just recently she confessed to me why she forgot the teachings of her childhood and mother, why she forgot her dream of being honorably married and becoming all that her mother was. She said, it was because she was hungry and had no place to sleep. She could not ask for charity or beg. 'I didn't know where or how to beg,' she said, 'but then I met you and you were kind to me.' I did not know this when I met that girl. I thought she was what she was from choice and not from necessity." As he got up to leave he said, "I am going to marry her and she shall be all that God intended her to be. I am going to help her, but there are many, very many girls who come to Portland, and who, through lack of life's necessities, are forced to forget." And this instance could be multiplied a thousand times, and in a thousand ways, in a thousand cities. In the afternoon, I began to look for work. I found that no privileges existed for labor; that the destitute working man, the man who was "broke," was forced to seek shelter where the homeless dog and rat seeks shelter. Men here, as in other cities, were forced to the fermenting refuse thrown from stables because it held warmth! Often men slept out in the open air behind billboards and in a hundred other deplorable places, where they could get a little rest unless discovered by the police and thrown into jail. In my search for work, I went to the offices of the Portland Light, Power and Electric Railway Company. I asked the clerk what show there was to get work as motorman or conductor. He answered, "pretty slim." Nevertheless, he asked how old I was. When I told him, he said there was no work for me, that there was a brotherhood of the railway employees which was an adjunct to the company and one of its rules was not to hire a man over forty. I said, "It is true, I am fifty, but I am just as strong and well, able-bodied and competent as I was at twenty-five." But that made no difference. I then asked, "If I were of an eligible age and you should give me work, what do you pay?" He said, "You are expected to work the first ten days for nothing. Then you receive twenty-four cents an hour for five years, then thirty cents as long as you live and work." I said, "I am broke, and even though I were of an age to be chosen, I would be giving my time to you during those ten days, and a man will starve to death in nine." A man who looks for work does not lose his worthiness, but the man who is forced to ask alms, to ask something for nothing, does. I then took the part of a cringing, disgraced, dependent with nothing to lose and nothing to gain, except to try and keep God's gift, the spark of life, until in my own opinion, at least, I could place myself in a position to be honorable. I knew that I would be looked upon suspiciously by the police, possibly thrown into jail; that in all of the places where I would ask for aid, they would look upon me as mean, base, low,--mental defective perhaps, or a victim of some awful habit. My poverty would be, of course, all my fault, as "there is no need of any one's being poor." I first looked for the Associated Charities. I scanned the papers closely, not knowing but that they might advertise to give a destitute man or woman, boy or girl, a lift. Finding no notice, I found the place at last, after a good deal of difficulty. Reaching there at about five minutes after five, I saw a sign on the door which told me they kept the usual "banking" hours, 9 A. M. to 5 P. M. I wondered whether, possibly, some one might not need a little help between 5 P. M. and 9 A. M. The Y. M. C. A. here, also, had nothing to give an indigent man, any more than in the other cities where I had been. Strolling down Burnside Street I came to an establishment with a sign, "People's Institute," over the door. I entered and asked for help. They had nothing to give away but religion. Yes, they had a reading-room, where a number of men sat reading in profound silence. Here I saw several other signs: "No Smoking," "Do your reading here, your talking on the outside, but not at the door." I inquired where a man was supposed to talk, and was told that it was "in the park or a block down the street." I wandered down to the river. Glancing across to the other side I saw a huge sign, which read: "Salvation Army. Industrial Home." I crossed the river and on reaching this work-house of faith and worship I saw that the lower floors were locked and dark. Climbing a stairway leading to the second story, I found myself in a rambling barrack. Hearing a noise in one of the rooms I made my way there and found a man preparing supper. I told him of my hard luck, and that I was willing to work for it if I could get a lodging for the night and supper and breakfast. He went right on pealing his onions and potatoes, telling me decidedly that the meals were for the officers of the Army and he was not allowed to give anything away. The Industrial part of the "Salvation Army Industrial Home" seemed to have ceased to be at the finishing of that great sign. The Captain told me later, however, that if I had asked the right man I would have been helped, but that I had asked the cook. For several hours I drifted around. In some of the "beer depots," as they call the saloons there, I found as many as two and three hundred men at one time. A policeman, whom I saw fulfilling his duty by driving a boy whom he suspected of being under age, from one of these resorts, directed me to two missions,--The Holy Rollers and the Portland Commons. Should I be denied shelter there, he told me to go to the jail, but added that I should not go there unless I was obliged to. The Commons had a name which indicated that it was meant to serve all. I climbed the stairs to an office. The only man available about the place told me if I had been there and attended the service they might have done something for me. When I asked him if I could receive supper, bath, bed and breakfast by doing some service in return, he stared at me and asked me what kind of a place I thought they were running! This is a simple statement of what a homeless man meets in Portland. If I had seen Staff Captain Bradley of the Salvation Army he would probably have given me a bed; or, had I come in contact with Mr. W. G. MacLaren of the Portland Commons, I would have been taken care of. I did not meet Captain Bradley after my investigation, but I did meet W. G. MacLaren, and found him a sincere Christian gentleman, doing a great deal to help those in need. I discovered, for the first time in my experience, a life-line running from the city jail to a mission, and the mission was Portland Commons. The night captain of the jail, Captain Slover, who ought to be chief of police of that city, was at one end of the line and W. G. MacLaren at the other. Many discouraged, unfortunate workers have, through the efforts of these two men, become honored citizens. Both Captain Slover and Mr. MacLaren know that private and individual effort is a failure; that it is as one trying to dip the ocean dry; that under our national, municipal, social and political systems, their work is useless. These men believe in municipal ownership as far as taking care of those in need is concerned. They are strong advocates of a Municipal Emergency Home. In Portland I found a boy who had been dragged at two o'clock in the morning from a delivery wagon where he was trying to sleep, and put in jail. Captain Slover sent him to the mission. On the street I saw another boy whom I had met in San Francisco a month before and who now was on his way to Tacoma, to which place his brother had written him to come, as he had a steady job for him with good pay. He had been pulled out of a freight car at three o'clock that morning and taken to jail. He told his story and they believed him. Afterward, while visiting that jail (the only Portland Municipal Lodging House) I found it such a filthy, disease- and crime-breeding institution that I wondered that the police themselves did not succumb. I found Russians thrown in there who were never in jail until they came to America. I saw the "drunk tanks" into which unfortunates were crowded and where, I was told, they were often found dead from suffocation. On Sunday morning I attended the First Congregational Church. It was not the regular service but a sort of joint meeting with the Foreign Missionary Commission. The minister preached thirty minutes about how much he pitied the poor little dwarfed soul. I heard not a single word about trying to save the soul (and the body) of the hundreds of shelterless and hungry men in the city of Portland who were searching for the possibility of carving out an existence for themselves and those dependent upon them. In its neglect to care for these, the church seemed an accessory to death rather than to the uplift of unfortunate men and women. During my entire work, I have been honored only once by being called upon by a minister and asked to speak in his church. "The Every Day Church," it is called, situated far out, almost in the suburbs, on the east side of Portland. Its pastor, Rev. James Diamond Corby, will surely be heard from in the near future. He is one of the men of the hour in that city. The _Oregonian_, the leading newspaper of Portland, which has been the bell sheep of Oregon for a great many years, and which thinks the jails and prisons of our country are too attractive and should be made less so, did advocate the establishment of a Municipal Emergency Home when I first went to Portland. On Easter Sunday morning, however, they crucified my idea and cartooned the Municipal Emergency Home, as the hairy hand of socialism tearing down the American flag! Shortly after leaving Portland I received the following letter which speaks for itself. Do not fail to read the postscript. "PORTL Ore Jan 24 1910. "Mr. Brown I read a artical of yours in the Sunday Oregonian on the Down and outs, belonging to that club I thought it might interest you to read this and therein you might solve the question, (what makes a tramp). I was born in Creston, Lancashire, Eng on the 27 of Nov 1876 my mother & father both died before I was four years old, and I was brought up with a family who we boarded with, my new mother was an angel, but her husband was a brute to me, but he was all right to his own children, but anytime I done wrong there was always that old song we ought to have sent you to the workhouse instead of trying to raise you to be a man. Notice what chance I had. At 10 years old I was put to work in one of those dreaded cotton mills, a half a day to school and a half a day in hell to work till I was 13 years old and then I went in on full time. 3 more years of this slaving and I got a chance to come too U. S. and I jumped at the chance, a cousin of mine paying my fare too Woonsocket where some more of those hell holes of cotton mills are, and so again in too the cotton mills I went, but a little over a year of such wrongs, I seeked new fields. I run away and went to boston, mass, where one night finding myself stranded I went to the Municipal lodgins, and get a poor bed and some soup. God only knows what it was made of and the next morning I was out and hustling and having a natural love for a horse, around the sales stables I went and I found out a man could always pick up a piece of change runing horses up and down the streets and taking them down to depot, and geting warmed up one day and having no other clothes I caught cold which turned into pneumonia and I went to the city hospital. the treatment there was fine and I never will forget the face of my nurse. when I came out I was weak and scaled about 90. having no money that night I had to go to the Municipal loding, and I told the officer in charge about coming out of the hospital that morning and he asked me to show him my discharge papers and I handed them out to him and he looked at them and tore them up right in front of my face, and said you -- -- -- -- your working the hospitals are you, and then he kicked me all the way down to the bath room and said he see that I sawed enough of wood in the morning, and he was there and after working a while I fell from weakness and the brute kicked me while I lay helpless and one lodger said something to him and he was promptly hustled inside and the patrol came down and took him away but I noticed he did not send me to see the judge. No, instead he told me to get out and never show my face again, which I never have. A few days after I got picked up on the street one night kind of late and took a front of the judge the next morning, the first time I was ever in a court room and charged with being Idle and Disorderly and was sent to the Reformatory at Concord and was for the next 13 months known as 9510. having no friends on the outside and having to have a position before they let you out some skeeming had to be done. but anyway I got out in 13 months and I was just as bad off as I went in but I was supplied with a lot of the knowledge of crooks. With the $5 they gave me I started for New York. I got stranded in a town called Portchester and the next day me and another Down and out started to walk to white plains and it was there I begged my first meal and it cost me 6 months in jail. White plains is a wealthy town and that night I asked to sleep in the police station and in the morning they had the man of the house where I asked for something to eat in the office and they brought me out to have him identify me and then the judge says 6 months, never give me a chance to say a word. why, because it was Graft, they shipped me through 2 other counties to the Kings County, Pen. and them having a Jail of their own in there County. I then thought it was as cheap to steal because I was just as poor when I come out, and so I started in on a life of crime. I committed a few small acts around new York and raised a little money on the proceed, and so I started back toward Boston but I fell in New London, and had to wait 3 months for trial and then on account of my youth and me pleading guilty (which they could never have proved if I have been an Old timer) they let me off with a year in Gail. When I come out they gave me 3 dollars and says start a new life, well I went to boston again and I got work around horses at the race track and in the fall I lost my position through the horses being sent home and so again I started to ramble this time towards the west, but I got as far as Buffalo and being broke one evning I made a raid on a wholesale grocey and got about 15$ and a wheel. I spent the 15$ around the Tenderloin in about as many hours and then I tried to sell the wheel but the jew would only give me 2 Dollars and I wanted 5$ and a policeman happened to come along and he settled the proceedings by taking me to the station, and after waiting about 2 months for a trial the judge says 9 months, the reason I got such a small sentence was because I turned the trick off right in front of station No. 1 in Broad-day-light. Why as I got through the window after breaking it I looked out into the street and saw a half Dozen big policemen sitting on the steps right across the street and it made me laugh every once in a while. While in the Buffalo pen I swore I would quit stealing for a living and to this day I kept that promise which is about 8 years ago because it aint right and jails made me a thief. I come west working on stock ranches, race tracks, rail-road camps, logging camps and all kinds of general work. But there is one question I would like to ask you before I end this letter. Every once in a while I find myself broke and out of a job and forced to beg on the streets to get the necessitys of life, and so I must conclude by cutting this letter short as I have no more writing paper and of course no money. but I am going out on the street and see cant I dig up a few old rusty dimes and now Good-bye--hoping you succeed in your undertaking of trying to get Municipal lodings such as new york as got because I have been there and no it is allright but the main point is to have decent officers in those places an not Brutes like Boston got. But the question (Why does a tramp keep tramping) P. S. I have just come down from the free Employment office and there is a big sign on the window Dont loafe in front of this building come inside, and when you get inside there is another sign entilted Dont loaf in this office. Nobody in this part of the country knows my right name because I have about a dozen or maybe more but if you care to write you can address John Murphy in care of Peoples institute corner of 4 and Burnside sts. Portl Ore" CHAPTER XVI TACOMA "_The greatest bravery is theirs who humbly dare, and know no praise._" I stood one day on the curbing of the principal street in Tacoma watching the construction of a sky-scraper. Near me stood a man of thirty-five, also watching. In reply to a question of mine concerning the wages of these builders who were taking such fearful risks, he said: "They receive four dollars and a half a day, but one does not have to float in the open air on a steel beam fifteen stories high, only, in order to hold his life in the balance. I am working for the lumber trust for two dollars a day down in the Sound. I work on slippery logs under which is a current so swift and treacherous that a misstep would be absolutely fatal. But I was glad even to get that job for I was broke when I reached here and slept three nights sitting up in a chair in a saloon. The police thought I was a worthless old bum, I guess, for every little while they would come along and rap me awake. Out of my two dollars, I am saving a little, though, and I have a promise of a better job. If I get that I will soon be able to send for the wife and little ones," and as he left me the thought touched his face with gladness. It was a rainy day, the Puget Sound country being filled with rain and cloud during the winter months. I walked up to the City Hall, the Associated Charities, the Free Labor Bureau and City Jail, which are all near together. I counted twenty-five men standing out in the rain waiting for work. They were a pitiable lot. Stepping inside, I discovered why they were forced to remain in the storm. The office space for applying for work was about large enough to accommodate six men comfortably, and there, also, was a very noticeable sign which read, "No Loafing in Here." Tacoma offered no privileges for the destitute out-of-work man. Here he will find no free bath but the Sound, no free bed but a chair in an all-night saloon or the jail, no free meal without begging or snatching from the free lunch counter. I counted just one hundred men sitting up all night in chairs in the various saloons of the city, and once more I appeal to Tacoma, and to every other city, not to take the saloon from the needy until it can give something in its place. What a conflict of opinions troop in at the suggestion of the word saloon! The saloon is a livid, malignant tumor, a virulent festering ulcer discharging corruption, abhorrent, odious. It breathes disease from neglected cheap lodgings, bull-pens and prisons. It is a destroyer of the City, State and Country; a murderer of reputation, character and society, a slayer of faith, love, hope and belief in God. Yet I have found it (who can deny it?) a Christian institution, saving the lives of men. It is doing what the church does not, or will not do. It stands a haven to the man who is desperate. It offers shelter and food to the homeless and destitute without demanding that he become a mendicant. It is true it may be only a chair, but it is under a roof and provides him shelter from the night. The food may be snatched from a fly-infested free lunch, but whether he drinks or not there are no questions asked. To all cities I want to say, "keep your saloons until you have something else to take their place." While I was making my investigations in Tacoma, I stepped into the Penal Mission. There was quite a large company praising God and testifying what God had done for them. After seeing what I had seen, and knowing what I knew, I could not refrain from telling them that I thought since God had done so much for them they surely ought to begin to do something for God. So I began by telling them a little of the suffering as it had been revealed to me in Seattle and Tacoma. I was abruptly interrupted by the leader who asked me if I were a Christian, and gave me to understand that this was a testimony meeting. That was just what I thought I was doing--testifying for Christ--and though I was remonstrated with by several men, semi-believers, for leaving, I silently stole away. While in Tacoma I met Archdeacon Grimes, an old, tried and true friend. He introduced me to the Tacoma Woman's Club, which I found to be one of the most active Women's Clubs in this country. The labor councils also were deeply interested. Tacoma may have been thoughtless, perhaps in the past, but Tacoma is so no longer. The city has awakened to her needs and is going to see that these needs are filled. CHAPTER XVII IN SEATTLE "_There are no bad herbs or bad men; there are only bad cultivators_" --HUGO. I shall never forget my first visit to Seattle several years ago. I came from Tacoma by boat. As we rounded the point in the bay the magic city burst into view. It seemed like the work of genii, this mighty commercial gateway to the land of the Alaskan,--a wonderful, beautiful city, solidly, grandly built and in so short a time. It is a miracle of American industry and enterprise. Its citizens have force and power and determined character. Yet here in this beautiful spot, I found, as in other cities, the starving, homeless, and destitute. "Will you give me enough to get something to eat?" asked an eighteen-year-old young man as he stopped me on one of the principal, prosperous streets of Seattle. He was such an object of pity that I hesitated and regarded him closely before I replied. So soiled and wretched was he that I stood apart lest he might touch me. Not alone did his clothing speak of his misery, but his face seemed burned with sin and neglect. "Go to the Charity Society," I said. "Will they help me?" he eagerly asked. I looked at a clock nearby and saw that it was then fifteen minutes after five. "It will be useless for you to go there now as they close at five, but," I said, "although I'm about broke, too, I will buy you a beer." His lip trembled and tears actually filled his eyes as he said, "I can find a lot of fellows who will buy me a beer, but I can't find anyone who will buy me something to eat." The next day I looked for work and to see what privileges were accorded for the out-of-work, destitute man in Seattle. First, after a jungle hunt, I found the Charity Society. After waiting a half-hour far up in a very high building in a dark room with a lot of rubbish, I was seen and put through a humiliating lot of questions. I was not asked if I were sick, or hungry, or whether I had comfortable clothing or needed medicine. I was asked if I were a church member, if I supported my wife, and many other such questions. Then I was offered a ticket for two twenty-cent meals at a restaurant and a bed at a Mission Lodging House. I took the names and addresses of these places and making some trivial excuse for not taking the tickets (although I could have given hundreds of them away that night) I left. I found the restaurant in a slum, and while I stood in its doorway I counted eight saloons. The lodging house I found in the heart of the worst tenderloin ever created. The sleeping quarters were in a basement. Its immediate surroundings were Chinese and Japanese who come to this country bringing all of their own vices and who then promptly adopt all of ours. Three doors from the entrance to the lodgings is a brothel of the lowest character. It harbors seventy-five scarlet women of the worst type, and it is only one of the many near at hand. These places, which, with all the other corrupting influences for sin, make up Seattle's worst hell, cannot be described. Yet it is here that the heads of the greatest of all the virtues send their homeless to rest. I rejoiced to understand that Seattle abolished this frightful tenderloin at the end of the administration which was in control of the city at the time of my visit. While loafing late in the evening in one of the big beer joints, a strong, healthy fellow with whom I had been talking (and in our talk we discovered we were both broke) said, "If I had thought for one moment I would not have been at work by this time, I would not have sent so much of my money home." Then he continued, "Where are you going to sleep to-night?" With a quick thought, I replied, "Oh, I am fixed for something to-night. I have two places and you can surely have one of them if you want it. One is at the Salvation Army. I was up there not long ago and the attendant told me they couldn't think of giving me supper, bath and breakfast, but if I would come and help him clean up between eleven and twelve o'clock at night he would give me a place to lie down, and you may have it. Do you want it?" "You bet I do," he answered. Then I said, "It is nearly eleven o'clock now. Let us go there." As we approached the place I said, "I'll not go in and you will stand a better show." He went in with an uncertain manner. He was not used to begging. Presently he returned and said, "I don't see anyone." "He is back in there somewhere," I said, "hunt him up." Trying again, I saw him come out with a broom. Looking through the window he saw me, smiled and shook his hand as he began sweeping. He had got his job and covering. The next day I met two brothers, one of whom was pale and trembling and staggered as he walked. I said to the elder boy (for they were only boys), "What is the matter with the kid?" "Sick. They let him stay in the hospital until he could walk. I guess he is still sick." These boys, one a tradesman and the other out of work, had no home, no money, were obliged to beg, and were sleeping under the most horrible conditions. I think that if the search light could be thrown on every man destitute of a home, and into the places he is forced by circumstances to seek rest in Seattle, the humanitarians and the people of that city who really care would walk their streets and know no peace until a remedy had been found. As I looked up the street I saw a large stone building and asked a citizen where the city jail was. He pointed to the great stone building and said, "That is the City Hall. On the top floor is the City Jail." I remarked, "That is wonderful. That is the first jail I have ever found located as that one seems to be. It must be very bright and light and sanitary, compared to most of the prisons, which are under or almost under the ground." "Yes," he replied, "it is, but it makes me shudder when I think of the awful den we had for years before that was built." I then strolled up and paid a visit of inspection to the jail. Reluctantly I was given an order by the police captain, directing the turnkey to grant me the privilege of looking about. The place impressed me with its cleanliness, its light and its good ventilation. He showed me first its bull-pen, one huge cell of concrete and steel, absolutely bare, where the inmates could only stand, lie down, or sit down on its concrete floor, and I remarked, "You must have as many as twenty-five in there at a time." "Yes, seventy-five," he replied, and I saw again before me the vision (though it was midday), of the midnight scene of that midnight hell. Then I asked, "Where is the lodgers' cell?" He looked at me a little quizzically for a moment, and then showed me another cell about half as large as the bull-pen. "This is it," he said. It contained, as I remember, six young men or boys, I judged in their teens, and at that time of day I could not understand why they should be locked in there if they were only lodgers. So I said, "Lodgers are often forced into the bull-pen, too, are they not?" and he said, "Yes." This lodgers' cell, as he called it, was also absolutely bare, a stone floor the only rest for the man who must work or look for work on the morrow. But there was the Associated Charities, and if the three hundred shelterless in Seattle could have found it between nine and five o'clock, they would have been given a bed no doubt. At least a bed was offered me there. Then my turnkey tapped slightly on a solid steel door of a solid steel cell. The only possible means for the ingress and egress of air to this dungeon was a small opening about half as large as an envelope. If I am not mistaken there was a slide door on that opening which could be closed, too, a device which is on all other similar torture chambers I have seen. He lightly tapped on the door, in a subdued way, with an expression as though he ought not to speak but must, and with an assumed, non-consequential smile, he said scarcely above a whisper, "There is a man in there." "What is he in there for?" I asked. "They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows." Then he pointed to another one and said, "There is a man in that one also." "And what is he in there for?" "I don't know." "How long are they kept in there?" "Ten days, sometimes." I knew the rest. The people of Seattle know the rest, or if they do not, they can learn it from the other stories of this book. There may be laws governing these torture hells and other prison abuses, but any government that allows them to exist is a government that will ignore the existence of these laws. I found in Seattle, also, six boys held for the Juvenile Court, locked in a cell in the county jail. I thought of Denver and her beautiful Detention Home for such as these. Sunday evening came. I had heard frequently of a certain clergyman since coming to Seattle, and believing a change of thought and scene would rest my tired heart and brain, I climbed the hill. I passed one Romanist Church on the very crown of the hill so large and elaborate that I fancied it must have cost a million. At last I reached the object of my search. This church, too, looked down on Seattle's best and worst. I entered. It was a large church. I think perhaps three thousand people were in attendance. The minister, in surplice, was giving out his notices. One was that the Prison Association wanted more clothing. (I afterward read that this same minister recommended more and harsher discipline in our jails, especially commending the whipping-post.) As the service continued, however, I found that I could not intelligently receive a word. Between the sentences I could plainly hear: "They are trying to make him tell something they think he knows!" CHAPTER XVIII SPOKANE "_Justifiæ partes sunt non violare homines; verecundiæ non offendere._"--CICERO. "_Justice consists in doing no injury to men,--decency in giving them no offence._" "He passed the prison. At the door hung an iron chain attached to a bell. He rang. The door opened. 'Turnkey,' he said, politely removing his cap, 'will you have the kindness to admit me and give me lodging for the night?' A voice replied, 'The prison is not an inn. Get yourself arrested and you will be admitted.'" These words were spoken to Jean Val Jean at the prison door in the village of D---- in France, in 1815. All who have read the Victor Hugo masterpiece know the wonderful story. In April, 1910, nearly one hundred years afterward, in the city of Spokane, I stepped up to a police officer whom I met on the streets and asked where I could get a free bed, having no money, nor friends, nor home in the city. He answered, "You can't find anything like a free bed in this town." Then I asked if I could sleep in the city jail. He replied, "No, you cannot. We have received instructions to send no one to the jail." Then he added, "Get yourself run in and you can lodge there." Here was a condition of things I had met with nowhere else. Even the shelter of the prison was denied a penniless wayfarer. Nothing daunted, I resolved to try to the fullest what Spokane might offer one like me. I was told that one of the missions had a lodging house. They perhaps would take me in for charity. I determined to try. I met a man on the street and asked him where it was. He said he believed they once had such an institution. He thought it was closed, but he was uncertain. "Ask a cop," he said. "You will find one on the next block." I went as directed and soon saw an officer of the Spokane police force. Stepping up to him, I asked for the mission lodging house. Instead of replying, he said, "What do you want to know for?" It was, or ought to have been, his duty to answer my simple civil question. What right had he to question what I wanted to know for? What business was it of his why I wanted to know? But he was of the Spokane police force and was endowed with authority. I replied, "I am without money and I am looking for a place to sleep. I thought perhaps they might give me a bed." I turned and started to leave him, but catching me roughly by the arm, he said, "Hold on here. Don't you leave me." I saw before me those horrible nights I had endured in other prisons, and my first impulse was to run. But I remembered the eighteen-year-old boy in Denver who was shot to death for running from a policeman. Then the Spokane officer said to me, "Who are you, anyway?" I answered, as I had in Pittsburg, "I am an honest working man." "And what do you do?" "I do anything I can to earn a living." He pulled me around and looked at my face on both sides, then said. "Let me see your hands." He regarded them closely, remarking, "They are pretty soft and white for a workingman's." "There are thousands of workingmen who have soft hands," I replied. "There are waiters, barbers, bookkeepers and clerks, and hundreds of positions which keep men's hands soft and white." "Yes, but your hands do not correspond with your clothes." "I wear gloves when I work. There are a great many of us fellows who do the hardest manual labor and wear blue jeans who wear gloves at our work. There is a lot of work that will lacerate the most hardy hands." His answer was, "Come with me. I am going to take you down anyway." We were not far from the jail. He did not ring up a big team of horses, a wagon and two or three men, or an automobile, to rush me to the jail as they do in other cities, although they do this in Spokane, also. We walked, and while we walked, he assured me twice that he would take the softness out of my hands by thirty days on the rock pile. He had absolutely and completely taken the law into his own hands before we ever reached the jail. This policeman knew what could and would be done to me, simply because I was apparently poor and helpless, and if their system in Spokane was as it is in other cities, I could be so nicely used for graft. Fathers and mothers throughout America, what if it had been _your_ boy in Spokane that night, without money and without a home? Think of the awful result! Put him in my place--about to receive the first stigma of a jail, to be thrust for thirty days among hardened criminals, made such by this same social system, to receive wanton insults and abuse, his health probably ruined for life,--possibly murdered! A man was dying at that very time in the city of Spokane, from abuse in that same city jail. Spokane began, from the first moment of my arrest, legally to plunder me, soul and body. As I walked, I tried to incorporate into my being, the suffering and the feelings of such a man or boy. They would not have accepted his statements as to his identity, no matter how hard he tried, as I knew they would be obliged to receive mine, and there would have begun the destruction of another American citizen. On reaching the jail the officer stopped me in a dark entrance. Pulling out his search-light he threw it over me, at the same time feeling me all over. Why he did this I could not understand, unless he may have thought I had a bomb to drop when I reached the Captain's office. Intending only to make a quiet investigation of Spokane, I did not leave my credentials at my hotel but had them in an inner pocket of my vest. These included several letters recently received from prominent and well-known people of the Coast. My proof was sufficient and I was promptly released. They seemed to be surprised that I was sober, and said, "Brown, how can you associate with these men and not drink?" "That is not necessary," I replied. "There are thousands of homeless, starving men in our nation to-day who never drink." While I was telling my story to the force, a reporter for the leading paper of the city came in, and that paper the next morning carried a story which stirred the town. As a result Spokane is going to have its Free Municipal Emergency Home. It is true that I found a desperate condition of things in Spokane for the man without the dime. But Spokane is no longer a country town, hid in the pine woods of Washington. She is a city--a city of stupendous natural resources, a city of a great awakening. She has begun a wonderful physical adornment and is combining with it those benevolent adornments to conserve her citizens. Spokane believes in the abolition of all influences that destroy. She is a force in the world to-day. CHAPTER XIX MINNEAPOLIS "_I never wear hand-made laces because they remind me of the eyes made blind in the weaving._"--MARIE CORELLI. The morning of April 19, 1910, found me in Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis, resting on the green moss below the "laughing waters" of Minnehaha Falls. This wonderful spot of nature took possession of my imagination until I was in one of God's factories, where a thousand creations were coming into life and beauty. The sparkling translucent falls, touched with a silver light, became a marvelous lace-weaving loom. I caught, white and shining, the actual resemblance to the hand-made Irish, the Duchess and Rose-point. Over all this great workshop of the Diety was joy, peace and happiness. For the first time real lace to me was beautiful, for it was of God's creation. The vision of eyes made sightless, the stooped shoulders of the aged, the little, starving children overworked for the mere pittance to exist, these were not in the weaving. To the thoughtful, any adornment, the price of which is paid by the blood of human lives, is no longer beautiful. Here I saw that every bird and bee, all insect life, even the smallest and most abject about me, either were building or had built homes. I then remembered my mission to Minneapolis. "Surely," I said to myself, "with this temple of worship to which the good folks of Minneapolis may come, thoughtlessness and selfishness will not be found here." Yet I wondered if I should find it. I had come to continue my battle for my homeless brothers. The approach of late afternoon and night found me wandering about the streets a jobless, moneyless man looking for work and shelter. I found Minneapolis not in advance of other cities, and much behind many in its care for its homeless toilers. I first went to a private employment office. There seemed plenty of work to do, work for everybody, but I could find no private office where they would give me work and trust me until pay day. I visited the city free employment bureau where I counted fifty men looking for work. There were chairs for fourteen. The rest seemed quite willing to stand as long as their feet held out, in the hope of securing something. As I scanned their faces I thought a large percentage of them seemed of the type driven to such a condition by lack of opportunity to make an honest living. Later I learned that many of these men came day after day, hungry and cold, after having spent the night huddled up somewhere in the open air. Next I became a beggar. I began looking for a public institution which would give me a bed, since I was unable to pay for one. I first tried the Associated Charities. The attendant took me into a little side room where as in other places, all sorts of rubbish was stored, and asked me the usual list of humiliating questions. Finally he told me they could do nothing for me, as it was too near their closing time. Doubtless this institution does many worthy things, but providing shelter for the homeless man without money is not among them. Directed by the attendant at the Associated Charities (who at least had gotten rid of me), I went to the Union City Mission. The attendant here, after making me repeat my questions regarding the possibility of a penniless man getting a supper and bed, turned on his heel without answering me and began to turn on the lights--for evening prayers! At the Salvation Army lodging house the attendant simply said: "We ain't got nothin' to give away." At the Y. M. C. A., "the beds were all full." The attendant _didn't know_ whether or not he could allow me to take a bath,--simply a polite refusal. Next I appealed to the police. Asking the first officer I met where a man without money could get a bath, I was directed to the river. He then recalled the advice however, saying it was too early in the season for the public baths to be open. Another policeman referred me to the old city lockup (Central Station) for lodging, saying, "Go there. They will give you a cell." I did not go to the extreme of enduring the hardships forced upon the indigent, honest workers of Minneapolis. It was not necessary. I knew the pitiful condition only too well. * * * * * Just as I finish this story there is laid on my study table a letter, which reads: "In the latter part of the year 1910 the Board, realizing the necessity of providing some lodging place for the transient class unable to pay for accommodations, decided to install a Municipal Emergency Home on the second floor of the old city lockup (Central Station). The work of installing this home was accomplished at an expense of $3,426.28. It was opened on the tenth of January, 1911, prepared to accommodate fifty applicants. The first three months of its operation demonstrated the fact that in order to care for all demands it would be necessary to increase the space. "We have now a Municipal Emergency Home that will accommodate a hundred and forty. The house is just as sanitary as it is possible to make an emergency home. It has all modern improvements, separate beds, baths, medical attendance, and fumigation. Lodgers are furnished with clean night-robes and socks and given a good wholesome breakfast. Of course this is entirely free. If a man has money we turn him away. The home is supported by public taxation." CHAPTER XX IN THE GREAT CITY OF NEW YORK "_The day-laborer is reckoned as standing at the foot of the social scale. Yet he is saturated with the laws of the world._" --EMERSON. When my investigations on the Pacific coast were over I felt that the strenuous part of my work,--that is the work of coming down to the personal level of destitute men,--was over. But from the South came such an appeal that I was prompted to continue my study at first hand for another year. So late in the summer of 1910, I found myself, a penniless man again, drifting along the docks on the west side of New York, seeking work as a longshoreman. I was unsuccessful until about 10 A. M. Then a flag was run up at pier forty-three indicating that a fruit ship from the south was docked. Just then a young man hurrying along asked, as he passed me, "Are you looking for work?" I answered in the affirmative. "Hurry along then and we will get in on the job." Running breathlessly we reached the dock. There were two hundred ahead of us. After an hour of jostling, pushing, crowding and clashing with upraised hands we succeeded in getting near enough to the distributor to arrest his attention long enough to receive a work-check which entitled us to work at the wage scale of twenty-five cents an hour. I noticed among the workers as we continually passed and re-passed one another, a pale, slim young man. He had a hectic flush on his cheeks and wore colored eye-glasses. The work was extremely laborious, so much so that, after working approximately an hour and being unaccustomed to such work, I began to tremble and to have frequent sensations of dizziness. I realized that I must desist, so cashed in, receiving twenty-five cents for my work. Just ahead of me, cashing in also, was the pale young man, whose whole frame seemed to shake involuntarily, while the flush on his cheeks had turned purple. It was evident that he also had no strength left to continue the work. As we left the pier and strolled down West Street to Battery Park, he told me his story: "I need money bad, but I couldn't do that work. I am a Swiss, a watchmaker by trade, but because of my failing eyesight a specialist declared I must absolutely change my occupation or go blind. What can I do? I am fitted for nothing but my trade. While struggling for a comfortable existence for myself and young wife my health failed. I feel that the only hope of regaining it is an absolute change of climate. I have a friend in Texas who writes me of the opportunity offered to the truck gardener there, but it takes money to go and it takes money to establish yourself when you reach there. You see I have no money. I believe, even here in New York State, if I could have an out-door, country life, I would speedily get well. I am living with my sister in Brooklyn. She is poor, also, but it is a home. I suppose I might start out and work for enough to eat on my way, and steal my passage to some health-giving climate. I may eventually be forced to do this. But even if the railroads had not created State laws making it a criminal offense in all States to travel that way, I could not go now." [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Male Dormitory_] [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Female Dormitory_] He showed me a letter from the Johnsbury State Sanitarium for the Insane he had received that morning, stating that his wife was no better. She was laboring under an hallucination, demanding continually that mass be said for her. Her little babe was expected in about a week, and it was expected of him as soon as possible to send clothing for it. I sat and pondered for awhile, looking far out to the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. Passing time had pierced it full of holes, letting the daylight through. I left the young man, and a little later was strolling around the docks on the East Side. Finally I came to Wall Street. Here at the entrance of this street I came upon the quartermaster's department of the United States Army. Over the door was the Coat of Arms,--the Eagle for Uncle Sam, the Sword for Defense, the Key for Security. Walking about half the length of Wall Street, I came to the great sub-treasury of the United States, and directly across the street, almost in hand-shaking distance, the powerful banking concern of J. Pierpont Morgan & Co. Going on, I came to the other end of this world-renowned street where stands Old Trinity. I was weary beyond words to express. So I sat down on the steps to rest. Presently, high up in its tower, the chimes began to ring. A little later, from within the church rang out an old familiar hymn, one stanza of which seemed peculiarly appropriate. "What num'rous crimes increasing rise Through this apostate isle! What land so favored of the skies, And yet, what land so vile!" "Good heavens!" I said to myself, "what ails that old bell ringer? Is he stone deaf or gone mad? Is there not someone to arrest him?" I knew how useless it would be to try to find that someone, for those with the will to do so were in Europe, or in Newport, or up the Hudson, or in the Adirondacks. As I took my weary way up Broadway, I heard in every step on the pavement the familiar melody, familiar words:-- "What land so favored of the skies, And yet, what land so vile!" Leaving Broadway I turned into a large "scoop joint" (saloon). In the corner where the free lunch was served a large brindle bull-dog was chained near a big stack of bread. I realized that I was on the Bowery. A little further up the street, just as I was passing a door-way, a man with a bundle came rolling down the stairs. From the sound of a voice above I knew he had been forcefully thrown out. He was about fifty years of age, almost helpless from the effects of alcohol or some other poison. Only slightly bruised, he regained his feet, but was hopelessly unable to gather his effects. His bundle had burst open and the contents were scattered about promiscuously. His helpless condition attracted the attention of the many passers-by and a group soon gathered to watch his futile efforts to regain his lost possessions. It was a sight too sad to be amusing. Suddenly a workingman stepped forward, gathered the belongings together, and fastened them securely. In the dull dazed face of the abandoned man there was a look of deepest gratitude. As his new friend had gathered up his belongings a small book with an inscription in gold letters fell from among them. As he held up the book I, too, could read the title: _The New Testament_. That poor unfortunate impressed me as being as great as the greatest man that ever lived, _for he had tried_. Through this great human funnel, the Bowery (and it is not the only one in New York through which pours the sin, the shame, the disease and the disgrace of this great city), I wandered on. Seeing a crowd gathered on the pavement in one place, I stopped and saw lying prone upon her face, a wretched creature whose skirt had fallen from her body. She lay there nude, defenseless, uncovered to the view of the morbid throng. The unfortunate, though helpless, was conscious of her shame, and was making futile efforts to hide her disgrace. Just then there happened along a good Samaritan, who, stepping through the crowd, took from his shoulders a blue cotton jumper and covered this wreck of womanhood. Turning to the gaping bystanders, he angrily heaped upon them so scathing a rebuke that with flushed faces and hanging heads they stole away. He asked of some women who stood near by if they would shield the woman until the arrival of an ambulance. One of them kindly consented to do so. I turned away sick at heart for I knew the pathetic finish, that the only open door New York held for this unfortunate one was a prison door. As I went along, I saw again Old Trinity with its stained glass windows, its old burying ground, worth millions, where the dead have rested for two hundred years, and I thought: "After all, it was the Bowery that revealed to me to-day '_the golden rule of Christ_,' which alone can bring '_the golden rule of man_.'" With the vanishing of the sunshine and shadows which all day long had been playing in and about Union Square--whose bits of green lawn, sparkling fountains, and many settees welcome the weary and heavy laden, for a little time at least, and invite rest,--came the myriad lights of the great city which follow the active day of toil and care. At evening I found myself resting there. I had taken a seat beside a white-haired, soft-spoken, slightly-bent man, clothed in a discolored suit, badly worn shoes and tattered hat,--a man who seemingly had received all the blows and hardships our tough old world can give. Indifferently I drew him casually into conversation. The information I gained was taken out of the crucible of a pathetic life, and it revealed a story which may be summed up in a few words: Youth, hope, health, success, love, happiness, reverses, crosses, trials, temptations, error, ruin, impaired health, old age, discouragement,--no, not entirely. He still had left a spark of courage. _He still believed in himself._ He spoke of the detriment of his physical weakness, caused by a State institution (I knew it was a prison) into which he was forced; of the prejudice against the man a little beyond middle life who was looking for work; of the past that stood as a barrier between him and an ability to re-establish himself in society. Yet he hopefully added, "I have a job now at seven dollars a week and my board. I shall be able to get the decent clothes so essential in finding better work, with better pay." When he realized that I was apparently in a worse position than himself, for I seemed both workless and penniless, we talked of our mutual vicissitudes. He referred me to the Municipal Lodging House of New York, declaring he had found it both a refuge and a salvation at a time when it almost seemed to him that life meant utter abandonment, even to self-destruction. I did not go to that beautiful home that night, but I stood instead in the "Bread Line" on the northwest corner of Broadway and Twelfth Street. It was ten o'clock, and although the bread was not to be given out to the starving poor of the city until midnight, a crowd had already begun to collect in front of Old Grace Church, the wealth of which is said to be almost fabulous. Extending up this street, long before the hour of distribution began, was a line in which I counted five hundred men. There were no women among them. There was no jest or laughter. They seemed as mute as "dumb driven cattle." Just at midnight, after the line had been standing several hours, two men appeared with the bread. There was a sudden rush across the street to be the first in line. A police rule seemed to be in force to the effect that no one was allowed to stand on that side of the street until the hour arrived for giving the bread away. After this long wait, my share of this left-over bread was a piece weighing just four ounces. When I remembered that during the throes of that long and bitter winter this one bread line (New York has several) grew from five hundred to two thousand men, the blazing cross which I could see from the high church tower became "the handwriting on the wall." Should you ask me why these men do not seek shelter in New York's Municipal Home, I could tell you in a few words. Notwithstanding the generous and hospitable character of the institution, it is usually crowded to overflowing. * * * * * While studying the character and the aspirations of the honest unemployed in all parts of the country, I found in most of them the desire, the longing for country life. Even the hardened frequenter of saloons and other vicious places seemed anxious to change his environment. They all recognized this to be of great benefit in starting life anew, and in trying to become useful members of society. I found many had gone to the country. Many more desired to go up the Hudson River to work on the farms, in the fruit orchards and the open fields. I determined to follow them and see what it all meant. So the following day found me again one of that army to whom society is inclined, in fact is fond of referring to, as "men who won't work,"--seeking an existence. I met a great many who, like myself, were looking for work. But, unlike me (for I had money) some were starving, some were ill. Many were crippled from much walking, several showed me blisters on their ankles and feet as large as a twenty-five cent piece. I found work for one of my English tongue exceedingly difficult to obtain. At Tarrytown, I asked for work at an enormous estate with a national reputation. At this time they were employing three hundred men, all Italians. There was no work for me. They had all the help they needed. When I asked for the privilege of working for my dinner, the foreman looked austerely at me and answered, indirectly, "You understand if you did work here you would receive your pay but once a month." "What is the pay?" I asked. "A dollar and seventy-five cents a day, and you board yourself." Those Italian workmen were walking several miles a day to and from work for that wage. I heard among them numerous complaints. I wondered why. In the land of the Comorra, on the drive from Sorrento to Pompeii, I had seen these same men in harness, hitched to wagons, hauling loads of stone like beasts of burden. [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Fumigating Chambers--Loading up_] [Illustration: _Municipal Lodging House, New York City Fumigating Chambers--Sealed up_] Someone told me if I wanted farm work I must travel further back in the country, which I did. I was not successful in finding it until the morning of the second day. Just over a stone wall I saw five men at work picking cucumbers for pickles. A little way off stood a very large, beautiful farm house. I was right when I drew the conclusion that the owner was a wealthy old farmer. He was holding his farm at a fabulous sum, believing he would receive it from a certain land owner who would eventually buy at any price. Leaping the wall I confronted the farmer, who needed me exceedingly at one dollar a day and board,--I supposed for not more than ten hours' work, but asked no questions. I soon discovered that beside the old man, my field companions were the old man's son and their hired men. No one spoke. Noiselessly and silently we worked, carrying the pickles in baskets on our shoulders, as fast as we gathered them, into a shed, where we emptied them into barrels. It rained at intervals all day, but that made no difference. We worked on. The mud and wet ground soaked our shoes. The rough basket, in constant contact with my shoulder, wore a hole through my jumper, which was a serious consideration when I reflected on my day's pay. At noon we were called to dinner. After standing what seemed an interminable time to a hungry man who for half a day had picked cucumbers out on the wet ground, beneath dripping trees, we were allowed to go in to dinner. In a rough outer room there was portioned out to each of the four hired men a bowl of tea, a tin plate containing vegetables and a small piece of meat. We were fed, about as the dog was fed, except that we sat at a table. Not one of my three fellow-workers had yet spoken to me. Turning to the one on my right I smiled and made some off-hand remark about the tough meat, which just at that moment he seemed to be struggling with. He smiled back but made no reply. I looked across the table at the slim, black eyed, busy fellow opposite me and made some non-consequential remark. He grinned with a little more accent than my right hand man. I then spoke to the man on my left, who was an old man of three score years and ten. He had his face very close to his plate and did not raise his head. I then discovered that one of the men was a Hun, the other a Pole. Neither could speak or understand my language, and the old man, a Dutchman, was stone deaf. This was about the most convivial dinner party I had ever attended. The afternoon was about as jovial as the dinner, and was augmented by more showers and a big lot of pickles. Did you ever pick pickles? If not, don't do it, at least not for one dollar a day, unless you must. How your back aches from continual stooping! Your fingers, black, bruised, and sore from the tiny, prickly cucumber points, drive a fellow to saying things he would not dare to say before his dad. At four o'clock the farmer left, to haul the pickles to the pickle factory. At five o'clock the Dutchman and the Pole went in to milk. These men were working by the month, each receiving fifteen dollars a month. On this farm many cows were milked. At six o'clock the son quit, which made little difference, as he spent most of his time in the shed. As he was leaving I said, "Is it time to quit?" He answered decidedly, "No, I'll tell you when to quit." And so the Austrian and I worked on. The son had mounted his motorcycle and flashed by us like a spark from a trolley. The Hun followed him with an intense look which seemed to say: "When I get my American farm I, too, shall have one." It was getting dark, and still no call to stop work. If I had known only two words of Slavic it would have been a relief. But I did not. So I did the next best thing. I expressed my feelings by throwing my basket as far as I could send it across the field and started toward the house. The Hun looked amazed. As I drew near, far up in the house somewhere, to the accompaniment of a tinkling piano, one of the old farmer's daughters was singing in a voice absolutely devoid of tune, "I want to go to Heaven right away." I hoped she would. Just then the son rode up on his spinning wheel and asked, "What did you quit for?" I replied, "I came up for a lantern." He then called the Hun. Our _carte du jour_ for supper was a duplicate of the dinner, only it was stone cold. We plebs slept in an oppressive attic room. We were called at three A. M. to get up and go to milking. Not being a regular man, I supposed I was not included in the call, although I noticed the Hun responded. After my fellow-workers left I turned over for a much-needed, final rest, but just as I was dozing into sleep I heard the old farmer puffing up the stairs. "Hey, you fellow," he called, "get up there and get out and help those fellers milk." "All right," I responded. I did get up and out, but it was to the woodshed where my bundle lay, and while I was putting it together the old man passed hurriedly by the window again, headed for the garret stairs with the look of Cain on his face, to see why I still lingered. I heard the heavy tread on the stairs, as I was passing out across the lawn toward the nearest town. Yes, there was one dollar due me, but I sent word back to one of these, my proletaire brothers, that he could have it, and I suggested that it might be well spent toward buying a talking machine to be used while they dined at that bountiful, hilarious table, at the pickle farm. CHAPTER XXI NEW YORK STATE--THE OPEN FIELDS "_Every man has something to sell if it is only his arms, and so has that property to dispose of._"--EMERSON. Pickle picking had not proved profitable. Continuing my search I found that factory work was out of the question. At all the factories where I had applied the reply had been, invariably, "We have a hundred applicants for every vacancy." In one, it is true, I might have had work had I been a skillful hatter. But I wasn't. So I resolved to follow out my original intention of trying the fruit farms which lay on the west side of the river, beginning at Balmville, some thirty miles up the stream. With this in view I crossed the Hudson. The coming of the night found me in densely-wooded, deeply-shaded intra-mural roadways, extending for miles, to which clung clambering vines bearing clusters of tiny fragrant flowers, and red, black and yellow berries. Here and there were intersecting drive-ways, the entrances to which were guarded by huge stone columns supporting massive gates, over which the summer had already begun to weave garlands of honeysuckle and eglantine. I could see at times, far through the foliage, the shining light of the palaces. I could hear merry laughter and the sweet song of a singer with a wonderful voice singing a wonderful song. It was nearing midnight. I was growing very hungry and weary. I saw a light in the distance, near the road at the foot of a long hill. It was an inn. The light was in the bar-room. I entered. Two occupants, Italians (one behind the bar), were quietly conversing. Entering I asked the man behind the bar if he could give me supper and a bed, adding, "I have money." He looked at me curiously. I did not wonder at it for I was travel-worn. The bundle and stick I carried were covered with the dust of the highway. In reply to my inquiry he answered, "I have no bed." Turning to his companion he said (in Italian), "He looks as though he had come a long way. I think he is from a prison. Let him sleep by the road. He will not suffer." I looked straight at the man, saying, "I may be all that you say, but I am honest." Slightly nonplussed he looked at me and grinned, saying, "Ah, you speak Italian!" "I spent one winter on the blue bay of Naples," I answered, "and understand a little." I had struck a sympathetic chord. He assured me that he told me the truth when he said he had no bed to give, but he invited me to a good supper. Greatly refreshed and not caring to sleep by the roadside, I continued my journey. I decided that I could reach West Point by daylight. After I had traveled some distance, intuitively I became possessed of a feeling of depression. I felt that I was in a realm which demanded caution. A gargoyle on the roadside, until I saw what it really was, startled me nearly out of my senses. I heard the mournful baying of hounds in the distance. I was conscious of climbing a mountain. The wayside had become open, barren of trees,--its features mostly brush and rocks. I frequently passed large signs which I could not read from the center of the road, but becoming curious, I approached one of them and read: "The property of Sing Sing Prison of the State of New York. All trespassers are liable to be shot." I was on Bear Mountain. Fearful of the probability of being near to some headquarters, and that this warning might be carried out, I turned and went down in the deep woods below, where I rested for the remainder of the night. As I turned back I saw far below me on the silver river a night boat throwing a powerful search light on the dark shores of the stream. When it was dawn I walked on. I could not but compare the humane expression of Bear Mountain, and the State of New York, to that little republic of Switzerland, whose labor colonies cannot be differentiated from the surrounding rural country. The traveler who enters or passes that way sees no mark of his erring brethren, no sign to tell the traveler he may be shot! It was Sunday morning when I reached Newburgh, a city of thirty thousand people. I strolled up the hill to the low-roofed house where Washington and his wife lived from April 4, 1782, to August 18, 1783. It is now used as a museum for Washington relics. "This," I thought, "is no doubt of exceeding interest, and educational. I will go in." But being the Sabbath day, it was closed. I had not heard from home or friends for a long time. I was getting hungry and had spent all of my money, but I knew there were letters and relief at the Post Office, so I made my way there. Being Sunday the Post Office was also closed. I did not wish to while away the time in a close, oppressive, ill-smelling back room of a saloon, or sit in the shadow somewhere on the street, even if the police did not interfere, but having a desire to read a good book, I hunted up the Public Library. That, too, was closed. In fact the only things I found open on this Lord's Day in Newburgh were the streets, the saloons, the churches and the jail. During the week or ten days I was in the vicinity of Newburgh I read in the daily papers the story of three starving men who had been picked up by the police. Two I particularly recall. One was found unconscious on the car tracks on which he had thrown himself, soaked to the skin, in a cold, terrific rain storm. The other was found eating swill from a garbage can in an alley. Both were thought to be _mentally unsound_. That is always the police report when these examples insult the intelligence of a city. Perhaps they were mentally unsound. Why not? Nothing will dethrone reason more quickly than starvation and neglect. _They were berry pickers_, the paper said. The church bells were ringing. I looked down at my soiled appearance and thought, "If I only had an opportunity to renovate, to regenerate, I could attend divine services." But there was no available place for the poor, the moneyless man or woman of Newburgh, to bathe but the river. I looked in my bundle and found a piece of washing soap. I would first wash my blue shirt, and while I bathed it could be drying in the sun. So I went to the river where many of Newburgh's destitute and needy were already bathing, but the sewerage had so contaminated the water as to make it repulsive, and I felt that to bathe in there "the last man would be worse than the first." Then I tried to overcome my prejudice against going to church just as I was. I could slip into a dark corner and scarcely be noticed. Being penniless I would of course be humiliated when the contribution plate was passed. I would, perhaps, be regarded as a dead-beat, but what of that? It would only be a moment. Finally I decided to go. I walked to one of Newburgh's large churches, up a cool and shady street. I was early. The silence of the lofty edifice, with costly, beautiful, memorial windows to those who had gone to their rest, gave me food for thought long before the service began. It was a strange coincidence that the scriptural reading included the following words: "For I was hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me." The text was, "_Go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor._" I sat through the service undisturbed. After a few days of rest I started out again to keep in touch with my unfortunate brothers from the highways and byways. I went in search of work to the berry fields. Work is supposed to be the ready collateral for self-preservation and maintenance, but during a two-mile walk I stopped at the door of many beautiful and comfortable homes and asked for the privilege of working for even a piece of bread and a cup of coffee. To see the owner or lady of the house, was out of the question. I only came in contact with the servants, and in every instance I was peremptorily denied. One or two said, "I would give you a little if I could, but I am not allowed to do so." The servant is the echo of the house. Finally, a little way in from the road, on a small beautiful lawn, I saw a sweet-faced, white-haired lady superintending a bright lad of sixteen who was making a flower bed. I entered and tried to make a polite salutation but it was something of a failure as my slouch hat had slipped down and stuck on my ear. However, I said: "I will work an hour for you for a piece of bread and a cup of coffee." The lady inquired with interest, "Would you work for an hour for a cup of coffee and a piece of bread? Well, if you will help this boy for an hour, I will give you a good breakfast." I readily assented. The task finished, and the breakfast as well, the lady assured me there was a great deal of garden and other work to be done there. If I would wait until the return of Mr. ----, which would be soon, he would probably give me work as long as I wished to remain. I had learned from the boy that the latter was a rich dominie of the neat little Episcopal chapel just at hand, which he owned, and that I was working at the rectory. He soon came. After a brief external examination he asked the question, "Why are you a hobo?" I replied in one word, "Circumstances." Apparently satisfied, he said, "What wages do you want?" I explained that I understood garden work, that I was a conscientious worker, and if I worked steadily ten long hours a day it ought to be worth one dollar a day and board. The gentleman thought not. He thought five dollars a week would be a square deal. The lady, near and interested, said that a man had come along the day before and offered to work for four dollars a week. Having discovered I was a few days in advance of the berry picking season, after a moment's reflection I told the gentleman I would try the garden work at his offer. One half of the garden, a very large one, was clean and growing. The other half was choked with weeds, and in a very troublesome condition. I exceedingly enjoyed my garden work. When I was hired (although the house contained, I should judge, at least fifteen rooms) I was told that there was no place in the house for me to sleep. I met this by saying that I could sleep any place, so I was given two comforters and left to seek my own bed, which I found on a pallet of hay over the stable. However, I was very comfortable except for feeling the need of a pillow. In wakeful moments during the silent night I could hear the beautiful Arabian horse, John, champing his fragrant hay, and I would sometimes call down, "Hello, John! How are you?" Several times he answered with a low whinny, as much as to say, "All right. How are you?" I dined with the cook and the work boy in the kitchen. We had all we could eat and it was good. No one worked on the Sabbath but the old cook. We all went to church except her. The dominie asked me to attend. I slipped in on a rear seat. The sermon was on the building of character. The good lady, seeing me, came back and offered me a hymn book. A pillow offered with the comforters would have held a greater meaning, but I am sure that the thoughtlessness of this kind lady was not intentional. I am sure I could have had the pillow if I had asked for it. During my short stay at the Rectory many destitute men came to the door and asked for food. I noticed they were never turned away if they were willing to work an hour for it, but I noticed, also, that the man was asked to perform his work before he was fed. The good dominie and I often exchanged thoughts. He had a pleasing way of making his help feel that they were his equals. He may not have realized it, but unconsciously he was building character in a much more effective way than if he had put it into words. I finally wished to leave. The dominie wanted me very much to remain. He said I was worth it, and he would give me the one dollar a day. The rains, I learned, were still delaying the fruit picking, so I decided to remain a while longer. When at last I left and was paid for my work, I said, "If I was worth at the rate of one dollar a day for these last few days, was I not worth the same for all my work?" "Oh, but that was not our bargain," he replied,--which, of course, was true. One day in one of our brief talks (which turned on the hungry man at the door), I said, "Doctor, from a business point of view, I think you make a mistake in asking a man to work before he is fed. A man with a full stomach can do twice as much work as one with an empty stomach." "But the man may not keep his part of the contract," he answered. "Then that is his disgrace and your misfortune. You have done your part. You have entertained the stranger in a humane way. By working him first is showing him your mistrust of him and that is demoralizing." I noticed after this little talk that the man who came to the door was always fed first. CHAPTER XXII THE LABORER THE FARMER'S GREATEST ASSET "_Letting down buckets into empty wells and growing old with drawing nothing up._"--COWPER. Leaving the Rectory I found myself on the highway, seeking a fortune as a berry picker. I heard rumors that men had actually made a stake at the work,--that is, enough money (by rigid economy) to exist in the destructive slums of a great city during the freezing winter months when there is no work to be had. The roads were lined with men and boys seeking work. The long drought had been exceedingly detrimental to the fruit. It was dwarfed and of inferior quality, which worked a hardship on the farmer as well as on the berry pickers. The farms and farm houses were exceptionally attractive, and seemed to abound with comforts. Many of them were homes of wealth and resembled country seats. The day was frightfully hot. There had been a terrific thunder storm the night before and I was obliged to seek shelter for the night with a number of others in a shed. It was a sleepless night for the rain came in and prevented us from even trying to rest on the bare ground. As I walked along the new State road, I came to an inviting shady spot by the roadside, near a deep hedge. Almost overcome by the heat and weary from lack of rest and sleep, I lay down with my bundle for a pillow and was just falling asleep when I was suddenly aroused by a voice commanding me to move on. Looking up I saw I was being accosted by a big six-foot bully. In reply to my question, "Why?" he answered, "It makes no difference why, move on." Looking the man unflinchingly in the eye, I said, "But it does make a difference why, and I will pretty quickly find out why a man, simply because he is poor and wants to rest on the side of the State road, is denied that privilege." The insolent swaggerer was nonplussed for the moment. I suppose he thought I was only a poor, starving berry picker or farm hand who, at his command, would cringingly creep on in the boiling sun, like a dog, to another shady spot. "Who are you?" he then asked. "I am a laborer looking for work," I replied, "but I am also an American. When I am insolently ordered to 'move on' on a public highway, I'll know the reason why if I have to go to Washington to find out. I know your actions have been tolerated in England and Europe for two thousand years. Since you ask me who I am, I am going to ask who you are." "I am foreman of this estate," he answered. "This is the country estate of a very rich ex-United States Congressman, and the State road line runs within six feet of the hedge." "Well, sir," I replied, "I humbly beg your pardon. It is a principle of mine never to ask or take something for nothing, unless it be to draw dividends on a few blocks of nine billion dollars of watered railroad stock. But say, if you would wall this little six-foot strip in, or put up a sign, 'No trespassing,' or 'Beware of the dog,' as others have done, neither your master nor yourself would have further cause to growl." As I wandered on I overtook an honest-looking man who said he was on his way to a farm near Marlborough where he had worked for several summers and had always pulled out with enough money to carry him, in a way, through the winter. It would have been much nearer for him to have walked the railroad track, he said, but he was told in Newburgh that if he did so he was liable to be arrested by the West Shore Railroad Company. They had arrested a hundred and thirty-eight wandering men at Kingston the day before and put them in jail, and so he thought it best to follow the country road. A little farther on, near some great elm trees, stood an old stone house. From the gilded signs and the many beer kegs in evidence, I saw at once it was another one of the roadside lamps of ruin. Many men seemed to have gathered in and about the place and without disturbance were resting beneath the trees. I joined them and just as I did so a farmer drove up in an automobile looking for help. Before he had spoken, I asked, "Do you want help?" "Well, I should say so," he answered. "The farmers are all clamoring for men, and are wondering where the temporary farm hands are this year." I suggested he might find a few of them in the Kingston jail. He said that because of the recent rains the fruit was ripening so rapidly that it was decaying on the vines for the need of being gathered. Considering that the earnings of the railroad company were augmented by the fruit shipments he granted that a little persuasive argument with the latter might be of help. But did I want work, and would I work for him? I certainly would. "What do you pay?" I asked. "A cent and a half a box for strawberries,--that is, if you will stay the season. If not, I will only pay one cent a box." The reason for this I found was that at the last gathering of a crop the fruit is light and the pickers cannot make nearly as much as in the beginning, and becoming discouraged, will quit. No matter if the farmer receives ten or thirty cents a box for his fruit, the picker receives no better wage. "You will board me, I suppose?" "Oh, no, you board yourself. We have a good bunkhouse where you can sleep." "But I have no money. How will I get me something to eat?" "I will pay you every night at the rate of one cent if you want it." "But I have no money at all. What will I do for supper and breakfast?" "Tell any of the grocers in Middlehope that you are going to work for me and they will trust you. You can come to my place and sleep to-night, so that you can begin work in the morning." Passing on to the village, I asked one of the merchants if he would trust me for a bill of edibles until the following evening. He looked at me hesitatingly. He had been deceived and that made him cautious. When saying that I only wanted a little, he consented and gave me the following bill: bacon, five cents, bread, five cents, coffee, five cents, can of corn, ten cents, total twenty-five cents. I found later that there have been (and are still) thousands of instances when these willing workers have been denied this confidence and have worked all day in the burning sun without supper, breakfast and dinner. Reaching the farm I was not shown where to go to sleep. I was told to go to the bunkhouse. I found a number of men already there with an improvised stove of rock and available sticks for fuel. With the aid of my willing contemporaries I managed to prepare and eat my supper. There was a promiscuous pile of filthy blankets to choose from for a bed. I went to the stable for straw on which to spread them, and as I picked up one pair of blankets, a man who had been there for some time said, "I wouldn't use those blankets. A sick man occupied them last." "What was the matter with him?" I asked. "I don't know, but he was pretty sick." Finally choosing a pair of blankets which had the appearance of being a degree more wholesome than the others (and with at least a clean reputation), we laid down. In a short time, we discovered the place was literally alive with night prowlers, which drove us all out under the trees. This was preferable as long as it continued dry and warm, but at two A. M. a rain storm forced us back into the shack. The next day I put in ten long hours picking berries. When I checked up I had earned just 50 cents--just enough to pay my store bill and buy another meager day's rations. I tried the cherries, the raspberries and the gooseberries, but could do no better. I discovered that the pickers, no matter how clever they might be, did not, or could not, average over fifty cents a day, which, if they had spent it all for food, would only have been sufficient to purchase about two-thirds as much as they would have eaten if they had had enough. For other farm work the pay was one dollar, or one and a quarter dollars per day without board. With a few exceptions board was given with the one dollar. It was extremely difficult to get other farm work in berry picking season. However, I myself was offered by an old farmer one dollar a day and board, to hoe corn. The next day was Sunday. Could I work on Sunday? Being good Irish church people, they had been taught to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. The old gentleman hesitated slightly but yielded finally when I told him I needed the money. Then, too, I was in much better company working by myself in the field than sitting around the village. He would see what the old lady would say about it. The old lady had been suffering with the toothache for the past two days and had tried everything from ice down her back to boiling water, when an old woman driving by suggested filling the cavity of the tooth with fine-cut tobacco. This she declared to be a never-failing cure. The old lady tried it, but had swallowed the tobacco, and no mortal, she declared, ever before passed through such a sickness and survived! Consequently life just then seemed very uncertain, and this caused, on her part, a deep reflection on the subject of being very good. But finally she thought it would be all right for me to hoe on the Sabbath day, providing I did my hoeing down in the woodlot, instead of in the open field on the hill. It was pitiful to see these workers, after a hard day's work, walk several miles to the village store with their few cents to buy their suppers, knowing that they must walk back before they could cook and eat it. Even though a man were not a drunkard, do you wonder that he would spend a portion of that day's pitiful wage for stimulant to create enough force to get back to his camp? All of the country merchants had coffee, tea and sugar done up in five-cent packages ready to hand out. They had many customers for such quantities. One day, during my short investigation among these, a man was found dead in a barn, where he had crawled to rest. Was it any wonder? He had in his possession only a few cents and a little package of groceries. Is it any marvel that another man was found dead, hanging in an orchard, or that another was killed by an automobile, in the darkness of the night? Seventy-five per cent of these workers were old men or men beyond middle life. They were men of all sorts of trades, as well as the unskilled. A great many were physically infirm, which disabled them from following either their own trade or the more arduous work of the common laborer. I heard during the time I was among these toilers, the wish expressed many times by them that they, too, could own a garden tract, a bit of land that they could cultivate, a place, however humble, that they could call home. No; men do not, as many will tell you, seek the open fields to _be_ evil, but to _shun_ evil. There exists to-day in many of the villages, towns and cities of New York, the rule to grant to the police, marshal, or constable, as a perquisite to his office, money for every arrest he makes. In Milton I was told by one of its citizens that the fee was one dollar. Consequently they are on the lookout for poor, unfortunate workingmen. When they find one he is thrown into a dark hole of their city jail or lockup. In one of these villages, this wretched place of detention was partially filled with water when the men were put in. No matter how prosperous the aspect of his farm, the farmer will tell you of the vicissitudes he must continually encounter before his crop is gathered and sold, that many of the farms are carrying a heavy mortgage with an excessive rate of interest which they can not pay off, but can only succeed in living and paying the usury,--that he is at the mercy of the middle man (the commission man) and, above all else, what a time he has with his help, so hard to get, so unreliable when he does get it. If this is all true, do you wonder at it? Why, the horse, the cow and the hogs on these farms are better treated than their help! The animal must be well fed, housed comfortably and kept in good health to be profitable. If these farmers would institute some kind of a recall which would rid them of the code of ethics now practiced among them, or which would force them to practice brotherly love, kindness and justice; if they would create a new religion that will abolish the death-dealing, demoralizing, destructive influences which exist among them now; if they will cease being thoughtless; if they will begin to think,--then the weather will have lost much of its terror. The mortgage will be more easily raised. The faults of the commission man may be overcome and the unpleasant specter of quantity and quality of help will vanish. _Labor is the corner-stone to the foundation of the edifice of prosperity._ It is left to the farmer to make his way easy, his burden light. Yet some who live in palaces, and many bold charlatans of trade who use the name of philanthropy to guild their shady ways, will still cry, "Why don't the out-of-work man help the farmer? Why don't they go onto the land?" They certainly do not mean in the domain of the Hudson. In talking with an editor, I once advanced the thought of the advantage of cultivating every acre of the ground from New York to Albany. The astonished editor replied, "Why, would you destroy the scenery of our American Rhine?" Destroy the scenery! I could not but ask, surprisedly, "What is more beautiful than a cultivated vineyard, or a farm supporting an American home?" But this was what the search light revealed. The great estates of the greatest financiers in the world; the palaces of wealthy brewers; the castles of whiskey distillers; monasteries of the Church of England; Roman Catholic convents; orphans' homes, reformatories for white slaves, States prisons, criminal insane asylums; United States War Schools; government store-houses for high explosives; miles of unsightly brick-yards (of the Brick Trust); acres of decaying old frame shacks; ice-houses (of the Ice Trust;) signs, "Don't trespass" and "Beware of the dog"--and hundreds of hungry, starving men. CHAPTER XXIII ALBANY--IN THE MIDST OF THE FIGHT "_As long as any man exists there is some need of him. Let him fight for his own._"--EMERSON. Between the hours of ten P. M. and midnight the next evening, I found myself (with another down-and-out worker) sitting in the smoking-room of the Albany depot. My momentary acquaintance was an Irishman. Presently another young fellow, whose appearance was indicative of having recently put off a good many meals, came in and sat down near us. The Irishman looked squarely and inquisitively at the new-comer (who was an Irish-American), and recognizing by some mutual instinct that he belonged to the army who must work and wander, abruptly said: "Who are you?" "I am a tramp," the young fellow replied. "Then, I suppose," continued the Irishman, "you have been in every State in the Union." "Yes, every State," answered the young fellow. "Well," said the Irishman, "I'll bet you have never been in the state of matrimony." "Yes," quickly answered the man, "_I have been in Utah, too_." "How about the state of intoxication?" "Do you mean the State of New York, or a personal experience with John Barleycorn? If you mean the latter, I can honestly say, I have never been drunk." Thus we laughed and joked and then talked seriously for an extended time. These two men were on their way to the hop fields of New York for work. The younger of the two, when he had reached the age to fully comprehend, found himself in an Orphan Asylum. At fourteen he had been given to a farmer for whom he did the work of a man. When he was sixteen the family was broken up and the farm sold. He had been taught no trade and had received very little book knowledge. With the non-existence of this farm home, he became (to use the soubriquet of disrespect which is often put upon the forced migratory wage-slave) a floater. There were only a few men in the smoking-room. Weary, almost beyond endurance, we lay down on the empty seats and fell asleep. Suddenly we were awakened by a depot official saying, "This is no lodging house." We were roughly asked many questions,--who we were, where we were going, whether we had a ticket or the price of a ticket. When our answers proved unsatisfactory we were violently thrust into the street. I wondered at the time why we were not jailed, but I soon learned that their local prisons were full, and that the fact that they knew we had no money was a good reason,--in fact our protection from arrest. Undaunted, I stepped up to a policeman who was standing a little way off talking to a man, and asked him for Albany's Municipal Emergency Home. This officer, surprised at my question, hesitated to answer. The man to whom he was talking, said, "Go to the Baptist Home. Tell them you are penniless and they will take care of you. Here is my card. The address is on it." We went to the home but found it closed and dark. To our ringing and knocking there was no response. I learned afterwards that even if the institution had been open, we would have found no welcome as it was house-cleaning time. We next sought out the Salvation Army. It was not house-cleaning time with them but the place was much darker, more securely sealed against the homeless, hopeless wayfarer, than the Baptist Home. A man on the street gave the two hop pickers the price of a supper, a breakfast and a place to rest, and very soon I was curled down on the cushions of an early morning train, riding the velvet into Rochester. When, on this early Fall morning, I reached Rochester it was again God's day of rest. A number of workingmen were grouped a little way down the street, and with assumed indifference I joined them. Their conversation was on the possibility of getting work. All of them seemed to be idle. There was no prospect in sight in the city, and they had decided to go into the apple orchards of the surrounding country. In response to my inquiry as to whether there was any public place where a fellow who was broke could get a meal with or without working for it, one of them replied, "I, too, am up against it, pal, or I would help you. The only place I have heard of is the Sunshine Rescue Mission on Front Street." I walked toward the Mission and as I went I caught sounds of a drunken brawl in a saloon. A little farther on a "scarlet girl" with a sad face tapped on the window and smiled. Just as I reached Front Street the police wagon came hurriedly dashing down the street. Three stalwart members of the police force, on the pay roll of the city of Rochester, got out of the wagon when it stopped at the Mission. I thought I must be mistaken in the place and that it was a police station. But no, there was the sign: "Sunshine Rescue Mission." The officers entered. Brutally and roughly they brought out two men, thrust them into the wagon and took them off to the prison. They were scarcely out of sight before another policeman came down the street with another man whom he hurried into the Mission. From the time I entered Rochester until I left, I saw evidences of a "vice trust," the depravity of which could only be conjectured. I did not dare remain there for I trembled at the thought of a homeless man asking for aid in that institution of a "humane" Christian city. I hurriedly left Rochester for here more than any place that I had been in there seemed to be something "rotten in Denmark." CHAPTER XXIV CLEVELAND--THE CRIME OF NEGLECT "_A servant grafted in my serious trust And therefore negligent._" --SHAKESPEARE. The midnight bell was striking. The great city of Cleveland was going to rest as I rode to my hotel. I, too, was soon resting,--but not sleeping. I was forming a resolution to become _absolutely indigent_ for an extended time. My assumed destitution previously had been of very brief periods, always having money at my hotel or in my pockets for my immediate needs. "What," I reasoned, "does the man who at any moment can place his hand in his pocket and secure relief know of the real struggle of the penniless and homeless worker?" I looked myself over. I was healthy, comparatively strong. I had no trade, yet was clever at many things. I was honest, sober, willing, industrious. So I entered, with an iron-clad resolve, into a mental contract, signing and sealing it, that I would go penniless to Memphis, Tenn., with a determination to secure work on the government works on the Mississippi river for the winter. For I had discovered in my study from New York to Cleveland many moneyless men striving to reach these government works. I would not steal, nor beat a railroad train, nor beg, but if forced to do so, I would ask succor from those institutions which stand, ostensibly, ready to help the needy. My itinerary, briefly given, would be, Cleveland to Cincinnati, Cincinnati to Louisville, Louisville to Memphis. The next morning, after sending my baggage on to Memphis and paying my hotel bill, I was completely broke, and found myself on the streets of Cleveland, destitute, looking for work. I strolled up to the Public Square while I was considering the best course to pursue. I had pulled on my blue jeans over a pretty good business suit, for my investigation was to be of that class of toilers who must work with their hands as well as of the class that does those things we faultily regard as more polite work. Destitute, homeless, friendless, I must honorably reach the government works,--that was the point I had to keep ever in mind. My first thought was as a hopeful medium to find work,--the newspapers. Stepping up to a news-stand I asked for a paper, and thrust my hand deep down in my pocket for the price. Thus it was that it came to me forcibly for the first time that I was broke. I looked at the news-vender as he handed me the paper and said, "Never mind, old man, I have left my pocketbook at home." Then I remembered I had a postage stamp and thought of offering that in exchange; but I remembered a long delayed letter which must be sent home, and so I kept the stamp. I thought of the many places where the newspapers were on file and the newspaper offices. Just as I entered the Square, a man sitting on a bench reading a morning paper left abruptly, leaving the paper behind. I made a dash for it with a half dozen other jobless men. I was the lucky one, however. Hurriedly I sought the want columns. I scanned them carefully and made note of those things I knew I could do. I also made note of an "ad" reading: "Wanted, fifty supers at the Opera House. Apply at 10 A. M." Handing the paper to the other boys, I left quickly on my mission for work. The super's job I kept as a last resort, if all others failed. All others did fail. There were a great many idle men and boys in Cleveland at that time. I saw the importance of being early, for the answer invariably was, "The place is filled long ago." So ten o'clock found me at the stage door of the Opera House with several hundred others, hanging onto the hope of being a favored chosen one. I knew that if successful I could work here nights, and that they would probably pay the same price offered in Pittsburg. Through the day I could do something else. I would therefore earn quickly enough to buy a six-dollar ticket to Cincinnati and be well on my journey to the government works, where, from all I had heard, I would be comfortably located for the winter, and in line for making a stake. The manager soon appeared and began rapidly to choose his men. We discovered we were to be millionaire senators in a great political play. I noticed I was being intentionally shunned, and fearful of not being chosen, I remembered my good front beneath my workingman's garb. I stepped up to the man and said, "I have better clothes than these. I can make an appearance for the part," whereupon he immediately took me. Our pay was to be three dollars and a half for eight performances, covering a week,--a little less than forty-four cents a performance. Although I had landed a job I was no better off so far as the immediate needs for existence went. So I saw that I must be active in order to cover the vacancy in some way. Already I was growing very hungry. The first thing I did was to ask a man with a star for the Municipal Emergency Home. He looked at me with a contemptuous smile, and seemed to regard me as one just dropped out of Russia, China, or some other heathen country. At last he said: "There is nothing like that here. I never heard of such a thing. Did you?" No one will ever know what it means to be really hungry until he is broke. There seemed no other way for me to win a dinner other than to ask the various restaurants the privilege of working for it. Of the great number to which I applied, the answer was, "Nothing doing." At last the proprietress of one restaurant told me she wanted some one very badly for the noon hour rush to wipe dishes, and in return for the work would gladly give me my dinner. I readily accepted the offer, and was soon installed in the small kitchen of a very large, cheap restaurant. I was obliged to stand near the dishwasher and his tubs, hemmed in by a very narrow space. In an instant the rush was on. Everything that was not nailed down or stuck to the wall was in the air. The busy boys would come in with a San Juan charge, literally firing the dishes into the big wash tub, and every time they did so I received a shower-bath. Now, I would not have objected to a sprinkle or two, but an immersion was a crime, and in my position I could neither retreat nor advance. The old lady appearing, I demanded a release, declaring our agreement was that I was to work for a meal and not a bath. She declared the hour was now nearly up, and then, too, I did not object as strenuously as I might have done, if, through the rain and the mist, I had not caught sight of rows of pies, cake, ice-cream and pudding. Also, perhaps as a panacea to my hurt feelings, the old lady (who had a bass voice and weighed about three hundred pounds) threatened to put a few of the reckless flunkies out of commission if they did not exercise more caution. True to her word, the moment the hour was spent, I was asked to sit down to a banquet on the end of the cook's table, and the order issued to give me all the corned beef, cabbage and boiled potatoes I wanted. The pie, cake, ice-cream and pudding were not on the dishwiper's menu, at least not that day, but I was to have all I wanted of what was given me, and that meant a great deal. Regaining the street, I felt a strong desire for a bath, clothes and all. Again approaching another appendix to the correctional laws of Cleveland, I asked for the free public baths. "Gad," he said, as he eyed me closely, "how many baths do you take a day?" He then referred me to Cleveland's two public baths, which were so far out that he advised me decidedly to take a street car. "And are they absolutely free?" I demanded. "No, one will cost you five cents and the other two." I went to the lake. In my little bundle I carried a small mirror, a hairbrush, a piece of soap, a couple of white collars and a towel. Ye gods, what a bath that was! The water was four degrees below freezing. However, I soon had on the expression of the United States Senator whom I was to impersonate at the Opera House that night, who wouldn't buy a vote, no, not if he died for it, who could sit in the four o'clock Y. M. C. A. Sunday afternoon meeting with a face as long as a fiddle, and an expression that to the thought of a jackpot would prove fatal. Not one of the elite in the great audience that night ever dreamed of the battle I had gone through that day in Cleveland for the privilege of sitting in that honored seat! We were an exceedingly interesting group of millionaire senators, for three-fourths of us were broke. After our great act, I timidly approached the manager, and asked him if he would please advance me a quarter as I had no place to sleep nor the money to buy a place. No, he could not think of doing so. It was not their custom to pay until the last performance. An old "senator" of sixty-eight years who sat next to me, one of the many in the same plight I was in, was waiting to learn the result of my plea. We then began to try to find a place to rest, for that we must have. Our act was not over until nearly ten-thirty o'clock, compelling us to be out late. My brother senator knew Cleveland better than I did and proposed going to the "charity" free lodging house where we could pay by sawing wood an hour or more the next morning. We made our way to the old rookery, which was in a hole down under the hill, but when we got there it was closed and dark. I then proposed the police station or the jail. He looked at me in astonishment and said, "Do you think I would go there? I'll tell you where we can go. I slept there the other night, and--well, it might have been worse. It is on the floor of the High Ball Saloon on St. Clair Street. There is no use to hurry, as we can't lie down until twelve o'clock." He then continued, "Let us find some newspapers to lie on." So as we walked towards our destination we searched the rubbish boxes on the street corners for paper with which to make a bed. Reaching the saloon, we stood about until midnight, at which time the lights were turned low and the side doors locked. Then we were allowed to lie down. We each had two newspapers which we spread under us. After a moment I raised up and counted the little army of bedless men who were obliged to seek shelter there that night. There were just an even sixty lying upon the floor, and this number was augmented now and then by a late arrival drifting in. A number of men stood at the bar, or lunch stand, and caroused all night. One, verging on delirium tremens, had a prize fight with a stone post. While the place seemed clean and the floor clean for a great, cheap saloon, roaches by the hundred were scampering all about us, and the odor from a near-by toilet could scarcely be endured. In a calm moment of the revelers, just as I felt that I might drop into a doze (my poor, weary, old senator was sleeping through it all), a big Dutchman, whose bones probably ached from coming in contact with the hard floor, raised up and turned over. As he did so, he came down on a little Irishman. Jumping up, he slapped the Dutchman in the face and a rough house was in order for an extended time. Occasionally a "cop" or a plain-clothes man came in and looked us over. For me to try to sleep was useless, and promptly at five o'clock the order was given "Every man up." My political colleague and I strolled confidentially up an alley to the Public Square. Here was located a beautiful example of Cleveland's humanity to man in a small, yet seemingly perfect public lavatory. Every man, no matter how soiled or wretched, was given a towel and a piece of soap to cleanse himself, and often I heard someone say, "Tom Johnson's gift." Food was the next essential to our good behavior and well-being. My associate member proposed we try the "Charity" Lodging House again, which we did. Yes, we could have breakfast if we would saw and split wood for an hour or more first. We would certainly do so. Imagine the state we were in from lack of food and sleep. And yet this homeless old gentleman--and he was a gentleman--was eager and willing. After splitting curly birch for over an hour, we were told to come to breakfast. They gave us weak barley soup, poor bread, and the same old "charity coffee." The staying qualities of that breakfast were extremely fleeting, for by the time we had climbed the hill we were no better off in regard to having our hunger appeased than when we went in. As we came out we noticed a sign which read, as I remember it, to this effect: "Persons coming here a second time must be expected to take orders from the city." Not a very encouraging hope for the man who was broke and who was only earning three-fifty per week, which he would not get for six days. Every day while in this city I found (aside from us senators) many men who had secured work or would have gone to work, but who could find no one to trust them. The boarding-house keepers had been imposed upon so many times by penniless people that they were cautious. The contractor or employer will never pay in advance, only at a stated time,--once a week, once in two weeks, or once a month. While there may be exceptions, through all my investigations in the larger cities of our country, I have never found any relief for the penniless worker in this time of need, either in public or private works. If he proves he is a fine worker he is valuable to his employer and he wants to keep him. But he does not know him. He may have unconquerable habits. It would never do to pay him his wage when the day is done. He might not return, so the employer hopes to hold him by offering him nothing, not even a word of inquiry as to his needs, or of encouragement. He forgets that he is an asset to the community, that whether working for the city or the individual, every laborer is just as worthy of respect and esteem as is the privileged owner of Forest Hill. What an appeal for Cleveland's Emergency Home to fill this place of need! Reader, I want you to keep steadily in mind that you are looking at _the man I describe_, not at me. I had multi-millionaire acquaintances in Cleveland who would have granted me any request I might have made. I held credentials on which any bank in that city would have honored my check without question. I could have stepped into the home of the exceedingly prominent lodge of which I was a member in good standing, and could have had my every wish granted. I knew if I fell ill or met with accident, to reveal my identity meant every care and comfort, the speedy coming of a loving wife, kind relatives and friends. And so, after all, while I might endure, I could only assume. My aged "senator" friend left me, to walk a long way in search of someone he knew, who perhaps would make his burden light. I did not need to be told the feelings of the old gentleman as he wearily took his departure. I had started for the Public Square to rest, though momentarily, for there was a dinner which must be battled for. I passed a fruit store. There was an array of delicious fruit in front,--many baskets of rich, purple grapes, marked ten cents. I was sure I could have eaten at least one basket. They were not directly in front of the window. It would have been so easy to pick up a basket unseen and be quickly lost in the crowd. After all it _was_ true, then, that starving men and boys filched bottles of milk from doorsteps, a loaf of bread from the bakery, or a pie from a wagon! I stepped directly in front of the window and looked at the apples and oranges. A woman inside seemed to have her eye on me,--I fancied suspiciously. Instantly she stepped out and picking up one each of the fairest of the apples and oranges offered them to me. I hesitatingly regarded her gift. "Take them," she said, "God made them to be eaten." I had had nothing to eat for eighteen hours except my "charity" bowl of barley soup and with it the warning not to come back. The city of Cleveland had nothing to offer. It remained for a poor woman to give me a portion of her small possessions. I reached the Square. Broken, I dropped into a seat and was immediately lost in sleep, from which I was suddenly awakened by a sharp blow on the bottom of my feet, which, through the thin half-wornout soles, left a burning sting. Lifting my head, I saw a burly policeman who growled, "Keep your eyes open. This Square is for wide-awake people." "It certainly is not for the city of Cleveland, then, in its care for its homeless," I remarked. Remembering I was in a "Golden Rule" city, I felt that I could safely reply to this august hint of the law, without fear of being "run in" or beaten into insensibility, as I had seen helpless men treated in other cities for such presumption. He simply gave me a half comprehending look as he passed on. Now this officer was not the Chief of Police in that city. He was simply a subordinate, and a city of six hundred thousand people requires a large police force. Notwithstanding the spirit of the Chief of Police, or his high ideal of what a police department really stands for, his good aim and end will be miscarried continually by his hirelings, until the required qualifications of a policeman are based upon intelligence, good-will, good morals, good deeds, and not upon the fact that he helped carry his ward. I saw, however, during my short stay in this city evidences of advancement in the character of their police system, which spoke volumes for Cleveland, even though the homeless and temporarily moneyless toiler, seeking work, found no help in the many considerations for labor. With the feeling that closing one's eyes in the public park in Cleveland might mean life imprisonment or at least, for the second offense, a rap on the head instead of the feet, which might disqualify me for my seat in the "senate" that night, I forced myself to keep awake, and in order to do that I had to keep moving. The agreement with myself was not to beg or steal. I was to be always "on the square." I decided to continue to look for work. The day before, in search of work, I had climbed many stairs, entered stores, hotels, factories, even tried the City, all without success. I began to feel that perhaps I was too old, yet several of them had said, "Come again. There are always chances. We may be able to use you in a few days." I realized I was weak from lack of sleep and nourishment. I must eat first. Just then I overheard one starving man say to another (the park was full of "wide-awake," starving men), "Jack, I have ten cents, let's have a couple of beers." "Honest, Bill, I'd rather have a loaf of bread for my share." "But you see," returned Bill, "you can get a scoop of beer as big as a toy balloon and a free lunch like a Christmas dinner for the price of a loaf of bread." "All right, I'm with you," said Jack who then continued, "Another week like the one gone by, and want will have me in a home for incurables." 'Tis true I had forty-four cents due me for one day's "session" in the "senate." But what of that? It was not due until Saturday night at twelve o'clock. By that time hunger might drive a man to wreck, rob, murder or suicide, and there is no telling what a politician will do, even on a full stomach. I then remembered hearing one "senator" telling another of a Catholic institution where he had received a hand-out for some work. I remembered the name of the place. I also remembered hearing another say he had earned fifty cents that day beating carpets,--a job he secured from the Associated Charities. I first made my way to the Romanist institution. A Sister with a sweet face framed in folds of black and white met me at the door. She looked kind enough to give me the institution, but she didn't. If she had, Cleveland would have had, from the way I was feeling just then, a Municipal Emergency Home about as quickly as one could change the sign. What she did give me was a job cleaning windows, for which I received a bowl of cold coffee and a piece of bread. As I waited I caught glimpses of delicious dishes of chicken, steaks, and other wholesome and dainty edibles. To the cook, a bright young Irish woman who had received orders to give me only what was before me, I said, as I looked at the bowl and bread, "Do these people believe in multiplying anything around here?" "Yes." "What?" "Working hours." "What do you do for something to eat when you get really hungry?" "Well, you see, this is an institution what believes in fasting." We both laughed and this brought forth a Mother Superior followed by a Mother Inferior, whose faces were sour enough to start a pickle factory. I felt that I had committed some unpardonable offense and abbreviated my call by taking a speedy departure. Scarcely were we seated that night in the "senate" before the old "senator" told of the square meal he had that day and of a fine place he had found in a stable where we could sleep with the comfort befitting our distinguished station. He had not seen it, but knew where it was and how to find it. So after the session adjourned, we started for our newly-found shelter. It was now late in October. The nights were unusually cold in Cleveland for that time of year. After walking what seemed an interminable distance, the warm, bright street cars passing us frequently (the fare only three cents), we finally reached our shelter. It was not as we fancied it would be,--a large, fine barn, half filled with new-mown hay. It was an old, closed-in, empty shed, with two stalls and two mangers. We entered. By striking a few matches, we could see to gather up enough of the refuse in the stalls to lie on, by placing it in the narrow mangers. The "senator" took one and I the other. He suggested that I take off my coat and place it over my head and shoulders, saying that by so doing I would be much warmer than if I kept it on. I found this to be true. So exhausted and weary had we become that we were soon lost in profound sleep, from which I awoke at three o'clock, perishing with the cold. I crept over and felt of the old man. He was alive and sleeping soundly. I slipped out and walked the streets for an hour. By the time I was thoroughly warmed the day had begun to break. Very soon I found myself again in "wide-awake" Square. I wasn't in the most amiable mood in the world. Far from it. I began to feel that I would like to stand on their city hall steps and tell the people of Cleveland what I thought of them. I slipped into that ideal little lavatory, and with the warm water, soap and clean towel, cleansed my hands and face until I felt refreshed. Then I thought of Tom Johnson, and the bitterness left my heart. I actually forgot for the moment that I was starving and fell to wondering whither God had taken him and what great work he was doing in that land to which he had gone. I then left for the Labor Bureau of the Associated Charities. Perhaps I could get work with enough pay in advance for a breakfast. On reaching there I found twenty men and boys standing outside, and after waiting an hour there seemed to be very little work to be had. Only a few were supplied. During my stay in Cleveland, as a test, I went every day to this place but never succeeded in getting work. This was the only place I had been able to find in Cleveland which even offered work to a man without money. I then tried for an hour to do something for a meal, but was unsuccessful. Going back to the Square I sat down and considered my contract and my feelings. I had agreed with myself to do nothing that would make me lose my self-respect, yet I must eat or forfeit my contract. I glanced down at my hand. There was the golden circle of love,--my wedding ring. Other starving men had been forced to pawn this priceless emblem of sweet memories. I remembered a penniless man whom I met in San Francisco, weak from the suffering caused by extreme want. He was an engraver by trade. Hoping against fate that each day would bring him an opportunity, he walked and searched for the place which he knew he could so ably fill. As we talked he told me a story from the book of his life; of a girl wife and a baby boy whom the Angel had taken. While he talked he glanced down and turned upon his finger a slender thread of gold. I saw that to this man, there lay in that circle of love, a sacred memory,--the blossoming of an honest workingman's home, attributes of which were truth, love, honor and eternal fidelity. The workingman's home,--without the intrusion of poverty--is the stronghold of a great and good citizen, _the steadfast guiding star of a great government_. Speaking to me with that freedom born of the sympathy which binds one homeless man to another (and he was a man, ambitious, free from the bondage of any bad habit), he said, "I will have to pawn my ring to-day, but," with determined emphasis, "I will never lose it. Yet I am a little afraid of the pawnshop. Their rate of interest is theft, and the time for redemption limited to one month." We then talked of New York City's Provident Loan Association, which is simply the poor man's depository, the interest only one per cent, a month, and the time one year. The city that is without this social good is the city that does not belong to the present day progress, and must savor of betrayal, of artifice, of ill-gotten gains. As I left him, I said, "Should you have to pawn your ring, look the matter up. Of course, San Francisco must have so worthy an organization." Leaving the Square I found a pawnshop. Unlike the man in actual poverty, I had not the dread fear of losing the cherished momento. The pawnshop man scratched it, weighed it, raised his hand, shrugged his shoulders, and said, "I giff you vun dollar." "But it cost ten," I said. "Vell, all right, I giff you vun dollar." There was no other way, I was helpless. So I replied, "All right, take it." He gave me the dollar and a pawn certificate demanding for the redemption of my ring a dollar and twenty-five cents if redeemed inside of thirty days. If redeemed within an hour, it made no difference. I had already tested the institutions, religious and otherwise, which existed in Cleveland supposedly to shelter the destitute, and had been either locked out or turned back into the street. How big that dollar felt in my hand! I fancied it was a twenty-dollar gold piece. I did not dare let go of it. With my old "senator" friend in mind, I saw a sign which read, "Dinner twenty-five cents." I could not get into the place quickly enough. I left greatly refreshed, but only half satisfied. I found the old "senator," with whom I shared my fortune. He had been unsuccessful in finding a job. He did as I did, spent twenty-five cents for a meal and saved the other quarter for a bed. We were fixed for that night, at least. The next morning I saw a prosperous looking young man, standing on a street corner. I don't know what prompted me to do so, but I stepped up to him and inquired, "Do you know where a fellow can get a job?" "Yes," he replied. "Do what I am doing. I am taking subscriptions for a magazine and I am making two and three dollars a day, and it's dead easy." He handed me a card on which was the address of the office. The agent told me he thought he had canvassers enough, but said, "You're an intelligent looking cuss, I think I will try you." He made the following proposition: "We offer five of our leading periodicals for twenty-five cents, providing the person will subscribe for four of them. These will come to him through the mail at twenty cents a month for one year. A collector comes every month for the twenty cents." The twenty-five cents paid down for the five magazines was to be my commission. That night I had just two dollars, and I think I was the happiest man in Cleveland. I had landed a job, and I fully realized that I could have done twice as much if I had not been weakened by lack of nourishment and exposure while seeking work. After drawing my salary as "senator" and working like a Trojan through the day, the next Sunday found me at the Big Four Station with just six dollars in my pocket. Five dollars and twenty-five cents I paid for a ticket to Cincinnati. Spending the balance for food while on the road, I landed in that city at midnight, _broke_. I had no money, but I possessed a wealth of knowledge in regard to the city of high standards on the shore of the Erie inland sea. CHAPTER XXV CINCINNATI--NECESSITY'S BRUTAL CHAINS "_There is no contending with necessity, and we should be very tender how we censure those who submit to it. It is one thing to be at liberty to do what we will and another thing to be tied up to do what we must._" I entered the depot and sank wearily into a seat. I felt pretty well and had a clear conscience. Had I not honorably paid my way from Cleveland to Cincinnati instead of trespassing on the property of a mighty railroad company? I found a place to sit down, dropped my head forward and was soon fast asleep. But the sleep was of short duration for in a few minutes I was rudely awakened by the depot policeman. "Where are you going?" he said. "Nowhere," I answered. "I have no money." "Well, what are you doing here?" "Can't you see? I am trying to sleep?" "Have you a railroad ticket?" "No." "Well, you can't stay here." "Have they a Free Municipal Emergency Home in this city?" "No." "Where would you have me go?" "Some other place." Knowing too well the result to the homeless, destitute wage-earner of disobedience to the scion of the law, I quickly left. To be absolutely alone on the streets of a great, strange city at midnight, penniless, without a friend or acquaintance, was nothing to me, a strong, well man. But to the homeless woman or girl, or the frail sick man or boy, my homelessness held a great meaning. Going a short way up the street, I saw a man standing on a corner, and from his dejected mien, I knew that he, like myself, was a down-and-out. "Hello," I said. "Hello," he answered. "Where can a fellow that's broke find a 'flop?'" "Explore me!" "They have just driven me out of the Big Four." "They have just kicked me out of the L. & N. I am going to Fountain Square. It is now one o'clock. There is a train that leaves at two-thirty from the L. & N. People are already going to the station. You can probably stay there unnoticed until the train leaves. I can't go back for they would know me, but keep your eyes open for bulls." And with this advice he pointed out the way. I went, and unnoticed I slept an hour sitting on a station seat. When the train left, I was the only remaining individual in the waiting-room and, of course, very conspicuous. The hint of the law for decency and order at that station, came to me with the question, "Why didn't you take that train?" "I did not want it." "What are you doing here?" "I have no other shelter." With the deep, low-bred voice of an unfeeling brute, he emphatically said, "Beat it." I, too, must now find Fountain Square. A switchman kindly pointed out the direction. As I walked up the street, I raised my eyes to see if the day was breaking, but I might have known better. Automobiles and hacks containing only men came down the street and stopped before the large, red-curtained houses, and from the sound of revelry, of jest, laughter and music, I realized that I was in the redlight district. A black slave standing in a dimly lighted entrance to a passage between two houses, said, "Hello, Honey, buy me a drink." "Why, girl, I could not buy a postage stamp that was canceled." "Why, what's the matter?" "I'm broke. I haven't even a place to sleep tonight." "Come here." I stepped up a little nearer to her. "Is yo' sho' nuff broke?" "I most assuredly am." "Whah yo' from?" "From Cleveland." "What's de matter wid Cleveland? Cleveland all gone to--?" "It was for me, at least during part of the time I was there." "And has yo' honest nowhah er to sleep?" She put her hand in her purse and offered me a quarter. "Take that. It will buy yo' a bed." Glancing up, I saw or fancied I saw the light of dawn. "No, girl. See, the day is breaking," and as I went on to the Square, I knew that I had seen in that poor, black slave girl an expression of human kindness that could not be found in the vocabulary of the Christian, intelligent, cultured city of Cincinnati. She had offered me, the homeless, penniless, out-of-work man, a shelter. Girl, for you and your kind, and your race, in the great South, the day _is_ dawning. Fountain Square is a strip of concrete about fifty feet wide, extending for a block. In the center is a large, magnificent fountain. This Square was acquired by the city as a gift, with a perpetual proviso that it should always be a market-place. Otherwise the city would forfeit the grant. Consequently, on one side, as a retainer, is built a six by ten foot iron, pagoda-roofed structure, under which are several tiers of shelves on which, for a short time each year, flowers are placed and sold. On either side benches were placed, but when I reached the Square every available place seemed filled. The shelves in the flower stand were crowded with homeless, drooping, broken human beings. The roof was a shelter from the frost. There were one hundred men in this Cincinnati "Free Municipal Emergency Home" that night. Nor was this even free, for frequently the police of this humane city raid the Square and drive all, to the last man, to prison. Exhaustion was beating me down, and there seemed no other alternative, so with palpitating heart lest I be singled out as a hopeless inebriate, thrown into jail and then onto the stone pile, I lay down on the frost-covered stone at the feet of my homeless companions and fell into a sleep. It was only for a short time, however, for the rousing up of the men on the bench awakened me and one said to me in a hoarse whisper, "For God's sake, Jack, get up! Here comes a bull." I quickly sprang to my feet. As the men were leaving the Square I saw a number of them enter a dark alley, and asked where they were going. I was told the _Enquirer_ posted the "want-ad" sheets of the paper at its back door an hour before daylight. A group of fifteen men and two young women were already there, striking matches and struggling to read the columns of "Help Wanted." I finally succeeded in getting close enough to read them. There were a number of things I could do. I took the list and started out only to realize the absolute necessity of a breakfast. I tried several places to work for this essential reinforcement to health and strength, but failed. I thought over my effects again. No, I had nothing except my eyeglasses. After all they were only for fine print while reading. I thought of the watchmaker in New York who was resting from going blind and of the boy I had met, who, without his glasses, was almost blind but who had pawned them for food; of another, a boy without vice and industrious, selling the gold filling from his teeth to help him over a rough place; of men I had seen, through want, pawn their underclothing. It was a simple thing for me to part with my glasses. I got twenty-five cents on them. After breakfast I began a strenuous search for work and at last, after explaining that I could handle horses, and was sober and industrious, I was hired at twelve dollars a week to drive a milk wagon at F----, a big milk depot. But they did not want me for three days and there was the rub. The manager of a large restaurant told me that if I would come at two o'clock the next morning and work from two until four he would give me my breakfast and a quarter of a dollar. I was exceedingly happy, for I, at least, was rich in prospects. I went to the public bath and was absolutely refused a bath because I had not a nickel. The Salvation Army refused me assistance in any way, shape or manner. The Associated Charities had nothing to give away. They did not even have a bed in exchange for work. However they had meals in exchange for labor. By sawing wood for one or more hours they would give me a meal. I knew what that meal would be, a decoction of stuff made mostly of water, and I said, "You must give a pretty good meal for one and a half hours' labor at the hard work of sawing wood." This seemed to touch the head of this Charity institution, for in an offended way he said: "This is a Charity institution--not a Commercial one." The Y. M. C. A. refused me even a bath. I was beginning to get saucy and politely told the presiding officer of this commercial institution he had better take the word "Christian" out of their title. I was met with such violent anathemas that I felt I was in the wrong and speedily retired. By this time circumstances were forcing my mental contract to assume an india-rubber character, like laws of justice and good books. There was a large religious convention in session in the city and if my contract would allow me to ask aid of those institutions which stand avowed to help a destitute workingman, and these gentlemen of the cloth posed as representatives of such heavenly safeguards against despair, I felt that I was justified (although it was against a city ordinance and, if caught, I would be imprisoned), at least in asking of these the price of a meal or a bed. So bringing into play a determined will and taking a stand at a convenient place where I was sure I would not be detected, I hesitatingly approached one saying, "Sir, would you kindly give an honest workingman the price of a meal?" He replied, without stopping except to slap me cordially on the back. "My dear boy, I have no money." I then asked another, whose answer as he stopped for a brief instant was: "My dear friend, I have no change." To this I replied, "I did not ask for change particularly. I am not hard to suit, at least just now. A dollar will go farther than a dime." He only smiled and hurried on. I was their dear boy and dear friend, but not precious enough to find a place in their hospitality. I could have rested again that night on the stones of Fountain Square, or suffered the insult and abuse of a Cincinnati prison, or have been forced into the hospital, or have ended the struggle in the Ohio river, for all that Cincinnati or at least these two satellites of this mighty convention cared. The nights were extremely cold but the days were bright and warm in the sunshine. Too weary to undergo further the trial without rest, I crept away to the river bank, far enough away to be unmolested, away from suspicion and question. Here on the sun-warmed gravel, with my little bundle for a pillow, I fell into a sweet sleep and pleasant dreams, not of pearly gates and golden streets, but of snowy beds and sumptuous tables. I slept for a long while and when I awoke the sun was setting in some dense black clouds and the air had the chill of an approaching storm. Remembering that I had a job at two o'clock on the coming morning and the thought bringing a certain degree of comfort and cheer, I strolled into a large saloon, where there was a bright fire. Here I sat and talked to many workingmen who came that way. I read the many papers scattered about until the place closed, at midnight, when I was forced back to a bench in Fountain Square. Just as I arrived there a gust of wind and rain swirled through the streets and into the Square with a mad force. It was a harbinger of what was to follow. A few moments later there broke forth the most piercing equinoctial storm of wind, snow and rain that I had ever known. It lasted for three days. I crept into the office of an all-night lodging house. When it was discovered that I did not want a bed and had no money I was requested to vacate. I thought of going at once to the restaurant where I was to work in the morning but I remembered the manager had told me not to come before two o'clock. Already wet from exposure I sought the shelter of the flower stand. Eight men ahead of me had taken refuge there, but they kindly allowed me to crowd in. While we were protected from the beating torrent of rain, we were thoroughly chilled and suffering intensely. After all, I was the favored one, for in a short time I would be in a big warm restaurant kitchen at work. It seemed an endless time before I found myself there with another man paring potatoes, and while we worked, he told me of the steamboat running from Cincinnati to Louisville, and of the opportunity many times for a man to work his way to the latter city,--a suggestion which I resolved, if possible, to profit by. Four o'clock soon came, and my breakfast was earned. It was not as I thought it would be,--a portion of all the good things that the restaurant afforded, and that I could eat against a week's time of need. It was simply a twenty cent check for a breakfast at the lunch counter upstairs. I could have eaten four such meals without fear of any unpleasant results, but as he gave me the check he gave me my quarter also, saying, "We do not usually give more than a meal for the work, but I will make an exception this time, and as I told you, give you a quarter." Why he did so, I have never been able to discover. That quarter meant a great deal to me, for I could spend it where I sought shelter, and feel a degree of independence and welcome. Don't think for a moment the Y. M. C. A., the Salvation Army, or the Associated Charities got it! I was pretty sure, however, to save ten cents of it for a bed at the Union Mission on the levee. On going there I asked for the gift of a bed, and was decidedly refused. I was told it was not a Christian institution which gave gifts to the needy, but absolutely a business proposition with them. Whether that be true or not, I admired them for their honesty. This Mission was near the steamboat landing. On the following morning I applied for the privilege of working my way to Louisville. I could do so, but the only work offered was that of roustabout, loading and unloading heavy freight before leaving and while en route. I would receive no pay for my work, unless I signed to return, or make a round trip. The deck passage was a dollar and a half. The next morning, with two white and twenty black men, associate workers, I was off for Louisville. Life, in recent years, had not inured me to such arduous work. I think I could have stood the work more successfully than my trial in New York if I had not been weakened by starvation, but at the test of carrying a heavy barrel, box, or bundle, I could not stand firm and wavered as I walked, which frightened me. I realized that I must desist. I made an appeal to the boat officer to carry me to Louisville on the promise that I would pay as soon as I had earned the money. I was a weather-beaten hobo, and of course, not to be trusted, but my request was granted, providing I would leave my little bundle as a pledge that I would fulfil my promise. As I was leaving the boat at Louisville, I stood with my little blue jeans bundle in my hand. The purser was there to see that I turned it over to the negro porter. The porter had an austere cruel expression, but instantly, as we stepped back to deposit it in the porter's locker, his face turned to a glow of kindness and he handed me back the bundle, saying, "Hit the plank. Put it under your coat. You will not be noticed." In that little package were all my earthly possessions. It meant a great deal to me. So taking the bundle I slipped away. I was again homeless on the streets of another great city, looking for work. CHAPTER XXVI LOUISVILLE AND THE SOUTH "_Kindness is wisdom. There is none in life but needs it and may learn._" Shortly after my arrival in Louisville, Kentucky, true to the promise I made myself in Cleveland, I sent the Navigation Company the cash due them for my passage. I felt exceedingly happy that it could not be said of me that I had stolen my journey. In Louisville, as in every other city of the Union I have visited, I found it very hard work to get employment. I found the white man working for the same wage as the black man, the black man working for just one-third of what he ought to have been paid. This is true all through the South. I found the white men greatly embittered against the black men and declaring that the negroes kept wages down by being willing to work for far less than the white workers. This was not true. The negroes were just as restless as the white men because of the small pay for labor. If the black workers were willing, or seemed willing, to work for less pay than the white workers, it was because they were forced to do so to keep from starving. As the night came down I was forced to seek shelter at an Associated Charities lodging house, in front of which was an open surface sewer, so vile that it was nauseating, the disease-breeding odor penetrating the dormitory all through the night. I was met so gruffly that I felt as if I had offended someone by my application for shelter even though I was given to understand that I was expected to saw five barrels of wood for it. I asked for the privilege of washing my hands and face; for a sheet of paper and an envelope that I might write a letter home; for something to read, and a place to read it. All these little benefits, which meant just then so much to me and which cost nothing, were bluntly denied. I was told to go out in the rear yard among stacks of rubbish, where it was cold and damp, until the time arrived for offering the hospitality of the place. Before going to bed I was obliged to take a shower bath, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but which was spoiled by a small, dirty, rough towel to dry myself with. The bed, filthy, wretched and uncomfortable, I could scarcely have endured had I not been so bruised and weary. The usual charity breakfast dope of water soup, water coffee, and coarse bread was given, for which I worked three hours. Edgeless tools made the work extremely difficult. Many of the men worked half a day for the night's shelter. I would have enjoyed the exhilarating work on the wood for an hour if I had been given a breakfast. Any man would who was able, and who wanted to keep his self-respect. I left the place embittered. I felt that I had been robbed, as others did who were forced into it, but it was a shelter. The needs of another night were near at hand, and I had a half-day left in which to look for work. I passed a fine restaurant where I noticed the windows needed polishing up a bit. I stepped inside and asked the privilege of cleaning them for a meal. My wish was granted. For my hour's work I was given a delicious, wholesome meal and twenty-five cents besides. I felt like doing a great deal for myself and something for others. I was in luck. After many trials I found work in a business place at five dollars per week and board, for seven days in the week. I was to begin the next morning. From exposure on the deck of the steamer I had contracted a severe cold which settled into neuralgia, and one of my teeth was aching beyond endurance. My twenty-five cents, which I was saving for a bed, I was now obliged to spend in having the distracting molar extracted. The first dentist to whom I described my pain and possessions, refused to pull the tooth for less than fifty cents, but the next man did it, and I was soon on the street feeling actually happy,--but my bed money was gone. I could not have returned to the Charity lodging house even if I had cared to, as I was obliged to be at work at seven in the morning. As it was now growing cold and dark, I was told by another "under-dog" of the Hope Rescue Mission. I followed his suggestion by going there. Entering, I registered my name, and discovered that my presence at the evening meeting was demanded before I was eligible for a bed. I attended the meeting and discovered that one must experience a change of heart before he is actually certain of shelter, for the leader of this heavenly mansion said in his address, "You fellers need not think you can come here and make a big spiel, and get a bed unless you mean what you say." Immediately after the service of song and praise, we were shown to bed. The door of this "heavenly refuge" was locked at ten o'clock for the night, and going to bed at this hour was compulsory. As we entered, the light, which was so dim that we could scarcely distinguish one cot from the other, and which hid the filth in which we were to rest, was in a moment turned out and all was darkness. Without undressing, I fell upon my bunk exhausted and was soon sound asleep, but at some unknown hour in the night I awakened. Notwithstanding my precaution in not undressing I realized that I was covered with vermin. The filthy odor of sewer gas pervaded the place and poisoned every breath of air we breathed. My first impulse was to get out of the place, but where would I go? To go out onto the street at this time of the night would probably mean arrest. I slid down from my bunk to the floor and forced myself to remain there until we were called at daylight. * * * * * All of these houses where a pretense is made of caring, perhaps, for "angels unawares," are run with the greatest saving of expense. They usually have a number of physically weak dependents who volunteer their services for an existence. While we were lined up in a room next to the eating place, we had prayer. As all the guests did not feel inclined to kneel, one of the religious attaches who seemed to regard it a religious duty to uphold the spirit of the institution demanded, "What is the matter with you fellows, can't you kneel?" This demand caused some back talk and probably would have ended in a rough house if at that moment the names of the worthy for breakfast had not been called. The breakfast consisted of luke-warm brown water, called coffee, and coarse bread, lacking in quality and quantity. A number of the men received nothing, and as we sat down before this prepared infusion of warm water, one of the volunteers looked straight at me and angrily said, "Say, can't you ask the blessing?" Before I could, with resentment, ask what for, a man opposite looked at the fellow and said: "Gwan, I'll put a lump on your thinker in a minute. Can't you see this feller ain't no mission stiff?" It was now six o'clock. I had just one hour before going to work. I realized that the annoyances I had contracted at this Rescue Hope Mission, which each moment seemed to increase with startling force and demand immediate action, must be gotten rid of. There was but one way open and that was the river. While hurriedly going there, I searched for some sort of vessel adequate to "boil up" with. Luckily I found a five gallon Standard Oil can, and reaching a secluded spot with available waste at hand for a fire, I hastily "boiled up." I also took a bath in the icy waters of the Ohio. Using my jeans for underclothing, and rolling in a bundle my now-purified wet garments, which in the rear of the business house where I had been engaged I hung on some boxes to dry, I entered, serene and smiling and started to work just as the clock struck seven. After working twelve long hours, which included time to eat two meals, I asked the manager if he would kindly advance me the seventy-one cents due for my day's work. "No, it is impossible," he said. "It is not our custom. We pay only when the week's work is done. If you have no place to sleep that is your affair, not ours." The reason the employer will not pay by the day is the same here as elsewhere,--because all working men are regarded as drinkers and they are fearful of losing the worker. I realized that I could not work without rest. Louisville offered such a privilege to no one without money, although I had become one of her army of toilers. I strolled down to the river thinking of my objective point, the government works below Memphis, which would afford me both shelter and food. I decided to reach there as soon as possible. The steamer, _Lucille Knowland_, running between Louisville and Evansville, was then loading freight and was scheduled to leave the next day at two P. M. Approaching a pompous, uniformed officer I asked if there was an opportunity for a man to work his way to Evansville. "I don't know," he replied, "Ask the cook." I left at once for the kitchen where I found a large, robust colored man,--the man I was looking for. In reply to my inquiry for the privilege of working my passage he kindly answered, "I think so, Jack. Come around at one o'clock to-morrow and see me." Going up the street I met another unlucky, a young man twenty-five years of age, a cabinet finisher by trade. We exchanged stories of woe, and unconsciously entered into a partnership of ideas for a resting place that night. While we sat on the stringer of a coal chute, a poor unfortunate victim of alcohol came drifting near. Overhearing our plans, he stopped and told us of a barber who was down and out when he first came to Louisville, and that he never refused an honest, homeless man the privilege of sleeping in a room in the rear of his shop. We followed the dissipated fellow's advice. After asking the barber for a night's resting place, he showed us the room. There were only a few old quilts on the floor, to be sure, but the place was very clean and a good shelter. When we awoke the next morning, the first words with which my companion greeted me were, "When I dropped to sleep last night, I almost wished I would never wake up. To-day is as yesterday,--the same uncertain struggle." Then he whistled a little and hopefully said, "But I may get work to-day." We parted, and I never saw him again. I left for my place of work. At one o'clock sharp I was on hand at the kitchen on the _Lucille Knowland_. The big cook took me and I was soon busily preparing vegetables for my passage. My day and a half of work I donated to the establishment I had just left. I have thought of writing them that they might use it as an advancement to some homeless man for a place to sleep for a week until he could draw his five dollars for seven days' work twelve hours a day. Just before the boat left, a negro boy, the second cook, appeared on the scene and I discovered that John Ray (that was the head cook's name) was not taking me because he needed me, but simply because he wanted to help me. When night came he spoke to one of the officers who gave me as fine a state room as there was in the officers' cabin. I fell asleep, but at midnight I was suddenly awakened by a black face thrust in at the door and a voice excitedly crying, "Get up! The boat is on fire!" In another instant I was out. I saw the darkies, with trousers in one hand and shoes in the other, scared speechless, skidding to the fore part of the boat. There was a fire down in the hold, but it was quickly extinguished without disturbing a passenger, and we of the crew were simply called to fight fire if necessary. I returned to my berth. It was the first time for many a night that I had enjoyed the comforts of a bed. I slept unruffled and refreshingly until morning. The second morning we were in Evansville, and as I left John Ray I took him by the hand and said, "John Ray, if I ever get to Heaven I will surely find you there, for Heaven is made up of hearts like yours!" In Evansville I got work with the hope of being able to save my railroad fare to Memphis but the pay was so meager I could scarcely exist. On the return of the man whose place I was temporarily filling, I found myself, one Sunday the last of October, almost broke and a long way from Memphis. As I was walking that day I met a young carpenter standing on a corner with all he possessed on this earth in a suitcase, and moneyless. He told me briefly his situation. He was married,--had a beautiful wife and a little golden-haired baby girl. But his wife--Ah, well, why go into details! _Circumstances_ made a tramp of him. That was enough. It was the old story of poverty, fatal to the American home. He was unable to get work in Evansville and was going on to Birmingham, Alabama, where he was sure of employment. He had spent the past night in an office chair, with the permission of the night clerk of a hotel. Several times he had dropped asleep and been awakened (although he was not on the street) by the police with insulting inquiries. I discovered that we were of the same mind in many things. He did not want to beat or steal from the railroad by riding a blind or a box car. Both of us wanted to work our way, if possible. He decided to peddle or pawn his suit case and clothes. Not being able to sell them, he was obliged to let a second-hand dealer have them for two dollars. Their value was fully thirty-five. We were directed two miles out of town to a place called Howe, where we might be able to catch a local freight, but we were disappointed in an opportunity to work for our passage. There was the great Ohio river, spanned by a ponderous iron bridge, miles long, which must be crossed, and as no one was allowed to walk this bridge, our only alternative was to steal a ride. Many trains passing through Howe were obliged to slow up and soon we were safely ensconced in a side-door Pullman and swinging far out on the mighty trestle of iron which arched the stream. I had broken my contract. We soon discovered that we were in a car which had been in a wreck and was probably on its way to the shops. The ponderous sides and great heavy roof were held up and in place temporarily by two-by-fours. After we crossed the bridge, the train seemingly attained a never-ending mile-a-minute speed, over cross roads, switches and springing piles. The roof and sides of the huge car would bend down and groan and tremble and swerve. We were positive that the next instant we would be crushed to death, from which there seemed absolutely no retreat. To have leaped from the fast-moving train among the rocks which lined the right of way, would have been fatal. So having nothing else to hang to, we hung to each other. This was the only available car. A submarine boat or an aeroplane was a life preserver compared to our vehicle. But a shrill, sharp whistle, coming at that time, was music. We were actually stopping. The train pulled out and left us at a water-tank, happy in our release. We might have been in Kansas for all we knew, but looking up and across the fields we saw a big house with a huge sign, "Whiskey Distillery." We knew we were still in Kentucky. A track man told us all trains stopped there, which was encouraging. It was now late in the day and there would be no more trains until morning. The track man told us of an inn not far away. We went there and spent the night. The next morning we found ourselves waiting at the track, broke, except that I had a nickel and the carpenter a dime. Soon a train swung into sight, and not having time to ask permission to work our way, we quickly boarded an empty gondola. It was a mixed train and we discovered that it was a freight which was very late. Immediately at the first station, we did not wait for the train crew to hunt us out and probably shovel us off, but leaping out, we ran ahead. Scarcely before either the crew or ourselves knew it, we were helping to carry sacks of oats, and what not, from a car into the station. The conductor looked at us curiously. When the work at that point was done, he said, "Come on back, boys, and ride in the caboose. No use of you fellers sitting out there in the cold." When dinner time came, the train crew shared with us their dinners, and so we worked along with hand and heart, laughing and singing, until ten o'clock found us in Princeton, Kentucky. While sitting in the depot, with no place to sleep, one of the station employees, kindly inclined and suspecting our position, said, "Boys, if you think of trying to spend the night here you had better not try it, for you are liable to be picked up. They arrested a bunch of out-of-work men here just the other night." We then crept up into the railroad yards, to a cheap, all-night lunch place where the owner kindly allowed us to lie down in a dark corner until morning. Then my pal decided to take another and a quicker route to Birmingham than the one I had planned, which was to go by way of Paducah. So we separated, he to find his desired train, I to find mine. I was told by a switchman that by walking out about a mile to the signal-tower I could catch a freight. What I did catch was a ponderous coal train, and mounting a gondola which was loaded with fine nut coal heaped up very high in the center, I was soon off. Custom had not filled me, as yet, with courage sufficient to ride the bumpers between the cars where the slightest accident meant instant death. I crawled on top of the coal and into a small vacuum in one corner which was caused by heaping the coal high in the center. I felt very comfortably fixed and everything worked smoothly up the long steep grade we were climbing until we began to descend. When we commenced plunging like a cyclone through woods and fields, down hills and hollows, I saw that the coal was fast shifting down, seeking its level and crowding me out of my pocket. I finally reached a point where I was hanging on to the corner of the car by my fingers and toes and feeling every moment that I would be dashed to the earth, for my strength was almost gone. Then we began to slow down. [Illustration: "_I Finally Reached a Point Where I Was Hanging on to the Corner of the Car by My Fingers and Toes_"] [Illustration: "_I Would Have Continued to Ride on the Top as Less Dangerous, if I had not been brutally forced on to the rods_"] When we reached the end of a thirty-mile run we stopped for water. I had about decided to walk to Memphis, but just then an old darkey came along with a span of mules hitched to the running gears of a wagon, who was going five miles on my way. I asked could I ride. "Sho' nuff, sho' nuff," was the answer, and we were soon astride the reach, exchanging black and white thoughts. Everything was serenely pleasant. The old darkey had just been praising his mules for the virtue of being reliable when an automobile hove into sight, coming directly toward us. Those mules jumped straight up in the air, plunged past the automobile, and with the swiftness of a scared wolf ran down the road to the first turn to the right, which they took in spite of the old darkey. In turning they tipped the skeleton of the wagon to such a degree that we were both spilled by the roadside. Luckily the earth was deep and soft, and we escaped injury except a few bruises, but it was a sudden parting of the ways. I caught a last glimpse of the old negro at the brow of the hill, on the run after the mules, just as I reached the railroad track, quite content to try walking again for awhile. I kept near to my beaten path, the railroad, and was told that five miles beyond was a point where all trains stopped. I discovered I could not walk much further. I was lame and sore and my shoes were worn out. I had now become, in the eyes of both the railroad and myself, a hardened criminal and could steal a ride without self-imputation. After walking what seemed to me a very long way I found myself exhausted. Having eaten nothing since the noon before, that which I had then being given me from the dinner pail of the railroad man, I felt the need of food. Seeing a large Kentucky farm house crowning a hill not far away, I approached it. Sitting on the wide piazza, in struggling rays of sunlight which played through golden autumn leaves and vines festooned with an aftermath of purple blossoms, sat an elderly gentleman whose very mien seemed bubbling over with good nature. Beside him sat his motherly-looking wife. "Will you give me the privilege of working for something to eat?" I asked. "Ma, can you give this hungry man something to eat?" But Ma was already up and half way to the kitchen. They gave me all I could eat and a nicely tied-up lunch, as they said, "for a time of need." When I had eaten I asked, "Now what can I do for you?" "I have nothing for you to do. You are very welcome. We are always glad to help a tired man. No one is ever turned away from the door of old Colonel Chandler's." Then, in response to a question of mine, he replied, "No; Ma, there, is the Christian side of the house. With me _it is just a spiritual law_, I guess." I caught a train of empty flat stone cars. Lying prone on one of these I rode five miles. We stopped. It was the terminal for that train, and a stopping place for all trains. I waited. In a short time another freight pulled in. From an empty box car came a familiar voice, "Hello!" I sought the voice and found it was my pal, the carpenter, who had not succeeded in going his way and so had decided to come mine. He was famished from hunger. The lunch from Colonel Chandler's was already needed to raise a man from the dust. "The time of need" had come. The night was upon us, and we were yet twenty-two miles from Paducah. We were suffering intensely from the cold, and while we waited for a relief train we built a fire by the track. No sooner had we done so than from out of the darkness somewhere we were joined by three other destitute men, bound our way. Immediately a train came in sight. It was made up mostly of oil tanks and the only possible way to ride, except on the rods and brake beams, was to lie flat down under one of the huge oil tanks and hang on. But it had rained somewhere and the rain had frozen as it fell. The train was covered with ice. The three other men took the advantage offered, regardless of all danger, but my pal and I, both novices, had not the courage, and as one of the men swung on, cognizant of our fear, he called out, "Oh, come on. You can't beat a train and be an old woman." I began to realize the physical courage necessary in the make-up and character of the man obliged to work and wander, to beat a railroad, braving dangers which from 1901 to 1905, inclusive, killed twenty-three thousand, nine hundred trespassers, and injured twenty-five thousand, two hundred and thirty-six, and each year shows no decrease. In this wonderful example of physical courage in these migratory workers, worthy of our deepest concern, we cannot help but catch the spirit of a greater courage in other workingmen--of one who freed four million slaves; of one who, nearly two thousand years ago, dared to enter the temple and cast out the thieves and the money-changers. We had not long to wait. A moment later my companion and I were hidden in a box car of a following train. After an hour's ride in the darkness, we found ourselves seeking in a strange city (Paducah, Kentucky), a place of rest. As we passed through the yards we saw a policeman striking matches or throwing bulls' eyes into empty cars, looking for such men as we were. [Illustration: _Riding a Standard Oil Car_] [Illustration: "_After Becoming Almost Helpless from Numbness by Coming in Contact with the Frozen Steel Shelf of the Car I Stood Up and Clung to the Tank Shielding My Face from the Storm_"] Aimlessly we wandered into the city. Just as the clock in the city hall tower was striking the hour of nine, we passed a window on which was lettered, "Charity Club Rest Room." The name looked good to us and we went in. A pleasant woman in charge told us she could not do anything then, but gave us a note to the police station, telling us that Captain Doran had a few beds for homeless men, and that we might also try the Salvation Army, telling us how to find it. We felt that it would be preferable to the jail, and after another two-mile walk we found the Army headquarters. We shouted, called, whistled, and even rattled the doors, but no response. That cry in the night was a familiar one to them. It had become common and the bruised in Paducah could go elsewhere--so far as they were concerned. Retracing our steps, we sought Police Headquarters. There was no other way. Our little note from the Charity Rest Room engendered a feeling of security, and we felt that, though helpless, we would not be committed to prison and the chain gang. The captain had no beds, but we were told to go into the police court room and lie on the benches. Broken, famished, exhausted, we lay down on the three-slat benches and were soon lost in a profound slumber from which we were only once disturbed when the chief of city detectives came in and turned on the lights, exercising what we supposed was his prerogative, and obliged us to tell him our pedigrees from Adam down. But we, undoubtedly, looked all right to him, for we were left to our rest until the sweepers came at five o'clock. The slats were cutting and hard. I awoke several times and in my wakeful moments heard the carpenter murmur the name of a little golden-haired baby girl, away up in a northern Indiana home. We left, unmolested. My pal was staked to a breakfast by a brother craftsman and told where he could find work in a nearby town. I cut wood for a good woman for half an hour with a stone hammer, for one of the best breakfasts cooked that morning in Paducah. She was the wife of a man who was employed in the railroad shops. Here the carpenter and I parted, not to meet again. He never learned my identity. I preferred river travel, if possible, and applied to the steamer _Dick Fowler_ for the privilege of working my way to Cairo, but was emphatically refused. The boat was due to leave. Deck fare was seventy-five cents, which I did not have. But I noticed a man,--apparently a business man of Paducah, who wore a fraternity badge of an order to which I belonged, in conference with the Captain. I showed my color in good standing and asked the loan of seventy-five cents. He gave me a dollar. Again I had broken my contract,--at least I had begged a loan. Reaching Cairo, I walked a mile to a point where without difficulty I could catch a freight on the I. C., bound south. But this freight train ran no farther than Fulton, a town a hundred and forty miles from Memphis. It was nine o'clock when I reached there, and was exceptionally cold for that time of the year. I still had the remaining quarter of my dollar. Although the demands of hunger were strong and I was so broken for rest, I decided in favor of a bed. I was told where I could find one for that price. It was a clean, comfortable, soft bed. In an instant I was lost in deep slumber and my aches and pains were being cured, my cares forgotten. Work even for breakfast was not to be had in Fulton, at least in all the places I had tried. I perhaps could stand it until reaching Memphis if I could get away quickly. Going out to a point where all trains would slow up, I found two negroes, waiting with the same object in view. Seated on the ground by a camp fire they were actually eating breakfast, consisting of some late corn, pretty old and tough, yet full of milk, which they had plucked from a nearby field and roasted on the bright coals. The moment I joined them, one inquired, "Yo'all had breakfast?" To my negative answer, he said, "Hep yo'sef, man." They had salt, and there and at that time it was the most refreshing green corn ever roasted. It satisfied me. I was ready to continue the battle. The weather grew colder. It began to spit snow. Presently a mixed freight train hove in sight and my black friends made a dash for the forward cars. I chose what seemed to be an empty gondola about midway of the train, but it proved to be about two-thirds full of Portland cement. After the train started the brakeman came back over the train and seeing me, asked, "Where are you going?" "To Memphis." "Got any money?" "No." "Well, you'll have to see the flagman then." "All right, at the first stop." "No, you will have to do it now." "I am not used to walking mixed freight trains in motion. I can't do it." "Yes, you can too." "You go to the devil." He passed on. I would not have run that train for ten thousand dollars. When we got full under way, I almost wished I had tried to do so for the ever-increasing wind caught the cement and hurled it into clouds of dust which enveloped me in a dense, fine powder, filling my eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Several times I was positive my respiration had ceased. It was with no small degree of joy, therefore, that I hailed the first stop. Whooping, coughing, sneezing, I got out of there and crept into an empty box car a little farther back. I congratulated myself on this shelter and good luck, when the flagman, who was on the lookout for me, stuck his head in the door saying, "Hello, old timer. Where are you going?" I thought I was a novice, and here I was being hailed as an old timer. My head swelled as big as a Superintendent of the Pullman Company. "I am going to Memphis if God and this traincrew will let me." "Have you any money?" "No." "Have you a card?" "No." "Well, you can't ride this train." The train was moving. "Let me ride to the next stop." "Well, if you do, you will get off in the woods." Half believing he meant it I leaped from the train. I did not have long to wait, for very soon another mixed train came thundering along. As it slacked up, the only advantage offered was another of the Standard Oil tank cars. However, it was not covered with ice. I crawled in under the huge tank, lay flat down on my belly, and hung on to the rods. As yet I had only made about twelve miles. As we sped on, I felt relieved that we were cutting down the miles. At the first stop, a voice greeted me. "Hello." It was one of my negro friends. He also had been ditched from the first train and had caught this one. His black pal was lost in the scuffle somewhere, and we did not see him again. Just as the negro spoke to me the conductor and brakeman came rushing up to the car. Just ahead of our tank car, was a carload of valuable horses. After looking them over, as they turned to go back, the conductor spied us, and with stress, shaded with oratory of brilliant hue, he ordered us off. Because the train was moving, however, he did not wait to see if we obeyed. At the next stop, I leaped from my position and began looking over the horses. Three of them were down. I immediately ran to the side of the right of way and getting a long reed began to prod them up. The darkey, seeing the crew coming, hid on the opposite side of the train. The conductor coming up said, "That's right. I wish you would keep your eye on those horses into Memphis," and I knew I was secure for a ride. "Where is that nigger?" asked the conductor with emphasis. "I don't know," was all I said. But I did know that he would be on the train as soon as it started, and he was. At the next stop, I said to him, "Get a rod and help me with the horses." This he did. There were four of them down, but before the conductor could get to us, we had them all up. He saw us at work and called from two car-lengths away, "Are they all right, boys?" "All right," we answered back. It was "boys" now, and I knew that the black, too, was safe. At nine o'clock, having been joined by three more white men, we finally rolled into Memphis. CHAPTER XXVII MEMPHIS--A CITY'S FAULT AND A NATION'S WRONG "_Society must necessarily look at these things because they are created by it._"--HUGO. On my arrival in Memphis I was greeted by a severe storm. Although chilled and almost starving my first desire was to secure my baggage, which I had sent on from Cleveland, and go to a hotel. But there were the conditions of the homeless and needy of Memphis to be studied. Under what more convincing and truthful conditions could I find need in Memphis for the erection and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home? So with renewed determination I decided to learn of what Memphis had to offer to the homeless, hungry worker. My brisk walk from the railroad yards to the heart of the city warmed my thoroughly-numbed body. I realized that I must have food. I was at my goal. Here was a chance to work for the government. I expected to be shipped on the first boat. I know my personal appearance was decidedly against me as I entered Memphis. Soiled, black, unshaven, unwashed, I felt certain of arrest if seen by the police. Entering several hotels I asked work for a meal, but was promptly denied. The good things glowed in the dining-room windows. People seated at tables were eating all and everything they wanted. Outside on the street, well-dressed people hurried on to their homes. Must I beg, after all? No. Here, too, it was against the city ordinance as well as against my contract. I decided to try one more place. I entered one of the largest restaurants and approaching the manager, I said, "I am hungry. Can I do something for you for a little to eat?" He looked me squarely in the eye with a merry twinkle in his own and said, "You look like the devil. Just drop in on a coal special?" "No, a Standard Oil," I answered. "Go back there," pointing toward the kitchen, "wash up, get some supper. My silver man has not shown up yet. If he does not, help them out in there." What a feast that supper, for which I worked half an hour! What the black cook did not give me was not in the restaurant. The silver man came, and I was again on the street. I was growing so weary and felt the need of sleep, but with a clean face and clean hands, and a brush up, I had the courage to ask a policeman where I could get a free bed. He replied, "In the jungles, or the jail. But I advise you not to go to the jail unless you have to." At last, because forced to do so, I applied at the Y. M. C. A. They could not think of giving a bath, meal or bed to a homeless man in their beautiful palace, but gave me a ticket to the Gospel Union Mission on Front Street. This was an old building partly destroyed by fire, which had been condemned by the city,--a place fairly reeking with filth, sewer gas, and vermin. The Y. M. C. A. of Memphis would have committed a more Christian act to have literally kicked me into the street or turned me over to the police. But what did they care? I had been gotten rid of and was no longer a concern of theirs. The old man at the Mission was reluctant to give me a bed for the night even with an order from the Y. M. C. A. He would so much, rather have had the ten cents. He told me I would have to saw wood the next morning for the privilege of sleeping there, which I did. Water was an unknown quantity, at least as far as a bath went, and no food was offered. The horrible experience I went through at the Hope Rescue Mission of Louisville did not exceed my experience in this awful place. In the morning I hurried to the Post Office expecting letters and money, but the letters had been delayed. I knew absolutely no one in Memphis. I went to the office of the government works to see about my shipment. The boat would not leave until the following day so I was forced to spend another night in Memphis. As there was no other place, I was obliged to spend that night in the jungles,--the dense woods and willows which line the river bank. I had to do this if I wished to see what it meant to be destitute in Memphis. I made my way to the jungle. I was not alone. There were six other destitute men there. Four of these men were skilled craftsmen, all were Americans. The other two were unskilled laborers, one a German, the other a Swede. During the wakeful moments of that long, cold night I learned from each of these men that the reasons for his being there were just and honorable. All of the men were on their way to work. None of them were over thirty years of age. Two were not yet twenty-one. They called each other "Pal." Four of the men had already received transportation on the steamboat _Kate Adams_, to leave on the next day for Walnut Bend, where they were to labor on the government works riprapping the river banks with willows. They were to receive a dollar and twenty-five cents a day with board if they remained over a week on the job. If not, they were to receive but one dollar a day for ten hours' work. The German and the Swede were on their way to a railroad camp where work awaited them. Because they had no transportation they were compelled to work or beat their way to their destination. Two of these men had just money enough for a meager breakfast. It was a question in their minds whether to go without the breakfast or a bed. They decided to deny themselves the latter. The others were penniless and had to win their breakfasts in some way or continue to starve. They were all comfortably clothed. The Swede's suit seemed a particularly good one, but in the approaching daylight it was discovered that, while lying too near the fire, he had burned out one side of his coat and one trouser leg. Noticing this he remarked, "Well, boys I must sneak out of town unseen, in a hurry, for if the police see me now they will arrest me without question." He and others expressed a fear that I also felt all through that awful night--the fear of the Memphis police. I decided to postpone my study of the government works. A week later I met one of the "pals." He told me the food down on the government works was good, for coarse food, and there was plenty of it, but the sleeping accommodations were extremely bad. "I would have stayed," he said, "although the work was such that I wore out clothes faster than my wages would replace them, but the water made me ill. Then, too, I saw a man drowned. After that I didn't care to stay." Explaining the tragedy, he said, "You see it was this way. We were working with the willows from a barge in the river. The boy lost his balance and fell into the stream. The treacherous current instantly swept him from the barge. He tried to swim back. God! I never saw such a trial of strength for life. With the strong Indian overstroke, the muscles stood out on his arms and neck like cords of rope, wrought to such a tension it seemed as if the slightest blow would have snapped them like glass. But the look of anguish on his face! If I could only forget that! Almost exhausted, and seeing that his efforts to reach the barge were in vain, he turned to swim down stream and toward the shore, but a whirlpool caught him. For an instant he raised his calloused hands above his head, and then--all was over. No sooner had he disappeared than the boss demanded, with a violent oath, 'Bring on the willows.'" "Were there no means of rescue provided for such an emergency?" I asked in horror. His answer was nothing but the mention of the existence of so much red tape that a boat could not be provided which might possibly have saved that young man's life. The man was so visibly affected while relating the incident that I was led to inquire the cause. He replied, as he abruptly left me, "He was our pal that night in the jungles--my pal." After hearing of this tragedy, I definitely decided not to go at all to the government works. So filled was I with the obvious neglect by the city of Memphis of its toilers, I decided to tell the people of that city something of their thoughtlessness towards their homeless and needy workers, for whom they failed to provide food and shelter. So I called on the mayor and other influential citizens, telling them of my experiences and appealing to them to make a Municipal Emergency Home possible. All were in hearty sympathy with me. On invitation I met the City Club, an organization made up of the progressive business men of the city. Following my appeal to them, a Municipal Emergency Home Committee was appointed. Leaving Memphis I went on to Birmingham, Alabama, that wonderfully active city, which because of its industries calls thousands of workingmen annually within its gate. My first effort here for the worker without the dime was to try to get medical treatment. Finding the dispensary closed at nine A. M., I was told it was open only one hour in the day, from twelve to one o'clock. The same conditions existed here in regard to the private charities as existed in other cities. Late in the afternoon I met a bricklayer, who told me in a casual way that a few weeks before, he had reached Birmingham, broke, and had been taken care of in a "speak easy" near the Louisville and Nashville Depot, which is filled with evil men and women. I had given him the impression that I was down and out. "They'll treat you right there," he said. "It is the only place I know of. Go there." Then he added, "I'll bet you're hungry," and as he left he offered me a quarter. Later in the evening, while I stood on a downtown corner, a well-dressed, intelligent-looking man slapped me on the shoulder and said, "Beg pardon. Are you a railroad man?" "In a way," I replied. "Can you direct me to the round-house?" "No. What is the matter, want a place to sleep?" "That is just it. Here is my union card. I happened to hit town broke. Don't know a soul, and don't know any of the boys. I know I could spend the night at the round-house, if I could find it." Even here the jail denied shelter and the Salvation Army had nothing to offer a penniless man. I felt my going to Birmingham was at an opportune time as the Alabama Federation of Women's Clubs was in convention, and a beautiful, gracious lady, their State President, Mrs. Ferris Columan, kindly granted me a hearing. When I left I was conscious of the fact that I left a thought which would be carried to a great many of the kind hearts of Alabama. I went on down to Mobile, then to New Orleans. Wherever I went, all through the South, I heard the cry in the night of cruel abuse and neglect of the wage-slave just as I heard it all through the North. I saw the blood drops of the peon, the broken, bruised and lacerated bodies of human beings leased from the prison to the convict camp. I heard the unceasing cry of woe from stone walls and iron bars, the mad shrieks from dungeon cells and torture chambers and the terror-striking bay of the bloodhound. While what I have written of will remain an incurable wound, when I carried the message of progress, of justice and love, a plea for an institution for labor, for health, and for brotherly care, into the labor councils, the progressive Business Men's Union, composed of three hundred citizens, and the Women's Clubs (especially the Era Club), the intense interest shown by all of these for the oppressed heralds an illumined page in history and bespeaks a glorious victory for the South. CHAPTER XXVIII HOUSTON--THE CHURCH AND THE CITY'S SIN AGAINST SOCIETY "_Do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger._"--JEREMIAH, 22: 3. The weather was bright and cold when I reached Texas. As I walked the streets of Houston I noticed that the police glanced at me suspiciously. Several of them, by their looks, seemed to be weighing my worth. After my arrival in this city, from morning until night I walked its streets in search of work, until compelled by the shadows of the night to seek a free place to rest. During all my earnest endeavors that day the only opportunity for work came from a labor solicitor offering me a dollar a day and board to work ten hours a day in the woods. [Illustration: _A Sick and Homeless Boy with His Dog on Guard. He is Sleeping on a Bed of Refuse Thrown from a Stable, with an Old Man Lying near Him_] "How do they feed you?" I asked. "As good as in any camp." (I knew all that meant.) "What are the sleeping accommodations like?" "Well, it is a new camp, and, of course, they are not the best." "What is the fare to the camp?" "Five dollars." "Do you pay the fare there?" "No, but we advance it to you and take it out of your pay." "Is my pay assured when my work is done?" "Oh, yes. You will be working for a mighty big corporation of Chicago, worth millions of dollars." "But when I reach there I am five dollars in debt to you. Suppose that I did not want to stay, or that I couldn't stand the work, or that I might be taken ill, or that there should be some reasons why I could not work, my only bond is my body, what then?" His face flushed. "I suppose I could run away if I had the strength," I continued, "and if I did, what then?" The already flushed face turned scarlet. "My friend," I said, "for a mere pittance and a subsistence that you cannot recommend, you would make of me and these other destitute laborers a peon with all the wicked evils of that slavery. Being a workingman yourself is the only excuse to be given you for filling the position as solicitor for human lives." After several futile efforts to secure work on the following day, I was advised by all institutions which stood supposedly to help the destitute in Houston to the "Star of Hope Mission." It was after ten o'clock when I arrived there and as I entered I noticed several exceedingly well-groomed, well-dressed and well-fed men who looked as though they were getting about six square meals a day. Innocent of who they were and why they were there, I stepped up to an attendant at the desk, saying, "Would you give a man who is broke a bed?" Absolutely and purposely ignoring me, the man, in a gloating voice and obtrusive manner, turned to one of these men in evidence, who proved to be one William Kessler, Chief of City Detectives, and said, "Here is a man who wants us to give him a free bed." Immediately this officer, within "this temple of peace, love and hope," began one of those brutal, harsh inquisitions for which the police forces of our nation are well-known and which they seem to think is their prerogative. Such an illegal examination, brutally conducted, covers the helpless and innocent with the awful shadow of fear fathered by the suspicion of cruel abuse, and the victims of such gross assault, in their loneliness, beyond all help, are forced to appear guilty of something when they are not. This "guardian of the peace" of Houston, in a most overbearing manner asked me: "Where are you from?" "From New York," I replied. "What do you do for a living?" "I work," was my answer. "What kind of work do you do?" "I do any kind of work I can get to do to make an honest living," I answered. At this point of our conversation I turned my back to leave him, when he loudly called to a subordinate and said, "Arrest that man." Instantly a rough hand was upon my shoulder. I demanded of the man, "Why do you arrest me? I have done no wrong." But my appeal for release was absolutely ignored. I resolved not to reveal my identity to anyone, and was taken half a block down the street, where a patrol wagon was waiting, in which were seated seven other unfortunate, homeless men like myself. Remember, the patrol wagon was waiting for me a half block away from the "Star of Hope Mission"! Why? Because it was so much more respectable than to have it waiting for the victims of the Mission in front of its door. After I had been forced into the wagon, while it passed the bright street lamps I studied the faces of my unlucky companions in crime. All these young fellows were between the ages of eighteen and thirty-three and were skilled workers. As I looked upon them I immediately recognized one of them as a young fellow to whom I had spoken that afternoon while looking for work. He, also, was in the same condition that I was in, stranded and homeless. He told me the police, that very day, ordered him out of town but because of his ill health he was unable to walk. He also said that he was afraid to risk going into the railroad yards to get a freight, as the police were liable to arrest him, so as the night was very cold, fearing with his poor health that it might be fatal if he should sleep outdoors, he finally decided to go to the "Star of Hope Mission," where, as a sick man, instead of being given relief and shelter, he was thrown into prison. Arriving at the jail, we were immediately searched. While the night captain took my record, I told him that I was there, not because of having committed any crime, or as a political critic, but simply to study the conditions of the unemployed in the city; to study the chances of an honest workingman, temporarily out of work and without means to get the necessaries of life in Houston. Having never heard of me, the Captain gave me an audible smile of suspicion and ordered me thrown into the bull-pen, a dungeon of almost utter darkness. The docket of the Houston City Jail for the night of November 28, 1910, has the names of eight victims of the "Star of Hope Mission," including myself. They were all run in by the Mission because they were unfortunate enough to be without a night's resting-place, and had appealed to this so-called Christian institution, maintained supposedly for the express purpose of sheltering homeless boys and men. While in jail I interviewed most of my fellow victims, and learned that not one of them had ever been in jail before. The torture of their humility was clear to me, for while speaking to them, they continually reverted to kind parents and a loving home. We were all sitting or lying down on the stone floor, as there was no other accommodation. While all of them were gloomily silent, I remarked: "Well, cheer up boys, this is not so bad. It might be worse." One of them quickly answered, "You're right, Mister. I hope they won't let us out until morning for I have no place to go." Then I said, "Supposing we were in a condemned prisoner's cell and were to be put to death to-morrow," and one of them quickly replied, "I wouldn't care if we were for I have nothing to live for anyway." During this interval of imprisonment a local newspaper man who learned of my being in the bull-pen, came at once to the dungeon and called me. I sprang to the steel barred door of this Houston hell, into which the "Star of Hope," aided by the Houston police force, had thrown us, and said, "Here. What will you?" The rays of a dim light revealed my face to the reporter, who asked me, "Are you Edwin A. Brown?" At the same time he pulled out of his pocket a New Orleans newspaper which had published a short time before a counterfeit presentment. While glancing at the likeness, he remarked, "You are the man all right." "When did you get into town? We have been looking for you for a week." I replied, "I got into town this morning and into jail this evening." (The New Orleans paper stated that I was going to Houston.) "Don't worry. We'll have you out of here in a few minutes." True to his word I was soon a free man and on my way with the journalist to the office of the Houston _Post_. After the interview, I left for my hotel, where, after the luxury of a refreshing bath, on a soft, snowy bed, I lay down to rest but not to sleep for while my body rested, my thoughts were back in that wicked cell with those of my countrymen who saw no future and to whom life held no meaning. Not until the dawn of another glorious Texas day, a symbol of the light glowing in the great hearts of the good people of Houston and of Texas, did I fall asleep. The next morning the Houston _Post_ carried a startling story on the arrest of the victims of the "Star of Hope Mission," supplemented by the interview I had given, portraying Houston's care for its homeless unemployed. The startling exposures made by the Houston press on existing conditions were followed by my talk before the Conference of State Charities then in session, and brought forth a volume of articles in the various local papers, teeming with apologies for the inexcusable conduct of the "Star of Hope Mission" and the police system of that city. CHAPTER XXIX SAN ANTONIO--WHOSE VERY NAME IS MUSIC "_If mankind showed half as much love to each other as when one dies or goes away, what a different world this would be._"--AUERBACH. I carried away in memory from San Antonio two pictures,--one of a beautiful, quaint old city, rich in historical lore; a city of winter sunshine, palms and flowers which make it truly "a stranger's haven"; a picture of welcome and a spirit of kindness even to the homeless unemployed of which I caught glimpses during my brief sojourn in that city, though covered by thoughtlessness for their care of them. The other picture is of the fifty destitute, homeless men I came in contact with during the few days I spent in San Antonio. I found all but two anxious and looking for work. These two, like many a rich man's son I know, impressed me that they would die before they would work. They seemed to have lost all self-respect and had no compunction in begging a meal or a bed. One was a drinker and the other had a mad passion for reading anything and everything, yet even from these I frequently heard the expression, "I wish I had a job." There are, of course, the regulars, chained by habits of vice, on whom the police can put their hands at any time. I know them at a moment's glance. It was not these poor unfortunates I came to San Antonio to study, but the itinerant workers who are lured from their dull towns to new and undeveloped centers of activity, believing work and high wages await them. It was Saturday morning. While strolling down West Commerce Street, I met a young man in overalls, with jumper tucked under one arm. I greeted him: "Hello, Jack! Can you tell a fellow where he can find a job?" He looked at me with a laughing twinkle in his eye and answered, "I have nothing like that up my sleeve. I wish I had, and if I could, I would share it with you, pal. I am dead broke, too, and," he continued, "this is my birthday. I am twenty-one to-day. God, but I feel wretched and dirty! I slept in a freight car last night in the I. & G. N. yards but it was a broken rest. The floor was hard and I was as cold as the devil, and then, too, a fellow can't sleep much when he is fearful that at any moment a railroad or a city bull is going to put his hand upon him." I then asked if he had yet breakfasted, and he answered, "No. I have not eaten since yesterday morning." Making a trivial excuse, confessing I possessed a little money, we went to breakfast. As we sat down I picked up the morning paper, and he said at once, "Look at the want ads." The only thing offered that morning was by a man in the Riverside Building who wanted ten grubbers. "Let's look it up," I said. "All right," he replied. "I can grub, and I'll do anything." We left for the place. The man was paying ten dollars an acre to men to grub his land, but the agent believed the work was all done. From the manner of the official in charge we fancied we were not of the right color or kind of men for the work. As we came out of the Riverside Building the young man said, "I would give a thousand dollars if I had it, for a bath and a shave." "Why don't you go to the public bath?" I asked. I wish all San Antonio could have seen the look of anticipated pleasure on that boy's face when he asked eagerly, "Where is it?" and the look of disappointment which replaced it when I said, "They haven't any here. But," I said, "you can get a free shave at the barber's college." He went there at once and got his shave. When he came out of the barber's college, I said, "Let's go to the Y. M. C. A. They, perhaps, will give us a free bath." "Where is that?" he asked. "It is a rich man's club, isn't it? I don't believe they want hoboes like us there." I answered, "No; it is a 'Christian institution,' and they are supposed to stand for just this very thing--to help young men who want to help themselves." We went to the Y. M. C. A. and when we reached the foot of the stairs I said to my companion, "You go up and ask them." "No," he said, "I can't do it. Why, it cut me even to ask for a free shave where I knew they wanted me." I then said, "Let us go up together." Shyly he followed. I approached the attendant at the desk and asked for a free bath. At first he told me decidedly that their baths were for members only. Then he asked me if I was a member of any organization. I replied I was not, and as I turned to leave he said, "I will make an exception this time, but it is not our custom. Do you want one or two?" I said, "But one. This young man with me wants it." The attendant gave him a towel and the young man went to his bath. But we were given to understand, in a decisive manner, that we were not welcome and not wanted. _The bath thus given my companion was the first gratuity ever granted me, in all my wanderings, by the Y. M. C. A._ The first remark the young man made after coming from the bath was, "I feel so good, I think I could go without eating for a week." Turning to me abruptly he said, "I tell you, Jack, I can't beg or steal, and I'm not going hungry or bedless another day." I suggested the Associated Charities. "They might possibly help us." "That would be begging, wouldn't it? Besides, that place is for sick men, isn't it? I am not sick. No! I am going into the navy. Let us go over to the Post Office, to the United States Marine Office, and see what they have to offer." Although he was a young man, a graduate of the grammar school, a perfect type of physical manhood, straight as a poplar, five feet eleven inches in height and weighing a hundred and eighty pounds, he could not get in, and was referred to Fort Sam Houston for enlistment. As we left he said, "I am going to ask the first soldier I see about going in. He probably will give me twenty-five cents for a meal and tell me to keep out of the goldarn place." He continued, though, in a decided manner, "I am going into the army,--not because I want to, but because there seems to be no other immediate opportunity offered." And so we parted, he to enter the army, I to be left alone with my thoughts. Two-thirds of our army to-day is made up of boys who are forced into it. It is the volunteer who makes a good soldier, but these boys are not volunteers--with them it is compulsory. Monday morning I went to the army post to see if the boy had done what he said he was going to do. I found him there a soldier, giving three of the best years of his life for sixteen dollars a month, instead of receiving the privilege of labor by being temporarily cared for in a Municipal Emergency Home until he could help himself. And, now, I will portray briefly the story of "The young man with the hoe," who made his way into southern Texas. He was penniless, and was arrested on the Frisco line because he was discovered riding a freight train. He told me how he was given thirty days in a Texas convict camp, and how they nearly killed him there for being charged with trespassing on the property of the railroad company. I somehow felt that the convict camp had almost killed the best within him, for he remarked as we were strolling down the street toward our destination, "I have a nice gun on me. I think I will pawn it, because if a fellow has a gun on him and has nothing to eat nor any place to sleep he is liable to do something he will be sorry for." He took his gun into a pawnshop and left it there for thirty-five cents. These are but two incidents showing how badly this city needs a Municipal Emergency Home. There are two-score others that sadden me as I think of them. What a beautiful thing it would be for San Antonio to be one of the first cities in the South to build a home! Leaving San Antonio on my way to Dallas, I stopped for a short time in Austin where the Texas Legislature was in session. During my investigations I have never seen a public notice, in the press or elsewhere, guiding a destitute person to the Associated Charities or publicly offering aid, until I came to Austin. Here I saw just one such notice. It was not at the depot nor at any employment office nor at the emergency hospital, nor at the prison door. It was plastered up in the office of a first-class hotel which at that time was headquarters for the assembled lawmakers of the State of Texas. Well, perhaps, that body of estimable gentlemen did need a little charity. The spirit of power, energy and enterprise has been breathed into the city of Dallas, with all its youth, strength and progress. There is not an old-fashioned thing about her. She fairly flows with the present. The things most in evidence in this city are new thoughts, new ways, new things. Realizing the spirit of the era, her badge of honor, her insignia should be "Just Now," covering two meanings. _Just_ (in the spirit of justice) "disposed to render to each man his due"; _Now,_ "in the least possible time." When I told the people of Dallas that their beautiful public library of fifteen thousand volumes could afford to have on file for public use only one daily paper and that I had seen a dozen men and boys waiting their turn to read the "want ads"; that the Salvation Army had turned many back into the street because they had no money; that a private employment office was robbing men and boys; that I had found a sixteen-year-old, starving boy in the city forced to beg or steal, who declared that the Associated Charities of New York had shipped seventeen of them from the Orphan Asylums through to Dallas and turned them adrift in the western country and that the Salvation Army absolutely refused to give them aid; of a mother with five little children, one a babe in arms, who spent thirty-six hours in a vacant, old storeroom which was absolutely barren, while the husband looked for work; of the suffering of the many toilers in Dallas walking the streets all night, seeking shelter under death-dealing conditions, and that none of these seemed to know that there was in existence such a thing as organized charity in Dallas, and that many of them, even had they known it, would have taken the chances of starvation rather than to have asked alms, no matter how kindly disposed Dallas charity organizations might be toward them,--they listened with deep interest. Houston, San Antonio and Dallas received my counsel, not in the spirit of criticism, but as a message holding a great truth, a message containing facts which must be regarded in acts that will reward themselves twofold in the still newer Houston, San Antonio and Dallas,--cities which every day are stirring into new industrial activity the northern hills of the "Lone Star" State. CHAPTER XXX MILWAUKEE--WILL THE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCIALISM END POVERTY? "_Politics rests on necessary foundations, and cannot be treated with levity._"--EMERSON. Following Christmas day, December 26, 1911, just at the beginning of the most bitterly cold winter weather our country had known for a great many years, I went to Milwaukee. The city was in the last few months of a Socialist Administration. I wanted to see what it meant to the working classes and especially to that class I was deeply interested in,-- the homeless workingman, and at times the destitute, homeless workingman. There were three of our important cities, which, because of their national prominence in social progress, I felt would add a climax to my investigations: "Socialist" Milwaukee; "The Golden Rule" City of Toledo; and "Spotless" Detroit. It was twenty degrees below zero when I arrived at Milwaukee and this extremely cold weather heralded the speedy gathering of the ice crop. In this city there were four thousand unemployed homeless men, fully one-fourth of them destitute, begging, thieving, sleeping on the floors of the cheaper saloons, seeking all of those available places that would possibly keep aflame the spark of life, in addition to those finding shelter in the Milwaukee Rescue Mission. In three days the ice crop was made and in four days' time thirty-five hundred of these men were on the ice. The five hundred who did not go were too old, physically weak, or had not sufficient clothing. Many of those who did go, in the condition they were in, froze their faces, ears, hands and feet and from exposure were forced into the hospitals and some into their graves. The wages paid by the ice company was a dollar and seventy-five cents per day, from which the worker paid five dollars per week for board. It is not necessary to refer again to the days of work. For many reasons, the laborer is forced to lose time during the week,--yet the board must be paid. The weather continued extremely cold for many weeks. I found the Milwaukee Rescue Mission incomplete and inadequate. In this bitter cold I was denied admission to the institution by reason of its being overcrowded, and, also, because its doors were locked at ten-thirty P. M. Late one afternoon I entered its waiting-room, a long narrow room, near the entrance. It was filled to suffocation with homeless men. I, with many others, was denied the privilege of working for shelter and food. Too many had already applied. I was not to be denied a bountiful five- or ten-cent meal providing I had the price. I heard an old man of sixty-five abused and denied a second cup of coffee. Divine worship, however, was free and while I waited in the packed room for that hour I read these inscriptions on the wall: "Any man caught in the Act, will have cause to wish he hadn't done it." "Even a moderate drinker will be denied lodging." "Whenever you smoke a cigarette, you may say, 'Nearer my God to Thee.'" "Keep your I's on the spotter for he is watching you." Smoking was absolutely forbidden, yet no smoking-room provided. Spitting on the floor was breaking a castiron rule, yet not a cuspidor was provided for that use. The hour for worship came and on the instant the lights were suddenly turned out. As we stumbled over the benches and chairs, as well as over one another trying to get out, a man told us emphatically "to go in to worship [in a very large audience room, which had stood empty while we were packed in the small one] or get out." The religion or the mode of worship of many of these men was not after their way, but that made no difference. As the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees below zero that night, it was not a very comfortable experience for the half-clothed men who were forced to walk the streets in search of other shelter. I followed them out to see where they went, and just as I was leaving I recalled the last motto I had read before the darkness was forced upon us: "No law but love, no creed but Christ." Most of the men who sought other shelter went to the saloons and by the big red-hot stoves kept from perishing. Others went to the tramway station or the depots, or the offices of the cheap lodging houses. In one of the Milwaukee daily papers January 2, 1912, I read: "The first man to be sent to the house of correction this year was John L----, sentenced in the District Court yesterday to a term of ninety days. He was begging on Grand Avenue, Sunday night." The spirit shown in the Milwaukee Rescue Mission, as revealed to me, was not Christian. The heart of the superintendent of this institution may be in the right place--I did not meet the gentleman--but the hearts of his subordinates (at least those I came in contact with), and the spirit of the institution were not. I heard men in the Police Court of Milwaukee beg of the Judge to be sent to the House of Correction as a relief from suffering during the bitter cold winter. This, my exposition of the condition of the unemployed homeless of Milwaukee, should not be regarded as a criticism on Socialism, although the latter failed in its care and treatment of their unemployed. There are many excuses to offer. An old, rotten political and social system, four thousand years old, could not be reconstructed in a moment's time. Bound by City and State Charters and a netted tangle of City and State laws, it was impossible for the administration to carry out the fundamental principles of Socialism. That brief Socialist administration was more one of theory than of practical interest, although the Fire and Police Departments were not out of control of the administration except in matters of salary. The good intent of the policies of the administration are reflected in many permissive bills which went to the Legislature, in most cases to remain. Among them are bills providing for: Men dealing in ice; Unequivocal right to construct Municipal Lodging Houses and Tenements; Public Comfort Stations; An act through to build parks. A municipal lighting plant was planned at this time and municipal markets. The unified press was against this administration, which taking all in all, it would not be fair to regard as a comprehensive example of Socialism, though I may well add that during it taxes were not raised. At that time Milwaukee had the lowest tax rate of any large American city. CHAPTER XXXI TOLEDO--THE "GOLDEN RULE" CITY "_One of the common people (as Lincoln once humorously said) God must have loved because he made so many._"--BRAND WHITLOCK. Among the things that I found in the "Golden Rule City" of Toledo were these: Four National banks, fourteen State banks, savings banks and trust companies, whose combined resources were over sixty millions. A splendid McKinley Monument built by popular subscription which was completed in one day. A three hundred and fifty thousand dollar Y. M. C. A. A two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollar Y. W. C. A. A one hundred thousand dollar Newsboys' Building. (How essential is the conservation of the Newsboy! When he is no longer small enough to be a newsboy and must do the work of an able-bodied man, what then?) A four hundred thousand dollar Marble Art Museum. (The cost given does not include the value of the collection.) Finest Municipal golf course in the world. A Municipal Zoölogical Garden which is a wonder, the animals being housed, fed and sheltered at great cost. Toledo has also an old ramshackle of a building, which ought to be condemned, called again by that pretty name which has become so popular with federated charities, "The Wayfarer's Lodge." I made one attempt to stop there but it was closed. Its closing hour was eight-thirty P. M. But I caught its spirit, which was a little worse than the Milwaukee Rescue Mission to the homeless man, when I was politely, or rather impolitely, given to understand that in that most bitter cold weather even, I was not welcome to warm myself by the old stove. I was told by a starving boy that the food given for one and a half or two hours' work was the usual three different concoctions of water, and to look at the old inadequate den from the exterior was enough. This wretched place accommodates only fifty men, when every night during that bitter winter there were from three to five hundred on the streets of Toledo who had no place to lay their heads. Just across the Maumee river, in East Toledo, is an old frame police station where I found a hundred and twenty-five men trying to sleep nightly on the floor. A little way from there, fifty were sleeping on the floor of a Mission, with newspapers for beds. Each lodger was taxed five cents for that privilege. In this "Golden Rule City," I found many men who had served time in the jails for the crime of poverty. I was told by a citizen at the time of my visit that three hundred men from one of their prisons were compelled to put up ice for the city of Toledo, receiving no recompense for their work but a cell and prison fare,--slavery more damnable than ever cursed the South. These were then pushed out on to the world again to become mendicants and criminals. Facts calling for prison reform as told in romances carry a great weight for good, but enforced reform is what is demanded of us to-day. Let us not be slow to act. I have told of the many things I found in "The Golden Rule City of Opportunities." Let me tell of a few things I did _not_ find,--things which might give an opportunity to those who come and are willing and must work: Municipal Emergency Home. Emergency Hospital. Convalescent Hospital. Public Bath. Municipal Laundry. Municipal work for the unemployed at standard wages. Public Lavatories. Public Comfort Stations. It may not be the fault of the progressive people of Toledo that they have not these beatitudes. Like Milwaukee, they too may be bound by a knotty web of State and City laws, which must be overcome before the people can really testify in action to what they really profess. CHAPTER XXXII SPOTLESS DETROIT "_How many things shudder beneath the mighty breath of night._"--HUGO. In the midst of the desperate winter of 1911 and '12 I passed a week among the homeless of Detroit. During my brief stay, there appeared in one of the daily papers the following notice, and a number of similar ones: "Charles Heague, thirty-six, no home, was picked up in the street after midnight by Patrolmen Wagner and Coats. Both hands were frozen." As in other cities, during the five long months of winter there is in Detroit a vast army of out-of-work, homeless, starving men. Detroit has many benevolent and charitable institutions, which, no doubt, are doing a great deal of good. But the ones I came in contact with were imperfect and do not serve their purpose. The McGregor Mission, which shelters thousands of homeless men annually, is one of the best, if not the best, in our nation. The spirit of kindness in evidence was remarkable with but few exceptions, of which the most important was that its doors were closed at ten P. M. Also I saw twenty men and boys, early one Sunday morning, driven out of this Mission when the mercury was far below zero, and not allowed to return for two hours. Being Sunday, the saloons and other places of business, as well as the other Missions, were closed. These half-clad men were forced to remain on the streets. Their suffering was pitiful. The McGregor Mission was decidedly inadequate for the vast army of homeless workers in Detroit at that time. Here, also, men were seeking every available place to sleep and many, for doing so, were thrust into jail. The most noticeable feature of the incompleteness of this institution was the lack of a department for women. One of the most startling examples of maladjustment in Detroit was the Michigan Free Employment Bureau, located in an old decaying building, with window lights broken out of both door and window-sash. The floor being much below the level of the ground, each comer carried in the snow and filth, which soon melted into an icy slush. Think of it! Two hundred homeless men, willing to work for a mere pittance, for an existence, crowded into a congested room--which did not hold nearly all of the applicants--many of them with broken shoes and sockless feet standing in ice water for hours while they waited and hoped! As a contrast to this object lesson, let me relate another. The following Sunday afternoon I mingled with an audience of two thousand people listening to a religious agitator who declared he _must_ raise four thousand dollars at once for a Mission,--a Mission which after a service of song and prayer let starving, homeless men freeze to death on the street! In thirty minutes he raised thirty-five hundred dollars. On another afternoon a man, with pathetic words and appealing pictures, was soliciting money for the lepers in India. To my question, "Are not these unfortunates subjects of the British Crown, and being so are there no appropriations made for their care by the English government?" the speaker answered, "Yes; but so little, it is very inefficient." It was then brought to his mind that Great Britain had recently spent several million pounds to crown a king and that this being the case, was it not rather inconsistent of them to ask people of other nations to help care for their sick? To which the gentleman could only reply by suggesting a harmony of opinion! One of Detroit's daily papers misquoted me by saying: "I found scores of mental defectives among the homeless workers roaming the streets of Detroit." Only two actually came under my notice who could properly be classed as mentally unbalanced. But after all I had seen, I fell to wondering if there were not a slight degree of mental deficiency in the minds of those who contribute to visionary institutions--which may perhaps have their good qualities--and to foreign lands, while at our very door, day after day, we hear the cry of the suffering, toiling American citizens who need our gifts. * * * * * With my visit to "Spotless" Detroit, my wanderings ceased. To-day I sit in my own home. In the closet of my study hangs a suit of wornout jeans. A pair of coarse, badly-worn shoes lie on the floor. On a hook hangs a tattered hat which I may never wear again. These things hold for me a thousand sermons and a philosophy which if it could but be revealed would be as deep and beautiful as any that has ever been spoken. My arduous trials are over, but my work is not done. As long as an opportunity presents itself, as long as the breath of life is within me, I shall lift my voice in behalf of the oppressed, and our cry against laws and customs that decree damnation, against hells and influences which block progress toward a divine destiny, until our beloved Stars and Stripes, the emblem of liberty, peace and justice, which by greed, lust of gold and false ambitions have been so cruelly and pitilessly destroyed, shall speak again of union,--of union in our States, in the brotherhood of man, in the golden rule of Christ, in the love of God. CHAPTER XXXIII CONCLUSION "_The greatest city is that which has the greatest men and women. If it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the world._"--WALT WHITMAN. As I put aside my pen in this my appeal for the Wandering Citizen, I see on my study table many letters, filled with questions. The following are the most frequently asked: "Is not drink the principal cause of destitution?" "Is the American police system brutal toward the homeless out-of-work man?" "What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?" Drink is not the primal cause of poverty. The first and all-important cause is industrial conditions. But the traffic in alcohol is the most powerful ally of our plutocratic industrial system--in perpetuating poverty. Despondent men drink for relief from self-consciousness, starving men for stimulation, while circumstances, fate, or the vicissitudes of life prompt many to resort to drink. The man who works ten hours a day on a meager midday lunch of bread and cheese, must drink to beat out the day, and when the day is done, do you wonder that he seeks a stimulant? The comfortable, well-to-do, honest middle class drink but little, and if at all, very moderately. The world's main consumers of alcohol are--the very poor for forgetfulness, the idle rich for pleasure. Broken hearts are found both in the palace and hovel. The saloon, that dissolvent of self-respect, character and chastity, mocking the intelligence of every community, leaving its trace and putting a brand of shame upon this our boasted enlightened era, we may not believe in as an institution. And yet, this same saloon is a refuge meaning as much to the wandering, homeless wage-earner, as did, in the old days, the shelter of the good monks to the storm-lost wanderer of the Alps, and until each city is honorable enough to give to the homeless poor man something in place of the saloon, it certainly ought not to be mean enough to take from him that agent of life-saving sustenance. One of the most brilliant newspaper writers that I met in my crusade told me that while down-and-out in Portland, Oregon, he lived for one week on what he snatched from the free lunch counter. In many places they have forced from the saloon the free lunch, the rest chairs, the tables and papers. They demand that they close at midnight or earlier, and all day Sunday. Take notice, where they are doing this, they are not opening their churches very fast as a substitute, and even if they did, there is very little to sustain life in a plaster-of-paris image or a stained-glass window. The saloon, with its shelter, its warmth, and its free lunch, saving the life of the half-clad perishing man, holds a very strong argument for its existence. If the mayor of a city has not the power to create and provide clean, wholesome, public benefits for the wage-earner in time of need (who has a civic right), we should certainly _demand_ that the saloon keeper be _forced_ to serve free lunch, and keep his door open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours every day, for it is a degree more respectable to sleep in a saloon than in a jail. The first saloon keeper to throw a man _out_, should be the first to be thrown _out_ of business. Keep the saloons until every city is honorable and humane enough in its strife for civic beauty to create public privileges, adequate Municipal Emergency Homes, public drinking fountains and comfort stations. Then, with a clear conscience, we may legislate the enormous profit off of the impure concoctions, and when this is done, the dragon will have been given at least one effectual blow. [Illustration: "_Waiting to Crawl into a Cellar for a Free Bed, Unfed, Unwashed--Fully Clothed They Spend the Night on Board Bunks, Crowded in Like Animals_"] "Is the American police system brutal toward the out-of-work man?" The declaration of the radical Agnostic street speaker, that there was only one miracle he believed in, and that was "that St. Patrick drove all the snakes and toads out of Ireland, and that they came to America, got into politics and on to the police force," is an unjust dogma, for in my observation every nationality represented on the police force is of the same character in administering the official duty and in taking advantage of the trust put in them where they are made a political adjunct to a municipality. The policeman is the same as other men. He is a workingman, and like all men, he loves, he hates, he has his home, his social and business interests. He is of the community and should stand for the welfare of that community, and should never be allowed to divorce himself from the trust placed upon him by the common rights of all the people. What greater examples of the virtues of character can we find anywhere than in the police? Their courage is noticeable. They will not hesitate to rush into danger, into fire, riot, water, to save lives and property. And over this character of courage is ever present the element of kindness toward the little child, the old and infirm, and often of the proffered dime to the homeless man. And yet he is an Ishmaelite--"his hand is against every man, and every man's hand is against him," which is a destructive condition. The _Police System taken as a whole_ throughout our country is extremely brutal toward the out-of-work, homeless man. There are but few exceptions. This is largely because when a man is chosen for that position, for political reasons, he pledges himself, not so much to keep the peace and the law of the community, as to enforce the law of the political machine and vice trust of that city. And if the helpless, homeless man, defenseless because of poverty, is not shot or clubbed to death (which makes a perquisite for the coroner), he is often railroaded, by the testimony of one policeman, into the county jail where it costs five cents a day to keep him, while the sheriff and chief of police will receive of the tax-payers' money thirty cents a day for his care. The capacity of these jails is from one to two hundred souls. So it can be plainly seen that it is much to the interests of these officeholders to keep them filled. The remedy? Simply divorce at once the police departments from politics, and under civil service examination, put intelligent, qualified men on the force. This is not only to serve honestly the community but your fellow citizen, the policeman, as well. It is not serving vicious private interests, which grant to the police a license to be dishonest, to shoot down or club to death homeless men on the street--which not infrequently results in the finding of policemen shot to death in vicious retaliation, supposedly always by a criminal. Then abuse will cease. As an example, I know of no better policed city than Boston. Study these men closely. Their spirit is kindliness. Though they may be armed as a protection from the drink-crazed, there is no evidence of gun or club. They are not seen drinking in the saloons. They do not meet you with rum-befouled breaths as in most cities, but with a _welcoming_ face and a clear eye. Here the unfortunate is given kindly consideration. In return, the Boston public seems to co-operate in helping the police. The secret of this valued quality of the police of Boston lies in the fact that the police are indirectly appointed by the Governor of the State,--that is, the Governor appoints the Police Commissioner, and he in turn chooses his officers, _after they have passed a satisfactory civil service examination_ at the State House. Such police officials should not receive the sobriquet of "bull" or "cop," but that of "officer" and "gentleman." The American citizen who chances to be a police officer is not brutal by choice, but by command of the system which forces him to be brutal. In municipalities where police brutality is their shame, the change can only come through the elector and the tax-payer. A well regulated city is one founded on the human rights of all the people, and a well regulated police is the strong right arm of a good city government. "What of the impostor at the Municipal Emergency Home?" Study teaches us that the out-of-work men who are so from choice, those that are mentally and physically normal, among the migratory workers, are exceedingly rare. If we hesitate at a Municipal Emergency Home and let ninety worthy men suffer or perish because ten out of the hundred are unworthy, why not close our public libraries, our hospitals, our parks, in fact, every public benevolence, lest some unworthy ones creep in? We strive to weed out the impostor in many communities by throwing all idle men in prison, and when they cannot be used as a graft, and become an expense, or the awakened humane spirit of the city demands that they shall no longer commit this outrage, they are often run out of town. Or, after they have been humiliated by arrest, they are hauled in the police wagons to the outskirts of the city with a prison threat not to return, and turned destitute onto the next community. But this clearance test will not stand the light of constitutional liberty. Though our missions and churches are filled with many grand good people, the crucial treatment of the wage-earner is the underlying reason for the crumbling of our Christian faith. The Carpenter of Nazareth never questioned the man in need who came to learn of Him. To heal him, that was the predominant thought of His mind. Are we, all of us, quite sure that we have not, during some period of our lives, appeared true and genuine when false? Let us not forget that the highest conception of a citizen of a Christian city is not what a man was yesterday, but what he is to-day, and what he is going to be to-morrow, and what we are going to help him to be. There is an eternal law that what is good and true for us individually is good and true for us collectively. Let us be self-reliant. To take the attitude that history _does_ and _must_ repeat itself is the attitude of cowards. "The reason of idleness and crime is the deferring of our hopes; whilst we are waiting we beguile the time with jokes, with sleep, with eating and with crime." This was Rome under the rule of its monarchical aristocracy of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Centuries. Under this aristocracy, greed for position, fame, and avarice for great wealth, was unparalleled. To satisfy this greed, they built great monuments. They drew upon the entire country for labor to achieve their selfish aim and end. They not only lured the country's populace by pomp and glittering gayety, but big business controlled the land for speculation and selfish pleasure, forcing the people into urban centers. Even the smaller cities built amphitheaters and "civic centers" larger than the population. Then the gluttons of big business discovered that basilicas, monuments for supposedly great men, triumphal arches, marvelous fountains and temples of myth were a poor relief for the oppressed wageearner. When too late, they reluctantly offered their watered charity in free baths, free coffee and free soup, but the decadence of the grandeur of the eternal city had already begun. The working wage slave of the ancient Romans, so marvelously clever in his many crafts, was looked upon as being but little better than the animal which hauled the stone. There was no recognition of equality between the classes, nor consequently equal sharing of profits of production, or the creation of any public government institutions as a privilege of labor by the right of toil, to care for the bodily needs of the normal and healthy man who might need such an institution. The monarchical aristocracy of the Roman Empire did not believe in those things. But our political and industrial interests in this country are awakening to the fact that the foundation of all business is food, shelter and clothing, and that the honest demands of the people for the essentials of life shall be met and honestly distributed. They are recognizing that a reserve of unemployed labor is necessary to the progress of our industries and the promotion of our civilization, and the necessity of conserving that unemployed force. We recognize that we are builders and that we are going to have a great name--not of the Third, Fourth and Fifth Century, but of this, the Twentieth Century, _our century_,--that we have already conquered sea and sky, and have put the "girdle 'round the earth in forty minutes." But every marvelous achievement, every boasted cry of liberty to make us free, will never make us great, until we learn that our ruling power _must_ be God's law of right and love. CHAPTER XXXIV VISIONS "_Where there is no vision the people perish._" --PROVERBS, 29:18. During my social study I was asked by the president of a Charity Board to become an employee of the city Board of Charity and Corrections in a Western city. The Board consisted of three members. The president was a young Presbyterian minister who was just beginning to catch, through the mist of tradition, the light of new things. The other two members of the Board were women, one the daughter of a corporation lawyer, a young lady of large, kind heart, who for some time was connected with the United Charities of Chicago and who seemed to believe in their ancient system of charity in meeting the problem of destitution. The other was an estimable Jewish lady who had some decided opinions in regard to comfortable jails for honest, homeless, shelterless women and girls. Considering the services of these estimable people on the Board, gratuitous criticism would be unfair and much praise is due them for their conscientious work and the initiative taken in many effectual reforms which to them will be a lasting monument. After six weeks' service I was found fault with by the Board, but the only charge against me was that I was a _visionist_. It was rather singular though that this charge should come on the day following my visit to the County Poor Farm, the story of that visit being told in one of the local papers the following day. I could not deny that I was not guilty, for the press had exposed me, not only as a visionist who saw things, but as one who told things. In fact I had been seeing and telling things for six weeks. There seemed to be "the rub." I was _not_ a politician. And so I was dismissed "broke" as far as the city Charity Board was concerned, as a very pleasing vision I failed to see was my six weeks' salary. But this can readily be accounted for as the city at this writing was "broke" and I was forced to be content with a postponement. With me, to meet postponement gracefully had become a virtue, for I had long since learned to postpone such a non-consequential thing as a meal a good many times, but I think I never missed any. Ah, the visions of that six weeks, I can assure you, were not visions of angels ascending and descending ladders! The first was that of an old rookery building, with a ten cent tin sign on which was written "City Board of Charities," directly opposite the city jail, where all day long, and all night long, men and women either directly or indirectly, for the crime of poverty, were being forced behind its iron bars, and walls of stone. It was obvious that the first thought of both beggar and criminal, or the supposed criminal forced to come that way, was charity and correction, one at the door of the alms station and the other at the door of the police station. But he who has been shoulder to shoulder with the victims of these two municipal institutions and has read through the pleading, parched lips and tear-stained faces of the victims of both these places, has learned an immutable lesson and can not refrain from crying out for a better and a greater social life. One who observes will quickly see throughout our nation how closely allied--in all their phases--are Charity and Prisons and Missions. While the church is lifting one thousand out of the gutter, society, by a destructive social system and evil influences, is pushing ten thousand in. Charity keeps many from actually starving to death, yet the ever-increasing number of our needy is even "greater than man can number." What is the price we pay? My practical work with this board was that of investigator, that is, I was sent out to see if the applicant for aid were really worthy, to see that the Charity Board was not being robbed by dishonest mendicants. Charity organizations seemed to be not so much concerned with the relief of the helpless as with protecting the well-to-do from imposition on the part of those who claim they are in distress. I was given approximately eighty questions to ask. I was expected to follow up these questions--many of them questions of reference--for the purpose of ascertaining whether the applicants for aid were really telling the truth. I rebelled a little at first at the thought of conducting this third degree inquisition. It was even repulsive for me to enter the door of the humblest home and state I was from the Charity Board. I would so much rather have said that I was from the city Department of Public Service for Labor. From my first day, however, I continued to see visions,--not visions of great numbers, not of saints, but of thousands of workingmen's vacant homes, deserted for lack of work due to the inability of these workingmen to earn a living. I saw the truth most forcibly revealed that again the foundation of all business was a comfortable existence and an opportunity to earn those comforts and the right of existence by labor, and that people must have that privilege or be forced to go where it _can_ be had. I saw many of those who remained struggling to tide themselves over, hoping for a better day. Many were helpless for lack of means to get away, and had therefore become dependents of the State and city. I saw nearly all of our attempted factories in ruins, and four thousand workingmen driven from the city by the smelter trust; and then came again the glowing vision of sixty million pounds of wool, and an enormous production of cotton, grown annually in a radius of five hundred miles around our very doors. This raw material was being shipped two thousand miles to be worked into the most essential commodities. Every day we were walking over the finest glass sand in the world, yet we were denied the benefit of that most needful and profitable industry. I knew we dwelt in the heart of the leather producing district of the nation and yet no shoe factories. These are but a few of the raw materials in the region of the Rocky Mountain Western States. One who has made a study of industrial economics knows too well why the State of Colorado has (to speak comparatively) but seven people to the square mile. He well knows one reason to be the protective associations which protect _big business_ instead of protecting the people,--forever crying down co-operative industry which is for the good of all. In the homes of these asking alms which I visited, I saw the fearful destroying effect on character of the wolf as he peered through broken pane, and the cracks and crannies of door and wall. I saw the humiliating tears and flushed faces of those who for the first time were forced to beg. It was exactly like those of my associates who for the first time had been thrust into prison. It needed but a glance to tell me whether they had received "charity" before, for there is always the spirit of being hardened to the "disgrace," just as there is in the manner in which the prisoner treats the situation if he has previously "done time." Little children it is said will tell the truth when men and women lie. I saw the father and mother, with the hope of making an impressive plea, lest they fail to obtain the needed food and fuel, prevaricate in replying to my many questions, or perhaps remain non-committal, but often the little child at hand, conscious of the practiced deceit of the parent, would speak the truth. Then would follow the austere look of reproof from the parent or a sudden banishing from the room. The cheerless house, the starving home was sowing the seed of crime. I was a destroying angel. I was blackmailing my helpless victims into dishonesty just as the plain-clothes man or uniformed police blackmail the poor white slave of the Red-light District and the homeless, out-of-work man of the street. In my daily investigations I saw the dipsomaniac pleading for help, yet this city offered no asylum for such as he except the city and county jail. I saw the poor tubercular victim clinging to the thread of life, dying from malnutrition, who, perhaps, could have gained his health under different circumstances. I saw hundreds of strong, hardy men demanding, by the divine right of living, the necessities of life. I saw the mother suffering from privation, who saw no future, and was without hope, whose soul and body throbbed with the life of the unborn babe, whose demand was greater than the single life of man,--the demand for the divine right of motherhood. And again I saw a vision,--a general view of the private and public institutions, both benevolent and correctional, which were in the city and which were crowded to overflowing because of poverty. Then came my fatal vision,--my visit to the Poor Farm. The greatest city of the State is usually the fountain head, the output camp for the entire State. When the unfortunate become homeless, helpless and needy, they drift to the capital. The burden of the indigent of the entire State is thus put upon that particular city and county. I saw a great number turned away from the Poor House door because of its already congested condition, who were then obliged to exploit the community in other ways for the right of existence. I saw in the tubercular ward twenty-five men in all stages of the disease, and yet, _not one a native of the State_. Some had been in the State only three weeks. They represented every part of our country. There was absolutely no provision made by this city, county, or State for the indigent, tubercular woman or girl. I had already heard continually in the homes of the needy the appealing cry of the poor who suffer and wait, hoping against hope for life and health, asking in one mighty, smothered sob for a National Tubercular Sanitarium, an institution which every State west of the Mississippi River should have. In the blind ward of this traditional place for those who have missed their aim (pioneers many of them, who hewed the logs and held the plow and blazed the trails from '59 to '85), I saw twenty blind, thirteen of whom were rendered blind by mine accidents, looking forward in the darkness, ever in the darkness, for a home that has not the stigma of charity, the infamy of a Poor House. Looking forward for the home which is theirs by inheritance, and _every one a native of the State_ to which Winfield Scott Stratton, the multi-millionaire mining-man and philanthropist, left _ten million dollars_ to build and support ten years ago! He left it in the hands of three exceedingly wealthy trusted friends to carry out his wishes who dwell and live in palaces amidst beautiful surroundings, and as yet no home has been built, and meanwhile the burying-ground of that final retreat, the Poor House, becomes ever increasingly dotted with the new-made graves. Monies belonging to these helpless, pioneer citizens who earned it by the right of enduring hardships and toil, money belonging to the hard-working people of the State, and to men still in the harness, this money is denied while the people at large are overburdened with taxation for the support of monarchical, handed-down institutions,--a burden from which they can get no relief. This vision of truth thrown upon the canvas of progress and humanity is forcibly applicable to every Western State, in its appeal for an intelligent and humane conservation of its citizens and most particularly the wage-earning citizen. And although these few pages can only hint at the truth revealed, they speak for National governmental action in placing our people on the lands and the erection of national institutions for our sufferers of the white plague. For co-operative industries of equity by and for the people; for governmental ownership of all public utilities and State institutions for our unfortunate, looking toward the dawn of that glad, new day the light which is beginning to glow through the press of this country. In Denver and many of the other Western cities there is a movement for a better and a greater West. Already in the new vision for the State of Colorado they have taken the citizen from behind stone walls and iron bars. The cities are creating municipal labor for the temporarily out-of-work man, which hand in hand with Municipal Emergency Homes is just to tide over the rough place. Imperfect and incomplete as its experimental beginning may be, who can deny the awakening of a perfect aim toward a perfect end? There is no wall of prejudice or selfishness, of ambition or unnatural greed, which can be built that will overcome these arguments. These needs must be met and shall be. No government can stand that is not founded on God's governing laws of humanity. APPENDIX MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOMES VS. CHARITABLE LODGING HOUSES In the hope that the story contained in these pages shall not have been recorded in vain, the author begs to offer a few suggestions in regard to Municipal Emergency Homes. Unless rightly built and rightly conducted they may prove worse than useless. That the need is great none can deny, and the institution should be strictly for the purpose of filling that need. The suggestions contained in the following paragraphs may solve some of the perplexities which confront the city wishing to build an institution such as the situation demands. THE FIRST STEP. In every State of the Union, the Legislature should pass a bill giving cities the right, under home rule, to erect and maintain a Municipal Emergency Home. Every city ought to pass an ordinance for the creation and maintenance of such Municipal Emergency Homes, and the budget of the city should contain an appropriation for its maintenance, based on the same reasons on which the appropriation is granted for running the Health Department, Police Department, or any other Department of the Municipal Government. The ordinance to be passed by the city council ought to create and develop a system that will give protection and opportunity to every honest wandering citizen while sojourning, in search of work, in the community. In the cities of New York and Boston, an appropriation is made from the public treasury for the care and maintenance of their Municipal Emergency Homes. In Chicago a special budget is created and added to the appropriation of the Police Department. It should properly have been added to the Health Department. THINGS TO AVOID. A Municipal Emergency Home should not be designed to be a money-making institution, but merely to provide shelter and food for men and women who appear _temporarily_ destitute. If it should appear that those demanding shelter in the Municipal Emergency Home should be afflicted with any physical illness, it should be the duty of its superintendent to transfer such individuals to a hospital ward, which may be a part of the Municipal Emergency Home, or to the city or county hospital where each man or woman may be thoroughly cured of any illness which has put them into destitute circumstances or is unfitting them to perform any kind of labor to make existence possible. The mind of the community is being educated to see that the adjustment of individuals to a suitable environment must be quickly but scientifically attempted. If unfit they must, if possible, be made fit. The idea seems to be dawning that permanent unfitness must be met with permanent adjustment. A PROTECTION TO SOCIETY. For the present, the Municipal Emergency Home stands, or rather should stand, on the one hand as a link in the chain of governmental institutions, not only as a public policy and agency which supports the individual who either fails in life or is compelled to be one in the ranks of destitute men because of economic conditions, but as an institution wherein one may receive temporary relief under the rights of citizenship. On the other hand, it should stand for the protection of society from the degradations, annoyances and misdemeanors of the individual who would thus be a burden upon his fellows and upon society as a whole. In other words, the Municipal Emergency Home should be one maintained and conducted _strictly by the municipality_ as a governmental institution. It should be the tiding-over place for the man or the woman without a job, a refuge to satisfy immediate needs, a hospital in certain cases of sickness, an asylum in case of destitution. ESSENTIALS TO SUCCESS. The author believes that there are two factors essential to the success of a Municipal Emergency Home; first, the co-operation of all public departments in the city government, and second, the cooperation of the public itself. When because of politics it has been found difficult to introduce improvements and progressive ideas in a municipality for relieving the temporarily distressed, it has become the custom to recommend religious or private charities for the management of relief-granting institutions. But no one can question the success and the need of a Municipal Emergency Home who is willing to investigate the wonderful success of the New York Municipal Lodging House and the Buffalo Municipal Lodging House. These are conducted strictly under city and County supervision and management. As such results as have been obtained in New York and Buffalo, and which may come into existence in any large city, under public management, why should other cities question the popularity and success of a Municipal Emergency Home under such management or doubt its advantages over those mismanaged by religious and private charity, the latter not infrequently run for profit? USE OF APPROPRIATION. The people of our cities may expect, and should forcibly demand from its public officials, that the money expended in municipal "charities" should be well adapted, elastic in its application, based upon wise, scientific conclusions, and on a thorough exhaustive experimentation. It is safe to say that New York stands in the front rank as the worst governed city in America. But when such a city creates an appropriation from its public treasury for the maintenance and management of a Municipal Emergency Home, there can be no reason to doubt the wisdom or the success of the experimentation of municipal charities. In fact, we ought not to speak of municipal charity, but rather to say that the city appropriates such money from tax-payers as has been earned by those who are temporarily destitute,--that those housed in such municipal institutions are but receiving assistance as an interest on their past earnings. A Municipal Emergency Home should not be considered as a charitable institution, but as an institution offering the right to every toiler to receive the hospitality of his fellowmen in time of need. CO-OPERATION OF THE PUBLIC. If the so-called influential and responsible people of every city would use half the effort they now use in subscribing, managing and advertising private charitable institutions to create a public sentiment so that the city would establish a Municipal Emergency Home with the most modern features, and if they then would continue in an advisory and co-operative relation to it, the writer does not hesitate to express his belief that the advantages, every time, would be on the side of a Municipal Emergency Home or, as a matter of fact, on any other so-called charitable institution managed by the community itself as a governmental function and in a co-operative capacity. The destitute man or woman who is compelled to apply for temporary relief at a Municipal Emergency Home comes immediately into the care of the city and may be turned at once to the protective treatment of which many stand in need. RELATION TO THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT. It is well to bear in mind the fact that a scientifically managed Municipal Emergency Home not only raises the standard of other lodging houses in the city, but to make its influence most effective, the co-operation of the Health Department is absolutely necessary. In fact, the most humane, the most scientific and in all respects the most desirable way to manage a Municipal Emergency Home is through the direct management and supervision of the city Health Department,--never under that of the Police Department. The institution deals with human beings who are out of adjustment to the community. The homeless, wandering citizen should not be considered as a derelict, a human monster, a criminal, a vagrant and what not, to be hounded to death by the brutal police system. PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS AND THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT. All religious, charitable and private lodging houses also should be under a rigid inspection of the Health Department of the city, lest they may become dangerous competitors to a Municipal Emergency Home by undoing the work accomplished by this exemplary institution. Because they can be maintained at a low standard of cleanliness and order, they are sought by the tired, weary, homeless workingman, that is,--when he has the money! No city should ever countenance an uninspected sheltering place where human beings are forced to congregate, where those harbored, in many instances, communicate disease to the country boy, seeking a job, and teach him lessons in mendicancy, vice and crime. CO-OPERATION OF THE CITY. All public departments, especially the Health Department, Public Works, Legal Department, Labor Department, should co-operate with the Municipal Emergency Home. The Health Department should look after the physical welfare of the city's guests, the Department of Public Works should aid by giving all able-bodied, willing workers plenty of work on all municipal undertakings, and by paying them the prevailing scale of union wages in the respective industries. The Legal Department should care for and protect against the private exploitation of the homeless men and women, and above all else, shield them from the undue interference of the police. EDUCATION OF THE PUBLIC. As to the co-operation of the great public itself, honest investigators must find the overwhelming advantages in every respect on the side of municipal management. If a city maintains and manages a modern Municipal Emergency Home, charitably-inclined private doners can be cheerfully advised to leave the entire problem to the city. Thus the great many charitable and quasi-charitable institutions that have failed to give relief where relief was most needed will fail to find support. This is exactly the purpose of all municipal and governmental undertakings,--firmly and scientifically to undertake the management of all public affairs, taking it out of the hands of superficial private organizations whose inadequate system, instead of doing good to the needy, does much moral harm. It is most desirable that the great public be _aroused and educated_ to see that the homeless, wandering citizen needs special treatment,--that he must, if necessary, be the object of expert, scientifically-trained solicitude, and that the public must provide that scientific service. When the public can be so educated, all applicants for shelter, food, or work (whether they come from the so-called "tramp," "bum," or "hobo," at the back door, or from the man on the street who begs a dime, or from the Salvation Army representative on the street corner, or from others who promiscuously ask donations for so-called "Lodging Houses") may safely be referred to the Municipal Emergency Home where the expert work of the community is being done, and the task of uplifting humanity and of elevating the community itself is being carried forward in the right way. THE PROBLEM IN OTHER COUNTRIES. It is quite remarkable that the Poor Law in England had its origin in an attempt to meet the problems of the homeless, wandering wage-earner. Yet there, as here, the homeless are rather on the increase, because of unjust social and industrial conditions. Nicholl quotes the following, purely utilitarian statement: "The usual restraints which are sufficient for the well-fed, are often useless in checking the demands of the hungry stomachs.... Under such circumstances, it might be considered cheaper to fill empty stomachs to the point of ready obedience than to compel starving wretches to respect the roast-beef of their more industrious neighbors. It might be expedient, from a mere economical point of view, to supply gratuitously the wants of able-bodied persons, if it could be done without creating crowds of additional applicants." This rudimentary economic advice has not been intelligently understood either in England or in our country. The people of our cities still look on while a group of men eat the cold roast beef of their more fortunate neighbors--calmly look on and take no action. Eminent scholars and authorities on economic, industrial and legal questions have well said, many times, that repressive measures and antagonistic treatment are never sufficient and never will be. Educational, constructive, scientific work alone will prevail. The religious and charitable organizations and societies may ask for police control and supervision, and for the repression of vagrancy in our cities, but the homeless and wandering wage-earners will be fed, because we have a Christ-given, common humanity. A WOMAN'S QUESTION. It has been said that the "tramp" question, the question of the homeless, hungry, wandering wage-earner is a woman's question. It is. But what made it such? It has been made a woman's question by the indifference and ignorance of our communities which have made no provisions for men and boys, women and girls, who are hungry and homeless. Women as well as men have represented the conscience of our communities in a poor fashion, in a most dangerous fashion, in a criminal fashion, for they have created just about as many "tramps" with their petty little charities, as the man who gives dimes on the street for a night's shelter. The women should know, the men too, that at the back doors or on the streets we cannot do the right thing. We can give only inadequate relief. We can only push a human being down the stairs of manhood to the level of a parasite. THE HISTORICAL VIEW. Let us look at the matter historically. We find that the mendicant of the Middle Ages stood in much the same relation to the community as the modern "tramp," the homeless, wandering wage-earner. One existed, and the other exists, because of a certain sentimentality which permits one group of persons to live on the industry of another group. The community giving, in the mediæval days, was centered in the monastery, and since the time of Henry VIII the State has assumed that function. The monastery cared for the mediæval tramp. Let the Modern Twentieth Century State of Civilization (if such we may call our time) care for and cure his descendant, the homeless, wandering wage-earner, just as it takes care of the other needs of the people in the respective communities. To be logical, every American city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home for the wandering citizen, the homeless wage-earner, in order to complete the system of governmental institutions and agencies dealing with the needs of a modern complex society. THE LEGAL ASPECT. Rightfully, and _legally_, in America, the so-called Overseers of the Poor, the Boards of Charities and Corrections, are required to relieve the homeless and destitute at their discretion. In many cities they are fulfilling this duty toward the men temporarily destitute and homeless by graciously permitting them to be sheltered at the insanitary, degrading police stations, to be fed with water concoctions, to sleep in a dark vermin-infested corner from which they are ordered to move on in the morning. Perhaps this is acting according to their discretion, but the result shows that it is unwise to put power into the hands of private individuals who not only know not the evil they increase but who could scarcely do otherwise if they knew. _Historically, every modern city should maintain a Municipal Emergency Home. Logically, it ought to do it. Legally, it must do it. Let it no longer be a woman's or a man's question, but our question, the cities' question. Let us all say that there must, nay, there shall be in every community for the homeless, wandering wage-earner, a decent, modern, sanitary shelter, a fitting meal, a place where the community can give individual, discriminating, scientific treatment, where there is an opportunity to get suitable work to make a decent living possible._ THE MORAL DUTY. Let everybody then make it his duty to appeal to the civic pride of the women and men of the community. Let the people of the city instruct its Mayor and City Council, or else themselves elect a man or a woman to supervise the management and maintenance of a Municipal Emergency Home of integrity, of resource, a place of sagacious and scientific training. Then, and not until then, will the women of our cities be able to shut their doors, the men their pockets, and point with pride to the Municipal Emergency Home, which in every American city is as necessary and as fundamental an institution as a hospital itself. In fact it is a human psychological hospital, an economic betterment provider, within the gates and welcome arch of every city. The name of the institution is significant,--_Municipal Emergency Home_. As the gate of the public system of institutions it should stand, always open and ready to receive the homeless, wandering wage-earner who may claim its hospitality. From it, he or she may go forth to renumerative industry, to economic, social and industrial betterment which is for the benefit of all humanity. WHAT A TWENTIETH CENTURY MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME SHOULD BE In the following pages, the author wishes to give in detail the chief aims, objects and principles upon which a model Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home should be maintained: I. It should provide, _free_ under humane and sanitary conditions, food, lodging and bath, with definite direction for such immediate relief as is needed for any man or boy, woman or girl, or even families, stranded in the city where located, as well as for the convalescent from the hospital. It should be able to give employment to able-bodied men and boys, women and girls, provide them with the necessaries of life, and make it possible for them to be economically independent of the future. This should be _the chief aim, object and principle_ upon which the maintenance of a model Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home is based. All consideration of causes, all efforts toward the enforcement of law or reform in legislation, are secondary to this first duty of providing a humane clearing-house for a scientific, systematic and intelligent distribution of the industrial, economic and social human waste, which gathers and disperses from season to season in the urban centers of America and tends constantly to fester into idleness, vice and crime. While the demands of this human clearing-house will be no small charge upon the respective municipalities, the Municipal Emergency Home will be primarily an institution of social service, collecting and regulating the entire human resource of the city for the mutual benefit of the community or those that serve it and of the individual that is served. This idea of connecting, in the most direct fashion possible, the social strength of a community with the individual weakness of the stranded man or boy, woman or girl, will be the first purpose of a Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. To further this end its location should be easily accessible to the lodging house district of the city. That the building should be sanitary and fireproof, the food wholesome and nourishing, the beds comfortable and clean, one man to a bed, not "double deckers," are matters of course. An isolation ward for special cases such as men suffering from inebriety, insanity, venereal disorders, etc., is a prime requisite. A system of registration by the card system ought to be in use, each card giving at a glance the significant facts such as name, age, birthplace, occupation, physical condition, reference, residence, nearest relative or friend, number of lodgings, disposition of the case, etc. This card should be filled out by the applicant himself, in order that the visitor may not be humiliated by an inquisition of a jail- or charity-like character. The registration clerk should be a man of good judgment, a man of honor, and with psychological training whose actions should always be guided by firm but just and human motives. Thorough physical investigation of each applicant, and the investigation of the capabilities of each applicant, should be in all cases intelligently conducted. Every visitor's clothing, including hat and shoes, should be thoroughly fumigated each night. All visitors should be required to bathe nightly and only shower baths should be used. A comprehensive physical examination of each visitor _should be made_ by competent examiners under the direction of a physician of the Health Department of the city. All necessary operations, supplies for simple medicaments, eye-glasses, crutches, bandages, trusses, in fact every accoutrement and further treatment, if necessary for the health and comfort of the visitor, should be supplied _free_. An entry of the actual physical conditions of each visitor should be made on his registration card after the first examination, and any change therefrom noted thereon as it may occur from time to time. All cases of infectious or chronic contagious diseases of a virulent nature should be sent at once to the isolation ward. The accuracy and care of this department is of immediate importance to the health of the entire community and _absolutely essential_ to the effective and successful administration of the Home. Each visitor should be provided with an absolutely clean nightshirt and a pair of slippers. The dormitories should be in all cases comfortable and quiet, talking, reading and smoking therein strictly prohibited. The morning call ought to be given in time to permit each visitor to dress for breakfast and to be sent to employment if he or she is able, in time for the day's work. The visitors desiring to find work in the town where the Municipal Emergency Home is located should form in line and pass the superintendent for distribution in accordance with the facts of each case, clearly stated on each record card, as to the physical condition, abilities and desires of each applicant for work. This is the crux of the ministry and the administration of a Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home. Clear-sighted, humane, resourceful, definite, resolute action is now demanded, and unless this demand is met with scientific exactness, with intelligent systematic application, the whole service fails. The superintendent will have before him the record card of every visitor containing his original story, the report of his physical condition, occupation, and such further important facts as may have been discovered in the course of his relations with the Home. Immediately at hand will be the employment resources for that day, the name and address of every labor union headquarters, every benevolent association, every dispensary and hospital, city and business directories, railroad and factory directories with the names and addresses of the respective superintendents under whose jurisdiction the employment of help may come. Thus the superintendent will be capable of intelligent co-operation with all agencies, public and private, that may minister to the varying needs of the stranded men and boys, women and girls whom he is to distribute and start on their way to independent, economic usefulness in the community. Men and women of all ages, nationalities, occupations, misfortunes, face the superintendent and must be dealt with definitely, but wisely, after a rapid comprehension of the visitor's needs, his card record, and the resources at command. No higher test can be made of human judgment, courage, right feeling, resource and common sense. It is at this crucial point in the administration of a Municipal Emergency Home that one feature of the model home stands out with commanding significance. This is the _Employment Bureau_. Daily opportunity for paid employment is the right arm of the most effective distribution, and the only genuine work test. Whether this can be assured or not in any given city, no one can say until it has been fairly applied and tried. When the employment resources of any city are thoroughly organized, if there still be men in any considerable number, able and willing to work, who cannot be given paid employment and who must suffer enforced idleness for any considerable length of time, then and not until then, will we know that the present industrial order has absolutely broken down. After all paid employment has been thoroughly taken advantage of, coming as it does from private resources, the respective municipalities should immediately put to work all able-bodied, willing wage-earners on municipal work of all kinds for which the city should pay them a decent, living wage, or rather the prevailing scale of union wages in the respective trades. There is an increasing number of people in this country--quiet, hard-working, hard-thinking, plain folk who are determined to know the facts of our present-day industrial and social system, and while enjoying the fruits of this present order, are determined to defend it against assaults. They also purpose to strive mightily in righting whatever wrongs may be proven to exist. The Municipal Emergency Home will help to supply these people with the real knowledge of conditions in the underworld, where millions of honest, able-bodied men and women are forced to spend their lives in enforced economic idleness and uselessness. One of the most significant indications of the power of the Municipal Emergency Home is the length and depth of its searching influence. Its hooks will reach clear down to the bottom of the human sewerage, in the dark channels of life, altogether unknown to the "other half" of our human society. Without disparaging the splendid work of other helping agencies in the respective communities, it cannot be denied that their influence, their hooks of help, hang too high to catch many worthy persons among the vast army of wandering citizens who are in direst need. The "Hang-out," the "Barrel-house," and the "Free-flops" receive many times more human drift than Charity Bureaus, Missions and Workingmen's Homes. This is seen to be inevitable when the conditions are rightly understood. Humankind is but just beginning to understand and appreciate the everlasting truth of that great clause of Agur's perfect prayer: "Feed me with food convenient for me," and of one of the greatest sayings in the Gospel of the Kingdom: "For I was hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me." The stranded man or boy, woman or girl needs food, shelter and a straightforward, resourceful meeting of the issues of his or her human life _first_. After that, if you possess sincerity, faith and clear vision, it may be your privilege to speak to him or her, with controlling power, of the ministry and message of the _Son of Man_. The sympathetic reader may well ask: "How will stranded men and boys, women and girls, learn of the existence of a Municipal Emergency Home, and what will impel the unfortunate woman or girl to accept its altruistic, humane but vigorous hospitality?" The answer is easy. It has already been discovered that one of the chief sanctions, one of the main objects for municipal direction of such work is _being a municipal enterprise_, a part of the city administration, a wing of its manifold governmental functions, it challenges most effectively the co-operation of all public authorities. The very first step therefore in this mandatory municipal co-operation will be the closing of the police stations, these degrading and unsanitary hells of our barbaric age, to the itinerant or local toilers who have been either "run in" by the police or forced to find shelter for the night, and provision for the supply of all such applicants with tickets of admission and directions to the Municipal Emergency Home. This will partly relieve the police stations of our cities of one of their most disagreeable duties, rendered in the past without any adequate means and under conditions that befouled not only the stations but which degraded the needy visitors, thereby encouraging vagrancy, crime and vice, creating disease and, in many cases, causing untimely deaths. The second answer to the question is that every policeman will be required to carry a supply of Municipal Emergency Home tickets in his pocket to give to all persons discovered in need, and to those found begging. These must be accompanied by a warning that he or she must not beg, because of the consequences, and that the city will take care of their monetary necessities. No police officer should be allowed to interfere or endanger the liberty of any such temporarily destitute people. All railroad stations should have, in a conspicuous place, an advertisement of the Home, calling the stranded wayfarer's attention to its existence and location. Such notices will prove a blessing to them and a saving to the community. All newspapers should co-operate with the city authorities in printing in the "want ads" column the fact of the existence of such a Municipal Emergency Home, its location and the possible positions that may be filled by applying to the superintendent. A most important step should be to provide every homeless man or boy, woman or girl who may have been discharged from the house of correction, from the penitentiaries, hospitals or other institutions, with the hospitality of the Municipal Emergency Home, thereby pledging the support and good faith of the city to secure him food, shelter, an opportunity for honest employment, or the right, for a period, while enjoying the hospitality of the city, to look about for such labor as he or she may prefer. No one who lays any claim to enlightened opinion upon subjects of this character believes any longer that arrest and incarceration in a penal or corrective institution is a final answer to the social obligations of the community in behalf of the so-called casual vagrant, the wandering citizen, the itinerant wage-worker, or petty criminal, as they are miscalled. It may be true, perhaps, that a three or six months' imprisonment is the only present available means for "straightening up a drunk" or getting some "evil spirit" out of a young man's heart. But at its best it is a very dangerous medicine, and surely when society leaves a man or boy, woman or girl at the prison gate, after a jail sentence of greater or less duration, and tells him or her to shift, each for himself or herself as best they may, it is simply an invitation and an encouragement to vagrancy, vice, crime and immorality. The last important step in this mandatory municipal co-operation should be a direct attack upon the "barrel-houses," "free-flops," and "hang-outs," certain cheap lodgings and Missions. To continue a campaign against vagrancy by an indiscriminate raiding of such resorts has proven to be a miserable failure. If there is no other free, accessible and serviceable place for the homeless and indigent man, boy, woman or girl, they will simply find another center, and the last may be worse than the first. On the other hand, having understood and provided for the actual needs of the temporarily unemployed homeless, we have cut off the base of evil supplies of "the mendicant army" through the use of tickets to a modern Municipal Emergency Home, and the co-operation of all other municipal departments and the great public. Then, and not until then, can a modern Christian community strike effectively the final blow against these recruiting stations of vice, immorality, crime and disease. An intelligent, scientific, systematic and centralized campaign of publicity must be _ceaselessly_ carried on for this Free Home. Free tickets of direction and admission must be constantly distributed through fraternal and charitable societies, labor unions, institutions, hotels, business offices, churches, clubs, housewives, railroad conductors, brakemen, and other officials and citizens. As soon as it is generally known that every applicant, without exception, is absolutely certain of wholesome food and sanitary shelter _free_, with such help next morning as his need demands, the cooperation of the humane public will be immediate and constant. In this campaign for publicity the daily press, through news items and editorial comment, should be the most powerful ally for the extension of the service to the needy. Two vitally important considerations of administration now claim our attention. One is the matter of an arbitrary limitation upon the number of nights one of these unfortunate, homeless, wandering wage-earners may remain and enjoy the hospitality of the city. The other is the question of the so-called work-test, so much asked for by charitable organizations. This, the greatest of all problems confronting the Municipal Emergency Home, we must face courageously in the endeavor to demonstrate its practicability to social service. Either in the name of Christian Brotherhood, sympathy for unfortunate humanity, or other high and holy sentiments, men are given to "cant." So they exploit the institution, or in the name of preventing pauperization, preserving, a man's self-respect, a business administration, and other like high sounding terms, the institution subtly exploits its charges. This much seems certain: The arbitrary, _lump_ method of dealing with men is always and everywhere wrong and inhuman. A model Municipal Emergency Home _should not have an arbitrary time limit_ on the extension of its hospitality to the needy. The injustice of such limitation is manifest in instances such as that of a visitor suffering from a bruise, wound, broken arm, injured leg,--of one who is awaiting money from friends, or transportation home, or to a place where employment is offered, or for the coming of the first pay-day after being re-established in industry. Neither should any Municipal Emergency Home have that inhuman, wasteful, robbing work test. To argue or reason that because one hundred or more men and boys lined up in front of a desk at five o'clock in the morning are alike because of the fact of having received a night's shelter and two meals and that, therefore, each alike should do three hours' work on a wood pile, or in the city streets, is to say the least, not only unscientific, but inhuman exploitation. In every such group there will be found not only a wide difference in resources and needs, but a wider difference in men. In such a group will be capable, earnest, sober and willing workingmen displaced by industrial depression, disturbances or inventions; all classes of casual laborers, between jobs; boys seeking their fortunes; victims of child labor; disabled, sick and aged industrial and social waste; beats, and frequently strays from the higher walks of professional criminals. All these challenge intelligent and resourceful discrimination. Surely the true interest of the community as well as that of the unfortunate, wandering citizen, is best served by at once sending men, able and willing to work, to paid employment; separating the boys of tender ages from this human drift, and starting them home or to steady, profitable employment for the security of their future; directing the sick, infirm or aged to such institutions as will best minister to their needs. The writer's personal experiences and observations of the lump work test in operation, as he saw it in the various religious and charitable lodging houses throughout the country, seem to justify the following statement: First. The worthy, average visitor to a Municipal Emergency Home will work diligently. Those chained by habits of vice will shirk. The crippled, sick and aged will simply "mark time." This results in the most fit man in the group being exploited for the benefit of the least fit, and in putting upon the backs of those members of the community least able to bear this burden, part of the charitable charge for the incompetent and unworthy. Second. There seems to be little foundation for the idea that a lump work test conserves a man's self-respect. On the contrary the conditions of its application are such as must always be more or less degrading, and it invariably operates to hold together the good and bad elements of a group, to the inevitable injury of the good. Third. Where the lump work test involves some financial benefit for the institution, the best of superintendents become less eager to re-establish his most fruitful, most capable, willing-to-work visitors in paid industry. Fourth. As an indication of character, the work test is almost valueless. Men of ordinary sense see through the thin disguise of the claim that it helps to preserve their self-respect, and recognize its true lineaments as a subtle exploitation that deprives them of the opportunity of getting paid employment for that day, or as a penal service to prevent their frequent return. Fifth. The quick deterioration of even fairly good workmen through getting used to a low standard of living by charitable contributions that lessen the economic pressure and seem to offer escape from the legitimate costs of life, is apparent to every thoughtful observer. Hard times, and an empty stomach, make it easy to submit to the kindly exploitation of a "Flop-house" wood-yard. The loss of self-respect is forgotten in relief from the necessity of trying to play a man's part in the industrial order, until the man that was an independent, capable, willing, but unfortunate wage earner is transformed into a half-parasite,--an individual of a special character, a man whose face is familiar only to charity workers, and to the charitably-inclined public. Summing up the effect of these two arbitrary lump restrictions it seems that they operate always to the injury of the service and are tolerated for one of three reasons. The first is that they provide some check upon the number and return of the visitors. The second is that they provide a subtle means of exploiting helpless men for the financial benefit of the institutions, and the third, that the institution thereby escapes the obligations of discriminating and effective distribution. Mr. Raymond Robins, the first superintendent of the Chicago Municipal Lodging House, in substantiation of the above argument says: "It may be well to say that the Chicago Municipal Lodging House began operations with both restrictions in force. A three nights' limit and three hours' work daily from each able-bodied lodger were required by the rules. Experience and observation of the results of the enforcement of these restrictions in Chicago and other cities convinced the administration that they were _cruel and unjust_. The substitution of an employment bureau, effective co-operation with other charitable and correctional agencies, and daily discriminating distribution, have enabled the Chicago Municipal Lodging House to abolish both restrictions entirely. Not only has this substitution not resulted in overcrowding the house or increasing the number of human parasites that seek its hospitality, but, on the contrary, the proportion of the worthy men has steadily risen under the new régime. The 'Chicago System' provides food, lodging, baths and distribution for a maximum of two hundred lodgers daily at an annual cost to the municipality of ten thousand dollars." In conclusion, let it be understood that the keyword for the successful administration of a model Municipal Emergency Home is co-operation,--co-operation in the interior management, co-operation in all external relations, co-operation with all existing agencies for human service, co-operation for the creation of new ones when found to be necessary from time to time; co-operation with all other sister cities and States in creating a body of approved information and legislation upon the broadest principles of humanity, for the service of helping the wandering citizen, the unemployed masses, of removing the causes, of bettering conditions and of correcting wrongs throughout the world. Standing as the collective social action of the whole people for meeting honestly and scientifically the communal obligation to the outcast, wandering, unemployed wage-earner, the homeless man and woman, without special regard for race or class or sect, serving no private scheme, or ulterior motive, the Twentieth Century Municipal Emergency Home will be a potent witness to the practical expression in municipal administrations of that awakening social conscience which is the growing hope for righteousness in all the nations of the earth. Following are suggestions for the printed cards to be used both as advertisement and admission tickets for the needy: I THIS TICKET IS GOOD FOR LODGING, FOOD AND BATH AT THE MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME (Location) _________________ _____________________ SUPT. ASST. SUPT. TELEPHONE_________________ (Reverse side) The City of ---- is maintaining a Municipal Emergency Home for the benefit of all wandering citizens, homeless and indigent men and boys, women and girls in this City. Lodging, food, a bath and other necessaries of life are being provided _free_ to every applicant. Those seeking work are given employment. The crippled, injured, old or infirm are sent each morning to hospitals, dispensaries or homes. Each applicant receives the personal attention of the superintendent, and upon personal investigation his or her case is disposed of upon the facts so determined alone. Employment is given to suit the applicants and only able-bodied people will be sent to work. All loyal citizens of the City of ---- are earnestly requested to refer needy, homeless fellow-men to the Municipal Emergency Home by means of this ticket. BY AUTHORITY OF ---- II GET YOUR HELP FROM THE MUNICIPAL EMERGENCY HOME (Location) SKILLED AND UNSKILLED LABOR CAN BE OBTAINED WITHOUT CHARGE TO EMPLOYER OR EMPLOYEE CARE TAKEN TO SUPPLY SITUATIONS WITH COMPETENT MEN __________________ __________________ ASST. SUPT. SUPT. TELEPHONE__________ In conclusion, I refer to New York's Municipal Emergency Home, as a guide for the technical plans which too can be improved upon, and are being improved upon as we understand this great subject more clearly. THE END Transcriber's Note The table below describes the various issues encountered in the preparation of this text. Where there are other instances of a misspelled word, it is assumed to be a printer's error, and was corrected. Other dubious cases are merely noted here. Hyphenated words are given as printed. Where the hyphenation occurred at a line break, it was removed if there were other unhyphenated instances. The spelling of "Pittsburgh" in Chapter XI varies. Historically, the final 'h' has come and gone, removed and restored by Post Office fiat. By the time of the publication of this text, it had been restored for good, but it seems the 'h'-less spelling still had some currency. The word 'lantine' on p. 115 is most likely a corruption of 'latrine', but has been allowed to stand. p. ap[p]licants Added. p. 40 itiner[e/a]nt Corrected. p. 54 repellant _sic._ p. 89 and he said, ["/']I'll fix 'em!["/'] Nested quotes. p. 92 floatsam _sic._ p. 115 lantine _sic._ 'Latrine'? p. 116 forgetfullness _sic._ p. 119 accom[m]odate Added. p. 123 itinerate _sic._ p. 138 occur[r]ence Added. p. 146 and get my pay.["] Added. p. 150 not[h]ing Added. p. 151 [pealing] potatoes _sic._ p. 161 accom[m]odate Added. p. 163 Tacoma [Woman's] Club _sic._ p. 178 Diety _sic_ Deity. p. 211 vil[l]age Added. p. 228 approach[i]ng Added. p. 245 ["flop"/'flop?'"] Nested quotes. p. 256 Lou[si/is]ville Transposed. p. 273 Pa[c/d]ucah Corrected. p. 331 ap[p]licants Added. exist[a/e]nce Both corrected. p. 346 don[e/o]rs Corrected. 
35040	----	scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print archive. [Illustration: JOSIAH FLYNT.] NOTES OF AN ITINERANT POLICEMAN By JOSIAH FLYNT AUTHOR OF "TRAMPING WITH TRAMPS" [Illustration] BOSTON L. C. PAGE & COMPANY _MDCCCC_ _Copyright, 1900_ BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY INSCRIBED TO WILLARD ROPES TRASK NOTE. A number of the chapters in this book have appeared as separate papers in the _Independent_, _Harper's Weekly_, the _Critic_, _Munsey's Magazine_, and in publications connected with McClure's Syndicate; but much of the material is new, and all of the articles have been revised before being republished. INTRODUCTORY. For a number of years it had been a wish of mine to have an experience as a police officer, to come in contact with tramps and criminals, as a representative of the law. Not that I bore these people any personal grudge, or desired to carry out any pet policy in dealing with them; but I had learned to know them pretty intimately as companions in lodging-houses and at camp-fires, and had observed them rather carefully as prisoners in jails, and I was anxious to supplement this knowledge of them with an inquiry in regard to the impression they make on the man whose business it is to keep an official watch over them while they are in the open. I desired also to learn more concerning the professional offender than it had been possible for me to find about him in tramp life. If one has the courage to go and live with professional criminals as one of them, he can become even more intimate with them than in a police force, but it is very difficult to associate with their class long and not be compelled to take an active part in their criminal enterprises, and my interest in them was not so great that I was prepared to do this. I merely wanted to know how strong they are as a class, in which sections of the country they are the most numerous, whether they have peculiar characteristics differentiating them in public thoroughfares from other types of outlaws, how they live, and what is the general attitude toward them of our police and prison authorities. Partial answers to these questions I had been able to get in Hoboland, but I was anxious to fill them out and get any new facts that would throw light on the general situation. During the spring and summer of last year (1899) it was possible for me to have a police officer's experience. The chief of a large railroad police force gave me a position as a patrolman, and, in company of two other officers, I was put on a "beat" extending over two thousand miles of railroad property. The work we were given to do was somewhat of an innovation, but it afforded me an excellent opportunity to secure the information I desired. For two months and a half, which was the extent of my connection with the undertaking and with the force, we had to travel over the property, protecting picnic trains, big excursions, passengers travelling to and from towns where circuses were exhibiting, and the ordinary scheduled traffic, whenever there was reason to believe that pickpockets and other thieves were likely to put in an appearance. Early in the spring wandering bands of thieves start out on tours of the railroads. They follow up circuses and picnics, and make it a point to attend all big gatherings, such as county fairs, races, conclaves, and congresses. Their main "graft," or business, is pocket-picking, but in a well-equipped "mob" there are also burglars, sneak-thieves, and professional gamblers. The pickpockets and gamblers operate, when they can, on passenger trains, and they have become so numerous and troublesome in a number of States that railroad companies are compelled to furnish their own protection for their patrons. This protection, on the road for which I worked, has generally been provided for by the stationary members of the force, and more or less satisfactorily, but last year the chief wanted to experiment with "a flying squadron" of officers, so to speak, who were to go all over the property and assist the stationary men as emergency required, and we three were chosen for this work. In this way it was possible for me to come in contact with a large variety of offenders, to make comparisons, and to see how extensively criminals travel. It was also easy for me to get an insight into the workings of different police organisations along the line, and to inspect carefully lock-ups, jails, workhouses and penitentiaries. In the following chapters I have tried to give an account of my finding in the police business, to bring out the facts about the man who makes his living and keeps up a bank account by professional thieving, to tell the truth in regard to "the unknown thief" in official life who makes it possible for the known thief to prey upon the public, and to describe some of the tramps and out-of-works who wander up and down the country on the railroads. There is much more to be said concerning these matters than will be found in this little book, but there are a great many persons who have no means of finding out anything about any one of them, and it is to such that my remarks are addressed. Until the general public takes an interest in making police life cleaner and in eliminating the professional offender and the dishonest public servant from the problems which crime in this country brings up for solution, very little can be accomplished by the police reformer or the penologist. CHAPTER I. WHO CONSTITUTE OUR CRIMINAL CLASSES? The first duty of a policeman, no matter what kind of a police force he belongs to, is to inform himself in regard to the people in his bailiwick who are likely to give him trouble. In a municipal force an officer can only be required to know thoroughly the situation on his particular beat; if he can inform himself about other districts as well, he is so much more valuable to the department, but he is not expected to do much more than get acquainted with the people under his immediate surveillance. In a railroad police force it is different, and it is required of the officer that he study carefully the criminal situation in all the towns and villages on the division on which he is stationed. Some divisions are longer than others, but the average railroad policeman's beat is not less than sixty miles, and in some cases nearly two hundred. Mine, as I have stated, was over two thousand miles long, and it took in five different States and nearly all the large cities in the middle West. I was, consequently, in a position to acquaint myself pretty thoroughly with the criminal classes in one of the most populous and representative parts of the country. Offenders differ, of course, in different localities, and one is not justified in drawing sweeping conclusions concerning all of them from the study of a single type, but my work was of such a nature that, in the course of my investigations, I encountered, indoors and out, the most frequent offenders with whom the policeman and penologist have to deal. It would take a large book merely to classify and describe the different types, but there is a general analysis that can be made without any great sacrifice of fact, and it is this I desire to attempt in this chapter. There are six distinct categories of offenders in the United States to which may be assigned, as they are apprehended and classified, the great majority of our lawbreakers. They are: the occasional or petty offender, the tramp, the "backwoods" criminal, the professional criminal, the "unknown" thief, and what, for want of a better name, I call the diseased or irresponsible criminal. All of these different types are to be found on the railroads, and the railroad police officer must know them when he sees them. The largest class is that of the petty offenders, and it is in this category that are found the majority of the criminally inclined foreigners who have emigrated to our shores. It is a popular notion that Europe has sent us a great many very desperate evil-doers, and we are inclined to excuse the increase of crime in the country on the ground that we have neglected to regulate immigration; but the facts are that we have ourselves evolved as cruel and cunning criminals as any that Europe may have foisted upon us, and that the foreigners' offences are generally of a minor character, and, in a number of instances, the result of a misunderstanding of the requirements of law in this country, rather than of wilful evil-doing. I hold no brief for the strangers in our midst in this connection; it would be very consoling, indeed, to know that we ourselves are so upright and honest that we are incapable of committing crimes, and, this being proved, a comparatively easy task to lessen the amount of crime; but there is no evidence to show that this is the case. The majority of the men, women, and children that I found in jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries, on my recent travels, were born and brought up in this country, and they admitted the fact on being arrested. If the reader desires more particular information concerning this question, the annual police reports of our large cities will be found useful; I have examined a number of them, and they substantiate my own personal finding. In some communities the proportion of foreign offenders to the general foreign population is greater than that of native offenders to the general native population, but I doubt whether this will be found to be the case throughout the country; and even where it is, I think there is an explanation to be given which does not necessarily excuse the crimes committed, but, in my opinion, does tone down a little the reproach of wilfulness. The average foreigner who comes to the United States looks upon the journey as an escape; he is henceforth released, he thinks,--and we ourselves have often helped to make him think so,--from the stiff rule of law and order in vogue in his own land. He comes to us ignorant of our laws, and with but little more appreciation of our institutions than that he fancies he is for evermore "a free man." In a great many cases he interprets "free" to mean an independence which would be impossible in any civilised country, and then begins a series of petty offences against our laws which land him, from time to time, in the lock-up, and, on occasions, in jail. Theft is a crime in this country as well as elsewhere, and we can make no distinction in our courts between the foreigner and native, but I have known foreigners to pilfer things which they thought they were justified in taking in this "liberal land;" they considered them common property. Some never get over the false notions they have of our customs and institutions, and develop into what may be termed occasional petty thieves; they steal whenever the opportunity seems favourable. It is this class of offenders, consisting of both natives and foreigners, that is found most frequently in our police courts and corrective institutions. I have put the tramp next to the occasional offender in numerical importance, and I believe this to be his place in a general census of the criminal population, but it is thought by some that his class is the most numerous of all. Doubtless one of the reasons why he is considered so strong is that he is to be found in every town and village in the country. It must be remembered, however, that he is continually in transit, thanks to the railroads, and is now in one town and to-morrow in another. In both, however, he is considered by the public to represent two distinct individuals, and is included in the tramp census of each community. In this way the same man may figure a dozen times, in the course of a winter, in the enumeration of a town's vagabonds, but as a member of the tramp population he can rightfully be counted but once. It is furthermore to be remarked concerning this class that a great many wanderers are included in it who are not actual vagabonds. The word tramp in the United States is made to cover practically every traveller of the road, and yet there are thousands who have no membership in the real tramp fraternity. Some are genuine seekers of work, others are adventuresome youths who pay their way as far as food and lodging are concerned, and still others are simple gipsy folk. The genuine tramp is a being by himself, known in this country as the "hobo." The experienced railroad police officer can pick him out of a general gathering of roadsters nearly every time, and the man himself is equally expert in discovering amateur roadsters. I will describe one of the first men I learned to know in Hoboland; he is typical of the majority of the successful tramps that I met during my experience as a police officer. His name was "Whitey,"--St. Louis Whitey,--and I fell in with him on the railroad, as is the case in almost all hobo acquaintances. He was sitting on a pile of ties when I first saw him. "On the road, Jack?" he said, in a hoarse, rasping voice, sizing me up with sharp gray eyes in that all-embracing glance which hoboes so soon acquire. They judge a man in this one glimpse as well as most people can in a week's companionship. I smiled and nodded my head. "Bound West?" "Yes." "The through freight comes through here pretty soon. I'm goin' West, too. This is a good place to catch freights." I sat down beside him on the ties, and we exchanged comments on the weather, the friendliness of the railroad we were on, the towns we expected to pass through, some of the tramps we had met, and other "road" matters, taking mental notes of each other as we talked. I noticed his voice, how he was dressed, where he seemed to have been, the kind of tramps he spoke most about, how he judged whether a town was "good" or not, whether he bragged, and other little things necessary to know in forming an opinion of all such men; he observed me from the same view-point. This is the hobo's way of getting acquainted, of finding out if he can "pal" with a man. There are no letters of introduction explaining these things; each person must discover them for himself, and a man is accepted entirely on the impression that he makes. A few men have great names that serve as recommendations at "hang-outs," but they must make their friends entirely on their merits. Merely as a hobo there was nothing very peculiar about "Whitey." He looked to be about forty years old, and knew American tramp life in all its phases. His face was weather-beaten and scarred, and his hands were tattooed. He dressed fairly well, had read considerably, mainly in jails, wrote a good hand, knew the rudiments of grammar, and almost always had money in his pockets. He made no pretensions to be anything but a hobo, but the average person would hardly have taken him for this. He might have passed in the street as a sailor, and on railroads he was often taken for a brakeman. I did not learn his history before becoming a tramp,--it is not considered good form to ask questions about this part of a man's life,--but from remarks that he dropped from time to time I inferred that he had once been a mechanic. He was well informed about the construction of engines, and could talk with machinists like one of their own kind. He had been a tramp about eight years when I first met him, and had learned how to make it pay. He begged for a thing, if it was possible to be begged, until he got it, and he ate his three meals a day, "set downs" he called them, as regularly as the time for them came around. I was with him for two weeks, and he lived during this time as well as a man does with $1,500 a year. His philosophy declared that what other people eat and wear he could also eat and wear if he presented himself at the right moment and in the right way, and he made it his business to study human nature. While I travelled with him he begged for everything, from a needle to a suit of clothes, and did not hesitate to ask a theatre manager for free tickets to a play for both of us, which he got. What made him a tramp, an inhabitant of Hoboland, was that he had given up the last shred of hope of ever amounting to anything in decent society. Every plan that he made to "get on" pertained exclusively to his narrow tramp world, and I cannot recall hearing him even envy any one in a respected position. I tried several times to sound him concerning a possible return to respectable living, and tentatively suggested work which I thought he could do, but I might as well have proposed a flying trip. "It's over with me," was his invariable reply. His fits of drunkenness--they came, he told me, every six weeks or so--had incapacitated him for steady employment, and he did not intend to give any more employers the privilege of discharging him. He had no particular grudge against society, he admitted that he was his own worst enemy; but, as it was impossible for him to live in society respectably, he deemed it not unwise to get all he could out of it as a tramp. "I'm goin' to hell anyhow," he said, "and I might as well go in style as in rags." Being considerably younger than he, he once barely suggested that perhaps I would better try to "brace up," but it was in no sense of the word an earnest appeal. Indeed, he seemed later to regret the remark, for it is out of order to make such suggestions to tramps. If they want to reform, the idea is that they can do it by themselves without any hints from friends. As a man, separate from his business, "Whitey" was what most persons would call a good fellow. He was modest, always willing to do a favour, and everybody seemed to like him. During our companionship we never had a quarrel, and he helped me through many a strait. I have seen him once again since the first meeting. He was not quite so well dressed as formerly, and his health seemed to be breaking up, but he was the same good fellow. In late years I have not been able to get news of him beyond the rumour that he was dying of consumption in Mexico. The menace of the tramp class to the country seems to me to consist mainly in the example they set to the casual working man,--the man who is looking around for an excuse to quit work,--and in the fact that they frequently recruit their ranks with young boys. It is also to be said of them that they are often in evidence at strikes, and take part in the most violent demonstrations. As trespassers on railroads they are notorious; they are a constant source of trouble to the railroad police officer. Strictly speaking, the majority of them cannot be called criminals, although a great many of them are discouraged criminals, but in the chapter dealing with "The Lake Shore Push" it will be seen how ferocious some of them become. The next largest class is composed of what I call backwoods criminals. Scattered over the country, in nearly every State of the Union, are to be found districts where people live practically without the pale of the law. These places are not so frequent in the East as in the West, in the North as in the South, but they exist in New England as well as in Western States. They are generally situated far away from any railroad, and the inhabitants seldom come in touch with the outside world. The offenders are mainly Americans, but of a degenerated type. They resemble Americans in looks, and have certain American mental characteristics, but otherwise they are a deteriorated collection of people who commit the most heinous offences in the criminal calendar without realising that they are doing anything reprehensible. I have encountered these miniature "Whitechapels" mainly on my excursions in tramp life, but I had to be on the lookout for them during the police experience. In one of the States which my "beat" traversed, I was told by my chief that there was a number of such communities, and that they turned out more criminals to the population in a year than the average large city. One day, while travelling in a "caboose" with a native of the State in question, I asked him how it came that it tolerated such nests of crime, but he was too loyal to admit their existence. "We used to have a lot of them," he explained, "but we've cleaned them up. You see, when we discovered natural gas, it boomed everything, and we've been building railroads and schools all over. No; you won't find those eyesores any more; we're as moral a State to-day as any in the Union." It was a pardonable pride that the man took in his State, but he was mistaken about the matter in question. There are communities not over a hundred and fifty miles from his own town where serious crimes are committed every day, and no court ever hears of them because they are not considered crimes by the people who take part in them. Not that these people are fundamentally deficient in moral attributes, or unequal to instruction as to the law of Mine and Thine, but they are so out of touch with the world that they have forgotten, if indeed they ever knew, that the things they do are criminal. It is impossible at present to get trustworthy statistics in regard to this class, because no one knows all of its haunts, but if it were possible, and the entire story about it were told, there would be less hue and cry about the evil that the foreigners among us do. I refer to the class without advancing any statistics, because it came within my province as a police officer to keep track of it, and because it had attracted my attention as an observer of tramp life; but it is well worth the serious consideration of the criminologist. The professional criminal, or the habitual offender, as he is called by some, comes next in numerical strength, but first of all, in my opinion, in importance. I consider him the most important because he frankly admits that he makes a business of crime, and is prepared to suffer any consequences that his offences may bring upon him. It is he who makes crime a constant temptation to the occasional offender, and it is also he with whom we have the most trouble in our criminal courts; he is almost as hard to convict as the man with "political influence." On my "beat" he was more in evidence, in the open at least, than any of the other offenders mentioned, except the tramp, but, as I stated, the warm months are the time when he comes out of his hiding-places, and it was natural that I should see a good deal of him. My fifth category is made up of what a friend calls "the unknown thief," whom he considers the most dangerous and despicable of all. He means, by the unknown thief, the man in official life, or in any position which permits of it, who protects, for the sake of compensation, the known thief. "If you will catch the unknown thief," he has frequently said to me, "I will contract to apprehend and convict the known," and he believes that until we make a crusade against the former, the latter is bound to flourish in spite of all our efforts. He sees no use, for instance, in spending weeks and sometimes months in trying to capture some well-known criminal, as long as it is possible for the man to buy his freedom back again, and it is his firm belief that this kind of bargaining is going on every day. Although there was no doubt that the unknown thief was to be located on any "beat," if looked for, my instructions were not to disturb him unless he seriously disturbed me, and as he made no effort to interfere with my work I merely made a note of his case when we met, and doubtless he also "sized me up" from his point of view. How strong his class is, compared with the others, must remain a matter of conjecture, but I have put his class fourth in my description because it is the quality of his offences, rather than their quantity, which makes his presence in the criminal world so significant. There are those who believe that he is to be found in every town and village in the United States, if enough money is offered him as bait, but I have not sufficient data to prove, or to make me believe, such a statement. The league between him and the known thief--the man whose photograph is in the "rogue's gallery"--is so close, however, that I have devoted special chapters to both offenders. Of the last category, the man whom I have called the irresponsible criminal, there is not much of interest or value that I have to report. While acting as police officer I practically never encountered him in the open, and the few members of his class that I saw in prisons seemed to me to have become irresponsible largely during their imprisonment. Perhaps I take a wrong view of the matter, but I cannot get over the belief that the majority of offenders, particularly those who are ranked as "professionals," are _compos mentis_ as far as the law need require. In every department of the prisons that I visited, men were to be seen who gave the impression of being at least queer, but they formed but a very small part of the prison population, and may very possibly have been shamming the eccentricities which seemed to indicate that they were on the border line of insanity. For this reason, and, as I say, because I met none in the open, it has seemed fair to put this class last. The foregoing classification is naturally not meant as a scientific description in the sense that the professional criminologist would take up the matter. I have merely tried to explain how the criminal situation in the United States seems to the man whose business it is to keep an official watch over it. I may have overlooked, in my classification, offenders that some of my brother officers would have included, but it stands for the general impression I got of the criminal world while in their company. To attempt to estimate the numerical strength of these classes as a whole would land one in a bewildering bog of guesses. It is only recently that we have made any serious effort to keep a record of offenders shut up in penal institutions, of crimes which have been detected and of offenders who have been punished, and it is a fact well known in police circles that there is a great deal of crime which is never ferreted out. There is consequently very little use in trying to calculate the number of the entire criminal population. The most that I can say in regard to the question is that never before has this population seemed to me to be so large, but I ought to admit that not until my recent experience have I had such an advantageous point of view from which to make observations. CHAPTER II. THE PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL. In appearance and manner the professional criminal has not changed much in the last decade. I knew him first over ten years ago, when making my earliest studies of tramp life. I saw him again five years ago, while on a short trip in Hoboland, and we have met recently on the railroads; and he looks just about as he did when we first got acquainted. Ordinarily he would not be noticed in mixed company by others than those accustomed to his ways. He is not like the tramp, whom practically any one can pick out in a crowd. He dresses well, can often carry himself like a gentleman, and generally has a snug sum of money in his pockets. It is his face, voice, and habits of companionship that mark him for what he is. Not that there is necessarily that in his countenance which Lombroso would have us believe signifies that he is a degenerate, congenitally deformed or insane, but rather that the life he leads gives him a look which the trained observer knows as "the mug of a crook." He can no more change this look after reaching manhood than can a genuinely honest man, who has never been in prison, acquire it. I had learned to know it, and had become practised in discovering it, long before I became a policeman. It took me years to reach the stage when in merely looking hurriedly at a criminal something instinctively pronounced him a thief, but such a time certainly comes to him who sojourns much in criminal environment. There are, of course, certain special features and wrinkles that one looks for, and that help in the general summing up, but after awhile these are not thought of in judging a man, at least not consciously, and the observer bases his opinion on instinctive feeling. Given the stylish clothes to which I have referred, a hard face, suspicious eyes which seem to take in everything, a loitering walk, a peculiar guttural cough, given by way of signal, and called the thief's cough, and a habit of lingering about places where a "sporty" constituency is usually to be found, and there is pretty conclusive evidence that a professional thief is in view. All of this evidence is not always at hand; sometimes there is only the cough to go by, but, the circumstances being suspicious, any one of them is sufficient to make an expert observer look quickly and prick up his ears. In New York City, for instance, there are streets in which professional thieves can be met by the dozen, if one understands how to identify them, and it is only necessary to pass a few words and they can be drawn into conversation. Some are dressed better than others,--there are a great many ups and downs in the profession,--and some look less typical than the more experienced men,--it takes time for the life to leave its traces,--but there they stand, the young and old, the clever and the stupid, for any one who knows how to scrape acquaintance with them. They are the most difficult people in the world to learn to know well until one has mastered their freemasonry, and then they are but little more fearful of approach than is the tramp. I devote a special chapter to their class, because I believe that they are the least understood of all offenders, and also, as I stated in the last chapter, because I consider them the real crux of the problem of crime in this country. The petty offender is comparatively easy to discourage, the backwoods criminal will disappear as our country develops, the born criminal, the man who says that he cannot help committing crimes, can be shut up indefinitely, but the professional criminal, thanks to his own cleverness and the league he and the unknown thief have entered into, baffles both the criminologist and the penologist, and he probably does more financial harm to the country than all the other offenders put together. He is the man that we must apprehend and punish before crime in the United States will fail to be attractive, and at the present moment it is its attractiveness which helps to make our criminal statistics so alarming. I have placed him fourth in numerical strength in my general classification, and I believe this to be a correct estimate of the number of those who really make their living by professional thieving. If those are to be included who would like to succeed as professional thieves and fail, and drop down sooner or later into the occasional criminal's class, or into the tramp's class, the position I have given the so-called successful "professional" would have to be changed; but it has seemed best to confine the class to those who are rated successful, and on this basis I doubt whether an actual census taking, if it were possible, would prove them to be more numerous than I have indicated. Seeing and hearing so much of them on my travels, I made every effort to secure trustworthy statistics in regard to their number, and as the majority of them are known to the police, it seemed reasonable to suppose that, if I passed around enough among different police organisations, I ought to get satisfactory figures, but the fact of the matter is that the police themselves can only make guesses concerning the general situation, and I am unable to do any better. When putting queries concerning the number of the offenders in question, my informants wanted me to differentiate and ask them about particular kinds of professionals before they would reply. One very well informed detective, for instance, said: "Do you mean the whole push, or just the A Number One guns? If you mean the push, why you're safe in saying that there are 100,000 in the whole country, but the most of 'em are a pretty poor lot. If you mean the really good people, 10,000 will take 'em all in." The cities which were reported to have turned out the greatest number were New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Chicago was given the palm for being, at the present moment, the main stronghold of habitual criminals. Nearly every photograph I saw of a young offender was said to represent one of Chicago's hopefuls, and the pictures of the old men were generally described as the likenesses of New York City "talent." Chicago's lead in the number of "professionals" was explained by one man on the ground that it is a Mecca and Medina "for young fellows who have got into some scrape in the East. They go to Chicago, get in with the push, and then start out on the road. The older men train them." A question that I was continually putting to myself when meeting the "professional" was: What made him choose such a career? He is intelligent, agreeable to talk to, pleasant as a travelling companion, and among his kind a fairly good fellow, and why did he not put these abilities and talents to a better use? To understand him well I believe that one must make his acquaintance while he is still living at home, as a boy, in some city "slum." He does not always come from a slum, but, as a rule, this is where he begins his criminal career. In every quarter of this character there is a criminal atmosphere. The criminologists have not given this fact sufficient prominence in their writings. They make some mention of it, but it is seldom given its true significance in their books. The best-born lad in the world can go wrong if forced to live in this corrupt environment. Not that he is necessarily taught to commit crimes, or urged to, although this sometimes happens; they become spontaneous actions on his part. The very air he breathes frequently incites him to criminal deeds, and practice makes him skilful and expert. In another environment, in nine cases out of ten, he could be trained to take an interest in upright living; in this one he follows the lines of least resistance, and becomes a thief. Let me describe the childhood of a criminal boy who will serve as a type for thousands. He was born in one of the slums of New York, not far from the Bowery, and within a stone's throw of the clock of Cooper Institute, and the white spire of Grace Church. From the very start he was what is called an unwelcome child. Not that there was any particular dislike toward him personally, but his parents had all they could do, and more too, to care for the half dozen other children who had come to them, and, when he appeared, there was hardly any room in the house left. He grew up with the sense of want always present, and when he got into the street with the other children of the neighbourhood, it became even more oppressive. Pretty soon he learned from the example of his playmates that begging sometimes helps to quiet a boy's hunger, and that pilfering from the grocer's sidewalk display makes the dinner at home more substantial. These are bits of slum philosophy that every child living in slums learns to appreciate sooner or later. The lad in question was no exception. He was soon initiated into the clique, and played his own part in these miniature bread riots. He did not appreciate their criminal significance. All he knew was that his stomach was empty and that he wanted the things he saw in the shops and streets. He was like a baby who sees a pretty colour gleaming on the carpet, and, without counting the cost or pains, creeps after it. He knew nothing of the law of Mine and Thine, except as the thing desired was held fast in the fist of its owner. Not that he was deformed in his moral nature, or naturally lacking in moral power, but this nature and power had never been trained. Like his body, they had been neglected and forgotten, and it is no surprise that they failed to develop. Had somebody taken him out of his "slum" environment, and taught him how to be respectable and honest, his talents might have been put to good uses, but luck, as he calls circumstances, was against him, and he had to stay in low life. In this life there is, as a rule, but one ideal for a boy, and that is successful thieving. He sees men, to be sure, who find gambling more profitable, as well as safer, and still others humble enough to content themselves with simple begging, but as a lad truly ambitious and anxious to get on rapidly, he must join the "crook's" fraternity. There is also a fascination about crime which appeals to him. Men describe it differently, but they all agree that it has a great deal to do in making criminals. My own idea is that it lies in the excitement of trying to elude justice. I know from experience as an amateur tramp that there is a great deal of satisfaction in slipping away from a policeman just as he is on the point of catching you, and I can easily understand how much greater the pleasure must be to a man, who, in thus dodging the officer, escapes not simply a few days in a county jail, but long years in a penitentiary. It is the most exciting business in the world, and for men equal to its vicissitudes it must have great attractions. In time it interested the boy I am describing. At first he thieved because it was the only way he knew to still his hunger, but as he grew older the idea of gain developed, and he threw himself body and soul into the thief's career. He had been brought up in crime, taught to regard it as a profitable field of labour, full of exciting chase and often splendid capture, and naturally it was the activity that appealed to him. He knew that he had certain abilities for criminal enterprises, that there was a possibility of making them pay, and he determined to trust to luck. The reader may exclaim here: "But this boy must have been a phenomenon. No lad wilfully chooses such a career so young." He was in all respects an average slum boy in his ambitions and maturity, and if he seems extraordinary to the reader, the only explanation I can give is that low life develops its characters with unusual rapidity. Outcast boys are in business and struggling for a place in the world long before the respectable boy has even had a glimpse of it. This comes of competition. They must either jump into the fray or die. The child in them is killed long before it has had a chance to expand, and the man develops with hothouse haste. It is abnormal, but it is true, and it all goes to show how the boy in question was registered so early in the criminal calendar. He had to make his living, he had to choose a business, and his precocity, if I may call it that, was simply the result of being forced so early into the "swim." He ought to have been a frolicsome child, fond of ball and marbles, but he had but little time for such amusements. Money was what he wanted, and he rushed pell-mell in search of it. I will leave him in the company of hardened tramps and criminals, into which he soon drifted, and among whom he made a name for himself. The resolution to be a "professional" comes later with some lads than with others. Until well on into their teens, and sometimes even into their twenties, there are those who merely drift, stealing when they can and managing otherwise when they can't. Finally they are arrested, convicted, and sent to state prison. Here there is the same criminal atmosphere that they were accustomed to in the open, only more of it. Go where they will in their world, they cannot escape it. In prison they form acquaintances and make contracts against the day when they will be free again. They are eventually turned loose. What are they to do? The "job," of course, that they have talked about with a "pal" in the "stir" (penitentiary). They do it, and get away with two or three thousand. This decides them. They know of more deals, and so do their cronies, and they agree to undertake them and divide the plunder. So it goes on for years, and finally they have "records;" they are recognised among their fellows and in police circles as clever "guns;" they have arrived at distinction. Only one who has been in the criminal world can realise how easy it is for a boy to develop on these lines. He who studies prison specimens only, and neglects to make their acquaintance while they are still young and unhardened, naturally comes to look upon them as weird and uncanny creatures, to be accounted for only on the ground that they are freaks of nature; but they are really the result of man's own social system. If there were no slums in this country, no criminal atmosphere, and no unknown thieves to protect the known, there would be comparatively few professional offenders. The trouble at present is that when a boy gets into this atmosphere, once learns to enjoy criminal companionship and practice, he is as unhappy without them as is the cigarette fiend without his cigarette. Violent measures are necessary to effect any changes, and there comes a time when nothing avails. Before closing this chapter it seems appropriate to refer to some of the peculiar characteristics of professional offenders. The most that can be attempted in the space of one chapter is a short account of a few of their traits as a class, but an interesting book might be written on this subject. A peculiar caste feeling or pride is one of the most noteworthy characteristics of professional offenders. They believe that, in ostracising them from decent company, the polite world meant that they should live their lives in absolute exile, that they should be denied all human companionship, and in finding it for themselves among their kind, in creating a world of their own with laws, manners, and customs, free of every other and answerable only to itself, they feel that they have outwitted the larger world, beaten it at its own game, as it were. Their attitude to society may be likened to that of the boy who has been thrown out of his home for some misdemeanour and who has "got on" without paternal help and advice; they think that they have "done" society, as the boy often thinks that he has "done" his father, and the thought makes them vain. Individually, they frequently regret the deeds which lost them their respectability, and a number, if they could, would like to live cleaner lives, but, collectively, their new citizenship and position give them a conceit such as few human beings of the respectable sort ever enjoy. Watch them at a hang-out camp-fire gathering! They sit there like Indian chiefs, proud of their freedom and scornful of all other society, poking fun at its follies, picking flaws in its morality, and imaginatively regenerating it with their own suggestions and reforms. At the bottom of their hearts they know that theirs is a low world, boasting nothing that can compare with the one which they criticise and carp at, and that they are justly exiled; but the fact that they have succeeded alone and unaided in making it their own puffs them up with a pride which will not allow them to judge impartially. I remember talking with a Western criminal in regard to this matter, and taking him to task for his loose and careless criticism, as I considered it. He had tossed off bold judgments on all manner of inconsistencies and immoralities which he claimed that he had found in respectable society, and took his own world as a standard of comparison. Generosity was a virtue which he thought much more prevalent in his class. He listened to my objections, and seemed to accept some of the points made, but he closed the argument with a passionate appeal to what he would have called my class pride. "But think how we've fooled 'em, Cigarette," he exclaimed. "Why, even when they put us in prison we've still got our gang, just the same, our crowd,--that's what tickles me. I s'pose they are better'n I am,--I'll be better when I'm dead,--but they ain't any smarter'n I am. They wanted me to go off in the woods somewhere 'n' chew up my soul all alone, 'n' I've fooled 'em,--we all have! That's what I'm kickin' for, that they give in 'n' say, 'You ain't such Rubes as we thought you were.' If one uv 'em 'ud jus' come to me 'n' say: 'Jack, it's a fact, we can't ring in the solitary confinement act on you.--d'you know, I believe I'd reform jus' to be square with 'im. What I want 'em to do is to 'fess up that I ain't beholden to 'em for cump'y, for my gang, 'n' that they ain't any smarter'n I am in findin' a gang. I'm jus' as big a man in my crowd as they are in theirs, 'n' nothin' that they can do'll make me any smaller. Ain't that right, eh?" And I had to confess that from his point of view it was. Respectable, law-abiding people never realise what a comfort this caste feeling is to thousands of men. I have met even educated men to whom it has been a consolation. They have never been able to define exactly the compensation it affords them, indeed they have often been ashamed to admit the fact, but it has remained, nevertheless. I think the man I have just quoted enunciates it as clearly as it is possible to be set forth in words. His joy consisted in discovering that he was just as "smart," just as full of resource, just as equal to a trying situation, even in his disgrace and downfall, as the man who shunned his company, who wanted him banished or sent to prison; he had revenged himself, so to speak, on his avengers, a gratification which is more or less dear to all human beings. Personal liberty and freedom in contra-distinction to class liberty and freedom also count for a good deal in the outcast's life. Besides being independent of other people, he is also more or less independent of his own people, so far as laws and commands are concerned. He tolerates no king, president, or parliament, and resents with vigour any infringements upon his privileges, either from society or his own organisation. In fact, he leaves the organisation and lives by himself alone, if he feels that its unwritten, but at times rather strict, laws bear too heavily upon him. There are men who live absolutely apart from the crowd, shunning all society, except that which supports them. They are often called "cranks" by their less thoroughgoing companions, and would probably impress every one as a little crotchety and peculiar, but their action is the logical outcome of the life. The tendency of this life is to make a man dislike the slightest conventionalism, and to live up to his disliking is the consistent conduct of every man in it. He hates veneer about him in every particular and only as he throws off every vestige of it does he enjoy to the full his world. In a lodging-house in Chicago, some years ago, I met a tramp who was a good example of the liberty-loving professional offenders. We awoke in the morning a little earlier than the rest, and, as it was not yet time to get up, fell to talking and "declaring ourselves," as tramps do under such circumstances. After we had exchanged the usual cut and dried remarks which even hobo society cannot do entirely without, he said to me, suddenly, and utterly without connection with what had gone before: "Don't you love this sort o' life?" at the same time looking at me enthusiastically, almost as if inspired. I confessed that it had certain attractive features, and showed, for the sake of drawing him out, an enthusiasm of my own. "I don't see," he went on, "how I have ever lived differently. I was brought up on a farm, but, my goodness, I wouldn't trade this life if you'd give me all the land in the wild West. Why, I can do just as I please now--exactly. When I want to go anywhere, I get on a train and go, and no one has the right to ask me any questions. That's what I call liberty,--I want to go just where I please," and he brought out the words with an emphasis that could not have been stronger had he been stating his religious convictions. I have often been asked whether tramps and criminals have class divisions and distinctions like those in society proper. "Are there aristocrats and middle class people, for instance," a number of persons have said to me, "and does position count for much?" Most certainly there are these distinctions, and they constitute one of the most notable features of the life. There is just as much chance to climb high and fall low, in the outcast world, there are just as many prizes and praises to win, as in the larger world surrounding it, and the investigator will find, if he observes carefully enough, the identical little jealousies, criticisms, and quarrels that prevail in "polite society." A man acquires position in pretty much the same way that it is acquired elsewhere,--he either works hard for it, or it is granted him by common consent on account of his superior native endowment. There is as little jumping into fame in this world as in any other; one must prove his ability to do certain things well, have a record of preparation consistent with his achievements, before he can take any very high place in the social order. The criminal enjoys, as a rule, the highest position; he is the aristocrat of the entire community. Everybody looks up to him, his presence is desired at "hang-out" gatherings, boys delight to shake his hand, and men repeat his remarks like the wise sayings of a prophet. He feels his importance, works for it, and tries to live up to it, just as determinedly as aristocrats in other spheres of activity, and if he loses it and falls from grace, the disappointment is correspondingly keen. The tramp may be said to belong to the middle class of the outcast world, and, like other middle class people, he often finds life a little nicer in a class socially above him. He enjoys associating with criminals, being able to quote them on matters of interest to the "hang-out," and giving the impression that he is _au courant_ with their business. If he can do all this well it makes him so much the more important among his fellows. His own particular class, however, also has advantages and attractions, and there are men who seek his company nearly as much as he seeks the criminals. There is an upper middle class as well as a lower, and the line of separation is sharply drawn. The "old stagers," the men who have been years "on the road," and know it "down to the ground," as they say, constitute the upper middle class. They can dictate somewhat to the tramps not so experienced as they are, and their opinions are always listened to first. If they say, for instance, that a certain town is "hostile," unfriendly to beggars, the statement is accepted on its face, unless some one has absolute evidence to the contrary, and even then the under class man makes his demurrer very modestly. I have never succeeded in getting as far as this during my tramp experiences, and had to remain content in the lower division, but even there I had a significance denied to men less experienced than I was. A newcomer, for instance, a "tenderfoot," was expected to show me deference, and if I happened in at a "hang-out," where only newcomers were present, I was cock of the walk. Even these "tenderfeet" have a class pride, too, for at the bottom of all this social arrangement there are men and women who have been turned out of every class, the outcast of the outcasts. They are called "tomato-can-stiffs" and "barrel dossers" by the people above them, terms which indicate that they have reached the last pitch of degradation. They realise their disgrace nearly as much as their counterparts who have been turned out of respectable society, and often look with longing upon the positions they once enjoyed, but their lot is not entirely without its consolations, as I learned one day in talking with one of them. "Well, at any rate," he said, "I ain't got to keep thinkin' all the while 't I'm goin' to fall and lose my posish the way you have to. There's no place for me to fall to, I've come to the end o' my rope. You've got to keep lookin' out fer yerself ev'ry step you take--keep worryin' about gettin' on, 'n' I don't have them worries any more, 'n' it's a big relief, I tell you. You feel the way you do when you get out o' prison." This thought is a little fanciful, and not entirely sincere, but I can nevertheless appreciate the man's point of view, for, with all the independence and liberty of this world, there is, just as he said, considerable worry about holding one's place, and I can imagine a time when it would be pleasant to be relieved of it all. The financial profits in a professional offender's career are not easy to determine, but they must be taken into consideration in all accounts of his life, no matter how short. I saw more of the pickpocket, during my police experience, than of any other professional thief, and it was possible for me to learn considerable in regard to his winnings. CHAPTER III. THE BUSINESS OF PICKING POCKETS. Next to the tramp, who is more of a nuisance on American railroads, however, than a criminal offender, the pickpocket is the most troublesome man that a railroad police officer has to deal with. He has made a study of the different methods by which passengers on trains can be relieved of their pocketbooks, and unless he is carefully watched he can give a railroad a very bad name. The same is true of a circus, in the wake of which light-fingered gentry are generally to be found. Circuses, like railroads, hire policemen to protect their properties and patrons, and there are certain "shows" which one can attend and feel comparatively safe; but in spite of the detectives which they employ, many of them are exactly what the owner of a circus called them in my presence--"shake-downs." Everybody is to be "shaken down" who is "green" enough to let the pickpockets get at him, and, if pocketbooks are lost, the proprietor will not be held responsible. A railroad company, on the other hand, is severely criticised, and justly, if pickpockets are much in evidence on its trains, and as they are the most numerous of all habitual offenders, the railroad police officer is kept very busy during the summer season. The origin of the pickpocket takes one too far back in history to be explained in detail here, but the probability is that his natural history is contemporaneous with that of the pocket. When pockets were sewed into our clothes, and we began to put valuables into them, the pickpocket's career was opened up; to-day he is one of the most expert criminal specialists. In the United States he has frequently begun life as a newsboy, who, if he is dishonest, soon learns how to take change from the "fob" pocket of men's coats. If he becomes skilled at this kind of "grafting," and attracts the attention of some older member of the pickpocket's guild, he is instructed in the other branches of the art, or trade, as one pleases; I call it a business. An apt pupil can become an adept before he is in his teens; indeed, some of the most successful pickpockets in the country to-day are young boys. There are a number of reasons why so many criminals make pocket-picking a specialty. In the first place, it brings in hard cash, which does not have to be pawned or sold, and which it is very difficult to identify. The "leather," or pocketbook, is "weeded" (the money is taken out) and then thrown away, and unless some one has actually seen the pickpocket take it he cannot be convicted. Another reason is that it requires no implements or tools other than those with which nature has provided us. Two nimble fingers are all that is necessary after the victim has once been "framed up," and the ease with which victims are found constitutes still another attraction of the profession. We all think we take great care of our pocketbooks in crowded thoroughfares, and on street cars, but the most careful persons are "marks" for the pickpocket, if he has reason to believe that the plunder will pay him for the necessary preparations. It is usually the unwary farmer from the country who makes the easiest victim, but there are knowing detectives who have been relieved of their purses. A fourth reason, and the main one, is that a practised hand at the business takes in a great deal of money. Twenty-five dollars a "touch" is not considered a phenomenal record if there is much money in the crowd in which the pickpocket is working, and five or six touches in a day frequently only pay expenses. An "A Number One grafter" is after hundreds and thousands, and it is the ambition of every man in the business to be this kind of pickpocket. Some men operate on the "single-handed" basis; they travel alone, arrange their own "frame-ups" (personally corner their victims), and keep all the profits. There are a few well-known successful pickpockets of this order, and they are rated high among their fellows, but the more general custom is for what is called a "mob" of men to travel together, one known as the "tool" doing the actual picking, and the others attending to the "stalling." A stall is the confederate of the pickpocket, who bumps up against people, or arranges them in such a way that the pickpocket can get at their pockets. Practically any one who will take a short course of instruction can learn how to stall, but there are naturally some who are more expert than others. A tool who hires his stalls and makes no division of spoils with them will sometimes have to pay as much as $5 a day for skilled men. When he divides what he gets, each man in the mob may get an equal share or not, according to a prearranged agreement, but the tool is the man who does the most work. Of first-class tools, men who are known to be successful, there are probably not more than 1,500 in the United States. Practically every professional offender has a "go" at pocket-picking some time in his career, but there are comparatively few who make a success of it as actual pickpockets; the stalls are numberless. Among the 1,500 there are some women and a fair portion of young boys, but the majority are men anywhere from twenty to sixty years old. The total number of the successful and unsuccessful is thirty, forty, or fifty thousand, as one likes. All that is actually known is that there is an army of them, and one can only make guesses as to their real strength. It is an interesting sight to see a mob of pickpockets at work. It equals football in exercise and tactics, and fencing in cunning and quickness. At the railroad station one of the favourite methods is for the mob to mix with the crowd, pushing and tugging on and near the steps of the coaches. It was my duty to watch carefully on all such occasions, and I was finally rewarded by seeing some pickpockets at work. We were three officers strong at the time, and we had concentrated at the middle of the train, where the pushing was worst. One of the officers was a man who has made a lifelong study of grafts and grafters. He and I were standing close together in the crowd, and suddenly I saw him dart like a flash toward the steps of one of the cars. I closed in also, as best I could, and there on the steps were two big stalls blocking the way, one of them saying to the people in front of him: "Excuse me, but I have left my valise in this car." His confederate was near by, also pushing. Between the two was the tool and his victim, and my companion had slipped in among them just in time to shove his arm in between the tool's arm and the victim's pocket, and the "leather" was saved. In the aisle of a car, when the passengers are getting out, another popular procedure is for one stall to get in front of the victim, another one behind him, and the tool places himself so that he can get his hand into the man's pocket. The stall behind pushes, and the one in front turns around angrily, blocking the way meanwhile, and says to the innocent passenger: "Stop your pushing, will you? Have you no manners?" The man makes profuse apologies, but the pushing continues until the two stalls hear the tool give the thief's cough or make a noise with his lips such as goes with a kiss, which is a signal to them that the leather has come up, and is safely landed; it has been passed in lightning fashion to a confederate in the rear; the tool never keeps it if he can help it. On reaching the station platform the front stall begs pardon for the harsh words he has spoken to the passenger, and in the language of the story-teller, all ends happily. Still another trick, and one that can happen anywhere, is to tip the victim's hat down over his eyes, and then "nick" him while he is trying to get his equilibrium again. A veteran justice of the peace whom I met on my travels, and who was the twin brother in appearance of the poet Whittier, has an amusing story to tell of how this trick was played on him. We had called on him--my two brother officers and I--to find out whether he would enforce the local suspicious character ordinance if we brought pickpockets before him that we knew were in town. It was circus day, and a raft of them had followed the show to the town, and we were afraid that they might attempt to do work on our trains. "Pickpockets! Enforce the suspicious character ordinance!"--screamed the squire. "You just bring the slickers in, an' see what I'll do with them. Why, gol darn them, they got $36 out o' me the night the soldier boys came home." "How did it happen?" "I can't tell you. All I know is that I was coming down that stairway over there across the street, my hat fell over my eyes, and I stumbled. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but when I got down to Simpson's, where I was going to buy some groceries for my wife, I found that my wallet was gone." "Did you notice any one on the stairway?" "Yes, there was a well dressed looking stranger coming down behind me, and there may have been another man, coming down behind him, but I couldn't 'a' sworn that they took my wallet. Some boys found it down the street the next day." For the benefit of those who have to travel much, and we are all on the cars a little, it seems worth while to describe the "raise" and "change" tricks. When a victim is to be raised, one stratagem is for a stall to go to him and ask whether a valise in the seat behind him is his,--it always is,--and if so will he kindly shift it. If passengers are getting into the car, and there is considerable crowding going on, the man will be relieved of his pocketbook while he is reaching down for his valise. To "change" a man is to shift him from one car to another on the plea that the one he is in is to be taken off at a junction. While he is changing and going down the aisle, his "roll" or wallet disappears, and the pickpockets take another train at a junction. It is all done in a flash, and is as simple as can be to those who are in the business, but a great many "leathers" would be saved if people would only be careful and not crowd together like sheep. At circuses I have seen them push and shove like mad, and all the while the pickpockets were at work among them. An interesting story is told of an Illinois town where a mob of pickpockets had been led to believe that they had "squared" things sufficiently with the authorities to be able to run "sure thing" games at the show grounds with impunity,--pickpockets dabble occasionally in games,--but they swindled people so outrageously that the authorities got scared and prohibited the games. The men had paid so heavily for what they had considered were privileges, that they were going to be losers unless they got in their "graft" somehow, so they turned pickpockets again, and, as one man put it, "simply tore the crowd open." When it dispersed, the ground was literally covered with emptied pocketbooks. The easiest way for the police officer to deal with the pickpocket is to know him whenever he appears, and to let him understand that he is "spotted" and would better keep away. Some officers are born thief-catchers, and can seemingly scent crime where it cannot even be seen, and, whether they know a man or not, can pick out the real culprit. The average officer, however, must recognise his man before he can touch him, unless he catches him red-handed, and it is he who knows a great many offenders and can call the "turn" on them, give their names and records, that is the great detective of modern times. The sleuth of fiction, who catches criminals by magic, as it were, is a snare and a delusion. During my police experience I carried with me a pocket "rogue's gallery" of the most notorious pickpockets of the section of the country in which I had to travel. For a time I saw so many of these gentry in the flesh, and was shown so many pictures, that a bewildering composite picture of all formed in my mind. It seemed to me, sometimes, as if everybody I saw in the streets resembled a pickpocket that I had to be on the lookout for. I finally determined to commit to memory a picture a day, or every two or three days as was necessary, and learn to differentiate, and the method proved successful. To-day there are about fifty pickpockets that I shall know wherever I see them. The majority of them I have met personally, but a number are known to me by photograph only. To illustrate the usefulness of photographs in the police business, and incidentally my method, I must tell about a pickpocket whom I identified, one morning, in a town where a circus was exhibiting. He had tried to take a watch from a fellow passenger on a trolley-car, and had nearly succeeded in unscrewing it from the chain when he was discovered. He was a desperate character, and drew a razor, with which he frightened everybody off the car, including the motorman. He attempted to escape by running the car himself, but on seeing that it was going to take him back to the town, he deserted it, appropriated a horse and buggy, and made another dash for liberty. He was eventually driven into a fence corner by some of the young men of the town, and kept at bay until the police arrived, when he was taken to the lock-up, where, in company with my two companions, I saw him. He was brought out of his cell for our inspection, and, as luck would have it, it was his photograph in my book that I had elected to commit to memory a few days before. I knew him the minute I saw him, and he was identified beyond a possible doubt. In return he gave me the worst scolding I have ever had in my life, and threatened to put out "my light" when he is free again, but this is a _façon de parler_ of men of his class; after he has served his five or ten years he will have forgotten me and his threat. The amount of money which pickpockets take in annually is probably greater than that of any of the other specialists in crime. It would be idle to say how large it is, but it is a well-known fact that thousands of dollars are stolen by them at big public gatherings to which they have access. It was reported, for instance, that at the recent Confederate Soldiers' Reunion in the South $30,000 were stolen by pickpockets, and almost every day in the year one reads in the newspapers of a big "touch" reaching into the thousands. I think it is a conservative statement to say that in a lifetime the expert pickpocket steals $20,000. Multiply this figure by 1,500, which I have given as the number of the first-class tools in the country, and the result reaches high up into the millions. Like other professional thieves, the pickpocket throws away his money like water, and very seldom thinks of saving for old age, but practically all successful mobs have "fall money" (an expense fund for paying lawyers, etc., when they get arrested) of from $3,000 to $5,000 each, carefully banked, and I know of one pickpocket who is the owner of some very valuable real estate. A good illustration of the rapidity with which they recoup themselves financially after a period of rest, or a term in prison, is the story told about one of them who returned to this country penniless after a pleasure trip in Europe. The man related the incident to a friend of mine. "Didn't have a red," he said. "I tackled a saloon keeper I knew for a couple of thousand. How long do you think I was paying him back? Three weeks!" If the pickpocket knew how to save his money, and could invest it well, his children might some day be but millionaires. CHAPTER IV. HOW SOME TOWNS ARE "PROTECTED." Speaking generally, there are two methods in vogue in American police circles for dealing with crime, and they may be called the compromising and the uncompromising. The latter is the more honest. In a town where it is followed, the chief of police is known to be a man who will not allow a professional thief within the city limits, if he can help it, and he is continually on watch for transient offenders. He will make no "deal" with criminals in any particular, and he takes pride in securing the conviction and punishment of all whom his men apprehend. He is naturally not liked by offenders, although they respect his consistency, and there is a local element of rowdies who consider him "an old fogey," but he is the kind of officer that makes Germany, for instance, and England, too, in a measure, so free of the class of criminals that in this country are so bold. There are some chiefs of police in the United States of this character, and they become known throughout the criminal world, but there ought to be more of them. The compromising policeman is a man of another stripe. He knows about the uncompromising "copper," has read about him and thought about him, but he excuses his disinclination to accept him as a model on the ground that, if he did, the thieves would "tear his town open." "Why, if I should antagonise this class, as you suggest," he will say to the protesting citizens, "they would come here some night and steal right and left, just out of revenge. I haven't enough men to protect the city in that way. The Town Council only give me so much to run the entire force, and I have to manage the best way I can. If you'll give me more men, I'll try to drive all the thieves out of the city." In certain instances his argument has truth in it; it sometimes happens that he has not enough men to take care of the city from the uncompromising policeman's point of view. The trouble is, however, that because he is thus handicapped he thinks that he can go a step farther, and is justified in reasoning thus: "Well, I had to pay to get this position, and if the people don't want the town protected as it ought to be, it isn't my fault, and I'm going to get out of the job all that's in it," and then begins a miserable conniving with crime. To illustrate what a professional thief can accomplish with such a police officer, let it be supposed that the thief is happily married, as is sometimes the case, has a family, and wants to live in a certain town. The chief of police knows him, however, and can disgrace his family, if he is so inclined. The thief wants his family left alone, he takes a pride in it, so he visits the chief at "Headquarters," and they have a talk. "See here, chief," he says, "I'll promise you not to do any work in your town, if you'll promise to leave me and mine alone. Now, what's it going to cost me?" Sometimes it costs money, not necessarily handed over the desk, and not always to the chief personally, but in a manner that is satisfactory to all concerned. In other cases the matter is arranged without money, and the thief may possibly promise to "tip off" to the chief some well-known "professional" when he comes to town, so that the chief can get the benefit of an advertisement in the newspapers; they will say that such and such a man has been captured, "after a long and exciting chase ably conducted by our brilliant chief." The chase generally amounts to a quiet walk to the hotel or saloon where the visiting thief is quietly reading a newspaper or drinking a glass of beer, and the capture dwindles down to a request on the part of the chief or his officer that the man shall go to the "front office," which he does, wondering all the while who it was that "beefed" on him (told the chief who he was). A number of the "fly catches," as they are called in police parlance, which create so much comment in the press, can be explained in some such way as this. Meanwhile, however, what has become of the protected thief? He may keep his word, a number of thieves do, and commit no theft in the town where he is allowed to live; it depends on how much money he needs to meet his various expenses, how dear his family is to him, and what temptations he encounters. If he does break his word, however, and there are no hall-marks on his theft, by which it can be definitely traced to him, all he has to say, when asked by his protector as to who did it, is: "It must have been outside talent." In other words, he can "work" with almost absolute safety in the town, and the innocent public is paying taxes all the while for a police force that ought to be able to apprehend him. To prove that this case is not hypothetical but actual, I would say that I have recently been in at least two cities where I know that professional thieves live with impunity, for I saw as many as ten in each, and they were not afraid to do criminal work in either. The police of both places claimed that in giving the thieves a domicile they were protecting their towns, but any one who knows either city well is aware that professional crime is prevalent. One of the worst features of the policy under consideration is its selfishness. A chief who says to a professional thief, "I will leave you alone if you will leave me alone," practically says to him: "Go to another town when you want to steal." An amusing story is told in this connection about two chiefs who aired their different notions in regard to the matter, at one of the annual conferences of the chiefs of police. One of them had said tentatively, so the story goes, that he had heard that in some cities criminals were protected, and that he considered the practice a bad one. Another chief, who was thought to favour such a policy, got up and said that he did not know much about the question in hand, but he did know that his town was particularly free of crime. "That may be, Bill," retorted the first speaker, "but I'll tell you what your thieves do--they come down to my town to steal and go back to yours, where they are left alone, to live." I give the anecdote merely as gossip, but it illustrates splendidly one of the worst results of compromise with crime. It sometimes happens that an entire municipal administration, or, at any rate, the most powerful officials in it, favour the policy of compromise, and then it is utterly impossible to punish the criminal adequately. I have been in such communities. Not long ago I was in a town of about ten thousand inhabitants where a "mob" of New York pickpockets were caught in the act of attempting to pick a pocket. On being charged with the crime by the officers who had discovered them, they admitted their guilt and profession, and said: "But what are you going to do about it?" If the town authorities had been trustworthy the pickpockets could have been sent to the penitentiary; because there was practically no hope of securing their conviction in the local courts on account of their ability to bribe, or to give a purely nominal bail and then run away, they were let go. One of the best illustrations of how a town's officials sell themselves is embodied in the vile character known as "the fixer." I know this man best as a circus follower. Connected with nearly all shows, sometimes officially and sometimes not, are men who have games of chance with which they swindle the public. In late years it has become necessary for these men, in order to run their games, to pay for what are called "privileges," and the man who secures these is called "the fixer." He goes to the mayor or the chief of police of a town, as necessity requires,--sometimes to both,--assures them that the games are harmless (which they know is a lie), and hands them $25, $50, or $100, as circumstances may require. In association with the men who have the games are pickpockets and other professional thieves,--indeed the gamesters themselves can frequently change clothes with the pickpockets and let the thieves attend to the games while they pick pockets. It is not necessarily understood that the "crooks" are to be protected by the authorities to the extent that the gamesters are, but "the fixer," who stands in with the thieves also, is supposed to be able to get them out of any serious trouble, or, at least, to warn them if he knows that trouble is brewing. It was once my duty to run a race with a "fixer," and try to get the ear of a mayor of a town before he did. Two other officers and myself had assured ourselves that a "mob" of pickpockets was following up a circus which was being transported over the railroad we were protecting, and we knew that in one town, at least, "the fixer" had "squared" things with the authorities. The circus was on its way to another town on our lines, the mayor and police of which we believed we could swing our way if we got to them before "the fixer" did, and we travelled there ahead of him. We were particularly anxious to have the pickpockets arrested if they put in an appearance, and we told the mayor who they were, what protection they were getting, and explained to him how he would be approached by "the fixer." The mayor listened to us, nodded his head from time to time, and then said: "Well, there'll be no fixing done in this town, and if you will point out the pickpockets, when they come in, you may rest assured that they will be arrested. I can't understand what the citizens of a town can be thinking of when they elect to office men such as you describe." The pickpockets as well as "the fixer" must have got wind of what we had done, for the former did not appear, and the latter made no call on the mayor. We learned, however, that he arranged things satisfactorily to all concerned in the town where the circus exhibited on the following day. How many towns in this country can be "fixed" in this manner is a question I would not attempt to answer, but I do know that in the district where I was on duty as a police officer a great deal of tact exercise was necessary to beat "the fixer" in a town where it was to his interests to buy up the local authorities; and I ask in wonderment, as did the mayor whom I have quoted: What are the citizens of a town thinking of, when they allow such corrupt officials to manage things? Is it because they are ignorant of what goes on, or merely because they are indifferent? A friend in the police business, but a man who has understood how to remain honest in spite of it, answers the question by saying: "The world is a graft; flash enough boodle under nine noses out of ten, and you can do as you like with them. Take New York, for instance. I could clean up that city in a week if the people would stand by me. They wouldn't do it. Enough would tumble down in front of some fixer to queer everything that I might do. You can't do anything worth while in the police business unless you've got the people behind you, and they are as fickle as a cat. Why, if I were chief of police in New York, and I should clean up the city thoroughly, there is a class of business men who would come to me and say that I was taking away some of the main attractions of the city, and that they were going to make a kick about it. Heaven knows that the police are corrupt, but I tell you that the public is corrupt, too. See how things are up in Canada! I have just come back from there, and I can assure you that there is no such sneak work going on up there as there is with us. Their police courts are as dignified almost as is our Supreme Court, and if a crook gets into one of them they settle him. How many crooks get what they ought to in this country? About one in ten, and he could get off with a light sentence, if he had money enough to square things." Perhaps this is true, and we are indifferent to corruption as a people. Certainly the police business makes one think so, but I have not been in it long enough to hold to this pessimistic notion. It is my opinion that the majority of the people in this country do not realise what goes on about them, and I can take my own experience as an example. I have seen more of criminal life, perhaps, than the average person, and it would seem that I ought to have been able to learn considerable about the corruption in the country, but I must admit that, until this experience in a police force, I had no idea that it was as widespread as it is. It is not unreasonable to suppose that people who have never had occasion to look into such matters at all must be even more ignorant of the situation than I was. There is a great deal of wrong-doing that is apparent to any one who takes an active part in municipal politics, and the newspapers are continually reporting things which can but make it obvious to all who read that there is a strong criminal class in the United States; but one seldom takes such matters seriously until he is brought in close contact with them, and the general public is not thus influenced. Take the Mazet Committee, which recently investigated New York. So far as the police are concerned, I cannot see that the committee brought to light much that was new, and it was difficult for me to take an interest in this part of the investigation. If they had subpoenaed a few successful professional thieves located in New York, however, and persuaded them to tell what they know, the situation would have been much clearer to me and to the general public. More interest and indignation would also have been aroused if New York is "protected" in the way that I have indicated in the case of other towns. The police are not going to help investigate themselves, and the public is not likely to be permanently affected by what they say. A very definite effect would be made upon me, however, if a thief would get up and tell on what basis he is allowed to live in New York, what it costs him, if anything, to "square" things when he is arrested, what his annual winnings are, and what, in general, he thinks of the criminal situation in the city. He is a specialist entitled to speak with authority, and I would accept his statements as trustworthy. It is, of course, to be replied to all this that it is very difficult to persuade a thief to talk, but the point I would make is that the public seldom gets the truth in regard to such matters as are under consideration. It hears in an indefinite way that corruption is rampant, and then there is an investigation, but the average citizen rarely realises what is going on until some personal business brings him in contact with the suspected officials. Let a man have his pocket picked, or his home robbed, and go to the police about it, and he will begin to see how things are managed. If everybody could have this experience, meet both detective and thief, and all could have a talk together, there would be an awakening in public sentiment that would be very beneficial. Meanwhile all that I can recommend is to hunt down the unknown thief, and punish him hard. There are different methods by which he can be apprehended, but I know of none better than to catch the known thief and through him find out the other. The police and court proceedings, if carefully followed, are bound to develop the facts, and, these once secured, the public is to blame if the unknown thief is not punished. CHAPTER V. A PENOLOGICAL PILGRIMAGE. One of the advantages that the itinerant policeman has over the stationary officer is that he can inspect a large number of penal institutions, and find out who, among the people he has to keep track of, are shut up. The municipal officer may know that a certain "professional" is out of his bailiwick, but unless he can place him elsewhere he is never sure when or where he may turn up again. The itinerant officer, on the other hand, can follow a man, and if he gets into prison the officer knows it immediately. This is a very definite gain in the police business, and it would be well if police forces generally were given the benefit of it. There is a National Bureau of Identification to which officers who are members may apply for information in regard to any offender of whom there is a record, and the institution is to be recommended to those who are connected with police life, but voluntary information in regard to convicts sent to police chiefs by prison wardens would also be helpful. My interest in the lock-ups, jails, workhouses, and penitentiaries that I visited on my travels was, in a measure, professional, but I was mainly concerned in getting information in regard to their condition and management, and in finding out to what extent they have a deterrent effect on crime. All told, I inspected about thirty-five places of detention and penal institutions, and they represent the best and worst of their kind in the country. In criticising them I would not have it understood that I hold the officials in charge necessarily responsible for their condition--the taxpayers decide whether a community shall have a truly modern prison or not; my purpose is merely to report what I saw, and to comment objectively on my finding. I visited more lock-ups than anything else. On reaching a town, I went as soon as possible to the "calaboose" to see who were held there. Sometimes the little prison was empty, and then again every cell would be occupied, but in a week I generally saw from thirty to fifty inmates. Mature men predominated, but women and boys were also to be found. The women were invariably separated from the men by at least a cell wall, but the boys, and I saw some not over ten years old, were thrown in with the most hardened criminals. They were allowed to pass about among the men in the lock-up corridor, and at night were shut up with them in the cells. This is the worst feature of the lock-up system in the United States. Very little effort is made in the smaller towns to separate the young from the old, the hardened from the unhardened, and even in the lock-ups of large cities a much more careful classification of the inmates is necessary. The officials in charge of these places excuse the policy now in vogue on the ground that there is not room enough to give the boys better attention, and the taxpayers say that there is not money enough in the community to build larger lock-ups. There is always a reason of some sort for every blunder that is made, but as long as we make our lock-ups "kindergartens of crime," as I once heard a criminal call them, there is no excuse whatever to wonder why there are so many offenders. It is a fashion, nowadays, to run to "the positive school" of Italy and France for an explanation concerning the origin of the criminal, to ask Signor Lombroso to diagnose the situation, but in this country we need but make a round of our lock-ups to discover where the fresh crop of offenders comes from. They generally get to the lock-up from the "slum," where they may or may not have shown criminal proclivities, but once in the lock-up and allowed to associate with the old offenders, very few of them, indeed, escape the contaminating influences brought to bear upon them. The county jail may be described as the public school of crime. There are some county jails in which a thorough classification of the inmates is secured, but there is a very small number of these jails compared with the hundreds in which young and old, first offenders and habitual criminals, are all jumbled together. I can write from a full experience in regard to our county jails, because I have not only had to visit them as a police officer, but I have also had to "serve time" in them as a tramp, and I know whereof I speak. Practically any boy, no matter what his training has been, can be made a criminal if handed over to skilled jail instructors, and every day in the year some lad, who, after all is said, is really only mischievous, is committed by a magistrate or justice of the peace to a county prison. There is no other place for the magistrate to send the boy, if his parents demand his incarceration, and the sheriff is not prepared to take him to the reform school immediately, and so he is tossed into the general rag-bag of offenders to take his chances. He is eventually sent to the reform school or house of correction, where it is theoretically supposed that he is going to be reformed; but it is a fact that the majority of professional offenders in this country have generally spent a part of their youth in just such institutions, where they were no more reformed than is a confirmed jailbird on his release from a penitentiary. It is an extremely difficult task to change any boy who goes to a reform school after a long sitting in a county jail, and the wonder to me is that our reformatories accomplish what they do. The superintendent of a reformatory school in Colorado took me to task some years ago for making the statement in public, in regard to tramps, that I have just made about professional criminals,--that the majority of them have experienced reform-school discipline,--and he said that it was a thoroughly established fact that tramps keep out of such places. Of course they keep out of them as full-grown men, as do also grown-up thieves, but they are sent to them as youngsters, if apprehended for some offence, whether they like it or not, and any one who is acquainted with tramps and criminal life knows this to be true. I make so much mention of boys in this paper because they are to be the next generation of offenders, unless we succeed in rescuing them from a criminal life while they are still susceptible to good influences; and we are not doing this, or even seriously thinking about it, when we give them professional thieves and convicted murderers as associates in jails. Various suggestions have been made by which the county jail system can be improved, and I favour the one which recommends that the county institution be abolished entirely, and that two or three well-equipped houses of detention be made to suffice for an entire State. Such an arrangement would not only be a great deal cheaper than the present practice, but it would permit of a careful division of all the inmates. Some of our workhouses are already run on this basis, several counties contributing toward the support and maintenance of each. It would, of course, be necessary to make a county's contributions toward the support of a jail proportionate to its population, but there ought not to be any great difficulty in arranging a satisfactory contract; and it is time, anyhow, that we throw over some of our commercial notions about making corrective and penal institutions pay their way. The thing to do is to make them effective in checking crime, and if they are successful in this very important particular, we can well afford to put a little money in them without worrying about the financial returns. I visited but one reformatory during my pilgrimage, but it was representative of the latest of these institutions. I refer to the Elmira, N. Y. type. The old and hardened "professional" calls these places the high schools of crime, the next grade after the county jail, but I do not agree with him in this classification. It is true, as he says, that a number of offenders are committed to these institutions, who ought to have been sent to the penitentiary, and it is particularly disgusting to him to see educated men, with "pull" and friends, who have been convicted of crimes for which less favoured offenders would receive sentences to the State prison, relieved of the disgrace of going to prison by being sent to the "kids' pen," as the reformatory is also sometimes called; but, admitting all this, I believe that the modern reformatory, when well managed, represents the best penological notions. As in all prisons, however, where the inmates work on the association basis, a great deal can be taught that is not in the curriculum of the institution, and it is consequently no surprise to meet, in the open, criminals who have "served time" in reformatories. In the reformatory that I visited, it was a disappointment to me to find that men whose faces, manner, and bearing proved them to be, if not actual professionals, at least understudies of men who are, were mixed up in the workshops with young fellows whom any one would have picked out; for comparatively innocent offenders. I believe in the principle of association in certain corrective institutions also, but I do not approve of indiscriminate companionship. A natural reply to my criticism is that it is hard to tell who are the old offenders, but a prison official who knows his business, and has learned how to read faces and to interpret actions, ought to be able to separate the "crook" from the beginner in crime. It is a false notion to think that the former is going to be helped by association with the latter. A prison is a prison, no matter what euphemistic name it is called, and the old offender is not going to allow any "mother's boy" fellow prisoner to set him an example. In the criminal world, as in the larger world on which it lives, the law of the survival of the fittest is operative, and the fittest, as a rule, are those who are the most hardened; in prison and out, it is they who really run things. Another mistake made in the reformatory in question, according to my view, is the age limit by which admission into the institution is regulated. When a young man has reached his twenty-first year, and commits a crime which calls for a prison sentence, I say let him have it, no matter whose son he may be, provided the penitentiary authorities observe the classification referred to above. If it can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the young man is mentally deficient, and not accountable for his actions, it is obvious that the State prison is no place for him; but, otherwise, it is my observation that more good than harm is done, if he is made to suffer the punishment that the law demands. I realise that I am on debatable ground in taking this view of such cases, but they are debatable largely because the different opinions held in regard to them are the result of different observations. Mine have been made mainly in the outdoor criminal world, and I have not had a wide experience with the offender in confinement, but I have met the pampered young criminal so often, and it has been so plain that it was light punishment which trained him to stand the more severe, that I have come to believe that a quick checking-up at the start would have been more beneficial. Of penitentiaries I saw two, each in a different State. One contained about two thousand five hundred inmates, and the other about one thousand eight hundred. It is not easy even for a police officer to explore these institutions freely. I know of one warden who refuses to let the police have photographs of criminals in his charge; he says that "it is not nice to pass them around,"--but I managed to see a good deal that I could not possibly have seen as an ordinary visitor, hurried through by a guard. As a general statement, it may be said that a penitentiary reflects the warden's personality. There are rules to be observed and work to be done, which have been arranged and planned for by the board of directors, but the warden is the man with whom the prisoners have to deal, and they look up to him as the principal authority in every-day matters. His main anxiety is to get good conduct out of his charges, and he has to experiment with various methods. Some wardens favour one method and some another. One, for instance, will think that leniency and kindness work best, while another will recommend whipping, the dungeon, electricity, hot water, etc., for recalcitrant inmates. The idea of each warden is that he wants things to go smoothly, and if they do not, he has to straighten them out as best he can. All this is very interesting from the warden's point of view, and it interested me also somewhat when visiting the two penitentiaries; but my main endeavour was to try to find out to what extent these institutions were lessening the number of criminals in the communities which they served. A man may be as gentle as a lamb while in durance, and the warden may pride himself on the good conduct he is getting out of him, but how is he going to be when he has his liberty once more? The cleverest criminal is usually the most docile prisoner, and yet he takes up crime again as his profession after his time has expired, and the penitentiary has been in his case merely a house of detention. Excepting the death penalty, however, imprisonment in a penitentiary is the final form of punishment that we have in this country, and if it fails to check crime, either our criminals are increasing out of proportion to our means for taking care of them, or we do not administer the proper chastisement. From what I have been able to see of our penitentiaries as a visitor, and have heard about them as a fellow traveller with tramps, and incidentally with criminals, I am inclined to accept the second conclusion. Crime has increased in this country faster than the population, but in the older States there are enough penal institutions to take care of the offenders, if they were made to have the discouraging effect on criminals that similar institutions have in Europe. The late Austin Bidwell, an American offender who had a long experience in an English prison, and who was a competent judge of the kind of punishment that is the most deterrent, once said to me that he believed that a short imprisonment, if made very severe, accomplished more than a long imprisonment with comforts. And he added that he thought that in the United States a mistake was made in giving criminals long sentences to easy prisons. I hold more or less to the same view. Penologically, I think that the punishment in vogue in Delaware, for certain offences, is wiser and more to the point than that in any other State in the Union. Punishment in prison ought not to be wholly retributive,--it has been well called expiatory discipline,--but it ought to check crime, and up to date there is no satisfactory evidence that our prisons are achieving this end. In many of them the discipline is too lenient. At one of the prisons I visited, two Sundays of the month are given up to a lawn festival, which the prisoners' friends may attend. They bring lunch baskets and join the prisoners in the prison garden, where they chat, eat ice-cream, and drink lemonade, sold at a booth presided over by one of the prisoners, and generally amuse themselves. It seemed to me that I was attending a picnic. In a talk with the warden in regard to the affair, he said that he found that such favours made the prisoners more tractable. In my humble opinion, a prison is not a place where favours of this character need be expected or shown, and if good conduct can only be got out of them by being "nice" to them after this fashion, they would better be shut up in their cells until they can learn to obey. In conclusion, I desire to put two queries: Why is it that the cleverest criminals in our prisons are frequently to be found taking their ease in the prison hospitals and "insane wards," and how does it come that men who belong to the class of prisoners who ought to wear the "stripes" are allowed the clothes which ordinarily are only given to prisoners who have passed the "stripe" period of their incarceration? In one penitentiary I found a politician and rich physician favoured in the latter particular, and in the hospital and insane ward of another, enjoying themselves in rocking-chairs and a private garden, I found more professional thieves than in any other part of the institution. I ask the questions in all innocence, but there are those who claim that correct answers to them would disclose some very bad practices in prison management. CHAPTER VI. A NEW CAREER FOR YOUNG MEN. Up till the present time the police business in the United States has remained almost exclusively in the hands of a particular class. From Maine to California one finds practically the same type of man patrolling a beat, and there is not much difference among the superior officers of police forces. They all have about the same conceptions of morality, honesty, and good citizenship, and they differ very little in their notions of police policy and methods. The thing to do, the majority of them think, is to keep a city superficially clean, and to keep everything quiet that is likely to arouse the public to an investigation. Nearly all are politicians in one form or another, and they feel that the security of their positions depends on the turn that politics may take. If they have a strict chief, one who tries to be honest according to his best light, they are more on their good behaviour than when governed by an easy-going man, but even under such circumstances there may be found, in large forces, a great deal of concealed disobedience. Their main friends and acquaintances are saloon-keepers, professional politicians, and employees in other departments of the municipal government. In small towns they mix with the citizens more than in large cities, but the best of them acquire in time a caste feeling which impels them to find companionship mainly among their own kind. Not all are dishonest or lazy, but the majority have a code of honour suggested by their life and business. Once in the life, and accustomed to its requirements, it is very difficult for them to change to another. They have learned how to arrest men, to make reports, to keep their eyes open or shut according to necessity, to rest when standing on their feet, and to appreciate the benefits of a regularly drawn salary, and their intelligence and general training correspond with such an existence. A few develop extraordinary ability in ferreting out crime, and become successful detectives, and others keep their records sufficiently clean, or secure enough "pull," to rise to superior posts, and in certain cases these exceptional men would fit into exemplary police organisations. As a general thing, however, they are men who would have received much less responsible positions in other walks of life. This is as true of the commanding officers as of the patrolmen. The captain of a precinct is frequently as poorly educated as the patrolman serving under him, and his gold braid and brass buttons are all that really differentiate him from the men he orders about. The chief, in some instances, is a man of demonstrated ability, but there are chiefs and chiefs, and the way their selection is managed it is largely a matter of luck whether a town gets a good or bad one. Occasionally the citizens of a town will become indignant, and remove from office a disreputable chief, choosing in his place some highly respected citizen who has consented to take the position on a "reform platform" and for awhile the town has a man at the head of its police force who is accepted as an equal in society and is recognised as an influential man in municipal affairs, but before long the professional politicians get hold of the reins of government again, things get back into the old rut, and the conventional chief returns. It is this precariousness of the life, and the slavery to politicians, that have probably deterred educated young men from making police work their life business. They have seen no chance of holding prominent police positions long, and they have possibly dreaded the companionship which a policeman's life seems to presuppose. The young man just out of college and casting about for a foothold in the world practically never includes the police career in the number of life activities from which he must make a choice. It is the law, medicine, journalism, or railroading which generally attracts him, and he leaves unconsidered one of the most useful callings in the world. There are few men who are given more responsible positions, and who have better opportunities of doing something worth while, than the police officer, and I think that I ought to add, the prison official. In Germany this fact is recognised, and men train for police and prison work as deliberately and diligently as for any other profession; in this country very little training is done, and the result is that comparatively inferior men get the important posts, and our cities are not taken care of as they ought to be, and could be. There is nothing sufficiently promising as yet in the state of public opinion to justify one in saying that the time is particularly opportune for young men to begin to consider the police career as a possible calling, but I doubt whether there ever will be until the young men take the matter into their own hands and give public notice of their determination to enter the profession. Numerous obstacles will be put in their way, and hundreds will get discouraged, but for those who "stick," a great career will open up. The beginners must necessarily be the pioneers and fight the brunt of the battle, but, the battle once fought, there will be some positions of splendid opportunity. For the benefit of those who may care to consider seriously the possibilities of the career, it will not be inappropriate, perhaps, to describe the kind of men they may expect to have to associate with while going through their apprenticeship, to explain some of the difficulties that will be encountered, and to make a few suggestions in regard to the training necessary for a successful performance of duty. I can write of these matters only as a beginner, but it is the would-be beginner that I desire to reach. In all police organisations supported by cities there are two distinct kinds of officers, the uniformed men and the detectives. Among these the beginner will have to pick out his friends, and until he knows well the work of both classes of men he will be in a quandary as to which he desires to ally himself with. There are things in the detective's life which make it more attractive to some men than the policeman's, and _vice versa_. The two officers have different attitudes toward the criminal world, and the beginner will probably be decided in his choice according to the impression the different attitudes make upon him. The uniformed officer, or "Flatty," as he is called in the thief's jargon, if he remains upright and honest, arrests a successful professional criminal with the same _sang-froid_ and objectivity that are characteristic of him when arresting a "disorderly drunk." It is a perfunctory act with him; the offender must be shut up, no matter who he is, and he is the party paid to do it. The officer in citizen's clothes, the "Elbow," is a different kind of man. He realises as well as the "Flatty" that it is his business to try to protect the community which employs him, but he handles a prisoner, especially if the latter is a nicely dressed and well known thief, in a different way from the ostentatious manner of arrest characteristic of the ordinary policeman. It almost seems sometimes as if he were showing deference to his prisoner, and the two walk along together like two old acquaintances. The fact of the matter is that a truly successful professional thief is a very interesting man to meet, and he is all the more interesting to the officer if he has been able to catch him unawares and without much trouble. Realising what a big man he has got,--and thieves themselves have no better opinion of their ability than that which the detective has of it,--he likes to ask him about other big men, to get "wise," as the expression is. If it has been a hard chase, he also likes to go over the details of it, and find out who has doubled the most on his tracks. In time, if he keeps steadily at the business and learns to know a number of what are called "good guns" (clever thieves), he develops into a recognised successful thief-catcher; but he has spent so much of his time in fraternising with "guns," in order to learn from them, that he comes to think that his moral responsibility is over after he has located them. Technically, I suppose this is true; it is his business to catch, and the State must prosecute and convict. The point I would bring out, however, is that he is inclined to be lenient with his prisoner. To him the struggle has been merely one of intelligence and shrewdness; he has had to be quick and alert in capturing the "gun," and the latter has exercised all of his ingenuity in trying to escape. Moral issues have not been at stake; the thief has not stolen from the officer, and why should the latter not be friendly when they meet? In defence of this attitude toward crime it may be said that criminals are much more tractable in the custody of an officer of the kind under consideration than when arrested by some blustering "Flatty," who shows them up in the street as they walk along, and it is natural for a detective to try to do his work with as little friction as possible. The question, however, that I was continually putting to myself as a beginner in the business was, whether I should not eventually drift into a very easy-going policeman if I learned to look upon the thief merely as a whetstone, so to speak, on which my wits were to be sharpened. It seemed to me that to do my full duty it was necessary to have moral ballast as well as shrewd intelligence, really to believe in law, and that lawbreakers must be punished. I would not have it understood that there are no police officers who keep hold of this point, but I am compelled to say that the detective--and he is the man to whom we shall have to go before professional crime in this country can be seriously dealt with--is too much inclined to overlook it. The beginner in the profession must take sides, one way or another, in regard to this kind of officer, and as he chooses for him or against him he will find himself in favour or not with the class--and it is a large one--to which the man belongs. It is unpleasant to have to begin one's career by immediately antagonising a number of daily companions, and a series of exasperating experiences follow such a policy, but in the case in question I believe it will be found best to nail up one's colours instanter and never to take them down. The officer who does this gets the reputation of being at least consistent even among his enemies, and he is also relieved of being continually approached by criminals with bribes. Once started on his course, and his policy defined, the worst difficulty that he will encounter for a number of months will be a reluctance, natural to all beginners, to make an arrest. It seems easy enough to walk up to a man, put a hand lightly on his shoulder, and say: "You're my prisoner," but one never realises how hard it is until he tries it. During my experience I had no occasion to make an arrest single-handed, but it did fall to my lot to have a prisoner beg and beseech me to let him go after he had been turned over to my care, and to the beginner this is the hardest appeal to withstand. The majority of persons arrested are justly taken into custody, and the bulk of the "hard luck" stories they tell are fabrications, but it takes a man who has been years in the service to listen to some of their tales of woe without wincing. This squeamishness conquered, the beginner will have to be careful not to become hard and pessimistic. There is a good deal to be said in excuse of a police officer who develops these traits of character,--the life he leads is itself often hard,--but if they dominate his nature he learns to look upon the world in general merely as a great collection of human beings, any one of whom he may have to arrest some day. He sees so much that is "crooked" that he is in danger of thinking that he sees crime and thieves wherever he turns, and unless he is very cautious he will drift into a philosophy which permits him to be "crooked" also, because, as he thinks, everybody else is. If the beginner has lived in a society where courtesies and kindnesses, rather than insults and scoldings, have prevailed, he will also find it hard for awhile to appreciate the fact that a police officer is a peacemaker, and not an avenger. Wherever he goes, and no matter what he does, he is a target for the nasty slings of rowdies and a favourite victim of the "roastings" of thieves. In tramp life I have had to take my share of insults, and until I experimented with the police business I thought that as mean things had been said to me as a man ought to stand in an ordinary lifetime, but on no tramp trip have I been berated by criminals as severely as during my recent experience as a railroad police officer, and yet it was my duty not to answer back if a quarrel was in sight. Not all, however, in the policeman's life is exasperating and discouraging. But few men have so many opportunities of doing good, and of keeping track of people in whom they have taken an interest. Nothing has pleased me more in my relations with the outcast world than the chance I had as a railroad patrolman to help in sending home a penitent runaway boy. He had left Chicago on the "blind baggage" of a passenger train to get away from a tyrannical stepfather, and he fell into our hands as a trespasser and vagrant several hundred miles from his starting-point. It was a pitiful case with which no officer likes to deal according to the requirements of the law, but we had to arrest him to rescue him from the local officers of the town where he had been apprehended; if he had been turned over to them the probability is that he would have been put on the stone-pile with the hardened tramps, and when released would have drifted into tramp life. We took him to headquarters on the train, and the general manager of the railroad gave him a pass home, where he has remained, sending me a number of weekly accounts about himself. I report the incident both to show the opportunities in a policeman's life, and to give a railroad company credit for a kind deed which has probably preserved for the country a bright lad who would otherwise have been an expense and trouble to it as a vagabond and criminal. A word, before closing this chapter, in regard to how a young man, desirous of following the police career, can best get a start. I chose a railroad police force for my preliminary experience, and I would recommend a similar choice to other beginners if the opportunity is favourable. As long as a man does his work well in a railroad police organisation he is not likely to be disturbed, but under existing conditions the same cannot be said of a municipal force. A railroad officer also has the advantage of being able to travel extensively and to acquaint himself with different communities. If he can rise to the top there is no reason, so far as I can see, why he should not be an eligible candidate for the superintendency of a municipal police force. The chief that I had, if he were able to gather the right men about him, could protect a large city as successfully as he now protects a big railroad system. If it is impossible for a would-be beginner to find lodgment in any police force at the start, my suggestion is that he experiment with the work of a police reporter on a newspaper. It is difficult at present for a police reporter to tell all that he learns, and it is to be hoped that he will some day be able to give the readers of his paper full accounts of his investigations; but the young man who is training for police work can make the reporter's position, in spite of its present discouraging limitations, a stepping-stone to a position in a police organisation. It helps him to get "wise," as the detective says, and it is when he has become "wise" in the full sense of the word that he is most valuable in the police business. A guard's position in a penitentiary makes a man acquainted with a great many criminals, and is helpful in teaching one in regard to the efficiency of different kinds of punishment. It is, perhaps, to be recommended to the beginner as the next best position to try for, if, after the reporter experience, there is still no opening in a police force. The beginner may not be sure whether he desires to become a police officer or to take part in the management of a prison, and the guard's post helps him to come to a decision. All three of the recommended preparatory positions will be found useful, if the young man has the patience and time to go through the drudgery which they involve, and he will find that when he finally succeeds in getting into a large police force he has a great advantage over men who have not had his thorough training. CHAPTER VII. "GAY-CATS." Scattered over the railroads, sometimes travelling in freight-cars, and sometimes sitting pensively around camp-fires, working when the mood is on them, and loafing when they have accumulated a "stake," always criticising other people but never themselves, seldom very happy or unhappy, and almost constantly without homes such as the persevering workingman struggles for and secures, there is an army of men and boys who, if a census of the unemployed were taken, would have to be included in the class which the regular tramps call "gay-cats." They claim that they are over five hundred thousand strong, and socialistic agitators sometimes urge that there are more than a million of them, but they probably do not really number over one hundred thousand. Not much is known about them by the general public, except that they are continually shifting from place to place, particularly during the warm months. In the winter they are known to seek shelter in the large cities, where they swell the ranks of the discontented and complaining, and accept benefits from charitable societies. They certainly are not tramps, in the hobo's sense of the word. His reason for derisively calling them "gay-cats" is that they work when they have to, and tramp only when the weather is fine. Many of them really prefer working to begging, but they are without employment during several months in the year, and are constantly grumbling about their lot in the world. They think that they are the representative unemployed men of the country, and are gradually developing a class feeling among themselves. They always speak of their kind as "the poor," and of the people who employ them as "the rich," and they believe that their number is continually increasing. As a railroad policeman it was my duty to keep well in touch with this class of wanderers. Although they do not belong to the real tramp fraternity, and are disliked by the hoboes proper, they follow the hobo's methods of travel, and are constantly trespassing on railroad property. The general manager of the railroad by which I was employed asked me to gather all the facts that I could in regard to their class. "The attitude of the company toward this class of trespassers," he said, in talking to me about the matter, "must necessarily be the same as toward the tramps, as long as they both use the same methods of travel, but I have often wondered whether there are enough of those who claim to be merely unemployed men to justify railroad companies in experimenting with a cheap train a day, somewhat similar in make-up to the fourth class in Germany and Russia. At present the trouble is that we can't tell whether they would support such a train, and I personally am not convinced that all of them are as honest out-of-works as they say they are, when arrested for stealing rides. If you can gather any data concerning them which will throw light on this matter, I should be glad to have it." All told, I have met on the railroads about one thousand men and boys who claimed to be out-of-works and not professional vagabonds and tramps. In saying that I have met them, I mean that I have talked with them and learned considerable about their history, present condition, and plans and hopes for the future. They talked with me as freely as with one of their own kind; indeed, they seemed to assume that I belonged among them. The most striking thing about them is that the majority are practically youths, the average age being about twenty-three years, both West and East. Of my one thousand out-of-works, fully two-thirds were between twenty and twenty-five years old; the rest were young boys under eighteen and mature men anywhere from forty to seventy. Youths of all classes of society have their _Wanderjahre_, and so much time during this period is taken up with mere roaming that it is easy to understand how many of them must be without work from time to time. It is also true that young men are more hasty than their elders in giving up positions on account of some real or supposed affront; life is all before them, they think, anyhow, and meanwhile they do not intend to knuckle down to any overbearing employer. In certain parts of the country, on account of crowded conditions, it must be stated, furthermore, that it is difficult for a number of young men to get suitable employment. There is a sociological significance, however, about the present strikingly large number of young men who are "beating" their way over the country on the railroads. There is gradually being developed in the United States a class of wanderers who may be likened to the degenerated _Handwerksburschen_ of Germany. They are not necessarily apprentices in the sense that the _Handwerksburschen_ usually are, although the great majority of them have trades and make some effort, in winter at least, to work at them, but they are almost the exact counterpart of the _Burschen_ in their migratory habits. Years ago the travelling apprentice was a picturesque figure in German life, and it was thought quite proper that he should pack up his tools every now and then, get out his wheelbarrow, and take a jaunt into the world. He had to take to the highways in those days, and there was no such inducement, as there is now, to make long, unbroken trips. A few miles a day was the average stint, and at the end of a fortnight, or possibly a month, he was ready and glad to go to work again. This is not the case to-day. The contemporary _Handwerksbursch_ works just as little as he can, and travels in fourth-class cars as far as the rails will carry him. In a few years, unless there is some home influence to bring him back, he generally wanders so far afield that he becomes a victim of _Die Ferne_, a thing of romance and poetry to his sturdier ancestors of Luther's time, which for him has become a snare and a delusion. German vagabondage is largely recruited from German apprentices. It is the same love of _Die Ferne_, the desire to get out into the world and have adventures independent of parental care and guidance, which accounts largely for the presence of so many young men in the ranks of the unemployed in this country. As I have said, they are not tramps or "hoboes," but neither are they victims of trusts, monopolists or capital. Great public undertakings, like the World's Fair at Chicago, the recent war with Spain, a new railroad and the attractions of places like the Klondike, have a tendency to increase the number of these youthful out-of-works. The World's Fair stranded many thousands, and there are already signs that the war with Spain has brought out a fresh crop of them. They have taken to travelling on the railroads because they have become inoculated with _Wanderlust_ and because they think that it is only by continually shifting that they are likely to get work. The same thing took place, only on a larger scale, after the Civil War, and our present tramp class is the result. Some of the young men who took part in the Spanish war, and when mustered out joined the wanderers on the railroads, will eventually develop into full-fledged tramps; it is inevitable. At present they are merely out-of-works, and at times honestly seek work. Let me tell the story of one of my young companions for a few days on a railroad in Ohio. He was a plumber by trade and had left a job only a fortnight before I met him. The weather had got too warm to work, he said (it was in June), and he had enough of a "stake" to keep him going for several weeks "on the road." He was on his way to the Northwest. "The West is the only part o' this country worth much, I guess," he said, "'n' I'm goin' out there to look around. Here in the East ev'rything is in the hands o' the rich. There's no chance for a young fellow here in Ohio any more." I asked him whether he was not able to make a good living when he remained at work. "Oh, I can live all right," he replied, "but this country's got to give me somethin' more'n a livin', before I'll work hard month in and month out. I ain't goin' to slave for anybody. I got as good a right's the next man to enjoy myself, 'n' when I want to go off on a trip I'm goin'." I suggested that this was hardly the philosophy of men who made and saved a great deal of money. "Well, I ain't goin' to work hard all my life 'n' have nothin' but money at the end of it. I want to live as I go along, 'n' I like hittin' the road ev'ry now and then." "How long do you generally keep a job?" "If I get a good one in the fall I generally keep it till spring, but the year round I guess I change places ev'ry two or three months." "How much of a loaf do you have between jobs?" "It depends. Last year I was nearly four months on the hog once,--couldn't get anything. As a general thing, though, I don't have to wait over six weeks if I look hard." "Are you going to look hard out West?" "Well, I'm goin' to size up the country, 'n' if I like it, why, I guess I'll take a job for awhile. I got enough money to keep me in tobacco 'n' booze for a few weeks, 'n' it don't cost me anything to ride or eat." "How do you manage?" "I hustle for my grub the way hoboes do,--it's easy enough." "I should think a workingman like yourself would hate to do that." "I used to a little, but I got over it. You got to help yourself in this world, 'n' I'm learnin' how to do it, too." The nationality of the "gay-cats" is mainly American. A large number have parents who were born in Europe, but they themselves were born in this country, and there are thousands whose families have been settled here for several generations. What I have said in regard to the unemployed young men applies also, in a measure, to the old men; the latter, in many cases, are as much the victims of _Wanderlust_ as are their youthful companions: but there are certain special facts which go to explain their vagabondage. The older men are more frequently confirmed drunkards than are the younger men. Occasionally during the past year I have met an aged out-of-work who was a "total abstainer," but nine-tenths of all the mature men were by their own confession hard drinkers. Whether their loose habits are also answerable for their love of carping and criticising, and their notion that they alone know how the world should be run, it is impossible for me to say; but certain it is that their continual grumbling and scolding against those who have been more persevering than they is another of the causes which have brought them to their present unfortunate state. Men who are unceasingly finding fault with their lot, and yet make no serious attempt to better it, cannot "get on" very far in this country, or in any other. This type of out-of-work exists everywhere, in Germany, Russia, England, and France as well as in the United States, but I am not sure that our particular civilisation, or rather our form of government, has not a tendency to develop it here a little more rapidly than in any other country which I have explored. It is a popular notion in the United States that every American has the right to say what he thinks, and my finding is that the love of speaking one's mind is exceedingly strong among the uneducated people of the country. Agitators, who go among them, are partly to blame for this, and I have observed that a number of the expressions used by the "gay-cats" are the stock phrases of socialistic propagandists, but there is something in the air they breathe that seems to incite them to untempered speech. In Germany, where there is certainly far more governmental interference to rant about, and among an equally intelligent class of out-of-works who are not allowed for an instant the freedom of movement permitted the same class in America, there is no such wild talk as is to be heard among our unemployed. I have met scores of old men on the railroads whom long indulgence in unconsidered language has incapacitated for saying anything good about any one of our institutions, as they conceive them, and they begrudge even their companions a generous word. Such men, it seems to me, must necessarily go to the wall, and although a few, perhaps, can advance evidence to show that circumstances over which they had no control brought them low, the majority of those that I know have themselves to blame for their present vagabondage. It is furthermore to be remarked concerning these aged out-of-works that pride and unwillingness to take work outside of their trades have also been causes of their bankruptcy. The same is true, to some extent, of all sorts of unemployed men, young and old, but it is particularly true of "gay-cats" who have passed their thirty-fifth year. I have known them to tramp and beg for months rather than accept employment which they considered beneath their training and intelligence. It has been a revelation to me to associate with these men and see how determined they are that the employing class shall have no opportunity to say: "Ah, ha! we told you so!" Many of them have given up their positions in a pet, and taken to the "road," with the idea that if they cannot get what they want they will make the world lodge and feed them for nothing. To bring out clearly their point of view, I will describe a man whom I travelled with in Illinois. He had been without employment for over eight months when I met him, and had just passed his forty-second year. He expected to get work again before long, and was passing the time away, until the position was ready for him, travelling up and down the Illinois Central Railroad. He was a carpenter by profession, and claimed that for over five years he had never worked at any other occupation, when he worked at all. "I put in three hard years learnin' to be a carpenter," he said, "an' I ain't goin' to learn another trade now. For awhile I used to take all kinds o' jobs when I got hard up, but I've got over that. It's carpenterin' or nothin' with me from now on. You got to put your foot down in this country or you won't get on at all. "If I was married 'n' had kids, o' course I'd have to crawl 'n' take what I could get, but, seein' I ain't, I'm goin' to be just as stuck up as any other man that's got somethin' to sell. That's what all men like us in this country ought to do. The rich have got it into their heads that they can have us when they want us, 'n' kick us out when they don't want us, 'n' that's what they've been doin' with the most of us. They ain't goin' to play with me any more, though. Ten years ago I was better off than I am now, 'n' I'd be in good shape to-day if it hadn't been for one o' them trusts." "Are you not at all to blame for your present condition?" I asked, knowing that the man was fond of whiskey. He thought a moment, and then admitted that he might have squandered less money on "booze," but he believed that he was entitled to the "fun" that "booze" brings. "'Course we workingmen drink," he explained, "'n' a lot of us gets on our uppers, but ain't we got as much right to get drunk 'n' have a good time as the rich? I'm runnin' my own life. When I want work I'll work, 'n' when I don't I won't. What we men need is more independence. What the devil 'ud become o' the world if we refused to work? Couldn't go on at all. That's what I keep tellin' my carpenter pals. 'Don't take nothin' outside o' your trade,' I tell 'em, 'n' then the blokes with no trades'll have a better chance.' But you know how it is,--you might as well tell the most of 'em not to eat. I have had a little sense knocked into me. You don't catch me workin' outside o' my trade. I'd rather bum." And, unless he got the job he expected, he is probably still "on the road." Enough, perhaps, has already been said to indicate the general trend of the philosophy of the "gay-cats," but this account of them will fail to do them justice if I do not quote them in regard to such matters as government, religion, and democracy. It has never been my privilege to hear them contribute anything particularly valuable to a better understanding of the questions they discuss, but it seems fitting to report upon some of their conclaves, if only to show how they pass away much of their time. They have an unconquerable desire to express themselves on all occasions and on all subjects, and it is no exaggeration to say that two-thirds of their day passes in talk. In regard to the government under which we live, the favourite expression used to characterise it was the word "fake." "Republic!" I heard a man exclaim one day; "this ain't no republic. It's run by the few just as much as Russia is. There ain't no real republic in existence. You and I are just as much slaves as the negroes were." Not all stated their opinions so strongly as this, and there were some who believed that on paper, at least, we have a democratic form of government, but the prevailing notion seemed to be that it was only on paper. The Republican party is considered as derelict as the Democratic by these critics. Neither organisation, they contend, is trying to live up to what a republic ought to stand for, and they see no hope, either for themselves or anybody else, in any of the existing political parties. When quizzed about our Constitution and the functions of the various departments of the government, they all show deplorable ignorance, but it avails nothing to take them to task on this ground. "They guessed they knew the facts just about as well as anybody else," and that was supposed to end the matter. Religion, which the majority of the men with whom I talked took to be synonymous with the word church, was another favourite topic of discussion. Indeed, as I look back now over my conversations with the "gay-cats," it seems to me that there was more said on this subject than any other, and I have observed its popularity as a topic of conversation among unemployed men in other countries as well. There is something about it which is very attractive to men who are vagrants, as they think, because of circumstances over which they had no control, and they sit and talk by the hour about what they think the church ought to do, and wherein it fails to accomplish that which it is supposed to have for a purpose. The men that I met think that the reason that the church in this country is not more successful in getting hold of people is because it neglects its duties to the poor. "Here you and I are," a young mechanic remarked to me, as we sat in the cold at a railroad watering-tank, "and what does any church in this town care about us? Ten chances to one that, excepting the Catholic priest, every clergyman we might go to for assistance would turn us down. Is that Christianity? Is that the way religion is going to make you and me any better? Not on your life. I tell you, the church has got to take more interest in me before I am going to go out of my way to take much interest in it." "But the church is not a public poor-house," I remonstrated. "You and I are no more excused than other people from earning our living. If the church had to take care of all the people who think they're poor, it would go bankrupt in a day." "It's bankrupt already, so far as having any influence over the men that you and I meet," he replied. "I don't see a man more than once in six months who goes near a church, and he's generally a Catholic. There's something wrong, you can bet, when things have got to that pass. If the church can't interest fellows like us, it's going to have its troubles interesting anybody." There were others who expressed themselves equally strongly, but I was unable to get any satisfactory suggestion from any of them as to how the church may be made either more religious or effective. They all had their notions concerning its defects and shortcomings, but they seemed unable to tell how these were to be supplanted by merits and virtues. Many of them impressed me as men who would be capable, under different conditions, of religious feeling, and there was something pathetic, I thought, in the way they loved to linger in conversation on the subject of religion, but in their present circumstances the most inspired church in the world could not do much with them. They are victims of the passion for indiscriminate criticism, and I doubt whether they would know whether a church was doing its duty or not. Naturally a never-failing subject for talk was the labour question, and, under this general head, in particular the importation of foreign labour by the big corporations. I cannot recall an allusion to their present circumstances that did not bring this point prominently to the fore, and on occasions the mere mention of the word "foreigner" was sufficient to bring out the most violent invectives. In a number of instances they claimed that they knew absolutely that they had been forced out of positions to make room for aliens who would work for less money. "An American don't count for what he used to in this country," an old man said to me in Chicago. "The corporations don't care who a man is, so long as he'll work cheap. 'Course a Dago can live cheaper'n I can, 'n' so he beats me. I don't blame the Dago, 'cause he's doin' better'n he did in Italy, anyhow, but I do blame them corporations, 'n' they're goin' to get it in the neck some day, too. I won't live to see it, perhaps, but you will. I tell you, Jack, there's goin' to be a revolution in this country just as sure as this city is Chicago. It's comin' nearer every day. Just wait till there's about a million more men on the road, 'n' then you'll see somethin'. It'll beat that French revolution bang up, take my tip for that." This same man, if his companions told the truth, had had a number of opportunities to succeed, and had let them slip through his hands. Like hundreds of others, however, he could not bear to admit that he was to blame for his own defeat in life, and he made the foreigner his scapegoat. It is, perhaps, true that some foreigners in this country have ousted some Americans from their positions, but one needs but to make a journey on any one of the railroads frequented by "gay-cats" to realise how small a minority of them are tramping because foreigners have got their jobs. Corporations and trusts may or may not be beneficial, according to the way one considers them, but, in my opinion, they are innocent of dealing unfairly by the thousand "gay-cats" that I have recently interviewed. CHAPTER VIII. THE LAKE SHORE PUSH. Previous to my experience in a railroad police force, I was employed by the same railroad company in making an investigation of the tramp situation on the lines under their management. The object of the investigation was to find out whether the policy pursued by the company was going to be permanently successful in keeping tramps and "train-riders" off the property, and to discover how neighbouring roads dealt with trespassers. Incidentally, I was also to interview tramps that I met, and ask their opinion of the methods used by the railroad for which I worked. The first month of the investigation was given up to roads crossing and recrossing the lines in which I was particularly interested, and I lived and travelled during this period like a professional tramp. While on my travels I made the acquaintance of a very interesting organisation of criminal tramps, which is continually troubling railroads in the middle West. As I also had to keep watch of it while on duty as a patrolman, an account of my experience with some of its members seems to fall within the scope of this book. One night, after I had been out about a week on the preliminary investigation for the railroad, I arrived at Ashtabula, Ohio, on the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad, in company with a little Englishman, who, when we registered at the police station where we went to ask for shelter, facetiously signed himself, George the Fourth. There are four "stops," as the tramp says, in Ashtabula, three police stations and the sand-house of the Lake Shore Railroad, and after we had used up our welcome in the police stations we went to the sand-house. Later, when we were sure that the police had forgotten us, we returned to the "calabooses," and made another round of them, but we also spent several nights at the sand-house. On our first night at the sand-house we arrived there before the other lodgers had finished their hunt for supper, and on the principle of "first come first served" we picked out the best places in the sand. It was early in April, and in Ashtabula at this season of the year the sand nearest the fire is the most comfortable. During the evening other men and boys came in, but they recognised that our early arrival entitled us to the good places, and they picked out the next best. About ten o'clock we all fell asleep, leaving barely enough room for the sand-house attendant to move about and attend to his duties. A little after midnight I was awakened by loud voices scolding and cursing, and heard a man, whom I could not see, however, say: "Kick the fellow's head off. It's your place right 'nough, teach 'im a lesson." Somebody struck a match then, and I saw two burly men standing over the little Englishman. They were the roughest-looking customers I have ever seen anywhere. More matches were struck in different parts of the sand-house, and I heard men whispering to one another that the two disturbers were "Lake Shore Push people," and that there was going to be a fight. "Get up, will ye?" one of them said, in a brutal voice to my companion. "It's a wonder ye wouldn't find a place o' yer own." "Hit 'im with the poker," the other advised. "Stave his slats in." Then the first speaker made as if he were going to kick the Englishman in the head with his big hobnailed boot. The Englishman could stand it no longer, and jumping to his feet and snatching up an empty sand-bucket, he took a defensive position, and said: "Come on, now, if you blokes want a scrap. One o' ye'll go down." The crowd seemed only to need this exhibition of grit on the part of the Britisher to make them rally to his side, and one of them set a ball of newspapers afire for a light, and the rest grabbed sand-buckets and pieces of board and made ready to assist the Britisher in "doing up" the two bullies. The latter wisely decided that fifteen to two was too much of a disadvantage, and left, threatening to come back with the "push" and "clean out the entire house," which they failed to do, however, that night or on any other night that the Englishman and I spent at the sand-house. After they had gone, the crowd gathered around the Englishman, and he was congratulated on having "put up such a good front" against the two men. Then began a general discussion of the organisation, or "push," as it was called, which I could only partially follow. I had been out of Hoboland for a number of years previous to this experience, and the "push" was a new institution to me. It was obvious, however, that it played a very prominent part in the lives of the men at the sand-house, for each one present had a story to tell of how he had been imposed upon by it, either on a freight-train or at some stopping-place, in more or less the same way as the Englishman had been. Had it not been that questions on my part would have proven me to be a "tenderfoot," which it was bad policy for one in my position to admit as possible, I should have made inquiries then and there, for it was plain that the "push" was an association that ought to interest me also; but all that I learned that night was that there was a gang of wild characters who were trying to run the Lake Shore Railroad, so far as Hoboland was concerned, according to their own wishes and interests, and that there were constant clashes between them and such men as were gathered together in the sand-house. There was no mention made of their strength or identity; the conversation was confined to accounts of their persecutions and crimes, and to suggestions as to how they could be made to disband. One man, I remember, said that the only thing to do was to shoot them, one at a time, on sight, and he declared that he would join a "push" which would make this task its object as an organisation. "They're the meanest push this country has ever seen," he added, "an' workin' men as well as 'boes ought to help do 'em up. They hold up ev'rybody, an' it's got so that it's all a man's life's worth to ride on this road." The following morning, while reading the newspaper, a week or so old, in which a baker had wrapped up some rolls which I had purchased of him, I came across a paragraph in the local column, which read something like this: "A middle-aged man was found dead yesterday morning, lying in the bushes near the railroad track between Girard and Erie. His neck was broken, and it is thought that he is another victim of the notorious 'Lake Shore gang.' The supposition is that he was beating his way on a freight-train when the gang overtook him, and that, after robbing him, they threw him off the train." After reading this paragraph, I strolled down the Lake Shore tracks to the west, until I came to the coal-chutes, where tramp camps are to be found the year round. As many as fifty men can be seen here on occasions, sitting around fires kept up by the railroad company's coal, and "dope" from the wheel-boxes of freight-cars. I found two camps on the morning in question, one very near the coal chutes, and the other about a quarter of a mile farther on. There were about a dozen men at the first, and not quite thirty at the second. I halted at the first, thinking that both were camps where all roadsters would be welcome. I had hardly taken a seat on one of the ties, and said, "How are you?" when a dirty-looking fellow of about fifty years asked me, in sarcasm, as I afterward learned, if I had a match. "S'pose y' ain't got a piece o' wood with a little brimstone on the end of it, have ye?" were his words. I replied that I had, and was about to hand him one, when a general grin ran over the faces of the men, and I heard a man near me, say, "Tenderfoot, sure." It was plain that there was something either in my make-up or manner which was not regular, but I was not left long in suspense as to what it was. The dirty man with the gray hair explained the situation. "This is our fire, our camp, an' our deestrict," he said in a gruff voice, "an' you better go off an' build one o' yer own. Ye've got a match, ye say?" the intonation of his voice sneeringly suggesting the interrogation. There was nothing to do but go, and I went, but I gave the camp a minute "sizing up" as I left. The men were having what is called in tramp parlance a "store-made scoff." They had bought eggs, bread, butter, meat, and potatoes in Ashtabula, and were in the midst of their breakfast when I came upon them. In looks they were what a tramp companion of mine once described as "blowed in the glass stiffs." It is not easy to explain to one who has never been in Hoboland and learned instinctively to appraise roadsters what this expression signifies, but in the present instance it means that depravity was simply dripping off them. Their faces were "tough" and dirty, their clothes were tattered and torn, their voices were rasping and coarse, and their general manner was as mean as human nature is capable of. To compare them to a collection of rowdies with which the reader is acquainted, I would say that they resembled very closely the tramps pictured in the illustrated edition of Mark Twain's "The Prince and the Pauper." Their average age was about thirty-five years, but several were fifty and over, and others were under twenty. The clever detective would probably have picked them out for what they were, "hobo guns,"--tramp thieves and "hold-up" men,--but the ordinary citizen would have classified them merely as "dirty tramps," which would also have been the truth, but not the whole truth. I learned more definitely about them at the second camp, where a welcome was extended to everybody. "Got the hot-foot at the other camp, I guess?" a young fellow said to me as I sat down beside him, and I admitted the fact. "Those brutes wouldn't do a favour to their own mothers," he went on. "We've jus' been chewin' the rag 'bout goin' over an' havin' a scrap with 'em. There's enough of us this mornin' to lay 'em out." "Who are they?" "Some o' the Lake Shore gang. They jump in an' out o' here ev'ry few days. There's a lot more o' them down at Painesville. They're scattered all along the line. Las' night some of 'em held up those two stone-masons settin' over there on that pile o' ties. Took away their tools, an' made 'em trade clothes. Caught 'em in a box-car comin' East. Shoved guns under their noses, an' the masons had to cough up." A few nights after this experience, and again in company with my friend, George the Fourth, I applied for lodging at the police station at Ashtabula Harbour. We made two of the first four to be admitted on the night in question, and picked out, selfishly, it is true, but entirely within our rights, two cells near the fire. We had made up our beds on the cell benches out of our coats and newspapers, and were boiling some coffee on the stove preparatory to going to sleep, when four newcomers, whom I had seen at the "push's" camp, were ushered in. They went immediately to the cells we had chosen, and, seeing that our things were in them, said: "These your togs in here?" We "allowed" that they were. "Take 'em out, then, 'cause these are our cells." "How your cells?" asked George. "See here, young fella, do as yer told. See?" "No, I don't see. You're not so warm." And George drew out his razor. The men must have seen something in his eyes which cowed them, for they chose other cells. I expected that they would maul us unmercifully before morning, but we were left in peace. One more episode: One afternoon George and I decided that it was time for us to be on the move again, and we boarded a train of empty cars bound West. We had ridden along pleasantly enough for about ten miles, taking in the scenery through the slats of the car, when we saw three men climb down the side of the car. George whispered "Lake Shore Push" to me the minute we saw them, and we both knew that we were to be "held up," if the fellows ever got at us. It was a predicament which called for a cool head and quick action, and George the Fourth had both. He addressed the invaders in a language peculiar to men of the road and distinctive mainly on account of its expletives, and wound up his harangue with the threat that the first man who tried to open the door would have his hand cut off. And he flashed his ubiquitous razor as evidence of his ability to carry out the threat. The engineer fortunately whistled just then for a watering-tank, and the men clambered back to the top of the car, and we saw them no more. So much for my personal experience with the "Lake Shore Push" as a possible victim; they failed to do me any harm, but it was not their fault. They interested me so much that I spent two weeks on the Lake Shore Railroad in order to learn the truth concerning them. I reasoned that if such an organisation as they seemed to be was possible on one railroad property, it might easily develop on another, and I deemed it worth while to inform myself in regard to their origin, strength, and purpose. Nearly every other newspaper that I came across, while travelling in this district, made some reference to them, but always in an indefinite way which showed that even the police reporter had not been able to find out much about them. They were always spoken of as the "infamous" or "notorious Lake Shore gang," and all kinds of crimes were supposed to have been committed by them, but there was nothing in any of the newspaper paragraphs which gave me any clue as to their identity. In the course of my investigations I ran across a man by the name of Peg Kelley, who had known me years before in the far West, and with whom I had tramped at different times. We went over in detail, I romancing a little, our experiences in the interval of time since our last meeting, and he finally confessed to me that he was a member of the "Lake Shore Push," and added that he was prepared to suggest my name for membership. From him I got what he claims are the facts in regard to the "push." To the best of my knowledge, never before in our history has an association of outlaws developed on the same lines as has the "Lake Shore Push," and it stands alone in the purpose for which it now exists. In the early seventies, some say in 1874, and others a little earlier, there lived in a row of old frame houses standing on, or near, the site of the present Lake View Park in Cleveland, Ohio, a collection of professional criminals, among whom were six fellows called New Orleans Tom, Buffalo Slim, Big Yellow, Allegheny B., Looking Glass Jack, and Garry. The names of these particular men are given, because Peg Kelley believes that they constituted the nucleus of the present "Lake Shore Push." They are probably all dead by this time; at any rate, the word "push" was not current tramp slang in their day, and they referred to themselves merely as the "gang." Cleveland was their headquarters, and it is reported that the town was a sort of Mecca for outlaws throughout the neighbouring vicinity. The main "graft," or business, of the gang, was robbing merchandise cars, banks, post-offices, and doing what is called "slough work," robbing locked houses. The leader of the company, if such men can be said to have a leader, was New Orleans Tom, who is described as a typical Southern desperado. He had been a sailor before joining the gang, and claimed that during the Civil War he was captured by Union soldiers and sailors, while on the _Harriet Lane_, lying off Galveston. The gang grew in numbers as the years went on, and there is a second stage in its development when Danny the Soldier, as he was called, seems to have taken Slim's place in leadership. By 1880, although still not called "The Lake Shore Push," the gang had made a name for itself, or, rather, a "record," to use the word which the men themselves would have preferred, and had become known to tramps and criminals throughout northern Ohio and southern Michigan. The police got after them from time to time, and there were periods when they were considerably scattered, but whenever they came together again, even in twos and threes, it was recognised that pals were meeting pals. When members of the gang died or were sent to limbo, it was comparatively easy to fill their places either with "talent" imported from other districts, or with local fellows who were glad to become identified with a mob. There has always been a rough element in such towns as Cleveland, Toledo, Erie, and Buffalo, from which gangs could be recruited; it is composed largely of "lakers," men who work on the lakes during the open season, and live by their wits in winter time. This class has contributed its full share to the criminal population of the country, and has always been heavily represented in mobs and gangs along the lake shore. Opinions differ, Peg Kelley claims, as to when the name "Lake Shore Push" was first used by the gang, as well as to who invented it, but it is his opinion, and I have none better to offer, that it was late in the eighties when it was first suggested, and that it was outsiders, such as transient roadsters, who made the expression popular. He says, in regard to this point: "The gang was known to hang out along the lake shore, an' mainly on the Lake Shore Road, an' 'boes from other States kep' seein' 'em an' hearin' about 'em when they came this way. Well, ye know how 'boes are. If they see a bloke holdin' down a district they give 'im the name o' the place, an' that's the way the gang got its monikey (nickname). The 'boes kep' talkin' about the push holdin' down the Lake Shore Road, an' after awhile they took to callin' it the 'Lake Shore Push.' "Ev'ry 'bo in the country knows the name now. Way out in 'Frisco, 'f they know 't ye've come from 'round here they'll ask ye 'bout the push, if it's what it's cracked up to be, an' all that kind o' thing. It's got the biggest rep of any 'bo push in the country." The story of how the "push" got its "rep" is best told by Peg, and in his own words. I have been at considerable pains to verify his statements, and have yet to discover him in wilful misrepresentation. He admits that the "push" has done some dastardly deeds, and appreciates perfectly why it is so hated by out-of-works who have to "beat" their way on trains which run through its territory, but he believes that it could not have been otherwise, considering the purpose for which the "push" was organised. "Ye can't try to monopolise anythin', Cigarette," he said to me, "without gettin' into a row with somebody, an' that's been the 'xperience o' the push. When there was jus' that Cleveland gang, nobody said nothin', 'cause they didn't try to run things, but the minute the big push came ev'rybody was talkin', an' they're chewin' the rag yet." "Who first thought of organising the big push?" "I don't know 't any one bloke thought of it. It was at the time that trusts an' syndicates an' that kind o' thing was beginnin' to be pop'lar, an' the blokes had been readin' 'bout 'em in the newspapers. I was out West then,--it was in '89,--an' didn't know 'bout the push one way or the other, but from what the blokes tell me the idea came to all of 'em 'bout the same time. Ye see, that Cleveland gang had kep' growin' an' growin' an' spreadin' out, an' after awhile there was a big mob of 'em floatin' up an' down the road here. Blokes from other places had got into it, an' they'd got to be the biggest push on the line. There was no partickler leader, the way the James and Dalton gangs had leaders, an' there never has been. 'Course the newspapers try to make out that this fella an' that fella runs the thing, but they don't know what they're talkin' 'bout. The bigger the gang got, the more room it wanted, an' pretty soon they began to get a grouch on against the gay-cats that kep' comin' to their camps. Ye know how it is yourself. When ye've got 'customed to a push, ye don't want to have to mix with a lot o' strangers, an' that's the way the gang felt, an' they got to drivin' the gay-cats away from their camps. That started 'em to wonderin' why they shouldn't have the Lake Shore Road all to themselves. As I was tellin' ye, trusts an' syndicates was gettin' into the air 'bout that time, an' the push didn't see why it couldn't have one too; an' they begun to have reg'lar fights with the gay-cats. I came into the push jus' about the time the scrappin' began. I ain't speshully fond o' scrappin', but I did like the idea o' dividin' up territory. There's no use talkin', Cig, if all the 'boes in the country 'ud do what we been tryin' to do, there'd be a lot more money in the game. Take the Erie Road, the Pennsy, the Dope,[1] an' the rest of 'em. Ye know as well as I do, 't if the 'boes on those lines 'ud organise an' keep ev'ry bum off of 'em 't wasn't in the push, an' 'ud keep the push from gettin' too large, they'd be a lot better off. 'Course there's got to be scrappin' to do the thing, but that don't need to interfere. See how the trusts an' syndicates scrap till they get what they want, an' see how many throats they cut. We've thrown bums off trains, I won't deny it, an' we hold up ev'ry one of 'em 't we can get hold of, but ain't that what the trusts are doin', too?" I asked him whether the "push" distinguished or not in the people it halted. "If a reg'lar 'bo, a fella 't we know by name," he went on, "will open up an' tell us who he is, an' his graft, we'll let 'im go, but we tell 'im that the world's gettin' smaller 'n' smaller, 'n' 't he'd better get a cinch on a part of it, too. That don't mean 't he can join the push, an' he knows it. He understan's what we're drivin' at. He can ride on the road 'f he likes, but he'll get sick o' bein' by himself all the time, an' 'll take a mooch after awhile. 'Course all don't do it, ye've seen yerself that there's hunderds runnin' up an' down the line 't we ain't got rid of, an' p'r'aps never will. I ain't so dead sure that the thing's goin' to work, but the coppers'll never break us up, anyhow. They've been tryin' now for years, an' they've got some of the blokes settled, but we can fill their places the minute they've gone." "How many are in the push?" "'Bout a hunderd an' fifty. Sometimes there's more an' sometimes there's less, but it aver'ges 'bout that." "Do all the fellows come from around here?" "No, not half of 'em. There's fellas from all over; a lot of 'em are Westerners." "What is the main graft?" "Well, we're diggin' into these cars right along. We got plants all along the road, from Buffalo to Chi. I can fit ye out in a new suit o' clothes to-morrow, 'f ye want to go up the line with me." "Don't the railroad people trouble you?" "O' course, they ain't lookin' on while we're robbin' 'em, but they can't do very much. We got the trainmen pretty well scared, an' when they get too rambunctious we do one of 'em up." "Do you ever shift to other roads?" "Lately we've branched out a little over on the Dope an' the Erie, but the main hang-outs are on the Shore. We know this road down to the ground, an' we ain't so sure o' the others. Most o' the post-office work, though, is done off this road." "What kind of work is that?" "Peter-work,[2] o' course, what d'ye think?" "Pan out pretty well?" "Don't get much cash, but the stamps are jus' about as good. Awhile ago I was payin' fer ev'rythin' in stamps. Felt like one o' the old fourth-class postmasters." "Doesn't the government get after you?" "Oh, it's settled some of us, but as I was tellin' ye, there's always fellas to take the empty places." "Got much fall money?" "No, not a bit. We don't save anythin', it all goes fer booze an' grub. I've seen a big box o' shoes go fer two kegs o' beer, an' ye can't get much fall money out o' that kind o' bargaining. We have a good time, though, an' we're the high-monkey-monks o' this road." Later he introduced me to some of his companions. They were the same kind of men with whom the Englishman and I had had the disagreeable encounters,--rough and vicious-looking. "They're not bad fellas, are they?" Peg asked, when we were alone again. "You'd tie up to them, Cig, 'f ye was on the Shore, I know ye would." It was useless to argue with him, and we separated, he to join a detachment of the "push" in western New York, and I to continue on my way westward. Since the meeting with Peg I have been back several times in the "push's" territory, and have continued to make acquaintances in it. In the tramp's criminal world it stands for the most successful form of syndicated lawlessness known up to date, and, unless soon broken up and severely dealt with, it will serve as a pattern for other organisations. Whether it is copied or not, however, when the history of crime in the United States is written, and a very interesting history it will be, the "Lake Shore Push" must be given by the historian a prominent place in his classification of criminal mobs. FOOTNOTES: [1] Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. [2] A "Peter-man" is a safe-"blower," and Peter-work is safe-breaking. CHAPTER IX. HOW TRAMPS BEG. It is a popular notion that tramps have a mysterious sign-language in which they communicate secrets to one another in regard to professional matters. It is thought, for instance, that they make peculiar chalk and pencil marks on fences and horse-blocks, indicating to the brotherhood such things as whether a certain house is "good" or not, where a ferocious dog is kept, at what time the police are least likely, or most likely, to put in an appearance, how late in the morning a barn can be occupied before the farmer will be up and about, and where a convenient chicken-coop is located. Elaborate accounts have been written in newspapers about the amount of information they give to one another in this way, and many persons believe that tramps rely on a sign-language in their begging. It is well to state at the outset that this is a false conception of their methods. They all have jargons and lingoes of their own choosing and making, and they converse in them when among themselves, but the reported puzzling signs and marks which are supposed to obviate all verbal speech are a fabrication so far as the majority of roadsters are concerned. Among the "Blanket Stiffs" in the far West, and among the "Bindle Men," "Mush Fakirs," and "Turnpikers," of the middle West, the East, and Canada, there exists a crude system of marking "good" houses, but these vagrants do not belong to the rank and file of the tramp army, and are comparatively few in numbers. It is furthermore to be said that the marking referred to is occasional rather than usual. Probably one of the main reasons why the public has imagined that tramps use hieroglyphics, in their profession is that when charity is shown to one of them the giver is frequently plagued with a visitation from a raft of beggars. This phenomenon, however, is easily explained without recourse to the sign-language theory. Outside of nearly all towns of ten thousand inhabitants and more the tramps have little camps or "hang-outs," where they make their headquarters while "working" the community. Naturally they compare notes at meal-time, and if one beggar has discovered what he considers an easy "mark,"--a good house,--he tells his pals about it, so that they may also get the benefit of its hospitality. The finder of the house cannot visit it himself again until his face has been forgotten, at any rate he seldom does visit it more than once during a week's stay in the town; but his companions can, so he tells them where it is, and what kind of a story they must use. Although the hoboes do not make use of the marks and signs with which the popular fancy has credited them, they have a number of interesting theories about begging and a large variety of clever ruses to deceive people, and it is well for the public to keep as up-to-date in regard to these matters as they keep in regard to the public's sympathies. Not all tramps are either clever or successful; the "road" is travelled by a great many more amateurs than professionals, but it is the earnest endeavour of all at least to make a living, and there are thousands who make something besides. Roughly estimated, there are from sixty to seventy-five thousand tramps in the United States, and probably a fifth of all may be classified as "first-class" tramps. There is a second and a third class, and even a fourth, but it is the "A Number One men," as they call themselves, who are the most interesting. The main distinction between these tramps and the less successful members of the craft is that they have completely conquered the amateur's squeamishness about begging. It seems comparatively easy to go to a back door and ask for something to eat, and the mere wording of the request is easy,--all too easy,--but the hard part of the transaction is to screw up courage enough to open the front gate. The beginner in tramp life goes to a dozen front gates before he can brace himself for the interview at the back door, and there are men to whom a vagrant life is attractive who never overcome the "tenderfoot's" bashfulness. It was once my lot to have a rather successful professional burglar for a companion on a short tramp trip in the middle West. We had come together in the haphazard way that all tramp acquaintanceships are formed. We met at a railroad watering-tank. The man's sojourn in trampdom, however, was only temporary; it was a good hiding-place until the detectives should give up the hunt for him. He had "planted" his money elsewhere, and meanwhile he had to take his chances with the "'boes." He was not a man who would ordinarily arouse much pity, but a tramp could not have helped having sympathy for him at meal-time. At every interview he had at back doors he was seized with the "tenderfoot's" bashfulness, and during the ten days that our companionship lasted he got but one "square meal." His profession of robber gave him no assistance. "I can steal," he said, "go into houses at night, and take my chances in a shootin' scrape, but I'll be ---- if I can beg. 'Taint like swipin'. When ye swipe, ye don't ask no questions, an' ye don't answer none. In this business ye got to cough up yer whole soul jus' to get a lump (hand-out). I'd rather swipe." This is the testimony of practically all beginners in the beggar's business; at the start thieving seems to them a much easier task. As the weeks and months pass by, however, they become hardened and discover that their "nerve" needs only to be developed to assert itself, and the time comes when nothing is so valuable that they do not feel justified in asking for it. They then definitely identify themselves with the profession and build up reputations as "first-class" tramps. Each man's experience suggests to him how this reputation can best be acquired. One man, for example, finds that he does best with a "graft" peculiarly his own, and another discovers that it is only at a certain time of the year, or in a particular part of the country, that he comes out winner. The tramp has to experiment in all kinds of ways ere he understands himself or his public, and he makes mistakes even after an apprenticeship extending over years of time. In every country where he lives, however, there is a common fund of experience and fact by which he regulates his conduct in the majority of cases. It is the collective testimony of generations and generations of tramps who have lived before him, and he acts upon it in about the same way that human beings in general act upon ordinary human experience. Emergencies arise when his own ingenuity alone avails and the "average finding" is of no use to him, and on such occasions he makes a note on the case and reports about it at the next "hang-out" conclave. If he has invented something of real value, a good begging story, for instance, and it is generally accepted as good, it is labelled "Shorty's Gag," or "Slim's," as the man's name may be, and becomes his contribution to the general collection of "gags." It is the man who has memorised the greatest number of "gags" or "ghost stories," as they are also called, and can handle them deftly as circumstances suggest, that is the most successful beggar. There are other requirements to be observed, but unless a man has a good stock of stories with which to "fool" people, he cannot expect to gain a foothold among "the blowed in the glass stiffs." He must also keep continually working over his stock. "Ghost stories" are like bonnets; those that were fashionable and _comme il faut_ last year are this year out of date, and they must be changed to suit new tastes and conditions, or be replaced by new ones. Frequently a fresh version of an old story has to be improvised on the spot, so to speak. The following personal experience illustrates under what circumstances "gags" are invented. It also shows how even the professionals forget themselves and their pose on occasions. One morning, about eight years ago, I arrived in a small town in the Mohawk valley in company with a tramp called Indianapolis Red. We had ridden all night in a box-car in the hope of reaching New York by morning, but the freight had been delayed on account of a wreck, and we were so hungry when we reached the town in question that we simply had to get off and look for something to eat. It was not a place, as we well knew, where tramps were welcome, but the train would not stop again at a town of any size until long after breakfast, so we decided to take our chances. We had an hour at our disposal until the next "freight" was due. The great question was what story we should tell, and we both rummaged through our collections to find a good one. Finally, after each of us had suggested a number of different stories and had refused them in turn, on the ground that they were too old for such a "hostile" place, Red suggested that we try "the deef 'n' dum' gag." There are several "gags" of this description, and I asked him which one he meant. "Let's work it this way," he said, and he began to improvise. "I'm your deef 'n' dum' brother, see? An' we're on our way to New York, where I'm going to get a job. I'm a clerk, and you're seein' me down to the city so's't nothin'll happen to me. Our money's given out, an' we've simply got to ask fer assistance. We're ter'bly hungry, an' you want to know if the lady o' the house'll be good enough to help yer brother along. See?" I "saw" all right, and accepted the proposition, but the odds seemed against us, because the town was one of the most unfriendly along the line. We picked out a house near the track. As a rule such houses have been "begged out," but we reasoned that if our story would go at all it would go there, and besides the house was convenient for catching the next freight-train. As we approached the back door I was careful to talk to Red on my fingers, thinking that somebody might be watching us. A motherly old lady answered our knock. I told her Red's story in my best manner, filling it out with convincing details. She heard me out, and then scrutinised Red in the way that we all look at creatures who are peculiar or abnormal. Then she smiled and invited us into the dining-room where the rest of the family were at breakfast. It turned out to be a Free Methodist clergyman's household. We were given places at the table, and ate as rapidly as we could, or rather Red did; I was continually being interrupted by the family asking me questions about my "unfortunate brother." "Was he born that way?" they asked, in hushed voices. "How did he learn to write? Can he ever get well?" and other like queries which I had to answer in turn. By the time I had finished my meal, however, I saw by a clock on the wall that we had still fifteen minutes to catch our train, and gave Red a nudge under the table as a hint that we ought to be going. We were about to get up and thank our hostess for her kindness when the man of the house, the clergyman, suggested that we stay to family prayers. "Glad to have you," he said; "if you can remain. You may get good out of it." I told him frankly that we wanted to catch a train and had only a few minutes to spare, but he assured me that he would not be long and asked me to explain the situation to Red. I did so with my fingers, telling the parson afterward that Red's wiggling of his fingers meant that he would be delighted to stay, but a wink of his left eye, meant for me alone, said plainly enough to "let the prayers go." We stood committed, however, and there was nothing to do but join the family in the sitting-room, where I was given a Bible to read two verses, one for Red and one for myself. This part of the program finished, the parson began to pray. All went well until he came to that part of his prayer where he referred to the "unfortunate brother in our midst," and asked that Red's speech and hearing be restored. Just then Red heard the whistle of our freight. He forgot everything, all that I had said and all that he had tried to act out, and with a wild whoop he sprang for the door, shouting back to me, as he went out: "Hustle, Cigarette, there's our rattler." There was nothing to do but follow after him as fast as my legs would carry me, and I did so in my liveliest manner. I have never been in the town since this experience, and it is to be hoped that the parson's family have forgiven and forgotten both Red and me. Besides studying the persons of whom he begs, and to whom he adapts his "ghost stories" as their different natures require, the tramp also has to keep in mind the time of the day, the state of the weather, and the character of the community in which he is begging. I refer, of course, to the expert tramp. The amateur blunders on regardless of these important details, and asks for things which have no relation with the time of the day, the season, or the locality. It is bad form, for instance, to ask early in the morning for money to buy a glass of whiskey, and it is equally inopportune to request a contribution toward the purchase of a railway ticket late at night. The "tenderfoot" is apt to make both of these mistakes; the expert, never. The steady patrons of beggars, and all old hands at the business have such, seldom realise how completely adjusted to local conditions "ghost stories" are. They probably think that they have heard the story told to them time and again and in the same way, but if they observe carefully they will generally find that, either in the modulation of the voice, or the tone of expression, it is different on rainy days, for instance, from what it is when the sun shines. It takes a trained ear to discriminate, and expert beggars realise that much of their finesse is lost even on persons who give to them; but they are artists in their way, and believe in "art for art's sake." Then, too, it is always possible that they will encounter somebody who will appreciate their talent, and this is also a gratification. Speaking generally, there is more begging done in winter than in summer, and in the East and North than in the South and West; but some of the cleverest begging takes place in the warm months. It is comparatively easy to get something to eat and a bed in a lodging-house when the thermometer stands ten degrees below zero. A man feels mean in refusing an appeal to his generosity at this time of the year. "I may be cold and hungry some day myself," he thinks, and he gives the beggar a dime or two. In summer, on the other hand, the tramp has no freezing weather to help him out, and has to invent excuses. Even a story of "no work" is of little use in the summer. This is the season, as a rule, when work is most plentiful, and when wages are highest, and the tramp knows it, and is aware that the public also understands this much of political economy. Nevertheless, he must live in summer as well as in winter, and he has to plan differently for both seasons. The main difference between his summer and winter campaigns is that he generally travels in summer, taking in the small towns where people are less "on to him," and where there are all kinds of free "dosses" (places to sleep), in the shape of barns and empty houses. In November he returns to the cities again to get the benefit of the cold weather "dodge," or goes South to Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. Probably fifteen thousand Eastern and Northern tramps winter in the South every year. Their luck there seems to be entirely individual; some do well and others barely live. They are all glad, however, to return to the North in April and go over their old routes again. An amusing experience that I had not long ago illustrates the different kind of tactics necessary in the tramp's summer campaign. So far as I know, he has never made use of the story that did me such good service, and that was told in all truthfulness, but it has since occurred to me that he might find it useful, and I relate it here so that the reader may not be taken unawares if some tramp should attempt to get the benefit of it. I was travelling with some tramps in western Pennsylvania at the time, and we were "beating" our way on a freight-train toward a town where we expected to spend the night. Noontime found us all hungry, and we got off the train at a small village to look for lunch. It was such a small place that it was decided that each man should pick out his particular "beat," and confine his search to the few houses it contained. If some failed to get anything, those who were more successful were to bring them back "hand-outs." My "beat" was so sparsely settled that I hardly expected to get so much as a piece of bread, because the entire village was known to hate tramps; but an inspiration came to me as I was crossing the fields, and I got a "set-down" and a "hand-out" at the first house I visited. The interview at the back door ran thus: "Madam,"--she was rather a severe-looking woman,--"I have exactly five cents in my pocket and I am awfully hungry. I know that you don't keep a boarding-house, but I have come to you thinking that you will give me more for my nickel than the storekeeper will over in the village. I shall be obliged to you if you will help me out." A look of surprise came into the woman's face. I was a new species to her, and I knew it, and she knew it. "Don't know whether we've got anything you want," she said, as if I were a guest rather than a wayfarer. "Anything will do, madam, anything," I replied, throwing into my words all the sincerity of which a hungry man is capable. She invited me into the dining-room, and gave me a most satisfying meal. There were no conversational interruptions. I ate my meal in silence and the woman watched me. The new species interested her. Just as I was finishing, she put some sandwiches, cake, and pie into a newspaper. I had made a good impression. "There," she said, as I was about to go. "You may need it." I held out my nickel and thanked her. She blushed, and put her hands behind her back. "I don't keep a hotel," she said, rather indignantly. "But, madam, I want to pay you. I'm no beggar." "You wouldn't have got it if you had been. Good-bye." The tramps' methods of begging, as has been said, are largely regulated by circumstances and experience, but even the amateurs have theories about the profession, and they are never more interesting than when sitting around some "hang-out" camp-fire, discussing their notions of the kind of "ghost stories" that go best with different sorts of people. Indeed, the bulk of their time is passed in conferences of this character. Each man, like the passionate gambler, has a "system," and he enjoys "chewing the rag" about its intricacies. The majority of the systems are founded on the tramp's knowledge of women. Taking the country by and large, he sees more of women on his begging tours than of men, and it is only natural that his theoretical calculations should be busied mainly with women. Some tramps believe that they can tell to a nicety what a blonde woman will give in excess of a brunette, or vice versa, and the same of a large woman in contra-distinction to a small one. Much of their theorising in these matters is as futile as is the gambler's estimate of his chances of luck, but certain it is that after a long apprenticeship they become phenomenally accurate in "sizing up" people; and it is he who can correctly "size up" the greatest number of people at first glance and adapt himself to their peculiarities, that comes out winner in the struggle. Next in importance to the ability to appraise correctly the generous tendencies of his patrons, and to modulate his voice and to concoct stories according to their tastes, come the tramp's clothes and the way he wears them. It probably seems to most persons that the tramp never changes his clothes, and that he always looks as tattered and torn as when they happen to see him, but the expert has almost as many "changes" as the actor. Some days he dresses very poorly; this is generally the case in winter; and on other days he looks as neat and clean as the ordinary business man. It all depends on the weather and the "beat" he has chosen for the day's work. Every morning, before he starts out on his tour, he takes a look at the weather and decides upon his "beat." The "beat" selected, he puts on the "togs" which he thinks suit the weather, and away he goes for better or worse. In New York city there are probably a hundred scientific beggars of this character, and they live as well as does the man with a yearly income of $2,000. Sunday is the most dismal day in the week to the average tramp,--the beggar who is content with his three meals a day and a place to lie down in at night. But few men who go on tramp for the first time expect that Sunday is going to be any different from any other day in the week. They usually reach "the road" on a week-day after a debauch, and they find that their soiled clothes and general unkempt condition differentiate them in public thoroughfares very little from hundreds of workingmen. No policeman worries them with suspicious glances, and in large cities they pass unchallenged even in the dead of night. Indeed, they receive so little notice from any one that they wonder how they had ever imagined that outcasts were such marked human beings. Then comes their first Sunday. They get up out of their hayloft, or wherever it may be that they lay down the night before, prepared to look for their breakfast just as they did on the previous day, and after brushing off their clothes and washing themselves at some pump or public faucet, they start out. In a small town they feel that something is wrong before they have gone a block, and by nine o'clock in large towns they decide to go without their breakfast if they have not yet got it. A change has come over the earth; they seem out of place even to themselves, and they return through back streets to their lodging-houses or retreats on the outskirts of the town, sincerely regretting that they are travellers of "the road." A number of men in the world have to thank this Sunday nausea that they are to-day workers and not tramps. The latter feel the effects of it to the end of their days; it is as unescapable as death, but like certain seafaring men who never get entirely free of seasickness and yet continue as sailors, so old vagabonds learn to expect and endure the miserable sensations which they experience on the first day of the week. These sensations are due to the remnant of manhood which is to be found in nearly all tramps. The majority of them are for all practical purposes outcasts, but at breakfast-time, on Sunday morning, they have emotions which on week-days no one would give them credit for. It was my fate, some years ago, to be one of a collection of wanderers who had to while away a Sunday in a "dugout" on a bleak prairie in western Kansas. We had nothing to eat or drink and practically nothing to talk about except our dismal lot. Toward nightfall we got to discussing in all earnestness the miserableness of our existence, and I have always remembered the remarks of a fellow sufferer whom we called "West Virginia Brown." He was supposed to be the degenerate scion of a noble English family, and was one of the best educated men I have ever met in Hoboland. He took little part in the general grumbling, but at last there was a lull in the conversation, and he spoke up. "I wonder," he said, "whether the good people who rest on Sunday, go to church, and have their best dinner in the week, realise how life is turned upside down for us on that day. There have always been men like us in the world, and it is for us as much as for any one, so far as I know, that religion exists, and yet the day in the week set apart for religion is the hardest of all for us to worry through. Was it, or wasn't it, the intention that outcasts were to have religion? The way things are now, we are made to look upon Sunday and all that it means with hatred, and yet I don't believe that there's any one in the world who tries to be any squarer to his pals than we do, and that's what I call being good." The last "the road" knew of Brown, he was serving a five years' sentence in a Canadian prison. His lot cannot be pleasant, but methinks that on Sundays, at least, he is glad that he is not "outside." CHAPTER X. THE TRAMP'S POLITICS. As a political party the tramps cannot be said to amount to much. Counting "gay-cats" and hoboes, the two main wings of the army, they are numerous enough, if concentrated in a single State, or in a city like New York, to cast, perhaps, the determining vote in a close election, but they are so scattered that they never become a formidable political organisation. They are more in evidence in the East than in the West, and in the North than in the South, but they are to be met in every State and Territory in the Union. On account of their migratory habits very few of them are legally entitled to vote, and the probability is that only a small fraction of them actively take part in elections. In large cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and during fiercely fought political struggles even in some of the smaller towns, they are collected into colonies by unscrupulous electioneering specialists, and paid to vote as they are told, but otherwise they make very little effort to have their voices count in political affairs. Two of their number, Indiana Blackie and Railroad Jack, have achieved some notoriety as stump speakers, and Blackie was a man who might have secured political preferment,--a consulship, perhaps,--if he had understood how to keep sober, but he broke down during a campaign in West Virginia, and was drowned not long after in the Ohio River. In Wheeling, West Virginia, I heard him make one of the wittiest political speeches I have ever heard anywhere, and his hearers listened to him as attentively as a few evenings before they had listened to a famous politician. The speech was no sooner ended, however, than Blackie went off on a terrible "jag," and I saw him at noon the next day, looking for a wash-boiler. He was splattered all over with mud, and did not know whether he was in West Virginia or Indiana. He finally concluded from the colour of the mud that he was out in Wyoming. Although the tramps have no comprehensive political organisation, and take but little interest in voting, except when their ballots bring in hard cash, they are great talkers on political questions of the day, and are continually championing the cause of some well-known political leader. As a class, they may be called _Geister die stets verneinen_,--they are almost invariably in opposition to the party in power. Since the last presidential election Mr. William Jennings Bryan has been their hero, and they expect of him, if his ambition to be President is ever gratified, a release from all the troubles which they think are now oppressing the country, and particularly themselves. They have, without doubt, misconstrued a great deal that Mr. Bryan has said in his speeches and writings; they have pinned their faith to him without carefully considering his promises; but in something that he has said or done, or in his personality, they have discovered, they think, the elements of leadership, which, for the nonce, at any rate, they admire. There is not a man in the country at the present moment, for whom they would shout as much, and in whose honour they would get so drunk, as for Mr. Bryan. They know very little concerning his theories about silver, beyond the expression, "The Cross of Gold," and they are very scantily informed in regard to his notions about expansion and imperialism, but he represents for them, as probably no other political leader ever did, upheaval and revolution, and it is on such things that they expect to thrive. The place to hear them talk and to get acquainted with their political views is at the "hang-out." Practically any nook or corner where they can lie down at night is a "hang-out" to them, but as most of their life is spent on the railroads their main gathering points are little camps built alongside the track. Here they sleep, eat, wait for trains, and "chew the rag." Much of their conversation is confined to purely professional matters, but every now and then, at some large camp, a roadster will make a slurring remark about this or that political leader, or a paragraph in a newspaper in regard to a "burning" question of the hour will be read aloud, and the confab begins. The topic that started it is soon smothered under a continually accumulating pile of fresh ones, but that does not matter, the "hang-out" never settles anything; it takes up one thing after the other in rapid succession, as fancy dictates, and one must listen carefully merely to catch the drift of what is said. The sentences are short and broken, and a word often suffices to kill what promised to be a lengthy discussion. The old men speak first, the young men next, and the boys are supposed to keep quiet and listen. Sometimes, when "booze" accompanies the talk, the age distinctions are temporarily overlooked, and all speak together; but this kind of a conclave finally ends in a free fight, to which politics and everything else are subordinated. The burden of practically all the palavers is "the way the country is going to the dogs." It comes as natural to the average tramp to declare that the United States is in dire peril as it does to the German socialist to say that Germany is a miserable _Polizei-Staat_. He does not honestly believe all that he says, and it needs but a scurrilous remark about our country from some foreign roadster to startle him into a pugnacious patriotism; but in the bosom of his "hang-out" he takes delight in explaining what a bad plight the country is in. This is really his political creed. Free trade, protection, civil service reform, the currency question, pensions, and expansion are mere side issues in his opinion. The real issue is what he considers the frightful condition of our "internal affairs." From Maine to California the tramps may be heard chattering by the hour on this topic, and they have singled out Mr. Bryan as their spokesman because they think that he voices their pessimism better than any other man in public view. It came as a surprise to me, when first getting acquainted with tramps, to find that they were such grumblers and critics,--such _Nörgler_, as Kaiser Wilhelm says. I had pictured them as a class which managed to live more or less successfully whether any one else got on or not, and had imagined that they were, comparatively speaking, at peace with the world. That they troubled themselves with public questions and political problems was a thought that had not occurred to me. The fact is, however, that they are as fierce political partisans as the country contains, and in talking with them one must be careful not to let an argument go beyond what in polite society would be considered rather narrow bounds. They are quick to resort to fists in all discussions, and in my intercourse with them it has paid best to let them do most of the talking when politics has been the topic of conversation. It would take a book, and a large one at that, to report all the evidence that they advance at "hang-out" conferences in support of their statements concerning the evils from which they believe the country is now suffering, but no account of their political notions, no matter how short, should fail to take note of their rantings against capital, and what they consider the political corruption of the country. Nearly every conversation they have on politics begins with some wild assertion in regard to one of these topics, and Mr. Bryan's name is invariably dragged into the discussion. They believe that he hates the man who has saved money and understands how to make it earn more, quite as much as they do, and they will be very much disappointed in him, in case he is ever elected President, if he does not suggest legislation by which the rich man can be made "to shell out his coin." On no subject do the tramps use such violent language as on this one of the capitalist. They think that it is he who has imported all the foreign labour in the country,--another eyesore in their opinion; who has made England the real "boss" of things on this side of the Atlantic,--a notion which they claim to have dug out of Mr. Bryan's speeches; who has reduced the wages of the "poor workingman" and increased the cost of living; and, worst of all, who is now trying to take away from them what they consider their inalienable railway privileges. They hold him answerable also for the trusts and syndicates, agitation against which they require from any political party in which they take an interest. They have thought seriously over these matters about as much as a ten-year-old child has, but that does not matter. They do not propose to think hard about anything. Mr. Bryan is for the present doing all the thinking which they consider necessary, and they are content merely to repeat in their own jargon statements which he has made, or which they think he has made. He has become for them an infallible oracle, who understands them and their position, and whom they understand. In the bottom of their hearts they know that they are deserving of precious little championship, that they lead despicable lives, and commit some very reprehensible deeds; but it is a consolation to them which they cannot let go, to think that Mr. Bryan includes them in his classification of victims of the "gold bugs," so they try to make propaganda for him. The time was when many of them shouted for Henry George and "General" Coxey as vociferously as they now shout for Bryan. They expected from George and Coxey the same overthrow of their imaginary oppressors and general upheaval of things that they now look forward to from Mr. Bryan. They were once also enamoured of Mr. Blaine, but for a different reason. They admired the way he championed the cause of Americans who got into trouble in foreign parts. When he was Secretary of State it was a temporary fad among them to scold about the way Americans were treated abroad, and on one occasion, the details of which I have forgotten, Mr. Blaine pleased them immensely by insisting on the release of an American who had been falsely arrested in some foreign port. They are particularly entertaining when talking about the corruption in the country. They discuss this question with all the seriousness of professional moralists and reformers, and it seems never to occur to them that there is any inconsistency in their attitude toward the matter. An amusing instance of their lack of perception in this particular came to my notice in Columbus, O., where I was temporarily on duty as a railroad police officer. One morning, word came that Mr. Bryan was expected to arrive about noon. He was to give a talk to his local admirers. There were about two hours between the time I received notice of his coming and the hour of his arrival, and I put them in strolling about the streets, seeing whether there were any light-fingered gentry in the town whom I knew. In the course of my wanderings I dropped into a saloon in one of the side streets where a man, whom I recognised as a "hobo gun,"--a tramp pickpocket,--was holding forth in loud language on the "poleetical c'rupshun" in the country, and in Ohio in particular. He made the usual platitudinous remarks about this matter, to which his drunken hearers listened with approval, and wound up his harangue with a eulogy on Mr. Bryan, who was "the one honest man in the land." When Mr. Bryan arrived at the railroad station, my companions and I had to be on watch to see that his pockets as well as those of the people crowding about him were not picked, and whom should I find prowling about suspiciously in the throng, but the loud-mouthed reformer of the saloon! He was looking hard for a pocket to "nick," but some one must have "tipped off" the "fly cops" to him, for he disappeared before long as mysteriously as he had appeared, and without any plunder, for no "leather" was "lifted" on that occasion. Not all of the tramps' political talk is merely negative and critical; some of it is also positive and constructive. They think that they know what they want in the way of government, as well as what they do not want. Speaking generally, they favour a crude kind of state socialism, to be prefaced, however, by a general cataclysm, in which existing conditions are to be entirely revolutionised, and out of which the poor, and more particularly the outcast, are to come victorious. They make no attempt to elaborate in conversation the details either of the convulsion, or of the new order of things which is to follow; generalities alone interest them, and they scorn inquiries as to how their theories are to be put into practice. That Mr. Bryan is in sympathy with their notions of the extensive powers that the government ought to have is proved for them by the fact that he believes that silver can be given its rightful place in our monetary system merely by an enactment of Congress, or by command of the President. They recognise no laws in politics other than those which man makes. That there are natural laws and economic facts, over which man has no control, is a matter which they have never taken into consideration. I refer to the rank and file of the tramp army. There are individual men who do not subscribe to what I have given as the political philosophy of the majority of the tramps,--men, indeed, who laugh at the thought of a tramp having any political notions at all,--but they are exceptions. The average roadster considers himself as justified in stating his political beliefs, and working for them, if he is so inclined, as does the workingman,--even more, because he thinks that he has time to formulate his ideas, whereas the workingman is kept busy merely earning his bread. As agitators and propagandists the tramp is mainly in evidence at big strikes. In the last fifteen years there has not been a notable railroad strike in the country in which he has not taken part either as a helper in destroying property, or as a self-elected "walking delegate." The more damage the strikers achieve, the more he is pleased, because he believes, as said above, that it is only upon ruins that the government he desires can be founded. When a train of cars is derailed or burned, he considers the achievement a contribution to the general downfall of the rich and favoured classes. He also has the antiquated notion of political economy, that when a thing has been rendered useless by breakage or incendiarism the workingman is benefited, because the thing must be replaced, and labour must be employed to do it,--hence it pays the poor to effect as much destruction as possible. It would be unjust to Mr. Bryan to say that the tramp has got this notion from him, but the trouble is that Mr. Bryan preaches from texts so easily misunderstood by the class of people to which tramps and criminals belong, that he does a great deal of harm to the country, and materially hurts his own cause. Not only the tramp, but thousands of workingmen expect of him, in case he is successful in his ambition, things which he can no more give than can the humblest of his admirers; yet both the tramp and the workingman believe that they have promises from him which justify them in expecting what they do. He is a victim of his own "gift of gab," as the tramp dubs his oratory. He has talked so much and so loosely that the tramp has read into his words assurance of changes which he can never bring about. Of course it is not to be expected that he or any other man in his position should put much store by what such a constituency as the tramps thinks of him, but the tramp's exaggerated notions of his policy are symptomatic of the man's influence on people. What the tramp particularly likes about him is his doctrine of discontent; they would drop him like a hot coal if he should admit that the country was in a proper condition. A great many other people, who are not tramps, tie to him for the same reason. He is the idol _par excellence_ of persons who have nothing to lose whether he succeeds or fails. He has promised them great benefits if they will help him to office, and as in the case of the tramp, it costs them nothing to shout and vote for him. His tramp admirers, however, he can hold only so long as he represents what they deem to be the most radical doctrines going. If another man like "General" Coxey should appear, with more attractive propositions, they would flock to him as readily as they now rally around Mr. Bryan. They are a volatile people. Just before war had been declared with Spain, while everybody was discussing our chances in the approaching struggle, a great many of the tramps were sure that the United States was going to get the "licking" of its life. One tramp was so positive of this that he declared that "Spain had forgotten more than we ever knew about naval warfare, or ever would know." To-day the same man, as well as the majority of those who sided with him, believe that the United States can "knock out" any nation in existence, and they are dissatisfied because we don't do it. So it will probably go with Bryan, so far as they are concerned. At the next presidential election, if he is defeated again, the majority of them will look around for some other man for whom they can talk. Even successful leadership bores them after awhile. They love change, and are continually seeking it in their every-day life as well as in their politics. It is this trait of theirs which would defeat any attempt at permanent organisation among them. Two friends were recently discussing the relative power and influence of the man who writes and the man who organises and leads. The late George William Curtis was cited as a man who must have wielded great power with his pen, and Richard Croker was set over against him as an organiser and leader. The argument ran on for some time, and one of the friends finally made this statement: "I wouldn't care if they were nothing better than tramps, provided a thousand of them would follow my directions in everything that was undertaken. Why, I could be king of a ward with such a following. Take the East Side, for instance. The man over there who can vote solid a thousand men on all occasions, beats any writer in the country in influence." Perhaps he does, but no man in the country, be he writer or organiser, could hold a thousand tramps together in politics. For one election they might be kept intact, but a defection would take place before the second one was due. As men to manipulate and direct, they could be made to do most in battle, and I have always regretted that a regiment of them did not go to Cuba during the late war. With a regiment of regulars behind them to have kept them from retreating, and some whiskey to inspire them, a regiment composed of fellows such as are to be found in "The Lake Shore Push," for instance, would have charged up San Juan Hill with a dash that even the Rough Riders would have had trouble to beat. They are not good political philosophers, or conscientious citizens, but in desperate circumstances they can fight as fiercely as any body of men in the world. CHAPTER XI. WHAT TRAMPS READ. In a superficial way tramps read practically everything they can get hold of. As a class they are not particularly fond of books when there is something more exciting to engage their attention, such as a "hang-out" conference, for instance, but they get pleasure out of both reading and writing. They have generally learned how to read as boys, either at home with their parents or in some institution for truants and "incorrigibles." Dime novels and like literature amuse them most at this stage in their career, and the same is true of tramp boys who are found in Hoboland, but they learn to laugh over the fascination that such books had for them, as do more highly cultivated readers. As a rule, however, it is not until they have served a term in prison that they take a definite interest in the books that appeal to educated people. In all large prisons there are libraries from which the inmates can draw books at stated intervals, and the majority of the truly professional tramps generally serve at least one sentence in these institutions. As youths, it was their ambition to be successful thieves, crack burglars, pickpockets, and "Peter-men" (safe thieves), and they have usually experimented with the thief's profession long enough to get a year or two in a penitentiary. Some take a longer time than others to become convinced that they lack criminal wit, and are fitted, so far as their world is concerned, for nothing higher than tramping, but the majority of tramps in the United States arrive at this conclusion sooner or later, and degenerate into what may be called discouraged criminals. In the process of getting discouraged they have access to prison libraries, and can pick and choose their books as they like. In some prisons the wardens keep track of the kinds of books their charges call for, and I have seen interesting reports in which an attempt has been made to read the characters of the men from their different bookish preferences; but it is easy to make mistakes in such calculations. I know of prisoners, for instance, who have called for nothing but religious books in the hope that the "Galway" (the prison priest) would be so impressed with their reformation that he would recommend their cases to the Board of Pardons for reconsideration. Indeed, prisoners in general are such _poseurs_, in one respect or another, that not much faith can be put in conclusions as to their literary tendencies deduced from their selection of books in prison libraries. One must observe them in the open, and see what they read when they are free of the necessity of making an impression, to discover their real preferences. In summer they are almost constantly "in transit," and read very little except newspapers, but in winter they flock to the large cities and gather around the stoves and radiators in public libraries, and it is then that one can learn what kind of reading they like best. The library in Cooper Union, for example, is one of their favourite gathering-places in New York City during the cold months, and I have seen the same tramps reading there day after day. Novels and books of adventure appeal to them most, and it would surprise a great many people to see the kind of novels many of them choose. Thackeray and Dickens are the favourite novelists of the majority of the tramps that I have happened to talk with about books, but the works of Victor Hugo and Eugene Sue are also very popular. The general criticism of the books of all of these writers, however, is that they are "terribly long drawn out." A tramp who had just finished reading Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" once said to me: "Why the devil didn't he choke it off in the middle, an' leave out all the descriptions? It's a good book all right enough, but it's as long-winded as a greyhound." Robert Louis Stevenson, on the other hand, is admired by a Western tramp acquaintance of mine on account of his "big mouthfuls of words." Detective stories like "Sherlock Holmes" and the books of Gaboriau are read widely by both tramps and criminals, and the ingenuity of their authors is often admired; but the tramp cannot understand, and no more can I, why the writers of such stories prefer to give their own conception of a detective to the "Hawkshaw" of real life. He believes, and I agree with him, that much more interesting detective tales could be written if the truth about police life were told; and there awaits the writer who is prepared and willing to depict the "fly cop" as he really is in Anglo-Saxon countries, a remunerative and literary success. No mistake has been made in portraying him as the King of the Under World, but some one ought to tell what a corrupt king he has been, and still is, in a great many communities. Popular books, such as "Trilby," "David Harum," and "Mr. Dooley," almost never reach the tramps until long after their immediate success is over. The tramps have no money to invest in books of the hour, and the consequence is that while the public is reading the book of some new favourite author, they are poring over books that were popular several years back. There are roadsters who are to-day reading for the first time the earliest books of Mark Twain, Bret Harte, and other well-known authors, and the next crop of vagabonds will probably read the works of writers who are now in the foreground. In Chicago I met, one day, a tramp who had just discovered Bret Harte, and he thought that "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" were recent stories. "I tell ye, Cigarette," he declared, enthusiastically, "those stories'll make that fella's fortune. Jus' wait till people get to talkin' about 'em, an' you'll see how they'll sell." He had read the tales in a sailor's mission to which somebody had donated a mutilated Tauchnitz edition of Bret Harte's writings. In a county jail in Ohio I also once heard two tramps discuss for nearly two hours the question whether Shakespeare wrote his plays when he did or about two hundred years later. The tramp who favoured the latter theory based it on the supposition that the balcony scene in "Romeo and Juliet" could not have been possible so far back as "in Shakespeare's time." "Why, gol darn it," he exclaimed, "they didn't have no such porches in them days. A porch, I tell ye, is a modern invention, just like dynamite is." Next to the exciting novel or tale of adventure, the tramp likes to read books which deal with historical and economic subjects. It is a rather exceptional tramp who can read intelligently such a book as Henry George's "Progress and Poverty," but a number of roadsters have gone through this work time and again, and can quote from it quite freely. Indeed, it has been the cause of long discussions at "hang-outs" all over the United States. Any book, by the way, which "shows up" what the tramps consider the unreasonable inequalities in our social conditions, appeals to them, and thoughts in regard to such matters filter through the various social strata and reach the tramp class more rapidly than the reader would think. I have heard tramps discuss socialism, for instance, with quite as clear an insight into its weak points, and with as thorough an appreciation of its alluring promises, as will be found in any general gathering of people. They are much more entertaining when discussing a book dealing with some serious question than when trying to state their opinion of a novel. If a character in a novel has taken hold of them, they can criticise it intelligently and amusingly, and they have their favourite characters in fiction just as other people have, but only a few tramps read novels with the intention of remembering their contents for any length of time; such books are taken up mainly for momentary entertainment, and are then forgotten. Books of historical or political import, on the contrary, are frequently read over and over again, and are made to do service as authorities on grave questions discussed at "hang-out" conferences. Bryan's "First Battle" has been quoted by tramps in nearly every State in the Union, and some roadsters can repeat verbatim long passages from it. A striking example of the tramp's fondness for what he would call heavy books was a man whom I met, some years ago, at a tramp camp in central New York. We had been sitting around the camp-fire for some time, discussing matters of the road, when the man called my attention to his weak eyes. I had noticed that the lids of his eyes were very red, and he told me that it was only with difficulty that he could read even large print. "Used them up in the stir" (penitentiary), he explained. "We had no work to do, and were shut up in our cells practically all of the time, and I simply read myself blind." I asked him what kind of reading he had enjoyed most, and he gave me a string of authors' names, whose books he had drawn from the library, which but few college graduates could beat. I have forgotten many of the books he mentioned, but Kant's "Pure Reason" and Burton's "Melancholy" were among the number. We talked together for over three hours about writers and writing, and I have seldom enjoyed a conversation more. The man was still a tramp in essential matters, and had no intention of becoming anything better, but his reading had widened the boundaries of his world to such an extent that in other clothes and with a few changes in his diction he might have passed muster in very respectable companionship. If he is alive, he is probably still looking for "set-downs" and "hand-outs," and discussing between meals with the hoboes the wonderful things that were revealed to him during the ten years he spent in his prison university. Endowed with this interest in books of a serious nature, it would seem that the tramp ought eventually to take to heart some of the wisdom such books contain, and try to live up to it in his every-day life, but I am compelled to say that, in the majority of cases, he considers himself a being apart from the rest of the world, so far as moral responsibility is concerned. He likes to ponder over the moral obligations of others, and to suggest schemes for a general social regeneration, but he finds it irksome and unpleasant to apply his advice and recommendations to his own existence. Theoretically, he has what he would call a religion, but he no more expects to live up to his religion than he intends to work when he can get out of it. He has two worlds in which he lives,--one consisting of theories and fanciful conceits which he has got from books and his own imagination, and the other of hard facts, prejudices, and habits. He is most natural in the latter environment, but moods come over him when he feels impelled to project himself into the world of theories, and then nothing pleases him more than imaginatively to reconstruct the world in general as he believes it ought to be. I have been asked whether he ever voluntarily reads the Bible. It is an easy book to get hold of, and in prison it is forced upon the tramp's attention, but it has no marked fascination for him. I have known a roadster to beg a New Testament from a Bible House agency in order to settle a dispute about religious doctrine, but this is a very exceptional case. The average tramp knows no difference between the Old and New Testaments, and bases any religious convictions that he may have on personal revelations of truth rather than on inspired Scripture. In one respect, however, he conforms to conventional customs,--he likes to sing hymns. In jail or out, if he happens to be in a singing mood, it is only necessary to start such hymns as "Pull for the shore," "There were ninety and nine," "Where is my wandering boy to-night?" and this tattered and uncouth creature breaks forth into song. There is a grin on his lips while he sings, for he appreciates the ludicrousness of the situation, but he sings on at the top of his voice. At night, on a Western prairie, where he and his pals have built a "hang-out" near a railroad track, there is no more picturesque scene in all Hoboland than when he stands up, starts a tune, and the others rise and join him. Equally amusing, if not so harmless, are the tramp's improvised schools. In the autumn, when the weather gets too cold for sleeping out, the country schoolhouse becomes one of the tramp's night shelters. He gets in through one of the windows. A wood-pile is near by, and what with a good fire and benches to lie on, he makes a very cosy nest. Let a crowd of ten or twenty appropriate such a place, and there is always a frolic before bedtime. One of the tramps is elected teacher, the scholars' books and slates are taken from their desks, and school begins. "Moike, oppen yer mug 'n' see if ye kin read," the teacher commands, and the burly pupil begins to paw over the leaves. Later comes a turn at spelling, writing, and "figgerin'," and a wild hobo song ends the session. A keg of beer sometimes helps to enliven things, and then ink-bottles, readers, and spelling-books are scattered about the room in great confusion. The wood-pile also disappears, and sometimes the building itself goes up in flames. I have often wondered whether the real pupils were not glad to find things so topsy-turvy in the morning. It must take time to put the schoolhouse in order again, and the boys and girls have a vacation meanwhile. The taxpayers grumble, of course, but, as the tramp says, "they ought to fasten things tighter," and until they do he will continue, I fear, to entertain himself at their expense. An experience that I had not long ago illustrates the tramp's unwillingness to have his reading matter regulated by outsiders. I was making an investigation of the tramp situation on certain railroads in the middle West at the time, and one night, in company of some fellow roadsters, I went for shelter to the tramp ward of a poor-house. The room we were sent to was in the cellar, and we all passed a very miserable night. In the morning we were given our breakfast in the common dining-room of the institution, and while we were sitting at the table the wife of the keeper gave each one of us a "tract," which we carefully tucked under our plates and left there. When we had finished, one of the tramps asked our hostess whether there was a place in the building where we could wash; the hole we had had to stay in over night was so dirty that our clothes and hands were covered with dust, and the tramp knew that any stream we might find outside would be frozen over. The woman looked at him severely, and said: "There's a brook at the foot of the hill." The tramp's anger was aroused. "Madam," he said, "I have always been taught that cleanliness is next to godliness. You have given us all tracts, but you won't give us a place to wash. Your religion and mine don't jibe. You'll find the tracts under the plates." We all got another severe look, and the next batch of tramps probably got the tracts. Of the newspapers that the tramp reads there is but little that is novel to report beyond the fact that he begs for them in the same systematic fashion characteristic of him when looking for his meals. Not all tramps are anxious to keep up to date as regards the world's doings, but a fair proportion of them look for their morning newspaper immediately after breakfast. They go to stores and barber-shops, and do not hesitate to ask even newsdealers. In summer the newspapers which they get also serve them as beds in railroad box-cars; they spread them out on the floor of the car and lie down on them, their shoes and vests doing duty as pillows, and their coats as covering. Their favourite papers are of the yellow kind, but I doubt whether they take them any more seriously than other people do who buy them merely for particular items of news and then throw them away. They like spicy articles and glaring pictures, and scramble with one another for first chance at the _Police Gazette_, but this taste is not unnatural; their life is rough, vulgar, and sensational, and the wonder is that they can appreciate and care for the high-class literature which many of them read. I have said that they get enjoyment out of writing as well as reading. There are a few well-educated men in tramp life, and they have been surprised attempting to make literature as well as to read it. In Germany it is quite a custom among the _Chausseegrabentapezirer_ to keep diaries in which they jot down notes and comments on their life, and in this country, also, journals and essays by tramps have been discovered. One of the most intelligent criticisms of my tramp papers in _The Century_ came from a Boston tramp, hailing for the time being from Texas. Excepting a few mistakes in grammar which many persons who are not tramps are guilty of, it was a very creditable production. Once upon a time, not to be too particular, two tramps were shut up all alone in a jail in Michigan, and their sentences wore so heavily upon them that they found it very difficult to be patient. Their stories gave out, the jail fare became tiresome, there was very little to read, and they were by nature very restless. At last things looked so gloomy that they decided to spin a coin for a choice of two suggested pastimes,--writing a story, or planning and carrying out an escape. It was "heads" for the story, and "tails" for the escape. Heads won. True to their contract, these two men, one fairly well educated, and the other with a big imagination, sat themselves down to the task, pencil and paper being furnished by the sheriff. For ten days they wrote and wrote, then rewrote, until, as the man with the imagination said, their "poor brains seemed squeezed to death." Indeed, they had worked so hard that the man with a little education thought it would be worth while to try to sell the story; so, after it had been read to the sheriff and his wife, both of whom it pleased, sufficient postage was collected to send it to a periodical thought to be looking for such contributions; and off it went, and with it the solemn prayers of the authors. Three weeks later, lo and behold! a letter arrived in care of the sheriff. The two men opened it tenderly and fearfully, each tearing a little of the end off and then passing it to the other, saying, like silly girls: "I don't dare." But what was their surprise, the terrifying little thing once laid bare, to find in it a check for ninety dollars, payable to them jointly or severally, as if the editor had fancied that they might be turned loose at different times. Unfortunately, they were freed together, and two hours afterward the man with the imagination had so inflated it with whiskey that he wanted to storm the jail and free the sheriff. His story, however, was not disgraced. It is still quite readable. He, poor fellow, would probably like to toss up again for pastimes; when last heard of he was "doing" solitary confinement. CHAPTER XII. POLICING THE RAILROADS. Engineers build railroads and are largely represented in their management, but both in building and operating them they are dependent, at one time or another, upon some kind of police protection. Indeed, there are railroads that could not have been constructed at all without the aid of either soldiers or policemen. The Trans-Caspian railroad was built largely by soldiers, and is still superintended by the war department at St. Petersburg rather than by the minister of ways of communication. The Siberian line is, in parts, the result of the work of convicts, who were carefully watched by police guards, and the Russian civil engineers in Manchuria have needed the protection of Cossacks merely to survey that end of the road. In Germany, practically all the railroad officials, from the head of the engineering department down to the track-walkers, have police power. The conductor of a train, for instance, can put an obstreperous passenger under arrest without waiting until a station is reached, and resistance to him is as serious an offence as is resistance to the ordinary _Schutzmann_. In Europe, it was seen, when railroads were first coming into use, that police efficiency, as well as that of the technical railroader, would be required, if the properties were to be well managed, and it was secured at the start. Before the railroads were built it had been made plain, after long experience, that even on the public turnpikes policemen were indispensable, and the authorities decided to employ them on railroads as well. The protection of life and property is a very serious matter in Europe, where precautions are taken which in the United States would seem superfluous. It avails nothing in Germany, for example, for a director of a company to excuse the loss of money intrusted to his care on the ground that he thought he was acting in a businesslike manner. Inspectors, or commissioners, are appointed to see whether his transactions come up to the standard of what is considered businesslike, and if they find that he has not exercised good judgment, although there may have been nothing intrinsically dishonest in the way he has managed, his bondsmen frequently have to reimburse the stockholders for the loss that his mistakes have brought upon them. It is the spirit of carefulness behind such a precaution as this which goes to explain why the Germans have the systematised police surveillance of railroad property referred to. Much of this surveillance is in the hands of the municipal police and rural constabulary, but the fact that the majority of the railroad officials have police authority shows how much protection was considered necessary to manage the properties carefully. In the United States the idea seems to have been that the engineers and managers could be relied on to get out of railroad investments all the profit that was in them, and that the assistance of policemen could be dispensed with except as watchmen. It is true that, for a number of years, railroad companies have had on their pay-rolls what are called "railroad detectives," but up to a few years ago there was not a well-organised railroad police force in the United States, and yet there is no country in the world, at the present moment, where railroads are more in need of such auxiliary departments. A great deal of money would have been saved to investors, and not a few lives would have been spared, had the American railroads seriously taken up this police matter in the early days of their existence, and until they do, say what one will about the luxuries to be found on American trains, and the speed at which they run, American railroad properties, in this particular at least, are inferior to those of Europe in management. The purpose of this last chapter is to call attention to the inadequateness of the police arrangements now prevalent on nearly all railroad systems in the United States, to show what has resulted from this inadequateness, and to interest railroad men and the general public in police organisations which will be equal to the work necessary to be done. To bring out clearly the defects of the prevailing railroad police methods in the United States, it seems appropriate to take a concrete case, and describe the situation on a railroad which I have been over as a passenger and as a trespasser. It employs about sixty men in its police department, and is one of the most tramp-infested roads in the country. The maintenance of the so-called detective force costs the company about forty thousand dollars a year. By way of illustration, I will give a résumé of conversations that I had respectively with a detective, a tramp, and a trainman that I encountered on the property. Each of these men was representative of his class, and spoke his mind freely. The detective had started out in life as a brakeman, but his eyesight became faulty after a few years, and he got a position on the police force. He had just passed his fiftieth year when I met him, and was heavy, unwieldy, and inclined to be lazy. His beat consisted of forty miles of track, and he generally went over it in a passenger train. I asked him whether he found many tramps on passenger trains. He was not supposed to devote all of his time to watching trespassers, but they were so obviously a nuisance on the property that it struck me as peculiar that he did not ride on trains where they were more likely to be found. "No," he replied, in a drawling voice, to my query, "I don't find many tramps in passenger coaches; but I know where their camps are, and several of us raid 'em every now and then." "I should think you would want to ride more on freight-trains," I went on, "and catch the trespassers in the act, so to speak." "I'm too heavy to fool around freight-trains; besides, I don't want to have a knife put into me. Some o' them tramps are mighty quick on their feet, and if I went at 'em they'd have a razor cut in me before I could turn round." I asked him why, in view of his age and heaviness, he did not try to find employment in some other department of the road more suited to his abilities. Railroad companies are often very lenient with employees of long standing, and give them easy positions in their old age. "This is the easiest department the road's got," he returned. "Besides, I'm my own boss." "Don't you have to make regular reports to any one?" "I go to the trainmaster's office every morning for orders, but he don't know much about the business, and generally tells me to do as I think best. We men haven't got a chief the way the regular railroaders have." "Who is responsible for what you do?" I inquired. "Nobody, I guess, but the pres'dent o' the road." "How do you spend your time?" "Well, I go to the trainmaster in the morning, and if he hasn't heard of anything special, like a car robbery or an accident where there's likely to be a claim for damages, I stay around the station a while, or go down into the yards and see what I can see. Sometimes I spend the day in the yards." "What do you do there?" "Oh, I loaf around, keep the kids away from the cars, chin-chin with the switchmen 'n' the other men, keep my eyes open for fellows that there's rewards for, eat my dinner, an' go to bed." "Why don't you try to break up the tramp camps?" "We do try it, but they come back again." "Don't you think you would probably be more successful if you raided them oftener?" "Yes, I guess we would; but, you see, there ain't any one who's running the thing. When an order comes from the superintendent to make raids we make 'em, but he don't send in that order more'n once in three months, an' the rest o' the time we do pretty much as we like." "How do you think things would go if you men were organised and had a chief? Would better work be done?" "Better work would be done, I guess, but it would be a darned sight harder work," and he smiled significantly. My tramp informant was an old roadster of about forty, who had "held down" the railroad in question for a number of years. I asked him how long it had been an "open" road,--one easy for trespassers to get over. "As long as the memory of man goes back," he replied, with a suggestive flourish of his hand. "Are not some divisions harder to beat than others?" "Once in awhile a division'll get a little horstile, but only fer a few weeks." "How many tramps are riding trains?" "I don't see all the trains, so I can't tell you; but I never seen a freight yet that wasn't carryin' at least five bums, 'n' I've seen some carryin' over a hundred In summer there's most as many bums as passengers." "Is there much robbing of cars going on?" "Not so much as there might be. The blokes are drunk most of the time, 'n' they let chances go by. If they'd keep sober, 'n' look up good fences, they could do a nice little business." "Do the police trouble you much?" "When they round up a camp they're pretty warm, but I don't see much o' them 'cept then. 'Course you wants to look out fer 'em when a train pulls into division yards, 'cause 'f yer handy they'll pinch you; but they ain't goin' to run after you very far. I've heard that they have orders to let the bums ride, so long as there ain't too much swipin' goin' on. The company don't care, some people say." The trainman that I interviewed was a freight-train conductor who had been in the employ of the company over twenty-five years. I asked him whether he had instructions to keep trespassers off his trains. "I got the instructions all right enough," he said, "but I don't follow them. I'm not a policeman for the road. I'm a conductor, and I only draw a salary for being that, too. When I was green I used to try to keep the bums off my trains, but I nearly got my head shot off one night and stopped after that. It's the detectives' business to look after such people." "Do you see much of the detectives?" "Once in awhile one of them shows up on my trains, but I've never seen them make any arrests. One of them got on my train one day when I was carryin' fifty tramps, and he never went near them." "What do you think ought to be done to keep tramps off trains?" "Well, what I'd like to have done would be for the United States government to let all us trainmen carry revolvers and shoot every galoot that got on to our trains. That'd stop the thing." "Do you think the company wants it stopped?" "I don't know whether they do or not, but I wish to God they'd do something. Why, we men can't go over our trains at night any more, and be sure that we ain't goin' to get it in the neck somewhere. It's a holy fright." I have quoted these men because their testimony may be accepted as expert. They know the situation and they know one another, and they had no reason to try to deceive me in answering my questions. In addition to their remarks, it is only necessary, so far as this particular road is concerned, to emphasise the fact that the forty thousand dollars a year which the company spends for protection of the property are not protecting it, and are bringing in to the stockholders practically no interest. The police force is entirely lacking in system; many of the men are too old and indifferent, and the property is littered up with as miscellaneous a collection of vagabonds and thieves as is to be found in a year's travel. This is neither good management, nor good business, and it is unfair to a community which furnishes a railroad much of its revenue, to foist such a rabble upon it. A more or less similar state of affairs exists on the great majority of the trunk lines in the United States. They are all spending thousands of dollars on their "detective" forces, as they call them, and they are all overrun by wandering mobs of ne'er-do-wells and criminals. There are no worse slums in the country than are to be found on the railroads. Reformers and social agitators are accustomed to speak of the congested districts of the large cities as the slums to which attention should be directed, but in the most congested quarters of New York City there are no greater desperadoes nor scenes of deeper degradation than may be met on the "iron highways" of the United States. A number of railroads are recognised by vagrants and criminals as the stamping ground of particular gangs that are generally found on the lines with which their names are connected. Every now and then the report is given out that a certain railroad is about to inaugurate a policy of retrenchment, and the newspapers state that a number of employees have been discharged or have had their work hours cut down. The best policy of retrenchment that a number of railroad companies can take up would be to stop the robberies on their properties, collect fares from the trespassers, and free their employees from the demoralising companionship of tramps and criminals. To carry out such a policy a well organised railroad police force is indispensable, and as I have made use of a practical illustration to indicate the need of reform, I will advance another to show how this reform can be brought about. There is one railroad police organisation in the United States which is conscientiously protecting the property in whose interests it works, and I cannot better make plain what is necessary to be done than by giving a short account of its organisation and performance. It is employed on the Pennsylvania lines west of Pittsburg, and in inception and direction is the achievement of the general manager of that system. As a division superintendent this gentleman became very much interested in the police question, and organised a force for the division under his immediate control. It worked so successfully that, on assuming management of the entire property, he determined to introduce in all the divisions the methods which he had found helpful in his division. There was no attempt made, however, to overhaul the entire property at once. The reform went on gradually, and as one division was organised, the needs and peculiarities of another were studied and planned for. Suitable men had to be found, and there was necessarily considerable experimenting. The work was done thoroughly, however, and with a view to permanent benefits rather than to merely temporary relief. To-day, after six years of preparatory exercise, the "Northwest System" has a model police organisation, and the "Southwest System" is being organised as rapidly as the right men can be found. The force on the "Northwest System"--and it must be remembered that this part of the property takes in such cities as Pittsburg, Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, where there is always a riffraff population likely to trespass on railroad property--is made up of eighty-three officers and men. The chief of the force is the superintendent, whose jurisdiction extends to the "Southwest System" also. He reports to the general manager, and is almost daily in conference with him. For an assistant to manage things when he is "out on the road," and to relieve him of road duty when he is needed at headquarters, he has an inspector, a man who has risen from the ranks and has demonstrated ability for the position. Each division has a captain, who reports to the division superintendent and to the chief of the police service. This captain has under him one or more lieutenants and the necessary number of patrolmen and watchman, who report to him alone. An order from the general manager consequently reaches the men for whom it is meant through official channels entirely within the police department, and the same is true of statements and reports of the men to the general manager. Practically everything is run according to a well-understood system, and this is the secret of the department's success. Day in and day out every man on the force knows what he has to do, and expects to be called to order if his work does not come up to what is desired. Hunting down trespassers and thieves is but a part of the routine. The property is patrolled almost exactly as a large city is, and the men are expected to make reports about such matters as the condition of frogs and switches, switch-lights, fences, and station-buildings, to do preliminary work for the department of claims, to keep the property free from trespassers, to protect the pay-car, look out for circus and excursion trains, and generally make themselves useful. They are all picked men, and have to come up to the requirements of the United States army as regards health and physical strength. Their personal records are known for five years previous to being employed on the force. They constitute for the general manager an invaluable guardianship. He has but to press the button, so to speak, and within a few hours the entire police force is carrying out his instructions. Through it he can keep in touch with a thousand and one matters which would otherwise escape his notice, and he can order an investigation with the assurance that he will get an exact and trustworthy report within a reasonable time. Such is the organisation. Its performance, up to date, has consisted in cleaning up a property that, seven years ago, as I know from observation, was so infested with criminals that it was notorious throughout the tramp world as an "open" road. To-day that system is noted for being the "tightest shut" line, from the trespasser's point of view, in the country, and the company pays seventeen thousand dollars a year less for its police arrangements than it did in 1893 for its watchmen and detective force. These are facts which any one may verify, and it is no longer possible for railroad companies to explain their hesitation in taking up the police matter in earnest on the ground that it would cost too much. It costs less, not only in the police department's pay-rolls, but in the department of claims as well, than it did when detached men, without any organisation and direction, were employed, and the conditions at the start were very similar to those on railroads now known to be "open." It is to be admitted that the rabble which formerly infested this property has in all probability shifted to other roads,--gangs of this character naturally follow the lines of least resistance,--but it would have been impossible for it to shift had other railroads taken a similar stand against it; it must have vanished. The time must come when this stand will be taken by all railroads. For a number of years there has been no more valuable contribution to the business of railroading in the United States than the demonstrated success of a railroad police force, and it is difficult to believe that the benefits it brings can be long overlooked. The question of methods to be employed will naturally occasion considerable discussion, and it will doubtless be found that an organisation which suits one railroad is not available for another, but I believe that the general plan of the police organisation described above is a safe one to follow. It is founded on the principle that the men must be carefully selected, thoroughly trained, systematically governed, and the scope of their work sharply defined. No police force, railroad or municipal, can do really good work unless due regard be given to these very important matters. For the benefit of railroad police forces which may be organised in the future, the following suggestion seems to me to be worthy of consideration. The title "detective" should not be given the men. They are not detectives in the ordinary sense of the word, and to be so called hurts them with the public and with their fellow employees. Railroading is a business done aboveboard and in the public view, and its police service should stand on a different footing from that of the detective force of a large city, where, as all the world knows, secret agents are necessary. They may be necessary at times on railroads also, but there already exist reputable agencies for furnishing such service. The superintending officers of the force should be superior men. In Germany a police patrolman has not the slightest hope of becoming so much as a lieutenant until he has passed a very severe examination, which practically implies a college education, and he consequently realises that his superior officer is entitled to his position on other grounds than mere "pull" or "seniority," and learns to have great respect for him. A similar dignity should be attached to authoritative positions in the railroad police, and to secure it able men must be employed. The superintendent of the service should be as supreme in it as is the superintendent of a division. If he has been chosen for the position on account of his fitness for it, the supposition is that he knows how to fill it, and there should be but one superior to whom he must answer. I bring up this point because on most railroads the police arrangements are, at present, such that almost every head of a department gives orders to the "detectives." On some roads even station agents are allowed to regulate the local police officer's movements. Whether an American railroad police can be organised on as broad lines as in Germany, where practically all the railroad officials have police authority, is a question which cannot yet be definitely decided. The conditions in the United States are very different from those in Germany, and it may be that the sentiment of the people would be against giving so many persons police power; but I think it would be advantageous to experiment with the track-walkers, crossing-watchmen, and gatemen, and see whether they can be incorporated in the railroad police. Great care must naturally be exercised in picking out the men to possess patrolmen's privileges, but an examination, such as all German railroad police officials have to pass, would seem to be a precaution which ought to secure safe officers. If such an arrangement were made, the railroad police would admirably supplement the municipal police and the rural constabulary, and the requirements, physical, mental, and moral, of the examinations to be gone through would have a tendency to elevate the morale of the men, not only as patrolmen, but also as railroaders. In conclusion, I desire to point out the opportunity of teaching by example which I believe the railroad police of the United States are going to have. Unlike the municipal police, they are free of the toils of politics, and ought to become exemplary. Their methods and efficiency will not remain unnoticed. The day that the railroad companies succeed in ridding their properties of the vagrant class which now troubles them, and thousands of this class begin to take up permanent quarters in the cities because they are unable to travel afoot, the public is going to make inquiries as to whence this undesirable contingent has come. They will then learn what a police force can do when it is not officered by political appointment and when it is made up of men who have been trained for the task imposed upon them. A good thing cannot for ever go a-begging. Six years ago it seemed as impossible that a railroad could be cleaned up morally, as the one I have described has been, as it now seems that American cities can have police departments independent of politics. The trouble was that no railroad had taken the initiative. Ten years hence, I venture to prophesy, the railroads of the United States will not be the avenues of crime that they are at present. Some day a similar reform in police methods will be attempted and carried through in one of our cities, and if the railroad police have done their work well, and remained true to honest principles, not a little of the credit will belong to them. 
51004	----	"And this is liberty--that one grow after the law of his own life, hindering not another." [Illustration: Title Page] _My Monks of Vagabondia._ _Andress Floyd_ Copyright 1913 By Andress Floyd TO MY WIFE LILLIAN BLANCHE FLOYD WHOSE DEVOTION AND INSPIRATION MADE POSSIBLE THE SELF MASTER COLONY Introductory My Monks of Vagabondia comprises Fact-stories selected from the old files of the Self Master Magazine. I wish to present the defeated man, as he really is, to the reader who cannot fail to appreciate the humor and tragedy that makes up his wayward life. The bond of sympathy should be awakened between us and the so-called prodigal. A wider publicity should be given to the unique but practical uplift work that I have founded and carried on for the past five years among these weaker brothers. The stories explain in part the methods and plans of the Family of Self Masters. It is--we believe--the only book in which a writer has received his facts for his stories direct from a life-experience with outcast men. Not alone that, but the volume is printed, bound and illustrated by the unexpected guests--the Itinerant Monks of whom the tales are told, and who make their home in our so-called Monastery. The day approaches when broken men shall have beautiful, though simple, homes of their own making, modeled after the group idea of The Self Master Colony. They will be established outside of the different cities of the world, and opened hospitably to all men who come in their hour of need or weakness, seeking Self Mastery and the peace that accompanies it. The proceeds from the sale of these stories go toward the purchase and installation of much needed equipment for the Printshop and Bindery. With this equipment the men can work out their own independence, industrially and socially. When a man has lived months and years enslaved by some vicious habit--self-destructive and careless of consequences--his sub-conscious mind is a sensitive matrix on which the sordid history is deeply engraved. The certain change can come only as the man learns values and respects them by a right life. The sub-conscious self takes on a complete reformation slowly. An evil habit does not gain mastery over the man upon the instant nor once in control is its grip broken by any feeble affirmation or miraculous phenomenon. The hope comes when one turns one's thought from the destructive to the constructive, and lives in the sight of the new born faith until wisdom lifts the darkened veil and freedom follows as its rightful legacy. The Self Master Colony offers an open door to the disheartened man during the period of his awakening to his real strength and helps him with its constant care and sympathy back to his true self. ANDRESS FLOYD. CONTENTS Introductory 13 A Journey to our Monastery 17 Mary and the Baby 25 My Problem with Slippery Jim. 37 Our Friend, The Anarchist 55 A Bashful Beggar 69 Fritz and His Sun Dial 75 The Waiter Who Did Not Wait. 87 Compounding a Felony 95 The Passing of Sullivan 105 When Sister Called 115 Edison's Evening Star 125 In the World of Wanderlust 133 The Two Jeans 137 A JOURNEY TO OUR MONASTERY If any pilgrim monk come from distant parts to dwell with us, and will be content with the customs which he finds in the place, and do not perchance by his lavishness disturb the Monastery, he shall be received. --_Saint Benedict._ A Journey to our Monastery The man had walked the entire distance from New York to the Self Master Family. In truth, he had walked more than the entire distance, for once or twice he had lost his way--as many a man has done in other walks of Life. Painfully he had retraced his steps to the right road. The mistakes had told heavily upon his failing strength. They had made him just that much more weary with it all. No doubt mistakes are wonderfully educational; they make men wiser, and therefore better, for in the final analysis wisdom and goodness are synonymous. He complained bitterly at the hardness of his lot and found little comfort in the thought that he might reach the Colony too late for the evening meal. His friend who had met him walking aimlessly up and down Broadway assured him that there was always a coffee pot boiling on the old-fashioned cook stove in the boys' kitchen--that the Colony House never locked its doors. To a man who feels that every door in the world is locked against him there is comfort in the thought that there is really one place where he may find a welcome. His friend had said that there would be no questions asked him on his arrival--no investigation. "No investigation," he muttered aloud, "thank God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a 'down-and-out' man to convince Professional Charity that he is really hungry. I think they would have given me a 'hand-out' when they investigated me the last time if I could have told them what town my mother was born in." He smiled with weak cynicism at the folly of his thoughts, and then became suddenly serious, for on the side hill in front of a large colonial house, worked out in white stone, were the words "The Self Masters." He stopped and studied the quiet, home-like scene from the road. All these weary miles he had come to ask food and shelter, and now his courage seemed to fail him. He sat down by the road side and leisurely took his pipe from his pocket. Then he prepared tobacco with the utmost care, filled the pipe and lighted it. "THE SELF MASTERS" he spelled out the letters on the sign; "What the h--ll is that?--Self Master--Self Mastery--Self Control. Old Man, if you had ever had any of that Self Control in your make-up you would not be a Knight of the Dusty Road!... You had better go back to the East Side where you know the land; where no man cares whether you live decently or not--if you can buy." Then the sound of a piano and male voices came to him and awakened him to a new train of thought. "It is a Monastery--a Monastery of Vagabondia," he said, "and why not? why shouldn't a man, even a homeless man, have his Monastery, if you please, where he can forget his past and live cleanly? If he only lives cleanly for a day and falls.... It's something to remember--a day he doesn't have to be ashamed of. Who knows but that in the one day of unselfish living a man is more truly his real self than he is in all the other days of his vicious years. "Throughout his long life Moses was the leader of his people, but it was in that day that he talked with God--face to face--that his countenance did shine like the sun. It was not when he slew the Egyptian, and, frightened, buried him in the sand; it was when he stood in the presence of Divinity--that Moses was Moses. When the drunkard is in his sober mind, when the liar is speaking the truth, when the thief is giving honest measure, when the murderer is kind to his fellow, then, and only then, is the true Self finding expression." He drew heavily at his pipe and then smilingly said, "My pipe has gone out!" He knocked out the ashes into his hand and scattered them to the wind, gravely, as if it were some religious ceremony. Then he dusted his shoes and clothes, and straightening himself up to his full height, he marched bravely up to the front door of the house.... ... A black crow, belated in his home-going, left his corn-thieving, and, rising, flew across the sky to his eyrie in the pines. [Illustration] MARY AND THE BABY "And a little child shall lead them." --_Isaiah._ Mary and the Baby "Resolved, that old-fashioned cow's milk is better for Our Baby, than any prepared food." The debate on the above subject will start at seven o'clock next Thursday evening. The Conservatives of our Colony will speak in favor of cow's milk as a baby's food. The Progressives will speak in favor of prepared food. The parliamentary rules governing the debate will be the same as govern a "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling match. No slugging will be permitted until forensic effort has proven ineffective. When further argument has become useless, the three-ounce boxing gloves, recently donated to us, may be used to force a decision. In fact, several of the boys who talk but little, are practising with the gloves, so that they may become factors in the final settlement of the problem. On the other hand, the literary coterie is in deep study. One boy is reading up reference books on the subject whenever he can find the time. Still another blindfolds himself and opens the Bible at random, looking for spiritual guidance on the subject of infant diet. Of course the Court of Final Appeal will be Her Ladyship--The Baby Herself. She already knows a great deal about crackers and breakfast foods, and she is far too clever not to have her own opinion on the dietary properties of milk and its substitutes. * * * * * And now it may be in point to tell how we came to have a ten-months-old baby at our Colony. We are ostensibly a young men's colony--men and boys trying to get to their feet and become independent and self-supporting. But if anyone comes to us hungry, we like to give them something more edible than a card to a professional charity. Had Hunger delayed her coming another week, Our Baby and her mother might have been driven to ask food and shelter on Christmas Eve. As it was, they came to us on December 19th, at ten o'clock in the evening. They had no place in which to sleep except the local police station, and that is not the place for a little baby--even strong men weaken in the chill of its hospitality. So, on their arrival, the boys who were retiring for the night, held a conference. Our supply of beds and bedding did not even equal the demand made upon it by the boys themselves. But that did not cause them to hesitate, and all agreed that they must not turn the newcomers away. One boy immediately gave up his blanket, the second his comforter, the third his bed. In that way the mother and baby were made comfortable for the night, little realizing that they were taking anything away from those who had nothing to spare. But homeless men are quickly sympathetic, for what they know of hunger and cold is not altogether hearsay. On the next day we undertook to make more permanent provision for the Baby and Mary, her mother. We began to look around for beds. We asked two of the kind-hearted clergymen if they could obtain a bed for our new arrivals. One of them phoned me later in the day to ask me what town the poor people were from, and when I informed him, he said "The woman should have applied to the charity association of the city from which they came. If the case was worthy, aid would be given." Worthy or unworthy, we didn't feel like sending the Baby away. She was teething and fretful, and a teething, fretful baby may not be as worthy as one who grins and bears it. The other minister said, "The wonderful work the Church was doing, had not so much to do with the poor in this life, as in the hereafter." Now in truth, while the mother was discouraged and didn't care anything about life as far as she herself was concerned, she had ambition for her child, so she could not qualify and ask assistance under these conditions. The boys themselves made two wooden beds, and fitted up a room for the Baby, while the mother in turn helped the young men in the kitchen. The Baby has grown strong and well. She likes her big brothers with all their noise and horseplay, and they like their Baby. To see rough homeless men sing lullabies to an infant-in-arms, congratulating themselves when she falls asleep soothed by the monotonous humming of some cradle song that they themselves thought they had forgotten long ago, might renew one's faith in the kindly humanity that lives in every heart. Has not Christ said, "And whosoever shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth me." THE BABY'S FATHER Now, this Baby has a father. He has lived in Russia and came to America to earn money. One of his older brothers was already located in New York State, and from his letters sent over the sea, it was plain that the opportunities for wealth in the States were most promising. The older brother had grown rich--very rich--working on the railroad. He never earned less than nine dollars a week, and now that he spoke English, he earned twelve. Such stories of easily acquired wealth lured John, as we call him, to leave his Fatherland with his wife and child. But unfortunately for John and his family, they reached America during the recent panic. Thousands of workmen were idle. In New York, John could find no work. Even the rich brother only worked part of the time, and having wife and children of his own, had nothing to divide with John and his family. So John drifted away seeking employment. The few dollars that he brought with him became exhausted, and although he studied English evenings, he spoke it brokenly. One of the boys at the Colony said he talked in "kindlewood." While he was seeking employment, no word came to the wife and child. Some said John would never come back. But Mary believed in him. She said that he had always loved the baby and he knew that she herself could work. But at times even she doubted when weeks followed weeks and no word came. Once when one of the boys was going to New York, she called him aside quietly, and said, "You will see John in New York, I think.... Big man, light hair ... tell him come home, see Baby.... I want him." But John was not seen in New York. It was not until a few days ago that he returned. He had traveled through New York State and on to Massachusetts. No work--everywhere no work! Sometimes he had walked. Sometimes he had jumped a freight. All to no purpose. He had wanted to write good news to Mary, and he had no good news to write. Always bad news. He was a failure. He had wished he might end it all, but the thought of the Baby had made him continue the search for employment. Finally, one day, a rich man in Montclair needed a gardener. This man was rich--not rich like his brother--but had houses and acres of splendid farm. He would pay two dollars a day wages to a man willing to work. It seemed too good to believe. He would hurry back to his Baby and Mary. They must know the good news. So he came and told Mary he had a job, and a little home for her and the Baby. They would be rich like his brother. So Mary went with John and they took their Baby, all tied up in shawls. That was yesterday--Monday--so there will be no argument Thursday on "Whether or not old-fashioned cow's milk is better for babies than prepared foods." Because we homeless men have lost Our Baby. One of the boys asked the Chairman--another boy--if they would have the Debate, now that the Baby was gone? "To hell with it," replied the Presiding Officer. * * * * * The above is a true story, and to The Self Master Colony, all a part of the day's work. [Illustration] MY PROBLEM WITH SLIPPERY JIM "When a boy goes to prison, a citizen dies." --_Jacob Riis_ My Problem with Slippery Jim. "My razor went yesterday for a beef stew," the young dare-devil told me. "Not that I am one of those collar-and-necktie-rounders," he continued, "who seek to give out the impression that they are gentlemen in distress, telling you of their Southern family and a squandered fortune when, in fact, they have never been further South than Coney Island.... But when a fellow decides to sell his razor he is about to commit an act that severs the jugular vein of his respectability. "He may have, only the moment before, shaven and groomed himself with the utmost care, still he is nearly ready to join the ranks of the down-and-outs. A man may sell his other belongings--his clothes included--and yet preserve a suggestion at least of his _sang-froid_. But when the razor goes--" "Then he can get a free shave at the Barbers' School," I suggested. "That only helps for a day or two," he went on. "Better throw up your hands at once and have it over. What man half ill with worry cares to listen to some ambitious pupil say, 'Teacher, shall I shave the right side of his face up, or shave it down?'--and, 'Teacher, how do you shave the upper lip without cutting it?' and, 'Teacher, if I do cut it, shall I disinfect it with carbolic or peroxide before I put on the new skin?'--No Barbers' School for me. It is better to turn philosopher on the instant--the old philosophers and prophets grew long beards.... Talk about getting next to Nature in about three days after a man has sold his razor, Nature will get next to him, and if he is not as beardless as an American Indian, he will be convinced when he sees himself in a mirror, of the truth of the Darwinian theory." "In Russia," I said, "the beard is the patriarch's badge of sanctity." "So it is in Jersey and several other States," he replied. "Many a so-called hobo with two weeks' growth of beard on his face may be at heart only a conscientious respecter of the law--for it is a misdemeanor in New Jersey to carry a razor. It is legally declared to be a concealed weapon. Many a poor rascal against whom a charge of vagrancy could not be maintained has found it so much the worse for him, and has been forced to go to prison for carrying concealed weapons in the form of a razor. So you see in Jersey, as well as in Russia, a beard may be only proof of honor.... The cleanly shaven man who knocks at your side door and wins the unsuspecting wife's confidence with that time-worn platitude of Vagabondia, 'Lady, all I want is work,' may have a weapon concealed upon his person, while the unshaven wanderer, the sight of whom makes the women folks bolt doors, may be a homeless fellow who really wants work, and would rather be unkempt in appearance than chance a prison-term for carrying a razor." "So you have sold your razor?" I asked. "Not because I am trying to compete with your Russian patriarch in sanctity. I sold it because I'm desperate." "Then you were not afraid of the misdemeanor charge?" He replied with a laugh that I did not like, and I felt quickly to see if my watch was still in my possession. "I don't want your watch," he said, "but it isn't the fear of doing time that holds me back. I know what my friend wrote about me. I have made up my mind to play square. You may not believe it. You have heard too many mission testimonies to believe much in them. But if I live right--it isn't because my heart is softened, my heart is cold and hard as a paving block." "Your friend wrote that you weren't such a bad fellow." "Don't believe him. In Elmira they have a scheme of percentage, and if a man gets above a certain percent he can win his freedom. In the four years I was there I was safely within the required percentage--all I had to do was to continue my good behavior. I was within a few days of freedom. Did you ever sense hatred--pure hatred? Shylock felt it when he refused to accept money to cancel Antonio's bond; when he would not listen to threats or entreaties, but only muttered, 'I'll have my pound of carrion flesh.' I know what he felt. In the night, after weeks and weeks of patient study and labor--after months of good conduct, when I played their game and won the chance of freedom. In the night, without reason, I jumped from my bed and battered at the bars and yelled and cursed at them all, until they put me in the dungeon and took from me my high percent. I lost a year that time." "Do the prison bars still hold you," I asked him. "What do you mean?" "You act like a mad man when you talk of the past. Some men can never throw off the thought of their imprisonment. It rules their life. They think only of prison and the crimes that follow such thinking. There is no hope for them. Can't you see it is your ideals that enslave or make you free? Can't you see you are free?" "It's mighty hard," he said, "but I want to forget. My friend sent me to you. He said you knew the path to freedom, and would help me. Days and days I have waited for you to come to me. My father would not have me at home, my friends left me, my money grew less and less--my clothes went, my razor--everything. And still you did not come. Sometimes I'd meet a boy that told me of your work. Sometimes I would doubt all I had heard, and then I would become indifferent--mutter a prayer or plan a crime. At last the letter came. I knew I was being put to the test, and I sought to be firm. Oh, God, such a test! What is it holds a man? I was hungry, yet I knew how to steal; I needed money, and I knew where I could rob with reasonable safety. What is it holds a man like me? At times I have thought it was my belief in you." "You mean our Colony held out a hope to you." "Yes," he said. "I am afraid to take you into my Family," I told him. "For fear I'll steal from you?" he said, coldly. "No, not that; I fear you cannot leave your prison thoughts behind you when you enter the Colony." "If you help me," he said, thoughtfully, "I think I can begin anew." "Will you promise never to speak to me or anyone of your past life?" "I will not speak of it again." "Then you may go to the entrance gate with me, and there I will decide if I can take you in." We talked on the way to the farm about many things--for he had read and traveled much. We made no mention of the Family or its work, but as we came near the Colony House I stopped. "Tell me," I said, "did they teach you a trade at Elmira?" "I'm a metal roofer by trade," he said. "Did you learn the trade in prison?" I asked him. "I think you mistake me for some other man," he replied, quietly. "I know nothing about prison life." "What do you mean, not only your friend told me that you had served a term, but you told me yourself?" I said, severely. He looked calmly into my face, but there were tears in his eyes. "I could not have told you, for had I told you such a foolish falsehood I would have remembered it. Let us talk of something else." "Very good," I said, pleasantly. He was trying to forget the past. At that moment there came to us the vigorous clamor of an old cow bell. "It is the bell that calls the boys to their evening meal." "Yes?" "Come, let us hurry, so we may be served at the first table, for you are hungry." II The holy Vedas teach us that as we pass from life to life, Time places gentle fingers over the eyes of memory, lest we become disheartened by past errors and falter enslaved by the fears of what we have been. Like the child who, having worked out a problem on his slate, erases it all, keeping only the answer, so we have within our soul-life the result of our past experiences; all the rest is erased. Who cares about the detailed account of all the happenings along the path we have traveled? We know intuitively that much of the past must be condemned, but that which concerns us vitally is the life we aim to live to-day. Night closes on the sorrows of yesterday. Dawn is radiant with the promise of a better day. Our friend, "Slippery Jim," tried to believe all this, and to look with hope towards the future, but he kept much to himself. He would take long walks into the woods. It disturbed me to see him so slow to take the boys into his confidence. "I never see you reading with the other men in the evening," I told him. "Men who love solitude are either very good or very bad." "I will try to do better," he answered, "but for so many years I have been used to being by myself." "Still one has to live in the world--and our world here is rather small," I said. "Cheerfulness is a duty one owes to his own soul." "And to others," he added. "Yes, and to others," I replied. "I am inclined to view lightly my duty to others. I owed a debt--a great debt once--to others, and I have paid it. They measured it out of my life, the payment they demanded. I have paid it--paid it in tears and wretchedness--paid it out of my heart and soul. Now I prefer to live apart.... The Indians, so the poet says, when on the march, leave their old and sick alone to die. I am a sick savage, and as such, I ask my rights." "Do you believe in the Great Spirit and the Happy Hunting Grounds?" I asked gently, for I knew he had no Indian blood in his veins. "Their religion is as good as many another, and quite as poetical." "Then go into the forest and pray to your Great Spirit," I said. "Only don't discredit him by being inconsiderate of others who would be kind to you." "Do I not do my work?" he asked, with rising anger. "You are expected to do your work, but I am not speaking to you on that subject. I want to know what you are thinking about while you are at work." "If you please, that is my own affair." "If you please, it is my affair also. You came out here to have me help you. I want to help you." "You have helped me; you took me into this Colony when my father had closed the door on me; you have given me food--such as it is--and out of the clothes sent in you have given me this second-hand suit." "And you have worked like the other men and paid by your labor for what you received?" "Yes." "And that is all there is to it?" "Yes." "It is very, very little I have done for you," and I started to leave him. "Wait a moment"--he stopped me. "I did not intend to be unkind to you. You have treated me much better than I have deserved." "It is something to have even simple food when one is hungry," I said, severely. "You have also more courage than when you came. In your work you know courage is quite important. You will soon be able to go back to your old life." "No, not that," his voice becoming less hardened. "In these days I have lived with you and observed the happiness you get out of your work--in spite of its sacrefice--and compared it with my own way of living, I can not understand how I could have ignored the good there's in me. But, really, you should not expect us all to be as cheerful as you are. You may see clearly the Truth that we see only through a glass darkly." "So you plan to live like an honest man?" "Absolutely." "Then I have not really lost after all," I said, thoughtfully. "What did you say?" he questioned, not having heard clearly my remark. "I said that if you have determined to live honestly, that is something." That evening I saw him walking up and down the kitchen floor with our Baby in his arms--for that Winter we had a homeless mother and Baby at the Colony. The Baby was kicking and laughing as he carried her with measured stride around the room. "I simply must put her to sleep," he said, confidingly. "Why don't you sing to her," I suggested. "I am hazy on my slumber songs," he said. A little later the Baby was nodding with half closed eyes. "Doesn't she look pretty," said the admiring mother. "She looks like Jeffries at the end of the fifth," was Jim's reply. A few moments later I heard him as he walked, singing music of his own improvising to the words of Wilde's prison poem: "With slouch and swing around the ring, We trod the Fools' Parade! We did not care; we knew we were The Devil's Own Brigade; And shaven head and feet of lead Make a merry masquerade." III The Winter was nearly over when "Slippery Jim" came to me and expressed a wish to return to the World again. If his father would only accept him once more! My observation of a father's attitude towards his prodigal son is that the moment the son desires to live as he ought, not only do closed doors open, but the father stands ready with outstretched arms to receive him. This supposedly harsh father, when he was convinced that his Jim had worked faithfully at the Colony for several months, was anxious that his son return home. Even the boy's old employer expressed sympathy and offered a position to him. When this good news came I did not have to tell the boy anything about its being one's duty to be cheerful. He wanted to dance a clog on the table in the men's reading room. Early the next morning he left us, not waiting to thank us, which was quite unnecessary; nor hardly stopping to say good-bye to us. But a few days afterward he wrote to me, saying that after four years he was back with his father and mother, brother and sisters, in his own room, sleeping in his own bed. The family had arranged it just the same as it had been before he left them for those sad years in prison. His father had purchased him a new suit for Easter. The next day he was to start to work. Nearly a year later he visited me. His work had taken him out of town. "When I first met you," he said. "I didn't have a home. Now it is a question which one to visit first, but I thought I would come out to see you, and then go this evening and see my other father." [Illustration] OUR FRIEND, THE ANARCHIST. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. --_Bible._ Our Friend, The Anarchist He said that he came from Germany, but he didn't look it, for Germany is a beautiful country, and he was far removed from even a suggestion of beauty. Had he said he had just arrived from "No Man's Land," it would have been easily accredited. For a German, even his accent and grammatical construction were unsatisfactory. He did not begin his sentences in the middle and talk both ways at once, after the well established custom of Americanized Teutons. In the stress of his excitement he expressed himself concisely and clearly. He was seated in the Charity House awaiting the investigation of the social workers. He held his head in his hands, while his body convulsed frequently, and tears were in his eyes. To see a man with unkempt whiskers indulging in a crying spell like a delicate woman, is almost as humorous as it is pathetic, unless one knows what the man is crying about. Then, too, the Germans, unlike the Irish, take their trouble seriously, so that their despair often creates for them the hell they fear. Surely it wasn't a German who in the old Bible days sent hired mourners to go about the street; it was undoubtedly an Irishman whose genius conceived the idea of paying other men to do his weeping for him. "Where are you from?" I asked the German. He surveyed me suspiciously from head to foot, then replied politely enough: "I am of German parentage and have lived the greater part of my life in Heidelberg, where my father and grandfather were instructors in the University." "When did you arrive in America?" I asked him. "A few days ago," he answered. "I came from Paris, where I met with heavy--heavy for me--financial reverses. I attempted to conduct a business similar to your brokers, who loan money on personal property, but being unfamiliar with French law, I found I could not legally enforce payments of the loans I made to the Frenchmen. My entire life savings--small, it is true--were lost. In disgust I came to America, and my condition now is worse than ever. I am desperate." He did not raise his voice, speaking quietly, but his hands were nervous, and his eyes reminded me of Svengali--fascinating, but dangerous. My impression was that I had seen safer men locked in darkened cells and allowed only wooden spoons with which to eat. "Has the charity association decided to help you?" I asked. "I fear not," he replied. "They wish me to tell them my father's address in Germany, as they inform me that they always make thorough investigations. Several times they asked me my home address, but I turned them from the point, as I have no intention of adding my burdens to the burdens my father and mother already have.... Does it seem quite generous of your social workers to be so insistent?... But, pardon me, have you not a saying that 'Beggars must not be choosers?'" I did not reply to his question, as I was thinking what my Reception Committee--made up of the boys of the Colony--would say to me if I invited this much-bewhiskered individual to join our Family. For the instant I forgot the German's troubles in the thought of the troubles which I was about to take upon myself. I smiled at my approaching embarrassment. "It is all very well," the boys had cautioned me, "to hold us responsible for the newly-arrived members, to make certain that no criminal nor fraud obtains admission to the Family, but you might be a little more discriminating in your selections, could you not?" * * * * * The German was quick to avail himself of my offer to join the Colony; he would go to Hoboken and get his luggage and join me as soon as possible. His luggage--he met me an hour later--consisted of a wooden box too small to be called a trunk, too large to be called a valise. As we approached the Colony House we passed several of the boys who had evidently seen us at a distance, for they appeared deeply interested in the setting sun, their faces turned from us. Finally one fellow who, like a good Pullman porter, can laugh at you without changing his facial expression, only if you watch closely you may note that the muscles at the back of the neck dance in uncontrolled merriment--came forward and said to us: "A beautiful sunset." He should have been reprimanded for his impudence, but I simply asked, "Where?" "In the west," he explained. Then the boys turned and laughed without restraint. "An ordinary sunset and a most ordinary joke," I said, rather icily. But they continued to laugh, first looking at my companion and then at me. "Not so ordinary," said another boy. "If you could see it from where we are you could understand." "I understand you only too well," I answered. Then the two boys who were on the Reception Committee came over to us and took my German friend in hand. There were no more remarks until we reached the house and the man himself was quite out of hearing. "Why did you bring out a man like that?" the cook questioned me soon after I reached the house, and every one looked up from the evening paper he was reading anxious to have his little laugh. But years have taught me somewhat of the ways of men. Did not Moses, when the children of Israel attempted to entangle him in argument, make his contention invulnerable by stating, "God spake unto Moses, saying,----" After that there wasn't much chance for argument. The best thing they could do at such a time was to quietly line up in the ranks. And there is an answer that will always check the hilarity of homeless men and make them as sympathetic as children. "Why did you bring him out with you?" the cook repeated. "Why?" I said, simply, "the man is hungry." Each boy frowned at the cook and turned back to his reading. And the cook made no answer, except he served the new-comer with double portions. That night the German slept with his bed between the two beds of the Reception Committee, and I heard nothing from him until they came to report to me in the morning. "Father," said one of the committee, "I don't like that old party you brought out with you yesterday. All night long in his sleep he was muttering: 'Down with the millionaire; curse the capitalist'--that man is an anarchist." A moment later the second member of the committee came in. "Mr. Floyd, you know that wooden box that 'Whiskers' brought with him?" he asked, nervously; "I put my ear down to it and listened. I could hear something inside going tick, tick, tick, as plain as day." "You are excited," I said. "After breakfast send the man to me." In my room the German and myself talked a long time. I asked him about the University of Heidelberg, the influence of the student in German politics and of the world-wide socialistic movement--had he ever read the works of Karl Marx, the great Socialist? No, he never had. Had he ever read La Salle, the anarchist? No. Or, in his travels, had he ever seen that little pamphlet entitled, "Dynamite as a Revolutionary Agency?" No. But despite the denial, it was plain to see that my old German was the anarchist that my committee had decided him to be. So I sent out word that the boys should redouble their kindness to their half-crazed friend. It was an opportunity to try our simple methods upon a man who felt that the sad old world and its many peoples were as utterly lost as a man may become who believes that there is no good within himself. Men who feel themselves to be evil, they work evil. Hardly had a fortnight passed before our good anarchist caught the spirit of the place and began to feel that kindly sympathy that dwells even in the hearts of stranded men. The young men grew really fond of him. At night he was the last man to knock at my door to see that everything had been given attention; in the morning he was the first to ask what I wished done. It was a cheery "good night" and a cheery "good morning." After several months our anarchist succeeded in finding his brother's address in Philadelphia. The brother offered him a home and a chance to work, so it was arranged for our friend to go to him. As he was bidding me "adieu" he said: "When we first met, you asked me if I had read any anarchistic writings, and I answered you untruthfully. I have read the authors you mentioned, and in my desperation I do not know to what extreme I might not have gone, for I had lost faith in all men. "But to see these young men at the Colony, forgetful of their own troubles, trying to help me to a renewal of courage, gave me a clearer viewpoint of life--the blood I see now in my dreams is not that of the capitalist done to death by a communistic mob--it is the blood of the gentle Christ, who said: "'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'" [Illustration: MAIN BUILDING FROM THE BUNGALOW] A BASHFUL BEGGAR "Faint heart ne'er won fair lady." A Bashful Beggar "It is his diffidence," the good lady told me, "that has caused the young man to fail dismally in this strenuous age of materialism. His is a gentle spirit!" At their first meeting, she told me, when he called at her home and asked for something to eat, he appeared so shy and embarrassed that she was immediately interested in him. He blushed and stammered in a most pitiable way, and after he had eaten heartily of the roast beef and potatoes placed before him he wanted to hurry away, hardly having the courage to remain and thank his benefactor. The good lady told me all this in such a serious manner that I felt I must accept it seriously, and when she suggested that I drive over to a neighboring village to meet the boy at the train, because, being unaccustomed to travel, he could never find his way alone to the Colony, I arranged to meet him. There are simple-minded men--mental defectives--who are oftentimes helpless as children, and I was inclined to put this boy in that class. But the lad whom I found waiting for me at the station came out to meet me in a manner so self-possessed that for the instant I was startled. The report of him seemed to be much in error. "I ought not to have put you to all this trouble," he said, in ready apology. "The letter," I replied, "stated that you might not be able to find your way." He gave me a sly, shrewd glance, and then, confident that he was understood, he said simply, "Indeed?" "Naturally you did not confide in the lady who sent you, that you had freighted it through most States as far as the railroads go?" "No, I did not approach her as a penitent at confessional," he answered, "but rather as a panhandler at the side door. Confession may help to advance a man spiritually, but to a man living on the material plane, would you advise it?" "Is it true," I asked, "that you stammered and blushed when our friend offered you roast beef and potatoes?" "It is my best canvass," he replied. We had driven some distance while this conversation was in progress, and coming to cross-roads, I was uncertain of the direction. "Go in to that farmhouse, please," I said to my companion, pointing to a cheerful looking home a short distance from the road, "and inquire the way?" He alighted quickly and went around to the side door out of my sight. I waited, every moment expecting him to return with the desired information, and was growing impatient when he came out to me, his face beaming with the enthusiasm that follows a successful interview. "This is your share," he said, holding out a generous portion of hot apple pie to me. "The lady who lives here is a motherly soul--very proud of her cooking, and the pie did smell most tempting--I could not resist." "Did you use your usual 'blush and stammer' method to solicit this pastry?" I questioned him. "No, she was as hungry for my compliments as I was for her apple pie, so we simply made a fair exchange." "And the directions back to the Colony?" "The direction?" and he felt extremely stupid. "I felt all the time that--in my sub-conscious mind--there was a thought trying to assert itself." "But the strength of a bad habit," I remarked, "held back the thought: habit is a strong force for good or evil, for it perpetuates itself by a form, as it were, of auto-suggestion. You know all suggestions are powerful." "It is good pie, isn't it?" he asked, irrelevantly. [Illustration] FRITZ AND HIS SUN DIAL "The small task--well performed--opens the door to larger opportunity." Fritz and His Sun Dial Years ago, I saw a near-sighted cook peeling onions--a most pathetic scene if one judges entirely from appearances. The incident impressed me deeply at the time, although it had long since passed from my mind, when good old Fritz came to me, with tears running down the dusty furrows of his be-wrinkled and weather-beaten face. Some strange analogy revived the old memory. There is--say what one will--something tremendously ludicrous about honesty when clothed too deeply in rusticity. We smile at it while we give it our love and respect. It can toy with our heart-strings, playing both grave and gay. We laugh at it so that we may not cry and become laughable ourselves. In broken English, he tried to explain that which was self-evident and needed no explanation--his own distress and desperation. His simple earnestness--his frank, honest manner--won every one's immediate sympathy. The boys began to plan to relieve his distress, even while they laughed with scant courtesy in the old man's face. His clothes were many sizes too large, which was not entirely offset by his cap that was several sizes too small. Through his broken shoes, ten toes spoke in most eloquent English--the need of protection and shelter. "What could ever cause a man to get into such a condition?" asked a fellow, who, three weeks before, had arrived quite as dishevelled, but had already forgotten the fact, which is just as well. "The cause?" asked the German. "Yes." "Beer." "Beer! You are the first man I ever saw who got to such a finish on beer," returned the questioner. "I drink nothing else--never," the old German affirmed. "I am thinking Mr. Floyd will try to clean you up in a hurry--or not at all--if you tell him that beer put you down and out." "I hope so," said the old man; "I feel pretty bad." "Some mighty arguments have been put out that it is the distilled liquors that do all the mischief; that light wine and malt liquors are no more harmful than tea. And here you are in our camp to disprove this contention. If you say you have been on a beer debauch, you may not be believed." "Maybe someone put a little apple-jack into my glass when I wasn't looking," replied the German, quickly, as he went into the boys' kitchen to get a little coffee. So it came about that Fritz became a Colony member, and his good nature made him a general favorite almost immediately. His strength returned to him rapidly. The final cure was effected when, among the books that came in, one of the men found a German volume. He took it to Fritz with some misgiving, as it was a work on astronomy, and Fritz did not resemble a Heidelberg professor; but when our friend glanced at the book and saw the German text, and then, on closer scrutiny, observed that it was a work on astronomy, he became excitedly enthusiastic. "Good! Very good! I am happy to get it." It was a week later, an hour or two after midnight, I saw Fritz in the moonlight, walking around outside the house. I went out to question him, as his actions seemed strange to me. "What is the trouble, Fritz?" I asked him. "It is nothing." "But I would rather not have the men out so late," I said. "I cannot find it," he replied. "Find what, Fritz? What have you lost?" "I cannot find the North Star," he said, sadly. "Don't you know where to look for it?" "Oh, yes; but it is always cloudy." At that moment the clouds began to move--not because Fritz wished it, but his patience had outstayed the clouds. "There it is. That's it," he exclaimed, as he ran into the stable, leaving me standing alone star-gazing to no purpose. But Fritz rejoined me as abruptly as he had left me. He had brought out with him a square board with an iron rod running through it. "What have you there?" I questioned him. "It is my sun-dial; it is my own invention. I have never seen a sun-dial, but I am sure that mine will be as correct as any of them." Then he fastened the dial firmly on a stump, pointing the wire straight at the North Star. "In the morning I can see if I am right. Good night, Mr. Floyd." "Good night, Fritz." For several weeks Fritz worked about the place timing his labor by his ingenious invention. Sometimes he would work after the shadows had passed the quitting hour. "The dial tells us," I said to him one day, "that it is time to stop work." "No," he said, "sun-dials are never exact; sometimes they vary fifteen minutes, at least. For the Earth goes around the Sun not in a circle but in an ellipse. I will work a little longer." * * * * * One Sunday I overheard Fritz talking excitedly out near the spot where the dial was stationed. I thought he had for the moment forgotten he was a Self Master--as all men are likely at times to forget. But when I went out to check the noise, I found that Fritz had ten or fifteen of the men standing in front of him and he was saying: "It is easy to do--to measure the distance to the Sun, or the distance from one planet to another. There are a hundred methods, many of them as simple as it is to measure the length of a building." "You are a student of astronomy?" I asked. "Yes, for many years, I have studied the German books on astronomy. It is my pleasure." From that day our respect for Fritz was established. There is an aristocracy of learning; we doff our hats to even the beggar who knows. The visitors were all interested in Fritz's queer looking sun-dial, made out of a square board and piece of telegraph wire. Automobiles halted by the roadside to look at it. The children insisted on setting their Ingersolls by its falling shadow. A well known physician stood examining the dial one day. He took out his watch to make comparison. "Very clever," he said, "very clever; now let me see Fritz." And Fritz came out. "He isn't much to look at," the Doctor whispered to me, as the old German approached us. Just then the five o'clock whistle blew. The Doctor and I looked at the dial. "The shadow," I said, "falls on the figure five." "Quite true," replied the Doctor. "It must," said Fritz, quietly; "it must, for the wire points to the North Star." The Doctor smiled, as he spoke: "A man intelligent enough to make that dial can, at least, care for my stable and horses.... Fritz, would you like to work for me? I have some splendid horses and I pay well for their care." "I will go gladly," said Fritz; "when do you want me?" "To-morrow," "May I go, Mr. Floyd?" "On one condition," I said. "What is it?" "You must give the Colony your sun-dial." "It is nothing, but you may have it if you like." The next day Fritz was given a good suit of clothes, a collar and tie. "I don't know about the collar and tie," said the old man; "I have not worn one for many months." Three or four of the boys helped him to button on the collar and arrange the ascot effectively. Then the Doctor came with his best span of pet horses. "Jump in with me, Fritz," he said. The old German, smiling, climbed in and then turned, took his hat off to me and the boys. "Thank you.... Good luck," he said. "You take the reins and drive," said the Doctor. Fritz buttoned his coat tightly around him, straightened up his old bent back and taking the reins he proudly drove away. "He did not come in a carriage," said a boy. "It is the Self Masters that helped him," said another. "You forget about the Sun-dial," I said. [Illustration] [Illustration: THE BUNGALOW FROM THE MAIN BUILDING] THE WAITER WHO DID NOT WAIT "Whoever is not master of himself is master of nobody."--_Stahl._ The Waiter Who Did Not Wait. Had the schedule been followed faithfully, it was the time for the auto party to have finished their tea and toast and be awaiting the chauffeur to come up with their machine, but there seemed to be a delay somewhere. Investigation revealed a peculiar condition of affairs. The visitors were moving about rather impatiently while the lunch, instead of being served, was rapidly getting chilled on the side-board in an adjoining room. "Where is Delmonico Bill, the attentive waiter," we asked, not a little surprised at his disappearance. He was nowhere to be found, although we hunted high and low for him. But to manage men successfully who admit their irresponsibility needs an overseer who is not only patient in disappointment, but who can offer the pat excuse impromptu, and cheerfully reassure friends that everything is all right, when--unless viewed from the standpoint of a year from to-day--it is all wrong. On this special day there seemed to be no apparent explanation except that the waiter did not wait. But everything is a success that ends happily, and the delayed lunch made the visitors more than ever in sympathy with the Work. Whoever loves us for our mistakes, shall become more endeared to us as they know us better. The diners--who had not dined--saw humor in our embarrassment, and assured us of their best wishes as they drove merrily away, leaving us stupidly asking ourselves why the waiter had left his guests unserved. It was nearly an hour later when Delmonico Bill came down out of the hay loft, brushing the dust and hay-seed from his clothes. "Has she gone?" he enquired stupidly. "Who?" we asked him in chorus. "My Sunday school teacher," he explained. We awaited his further explanation. It was the first time we had heard that he ever had such a teacher. "It isn't that I am in the least ashamed to serve as a waiter. Menial work that must be done is not humiliating to me. But when I looked in at the visitors as I was arranging their lunch on the tray--I recognized in one of the ladies my old Sunday school teacher--and when I thought to what an extent I had disregarded her instructions I hadn't the courage to face her.... My, but it was hot up in that haymow!... "The last time I saw this good lady was the evening in the church vestry when the class members gave her a group picture of themselves. We all went to the local photographers together. There were three rows of us--the tall, taller and tallest--all raw-boned rascals trying to assume the spiritual pose of Sir Galahad. I never cared much for the photograph, but the frame--the gold frame--much befiligreed was mighty impressive. I remember it because there was seventy-five cents of my money in it. I worked hard for that money. It took me the best part of three nights to get it from Cy Watson--playing penny-ante in his father's carriage house. But I was happy to turn it to such good use." "It was tainted money," said one of the boys. "There wasn't any such thing as tainted money in those days. Money was money and no one had any of it. "I made the presentation speech that night in the vestry. It was a masterpiece. The teacher and the women folks all cried. I have forgotten the speech now; thirty years of knocking around the world crowds out the memory of many things that happened when we were boys in Sunday school. But for years, I could repeat that piece. I rehearsed for that evening over two months--I could say it forwards or backwards, I could start it in the middle and say it both ways--in fact when I think of it, I rather believe that was the way I did say it that evening, because the applause that followed my humble effort was too tempestuous, yet the scholars all had their money in the gold frame, and the teacher was to leave us next morning for the East, where she was to marry some man of prominence. My mother said I spoke splendidly, but I doubt if she really heard me. She was thinking how charming I looked in the new trousers she had made for me. The truth was, she had worked all the night before to get them ready. She had had some difficulty to make the seams come down the side. As it was they were not quite finished, but no one knew it but my mother and me. "In the years that are to come," I said in my speech, "not only will your kindly instructions in our Bible studies help us to meet and overcome all temptation, but the inspiration which we have received from your friendship and devotion to our spiritual welfare will influence us throughout our lives." For the moment Delmonico Bill was silent--whatever his thoughts may have been, he did not share them with us. But presently, he observed the tray with the tea and toast upon it, just as he had left it. "It is too bad," he said, "maybe she would not have known me at all.... I am sorry ... but you can understand." Then he began to clear away the lunch. "The tea is still warm," he said smilingly, "I believe I will pour a cup for myself ... my nerves are jumping, it may quiet them." He filled the cup and raising it he said: "Here is to my Sunday school teacher who believed in me in those days when I believed in myself. God bless her." [Illustration] COMPOUNDING A FELONY "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."--_Bible._ Compounding a Felony There was a knock at the door, but no one thought of answering it until it was repeated--more faintly, a second time--then one of the young men opened it, saying to the newcomer, "It is never locked, my boy." In stepped a lad some seventeen years of age, and inquired in a voice hardly audible if he could stay all night. The young men sent the new arrival to me for an answer to his request. It was readily to be seen that the boy was in a state of great excitement. He acted so strangely that, contrary to custom, I asked him why he had come. "The police are after me," he stammered, as he turned and looked nervously at the door. "What have you done?" I questioned the boy. "I stole a bicycle and the owner just saw me walking along the street and started to chase me, calling after me, 'Stop, thief!' A crowd began to gather and I had all I could do to get away. I ran around a building and joined the crowd in the search; then, after a little, I dropped out of sight again and decided that I would go out to you for advice." "Where is the bicycle now?" I questioned. "I sold it," he said. "Where is the money you got for it?" "I spent it." He began to cry. "And now your conscience starts to trouble you." "Yes, sir." "My lad," I told him, "this is no hiding place for boys who steal, and for whom the police are searching." The boy did not reply; he turned aside and brushed away the tears with his cap. Then he started slowly towards the door. "So I can't stay?" he said finally. "I am afraid not," I replied. He went to the window and peered out into the night. "They'll get me," he said, hopelessly, "and when they do it means a long term in prison for me." "Wait a moment," I said. "Have you been arrested before." "Yes, another boy and myself took some fancy postal cards from a stationery stand. They were funny pictures that we wanted for our collection. We were sent to Jamesburg that time. Then since I came from that institution I was arrested again for something else I did and I am now out on probation. Next time the judge said he would give me a long sentence in the Rahway Reformatory." "You should have thought of all this sooner," I said, with a sternness that I did not feel, for I knew how easily one can drift from an evil thought into an evil act. "I heard you helped boys when they needed it," ventured the young rascal. "I surely need it now." "I may help them when I can," I replied, "but I never intentionally make myself a partner in their wrong doing." "The judge ought not to give me more than three years," said the boy thoughtfully, "even that is a long time.... The bicycle wasn't worth more than five dollars any way. The owner said he would sell it to me for that amount." At that moment there was a noise in the next room. "What was that?" asked the lad, trembling with fear. "Your conscience is quite wakeful, my boy. That was one of the men closing the windows for the night." The boy came over close to me so he could look into my face, and there was a depth of seriousness in his voice when he said, "So you think I ought to give myself up and take the consequences?" "Three years in prison?" I asked, looking straight at the boy. "Three years in prison!" The words of Jacob Riis flashed through my mind--"When a boy goes to prison, a citizen dies." "If you were in my place you would give yourself up?" he asked me pointedly. I passed my hand across my eyes. Unlike the boy I had no cap with which to brush away the tears. "My boy," I said, "I will be honest with you--I would not give myself up." "What would you do?" "First, I would make up my mind not to steal any more, then I would earn money and pay the man for the bicycle." A new light came into the boy's eyes. "I did not used to be a thief," he said, "but they made me mad. Ever since I came from Jamesburg every one watches me. My old boy friends, my father and mother, the police; someone's eye is always on me. Their suspicions madden me. Sometimes it seems to me as if they dared me to take another risk. One day on the ferryboat from New York I met a detective who had once arrested me. Wherever I went he followed me. I was afraid, so I left the other boys who were with me and went to the stern of the boat. I didn't tell anyone, but when I was all alone I put my hands down into my own pockets so he would know that I didn't have them in anyone else's.... I'm not very old, but I know that that isn't the way to make a bad boy into a good one." After a moment I said to him: "if I can arrange with the owner of the bicycle so that you can pay for it in small weekly payments, will you join the Colony and out of the little money you earn settle with the man you have wronged?" "If you will help me," returned the lad hopefully, "I will make good to the man and to you." The next morning I talked the boy's case over with an elderly attorney who lives with us, and who knows of his own knowledge the ruin one can bring upon himself if he does not follow proper methods. The old man gladly undertook to settle with the owner of the stolen bicycle, and save the boy from the consequences of his wrongdoing. The boy worked industriously about the place and in a few weeks had earned sufficient money to settle satisfactorily for the bicycle. He is now working on a neighbor's farm and says that he is determined to make something worth while out of his life. "Do you know," said the old attorney to me recently, "if anyone ever charges us with having compounded a felony in the case of this boy and his bicycle we can defend ourselves on the technical ground that the bicycle was of such slight value that the stealing of it was only a petty crime." "In this case--the saving of a boy from prison"--I answered him, "if a technicality saves us from a criminal charge which might be brought against us, I for one am perfectly satisfied with such a defense." [Illustration] THE PASSING OF SULLIVAN "Friar Philip, you are the tuning fork from whence my conscience takes its proper tone."--_Richelieu._ The Passing of Sullivan "What's the name that grows Upon you more and more?" "Sullivan!"--"That's my name." "Who's the man who wrote The opera, Pinafore?" "Sullivan!"--"That's my name." "Big Tim, you all knew him; John L., you know him well. There never was a man, named Sullivan Who wasn't a d---- fine Irishman." --_George Cohan's Song, "Sullivan."_ If you thought it was imperative to change your name and you had access to all the Literature--Ancient and Modern--to be found in a Carnegie Library, would you select for yourself the name "Sullivan?" Evidently our Irish Lad agreed with Cohan--that "it is a d--n fine name"--for when I recognized in him one of my Family of Homeless Men as he walked aimlessly along the city streets, and asked him rather abruptly, what his name might be, his reply--too long considered to be truthful--was, "Frank Sullivan." "Pardon me," I said, immediately realizing that I had no right to ask of him the question and that my thoughtlessness had caused the boy to answer falsely. The outcast, distrustful of his fellow, frequently seeks safety in falsehood until friendship disarms suspicion and Love calls forth the Truth for which it has not asked. "_Frank Sullivan_," I said. "I, too, like the name." * * * * * So upon my invitation he came gladly into our little Family to share the happy freedom of a peaceful home, where others like himself give honest work and receive--not in the spirit of organized charity, but in the true warmth of fraternal love--the hospitality of a welcome guest. His Irish heart soon caught the meaning of the work, and responded readily in thoughtful service.... If our Self Master Colony attracted the attention of some broad-minded man well known in humanitarian work so that encouraged, it carried me and my dreams of uplift higher and higher until the stars were our near neighbors--Sullivan, silent and attentive, followed me in my dreams. If my work was misunderstood and my best efforts discredited, Sullivan was at my side silently consoling me with his loyalty and friendship. He grew into my life. I depended upon him and he did not fail me. "Richelieu," I would often say, "had his Friar Philip to aid him in his ambitions and I have my good friend Sullivan." Then as the months passed, once again, the grass spread its delicate carpet beneath our feet, the trees blossomed sending a perfumed message to us, the bluebird and the thrush called through the open windows until we, busy with our work, were forced to remark that Spring time had come--the beginning of another year.... Then the Brothers observed the progress we had made in the twelvemonth.... It seemed so much to them, so little to the outside world. "It looks more prosperous now," said Sullivan proudly as he observed the automobiles stopping at the door, "you make Prince as well as Pauper do you homage." "No, Sullivan, not I; it's the Truth that all are hungry for--Pauper and Prince alike--and while the few may reach it by meditation and the more by prayer, the most of common clay like you and I must reach it by service." "I never quite understand you when you speak," he said, "I never could read those dry old books however much I tried.... But by the way, I wonder if we have blankets for the new arrival who just came in." For the Stranded Sons of the City come often to join our Family and share our simple hospitality. * * * * * "Sullivan," I said one day, "this work is going to grow and grow.... When we have won I want you to share the credit with me--you will remain, will you not?" Then receiving no reply, I turned to look and he had gone--gone to offer his blanket to the new guest. "Yes," I heard him say, "I have some extra covers on my bed you may have." "Another falsehood. Sullivan, you should always speak the truth." For the nights were cold and the blankets none too many. And yet since many prayers are lies, why may not some lies be prayers? "Maybe in your dark purgatory, my Irish lad, these little falsehoods of yours will be counted as prayers." One afternoon a letter came for my friend--in a young girl's rather labored writing--he had received many such, and as I gave it to him I smiled a little. To him I had always been an indulgent Father--for a boy and girl will love, even though he or she may be our favorite child. That night when the day's labor was over, Sullivan came to me, asking if he could talk to me. It was a strange request, for he never seemed to wish to talk, and I knew that something had moved him deeply. "You know my name is not Frank Sullivan," he asked. "Yes, I know," I answered. "But did you know I was married?" he inquired. "What, a boy like yourself married?" I asked. "Yes, I have been married over two years and have a little girl a year old. The letters that I have received have been from my wife Josephine. She and I ran away and were married, but on our return her father wouldn't accept me. He said I was not worthy of his daughter--and no doubt he is right. He is wealthy and I could not support her in the way to which she is accustomed. So I was forced to leave her. But Josephine and I couldn't forget. "All these months she has been working to interest her father in me, and now the baby is a year old, he has decided to help me.... We--Josephine and I--knew he would soften in time; you see he, too, loves Josephine and the Baby. So I want to go to them." "Yes," I said simply, for a sense of approaching loss had robbed me of my pretty speeches. "When you met me, I didn't know where to go, nor what to do," he said. "Yes." "I have flattered myself I have been some help to you in starting your work. Tell me have I made good to you?" "Yes." "I shall try to make good to Josephine's father." "Yes." Then in a few moments he said: "Now that it is time to go from you, I hate to leave you and the boys." "But you must go," I said, "your wife and child have the first claim." "Josephine wanted me to ask you for two or three rugs that the boys weave. We want them for our new home." "You may have them." And I took him by the hand, "Good-by, Sullivan." "Not Sullivan anymore, but McLean," he replied. As he turned away he said half regretfully, "It is the Passing of Sullivan." "I wonder if Richelieu, after all, lost his Friar Philip?" I asked myself as I waved my hand in farewell to him. [Illustration] WHEN SISTER CALLED "O Lord, That which I want is first bread--Thy decree, not my choice, that bread must be first."--_Sidney Lanier._ When Sister Called He came--did Jim--highly recommended by two fellows who live by their wits--one, Lakewood Joe and the other, Corduroy Tom. They are my friends, for they have told me they were. One of them always comes to me in the Winter anxious to get work on a farm; the other with a few broken umbrellas and a railroad spike for a hammer, starts out with the Springtime on the quest of "anything to mend." Umbrella mending was once a reputable calling, but it has fallen into disrepute since the introduction of the cheap umbrella. But that pathetic part of the story should be left for Lakewood Joe to tell, for it gets him--a humble mechanic--many a hot cup of coffee, many a dime. The recommendation by my two friends was sufficiently strong to nearly cause me to refuse admission to young Jim. But his manner pleased me and our reception committee--made up of members of the Family--assured me that we had no need to fear poor Jim. Anyway he who has nothing can safely make friends with whomever he chooses. Jim told us that years ago he had been a "cookie"--please note the "ie"--in a lumber camp in an Eastern State. So when a vacancy occurred in the culinary department of our home Jim was selected for the place. He proved an excellent assistant and worked for the house--as the phrase goes--he made the coffee so weak, he made the potato soup go so far, that I, economical from habit and from necessity, would blush whenever one of the boys said that he enjoyed the good dinner. I need have had no fear for it was Jim's smile that made us all content with the simple fare. "A grand cook," the boys would say. "A grand cook," Echo and I would answer. Jim had roughed it for several years and knew a little of the ways of the road. He had worked when a boy in his father's factory and as some of the workmen felt they were not being paid properly--the son joined in with the workmen and went out on a strike against his father. In the excitement of the strike the father had spoken to the son about his joining in with the strikers. It seemed to the father like disloyalty--ingratitude. But as for the son, he couldn't analyze his own psychological state of mind sufficiently to explain why his sympathy had been with the strikers, but feeling himself no longer welcome at the old home, he started to roam. Seven years had passed since he had written to the old folks. Once or twice he had heard indirectly of his father's search for him, but he could not even bring himself to write, much less to return. He had been with us nearly a month when finally, one evening, as he saw the other boys writing letters to their homes he decided he himself would write a letter to his married sister in Pennsylvania. When it was written and mailed, he half regretted what he had done. Wasn't he a wanderer--a young hobo if you like--and why should he think of home after all these years, even if the kindly sympathy to be found at the Colony did recall to him those better days? But the letter was already on its way.... He wondered what his sister might think, how she might act.... She had always cared for him. The bean soup which he was preparing for supper burned while he was deep in thought, and he blamed himself for his absent-mindedness. "The boys will have to eat burnt soup just because I got to feeling sentimental," he said to himself. * * * * * Then a word came that a nicely gowned young lady was coming up the driveway. There are many visitors at the Tea Room of the Colony House so it need have caused no excitement. But some one whispered "Look at Jim!" He had glanced out at the approaching stranger, and he was pale and trembling. He said to me in a faint voice, "It's my sister. Tell her I left this morning.... Tell her I got a position." And then the bell rang and he said: "Wait--I will see her." So brushing his hair and arranging his tie he went in to meet his sister. The homeless outcast lad faced his aristocratic sweet-faced sister! As the boys saw them they did not know which one to pity the more, although the sympathy seemed to be pretty largely with Jim. "Is every one well?" the brother asked, trying to relieve the strain of the situation. "Yes," she answered, "but why have you never written all these years? I got your letter this morning and left in an hour to get to you for fear I might lose you again. Father has hunted for you everywhere. He thinks he was harsh with you when you struck that day with the men--for you were only a child. "I thought I might get you to come home with me," she continued, "my husband and I have a splendid home. You are always welcome.... Or why don't you go back to your old job with Father. He needs you. He is getting older." "You think he would take me back?" "Gladly. What are you doing here?" "I am cook for the boys," he said. "You, a cook?" she smiled. "Why, you wouldn't wash a dish at home for me when we were children. You can't be very much of a cook.... But never mind. I have found you." "Confound it! I have let those beans burn again." And he excused himself for a moment. When he returned he said, "I will write you if I can decide to go back home. It comes a little suddenly you know. I have been a prodigal too long to turn into a father's white-haired boy on the instant." Then after a moment he asked: "Do you know what Mother used to put into the beans when she burned them to take out the smoky taste?" "Jim, Mother wasn't that kind of a cook." As the sister was going out to step into the carriage she said, "Promise me you will not leave here without writing me. I don't want to lose you again." "I promise," he said. * * * * * That night the boys ate their supper in silence. Each one was deep in thought. "Too bad the beans are burned," Jim said. "I like them that way," replied one of the boys. "It makes them taste different." That night after supper no one wrote any letters, which was unusual, and one of the boys jokingly asked another near him, "Why don't you write a letter home to your sister?" "I am afraid," replied the lad, "she might answer it in person like Jim's sister did." Jim has taken a job on a farm and is saving his money. He has nearly enough to return to his old home; he refuses to accept any aid from his father or sister. "I will go back as I came away--independently." [Illustration] EDISON'S EVENING STAR "Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion: The Lord is his name."--_Bible._ Edison's Evening Star _Hamlet_: "Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?" _First Clown_: "Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it's no great matter there." _Hamlet_: "Why?" _First Clown_: "'Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he." --_Shakespeare._ To be dull of wit is sadly unfortunate, but to be dull of wit and be compelled to live in a Colony made up of more or less reckless young men is doubly unfortunate. In the group eccentricities are quickly discouraged. The grouch, the crank, the bully, if he would remain and live in harmony must learn his lesson in democracy--the individualist is given short shift. Of course the dull of wit should be given immunity at all times, and in theory he is, but in real practice even the most gentle hearted man will have his little joke at the expense of the man less alert mentally. The members of the Colony are no exception to this rule. "Tell us more," the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening after the day's work was done, "about the inhabitants of Mars, which you see in your trances." And then he--the Moon-Struck-One--would explain in detail the strange people he had seen in his dreams. "These planets," he told them, "are all being made ready for the coming race of Man.... After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better worlds.... Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the evolving man's hope and his despair.... The cosmic scheme is worthy of the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns--you laugh, most men laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen--but I know and have seen." "How interesting," said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. "I know something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate." It was a summer's evening when this conversation took place and the boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day had been hot and oppressive. "What do any of you know of the Stars?" said the Moon-Struck-Sage. "Very little, but tell us," said one of the boys, "for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire--a bad sign as you very well know--and the next day I got 'pinched.'" "Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars," he said with smiling skepticism, "that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern." "Look out," said a boy who had not spoken before, "he is joking you." "No, seriously," said the Witless One, "when I said 'lantern' I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear--you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day.... Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?" "Yes," said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison's powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper. "He is a wonderful man," said another. At last all were convinced and the Moon-Struck-One, satisfied, arose rather abruptly, and went into the house. A few days later he left the Colony to go to his relatives in a distant city, and so the boys had no one to play tricks upon, no one who was not their equal in wit. It was some weeks afterwards that one of the young men said to me as we were talking out of doors in the evening: "There is that light of Edison's hanging over the trees." "Where?" I asked. "That bright light over there that looks like a big star. The Witless One told us about it. In some ways he was really wiser than we gave him credit for." "That's the Evening Star," I said. "It is what?" asked another boy. "It is Venus, the Evening Star." "He told us it was put up there by Edison." "So it really isn't an illuminated balloon?" The boys looked from one to the other, then every one laughed loudly and long. "Doesn't the Bible say, 'Answer a fool according to his folly?'" asked a boy. "Yes, and it also says, 'Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him.'" [Illustration] IN THE WORLD OF WANDERLUST "To stand in true relations with men in a false age, is worth a fit of insanity, is it not?" --_Emerson._ In the World of Wanderlust The Spirit of the Wanderlust seizes all the World in the early days of Spring--the so-called hobo takes to the open road, the millionaire to his country home, each rejoices that the long imprisonment of winter is passed, for all men are akin in their love of freedom. It is a search for the ideal. With De Soto we would say, "Somewhere, if ye seek untiringly, ye shall discover and drinke of ye Fountaine of Youth and Happiness." "Men have said they do not understand my restless wanderings," remarked Lakewood Tom. "Can it be they have never watched the coming of the first robin, and do not know that he ushers in the new regime of promise and prosperity? "Other men may linger in the failing twilight of the tired day. I go to greet the rising sun. Even the very birds--little hoboes of the air, break camp cheerfully in early May. Like them I, too, take to the open road and walk by faith. "But you, my lords, with your worldly goods, are vagabonds no less than I. Out of the inexhaustible larder of the Divine, God gives you--as it were--a crust of bread, and men call you mighty in riches. Take a vagabond's advice, and put your mark upon the house where you found favor, lest after many years, disheartened, you pass that way again and need another 'handout'--maybe not a crust of bread, but, a more lasting gift--an ideal perchance, that may not fail so soon. Sometimes methinks it sad, there is given to man only the thing for which he asks. "Adieu," said Lakewood Tom, taking up his staff, "when the snow falls next year I may visit your Monastery again with your permission, if by happy chance I am on this earth. If not, I'll meet you some Christmas day on the planet Mars, for I never forget a friend. Good cheer! Adieu." "Much privation has crazed the old man," said a comrade who, with me, watched the old vagabond walking slowly down the drive. "I do not know," I said. THE TWO JEANS "To every man there come noble thoughts that pass across his heart like great white birds."--_Maeterlinck._ The Two Jeans "It is always hard times on the Bowery," my diminutive informant told me. He was a new comer to our Colony. He, in company with another young man, had made his appearance an hour or two before, but I had not been able to talk with him, except to assure him that he and his friend might remain with us one night, at least. "Yes, sir," he continued, "without money a man is a dead one; even in this strange haunt of stranger men money is a daily need. Of course, some men who know the hidden ways can get along on as little as twenty cents a day, or less, but for myself I could not exist on less than thirty-five cents." The figures he mentioned seemed modest enough to me. "Couldn't you earn that much?" I asked him. "I am so small no one would hire me," he replied. "I could get errands to do now and then. Of course, while my mother lived she kept a home for me, but after she died I did not know what to do. I only sat in the house day after day and looked out of the window. I could not make any plans for myself. You see when I was a baby I fell and injured my back. I didn't grow much more after that accident. The doctors called it a curvature." He laughed easily as he asked me, "You know the poem of James Whitcomb Riley, 'I'm th'ust a little cripple boy An' never going to grow, An' git a great big man at all, 'Cause auntie told me so.' "I rather think I'm that boy. One time I chanced to find that poem and read it to my mother. She took the book from me in the gentle way she had, and then putting her arms around me, told me to be a good boy and everything would come out all right. But they never did come all right. Maybe I was not good enough; but this can't interest you. You hear enough hard luck stories without mine." "If you wish to tell me," I said, "I shall be quite glad to listen." "Well, it's only this," he continued. "Left to myself, I wasn't smart enough to make a living. I can't get my room rent and my lunch money all at the same time. If I have my lunches I have no room, and if I have a room I have nothing to eat." He grew very serious. He could laugh at his misshapen back, make a jest at his deformity, but hunger--even at the thought of hunger--the smile left his face, the color fled from his lips. "Are you faint?" I asked him quickly. "No, I am a coward," he said, "just a plain coward. You see, I am beaten and I know it." "You will be all right in a few days," I said, "and be able to criticise the food as cheerfully as any other member of my Family." I laughed gayly enough, but he did not laugh with me. "Have you and this boy been friends a long time? Where did you meet him?" I inquired. "In the park, some weeks ago. He has no home either. He was sleeping out and so was I. He gave me part of a newspaper to put under me, as the ground was damp. So I tried to talk to him.... He is good looking, isn't he?" I admitted it. "Well, he's a Russian dummy," said the boy. "He is what?" I asked. "He just landed from Russia three months ago, and he knows very little about the English language. He doesn't have the slightest idea what I have been talking to you about all this time. Night after night, not having any bed to sleep in, he has 'flopped' in the park or 'carried the banner' until morning." "So you brought him out with you?" "Yes; I didn't know whether you would take us in or not. I thought I would take him along on the theory that the ground in Jersey is no harder to sleep on than it is in New York State. If you have to turn us away we will not be any worse off than we have been." "We will make room somehow for you and your friend," I told him. So Jean--Little Jean, the boys called him--went through a pantomime for the enlightenment of the Russian youth whose name was also Jean. Finally the larger boy understood that I had given them permission to remain, for he turned to me and said simply: "Nice," and then he bowed gracefully. Little Jean was right--Big Jean was good looking. "I wish I was big and strong like him," said Little Jean, admiringly.... * * * * * ... The weeks pass quickly when one has his work to do, and the two Jeans grew to know the Colony. Big Jean spent his spare hours studying English and talking with the other boys. Little Jean made friends with the chickens, the pigs, the cow and the horse, while Boozer--the Colony dog--and he were inseparable chums. "Boozer," Little Jean told me, "knows the heart of outcast boys and men. He meets the new arrivals at the gate and escorts them to the house. He may challenge the lawless approach of the rich man in his auto, and warn the household of possible danger impending, but the most unkempt 'knight of the road' will find Boozer quick to make friends with him." Big Jean--with his pleasing bow--looked after the guests who visited the Tea Room, for he learned to speak English rapidly. The report of his courteous service came to the ears of a wide awake Jap who needed him to help him in his hotel. So one day he sent for the Russian lad. At the start the pay was to be twenty dollars a month, with room, board and extra tips. "You need me in your Tea Room, Mr. Floyd," he said, "I am willing to stay." "No, Jean, you must take the position and prove to me and to yourself that you can make good." That night he wrote to his aged mother in Russia that there were wonderful opportunities for young men in America. When he had gone I hunted to find Little Jean. I found him out on the lawn with his chum, Boozer. He did not see me as I approached, but as I looked at him the thought came to me that he had suddenly grown old, and there was the anxious look upon his face--the same that I had seen when he had talked to me the first time. "Boozer," I heard him say, "it's all right; I am a coward, I'm beaten and I know it, but I'm glad Big Jean got the job--honestly, Boozer, I am--you see it isn't all my fault--he's so damned good looking." Boozer put his face close to that of Little Jean and held out his paw to the discouraged boy. You see when you live your life at the Self Masters you sense the inner thought of broken men. Boozer--who knows no other life--understands the heart of the discouraged. I did not interrupt the two friends, but turned back to the house. * * * * * "What can you ever do to help poor Little Jean?" a visitor asked me. "There seems to be no position in the world for him. What can you do for him?" "I don't see much chance," I replied, distrusting for the moment that Divine Guidance that never fails. It was only two days after Big Jean had left us that a kindly old lady called at the Colony. She wanted a boy who would take good care of her horses, and drive her and her husband back and forth from her home to the railway station. "I want a boy who loves animals," she said. So Little Jean has his place in the world--like you and I if we can only find it.... * * * * * ... Xmas Day Big Jean brought four big pies which he had cooked especially for the Self Masters' dinner. And Little Jean brought his Xmas present--all neatly tied up in a box bedecked with pink ribbons--a pound of meat for Boozer. [Illustration] [Illustration: Self Master Print. Union, Union Co. New Jersey.] * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Italics and underlining indicated by _ markings Obvious printing errors repaired Alternate and idiosyncratic spellings retained as printed Example p. 49: Retained archaic spelling of sacrefice as printed Retained inconsistent hyphenation as printed 
46558	----	THE DEMI-GODS [Illustration] THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO · DALLAS ATLANTA · SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO THE DEMI-GODS BY JAMES STEPHENS AUTHOR OF "THE HILL OF VISION," "THE CROCK OF GOLD," "HERE ARE LADIES," ETC. New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1914, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1914. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. To THOMAS BODKIN CONTENTS BOOK I PAGE PATSY MAC CANN 1 BOOK II EILEEN NI COOLEY 85 BOOK III BRIEN O'BRIEN 141 BOOK IV MARY MAC CANN 225 BOOK I PATSY MAC CANN CHAPTER I "Will you leave that donkey alone," said Patsy Mac Cann to his daughter. "I never heard the like of it," he continued testily. "I tell you the way you do be going on with the ass is enough to make a Christian man swear, so it is." "You let me be," she replied. "If I was doing hurt or harm to you I wouldn't mind, and if I am fond of the ass itself what does it matter to anybody?" "It's this way, that I don't like to see a woman kissing an ass on the snout, it's not natural nor proper." "A lot you know about natural and proper. Let you leave me alone now; and, besides that, doesn't the ass like it?" "That's not a reason; sure it doesn't matter in the world what an ass likes or dislikes, and, anyhow, an ass doesn't like anything except carrots and turnips." "This one does," said she stoutly. "And a body might be kissing an ass until the black day of doom and he wouldn't mind it." "This one minds." "Kissing an old ass!" "One has to be kissing something." "Let you kiss me then and get done with it," said he. She regarded him in amazement. "What would I kiss you for? Sure you're my father, and aren't you as old as the hills?" "Well, well, you're full of fun, and that's what I say. Take the winkers off that donkey's face, and let him get a bit to eat; there's grass enough, God knows, and it's good grass." Mary busied herself with the winkers and the bit while her father continued: "What I wish is this, that Christian people were able to eat grass like the beasts, and then there wouldn't be any more trouble in the world. Are you listening to me, Mary, or are you listening to the donkey?" "It's you I'm listening to." "I say this, that if every person had enough to eat there'd be no more trouble in the world and we could fight our fill. What have you got in the basket?" "I've the loaf that I bought in the shop at Knockbeg, and the half loaf that you took out of the woman's window--it's fresher than the other one." "I was guided," said her father. "We'll eat that one first the way no person can claim it. What else have you got?" "I've the white turnip that I found in a field." "There's great nourishment in turnips; the cattle do get fat on them in winter." "And I've the two handfuls of potatoes that you gathered at the bend of the road." "Roast themselves in the embers, for that's the only road to cook a potato. What way are we going to eat to-night?" "We'll eat the turnip first, and then we'll eat the bread, and after that we'll eat the potatoes." "And fine they'll taste. I'll cut the turnip for you with the sailorman's jackknife." * * * * * The day had drawn to its close. The stars had not yet come, nor the moon. Far to the west a red cloud poised on the horizon like a great whale and, moment by moment, it paled and faded until it was no more than a pink flush. On high, clouds of pearl and snow piled and fell and sailed away on easy voyages. It was the twilight--a twilight of such quietude that one could hear the soft voice of the world as it whispered through leaf and twig. There was no breeze to swing the branches of the trees or to creep among the rank grasses and set them dancing, and yet everywhere there was unceasing movement and a sound that never ceased. About them, for mile upon mile, there was no habitation of man; there was no movement anywhere except when a bird dipped and soared in a hasty flight homewards, or when a beetle went slugging by like a tired bullet. Mary had unharnessed the ass and bade him, with an affectionate kiss, to eat his full. The donkey stood for a moment with his ears and tail hanging down, then he lifted both his ears and his tail, slung up his ragged head, bared his solid teeth, and brayed furiously for two minutes. That accomplished he trotted briskly a few paces, bent to the grass, and began to eat so eagerly that one would think eating was more of a novelty to him than it could be to an ass of his years. "The sound of that beast's voice does get on my nerves," said Patsy. "He has a powerful voice, sure enough, God bless him! Sit down there by the hedge and light the fire while I'm getting the things ready; the night will be on us in a few minutes and it will be a cold night." While she moved busily from the cart to the hedge her father employed himself lighting a fire of turf in a wrinkled bucket. When this was under way he pulled out a pipe, black as a coal, and off which half the shank was broken, and this he put into his mouth. At the moment he seemed to be sunken in thought, his eyes to the grass and his feet planted, and it was in a musing voice that he spoke: "Do you know what I'd do, Mary, if I had a bottle of porter beside me in this field?" "I do well," she replied; "you'd drink it." "I would so, but before I'd drink it I'd put the end of this pipe into it, for it's newly cracked, and it sticks to my lips in a way that would anger a man wanting a smoke, and if I could stick it into the porter it would be cured. I don't suppose, now, that you have a sup of porter in the cart!" "I have not." "Because if you had a small sup I'd be able to get a smoke this night, as well as a drink." "You're full of fun," said she sourly. "I saw a bottle in your hand a while back," he continued musingly, "and it looked like a weighty bottle." "It's full to the neck with spring water." "Ah!" said her father, and he regarded that distant horizon whereon the pink cloud was now scarcely visible as a pinkness and was no longer the shape of a great whale. After a moment he continued in a careless voice: "You might hand me the bottle of spring water, alanna, till I wet my lips with it. It's a great thing for the thirst, I'm told, and it's healthy beside that." "I'm keeping that sup of water to make the tea when we'd be wanting it." "Well, I'll only take a drop out of it, and I won't lose the cork." "You can get it yourself, then," said Mary, "for I've plenty to do and you haven't." Her father, rolling his tough chin with his fingers, went to the cart. He found the bottle, lifted the cork, smelt it, tasted: "It is spring water indeed," said he, and he thumped the cork back again with some irritation and replaced the bottle in the cart. "I thought you wanted a drink," said his daughter mildly. "So I do," he replied, "but I can't stand the little creatures that do be wriggling about in spring water. I wouldn't like to be swallowing them unknown. Ah! them things don't be in barrels that you buy in a shop, and that's a fact." She was preparing the potatoes when a remark from her father caused her to pause. "What is it?" said she. "It's a bird. I saw it for a second against a white piece of a cloud, and I give you my word that it's as big as a haystack. There it is again," he continued excitedly, "there's three of them." For a few minutes they followed the flight of these amazing birds, but the twilight had almost entirely departed and darkness was brooding over the land. They did not see them any more. CHAPTER II And yet it was but a short distance from where they camped that the angels first put foot to earth. It is useless to question what turmoil of wind or vagary of wing brought them to this desert hill instead of to a place more worthy of their grandeur, for, indeed, they were gorgeously apparelled in silken robes of scarlet and gold and purple; upon their heads were crowns high in form and of curious, intricate workmanship, and their wings, stretching ten feet on either side, were of many and shining colours. Enough that here they did land, and in this silence and darkness they stood for a few moments looking about them. Then one spoke: "Art," said he, "we were too busy coming down to look about us carefully; spring up again a little way, and see if there is any house in sight." At the word one of the three stepped forward a pace, and leaped twenty feet into the air; his great wings swung out as he leaped, they beat twice, and he went circling the hill in steady, noiseless flight. He returned in a minute: "There are no houses here, but a little way below I saw a fire and two people sitting beside it." "We will talk to them," said the other. "Show the way, Art." "Up then," said Art. "No," said the Angel who had not yet spoken. "I am tired of flying. We will walk to this place you speak of." "Very well," replied Art, "let us walk." And they went forward. * * * * * Around the little bucket of fire where Mac Cann and his daughter were sitting there was an intense darkness. At the distance of six feet they could still see, but delicately, indistinctly, and beyond that the night hung like a velvet curtain. They did not mind the night, they did not fear it, they did not look at it: it was around them, full of strangeness, full of mystery and terror, but they looked only at the glowing brazier, and in the red cheer of that they were content. They had eaten the bread and the turnip, and were waiting for the potatoes to be cooked, and as they waited an odd phrase, an exclamation, a sigh would pass from one to the other; and then, suddenly, the dark curtain of night moved noiselessly, and the three angels stepped nobly in the firelight. For an instant neither Mac Cann nor his daughter made a movement; they did not make a sound. Here was terror, and astonishment the sister of terror: they gaped: their whole being was in their eyes as they stared. From Mac Cann's throat came a noise; it had no grammatical significance, but it was weighted with all the sense that is in a dog's growl or a wolf's cry. Then the youngest of the strangers came forward: "May we sit by your fire for a little time?" said he. "The night is cold, and in this darkness one does not know where to go." At the sound of words Patsy seized hold of his sliding civilization. "To be sure," he stammered. "Why wouldn't your honour sit down? There isn't a seat, but you're welcome to the grass and the light of the fire." "Mary," he continued, looking hastily around-- But Mary was not there. The same instant those tall forms strode from the darkness in front Mary had slipped, swift and noiseless as the shadow of a cat, into the darkness behind her. "Mary," said her father again, "these are decent people, I'm thinking. Let you come from wherever you are, for I'm sure they wouldn't hurt yourself or myself." As swiftly as she had disappeared she reappeared. "I was looking if the ass was all right," said she sullenly. She sat again by the brazier, and began to turn the potatoes with a stick. She did not appear to be taking any heed of the strangers, but it is likely that she was able to see them without looking, because, as is well known, women and birds are able to see without turning their heads, and that is indeed a necessary provision, for they are both surrounded by enemies. CHAPTER III The remarkable thing about astonishment is that it can only last for an instant. No person can be surprised for more than that time. You will come to terms with a ghost within two minutes of its appearance, and it had scarcely taken that time for Mac Cann and his daughter to become one with the visitors. If the surprisor and the surprisee are mutually astonished, then, indeed, there is a tangle out of which anything may emerge, for two explanations are necessary at the one moment, and two explanations can no more hold the same position in time than two bodies can occupy the same lodgment in space. It needed alone that the angels should proclaim their quality for the situation to arrange itself naturally. Man is a scientific creature; he labels his ignorance and shelves it: mystery affrights him, it bores him, but when he has given a name to any appearance then mystery flies away, and reality alone remains for his cogitation. Later, perhaps, reality will enrage and mystify him more profoundly than any unexpectedness can do. The Mac Canns, so far as they professed a religion, were Catholics. Deeper than that they were Irish folk. From their cradles, if ever they had cradles other than a mother's breast and shoulder, they had supped on wonder. They believed as easily as an animal does, for most creatures are forced to credit everything long before they are able to prove anything. We have arranged to label these faculties of imagination and prophecy among the lesser creatures Instinct, and with the label we have thrown overboard more of mystery than we could afford to live with. Later these may confront us again in our proper souls, and the wonder and terror so long overdue will compel our tardy obeisance. At the end of amazement, as of all else, we go to sleep, and, within an hour of their meeting, the angels and the Mac Canns were stretched in one common unconsciousness. The angels were asleep, their attitudes proclaimed it. Patsy was asleep, his nose, with the unpleasant emphasis of a cracked trumpet, pealed wheezy confirmation of his slumber. His daughter was asleep, for there by the brazier she lay, motionless as the ground itself. Perhaps she was not asleep. Perhaps she was lying with her face to the skies, staring through the darkness at the pale, scarce stars, dreaming dreams and seeing visions, while, all around, down the invisible road and across the vanished fields and the hills, night trailed her dusky robes and crushed abroad her poppy. Whether she had slept or not she was the first to arise in the morning. A pale twilight was creeping over the earth, and through it one could see chilly trees and shivering grass; the heavy clouds huddled together as though they were seeking warmth on those grisly heights; the birds had not yet left their nests; it was an hour of utter silence and uncomeliness; an hour for blind and despairing creatures to move forward spitefully, cursing themselves and the powers; an hour when imagination has no function, and hope would fly again to the darkness rather than remain in that livid wilderness, for this was not yet the thin child of the dawn, crowned with young buds and active as a wintry leaf; it was the abortion of the dawn, formless, heavy, and detestable. Moving cautiously in that shade, Mary herself seemed no more than a shadow; she diminished thin and formless as a wraith, while she trod carefully to and fro from the cart to the hedge. She sat down, unloosed her hair and commenced to brush it. In this colourless light her hair had no colour, but was of astonishing length and thickness; it flowed about her like a cloak, and as she sat it rolled and crept on the grass. She did not often tend her hair thus. Sometimes she plaited it for the sake of convenience, so that windy days would not whip it into her eyes or lash her cheeks; sometimes, through sheer laziness, she did not even plait it, she rolled it into a great ball and drew a wide, masculine cap over its brightness; and now, before the day had broken, sitting in a ghastly lightness, which was neither light nor darkness, she was attending to her hair. And this hair perplexed her, for she did not know what to do with it; she did not know whether it was to be seen or not seen; whether to braid it in two great ropes, or roll it carelessly or carefully above her head, or let it hang loosely about her shoulders held only at the nape with a piece of ribbon or stuff. An hesitation such as this was new to her; she had never had occasion for such forethought; it was strange and inquieting; more disturbing, indeed, than the visit at black of night of those tall strangers whose eyes and voices were so quiet, and whose appointments flashed in the firelight while they spoke to her father of the things in which travellers are interested. She looked at them where they lay, but they were scarcely more than visible--a tangle of flowing cloths and great limbs fading away in the rank grasses and the obscurity, and to her mind the real wonder was not that they had come, but that they were still there, and that they were sleeping deeply and peacefully as she had slept so often, with her head pillowed on her arm and her limbs folded calmly between the earth and the sky. CHAPTER IV Her hair was not braided; it was tied at the neck with a piece of whitish cloth torn from some part of her clothing, and upon her shoulders it billowed and rolled in magnificent living abundance. Very gently she moved to where her father lay on his back with his mouth open and his black chin jutting at the sky. He was breathing through his mouth, so he was not snoring any longer. She lifted the three or four sacks which covered him, and rocked his shoulders cautiously until he awakened. Her father awakened exactly as she did, exactly as every open-air animal does; his eyes flew wide, instantly and entirely wakeful, and he looked at her with full comprehension of their adventure. He raised softly on an elbow and glanced to where the strangers were; then nodded to his daughter and rose noiselessly to his feet. She beckoned him and they stepped a few paces away so that they might talk in security. Mary was about to speak but her father prevented her: "Listen," he whispered, "the best thing we can do is to load the things into the cart, without making any noise, mind you! then we'll yoke the little ass as easy as anything, and then I'll get into the cart and I'll drive off as hard as ever I can pelt, and you can run beside the ass with a stick in your hand and you welting the devil out of him to make him go quick. I'm no good myself at the running, and that's why I'll get into the cart, but you can run like a hare, and that's why you'll wallop the beast." "Mind now," he continued fiercely, "we don't know who them fellows are at all, and what would the priest say if he heard we were stravaiging the country with three big, buck angels, and they full of tricks maybe; so go you now and be lifting in the things and I'll give you good help myself." "I'll do nothing of the kind," whispered Mary angrily, "and it wasn't for that I woke you up." "Won't you, indeed?" said her father fiercely. "What would they be thinking of us at all if they were to rouse and see us sneaking off in that way? I'm telling you now that I won't do it, and that you won't do it either, and if you make a move to the cart I'll give a shout that will waken the men." "The devil's in you, you strap!" replied her father, grinding his teeth at her. "What call have we to be mixing ourselves up with holy angels that'll be killing us maybe in an hour or half an hour; and maybe they're not angels at all but men that do be travelling the land in a circus and they full of fun and devilment?" "It's angels they are," replied his daughter urgently, "and if they're not angels itself they are rich men, for there's big rings of gold on their fingers, and every ring has a diamond in it, and they've golden chains across their shoulders, I'm telling you, and the stuff in their clothes is fit for the children of a king. It's rich and very rich they are." Mac Cann rasped his chin with his thumb. "Do you think they are rich folk?" "I do, indeed." "Then," said her father in an abstracted tone, "we won't say anything more about it." After a moment he spoke again: "What were you thinking about yourself?" "I was thinking," she replied, "that when they waken up in a little while there won't be anything at all for them to eat and they strangers." "Hum!" said her father. "There's two cold potatoes in the basket," she continued, "and a small piece of bread, and there isn't anything more than that; so let you be looking around for something to eat the way we won't be put to shame before the men." "It's easy talking!" said he; "where am I to look? Do you want me to pick red herrings out of the grass and sides of bacon off the little bushes?" "We passed a house last night a mile down the road," said Mary; "go you there and get whatever you're able to get, and if you can't get anything buy it off the people in the house. I've three shillings in my pocket that I was saving for a particular thing, but I'll give them to you because I wouldn't like to be shamed before the strange men." Her father took the money: "I wish I knew that you had it yesterday," he growled, "I wouldn't have gone to sleep with a throat on me like a mid-summer ditch and it full of dust and pismires." Mary pushed him down the road. "Be back as quick as you are able, and buy every kind of thing that you can get for the three shillings." She watched him stamping heavily down the road, and then she returned again to their encampment. CHAPTER V The visitors had not awakened. Now the air was growing clearer; the first livid pallor of the dawn had changed to a wholesome twilight, and light was rolling like clear smoke over the land. The air looked cold, and it began to look sharp instead of muddy; now the trees and bushes stood apart; they seemed lonely and unguarded in that chill dawning; they seemed like living things which were cold and a little frightened in an immensity to which they were foreign and from which they had much to dread. Of all unnatural things, if that word can be used in any context, there is none more unnatural than silence, there is none so terrifying; for silence means more than itself, it means also immobility; it is the symbol and signature of death, and from it no one knows what may come at an instant; for silence is not quietness, it is the enemy of quietness; against it your watch must climb the tower and stare in vain; against it your picket must be set, and he will thrust a lance to the sound of his own pulses; he will challenge the beating of his own heart, and hear his own harness threatening him at a distance. To walk in a forest when there is no wind to stir the branches and set the leaves tapping upon the boughs, this is terrifying; a lonely sea stretching beyond sight and upon which there is no ripple holds the same despair, and a grassy plain from whence there is no movement visible has too its desolating horror. But these things did not haunt the girl. She did not heed the silence for she did not listen to it; she did not heed the immensity for she did not see it. In space and silence she had been cradled; they were her foster-parents, and if ever she looked or listened it was to see and hear something quite other than these. Now she did listen and look. She listened to the breathing of the sleepers, and soon, for she was a female, she looked to see what they were like. She leaned softly over one. He was a noble old man with a sweeping, white beard and a great brow; the expression of his quiet features was that of a wise infant; her heart went out to him and she smiled at him in his sleep. She trod to the next and bent again. He was younger, but not young; he looked about forty years of age; his features were regular and very determined; his face looked strong, comely as though it had been chiselled from a gracious stone; there was a short coal-black beard on his chin. She turned to the third sleeper, and halted blushing. She remembered his face, caught on the previous night in one lightning peep while she slid away from their approach. It was from him she had fled in the night, and for him that her hair was now draping her shoulders in unaccustomed beauty. She did not dare go near him; she was afraid that if she bent over him he would flash open his eyes and look at her, and, as yet, she could not support such a look. She knew that if she were stretched in sleep and he approached to lean across her, she would awaken at the touch of his eyes, and she would be ashamed and frightened. She did not look at him. She went again to her place and set to building a fire in the brazier, and, while she sat, a voice began to sing in the dawn; not loud, but very gently, very sweetly. It was so early for a bird to sing, and she did not recognise that tune although the sound of it was thrilling through all her body. Softly, more softly, O Prophetic Voice! I do not know your speech; I do not know what happiness you are promising; is it of the leaves you tell and of a nest that rocks high on a leafy spray; there your mate swings cooing to herself. She swings and coos; she is folded in peace, and the small, white clouds go sailing by and they do not fall. So through unimagined ways went that song, lifting its theme in terms that she did not comprehend; but it was not a bird that sang to her, it was her own heart making its obscure music and lilting its secret, wild lyrics in the dawn. CHAPTER VI It was the donkey awakened them. For some time he had been rolling along the ground in ecstasy; now his agitated legs were pointing at the sky while he scratched his back against little stones and clumps of tough clay; now he was lying flat rubbing his jowl against these same clumps. He stood up suddenly, shook himself, swung up his tail and his chin, bared his teeth, fixed his eye on eternity, and roared "hee-haw" in a voice of such sudden mightiness, that not alone did the sleepers bound from their slumbers, but the very sun itself leaped across the horizon and stared at him with its wild eye. Mary ran and beat the ass on the nose with her fist, but whatever Mary did to the ass was understood by him as a caress, and he willingly suffered it--"hee-haw," said he again triumphantly, and he planted his big head on her shoulder and stared sadly into space. He was thinking, and thought always makes an ass look sad, but what he was thinking about not even Mary knew; his eye was hazy with cogitation, and he looked as wise and as kindly as the eldest of the three angels; indeed, although he had never been groomed, he looked handsome also, for he had the shape of a good donkey; his muzzle and his paws were white, the rest of his body was black and his eyes were brown. That was the appearance of the donkey. The angels arose and, much as the ass did they shook themselves; there was no further toilet than that practicable; they ran their hands through their abundant hair, and the two who had beards combed these also with their fingers--then they looked around them. Now the birds were sweeping and climbing on the shining air; they were calling and shrieking and singing; fifty of them, and all of the same kind, came dashing madly together, and they all sang the one song, so loud, so exultant, the heaven and earth seemed to ring and ring again of their glee. They passed, and three antic wings came tumbling and flirting together; these had no song or their happiness went far beyond all orderly sound; they squealed as they chased each other; they squealed as they dropped twenty sheer feet towards the ground, and squealed again as they recovered on a swoop, and as they climbed an hundred feet in three swift zig-zags, they still squealed without intermission, and then the three went flickering away to the west, each trying to bite the tail off the others. There came a crow whose happiness was so intense that he was not able to move; he stood on the hedge for a long time, and all that time he was trying hard to compose himself to a gravity befitting the father of many families, but every few seconds he lost all control and bawled with fervour. He examined himself all over; he peeped under his feathers to see was his complexion good; he parted the plumage of his tail modishly; he polished his feet with his bill, and then polished his bill on his left thigh, and then he polished his left thigh with the back of his neck. "I'm a hell of a crow," said he, "and everybody admits it." He flew with admirable carelessness over the ass, and cleverly stole two claws and one beak full of hair; but in mid-air he laughed incautiously so that the hair fell out of his beak, and in grabbing at that portion he dropped the bits in his claws, and he got so excited in trying to rescue these before they reached the ground that his voice covered all the other sounds of creation. The sun was shining; the trees waved their branches in delight; there was no longer murk or coldness in the air; it sparkled from every point like a vast jewel, and the brisk clouds arraying themselves in fleeces of white and blue raced happily aloft. That was what the angels saw when they looked abroad; a few paces distant the cart was lying with its shafts up in the air, and a tumble of miscellaneous rubbish was hanging half in and half out of it; a little farther the ass, in a concentrated manner, was chopping grass as quickly as ever he could, and, naturally enough, eating it; for after thinking deeply we eat, and it is true wisdom to do so. The eldest of the angels observed the donkey. He stroked his beard. "One eats that kind of vegetable," said he. The others observed also. "And," that angel continued, "the time has come for us to eat." The second eldest angel rolled his coal-black chin in his hand and his gesture and attitude were precisely those of Patsy Mac Cann. "I am certainly hungry," said he. He picked a fistful of grass and thrust some of it into his mouth, but after a moment of difficulty he removed it again. "It is soft enough to eat," said he musingly, "but I do not care greatly for its taste." The youngest angel made a suggestion. "Let us talk to the girl," said he. And they all moved over to Mary. "Daughter," said the eldest of the three, "we are hungry," and he beamed on her so contentedly that all fear and diffidence fled from her on the instant. She replied: "My father has gone down the road looking for food; he will be coming back in a minute or two, and he'll be bringing every kind of thing that's nourishing." "While we are waiting for him," said the angel, "let us sit down and you can tell us all about food." "It is a thing we ought to learn at once," said the second angel. So they sat in a half-circle opposite the girl, and requested her to give them a lecture on food. She thought it natural they should require information about earthly matters, but she found, as all unpractised speakers do, that she did not know at what point to begin on her subject. Still, something had to be said, for two of them were stroking their beards, and one was hugging his knees, and all three were gazing at her. "Everything," said she, "that a body can eat is good to eat, but some things do taste nicer than others; potatoes and cabbage are very good to eat, and so is bacon; my father likes bacon when it's very salt, but I don't like it that way myself; bread is a good thing to eat, and so is cheese." "What do you call this vegetable that the animal is eating?" said the angel pointing to the ass. "That isn't a vegetable at all, sir, that's only grass; every kind of animal eats it, but Christians don't." "Is it not good to eat?" "Sure, I don't know. Dogs eat it when they are sick, so it ought to be wholesome, but I never heard tell of any person that ate grass except they were dying of the hunger and couldn't help themselves, poor creatures! And there was a Jew once who was a king, and they do say that he used to go out with the cattle and eat the grass like themselves, and nobody says that he didn't get fat. "But here's my father coming across the fields (which is a queer way for him to come, because he went away by the road), and I'm thinking that he has a basket under his arm and there will be food in it." CHAPTER VII It was true enough. Mac Cann was coming to them from a point at right angles to where he was expected. Now and again he turned to look over his shoulder, and as he was taking advantage of dips in the ground, bushes, and such-like to shield his advance his daughter divined that something had occurred in addition to the purchase of food. She had often before observed her father moving with these precautionary tactics, and had many times herself shared and even directed a retreat which was full of interest. When her father drew nigh he nodded meaningly at her, set down a basket and a bundle, and stood for a moment looking at these while he thumbed his chin. "Faith!" said he, "the world is full of trouble, and that's a fact." He turned to the strangers. "And I'm telling you this, that if the world wasn't full of trouble there'd be no life at all for the poor. It's the only chance we get is when people are full of woe, God help them! and isn't that a queer thing? "Mary," he turned, and his voice was full of careless pride, "try if there isn't some small thing or other in the basket, and let your honours sit down on the grass while the young girl is getting your breakfast." So the angels and Patsy sat down peacefully on the grass, and Mary opened the basket. There were two loaves of bread in it, a fine square of butter, a piece of cheese as big as a man's hand and four times as thick; there was a leg of mutton in the basket, and only a little bit had been taken off it, a big paper bag full of tea, a package of soft sugar, a bottle full of milk, a bottle half full of whisky, two tobacco pipes having silver bands on their middles, and a big bar of plug tobacco. Those were the things in the basket. Mary's eyes and her mouth opened when she saw them, and she blessed herself, but she made no sound; and when she turned her face towards the company there was no expression on it except that of hospitality. She cut slices from each of these things and piled them on a large piece of paper in the centre of the men; then she sat herself down and they all prepared to eat. The second angel turned courteously to Mac Cann. "Will you kindly begin to eat," said he, "and by watching you we will know what to do." "There can be nothing more uncomely," said the first angel, "than to see people acting in disaccord with custom; we will try to do exactly as you do, and although you may be troubled by our awkwardness you will not be shocked by a lapse from sacred tradition." "Well!" said Patsy thoughtfully. He stretched a hand towards the food. "I'll stand in nobody's light, and teaching people is God's own work; this is the way I do it, your worships, and any one that likes can follow me up." He seized two pieces of bread, placed a slice of cheese between them, and bit deeply into that trinity. The strangers followed his actions with fidelity, and in a moment their mouths were as full as his was and as content. Patsy paused between bites: "When I've this one finished," said he, "I'll take two more bits of bread and I'll put a lump of meat between them, and I'll eat that." "Ah!" said that one of the angels whose mouth chanced to be free. Patsy's eye roved over the rest of the food. "And after that," he continued, "we will take a bit of whatever is handy." In a short time there was nothing left on the newspaper but soft sugar, butter, tea, and tobacco. Patsy was abashed. "I did think that there was more than that," said he. "I've had enough myself," he continued, "but maybe your honours could eat more." Two of the angels assured him that they were quite satisfied, but the youngest angel said nothing. "I'm doubting that you had enough," said Patsy dubiously to him. "I could eat more if I had it," returned that one with a smile. Mary went to the cart and returned bearing two cold potatoes and a piece of bread, and she placed these before the young angel. He thanked her and ate these, and then he ate the package of soft sugar, and then he ate a little piece of the butter, but he didn't care for it. He pointed to the plug of tobacco: "Does this be eaten?" he enquired. "It does not," said Patsy. "If you ate a bit of that you'd get a pain inside of your belly that would last you for a month. There's some people do smoke it, and there's others do chew it; but I smoke it and chew it myself, and that's the best way. There's two pipes there on the paper, and I've a pipe in my own pocket, so whichever of you would like a smoke can do exactly as I do." With a big jack-knife he shredded pieces from the plug, and rolled these between his palms, then he carefully stuffed his pipe, pulled at it to see was it drawing well, lit the tobacco, and heaved a sigh of contentment. He smiled around the circle. "That's real good," said he. The strangers examined the pipes and tobacco with curiosity, but they did not venture to smoke, and they watched Patsy's beatific face with kindly attention. CHAPTER VIII Now at this moment Mary was devoured with curiosity. She wanted to know how her father had become possessed of the basketful of provisions. She knew that three shillings would not have purchased a tithe of these goods, and, as she had now no fear of the strangers, she questioned her parent. "Father," said she, "where did you get all the good food?" The angels had eaten of his bounty, so Mac Cann considered that he had nothing to fear from their side. He regarded them while he pulled thoughtfully at his pipe. "Do you know," said he, "that the hardest thing in the world is to get the food, and a body is never done looking for it. We are after eating all that we got this morning, so now we'll have to search for what we'll eat to-night, and in the morning we'll have to look again for more of it, and the day after that, and every day until we are dead we'll have to go on searching for the food." "I would have thought," said the eldest angel, "that of all problems food would be the simplest in an organised society." This halted Mac Cann for a moment. "Maybe you're right, sir," said he kindly, and he dismissed the interruption. "I heard a man once, he was a stranger to these parts, and he had a great deal of the talk, he said that the folk at the top do grab all the food in the world, and that then they make every person work for them, and that when you've done a certain amount of work they give you just enough money to buy just enough food to let you keep on working for them. That's what the man said: a big, angry man he was, with whiskers on him like the whirlwind, and he swore he wouldn't work for any one. I'm thinking myself that he didn't work either. We were great friends, that man and me, for I don't do any work if I can help it; it's that I haven't got the knack for work, and, God help me! I've a big appetite. Besides that, the work I'd be able to do in a day mightn't give me enough to eat, and wouldn't I be cheated then?" "Father," said Mary, "where did you get all the good food this morning?" "I'll tell you that. I went down to the bend of the road where the house is, and I had the three shillings in my hand. When I came to the house the door was standing wide open. I hit it a thump of my fist, but nobody answered me. 'God be with all here,' said I, and in I marched. There was a woman lying on the floor in one room, and her head had been cracked with a stick; and in the next room there was a man lying on the floor, and his head had been cracked with a stick. It was in that room I saw the food packed nice and tight in the basket that you see before you. I looked around another little bit, and then I came away, for, as they say, a wise man never found a dead man, and I'm wise enough no matter what I look like." "Were the people all dead?" said Mary, horrified. "They were not--they only got a couple of clouts. I'm thinking they are all right by this, and they looking for the basket, but, please God, they won't find it. But what I'd like to know is this, who was it hit the people with a stick, and then walked away without the food and the drink and the tobacco, for that's a queer thing." He turned to his daughter. "Mary, a cree, let you burn up that basket in the brazier, for I don't like the look of it at all, and it empty." So Mary burned the basket with great care while her father piled their goods on the cart and yoked up the ass. Meanwhile the angels were talking together, and after a short time they approached Mac Cann. "If it is not inconvenient," said their spokesman, "we would like to remain with you for a time. We think that in your company we may learn more than we might otherwise do, for you seem to be a man of ability, and at present we are rather lost in this strange world." "Sure," said Patsy heartily, "I haven't the least objection in the world, only, if you don't want to be getting into trouble, and if you'll take my advice, I'd say that ye ought to take off them kinds of clothes you're wearing and get into duds something like my own, and let you put your wings aside and your fine high crowns, the way folk won't be staring at you every foot of the road, for I'm telling you that it's a bad thing to have people looking after you when you go through a little village or a town, because you can never know who'll remember you afterwards, and you maybe not wanting to be remembered at all." "If our attire," said the angel, "is such as would make us remarkable----" "It is," said Patsy. "People would think you belonged to a circus, and the crowds of the world would be after you in every place." "Then," replied the angel, "we will do as you say." "I have clothes enough in this bundle," said Patsy, with a vague air. "I found them up there in the house, and I was thinking of yourselves when I took them. Let you put them on, and we will tie up your own things in a sack and bury them here so that when you want them again you'll be able to get them, and then we can travel wherever we please and no person will say a word to us." So the strangers retired a little way with the bundle, and there they shed their finery. When they appeared again they were clad in stout, ordinary clothing. They did not look a bit different from Patsy Mac Cann except that they were all taller men than he, but between his dilapidation and theirs there was very little to choose. Mac Cann dug a hole beside a tree and carefully buried their property, then with a thoughtful air he bade Mary move ahead with the ass, while he and the angels stepped forward at the tailboard. They walked then through the morning sunlight, and for a time they had little to say to each other. CHAPTER IX In truth Patsy Mac Cann was a very able person. For forty-two years he had existed on the edges of a society which did not recognise him in any way, and, as he might himself have put it, he had not done so very badly at all. He lived as a bird lives, or a fish, or a wolf. Laws were for other people, but they were not for him; he crawled under or vaulted across these ethical barriers, and they troubled him no more than as he had to bend or climb a little to avoid them--he discerned laws as something to be avoided, and it was thus he saw most things. Religion and morality, although he paid these an extraordinary reverence, were not for him either; he beheld them from afar, and, however they might seem beautiful or foolish, he left them behind as readily as he did his debts, if so weighty a description may be given to his volatile engagements. He did not discharge these engagements; he elongated himself from them; between himself and a query he interposed distance, and at once that became foreign to him, for half a mile about himself was his frontier, and beyond that, wherever he was, the enemy lay. He stood outside of every social relation, and within an organised humanity he might almost have been reckoned as a different species. He was very mobile, but all his freedom lay in one direction, and outside of that pasturage he could never go. For the average man there are two dimensions of space wherein he moves with a certain limited freedom; it is for him a horizontal and a perpendicular world; he goes up the social scale and down it, and in both these atmospheres there is a level wherein he can exercise himself to and fro, his journeyings being strictly limited by his business and his family. Between the place where he works and the place where he lives lies all the freedom he can hope for; within that range he must seek such adventures as he craves, and the sole expansion to which he can attain is upwards towards another social life if he be ambitious, or downward to the underworlds if he is bored. For Mac Cann there was no upward and no downward movements, he had plumbed to the very rocks of life, but his horizontal movements were bounded only by the oceans around his country, and in this gigantic underworld he moved with almost absolute freedom, and a knowledge which might properly be termed scientific. In despite of his apparent outlawry he was singularly secure; ambition waved no littlest lamp at him; the one ill which could overtake him was death, which catches on every man; no enmity could pursue him to any wall, for he was sunken a whole sphere beneath malice as beneath benevolence. Physical ill-treatment might come upon him, but in that case it was his manhood and his muscle against another manhood and another muscle--the simplest best would win, but there was no glory for the conqueror nor any loot to be carried from the battle. Casual warfares, such as these, had been frequent enough in his career, for he had fought stubbornly with every kind of man, and had afterwards medicined his wounds with the only unguents cheap enough for his usage--the healing balsams of time and patience. He had but one occupation, and it was an engrossing one--he hunted for food, and for it he hunted with the skill and pertinacity of a wolf or a vulture. With what skill he did hunt! He would pick crumbs from the lank chaps of famine; he gathered nourishment from the empty air; he lifted it from wells and watercourses; he picked it off clothes lines and hedges; he stole so cleverly from the bees that they never felt his hand in their pocket; he would lift the eggs from beneath a bird, and she would think that his finger was a chicken; he would clutch a hen from the roost, and the housewife would think he was the yard dog, and the yard dog would think he was its brother. He had a culture too, and if it was not wide it was profound; he knew wind and weather as few astronomers know it; he knew the habit of the trees and the earth; how the seasons moved, not as seasons, but as days and hours; he had gathered all the sweets of summer, and the last rigour of winter was no secret to him; he had fought with the winter every year of his life as one fights with a mad beast, he had held off that grizzliest of muzzles and escaped scatheless. He knew men and women, and he knew them from an angle at which they seldom caught themselves or each other; he knew them as prey to be bitten and escaped from quickly. At them, charged with a thousand preoccupations, he looked with an eye in which there was a single surmise, and he divined them in a flash. In this quick vision he saw man, one expression, one attitude for all; never did he see a man or woman in their fullness, his microscopic vision caught only what it looked for, but he saw that with the instant clarity of the microscope. There were no complexities for him in humanity; there were those who gave and those who did not give; there were those who might be cajoled, and those who might be frightened. If there was goodness in a man he glimpsed it from afar as a hawk sees a mouse in the clover, and he swooped on that virtue and was away with booty. If there was evil in a man he passed it serenely as a sheep passes by a butcher, for evil did not affect him. Evil could never put a hand on him, and he was not evil himself. If the denominations of virtue or vice must be affixed to his innocent existence, then these terms would have to be re-defined, for they had no meaning in his case; he stood outside these as he did outside of the social structure. But, indeed, he was not outside of the social structure at all; he was so far inside of it that he could never get out; he was at the very heart of it; he was held in it like a deer in an ornamental park, or a cork that bobs peacefully in a bucket, and in the immense, neglected pastures of civilisation he found his own quietude and his own wisdom. All of the things he knew and all of the things that he had done were most competently understood by his daughter. CHAPTER X It is to be remarked that the angels were strangely like Patsy Mac Cann. Their ideas of right and wrong almost entirely coincided with his. They had no property and so they had no prejudices, for the person who has nothing may look upon the world as his inheritance, while the person who has something has seldom anything but that. Civilisation, having built itself at hazard upon the Rights of Property, has sought on many occasions to unbuild itself again in sheer desperation of any advance, but from the great Ethic of Possession there never has been any escape, and there never will be until the solidarity of man has been really created, and until each man ceases to see the wolf in his neighbour. Is there actually a wolf in our neighbour? We see that which we are, and our eyes project on every side an image of ourselves; if we look with fear that which we behold is frightful; if we look with love then the colours of heaven are repeated to us from the ditch and the dungeon. We invent eternally upon one another; we scatter our sins broadcast and call them our neighbours; let us scatter our virtues abroad and build us a city to live in. For Mac Cann and his daughter there was no longer any strangeness in their companions. As day and night succeeded, as conversation and action supplemented each other on their journeys, so each of them began to unfold from the fleshy disguise, and in a short time they could each have spoken of the others to an inquiring stranger, giving, within bounds, reasonably exact information as to habit and mentality. What conversations they had engaged in! Sitting now by a hedge close to a tiny chaotic village, compact of ugliness and stupidity, now at twilight as they camped in a disused quarry, leaning their shoulders against great splintered rocks, and hearing no sound but the magnified, slow trickle of water and the breeze that sung or screamed against a razor edge of rock; or lying on the sheltered side of a pit of potatoes, they stared at the moon as she sailed on her lonely voyages, or watched the stars that glanced and shone from the drifting clouds; and as they lifted their eyes to these sacred voyagers in whose charge is the destiny of man they lifted their minds also and adored mutely that mind of which these are the thoughts made visible. Sometimes they discussed the problems of man in a thousand superficial relationships. The angels were wise, but in the vocabulary which they had to use wisdom had no terms. Their wisdom referred only to ultimates, and was the unhandiest of tools when dug into some immediate, curious problem. Before wisdom can be audible a new language must be invented, and they also had to unshape their definitions and re-translate these secular findings into terms wherein they could see the subject broadly, and they found that what they gained in breadth they lost in outline, and that the last generalisation, however logically it was framed, was seldom more than an intensely interesting lie when it was dissected again. No truth in regard to space and time can retain virtue for longer than the beating of an artery; it too has its succession, its sidereal tide, and while you look upon it, round and hardy as a pebble, behold, it is split and fissured and transformed. Sometimes when it rained, and it rained often, they would seek refuge in a haystack, if one was handy; or they would creep into a barn and hide behind hills of cabbages or piles of farming tools; or they slid into the sheds among the cattle where they warmed and fed themselves against those peaceful flanks; or, if they were nigh a town and had been lucky that day, they would pay a few coppers to sleep on the well-trodden, earthen floor of a house. As for the ass, he slept wherever he could. When there was rain he would stand with his tail against the wind sunken in a reverie so profound that he no longer seemed to feel the rain or the wind. From these abysses of thought he would emerge to the realisation that there was a sheltered side to a wall or a clump of heather, and he also would take his timely rest under the stars of God. What did they say to him? Down the glittering slopes they peer and nod; before his eyes the mighty pageant is unrolled in quiet splendour; for him too the signs are set. Does the Waterman care nothing for his thirst? Does the Ram not bless his increase? Against his enemies also the Archer will bend his azure bow and loose his arrows of burning gold. On their journeyings they met with many people; not the folk who lived in the houses dotted here and there at great distances from each other on the curving roads, for with these people they had nothing to do, they had scarcely anything to say, and the housefolk looked on the strollers with a suspicion which was almost a fear. The language of these was seldom gracious, and often, on their approach, the man of the house was sent for and the dog was unchained. But for the vagabonds these people did not count; Mac Cann and his daughter scarcely looked on them as human beings, and if he had generalised about them at all, he would have said that there was no difference between these folk and the trees that shaded their dwellings in leafy spray, that they were rooted in their houses, and that they had no idea of life other than the trees might have which snuff for ever the same atmosphere and look on the same horizon until they droop again to the clay they lifted from. It was with quite other people they communed. The wandering ballad singer with his wallet of songs slung at his ragged haunch; the travelling musician whose blotchy fiddle could sneeze out the ten strange tunes he had learned from his father and from his father's generations before him; the little band travelling the world carrying saplings and rushes from the stream which they wove cunningly into tables and chairs warranted not to last too long; the folk who sold rootless ferns to people from whose window-ledges they had previously stolen the pots to plant them in; the men who went roaring along the roads driving the cattle before them from fair to market and back again; the hairy tinkers with their clattering metals, who marched in the angriest of battalions and who spoke a language composed entirely of curses. These, and an hundred varieties of these, they met and camped with and were friendly with, and to the angels these people were humanity, and the others were, they did not know what. CHAPTER XI It might be asked why Patsy Mac Cann permitted the strangers to remain with him. Now that they were dressed like himself he had quite forgotten, or he never thought of their celestial character, and they were undoubtedly a burden upon his ingenuity. They ate as vigorously as he did, and the food which they ate he had to supply. There were two reasons for this kindliness--He had always wished to be the leader of a troop. In his soul the Ancient Patriarch was alive and ambitious of leadership. Had his wife given him more children he would have formed them and their wives and children into a band, and the affairs of this little world would have been directed by him with pride and pleasure. He would have observed their goings-out and their comings-in; he would have apportioned praise and reproach to his little clann; he would have instructed them upon a multitude of things, and passed on to them the culture which he had gathered so hardily, and, when they arrived at the age of ingenuity, it would have still been his ambition to dash their arguments with his superior knowledge, or put the happy finish to any plan which they submitted for his approval; he would have taken the road, like a prince of old, with his tail, and he would have undertaken such raids and forays that his name and fame would ring through the underworld like the note of a trumpet. He could not do this because he only had one child (the others had died wintry deaths) and she was a girl. But now heaven itself had blessed him with a following and he led it with skill and enjoyment. Furthermore, his daughter, of whom he stood in considerable awe, had refused flatly to desert the strangers whom Providence had directed to them. She had constituted herself in some strange way the mother of the four men. She cooked for them, she washed and mended for them, and, when the necessity arose, she scolded them with the heartiest good-will. Her childhood had known nothing of dolls, and so her youth made dolls of these men whom she dressed and fed. Sometimes her existence with them was peaceful and happy; at other times she almost went mad with jealous rage. Little by little she began to demand a domestic obedience which they very willingly gave her; so they were her men and no one else's, and the exercise of this power gave her a delight such as she had never known. She was wise also, for it was only in domestic affairs that she claimed their fealty; with their masculine movements she did not interfere, nor did she interfere with the task and apportioning of the day, although her counsel was willingly listened to in these matters; but when night came, when the camp was selected, the little cart unloaded, and the brazier lit, then she stepped briskly to her kingdom and ruled like a chieftainess. With her father she often had trouble: he would capitulate at the end, but not until he had set forth at length his distaste for her suggestions and his assurance that she was a strap. She seldom treated him as a father, for she seldom remembered that relationship; she loved him as one loves a younger brother, and she was angry with him as one can only be angry with a younger brother. Usually she treated him as an infant; she adored him, and, if he had permitted it, she would have beaten him soundly on many an occasion. For she was a strong girl. She was big in build and bone, and she was beautiful and fearless. Framed in a rusty shawl her face leaped out instant and catching as a torch in darkness; under her clumsy garments one divined a body to be adored as a revelation; she walked carelessly as the wind walks, proudly as a young queen trained in grandeur. She could leap from where she stood, as a wild-cat that springs terribly from quietude; she could run as a deer runs, and pause at full flight like a carven statue. Each movement of hers was complete and lovely in itself; when she lifted a hand to her hair the free attitude was a marvel of composure; it might never have begun, and might never cease, it was solitary and perfect; when she bent to the brazier she folded to such an economy of content that one might have thought her half her size and yet perfect; she had that beauty which raises the mind of man to an ecstasy which is murderous if it be not artistic; and she was so conscious of her loveliness that she could afford to forget it, and so careless that she had never yet used it as a weapon or a plea. She could not but be aware of her beauty, for her mirrors had tongues; they were the eyes of those she met and paused with. No man had yet said anything to her, saving in rough jest as to a child, but no woman could speak of anything else in her presence, and these exclamations drummed through all their talk. She had been worshipped by many women, for to physical loveliness in their own sex women are the veriest slaves. They will love a man for his beauty, but a woman they will adore as a singularity, as something almost too good to be true, as something which may vanish even while they gaze at it. Prettiness they understand and like or antagonise, but they have credited beauty as a masculine trait; and as a race long sunken in slavery, and who look almost despairingly for a saviour, so the female consciousness prostrates itself before female beauty as before a messiah who will lead them to the unconscious horrible ambitions which are the goal of femininity. But, and it is humanity's guard against a solitary development, while women worship a beautiful woman the beauty does not care for them; she accepts their homage and flies them as one flies from the deadliest boredom; she is the widest swing of their pendulum, and must hurry again from the circumference to the centre with the violent speed of an outcast who sees from afar the smoke of his father's house and the sacred roof-tree. There is a steadying influence; an irreconcilable desire and ambition; the desire of every woman to be the wife of a fool, her ambition to be the mother of a genius; but they postulate genius, it is their outlet and their justification for that leap at a tangent which they have already taken. Out there they have discovered the Neuter. Is the Genius always to be born from an unfertilised womb, or rather a self-fertilised one? Singular Messiahs! scorners of paternity! claiming no less than the Cosmos for a father; taking from the solitary mother capacity for infinite suffering and infinite love, whence did ye gather the rough masculine intellect, the single eye, all that hardiness of courage and sensibility of self that made of your souls a battlefield, and of your memory a terror to drown love under torrents of horrid red! Deluded so far and mocked! No genius has yet sprung from ye but the Genius of War and Destruction, those frowning captains that have ravaged our vineyards and blackened our generations with the torches of their egotism. To woman beauty is energy, and they would gladly take from their own sex that which they have so long accepted from man. They are economical; the ants and the bees are not more amazingly parsimonious than they, and, like the ants and the bees, their subsequent extravagance is a thing to marvel at. Food and children they will hoard, and when these are safeguarded their attitude to the life about them is ruinous. They will adorn themselves at the expense of all creation, and in a few years they crush from teeming life a species which nature has toiled through laborious ages to perfect. They adorn themselves, and too often adornment is the chief manifestation of boredom. They are world-weary, sex-weary, and they do not know what they want; but they want power, so that they may rule evolution once more as long ago they ruled it; their blood remembers an ancient greatness; they crave to be the queens again, to hold the sceptre of life in their cruel hands, to break up the mould which has grown too rigid for freedom, to form anew the chaos which is a womb, and which they conceive is their womb, and to create therein beauty and freedom and power. But the king whom they have placed on the throne has grown wise in watching them; he is their bone terribly separated, terribly endowed; he uses their cruelty, their fierceness, as his armies against them--and so the battle is set, and wild deeds may flare from the stars of rebellion and prophecy. Mary, who could make women do anything for her, was entirely interested in making men bow to her will, and because, almost against her expectation they did bow, she loved them, and could not sacrifice herself too much for their comfort or even their caprice. It was the mother-spirit in her which, observing the obedience of her children, is forced in very gratitude to become their slave; for, beyond all things, a woman desires power, and, beyond all things, she is unable to use it when she gets it. If this power be given to her grudgingly she will exercise it mercilessly; if it is given kindly then she is bound by her nature to renounce authority, and to live happy ever after, but it must be given to her. CHAPTER XII It may be surprising to learn that the names of the angels were Irish names, but more than eight hundred years ago a famous Saint informed the world that the language spoken in heaven was Gaelic, and, presumably, he had information on the point. He was not an Irishman, and he had no reason to exalt Fodhla above the other nations of the earth, and, therefore, his statement may be accepted on its merits, the more particularly as no other saint has denied it, and every Irish person is prepared to credit it. It was also believed in ancient times, and the belief was world-wide, that the entrance to heaven, hell, and purgatory yawned in the Isle of the Saints, and this belief also, although it has never been proved, has never been disproved, and it does assist the theory that Irish is the celestial language. Furthermore, Gaelic is the most beautiful and expressive fashion of speech in the whole world, and, thus, an artistic and utilitarian reinforcement can be hurried to the support of that theory should it ever be in danger from philologists with foreign axes to grind. The names of the angels were Finaun and Caeltia and Art. Finaun was the eldest angel; Caeltia was that one who had a small coal-black beard on his chin, and Art was the youngest of the three, and he was as beautiful as the dawn, than which there is nothing more beautiful. Finaun was an Archangel when he was in his own place; Caeltia was a Seraph, and Art was a Cherub. An Archangel is a Councillor and a Guardian; a Seraph is one who accumulates knowledge; a Cherub is one who accumulates love. In heaven these were their denominations. Finaun was wise, childish, and kind, and between him and the little ass which drew their cart there was a singular and very pleasant resemblance. Caeltia was dark and determined, and if he had cropped his beard with a scissors, the way Patsy Mac Cann did, he would have resembled Patsy Mac Cann as closely as one man can resemble another. Art was dark also, and young and swift and beautiful. Looking carelessly at him one would have said that, barring the colour, he was the brother of Mary Mac Cann, and that the two of them were born at a birth, and a good birth. Mary extended to Finaun part of the affection which she already had for the ass, and while they were marching the roads these three always went together; the archangel would be on one side of the donkey and Mary would be on the other side, and (one may say so) the three of them never ceased talking for an instant. The ass, it will be admitted, did not speak, but he listened with such evident intention that no one could say he was out of the conversation; his right-hand ear hearkened agilely to Mary; his left-hand ear sprang to attention when Finaun spoke, and when, by a chance, they happened to be silent at the one moment then both his ears drooped forward towards his nose, and so he was silent also. A hand from either side continually touched his muzzle caressingly, and at moments entirely unexpected he would bray affectionately at them in a voice that would have tormented the ears of any but a true friend. Patsy Mac Cann and the seraph Caeltia used to march exactly at the tail of the cart, and they, also, talked a lot. At first Patsy talked the most, for he had much information to impart, and the seraph listened with intent humility, but, after a while, Caeltia, having captured knowledge, would dispute and argue with great vivacity. They spoke of many things, but a person who listened closely and recorded these things would have found that they talked oftener about strong drinks than about anything else. Mac Cann used to speak longingly about strange waters which he had heard were brewed in foreign lands, potent brewings which had been described to him by emphatic sailormen with tarry thumbs; but at this stage Caeltia only spoke about porter and whisky, and was well contented to talk of these. The cherub Art was used to promenade alone behind them all, but sometimes he would go in front and listen to the conversation with the ass; sometimes he would join the two behind and force them to consider matters in which they were not interested, and sometimes again he would range the fields on either side, or he would climb a tree, or he would go alone by himself shouting a loud song that he had learned at the fair which they had last journeyed to, or he would prance silently along the road as though his body was full of jumps and he did not know what to do with them, or he would trudge forlornly in a boredom so profound that one expected him to drop dead of it in his tracks. So life fell into a sort of routine. When they were camped for the night Caeltia and Art would always sit on one side of the brazier with Patsy Mac Cann sitting between them; on the other side of the brazier the archangel and Mary would sit; Finaun always sat very close to her when they had finished eating and were all talking together; he used to take her long plait of hair into his lap, and for a long time he would unplait and plait again the end of that lovely rope. Mary liked him to do this, and nobody else minded it. BOOK II EILEEN NI COOLEY CHAPTER XIII Early in the morning the sun had been shining gloriously, and there was a thump of a wind blowing across the road that kept everything gay; the trees were in full leaf and every bough went jigging to its neighbour, but on the sky the clouds raced so fast that they were continually catching each other up and getting so mixed that they could not disentangle themselves again, and from their excessive gaiety black misery spread and the sun took a gloomy cast. Mac Cann screwed an eye upwards like a bird and rubbed at his chin. "There will be rain soon," said he, "and the country wants it." "It will be heavy rain," said his daughter. "It will so," he replied; "let us be getting along now the way we'll be somewhere before the rain comes, for I never did like getting wetted by rain, and nobody ever did except the people of the County Cork, and they are so used to it that they never know whether it's raining or whether it isn't." So they encouraged the ass to go quicker and he did that. As they hastened along the road they saw in front of them two people marching close together, and in a little time they drew close to these people. "I know the look of that man's back," said Patsy, "but I can't tell you where I saw it. I've a good memory for faces, though, and I'll tell you all about him in a minute." "Do you know the woman that is with him?" said Caeltia. "You can't tell a woman by her back," replied Patsy, "and nobody could, for they all have the same back when they have a shawl on." Mary turned her head to them: "Every woman's back is different," said she, "whether there's a shawl on it or not, and I know from the way that woman is wearing her shawl that she is Eileen Ni Cooley and no one else." "If that is so," said her father hastily, "let us be going slower the way we won't catch up on her. Mary, a grah, whisper a word in the ass's ear so that he won't be going so quick, for he is full of fun this day." "I'll do that," said Mary, and she said "whoa" into the ear of the little ass, and he stopped inside the quarter of a pace. "Do you not like that woman?" Caeltia enquired. "She's a bad woman," replied Patsy. "What sort of a bad woman is she?" "She's the sort that commits adultery with every kind of man," said he harshly. Caeltia turned over that accusation for a moment. "Did she ever commit adultery with yourself?" said he. "She did not," said Patsy, "and that's why I don't like her." Caeltia considered that statement also, and found it reasonable: "I think," said he, "that the reason you don't like that woman is because you like her too much." "It's so," said Patsy, "but there is no reason for her taking on with every kind of man and not taking on with me at all." He was silent for a moment. "I tell you," said he furiously, "that I made love to that woman from the dawn to the dark, and then she walked off with a man that came down a little road." "That was her right," said Caeltia mildly. "Maybe it was, but for the weight of a straw I would have killed the pair of them that night in the dark place." "Why didn't you?" "She had me weakened. My knees gave under me when she walked away and there wasn't even a curse in my mouth." Again he was silent, and again he broke into angry speech! "I don't want to see her at all, for she torments me, so let the pair of them walk their road until they come to a ditch that is full of thorns and is fit for them to die in." "I think," said Caeltia, "that the reason you don't want to see her is because you want to see her too much." "It's so," growled Mac Cann, "and it's so too that you are a prying kind of a man and that your mouth is never at rest, so we'll go on now to the woman yonder, and let you talk to her with your tongue and your nimble questions." Thereupon he rushed forward and kicked the ass so suddenly in the belly that it leaped straight off the ground and began to run before its legs touched earth again. When they had taken a few dozen steps Mac Cann began to roar furiously: "What way are you, Eileen Ni Cooley? What sort of a man is it that's walking beside yourself?" And he continued roaring questions such as that until they drew on the people. The folk stopped at his shouts. The woman was big and thin and she had red hair. Her face was freckled all over so that one could only see her delicate complexion in little spots, and at the first glance the resemblance between herself and Finaun was extraordinary. In the sweep of the brow, the set of the cheek-bones, a regard of the eyes, that resemblance was seen, and then the look vanished in a poise of the head and came again in another one. At the moment her blue eyes seemed the angriest that ever were in a woman's head. She stood leaning on a thick ash-plant and watched the advancing company, but she did not utter a word to them. The man by her side was tall also and as thin as a pole; he was ramshackle and slovenly; there was not much pith in his body, for he was weak at the knees and his big feet splayed outwards at a curious angle; but his face was extraordinary intelligent, and when he was younger must have been beautiful. Drink and ill-health had dragged and carved his flesh, and nothing of comeliness remained to him but his eyes, which were timid and tender as those of a fawn, and his hands which had never done anything but fumble with women. He also leaned quietly on a cudgel and watched Patsy Mac Cann. And it was to him that Patsy came. He did not look once at the woman, though all the time he never ceased shouting salutations and questions at her by her name. He walked directly to the man, eyeing him intently. "And how is yourself?" he roared with horrible heartiness. "It's a while since I saw you, and it was the pitch night that time." "I'm all right," said the man. "So you are," said Patsy, "and why wouldn't you be? Weren't you born in the wide lap of good luck, and didn't you stay there? Ah, it's the way that the men that come down little, narrow paths do have fortune, and the ones that tramp the wide roads do have nothing but their broken feet. Good luck to you, my soul, and long may you wave--Eh!" "I didn't say a word," said the man. "And there's a stick in your hand that would crack the skull of a mountain, let alone a man." "It's a good stick," said the man. "Would you be calling it the brother or the husband of the one that the woman has in her happy hands." "I would be calling it a stick only," replied the man. "That's the name for it surely," said Patsy, "for a stick hasn't got a soul any more than a woman has, and isn't that a great mercy and a great comfort, for heaven would be full of women and wood, and there would be no room for the men and the drink." The red-haired woman strode to Patsy and, putting her hand against his breast, she gave him a great push: "If you're talking," said she, "or if you're fighting, turn to myself, for the man doesn't know you." Patsy did turn to her with a great laugh: "It's the one pleasure of my life to have your hands on me," he gibed. "Give me another puck now, and a hard one, the way I'll feel you well." The woman lifted her ash-plant threateningly and crouched towards him, but the look on his face was such that she let her hand fall again. "You're full of fun," said Patsy, "and you always were, but we're going to be the great friends from now on, yourself and myself and the man with the stick; we'll be going by short cuts everywhere in the world, and having a gay time." "We're not going with you, Padraig," said the woman, "and whatever road you are taking this day the man and myself will be going another road." "Whoo!" said Patsy, "there are roads everywhere, so you're all right, and there are men on every one of the roads." CHAPTER XIV While this conversation had been taking place the others stood in a grave semicircle, and listened intently to their words. Caeltia, regarding the sky, intervened: "The rain will be here in a minute, so we had better walk on and look for shelter." Mac Cann detached his heavy regard from Eileen Ni Cooley, and swept the sky and the horizon. "That is so," said he. "Let us go ahead now, for we've had our talk, and we are all satisfied." "There is a broken-down house stuck up a bohereen," he continued. "It's only a few perches up this road, for I remember passing the place the last time I was this way; that place will give us shelter while the rain spills." He turned his stubborn face to the woman: "You can come with us if you like, and you can stay where you are if you like, or you can go to the devil," and, saying so, he tramped after his daughter. The woman had just caught sight of Art the cherub, and was regarding him with her steady eyes. "Whoo!" said she, "I'm not the one to be frightened and I never was, so let us all go along and talk about our sins in the wet weather." They started anew on the road, Patsy's company in advance, and behind marched the woman and the man and Art the cherub. The sun had disappeared; wild clouds were piling themselves in rugged hills along the sky, and the world was growing dull and chill. Against the grey atmosphere Art's face was in profile, an outline sharp and calm and beautiful. Eileen Ni Cooley was regarding him curiously as they walked together, and the strange man, with a wry smile on his lips, was regarding her with a like curiosity. She pointed towards Patsy Mac Cann, who was tramping vigorously a dozen yards ahead. "Young boy," said she, "where did you pick up with the man yonder, for the pair of you don't look matched?" Art had his hands in his pockets; he turned and looked at her tranquilly. "Where did you pick up with that man," he nodded towards her companion, "and where did the man pick up with you, for you don't look matched either?" "We're not," said the woman quickly; "we're not matched a bit. That man and myself do be quarrelling all day and all night, and threatening to walk away from each other every minute of the time." The man stared at her. "Is that how it is with us?" said he. "It is," said she to Art, "that's the way it is with us, honey. The man and myself have no love for each other now, and we never had." The man halted suddenly; he changed the cudgel to his left hand and thrust out his right hand to her. "Put your own hand there," said he, "and shake it well, and then be going along your road." "What are you talking about?" said she. He replied, frowning sternly from his wild eyes: "I wouldn't hold the grace of God if I saw it slipping from me, so put your hand into my hand and go along your road." Eileen Ni Cooley put her hand into his with some awkwardness and turned away her head. "There it is for you," said she. Then the man turned about and flapped quickly along the path they had already travelled; his cudgel beat the ground with a sharp noise, and he did not once look back. Before he had taken an hundred paces the rain came, a fine, noiseless drizzle. "It will be heavy in a minute," said the woman, "let us run after the cart." With a quick movement she tucked her shawl about her head and shoulders and started to run, and Art went after her in alternate long hops of each foot. They had reached a narrow path running diagonally from the main road. "Up this way," shouted Patsy, and the company trooped after him, leaving the ass and cart to the storm. Two minutes' distance up the road stood a small, dismantled house. There was a black gape where the window had been, and there were holes in the walls. In these holes grass and weeds were waving, as they were along the window-ledge. The roof was covered with a rusty thatch and there were red poppies growing on that. Patsy climbed through the low window-space, and the others climbed in after him. CHAPTER XV Inside the house was an earthen floor, four walls, and plenty of air. There were breezes blowing in the empty house, for from whatever direction a wind might come it found entrance there. There were stones lying everywhere on the floor; some of them had dropped from the walls, but most had been jerked through the window by passing children. There were spider's webs in that house; the roof was covered with them, and the walls were covered with them too. It was a dusty house, and when it would be wet enough it would be a muddy house, and it was musty with disuse and desolation. But the company did not care anything about dust or stones or spiders. They kicked the stones aside and sat on the floor in the most sheltered part of the place where there had once been a fireplace, and if a spider walked on any of them it was permitted. Patsy produced a clay pipe and lit it, and Caeltia took a silver-mounted briar from his pocket and he lit that and smoked it. Outside the rain suddenly began to fall with a low noise and the room grew dark. Within there was a brooding quietness, for none of the people spoke; they were all waiting for each other to speak. Indeed, they had all been agitated when they came in, for the wrung face of Patsy and the savage eyes of Eileen Ni Cooley had whipped their blood. Tragedy had sounded her warning note on the air, and they were each waiting to see had they a part in the play. But the sudden change of atmosphere wrought like a foreign chemical in their blood, the sound of the falling rain dulled their spirits, the must of that sleeping house went to their brains like an opiate, and the silence of the place folded them about, compelling them to a similar quietude. We are imitative beings; we respond to the tone and colour of our environment almost against ourselves, and still have our links with the chameleon and the moth; the sunset sheds its radiant peace upon us and we are content; the silent mountain-top lays a finger on our lips and we talk in whispers; the clouds lend us of their gaiety and we rejoice. So for a few moments they sat wrestling with the dull ghosts of that broken house, the mournful phantasms that were not dead long enough to be happy, for death is sorrowful at first and for a long time, but afterwards the dead are contented and learn to shape themselves anew. Patsy, drawing on his pipe, looked around the people. "Eh!" he exclaimed with heavy joviality, "where has the man got to, the man with the big stick? If he's shy let him come in, and if he's angry let him come in too." Eileen Ni Cooley was sitting close beside Art. She had let her shawl droop from her head, and her hair was showing through the dusk like a torch. "The man has gone away, Padraig," said she; "he got tired of the company, and he's gone travelling towards his own friends." Patsy regarded her with shining eyes. The must of the house was no longer in his nostrils; the silence lifted from him at a bound. "You are telling me a fine story, Eileen," said he, "tell me this too, did the man go away of his own will, or did you send him away?" "It was a bit of both, Padraig." "The time to get good news," said Patsy, "is when it's raining, and that is good news, and it's raining now." "News need not be good or bad, but only news," she replied, "and we will leave it at that." Caeltia spoke to her: "Do you have a good life going by yourself about the country and making acquaintances where you please?" "I have the life I like," she answered, "and whether it's good or bad doesn't matter." "Tell me the reason you never let himself make love to you when he wants to make it?" "He is a domineering man," said she, "and I am a proud woman, and we would never give in to each other. When one of us would want to do a thing the other one wouldn't do it, and there would be no living between us. If I said black he would say white, and if he said yes I would say no, and that's how we are." "He has a great love for you." "He has a great hate for me. He loves me the way a dog loves bones, and in a little while he'd kill me in a lonely place with his hands to see what I would look like and I dying." She turned her face to Mac Cann: "That's the kind of man you are to me, Padraig, although you're different to other people." "I am not that sort of man, but it's yourself is like that. I tell you that if I took a woman with me I'd be staunch to her the way I was with the mother of the girl there, and if you were to come with me you wouldn't have any complaint from now on." "I know every thing I'm talking about," she replied sternly, "and I won't go with you, but I'll go with the young man here beside me." With the words she put her hand on Art's arm and kept it there. Mary Mac Cann straightened up where she was sitting and became deeply interested. Art turned and burst into a laugh as he looked critically at Eileen. "I will not go with you," said he. "I don't care for you a bit." She gave a hard smile and removed her hand from his arm. "It's all the worse for me," said she, "and it's small harm to you, young boy." "That's a new answer for yourself," said Patsy, grinning savagely. "It is, and it's a new day for me, and a poor day, for it's the first day of my old age." "You'll die in a ditch," cried Patsy, "you'll die in a ditch like an old mare with a broken leg." "I will," she snarled, "when the time comes, but you'll never have the killing of me, Padraig." Finaun was sitting beside Mary with her hand in his, but she snatched her hand away and flared so fiercely upon Eileen that the woman looked up. "Don't be angry with me, Mary," said she; "I never did you any harm yet and I'll never be able to do it now, for there are years between us, and they're going to break my back." Finaun was speaking, more, it seemed, to himself than to the company. He combed his white beard with his hand as he spoke, and they all looked at him. "He is talking in his sleep," said Eileen pensively, "and he an old man, and a nice old man." "My father," said Caeltia, in an apologetic voice; "there is no need to tell about that." "There is every need, my beloved," replied Finaun with his slow smile. "I would rather you did not," murmured Caeltia, lifting his hand a little. "I ask your permission, my son," said Finaun gently. Caeltia spread out his open palms and dropped them again. "Whatever you wish to do is good, my father," and, with a slight blush, he slid the pipe into his pocket. Finaun turned to Eileen Ni Cooley: "I will tell you a story," said he. "Sure," said Eileen, "I'd love to hear you, and I could listen to a story for a day and a night." Mac Cann pulled solemnly at his pipe and regarded Finaun who was looking at him peacefully from a corner. "You're full of fun," said he to the archangel. CHAPTER XVI Said Finaun: "While generation succeeds generation a man has to fight the same fight. At the end he wins, and he never has to fight that battle again, and then he is ready for Paradise. "Every man from the beginning has one enemy from whom he can never escape, and the story of his lives is the story of his battles with that enemy whom he must draw into his own being before he can himself attain to real being, for an enemy can never be crushed, but every enemy can be won. "Long before the foundations of this world were laid, when the voice was heard and the army of the voice went through the darkness, two people came into being with the universe that was their shell. They lived through myriad existences knowing star after star grow hot and cold in the broad sky, and they hated each other through the changing of the stars and the ebbing and flooding of their lives. "At a time this one of them would be a woman and that other would be a man, and again in due period the one that had been a woman would be a man and the other would be a woman, that their battle might be joined in the intimacy which can only come through difference and the distance that is attraction. "No one can say which of these did most harm to the other; no one can say which was the most ruthless, the most merciless, for they were born, as all enemies are, equal in being and in power. "Through their lives they had many names and they lived in many lands, but their names in eternity were Finaun Mac Dea and Caeltia Mac Dea, and when the time comes, their name will be Mac Dea and nothing else: then they will become one in each other, and one in Infinite Greatness, and one in the unending life of Eternity which is God: but still, in world under world, in star under flaming star, they pursue each other with a hate which is slowly changing into love. "It was not on earth, nor in any planet, that the beginning of love came to these two, it was in the hell that they had fashioned for themselves in terror and lust and cruelty. For, as they sat among their demons, a seed germinated in the soul of one, the seed of knowledge which is the parent of love and the parent of every terrible and beautiful thing in the worlds and the heavens. "While that one looked on his companion, writhing like himself in torment, he grew conscious, and although he looked at the other with fury it was with a new fury, for with it came contempt, and they were no longer equal in power or in hate. "Now, for the first time, that one in whom knowledge had been born desired to escape from his companion; he wished to get away so that he might never behold that enemy again; suddenly the other appeared to him hideous as a toad that couches in slime and spits his poison at random, but he could not escape, and he could never escape. "As that one increased in knowledge so he increased in cruelty and power, so his lust became terrible, for now there was fear in his contempt because he could never escape. Many a time they fled from one another, but always, and however they fled, it was towards each other their steps were directed. At the feast, in the camp, and in the wilderness they found themselves and undertook anew the quarrel which was their blood and their being. "And that other in whom knowledge had not awakened--He raged like a beast; he thought in blood and fever; his brains were his teeth and the nails of his hands. Cunning came creepingly to his aid against knowledge; he lay in wait for his enemy in gloomy places; he spread snares for him in the darkness and baited traps. He feigned humility to get closer to his vengeance, but he could not combat knowledge. "Time and again he became the slave of that other, and as slave and master their battle was savagely joined, until at last knowledge stirred also in that mind and he grew conscious. "Then the age-long enmity drew to its change. For him there was no contempt possible, the other was older than he and wiser, for to be wise is to be old; there was no vantage for contempt, but envy sharpened his sword, it salted his anger, and they fought anew and unceasingly. "But now their hands were not seeking each other's throats with such frank urgency; they fought subterraneously, with smiles and polite words and decent observances, but they did not cease for an instant to strive and never did they forsake an advantage or lift up the one that had fallen. "Again the change: and now they battled not in the name of hate but under the holy superscription of love; again and again, life after life, they harried and ruined each other; their desire for one another was a madness, and in that desire they warred more bitterly than before. They blasted each other's lives, they dashed their honour to the mud, they slew one another. Than this none of their battles had been so terrible. Here there was no let, no respite even for an instant. They knew each other with that superficial knowledge which seems so clear although it shows no more than the scum floating upon existence; they knew the scumminess of each other and exhausted to the dregs their abundant evil until of evil they could learn no further, and their lives, alternating in a fierce energy and a miserable weariness, came towards but could not come to stagnation. "The horizon vanished from them; there were irons on the feet of the winds; the sun peered from a hood through a mask, and life was one room wherein dull voices droned dully, wherein something was for ever uttered and nothing was said, where hands were for ever lifted and nothing was done, where the mind smouldered and flared to lightning and no thought came from the spark. "They had reached an end, and it was a precipice down which they must spin giddily to the murk, or else shape wings for themselves and soar from that completion, for completion is a consciousness, and once again they were powerfully aware of themselves. They were vice-conscious, and virtue did not abide in their minds than as a dream which was an illusion and a lie. "Then, and this too was long ago! how long! When the moon was young; when she gathered rosy clouds about her evening and sang at noon from bush and mountain-ledge; when she folded her breasts in dewy darkness and awakened with cries of joy to the sun; then she tended her flowers in the vale; she drove her kine to deep pasture: she sang to her multitudes of increase and happiness while her feet went in the furrow with the plough and her hand guided the sickle and the sheaf. Great love didst thou give when thou wast a mother, O Beautiful! who art now white as silver and hath ice upon thine ancient head. "Again they lived and were wed. "Which of them was which in that sad pilgrimage it is not now possible to know. Memory faints at the long tale of it, and they were so intermingled, so alike through all their difference that they were becoming one in the great memory. Again they took up the time-long burden, and again desire drew them wildly to the embrace which was much repugnance and very little love. So, behold these two, a man and a woman, walking through the pleasant light, taking each other's hands in a kindness that had no roots, speaking words of affection that their souls groaned the lie to. "The woman was fair--she was fair as one star that shines on the void and is not abashed before immensity; she was beautiful as a green tree by a pool that bows peacefully to the sun; she was lovely as a field of mild corn waving to the wind in one slow movement. Together they plumbed their desire and found wickedness glooming at the bottom, and they were conscious of themselves and of all evil. "There was a demon in the pit that they had digged, and always, when they founded anew their hell, he tormented them; he was the accumulation of their evil; age after age they re-created him until he showed gigantic and terrible as a storm, and as they lusted after each other so he lusted after them. "On a time that Misery shaped itself as a man and came privily to the woman while she walked under heavy apple boughs in a garden. Their feet went to and fro closely together in the grass and their voices communed together, until one day the woman cried bitterly that there were no wings, and with the Spectre she leaped forthright to the chasm and went down shrieking a laughter that was woe. There she found herself and her demon and was the concubine of that one; and there, in the gulf and chasm of evil, she conjured virtue to her tortured soul and stole energy from the demon. "She sat among the rocks of her place. "Old Misery beside her laughed his laugh, and while she looked at him her eyes went backwards in her head, and when she looked again she saw differently, for in that space knowledge had put forth a bud and a blossom and she looked through knowledge. She saw herself and the demon and the man, and she prayed to the demon. As she prayed she gathered small blue flowers that peered sparsely among the crags, and she made a chaplet of these. She wove them with tears and sighs, and when the chaplet was made she put it to the demon's hand, praying him to bear it to the man. "He did that for her because he loved to laugh at their trouble, and he divined laughter for his iron chaps. "So the demon came terribly to the man as he walked under the swaying and lifting of green boughs in the long grass of an orchard, and he put the chaplet in the man's hand, saying: "'My concubine, your beloved, sends a greeting to you with her love and this garland of blue flowers which she has woven with her two hands in hell.' "The man, looking on these flowers, felt his heart move within him like water. "'Bring her to me,' said he to the demon. "'I will not do so,' replied the Misery. "And, suddenly, the man leaped on the Spectre. He locked his arms about that cold neck, and clung furiously with his knees. "'Then I will go to her with you,' said he. "And together they went headlong down the pit, and as they fell they battled frightfully in the dark pitch." CHAPTER XVII Mac Cann was asleep, but when Finaun's voice ceased he awakened and stretched himself with a loud yawn. "I didn't hear a word of that story," said he. "I heard it," said Eileen Ni Cooley; "it was a good story." "What was it about?" "I don't know," she replied. "Do you know what it was about, Mary?" "I do not, for I was thinking about other things at the time." Finaun took her hand. "There was no need for any of you to know what that story was about, excepting you only," and he looked very kindly at Eileen Ni Cooley. "I listened to it," said she; "and it was a good story. I know what it was about, but I would not know how to tell what it was about." "It must have been the queer yarn," said Patsy regretfully; "I wish I hadn't gone to sleep." "I was awake for you," said Caeltia. "What's the use of that?" said Patsy testily. It was still raining. The day was far advanced and evening was spinning her dull webs athwart the sky. Already in the broken house the light had diminished to a brown gloom, and their faces looked watchful and pale to each other as they crouched on the earthen floor. Silence was again seizing on them, and each person's eyes were focussing on some object or point on the wall or the floor as their thoughts began to hold them. Mac Cann roused himself. "We are here for the night; that rain won't stop as long as there's a drop left in its can." Mary bestirred herself also. "I'll slip down to the cart and bring back whatever food is in it. I left every thing covered and I don't think they'll be too wet." "Do that," said her father. "There's a big bottle rolled up in a sack," he continued; "it's in a bucket at the front of the cart by the right shaft, and there's a little sup of whisky in the big bottle." "I'll bring that too." "You're a good girl," said he. "What will I do with the ass this night?" said Mary. "Hit him a kick," said her father. CHAPTER XVIII The ass stood quietly where he had been left. Rain was pouring from him as though he were the father of rivers and supplied the world with running water. It dashed off his flanks; it leaped down his tail; it foamed over his forehead to his nose, and hit the ground from there with a thump. "I'm very wet," said the ass to himself, "and I wish I wasn't." His eyes were fixed on a brown stone that had a knob on its back. Every drop of rain that hit the stone jumped twice and then spattered to the ground. After a moment he spoke to himself again: "I don't care whether it stops raining or not, for I can't be any wetter than I am, however it goes." Having said this, he dismissed the weather and settled himself to think. He hung his head slightly and fixed his eyes afar off, and he stared distantly like that without seeing anything while he gathered and revolved his thoughts. The first thing he thought about was carrots. He thought of their shape, their colour, and the way they looked in a bucket. Some would have the thick end stuck up, and some would have the other end stuck up, and there were always bits of clay sticking to one end or the other. Some would be lying on their sides as though they had slipped quietly to sleep, and some would be standing in a slanting way as though they were leaning their backs against a wall and couldn't make up their minds what to do next. But, however they looked in the bucket, they all tasted alike, and they all tasted well. They are a companionable food; they make a pleasant, crunching noise when they are bitten, and so, when one is eating carrots, one can listen to the sound of one's eating and make a story from it. Thistles make a swishing noise when they are bitten; they have their taste. Grass does not make any noise at all; it slips dumbly to the sepulchre, and makes no sign. Bread makes no sound when it is eaten by an ass; it has an interesting taste, and it clings about one's teeth for a long time. Apples have a good smell and a joyful crunch, but the taste of sugar lasts longer in the mouth, and can be remembered for longer than anything else; it has a short, sharp crunch that is like a curse, and instantly it blesses you with the taste of it. Hay can be eaten in great mouthfuls. It has a chip and a crack at the first bite, and then it says no more. It sticks out of one's mouth like whiskers, and you can watch it with your eye while it moves to and fro according as your mouth moves. It is a friendly food, and very good for the hungry. Oats are not a food; they are a great blessing; they are a debauch; they make you proud, so that you want to kick the front out of a cart, and climb a tree, and bite a cow, and chase chickens. * * * * * Mary came running and unyoked him from the cart. She embraced him on the streaming nose. "You poor thing, you!" said she, and she took a large paper bag from the cart and held it to his muzzle. There was soft sugar in the bag, and half a pound of it clove to his tongue at the first lick. As she went back to the house with the bundle of food the ass regarded her. "You are a good girl," said the ass. He shook himself and dissipated his thoughts; then he trotted briskly here and there on the path to see if there was anything worth looking for. CHAPTER XIX They shared the food: there was little of it, and some of it was wet; but they each had a piece of bread, a knuckle of cheese, and three cold potatoes. Mary said there was something wrong with her, and she passed two of her cold potatoes to the cherub Art, who ate them easily. "I wish you had given them to me," said her father. "I'll give you one of mine," said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she thrust one across to him. Mac Cann pushed it entire into his mouth, and ate it as one who eats in a trance: he stared at Eileen. "Why did you give me your potato?" said he. Eileen blushed until not a single freckle in her face was visible. "I don't know," she answered. "You don't seem to know anything at all this day," he complained. "You're full of fun," said he. He lit his pipe, and, after pulling for a while at it, he handed it to the woman. "Take a draw at that pipe," he commanded, "and let us be decent with each other." Eileen Ni Cooley did take a draw at the pipe, but she handed it back soon. "I never was much at the smoking," said she. Caeltia had his pipe going at full blast. He was leaning against the wall with his eyes half closed, and was thinking deeply between puffs. Finaun had a good grip on Mary's hair, which he was methodically plaiting and unloosening again. He was sunken in reverie. Mary was peeping from beneath her lids at Art, and was at the same time watching everybody else to see that she was not observed. Art was whistling to himself in a low tone, and he was looking fixedly at a spider. The spider was hauling on a loose rope of his tent, and he was very leisurely. One would have thought that he was smoking also. "What did you have for dinner?" said Art to the spider. "Nothing, sir, but a little, thin, wisp of a young fly," said the spider. He was a thick-set, heavy kind of spider, and he seemed to be middle-aged, and resigned to it. "That is all I had myself," said Art. "Are the times bad with you now, or are they middling?" "Not so bad, glory be to God! The flies do wander in through the holes, and when they come from the light outside to the darkness in here, sir, we catch them on the wall, and we crunch their bones." "Do they like that?" "They do not, sir, but we do. The lad with the stout, hairy legs, down there beside your elbow, caught a blue-bottle yesterday; there was eating on that fellow, I tell you, and he's not all eaten yet, but that spider is always lucky, barring the day he caught the wasp." "That was a thing he didn't like?" queried Art. "Don't mention it to him, sir, he doesn't care to talk about it." "What way are you going to fasten up your rope?" said Art. "I'll put a spit on the end of it, and then I'll thump it with my head to make it stick." "Well, good luck to yourself." "Good luck to your honour." * * * * * Said Patsy to Caeltia, pointing to Finaun: "What does he be thinking about when he gets into them fits?" "He does be talking to the hierarchy," replied Caeltia. "And who are themselves?" "They are the people in charge of this world." "Is it the kings and the queens and the Holy Pope?" "No, they are different kinds of people." Patsy yawned. "What does he be talking to them about?" "Every kind of thing," replied Caeltia, and yawned also. "They are asking him for advice now." "What is he saying?" "He is talking about love," said Caeltia. "He is always talking about that," said Patsy. "And," said Caeltia, "he is talking about knowledge." "It's another word of his." "And he is saying that love and knowledge are the same thing." "I wouldn't put it past him," said Patsy. * * * * * For he was in a bad temper. Either the close confinement, or the dull weather, or the presence of Eileen Ni Cooley, or all of these, had made him savage. He arose and began striding through the narrow room, kicking stones from one side of the place to the other and glooming fiercely at everybody. Twice he halted before Eileen Ni Cooley, staring at her, and twice, without a word said, he resumed his marching. Suddenly he leaned his back against the wall facing her, and shouted: "Well, Eileen a grah, the man went away from you, the man with the big stick and the lengthy feet. Ah! that's a man you'd be crying out for and you all by yourself in the night." "He was a good man," said Eileen; "there was no harm in that man, Padraig." "Maybe he used to be putting his two arms around you now and then beside a hedge and giving you long kisses on the mouth?" "He used to be doing that." "Aye did he, indeed, and he wasn't the first man to do that, Eileen." "Maybe you're right, Padraig." "Nor the twenty-first." "You've got me here in the house, Padraig, and the people around us are your own friends." Caeltia also had arisen to his feet and was staring morosely at Eileen. Suddenly he leaped to her, wrenched the shawl from her head with a wide gesture, and gripped her throat between his hands; as her head touched the ground she gasped, and then, and just as suddenly, he released her. He stood up, looking wildly at Patsy, who stared back at him grinning like a madman, then he stumbled across to Finaun and took his hands between his own. "You must not hurt me, my dear," said Finaun, smiling gravely at him. Mary had leaped to Art, whose arm she took, and they backed to the end of the room. Eileen stood up; she arranged her dress and wrapped the shawl about her head again; she gazed fearlessly at Mac Cann. "The house is full of your friends, Padraig, and there's nobody here with me at all; there's no man could want better than that for himself." Patsy's voice was hoarse. "You're looking for fight?" "I'm looking for whatever is coming," she replied steadily. "I'm coming, then," he roared, and he strode to her. He lifted his hands above his head, and brought them down so heavily on her shoulders that she staggered. "Here I am," said he, staring into her face. She closed her eyes. "I knew it wasn't love you wanted, Padraig; it was murder you wanted, and you have your wish." She was swaying under his weight as she spoke; her knees were giving beneath her. "Eileen," said Patsy, in a small voice, "I'm going to tumble; I can't hold myself up, Eileen; my knees are giving way under me, and I've only got my arms round your neck." She opened her eyes and saw him sagging against her, with his eyes half closed and his face gone white. "Sure, Padraig!" said she. She flung her arms about his body and lifted him, but the weight was too much, and he went down. She crouched by him on the floor, hugging his head against her breast. "Sure, listen to me, Padraig; I never did like any one in the world but yourself; there wasn't a man of them all was more to me than a blast of wind; you were the one I liked always. Listen to me now, Padraig. Don't I be wanting you day and night, and saying prayers to you in the darkness and crying out in the dawn; my heart is sore for you, so it is: there's a twist in us, O my dear. Don't you be minding the men; whatever they did it was nothing, it was nothing more than beasts playing in a field and not caring anything. We are beside one another for a minute now. When I would put my hand on my breast in the middle of a laugh it was you I was touching, and I do never stop thinking of you in any place under the sky." They were kissing each other like lost souls; they babbled and clung to each other; they thrust one another's head back to stare at it, and pursued the head with their violent lips. * * * * * It was a time before they all got to sleep that night, but they did sleep at the end of it. They stretched in the darkness with their eyes closed, and the night folded them around, separating each one from his fellow, and putting on each the enchantment of silence and blindness. They were no longer together although they were lying but a few inches apart; there was only the darkness that had no inches to it; the darkness that has no beginning and no end; that appears and disappears, calling hush as it comes and goes, and holding peace and terror in either invisible hand; there was no silver moon in the sky and no sparkle of white stars; there was only darkness and silence and the steady hushing of the rain. * * * * * When he awoke in the morning Mac Cann rolled urgently on his elbow and stared to where Eileen Ni Cooley had stretched herself for sleep--but she was not there, she was not anywhere. He shouted, and the company sprang to their feet. "She got out through the window," he roared. "The devil damn the soul of her," said he. BOOK III BRIEN O'BRIEN CHAPTER XX They continued their travels. It would be more correct to say they continued their search for food, for that in reality was the objective of each day's journeying. Moving thus, day by day, taking practically any road that presented itself, they had wandered easily through rugged, beautiful Donegal down into Connaught. They had camped on the slopes of rough mountains, slept peacefully in deep valleys that wound round and round like a corkscrew, traversed for weeks in Connemara by the clamorous sea where they lived sumptuously on fish, and then they struck to the inland plains again, and away by curving paths to the County Kerry. At times Mac Cann got work to do--to mend a kettle that had a little hole in it, to stick a handle on a pot, to stiffen the last days of a bucket that was already long past its labour, and he did these jobs sitting in the sunlight on dusty roads, and if he did not do them Mary did them for him while he observed her critically and explained both to her and to his company the mystery of the tinker's craft. "There's a great deal," he would say, "in the twist of the hand." And again, but this usually to Art when that cherub tried his skill on a rusty pot: "You'll never make a good tinker unless you've got a hand on you. Keep your feet in your boots and get to work with your fingers." And sometimes he would nod contentedly at Mary and say: "There's a girl with real hands on her that aren't feet." Hands represented to him whatever of praiseworthy might be spoken of by a man, but feet were in his opinion rightly covered, and ought not to be discovered except in minatory conversation. One ran on them! Well, it was a dog's trade, or a donkey's; but hands! he expanded to that subject, and could loose thereon a gale of praise that would blow all other conversation across the border. They set their camp among roaring fairs where every kind of wild man and woman yelled salutation at Patsy and his daughter, and howled remembrance of ten and twenty-year old follies, and plunged into drink with the savage alacrity of those to whom despair is a fairer brother than hope, and with some of these people the next day's journey would be shared, rioting and screaming on the lonely roads, and these people also the angels observed and were friendly with. One morning they were pacing on their journey. The eyes of the little troop were actively scanning the fields on either hand. They were all hungry, for they had eaten nothing since the previous midday. But these fields were barren of food. Great stretches of grass stretched away to either horizon, and there was nothing here that could be eaten except by the donkey. As they went they saw a man sitting on a raised bank. His arms were folded; he had a straw in his mouth; there was a broad grin on his red face; a battered hat was thrust far back on his head, and from beneath this a brush of stiff hair poked in any direction like an ill-tied bundle of black wire. Mac Cann stared at that red joviality. "There's a man," said he to Caeltia, "that hasn't got a care in the world." "It must be very bad for him," commented Caeltia. "Holloa, mister," cried Patsy heartily, "how's everything?" "Everything's fine," beamed the man, "how's yourself?" "We're holding up, glory be to God!" "That's the way." He waved his hand against the horizon. "There's weather for you," and he spoke with the proud humility of one who had made that weather, but would not boast. His eye was steady on Mac Cann. "I've got a hunger on me that's worth feeding, mister." "We've all got that," replied Patsy, "and there's nothing in the cart barring its timbers. I'm keeping an eye out, tho', and maybe we'll trip over a side of bacon in the middle of the road or a neat little patch of potatoes in the next field and it full of the flowery boyoes." "There's a field a mile up this road," said the man, "and everything you could talk about is in that field." "Do you tell me!" said Patsy briskly. "I do: every kind of thing is in that field, and there's rabbits at the foot of the hill beyond it." "I used to have a good shot with a stone," said Patsy. "Mary," he continued, "when we come to the field let yourself and Art gather up the potatoes while Caeltia and myself take stones in our hands to kill the rabbits." "I'm coming along with you," said the man, "and I'll get my share." "You can do that," said Patsy. The man scrambled down the bank. There was something between his knees of which he was very careful. "What sort of a thing is that?" said Mary. "It's a concertina and I do play tunes on it before the houses, and that's how I make my money." "The musiciner will give us a tune after we get a feed," said Patsy. "Sure enough," said the man. Art stretched out his hand. "Let me have a look at the musical instrument," said he. The man handed it to him and fell into pace beside Patsy and Caeltia. Mary and Finaun were going as usual one on either side of the ass, and the three of them returned to their interrupted conversation. Every dozen paces Finaun would lean to the border of the road and pluck a fistful of prime grass or a thistle or a clutch of chickweed, and he would put these to the ass's mouth. Patsy was eyeing the man. "What's your name, mister?" said he. "I was known as Old Carolan, but now the people call me Billy the Music." "How is it that I never met you before?" "I'm from Connemara." "I know every cow-track and bohereen in Connemara, and I know every road in Donegal and Kerry, and I know everybody that's on them roads, but I don't know you, mister." The man laughed at him. "I'm not long on the roads, so how could you know me? What are you called yourself?" "I'm called Padraig Mac Cann." "I know you well, for you stole a hen and a pair of boots off me ten months ago when I lived in a house." "Do you tell me?" said Mac Cann. "I do; and I never grudged them to you, for that was the day that everything happened to me." Mac Cann was searching his head to find from whom he had stolen a hen and a pair of boots at the one time. "Well, glory be to God!" he cried. "Isn't it the queer world! Are you old Carolan, the miserly man of Temple Cahill?" The man laughed and nodded. "I used to be him, but now I'm Billy the Music, and there's my instrument under the boy's oxter." Patsy stared at him. "And where's the house and the cattle, and the hundred acres of grass land and glebe, and the wife that people said you used to starve the stomach out of?" "Faith, I don't know where they are, and I don't care either," and he shook with the laughter as he said it. "And your sister that killed herself climbing out of a high window on a windy night to search for food among the neighbours?" "She's dead still," said the man, and he doubled up with glee. "I declare," said Patsy, "that it's the end of the world." The man broke on his eloquence with a pointed finger. "There's the field I was telling you about and it's weighty to the ribs with potatoes and turnips." Patsy turned to his daughter. "Gather in the potatoes; don't take them all from the one place, but take them from here and there the way they won't be missed, and then go along the road with the cart for twenty minutes and be cooking them. Myself and Caeltia will catch up on you in a little time and we'll bring good meat with us." Caeltia and he moved to the right where a gentle hill rose against the sky. The hill was thickly wooded, massive clumps of trees were dotted every little distance, and through these one could see quiet, green spaces drowsing in the sun. When they came to the fringing trees Patsy directed his companion to go among them some little distance and then to charge here and there, slashing against the trees and the ground with a stick. Caeltia did that, and at the end of a quarter of an hour Patsy had three rabbits stretched under his hand. "That's good enough," he called; "we'll go on now after the people." They stowed the rabbits under their coats and took the road. They soon caught on their companions. The cart was drawn to the side of the road, at a little distance the ass was browsing, and Mary had a fire going in the brazier and the potatoes ready for the pot. Patsy tossed the rabbits to her. "There you are, my girl," said he, and, with Caeltia, he sank down on the grassy margin of the road and drew out his pipe. The strange man was sitting beside Art, to whom he was explaining the mechanism of a concertina. "While we are waiting," said Patsy to him, "you can tell us all the news; tell us what happened to the land and what you're doing on the road; and there is a bit of twist to put in your pipe so that you'll talk well." Mary broke in: "Wait a minute now, for I want to hear that story; let yourself help me over with the brazier and we can all sit together." There was a handle to the bucket and through this they put a long stick and lifted all bodily to the butt of the hedge. "Now we can sit together," said Mary, "and I can be cooking the food and listening to the story at the same time." "I'd sooner give you a tune on the concertina," said Billy the Music. "You can do that afterwards," replied Patsy. CHAPTER XXI "I'll tell you the story," said Billy the Music, "and here it is: "A year ago I had a farm in the valley. The sun shone into it, and the wind didn't blow into it for it was well sheltered, and the crops that I used to take off that land would astonish you. "I had twenty head of cattle eating the grass, and they used to get fat quick and they used to give good milk into the bargain. I had cocks and hens for the eggs and the market, and there was a good many folk would have been glad to get my farm. "There were ten men always working on the place, but at harvest-time there would be a lot more, and I used to make them work too. Myself and my son and my wife's brother (a lout, that fellow!) used to run after the men, but it was hard to keep up with them, for they were great schemers. They tried to do as little work as ever they were able, and they tried to get as much money out of me as they could manage. But I was up to them lads, and it's mighty little they got out of me without giving twice as much for it. "Bit by bit I weeded out the men until at last I only had the ones I wanted, the tried and trusty men. They were a poor lot, and they didn't dare to look back at me when I looked at them; but they were able to work, and that is all I wanted them to do, and I saw that they did it. "As I'm sitting beside you on this bank to-day I'm wondering why I took all the trouble I did take, and what, in the name of this and that, I expected to get out of it all. I usen't go to bed until twelve o'clock at night, and I would be up in the dawn before the birds. Five o'clock in the morning never saw me stretching in the warm bed, and every day I would root the men out of their sleep; often enough I had to throw them out of bed, for there wasn't a man of them but would have slept rings round the clock if he got the chance. "Of course I knew that they didn't want to work for me, and that, bating the hunger, they'd have seen me far enough before they'd lift a hand for my good; but I had them by the hasp, for as long as men have to eat, any man with the food can make them do whatever he wants them to do; wouldn't they stand on their heads for twelve hours a day if you gave them wages? Aye would they, and eighteen hours if you held them to it. "I had the idea too that they were trying to rob me, and maybe they were. It doesn't seem to matter now whether they robbed me or not, for I give you my word that the man who wants to rob me to-day is welcome to all he can get and more if I had it." "Faith, you're the kind man!" said Patsy. "Let that be," said Billy the Music. "The secret of the thing was that I loved money, hard money, gold and silver pieces, and pieces of copper. I liked it better than the people who were round me. I liked it better than the cattle and the crops. I liked it better than I liked myself, and isn't that the queer thing? I put up with the silliest ways for it, and I lived upside down and inside out for it. I tell you I would have done anything just to get money, and when I paid the men for their labour I grudged them every penny that they took from me. "It did seem to me that in taking my metal they were surely and openly robbing me and laughing at me as they did it. I saw no reason why they shouldn't have worked for me for nothing, and if they had I would have grudged them the food they ate and the time they lost in sleeping, and that's another queer thing, mind you!" "If one of them men," said Patsy solemnly, "had the spunk of a wandering goat or a mangy dog he'd have taken a graipe to yourself, mister, and he'd have picked your soul out of your body and slung it on a dung-heap." "Don't be thinking," replied the other, "that men are courageous and fiery animals, for they're not, and every person that pays wages to men knows well that they're as timid as sheep and twice as timid. Let me tell you too that all the trouble wasn't on their side; I had a share of it and a big share." Mac Cann interrupted solemnly-- "That's what the fox told the goose when the goose said that the teeth hurted him. 'Look at the trouble I had to catch you,' said the fox." "We won't mind that," said Billy the Music. "I was hard put to it to make the money. I was able to knock a good profit out of the land and the beasts and the men that worked for me; and then, when I came to turn the profit into solid pieces, I found that there was a world outside of my world, and it was truly bent on robbing me, and, what's more, it had thought hard for generations about the best way of doing it. It had made its scheme so carefully that I was as helpless among them people as the labourers were with me. Oh! they got me, and they squeezed me, and they marched off smiling with the heaviest part of my gain, and they told me to be a bit more polite or they'd break me into bits, and I was polite too. Ah! there's a big world outside the little world, and maybe there's a bigger world outside that, and grindstones in it for all the people that are squeezers in their own place. "The price I thought fair for the crop was never the price I got from the jobbers. If I sold a cow or a horse I never got as much as half of what I reckoned on. There were rings and cliques in the markets everywhere, and they knew how to manage me. It was they who got more than half the money I made, and they had me gripped so that I couldn't get away. It was for these people I used to be out of bed at twelve o'clock at night and up again before the fowl were done snoring, and it was for them I tore the bowels out of my land, and hazed and bedevilled every man and woman and dog that came in sight of me, and when I thought of these market-men with their red jowls and their 'take it or leave it' I used to get so full of rage that I could hardly breathe. "I had to take it because I couldn't afford to leave it, and then I'd go home again trying to cut it finer, trying to skin an extra chance profit off the land and workers, and I do wonder now that the men didn't try to kill me or didn't commit suicide. Aye, I wonder that I didn't commit suicide myself by dint of the rage and greed and weariness that was my share of life day and night. "I got the money anyhow, and, sure enough, the people must have thought I was the devil's self; but it was little I cared what they thought, for the pieces were beginning to mount up in the box, and one fine day the box got so full that not another penny-piece could have been squeezed sideways into it, so I had to make a new box, and it wasn't so long until I made a third box and a fourth one, and I could see the time coming when I would be able to stand in with the market-men, and get a good grip on whatever might be going." "How much did you rob in all?" said Patsy. "I had all of two thousand pounds." "That's a lot of money, I'm thinking." "It is so, and it took a lot of getting, and there was twenty damns went into the box with every one of the yellow pieces." "A damn isn't worth a shilling," said Patsy. "You can have them from me at two for a ha'penny, and there's lots of people would give them to yourself for nothing, you rotten old robber of the world! And if I had the lump of twist back that I gave you a couple of minutes ago I'd put it in my pocket, so I would, and I'd sit on it." "Don't forget that you're talking about old things," said Billy the Music. "If I was one of your men," shouted Patsy, "you wouldn't have treated me that way." Billy the Music smiled happily at him. "Wouldn't I?" said he, with his head on one side. "You would not," said Patsy, "for I'd have broken your skull with a spade." "If you had been one of my men," the other replied mildly, "you'd have been as tame as a little kitten; you'd have crawled round me with your hat in your hand and your eyes turned up like a dying duck's, and you'd have said, 'Yes, sir,' and 'No, sir,' like the other men that I welted the stuffing out of with my two fists, and broke the spirits of with labour and hunger. Don't be talking now, for you're an ignorant man in these things, although you did manage to steal a clocking hen off me the day I was busy." "And a pair of good boots," said Patsy triumphantly. "Do you want to hear the rest of the story?" "I do so," said Patsy; "and I take back what I said about the tobacco; here's another bit of it for your pipe." "Thank you kindly," replied Billy. He shook the ashes from his pipe, filled it, and continued his tale. "On the head of all these things a wonderful thing happened to me." "That's the way to start," said Patsy approvingly. "You're a good story-teller, mister." "It isn't so much that," replied Billy, "but it's a good story and a wonderful story." "The potatoes are nearly done, Mary, a grah?" "They'll be done in a short while." "Hold your story for a few minutes until we eat the potatoes and a few collops of the rabbits, for I tell you that I'm drooping with the hunger." "I didn't eat anything myself," replied Billy, "since the middle of yesterday, and the food there has a smell to it that's making me mad." "It's not quite done yet," said Mary. "It's done enough," replied her father. "Aren't you particular this day! Pull them over here and share them round, and don't be having the men dying on your hands." Mary did so, and for five minutes there was no sound except that of moving jaws, and by that time there was no more food in sight. "Ah!" said Patsy with a great sigh. "Aye, indeed!" said Billy the Music with another sigh. "Put on more of the potatoes now," Patsy commanded his daughter, "and be cooking them against the time this story will be finished." "I wish I had twice as much as I had," said Art. "You got twice as much as me," cried Patsy angrily, "for I saw the girl giving it to you." "I'm not complaining," replied Art; "I'm only stating a fact." "That's all right," said Patsy. The pipes were lit, and all eyes turned to Billy the Music. Patsy leaned back on his elbow, and blew his cloud. "Now we'll have the rest of the story," said he. CHAPTER XXII "This," continued Billy the Music, "is the wonderful thing that happened to me. "Bit by bit I got fonder of the money. The more I got of it the more I wanted. I used to go away by myself to look at it and handle it and count it. I didn't store it all in the house; I only kept enough there to make the people think it was all there, and as every one was watching that and watching each other (for they all wanted to steal it) it was safe enough. "They didn't know it was mostly copper was in that box, but copper it was, and some silver that I couldn't fit into the other boxes. "There was a place at the end of the big barn, just underneath the dog's kennel--maybe you remember my dog, Patsy?" "A big black-and-white snarly devil of a bull-terrier?" said Patsy, thoughtfully. "That's him." "I remember him well," said Patsy. "I fed him once." "You poisoned him," said Billy the Music quickly. "That's a hard word to say," replied Patsy, scraping at his chin. Billy the Music looked very fixedly at him, and he also scraped meditatively at his bristles. "It doesn't matter now," said he. "That was the dog. I made a place under his kennel. It was well made. If you had pulled the kennel aside you'd have seen nothing but the floor. Down there I kept the three boxes of gold, and while I'd be looking at them the dog would be lurching around wondering why he wasn't allowed to eat people--I was a bit timid with that dog myself--and it was one day while I was handling the money that the thing happened. "There came a thump on the barn door. The dog made a noise away down in the heel of his throat and loped across; he stuck his nose against the crack at the bottom and began to sniff and scratch. "'Strangers there,' said I. I put the money away quietly, lifted the kennel back to its place, and went over to open the door. "There were two men standing outside, and the dog sprang for one of them as if he had been shot out of a gun. "But that man was quick. He took the beast on the jump, caught him by the chaps, and slung him with a heave of his arm. I don't know where he slung him to; I never saw the dog alive after that, and I did think it was that jerk killed him." "Begor!" said Patsy. "It must have been within half an hour or so that you gave him the poisoned meat, Patsy." "It was a lengthy mutton bone," murmured Mac Cann. "Whatever it was!" said Billy the Music. "The men walked in, they shut the barn door behind them and locked it, for the key was inside whenever I was. "Well! I always had the use of my hands and my feet and my teeth, but I had no chance there, so in a few minutes I sat down on the kennel to get my breath back and to mop up the blood that was teeming out of my nose. The two men, I will say, were very quiet with it all--they waited for me. "One of them was a middle-sized block of a man, and he looked as if his head had been rolled in tar--" "Eh!" said Patsy loudly. "The other one was a big, young man with a girl's face; he had blue eyes and curls of gold, and he was wearing a woman's skirt--the raggedest old----" "Begor!" cried Patsy, and he leaped furiously to his feet. "What's wrong with you?" said Billy the Music. Patsy beat his fists together. "I've been looking for that pair of playboys for a full year," he barked. "Do you know them?" said Billy the Music, with equal excitement. "I don't know them, but I met them, and the girl yonder met them too, the thieves!" "They are a pair of dirty dogs," said Mary coldly. "And when I do meet them," said Patsy savagely, "I'll kill the pair of them: I will so. Billy the Music laughed. "I wouldn't try killing them lads; I did try it once, but they wouldn't let me. Tell us what they did to yourself, and then I'll go on with my story, for I'm real curious about those two." Mac Cann put his pipe into his pocket. CHAPTER XXIII Said Patsy: "There isn't very much to tell, but this is how it happened. "About two weeks before your dog died myself and the girl were tramping up towards Dublin. We hadn't got the ass with us that time, for it was in pawn to a woman that peddled fish in the south-west of Connemara. She was keeping the ass and cart for us while we were away, and she was going to give us something for their loan at the heel of the season. She was an old rip, that one, for she sold the ass on us to one man and she sold the cart to another man, and we had the trouble of the world getting the pair of them together again--but that's no matter. "One morning, fresh and early, we were beating along a road that comes down from the mountains and runs away into Donnybrook. I had just picked up a little goose that I found walking along with its nose up, and I thought maybe we could sell the creature to some person in the city who wanted a goose. "We turned a bend in the road (it's a twisty district), and there I saw two men sitting on the grass on each side of the path. The two men were sitting with the full width of the road between them, and they were clean, stark, stone naked. "They hadn't got as much as a shirt; they hadn't a hat; they hadn't got anything at all on them barring their skins. "'Whoo!' said I to myself, and I caught a grip of the girl. 'We'll be taking another road,' said I, and round we sailed with the goose and all. "But the two men came after us, and what with the goose and the girl, they caught up on us too. "One of them was a bullet-headed thief and he did look as if he had been rolled in tar, and I hope he was. The other was a dandy lad that never got his hair cut since he was a mother's boy. "'Be off with the pair of you,' said I, 'ye indecent devils. What do ye want with honest folk and you in your pelt?' "The bullet-headed one was bouncing round me like a rubber ball. "'Take off your clothes, mister,' said he. "'What!' said I. "'Take off your clothes quick,' said he, 'or I'll kill you.' "So, with that I jumped into the middle of the road, and I up with the goose, and I hit that chap such a welt on the head that the goose bursted. Then the lad was into me and we went round the road like thunder and lightning till the other fellow joined in, and then Mary welted into the lot of us with a stick that she had, but they didn't mind her any more than a fly. Before you could whistle, mister, they had me stripped to the buff, and before you could whistle again they had the girl stripped, and the pair of them were going down the road as hard as ever they could pelt with our clothes under their oxters." "Begor!" said Billy the Music. "I tell you so," grinned Patsy. "There was herself and myself standing in the middle of the road with nothing to cover our nakedness but a bursted goose." "That was the queer sight," said Billy the Music looking thoughtfully at Mary. "You keep your eyes to yourself, mister," said Mary hotly. "What did you do then?" said Billy. "We sat down on the side of the road for a long time until we heard footsteps and then we hid ourselves. "I peeped over the hedge and there was a man coming along the path. He was a nice-looking man with a black bag in his hand and he was walking fast. When he came exactly opposite me I jumped the hedge and I took the clothes off him--" Billy the Music slapped his palm on his knee. "You did so!" "I did so," said Patsy. "He was grumbling all the time, but as soon as I let him loose he started to run, and that was the last I saw of him. "After a bit a woman came along the road, and Mary took the clothes off her. She was a quiet, poor soul, and she didn't say a word to either of us. We left her the goose and the man's black bag for payment, and then the pair of us started off, and we didn't stop running till we came to the County Kerry. "These are the clothes I'm telling you about," said Patsy; "I have them on me this minute." "It's a great story," said Billy the Music. "I can tell you something further about these people," said Caeltia smiling. "Can you so?" cried Patsy. "I can, but the man here hasn't finished what he was telling us." "I was forgetting him," said Mac Cann. "Put another pinch in your pipe, mister, and tell us what happened to you after that." CHAPTER XXIV Billy the Music did put another pinch of tobacco into his pipe, and after drawing on it meditatively for a few minutes he snuffed it out with his thumb and put it into his pocket. Naturally he put it in upside down, so that the tobacco might drop from the pipe, for he was no longer a saving man. "They were surely the two men that I'm telling you about," said he, "and there they were standing up in front of me while I was sneezing the blood out of my nose. "'What do you want?' said I to themselves, and all the time I was peeping here and there to see if there wasn't a bit of a stick or a crowbar maybe lying handy. "It was the boyo in the skirt that answered me: "'I wanted to have a look at yourself,' said he. "'Take your eye-full and go away, for God's sake,' said I. "'You dirty thief!' said he to me. "'What's that for?' said I. "'What do you mean by getting me thrown out of heaven?' said he. "...! Well, mister honey, that was a question to worry any man, and it worried me. I couldn't think what to say to him. 'Begor!' said I, and I sneezed out some more of my blood. "But the lad was stamping mad. "'If I could blot you from the light of life without doing any hurt to myself, I'd smash you this mortal minute,' said he. "'For the love of heaven,' said I, 'tell me what I did to yourself, for I never did see you before this day, and I wish I didn't see you now.' "The bullet-headed man was standing by all the time, and he chewing tobacco. "'Have it out with him, Cuchulain,' said he. 'Kill him,' said he, 'and send him out among the spooks.' "But the other man calmed down a bit, and he came over to me wagging the girl's skirts. "'Listen!' said he, 'I'm the Seraph Cuchulain.' "'Very good,' said I. "'I'm your Guardian Angel,' said he. "'Very good,' said I. "'I'm your Higher Self,' said he, 'and every rotten business you do down here does be vibrating against me up there. You never did anything in your life that wasn't rotten. You're a miser and a thief, and you got me thrown out of heaven because of the way you loved money. You seduced me when I wasn't looking. You made a thief of me in a place where it's no fun to be a robber, and here I am wandering the dirty world on the head of your unrighteous ways. Repent, you beast,' said he, and he landed me a clout on the side of the head that rolled me from one end of the barn to the other. "'Give him another one,' said the bullet-headed man, and he chewing strongly on his plug. "'What have you got to do with it?' said I to him. 'You're not my Guardian Angel, God help me!' "'How dare you,' said the bullet-headed man. 'How dare you set this honest party stealing the last threepenny bit of a poor man?' and with that he made a clout at me. "'What threepenny bit are you talking about?' said I. "'My own threepenny bit,' said he. 'The only one I had. The one I dropped outside the gates of hell.' "Well, that beat me! 'I don't care what you say any longer,' said I, 'you can talk till you're blue and I won't care what you say,' and down I sat on the kennel and shed my blood. "'You must repent of your own free will,' said Cuchulain, marching to the door. "'And you'd better hurry up, too,' said the other fellow, 'or I'll hammer the head off you.' "The queer thing is that I believed every word the man said. I didn't know what he was talking about, but I did know that he was talking about something that was real although it was beyond me. And there was the way he said it too, for he spoke like a bishop, with fine, shouting words that I can't remember now, and the months gone past. I took him at his word anyhow, and on the minute I began to feel a different creature, for, mind you, a man can no more go against his Guardian Angel than he can climb a tree backwards. "As they were going out of the barn Cuchulain turned to me: "'I'll help you to repent,' said he, 'for I want to get back again, and this is the way I'll help you. I'll give you money, and I'll give you piles of it.' "The two of them went off then, and I didn't venture out of the barn for half-an-hour. * * * * * "I went into the barn next day, and what do you think I saw?" "The floor was covered with gold pieces," said Patsy. Billy nodded: "That's what I saw. I gathered them up and hid them under the kennel. There wasn't room for the lot of them, so I rolled the rest in a bit of a sack and covered them up with cabbages. "The next day I went in and the floor was covered with gold pieces, and I swept them up and hid them under the cabbages too. The day after that and the next day and the day after that again it was the same story. I didn't know where to put the money. I had to leave it lying on the floor, and I hadn't as much as a dog to guard it from the robbers." "You had not," said Patsy, "and that's the truth." "I locked the barn; then I called up all the men; I paid them their wages, for what did I want with them any longer and I rolling in gold? I told them to get out of my sight, and I saw every man of them off the land. Then I told my wife's brother that I didn't want him in my house any longer, and I saw him off the land. Then I argued my son out of the house, and I told my wife that she could go with him if she wanted to, and then I went back to the barn. "But, as I told you a minute ago, I was a changed man. The gold was mounting up on me, and I didn't know what to do with it. I could have rolled in it if I wanted to, and I did roll in it, but there was no fun in that. "This was the trouble with me--I couldn't count it; it had gone beyond me; there were piles of it; there were stacks of it; it was four feet deep all over the floor, and I could no more move it than I could move a house. "I never wanted that much money, for no man could want it: I only wanted what I could manage with my hands; and the fear of robbers was on me to that pitch that I could neither sit nor stand nor sleep. "Every time I opened the door the place was fuller than it was the last time, and, at last, I got to hate the barn. I just couldn't stand the look of the place, and the light squinting at me from thousands and thousands of gold corners. "It beat me at last. One day I marched into the house, and I picked up the concertina that my son bought (I was able to play it well myself) and said I to the wife: "'I'm off.' "'Where are you off?' "'I'm going into the world.' "'What will become of the farm?' "'You can have it yourself,' said I, and with that I stepped clean out of the house and away to the road. I didn't stop walking for two days, and I never went back from that day to this. "I do play on the concertina before the houses, and the people give me coppers. I travel from place to place every day, and I'm as happy as a bird on a bough, for I've no worries and I worry no one." "What did become of the money?" said Patsy. "I'm thinking now that it might have been fairy gold, and, if it was, nobody could touch it." "So," said Mac Cann, "that's the sort of boys they were?" "That's the sort." "And one of them was your own Guardian Angel!" "He said that." "And what was the other one?" "I don't know, but I do think that he was a spook." Patsy turned to Finaun: "Tell me, mister, is that a true story now, or was the lad making it up?" "It is true," replied Finaun. Patsy considered for a moment. "I wonder," said he musingly, "who is my own Guardian Angel?" Caeltia hastily put the pipe into his pocket. "I am," said he. "Oh, bedad!" Mac Cann placed his hands on his knees and laughed heartily. "You are! and I making you drunk every second night in the little pubs!" "You never made me drunk." "I did not, for you've got a hard head surely, but there's a pair of us in it, mister." He was silent again, then: "I wonder who is the Guardian Angel of Eileen Ni Cooley? for he has his work cut out for him, I'm thinking." "I am her Guardian Angel," said Finaun. "Are you telling me that?" Mac Cann stared at Finaun, and he lapsed again to reverie. "Ah, well!" said he to Billy the Music, "it was a fine story you told us, mister, and queer deeds you were mixed up in; but I'd like to meet the men that took our clothes, I would so." "I can tell you something more about them," Caeltia remarked. "So you said a while back. What is it you can tell us?" "I can tell you the beginning of all that tale." "I'd like to hear it," said Billy the Music. "There is just a piece I will have to make up from what I heard since we came here, but the rest I can answer for because I was there at the time." "I remember it too," said Art to Caeltia, "and when you have told your story I'll tell another one." "Serve out the potatoes, Mary," said Mac Cann, "and then you can go on with the story. Do you think is that ass all right, alannah?" "He's eating the grass still, but I think he may be wanting a drink." "He had a good drink yesterday," said her father, and he shifted to a more comfortable position. CHAPTER XXV Said Caeltia: "When Brien O'Brien died people said that it did not matter very much because he would have died young in any case. He would have been hanged, or his head would have been split in two halves with a hatchet, or he would have tumbled down the cliff when he was drunk and been smashed into jelly. Something like that was due to him, and everybody likes to see a man get what he deserves to get. "But, as ethical writs cease to run when a man is dead, the neighbours did not stay away from his wake. They came, and they said many mitigating things across the body with the bandaged jaws and the sly grin, and they reminded each other of this and that queer thing which he had done, for his memory was crusted over with stories of wild, laughable things, and other things which were wild but not laughable. "Meanwhile he was dead, and one was at liberty to be a trifle sorry for him. Further, he belonged to the O'Brien nation--a stock to whom reverence was due. A stock not easily forgotten. The historic memory could reconstruct forgotten glories of station and battle, of terrible villainy and terrible saintliness, the pitiful, valorous, slow descent to the degradation which was not yet wholly victorious. A great stock! The O'Neills remembered it. The O'Tools and the Mac Sweeneys had stories by the hundred of love and hate. The Burkes and the Geraldines and the new strangers had memories also. "His family was left in the poorest way, but they were used to that, for he had kept them as poor as he left them, or found them, for that matter. They had shaken hands with Charity so often that they no longer disliked the sallow-faced lady, and so certain small gifts made by the neighbours were accepted, not very thankfully, but very readily. These gifts were almost always in kind. A few eggs. A bag of potatoes. A handful of meal. A couple of twists of tea--such like. "One of the visitors, however, moved by an extraordinary dejection, slipped a silver threepenny-piece into the hand of Brien's little daughter, Sheila, aged four years, and later on she did not like to ask for it back again. "Little Sheila had been well trained by her father. She knew exactly what should be done with money, and so, when nobody was looking, she tip-toed to the coffin and slipped the threepenny-piece into Brien's hand. That hand had never refused money when it was alive, it did not reject it either when it was dead. "They buried him the next day. "He was called up for judgment the day after, and made his appearance with a miscellaneous crowd of wretches, and there he again received what was due to him. He was removed, protesting and struggling, to the place decreed: "'Down,' said Rhadamanthus, pointing with his great hand, and down he went. "In the struggle he dropped the threepenny-piece, but he was so bustled and heated that he did not observe his loss. He went down, far down, out of sight, out of remembrance, to a howling black gulf with others of his unseen kind. "A young seraph, named Cuchulain, chancing to pass that way shortly afterwards, saw the threepenny-piece peeping brightly from the rocks, and he picked it up. "He looked at it in astonishment. He turned it over and over, this way and that way. Examined it at the stretch of his arm, and peered minutely at it from two inches distance. "'I have never in my life seen anything so beautifully wrought,' said he, and, having stowed it in his pouch along with some other trinkets, he strolled homewards again through the massy gates. "It was not long until Brien discovered his loss, and suddenly, through the black region, his voice went mounting and brawling. "'I have been robbed,' he yelled. 'I have been robbed in heaven!' "Having begun to yell he did not stop. Sometimes he was simply angry and made a noise. Sometimes he became sarcastic and would send his query swirling upwards. "'Who stole the threepenny-bit?' he roared. He addressed the surrounding black space: "'Who stole the last threepenny-bit of a poor man?' "Again and again his voice pealed upwards. The pains of his habitation lost all their sting for him. His mind had nourishment, and the heat within him vanquished the fumes without. He had a grievance, a righteous cause, he was buoyed and strengthened, nothing could silence him. They tried ingenious devices, all kinds of complicated things, but he paid no heed, and the tormentors were in despair. "'I hate these sinners from the kingdom of Kerry,' said the Chief Tormentor, and he sat moodily down on his own circular saw; and that worried him also, for he was clad only in a loin-cloth. "'I hate the entire Clann of the Gael,' said he; 'why cannot they send them somewhere else?' and then he started practising again on Brien. "It was no use. Brien's query still blared upwards like the sound of the great trump itself. It wakened and rung the rocky caverns, screamed through fissure and funnel, and was battered and slung from pinnacle to crag and up again. Worse! his companions in doom became interested and took up the cry, until at last the uproar became so appalling that the Master himself could not stand it. "'I have not had a wink of sleep for three nights,' said that harassed one, and he sent a special embassy to the powers. "Rhadamanthus was astonished when they arrived. His elbow was leaning on his vast knee, and his heavy head rested on a hand that was acres long, acres wide. "'What is all this about?' said he. "'The Master cannot go to sleep,' said the spokesman of the embassy, and he grinned as he said it, for it sounded queer even to himself. "'It is not necessary that he should sleep,' said Rhadamanthus. 'I have never slept since time began, and I will never sleep until time is over. But the complaint is curious. What has troubled your master?' "'Hell is turned upside down and inside out,' said the fiend. 'The tormentors are weeping like little children. The principalities are squatting on their hunkers doing nothing. The orders are running here and there fighting each other. The styles are leaning against walls shrugging their shoulders, and the damned are shouting and laughing and have become callous to torment.' "'It is not my business,' said the judge. "'The sinners demand justice,' said the spokesman. "'They've got it,' said Rhadamanthus, 'let them stew in it.' "'They refuse to stew,' replied the spokesman, wringing his hands. "Rhadamanthus sat up. "'It is an axiom in law,' said he, 'that however complicated an event may be, there can never be more than one person at the extreme bottom of it. Who is the person?' "'It is one Brien of the O'Brien nation, late of the kingdom of Kerry. A bad one! He got the maximum punishment a week ago.' "For the first time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed. He scratched his head, and it was the first time he had ever done that either. "'You say he got the maximum,' said Rhadamanthus, 'then it's a fix! I have damned him for ever, and better or worse than that cannot be done. It is none of my business,' said he angrily, and he had the deputation removed by force. "But that did not ease the trouble. The contagion spread until ten million billions of voices were chanting in unison, and uncountable multitudes were listening between their pangs. "'Who stole the threepenny-bit? Who stole the threepenny-bit?' "That was still their cry. Heaven rang with it as well as hell. Space was filled with that rhythmic tumult. Chaos and empty Nox had a new discord added to their elemental throes. Another memorial was drafted below, showing that unless the missing coin was restored to its owner hell would have to close its doors. There was a veiled menace in the memorial also, for Clause 6 hinted that if hell was allowed to go by the board heaven might find itself in some jeopardy thereafter. "The document was despatched and considered. In consequence a proclamation was sent through all the wards of Paradise, calling on whatever person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, had found a threepenny-piece since mid-day of the tenth August then instant, that the same person, archangel, seraph, cherub, or acolyte, should deliver the said threepenny-piece to Rhadamanthus at his Court, and should receive in return a free pardon and a receipt. "The coin was not delivered. * * * * * "The young seraph, Cuchulain, walked about like a person who was strange to himself. He was not tormented: he was angry. He frowned, he cogitated and fumed. He drew one golden curl through his fingers until it was lank and drooping; save the end only, that was still a ripple of gold. He put the end in his mouth and strode moodily chewing it. And every day his feet turned in the same direction--down the long entrance boulevard, through the mighty gates, along the strip of carved slabs, to that piled wilderness where Rhadamanthus sat monumentally. "Here delicately he went, sometimes with a hand outstretched to help his foothold, standing for a space to think ere he jumped to a farther rock, balancing himself for a moment ere he leaped again. So he would come to stand and stare gloomily upon the judge. "He would salute gravely, as was meet, and say, 'God bless the work'; but Rhadamanthus never replied, save by a nod, for he was very busy. "Yet the judge did observe him, and would sometimes heave ponderous lids to where he stood, and so, for a few seconds, they regarded each other in an interval of that unceasing business. "Sometimes for a minute or two the young seraph Cuchulain would look from the judge to the judged as they crouched back or strained forward, the good and the bad all in the same tremble of fear, all unknowing which way their doom might lead. They did not look at each other. They looked at the judge high on his ebon throne, and they could not look away from him. There were those who knew, guessed clearly their doom; abashed and flaccid they sat, quaking. There were some who were uncertain--rabbit-eyed these, not less quaking than the others, biting at their knuckles as they peeped upwards. There were those hopeful, yet searching fearfully backwards in the wilderness of memory, chasing and weighing their sins; and these last, even when their bliss was sealed and their steps set on an easy path, went faltering, not daring to look around again, their ears strained to catch a--'Halt, miscreant! this other is your way!' "So, day by day, he went to stand near the judge; and one day Rhadamanthus, looking on him more intently, lifted his great hand and pointed: "'Go you among those to be judged,' said he. "For Rhadamanthus knew. It was his business to look deep into the heart and the mind, to fish for secrets in the pools of being, "And the young seraph Cuchulain, still rolling his golden curl between his lips, went obediently forward and set down his nodding plumes between two who whimpered and stared and quaked. "When his turn came, Rhadamanthus eyed him intently for a long time: "'Well!' said Rhadamanthus. "The young seraph Cuchulain blew the curl of gold from his lips: "'Findings are keepings,' said he loudly, and he closed his mouth and stared very impertinently at the judge. "'It is to be given up,' said the judge. "'Let them come and take it from me,' said the seraph Cuchulain. And suddenly (for these things are at the will of spirits) around his head the lightnings span, and his hands were on the necks of thunders. "For the second time in his life Rhadamanthus was disturbed, again he scratched his head: "'It's a fix,' said he moodily. But in a moment he called to those whose duty it was: "'Take him to this side,' he roared. "And they advanced. But the seraph Cuchulain swung to meet them, and his golden hair blazed and shrieked; and the thunders rolled at his feet, and about him a bright network that hissed and stung--and those who advanced turned haltingly backwards and ran screaming. "'It's a fix,' said Rhadamanthus; and for a little time he stared menacingly at the seraph Cuchulain. "But only for a little time. Suddenly he put his hands on the rests of his throne and heaved upwards his terrific bulk. Never before had Rhadamanthus stood from his ordained chair. He strode mightily forward and in an instant had quelled that rebel. The thunders and lightnings were but moonbeams and dew on that stony carcass. He seized the seraph Cuchulain, lifted him to his breast as one lifts a sparrow, and tramped back with him: "'Fetch me that other,' said he sternly, and he sat down. "Those whose duty it was sped swiftly downwards to find Brien of the O'Brien nation; and while they were gone, all in vain the seraph Cuchulain crushed flamy barbs against that bosom of doom. Now, indeed, his golden locks were drooping and his plumes were broken and tossed; but his fierce eye still glared courageously against the nipple of Rhadamanthus. "Soon they brought Brien. He was a sight of woe--howling, naked as a tree in winter, black as a tarred wall, carved and gashed, tattered in all but his throat, wherewith, until one's ears rebelled, he bawled his one demand. "But the sudden light struck him to a wondering silence, and the sight of the judge holding the seraph Cuchulain like a limp flower to his breast held him gaping. "'Bring him here,' said Rhadamanthus. "And they brought him to the steps of the throne. "'You have lost a medal!' said Rhadamanthus. 'This one has it.' "Brien looked straitly at the seraph Cuchulain. "Rhadamanthus stood again, whirled his arm in an enormous arc, jerked, and let go, and the seraph Cuchulain went swirling through space like a slung stone. "'Go after him, Kerryman' said Rhadamanthus, stooping; and he seized Brien by the leg, whirled him wide and out and far; dizzy, dizzy as a swooping comet, and down, and down, and down. "Rhadamanthus seated himself. He motioned with his hand. "'Next,' said he coldly. "Down went the seraph Cuchulain, swirling in wide tumbles, scarcely visible for quickness. Sometimes, with outstretched hands, he was a cross that dropped plumb. Anon, head urgently downwards, he dived steeply. Again, like a living hoop, head and heels together, he spun giddily. Blind, deaf, dumb, breathless, mindless; and behind him Brien of the O'Brien nation came pelting and whizzing. "What of that journey? Who could give it words? Of the suns that appeared and disappeared like winkling eyes. Comets that shone for an instant, went black and vanished. Moons that came, and stood, and were gone. And around all, including all, boundless space, boundless silence; the black unmoving void--the deep, unending quietude, through which they fell with Saturn and Orion, and mildly-smiling Venus, and the fair, stark-naked moon, and the decent earth wreathed in pearl and blue. From afar she appeared, the quiet one, all lonely in the void. As sudden as a fair face in a crowded street. Beautiful as the sound of falling waters. Beautiful as the sound of music in a silence. Like a white sail on a windy sea. Like a green tree in a solitary place. Chaste and wonderful she appeared. Flying afar. Flying aloft like a joyous bird when the morning breaks on the darkness and he shrills sweet tidings. She soared and sang. Gently she sang to timid pipes and flutes of tender straw and murmuring, distant strings. A song that grew and swelled, gathering to a multitudinous, deep-thundered harmony, until the overburdened ear failed before the appalling uproar of her ecstasy, and denounced her. No longer a star! No longer a bird! A plumed and horned fury! Gigantic, gigantic, leaping and shrieking tempestuously, spouting whirlwinds of lightning, tearing gluttonously along her path, avid, rampant, howling with rage and terror she leaped, dreadfully she leaped and flew.... * * * * * "Enough! They hit the earth--they were not smashed, there was that virtue in them. They hit the ground just outside the village of Donnybrook where the back road runs to the hills; and scarcely had they bumped twice when Brien of the O'Brien nation had the seraph Cuchulain by the throat. "'My threepenny-bit,' he roared, with one fist up. "But the seraph Cuchulain only laughed: "'That!' said he. 'Look at me, man. Your little medal dropped far beyond the rings of Saturn.' "And Brien stood back looking at him--He was as naked as Brien was. He was as naked as a stone, or an eel, or a pot, or a new-born babe. He was very naked. "So Brien of the O'Brien nation strode across the path and sat down by the side of a hedge: "'The first man that passes this way,' said he, 'will give me his clothes, or I'll strangle him.' "The seraph Cuchulain walked over to him: "'I will take the clothes of the second man that passes,' said he, and he sat down." CHAPTER XXVI "And then," said Mac Cann thoughtfully, "we came along, and they stole our clothes." "That wasn't a bad tale," he continued to Caeltia. "You are as good a story-teller, mister, as the man himself," pointing to Billy the Music. Billy replied modestly: "It's because the stories were good ones that they were well told, for that's not my trade, and what wonder would it be if I made a botch of it? I'm a musician myself, as I told you, and there's my instrument, but I knew an old man in Connaught one time, and he was a great lad for the stories. He used to make his money at it, and if that man was to break off in the middle of a tale the people would stand up and kill him, they would so. He was a gifted man, for he would tell you a story about nothing at all, and you'd listen to him with your mouth open and you afraid that he would come to the end of it soon, and maybe it would be nothing more than the tale of how a white hen laid a brown egg. He would tell you a thing you knew all your life, and you would think it was a new thing. There was no old age in that man's mind, and that's the secret of story-telling." Said Mary: "I could listen to a story for a day and a night." Her father nodded acquiescence: "So could I, if it was a good story and well told, and I would be ready to listen to another one after that." He turned to Art: "You were saying yourself, sonny, that there was a story in your head, and if that's so, now is your chance to tell it; but I'm doubting you'll be able to do it as well as the two men here, for you are a youngster, and story-telling is an old man's trade." "I'll do my best," said Art, "but I never told a story in my life, and it may not be a good one at the first attempt." "That's all right," replied Mac Cann encouragingly. "We won't be hard on you." "Sure enough," said Billy the Music, "and you've listened to the lot of us, so you will know the road." "What are you going to talk about?" said Caeltia. "I'm going to talk about Brien O'Brien, the same as the rest of you." "Did you know him too?" cried Billy. "I did." "There isn't a person doesn't know that man," growled Patsy. "Maybe," and he grinned ferociously as he said it, "maybe we'll meet him on the road and he tramping, and perhaps he will tell us a story himself." "That man could not tell a story," Finaun interrupted, "for he has no memory, and that is a thing a good story-teller ought to have." "If we meet him," said Mac Cann grimly, "I'll do something to him and he'll remember it, and it's likely that he will be able to make a story out of it too." "I only saw him once," said Art, "but when Rhadamanthus tossed him through the void I recognised his face, although so long a time had elapsed since I did see him. He is now less than he was, but he is, nevertheless, much more than I had expected he would be." "What is he now?" said Billy the Music. "He is a man." "We are all that," said Patsy, "and it isn't any trouble to us." "It was more trouble than you imagine," said Finaun. "I had expected him to be no more than one of the higher animals, or even that he might have been dissipated completely from existence." "What was he at the time you met him?" "He was a magician, and he was one of the most powerful magicians that ever lived. He was a being of the fifth round, and he had discovered many secrets." "I have known magicians," commented Finaun, "and I always found that they were fools." "Brien O'Brien destroyed himself," Art continued, "he forfeited his evolution and added treble to his karmic burden because he had not got a sense of humour." "No magician has a sense of humour," remarked Finaun, "he could not be a magician if he had--Humour is the health of the mind." "That," Art broke in, "is one of the things he said to me. So you see he had discovered something. He was very near to being a wise man. He was certainly a courageous man, or, perhaps, foolhardy; but he was as serious as a fog, and he could not bring himself to believe it." "Tell us the story," said Caeltia. "Here it is," said Art. CHAPTER XXVII "On a day long ago I laboured with the Army of the Voice. The first syllable of the great word had been uttered, and in far eastern space, beyond seven of the flaming wheels, I and the six sons drew the lives together and held them for the whirlwind which is the one. We were waiting for the second syllable to form the wind. "As I stood by my place holding the north in quietness, I felt a strong vibration between my hands. Something was interfering with me. I could not let go, but I looked behind me, and there I saw a man standing, and he was weaving spells. "It was a short, dark man with a little bristle of black whisker on his chin and a stiff bristle of black hair on his head. He was standing inside a double triangle having the points upwards, and there were magical signs at each point of the triangles. While I looked, he threw around him from side to side a flaming circle, and then he threw a flaming circle about him from front to back, and he span these so quickly that he was surrounded by a wall of fire. "At him, on the instant, I charged a bolt, but it could not penetrate his circles; it hit them and fell harmless, for the circles had a greater speed than my thunderbolt. "He stood so in the triangles, laughing at me and scratching his chin. "I dared not loose my hands again lest the labour of a cycle should be dissipated in an instant, and it was no use shouting to the others, for they also were holding the lives in readiness for the whirlwind which would shape them to a globe, so the man had me at his mercy. "He was working against my grip, and he had amazing power. He had somehow discovered part of the first syllable of the great word, and he was intoning this on me between giggles, but he could not destroy us, for together we were equal to the number of that syllable. "When I looked at him again he laughed at me, and what he said astonished me greatly. "'This,' said he, 'is very funny.' "I made no reply to him, being intent only on holding my grip; but I was reassured, for, although he poured on me incessantly the great sound, its effect was neutralised, for I am a number, and in totality we were the numbers; nevertheless the substance did strain and heave so powerfully that I could do no more than hold it in place. "The man spoke to me again. Said he: "'Do you not think that this is very funny?' "I made no answer for a time, and then I said: "'Who are you?' "'A name,' he replied, 'is a power; I won't give you my name although I would like to, for this is a great deed and a funny one.' "'What is your planet?' quoth I. "'I won't tell you that,' he replied; 'you might read my signs and come after me later on.' "I could not but admire the immense impertinence of his deed. "'I know your sign,' said I, 'for you have already made it three times with your hand, and there is only one planet of these systems which has evolved the fifth race, so I know your planet. Your symbol is the Mule, and Uriel is your Regent; he will be coming after you soon, so you had better go away while you have time.' "'If he comes,' said the man, 'I'll put him in a bottle, and I'll put you in a bottle too. I won't go for another while, the joke is too good, and this is only the commencement of it.' "'You will be caught by the second syllable,' I warned him. "'I'll put it in a bottle,' said he grinning at me. 'No,' he continued, 'I won't be caught, I've made my calculations, and it's not due yet a while.' "Again he poured on me the great sound until I rocked to and fro like a bush in the wind; but he could not loose my grip, for I was a part of the word. "'Why are you doing this?' I asked him. "'I'll tell you that,' he replied. "'I am two things, and I am great in each of these two things. I am a great magician, and I am a great humourist. Now, it is very easy to prove that one is a magician, for one has only to do things and then people are astonished; they are filled with fear and wonder; they fall down and worship and call one god and master. But it is not so easy to be a humourist, because in that case it is necessary to make people laugh. If a man is to be a magician it is necessary, if his art is to be appreciated, that the people around him be fools. If a person desires to be a humourist it is necessary that the people around him shall be at least as wise as he is, otherwise his humour will not be comprehended. You see my predicament! and it is a cruel one, for I cannot forego either of these ambitions--they are my karma. Laughter is purely an intellectual quality, and in my planet I have no intellectual equals: my jokes can only be enjoyed by myself, and it is of the essence of humour that one share it, or it turns to ill-health and cynicism and mental sourness. My humour cannot be shared with the people of my planet, for they are all half a round beneath me--they can never see the joke, they only see consequences, and these blind them to the rich drollery of any affair, and render me discontented and angry. My humour is too great for them, for it is not terrestrial but cosmic; it can only be appreciated by the gods, therefore, I have come out here to seek my peers and to have at least one hearty laugh with them.' "'One must laugh,' he continued, 'for laughter is the health of the mind, and I have not laughed for a crore of seasons.' "Thereupon he took up the syllable and intoned its flooding sound so that the matter beneath my hands strained against me almost unbearably. "I turned my head and stared at the little man as he laughed happily to himself and scraped his chin. "'You are a fool,' said I to that man. "The smile vanished from his face and a shade of dejection took its place. "'Is it possible, Regent, that you have no sense of humour!' said he. "'This,' I replied, 'is not humorous; it is only a practical joke; it is no more than incipient humour; there is no joke in it but only mischief, for to interfere with work is the humour of a babe or a monkey. You are a thoroughly serious person, and you will not make a joke in ten eternities; that also is in your karma.' "At these words his eyes brooded on me darkly, and an expression of real malignancy came on his face: he stamped at me from the triangles and hissed with rage. "'I'll show you something else,' said he, 'and if it doesn't make you laugh it will make everybody else who hears about it laugh for an age.' "I saw that he was meditating a personal evil to me, but I was powerless, for I could not let go my grip on the substance. "He lifted his hands against me then, but, at the moment, there came a sound, so low, so deep, it could scarcely be heard, and with equal strong intensity the sound pervaded all the spaces and brooded in every point and atom with its thrilling breath--we were about to shape to the whirlwind. "The man's hands fell, and he stared at me. "'Oh!' said he, and he said 'Oh' three times in a whisper. "The sound was the beginning of the second syllable. "'I thought I had time,' he gasped: 'my calculations were wrong.' "'The joke is against you,' said I to the man. "'What will I do?' he screamed. "'Laugh,' I replied, 'laugh at the joke.' "Already his flying circles had ceased to revolve, and their broad flame was no more than a blue flicker that disappeared even as I looked at them. He stood only in the triangles, and he was open to my vengeance. His staring, haggard eyes fell on the bolt in my hand. "'There is no need for that,' said he, and he did speak with some small dignity, 'I am caught by the sound, and there is an end to me.' "And that was true, so I did not loose my bolt. "Already his triangles were crumbling. He sank on his haunches, clasped his hands about his legs and bowed his head on his knees. I could see that he knew all was lost, and that he was making a last desperate effort to guard his entity from dissolution, and he succeeded, for, one instant before the triangles had disappeared, he had vanished, but he could not have entirely escaped the sound, that was impossible, and if he reached his planet it must have been as a life of the third round instead of the fifth to which he had attained. He had the entire of his evolution to perform over again and had, moreover, added weightily to his karmic disabilities. "I saw him no more, nor did I hear of him again until the day when Brien O'Brien was thrown from the gates, and then I knew that he and O'Brien were the same being, and that he had really escaped and was a fourth round life of the lowest globe. "Perhaps he will be heard of again, for he is an energetic and restless being to whom an environment is an enemy and to whom humour is an ambition and a mystery." * * * * * "That is the end of my story," said Art modestly. Mac Cann regarded him indulgently from a cloud of smoke: "It wasn't as good as the other ones," he remarked, "but that's not your fault, and you're young into the bargain." "He is not as young as he looks," remarked Finaun. "A good story has to be about ordinary things," continued Patsy, "but there isn't anybody could tell what your story was about." Billy the Music here broke in: "The person I would have liked to hear more of is Cuchulain, for he is my own guardian angel and it's him I'm interested in. The next time I meet him I'll ask him questions." He glanced around the circle: "Is there anybody would like to hear a tune on the concertina? I have it by my hand here, and the evening is before us." "You can play it for us the next time we meet," said Patsy, "for we are all tired listening to the stories, and you are tired yourself." He lifted to his feet then and yawned heartily with his arms at full stretch and his fists clenched: "We had better be moving," he continued, "for the evening is coming on and it's twenty miles to the fair." They harnessed the ass. "I'm going the opposite way to you," said Billy the Music. "All right," said Patsy. "God be with you, mister." "God be with yourselves," replied Billy the Music. He tramped off then in his own direction, while Mac Cann and his companions took their road with the ass. BOOK IV MARY MAC CANN CHAPTER XXVIII The search for work and food led them back, but by different paths, through Kerry, up into Connemara, and thence by stony regions to Donegal again and the rugged hills. Their days were uneventful but they were peaceful: their nights were pleasant, and seldom did they lack for even one meal in the day. When they did so lack they passed the unwelcome hour in the silence of those to whom such an hiatus was not singular. Under Mac Cann's captaincy the tiny band moved from meal to meal as another army would invest and sack and depart from the cities on its route. Sometimes at night a ballad-singer would stray on their road, an angry man from whom no person had purchased songs for two days, and in return for victual this one would entertain them with his lays and recite the curses he had composed against those who did not pay the musician. Sometimes they came on gatherings of tinkers and pedlars, tramps, and trick-men, and in the midst of these they would journey towards a fair. Uproarious nights then! Wild throats yelling at the stars and much loud trampling on the roads as the women fought and screeched, and the men howled criticism and encouragement, and came by mere criticism themselves to the battle. Paltry onslaughts these, more of word than of weapon to the fray that left some blooded noses and swollen lips as the one hour memorial of their deeds. And again the peaceful nights, the calm stars, the quiet moon strewing her path in silver; space for the eye, the ear, and the soul; the whispering of lovely trees; the unending rustle of the grass, and the wind that came and went away and came, chanting its long rhythms or hushing its chill lullaby by the fields and the hills. On a day when they had finished eating Finaun beckoned Caeltia and Art aside and they spoke closely together. Turning to Mac Cann and his daughter Finaun said: "We have finished what we came to do, my friends." Patsy nodded frowningly at him. "What was it you came to do?" "I came to give help to the powers," said Finaun mildly. "I didn't see you doing much," replied Patsy. "And," Finaun continued smilingly, "the time has come for us to go away." "You're in a hurry, I suppose?" "We are not in a great hurry, but the time has come for us to go back." "Very well!" said Patsy. "We aren't so far from where we started. If we take one of the turns on the right here and bear away to the west by Cnuc-Mahon and Tober-Fola and Rath-Cormac we'll come to the place where your things are buried, and then I suppose--we can get there in three days, if that will do you?" "That will do," said Finaun. During the remainder of the day he and his companions walked together talking among themselves while Mac Cann and his daughter went with the ass. Patsy also was preoccupied all that day and she had her own thoughts; they scarcely spoke at all and the ass was bored. At night they camped under a broken arch, the vestige of they knew not what crumbled building, and, seated around the brazier, they sunk to silence, each staring at the red glow and thinking according to their need, and it was then that Art, lifting his eyes from the brazier, looked for the first time at Mary and saw that she was beautiful. She had been looking at him--that was now her one occupation. She existed only in these surreptitious examinations. She dwelt on him broodingly as a miser burns on his gold or a mother hovers hungrily upon her infant, but he had never given her any heed. Now he was looking at her, and across the brazier their eyes communed deeply. There was birth already between them--sex was born, and something else was shaping feebly to existence. Love, that protection and cherishing, that total of life, the shy prince scarcely to be known among the teeming populations of the world, raised languidly from enchanted sleep a feeble hand. What fire did their eyes utter! The quiet night became soundingly vocal. Winged words were around her again as in that twilight when her heart loosed its first trials of song. Though the night was about her black and calm there was dawn and sunlight in her heart, and she bathed herself deeply in the flame. And he! There is no knowing but this, that his eyes poured soft fire, enveloping, exhaustless. He surrounded her as with a sea. There she slid and fell and disappeared, to find herself again, renewed, reborn, thrilling to the embrace of those waters, wondrously alive and yet so languid that she could not move. There she rocked like a boat on the broad waves and, saving the limitless sea, there was nothing in sight. Almost he even had disappeared from her view but not from her sensation: he was an influence wide as the world, deep and steep and tremendous as all space. They were alone. The quiet men seated beside them thinned and faded and disappeared: the night whisked from knowledge as a mounting plume of smoke that eddies and is gone: the trees and the hills tripped softly backwards and drooped away. Now they were in a world of their own, microscopic, but intense: a sphere bounded by less than the stretching of their arms: a circle of such violent movement that it was stationary as a spinning-top, and her mind whirled to it, and was still from very activity. She could not think, she could not try to think, that was her stillness, but she could feel and that was her movement; she was no longer a woman but a responsiveness: she was an universal contact thrilling at every pore and point: she was surrendered and lost and captured and no longer pertained to herself. So much can the eye do when the gathered body peers meaningly through its lens. They existed in each other: in and through each other: the three feet of distance was no longer there: it had disappeared, and they were one being swinging on league-long wings through vast spaces. When they dropped to sleep it was merely a slipping backwards, a motion that they did not feel: they were asleep before they dropped asleep: they were asleep long before that, drugged and senseless with the strong potion of the body, stronger than aught in the world but the sharp essence of the mind that awakens all things and never permits them to be lulled again. * * * * * When morning dawned and the camp awakened there was some little confusion, for Mac Cann was not in the place where he had slept and they could not imagine where he had gone to. Mary discussed his disappearance in all kinds of terms, Caeltia alone, with a downcast air, refusing to speak of it. They waited during hours for him, but he did not return, and at noon they decided to wait no longer but to go on their journey leaving him to catch on them if he was behind or hoping to gain on him if he was in advance, for their route was marked. The angels did seem a trifle lost in his absence, and they looked with some dubiety at Mary when she took charge of their journey and of the daily provision of their food. Food had to be gotten, and she had to discover it not alone for herself but for these other mouths. It was the first time she had been alone and, although her brows and lips were steady, her heart beat terror through her body. For she had to do two things which she had never done and had never surmised really had to be done. She had to think, and she had to follow her thought by doing the thing she thought of. Which of these two were the more terrible she did not know, but there was no difficulty as to which she must do first, the simple orderliness of logic clamoured that she must think before she could do anything, and, so, her brain set to the painful weaving of webs too flimsy at first for any usage; but on this day she discovered where her head lay and how to use it without any assistance. She had memory to work with also, the recollection of her father's activities, and memory is knowledge; a well-packed head and energy--that is the baggage for life, it is the baggage for eternity. She moved to the head of the ass and pulled his ear to advance. Caeltia and Finaun trod beside and they went forward. Behind came Art sniffing with the hungriest of nostrils on the sunny air, for it was five hours since they had eaten and more than three hours' abstinence was painful to him. CHAPTER XXIX She did get food. She nourished her three children sumptuously, but she made them help her to get it. She looked at Finaun's high nose, his sweeping beard, his air as of a good child well matured, and she sent it to the market: "One must eat," said she. When they came to a house by the roadside she ordered Finaun to the door to ask for bread; he got it too and had eaten but the slowest mouthful when she seized it from him and stocked it for the common good. She charged Caeltia through the open door of a cottage, and his expedition was famous for eight hours afterwards. She performed feats herself in a fowl-house and a cattle-pen, but she did not issue any commands to Art except at the falling-to, when he obeyed adequately. She recalled the deeds of her father in many predicaments, and for the first time she really understood his ceaseless skill and activity. She found too that she could recollect his tactics, beside which her own were but childish blunderings, and, with that memory she mended her hand, and life became the orderly progression which everybody expects it to be. That night by the glow of the brazier she rested a mind that had never been weary before, and she craved for the presence of her father that she might gain from him the praise which her present companions did not know was due to her. * * * * * "Two days more," said her heart, communicating to her bitterly as they proceeded on the morrow morning, but she banished the thought and set to her plots and plans. She banished it, but it clung with her, vague and weighty as a nightmare, and when she looked backwards on the road Art's eyes were looking into hers with a quietness that almost drove her mad. She could not understand him. They had never spoken to each other; not once had they spoken directly since that night when he stepped into the glow of the brazier. At first she had fled from him in a fear which was all shyness and wildness, and so an overlooking habit had been formed between them which he had never sought to break, and which she did not know how to put an end to. "Two days!" said her heart again, pealing it to her through her webs, and again she exiled her heart, and could feel its wailing when she could hear it no longer. * * * * * They stopped for the mid-day meal; bread and potatoes and a morsel of cheese; the fare was plentiful, and from a stream near by good water washed it down. The reins of the donkey were thrown across the limb of a tree, and he had liberty to browse in a circle. He also had his drink from the running stream, and was glad of it. As they sat three people marched the road behind them; they saw these people, and studied their advance. A talkative, a disorderly advance it was. An advance that halted every few paces for parley, and moved on again like a battle. Two men and a woman were in that party, and it did seem that they were fighting every inch of their way. Certainly, they were laughing also, for a harsh peal came creaking up the road, and came again. Once the laugh broke abruptly on its gruff note as though a hand had pounded into its middle. Then the party parleyed again and moved again. What they said could not be distinguished, but the rumour of their conversation might have been heard across the world. They bawled and screamed, and always through the tumult came the gruff hoot of laughter. Said Caeltia: "Do you know these people?" "The woman is Eileen Ni Cooley," replied Mary, "for I know her walk, but I don't know the shape of the men." Caeltia laughed quietly to himself. "The taller of these men," said he, "is the Seraph Cuchulain, the other man is that Brien O'Brien we were telling you of." Mary's face flamed, but she made no remark. In a few minutes these people drew near. Eileen Ni Cooley was dishevelled. Her shawl hung only from one shoulder and there were holes in it, her dress was tattered, and a long wisp of red hair streamed behind her like a flame. Her face was red also, and her eyes were anxious as they roved from one to the other. She came directly to the girl and sat beside her; young Cuchulain set himself down beside Art, but Brien O'Brien stood a few paces distant with his fists thrust in his pockets and he chewing strongly on tobacco. Every now and then he growled a harsh creak of a laugh and then covered it ostentatiously with his hand. "God be with you, Mary Ni Cahan," said Eileen Ni Cooley, and she twisted up her flying hair and arranged her shawl. "What's wrong with you?" said Mary. "Where's your father?" said Eileen. "I don't know where he is. When we lifted from sleep a morning ago he wasn't in his place, and we haven't seen him since that time." "What am I going to do at all?" said Eileen in a low voice. "These men have me tormented the way I don't know how to manage." "What could my father do?" said Mary sternly, "and you playing tricks on him since the day you were born." "That's between myself and him," replied Eileen, "and it doesn't matter at all. I wanted your father to beat O'Brien for me, for he won't leave me alone day or night, and I can't get away from him." Mary leaned to her whispering: "My father couldn't beat that man, for I saw the two of them fighting on the Donnybrook Road, and he had no chance against him." "He could beat him, indeed," said Eileen indignantly, "and I'd give him good help myself." "If my father owes you anything," said Mary, "I'm ready to pay it for him, so let us both rise against the man, and maybe the pair of us would make him fly." Eileen stared at her. "I hit him once," continued Mary, "and I would like well to hit him again; my people here would keep his friend from joining against us." The blue eyes of Eileen Ni Cooley shone with contentment; she slipped the shawl from her shoulders and let it drop to the ground. "We'll do that, Mary," said she, "and let us do it now." So the women lifted to their feet and they walked towards Brien O'Brien, and suddenly they leaped on him like a pair of panthers, and they leaped so suddenly that he went down against the road with a great bump. But he did not stay down. He rose after one dumbfounded moment, and he played with the pair of them the way a conjurer would play with two balls, so that the breath went out of their bodies, and they had to sit down or suffocate. "That's the kind of man he is," panted Eileen. "Very well!" said Mary fiercely, "we'll try him again in a minute." The camp was in confusion, and from that confusion Art leaped towards Brien O'Brien, but the Seraph Cuchulain leaped and outleaped Art, and set himself bristling by the elbow of his friend; then Caeltia, with his face shining happily, tip-toed forward and ranged with Art against these two, but Finaun went quicker than they all; he leaped between the couples, and there was not a man of the four dared move against his hand. In a second that storm blew itself out, and they returned to their seats smiling foolishly. "Let the women be quiet," said Brien O'Brien harshly. He also seated himself, with his back touching against the donkey's legs. The ass had finished eating and drinking, and was now searching the horizon with the intent eye of one who does not see anything, but only looks on the world without in order to focus steadily the world within. Brien O'Brien stared with a new interest at Finaun, and revolved his quid. Said he to Cuchulain: "Would the old lad be able to treat us the way Rhadamanthus did, do you think?" "He could do that," laughed Cuchulain, "and he could do it easily." O'Brien moved the quid to the other side of his jaw. "If he slung us out of this place we wouldn't know where we might land," said he. "That is so," replied Cuchulain, thrusting a sleek curl between his teeth. "I don't know these regions, and I don't know where we might land, or if we would ever land. Only for that I would go against him," and he waggled his finger comically at Finaun. Art commenced to snigger and Finaun laughed heartily, but Caeltia eyed Cuchulain so menacingly that the seraph kept a quiet regard on him for the rest of the day. Peace was restored, and while they were revolving peace and wondering how to express it Patsy Mac Cann came on them from a side path that ran narrowly between small hills. CHAPTER XXX When Mac Cann saw the visitors he halted for an instant and then came forward very slowly, with his head on one side and his thumb rasping steadily on his chin. He was staring at Brien O'Brien, and as he stared he bristled like a dog. "It's the man himself," said he, "the man that stole my clothes." O'Brien peeped upwards at him but did not move. "Sit down and hold your prate," said he, "or I'll steal your life." Mac Cann would have thrown himself on his enemy, but at that moment he caught sight of Eileen Ni Cooley and her face drove the other out of his head. He stared. "It's yourself!" said he. "It is me, sure enough, Padraig." "You'll be going away in a minute, I suppose," said he grimly. He sat on the grass and there was peace once more. He was sitting beside O'Brien, and the ass was still thinking deeply with his hocks touching against their shoulder-blades. When he seated himself they were all silent, for, in face of everything, Mac Cann took the lead, and they waited for him to speak. O'Brien was looking at him sideways with a grin on his hard jaw. He creaked out a little laugh and then covered it up with his hand as one who was abashed, but Mac Cann paid no attention to him. His attention was on Eileen Ni Cooley. "You're a great woman," said he, "and you're full of fun surely." "I'm everything you like to call me," replied Eileen. "Which of the men are you with this time, or are you travelling with the pair of them?" "I don't want either of them, Padraig, but I can't get away from them anyhow. They won't let me go my own road, and they're marching at my elbows for two days and two nights, cursing and kicking and making a noise every step of the way." "They're doing that!" said Patsy. "They are doing that, Padraig. It's O'Brien is the worst, for the other fellow is only helping him and doesn't care for me at all. Catching me they do be, and holding me...." "Aye!" said Patsy. "I can't get away from O'Brien," said she, "and I thought that if I could find yourself----" "You were looking for me?" "I was looking for you this time, Padraig." "Aye!" said Patsy, and he turned a black eye on Brien O'Brien, and his eye looked like a little, hard ball of stone. "You'll be left alone from this day out," said Patsy. "Mind yourself!" growled Brien O'Brien. "Mind yourself, my hardy man, or you'll waken up among the spooks." Patsy held him with that solid eye. "Spooks!" said he, and suddenly he rolled on top of Brien O'Brien, his left hand grabbing at the throat, his right fist jabbing viciously with packed knuckles. Down went Brien O'Brien's head and up went his heels; then he gave a mighty wriggle and started to come up, his hands threshing like the wings of a mill. As he came up they rolled, and now Mac Cann was below; but Brien O'Brien's head had disturbed the donkey, and, without emerging from cogitation, the ass let his two heels fly at the enemy of thought behind him; Patsy saw for an instant the white flash of those little hoofs across his face, but Brien of the O'Brien Nation took them full on his forehead and his brows crackled in like the shell of an egg; he relaxed, he sagged, he drooped and huddled limply to Patsy's bosom, and for three seconds Mac Cann lay quietly beneath him, captured by astonishment. The donkey had again related the infinity without to the eternity within, and his little hoofs were as peaceful as his mild eye. Mac Cann tugged himself from beneath that weighty carcass and came to his feet. Mary and Eileen were both sitting rigid, with arms at full stretch and their fingers tipping straitly on the ground, while their round eyes were wide in an unwinking stare. Caeltia was on his feet and was crouching at an equally crouching Cuchulain. Patsy saw the curl jerking as the lips of the seraph laughed. Art was frozen on one knee in the mid-act of rising, and Finaun was combing his beard while he looked fixedly at Eileen Ni Cooley. Twenty seconds only had elapsed since Mac Cann rolled sideways on Brien O'Brien. The seraph Cuchulain was staring under Caeltia's arm. He blew the golden curl from his lips and sounded a laugh that was like the ringing of silver bells. "What will Rhadamanthus say this time?" quoth he, and with that he turned and tripped happily down the road and away. * * * * * Mac Cann regarded the corpse. "We had better bury the man," said he gloomily. He took a short spade from the cart, and with it he made a hole in the roadside. They laid Brien O'Brien in that hole. "Wait for a minute," said Mac Cann. "It's not decent to send him off that way." He pushed a hand into his pocket and pulled it out again with money in it. "He should have something with himself and he taking the long journey." He lifted O'Brien's clenched fist, forced it open, and put a silver threepenny-piece into it; then he tightened the pale hand again and folded it with the other on his breast. They wrapped a newspaper about his face, and they threw the clay over Brien of the O'Brien Nation and stamped it down well with their feet, and as they left him the twilight stole over the land, and a broad star looked peacefully down through the grey distances. CHAPTER XXXI They walked through the evening. Dusk had fallen and in the drowsy half-lights the world stretched itself in peacefulness. They had come to a flat country that whispered in grass; there were no more of the little hills that roll and fall and roll; there were scarcely any trees; here and there in great space a beech swung its slow boughs and made a quiet noise in the stillness; here and there a stiff tree lifted its lonely greenness, and around it the vast horizon stretched away and away to sightlessness. There was silence here, there was deep silence, and over all the dusk drowsed and folded and increased. With what slow veils the darkness deepened! the gentle weaver spun her thin webs and drooped soft coverings from the sky to the clay; momently the stars came flashing their tiny signals, gathering their bright hosts by lonely clusters, and one thin sickle of the moon grew from a cloud and stood distantly as a sign of gold. But the quiet beauty of the heavens and the quiet falling to sleep of the earth had for this night no effect on one of our travellers. Mac Cann was ill at ease. He was moody and irritable, and he moved from Eileen Ni Cooley to his daughter and back again to Eileen Ni Cooley and could not content himself with either of them. The angels were treading at the rear of the cart talking among themselves; the slow drone of their voices drifted up the road, and from this murmuring the words God and Beauty and Love would detach themselves and sing recurringly on the air like incantations. Eileen Ni Cooley trod on the left side of the ass. She trod like a featureless shade; her shawl wrapped blottingly about her face and her mind moving within herself and for herself. Mac Cann and his daughter went together by the right side of the donkey, and, as he looked constantly at his daughter, his eyes were furtive and cunning. He tapped her elbow. "Mary," he whispered, "I want to talk to you." She replied in a voice that was low from his contact. "I want to talk to yourself," said she. "What do you want to say?" "I want to know where you got the money that I saw in your hand when you buried the man?" "That's what I'm going to tell you about," he whispered. "Be listening to me now and don't make any noise." "I'm listening to you," said Mary. "What have we got to do with these lads behind us?" said Patsy urgently. "They are nothing to us at all, and I'm tired of them." "There's a thing to say!" quoth she. "This is what we'll do. To-night we won't unyoke the ass, and when they are well asleep we'll walk quietly off with ourselves and leave them there. Eileen Ni Cooley will come with us and in the morning we'll be distant." "I won't do that," said Mary. He darted at her a sparkle of rage. "You'll do what I say, you strap, or it'll be the worse for you!" said his violent whisper. "I won't do that," she hissed, "and I tell you I won't." "By the living Jingo...!" said Patsy. She came at him whispering with equal fierceness. "What have you done on the men?" said she. "What did you do on them that you want to run away from them in the night?" "Keep your tongue in your teeth, you----!" "Where were you for a day and a half? Where did you get the money from that I saw in your hand when you buried the man?" Patsy composed himself with difficulty; he licked his dry lips. "There's no fooling you, alannah, and I'll tell you the truth." He glanced cautiously to where the others were coming deep in talk. "This is what I did. I went to that place by Ard-Martin where we buried the things, and I dug them up." "Oh!" said Mary. "I dug them up, and I took them away, and I sold them to a man for money." "Oh!" said Mary. "They're sold, do you hear? And there's no going back on it; so do what I tell you about the ass this night and we'll take our own road from now on." "I won't do it," whispered Mary, and she was almost speechless with rage. Mac Cann thrust his face close to hers grinning like a madman. "You won't do it!" said he. "What will you do then against your father?" "I'll go on to the place with the men," she stammered. "You'll come with me this night." "I'll not go," said she harshly. "You'll come with me this night," said he. "I'll not go," she screamed at him. At the sound of her scream everybody came running to them. "Is there anything wrong?" said Art. "She's only laughing at a joke I told her," said Patsy. "Make that ass go on, Mary a grah, for it's walking as if it was going asleep." Caeltia was looking at Mac Cann so fixedly, with such a severe gravity of eye, that the blood of the man turned to water and he could scarcely hold himself upright. For the first time in his life Mac Cann knew what fear was. "To-morrow," said Caeltia, "we will be going away from you, let us be peaceful then for our last night together." "Aye," said Patsy, "let us be comfortable for this night of all nights." He turned away, and with a great effort at carelessness he moved to the donkey's head. "Come on, Mary," said he. Eileen Ni Cooley trod beside him for a moment. "What's wrong with you, Padraig?" said she. "Nothing at all, Eileen, just leave me alone for a minute for I want to talk to the girl." "You can count on me for anything, Padraig." "I don't know whether I can or not," he muttered savagely. "Keep quiet for ten minutes, in the name of God." For a few dull seconds they paced in quiet. Patsy moistened his lips with his tongue. "What are you going to do, Mary?" "I don't know," she replied. "What man did you sell the things to?" "I sold them to a man that lives near by--a rich man in a big house." "There's only one big house about here." "That's the house." She was silent. "If you're going to tell the men," said her father, "give me two hours' law this night until I get away, and then you can tell them and be damned to you." "Listen to me!" said the girl. "I'm listening." "There is only one thing to be done, and it has got to be done at once: go you to the place of that rich man and take the things away from his house and bury them back again in the place they were buried. If you want any help I'll go with you myself." Mac Cann's thumb wandered to his chin and a sound as of filing was heard while he rubbed it. His voice was quite changed as he replied: "Begor!" said he. "You're full of fun," said he, thoughtfully. He covered his mouth with his hand then and stared thoughtfully down the road. "Will you do that?" said Mary. He thumped a hand heavily on her shoulder. "I will so, and I do wonder that I didn't think of it myself, for it's the thing that ought to be done." And now as they marched the atmosphere had changed; there was once more peace or the precursor of it; from Mac Cann a tempered happiness radiated as of old: he looked abroad without misgiving and he looked at his daughter with the cynical kindliness habitual to him. They trod so for a little time arranging their thoughts, then: "We are near enough to that house to be far enough from it if there's any reason to be far," said Mac Cann, "so this is what I say, let us stop where we are for the night and in the morning we'll go on from here." "Very well," said Mary, "let us stop here." Her father drew the ass to the side of the road and there halted it. "We'll go to bed now," he shouted to the company, and they all agreed to that. "I'm going to unyoke the beast," said Mary with a steady eye on her father. He replied heartily. "Why wouldn't you do that? Let him out to get something to eat like the rest of us." "There isn't any water," he complained a minute later. "What will that animal do? and what will we do ourselves?" "I have two big bottles of water in the cart," said Mary. "And I have a little bottle in my pocket," said he, "so we're all right." The donkey was unyoked, and he went at once to stand with his feet in the wet grass. He remained so for a long time without eating, but he did eat when that idea occurred to him. The brazier was lit, the sacks strewn on the ground, and they sat about the fire in their accustomed places and ate their food. After a smoke and a little conversation each person stretched backwards, covering themselves with other sacks, and they went heartily to sleep. "We will have to be up early in the morning," was Patsy's last remark, "for you are in a hurry to get back your things," and saying so he stretched his length with the others. * * * * * When a still hour had drifted by Mary raised cautiously and tip-toed to her father. As she stood by him he slid the sacks aside and came to his feet, and they moved a little way down the road. "Now," said Mary, "you can do what you said you'd do." "I'll do that," said he. "And get back as quick as you can." "It's a distance there and back again. I'll be here in the morning, but I'll be late." "Bury the things the way they were before." "That's all right," and he moved a step backwards. "Father!" said Mary softly. He returned to her. "What more do you want?" said he impatiently. She put her arms about his neck. "What the devil are you doing?" said he in astonishment, and he tried to wriggle loose from her. But she did not say another word, and after a moment he put his own arms about her with a grunt and held her tightly. "I'm away now," said he, and, moving against the darkness, he disappeared. For half a minute the sound of his feet was heard, and then the darkness covered him. Mary returned to her place by the brazier. She stretched close to Eileen Ni Cooley and lay staring at the moving clouds. In a few minutes she was asleep, although she had not felt any heaviness on her eyes. CHAPTER XXXII No one was awake. In the brazier a faint glow peeped from the white turf-ash; the earth seemed to be holding its breath, so still it was; the clouds hung immovably each in its place; a solitary tree near by folded its wide limbs into the darkness and made no sound. Nothing stirred in the world but the ass as he lifted his head slowly and drooped it again; his feet were sunken in a plot of grass and he was quiet as the earth. Then I came softly, and I spoke to the ass in the darkness. "Little ass," quoth I, "how is everything with you?" "Everything is very well," said the ass. "Little ass," said I, "tell me what you do be thinking of when you fix your eye on vacancy and stare there for a long time?" "I do be thinking," said the ass, "of my companions, and sometimes I do be looking at them." "Who are your companions?" "Last night I saw the Cyclops striding across a hill; there were forty of them, and each man was forty feet high; they had only one eye in their heads and they looked through that; they looked through it the way a fire stares through a hole and they could see well." "How do you know they could see well?" "One of them saw me and he called out to the others; they did not wait, but he waited for a moment; he took me in his arms and he stroked my head; then he put me on the ground and went away, and in ten strides he crossed over the mountain." "That was a good sight to see!" "That was a good sight." "Tell me something else you saw." "I saw seven girls in a meadow and they were playing together; when they were tired playing they lay on the grass and they went to sleep; I drew near and stretched beside them on the grass, and I watched them for a long time; but when they awakened they disappeared into the air and were gone like puffs of smoke. "I saw the fairy host marching through a valley in the hills; wide, silken banners were flying above their heads; some had long swords in their hands and some had musical instruments, and there were others who carried a golden apple in their hands, and others again with silver lilies and cups of heavy silver; they were beautiful and proud and they marched courageously; they marched past me for three gay hours while I stood on the slope of a hill. "I saw three centaurs riding out of a wood; they raced round and round me shouting and waving their hands; one of them leaned his elbows on my back, and they talked of a place in the middle of a forest; they pelted me with tufts of grass; then they went by a narrow path into the wood, and they rode away. "I saw a herd of wild asses in a plain; men were creeping around them in the long grass, but the asses ran suddenly, and they killed the men with their hoofs and their teeth; I galloped in the middle of them for half a night, but I remembered Mary Ni Cahan, and when I remembered her I turned from all my companions and I galloped home again." "Those were all good sights to see!" "They were all good sights." "Good-bye, little ass," said I. "Good-bye, you," said he. He lay along the grass then and he closed his eyes, but I turned back and crouched by the brazier, watching the people while they slept, and staring often into the darkness to see did anything stir before the light came. CHAPTER XXXIII Mac Cann strode through the darkness for a little time, but when he found himself at sufficient distance from the camp he began to run. There was not very much time wherein to do all that he had engaged before the morning dawned, and so he took to this mode of activity, which was not one for which he had any reverence. He was a heavy man and did not run with either grace or ease, but he could hasten his movements to a jog-trot, and, as his physical condition was perfect, he could continue such a trot until hunger brought it to a halt, for he was never fatigued, being as strong and tireless as a bear. He was the most simple-minded of men. When he was engaged in one affair he could not meddle with anything else, and now that he was running he could do nothing but run--he could not think, for instance. When it was necessary to think he would either walk very slowly or stand stock-still, and then he would think with great speed and with great simplicity. His head bade his legs be quiet while it was occupied, and, when they were in motion, his legs tramped hush to his head, which obeyed instantly; and he was so well organised on these lines that there was never any quarrel between the extremities. It was, therefore, the emptiest of men that now pounded the road. He would deal with an emergency when it was visible, but until then he snapped a finger and forgot it, for he had learned that the first word of an emergency is a warning, the second a direction for escape, its third utterance is in action, and it will only be waited for by a fool. Exactly what he would do when he arrived at the house he did not know, and as yet he made no effort to deal with that problem: he obeyed the prime logical necessity, which was to get there: once there and the second step would push itself against him, and from that cause the most orderly of results would ensue. If there was no trouble he would succeed in his enterprise; if there was trouble he would fly--that was his simple programme. And meantime there was nothing in the world but darkness and the rhythmic tramping of his feet. These, with a faintly hushing wind, kept his ears occupied. He had much of the cat's facility for seeing in the dark, and he had the sense of direction which some birds have, so he made good progress. After half an hour's steady movement he came to the house for which he was seeking, and halted there. It was a long, low building, standing back from the road. There was a stone wall around this house, and the entrance was by an iron gate. Mac Cann touched the gate, for experience had taught him that gates are not always locked, but this one was locked securely. By the gate was a caretaker's lodge, so he moved quietly from that place and walked by the wall. There was glass on the top of the wall which halted him for a few moments while he sucked his incautious hand. To cope with this he gathered several large stones and placed them on top of each other and he stood on these, then he threw his coat and waistcoat over the glass and climbed easily across. He was in a shrubbery. About him every few paces were short, stiff bushes, some of which were armed with spines, which did their duty on his hands and the legs of his trousers; but he regarded these with an inattention which must have disgusted them. He tip-toed among these guardians and was shortly free of them and on a gravel pathway. Crossing this he came on quiet flower-beds, which he skirted: the house was now visible as a dark mass distant some hundred yards. Saving for one window the place was entirely dark, and it was towards that window he directed his careful steps. "It's better to look at something than at nothing," quoth he. He was again on a gravel path, and the stones tried to crunch and wriggle under his feet, but he did not allow that to happen. He came to the window and, standing well to the side, peeped in. He saw a square room furnished as a library. The entire section of the walls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books. There were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were long, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff attention. There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened. There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that leaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against their neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, "All heroines are charming to us." In the centre of the room was a heavy, black table, and upon the highly polished surface of this a yellow light fell from globes on the ceiling. At this table a man was seated, and he was staring at his hands. He was a man of about thirty years of age. A tall, slender man with a lean face, and, to Patsy, he was of an appalling cleanliness--a cleanliness really to make one shudder: he was shaved to the last closeness; he was washed to the ultimate rub; on him both soap and water had wrought their utmost, and could have no further ambitions; his wristlets gleamed like snow on a tree, and his collar rose upon a black coat as the plumage of a swan emerges spotlessly from water. His cleanliness was a sight to terrify any tramp, but it only angered Mac Cann, who was not liable to terror of anything but hunger. "I would like to give you a thump on the head, you dirty dog!" said Patsy, breathing fiercely against the corner of the window-pane, and his use of the adjective was singular as showing in what strange ways extremes can meet. This was the man to whom he had sold the gear of his companions: an indelicate business indeed, and one which the cleanliness of the purchaser assisted him to rectify, and it was in this room that the barter had been conducted. By craning his neck a little he could see an oaken settle, and upon this his sacks were lying with their mouths open and the gleaming cloths flooding at the entry. While he stared, the man removed his fingers from his eyes and put them in his pocket, then he arose very slowly and paced thoughtfully towards the window. Mac Cann immediately ducked beneath the window-ledge. He heard the window opened and knew the man was leaning his elbows on the sill while he stared into the darkness. "Begor!" said Patsy to himself, and he flattened his body against the wall. After a time, which felt longer than it could have been, he heard the man moving away, and he then popped up and again peeped through the window. The man had opened the door of the room which faced the window and was standing in the entry. Now his hands were clasped behind his back, his head was sunken forward, and he seemed to be looking at his feet, which is the habit of many men when they think, for when the eyes touch the feet a circuit is formed and one's entire body is able to think at ease. Suddenly the man stepped into a black corridor and he disappeared. Mac Cann heard about ten steps ringing from a solid flooring, then he heard a door open and shut, then he heard nothing but the shifting and rubbing of his own clothes and the sound his own nose made when he breathed outwards: there was a leathern belt about his middle, and from the noise which it made one would have fancied that it was woven of thunders--there was a great silence; the lighted room was both inviting and terrifying, for it was even more silent than the world outside; the steady globes stared at the window like the eyes of a mad fish, and one could imagine that the room had pricked up invisible ears and was listening towards the window, and one could imagine also that the room would squeak and wail if any person were to come through anywhere but a door and stand in it. Mac Cann did not imagine any of these things. He spat on his hands, and in the twinkling of an eye he was inside the window. In three long and hasty paces he placed a hand on each of the sacks, and just as he gripped them he heard a door opening, and he heard the footsteps ringing again on a solid flooring. "I'm in," said he, viciously, "and I won't go out." His eyes blinked around like the flash of lightning but there was no place to hide. He stepped across the oaken chest and crouched down. Behind him, from the floor upwards, were books, in front was the big chest, and on top of it the two bulging sacks. He was well screened and he could peep between the sacks. He stared towards the door. The clean man came in and stood aside. Following him came a woman who was, if anything, more rigorously washed than he was. Somehow, although she was a tall woman, she seemed as light as a feather. She was clad in a delicate pink gown of such gossamer quality that it balanced and swam on the air with every movement she made. Across her bare shoulders was a lawn veiling, which also sailed and billowed as she moved. Her hair seemed to be of the finest spun gold, light as thistle-down, and it, too, waved and floated in little strands and ringlets. These two people sat down at different sides of the table, and for a time they did not speak to each other. Then the man raised his head: "I got a letter from your mother this morning," said he in a low voice. The woman answered him in a tone that was equally low: "I did not know you corresponded with her." The man made a slight gesture: "Nor did I know that your correspondence was as peculiar as I have found it," said he. Said the woman coldly: "You are opening this subject again." "I am: I have to: your mother confirms everything that I have charged you with." "My mother hates me," said the woman, "she would confirm anything that was said of me, if it was bad enough." "She is your mother." "Oh no, she is not! When I ceased to be a child she ceased to be a mother. We are only two women who are so well acquainted that we can be enemies without any shame of each other." "Are you not talking nonsense?" "I have committed a crime against her. She will never forgive me for being younger than she is, and for being pretty in her own fashion. She left my father because he said I was good-looking." "All that...!" said the man with a movement of his shoulder. "As to what she would do against me, you should know it well enough considering the things she told you before we were married." "You admitted that they were not all lies." "Some of the facts were true, all of the colouring was false--they are the things a loving mother says about her daughter! but that is an old story now, or I had fancied so." "One forgets the old story until the new story drags it to memory," said he. She also moved her shoulders slightly. "I begin to find these conversations tiresome." "I can understand that.... With her letter your mother enclosed some other letters from her friends--they insist on the facts, and add others." "Are they letters, or copies of letters?" "They are copies." "Of course my mother has forbidden you to disclose the fact that she forwarded her friends' private correspondence to you." "Naturally." "Very naturally; the reason being that she wrote these letters herself to herself. There are no originals of these copies." "Again you are talking nonsense." "I know her better than you do, better than she knows herself." There was silence between them again for a few moments, and again it was broken by the man. "There are some things I cannot do," said he, and paused: "I cannot search in unclean places for unclean information," he continued, and again the silence fell between these two people. She could bear that silence, but he could not: "You do not say anything!" said he. "This seems to be so entirely your business," was her quiet reply. He moved a hand at that: "You cannot divorce yourself from me with such ease. This is our business, and we must settle it between us." Her hand was resting on the table, and suddenly he reached to her and laid his own hand on hers. She did not withdraw, but the stiffening of her body was more than withdrawal. He drew his hand away again. "We are reasonable creatures and must question our difficulties," said he gently, "we must even help each other to resolve them." "These difficulties are not of my making." "They are, and you are lying to me shamelessly." Again between these people a silence fell which was profound but not quiet. That soundlessness was tingling with sound; there were screams latent in it; it was atrocious and terrifying. The man's hand was pressed against his forehead and his eyes were closed, but what he was looking at was known only to himself in the silence of his being. The woman sat upright an arm's-length from him, and although her eyes were wide and calm, she also was regarding that which was free within herself, and very visible to her. "There are things I cannot do," said the man, emerging as with an effort from subterranean caves and secret prospects. He continued speaking, calmly but tonelessly: "I have striven to make a rule of life for myself and to follow it, but I have not sought to impose my laws on any one else--not on you, certainly. Still there are elementary duties which we owe to one another and which cannot be renounced by either of us. There is a personal, I might say, a domestic loyalty expected by each of us...." "I expect nothing," said she. "I exact nothing," said the man, "but I expect that--I expect it as I expect air for my lungs and stability under my feet. You must not withdraw that from me. You are not the individual you think; you are a member of society, and you live by it; you are a member of my household, and you live by it." She turned her face to him but not her eyes. "I do not ask anything from you," said she, "and I have accepted as little as was possible." He clenched his hand on the table, but when he spoke his voice was without emphasis: "That is part of my grievance against you. Life is to give and take without any weighing of the gifts. You will do neither, and yet our circumstances are such that we must accommodate each other whether we will or not." "I am an exact man," he continued, "perhaps you find that trying, but I cannot live in doubt. Whatever happens to hinder or assist my consciousness must be known to me. It is a law of my being: it is my ancestral heritage, and I have no command over it." "I also," said she coldly, "am an heir of the ages, and must take my bequests whether I like them or not." "I love you," said the man, "and I have proved it many times. I am not demonstrative, and I am shy of this fashion of speech. Perhaps that shyness of speech is responsible for more than is apparent to either of us in a world eager for speech and gesture, but I say the word now in all sincerity, with a gravity, perhaps, which you find repulsive. Be at least as honest with me, no matter how cruel you are. I cannot live in the half-knowledge which is jealousy. It tears my heart. It makes me unfit for thought, for life, for sleep, even for death. I must know, or I am a madman and no man any longer, a wild beast that will bite itself in despair of hurting its enemy." The woman's tongue slipped over her pale lips in a quick, red flash. "Have you anything to say to me?" said he. There was no reply. He insisted: "Are the statements in your mother's letter true?" "My mother's letter!" said she. "Have I reason for this jealousy?" he breathed. Her reply was also but a breathing: "I will not tell you anything," said she. Once again the silence drowsed and droned between the two people, and again they repaired to the secret places of their souls where energy was sucked from them until they existed only in a torpor. The woman rose languidly from her chair, and, after an instant, the man stood also. Said he: "I will leave here in the morning." "You will let me see the boy," she murmured. "If," said he, "I ever learn that you have spoken to the boy I will kill you, and I will kill the boy." The woman went out then, and her feet tapped lightly along the corridor. The man turned down the lights in the yellow globes and stepped to the door; his footsteps also died away in the darkness, but in a different direction. * * * * * Mac Cann stood up: "Begor!" said he, stretching his cramped knees. About him was a great darkness and a great silence, and the air of that room was more unpleasant than any atmosphere he had ever breathed. But he had the nerves of a bear and a resolute adherence to his own business, so the excitement of another person could only disturb him for a moment. Still, he did not like the room, and he made all haste to get out of it. He lifted the sacks, stepped carefully to the window, and dropped them out. Then he climbed through and picked them up. In five minutes he was on the road again. Along it for some dozen yards he trod like a great cat until he had left the gate-keeper's lodge well behind him; then, with the sacks across his shoulders, he shook to the steady jog-trot which was to last for about three hours. CHAPTER XXXIV Mary awakened early. The morning was grey and the sky flat and solid, with here and there thin furrows marking its gathered fields. She raised her head, and looked towards her father's place, but he was not there, and the sacks were crumpled on the ground. Finaun's great length was lying along the ground, and he was straight as a rod. Caeltia was curved a little, and one hand was flung above his head. Art was rolled up like a ball; his hands were gripped about his knees, and he had kicked the sacks off his body. Eileen Ni Cooley had her two arms under her face; she was lying on her breast, and her hair streamed sidewards from her head along the dull grass. As Mary lay back, for it was still too early to rise, a thought came to her and she rose to her feet again. She thought that perhaps her father had come softly in the night and moved the ass and cart away with him, and that thought lifted her breast in panic. She ran down the road and saw the cart with its shafts poked in the air, and further away the donkey was lying on his side. She came back on tip-toe smiling happily to herself, and, with infinite precaution, she restored the sacks to Art's body and composed herself again to sleep. She did not raise the camp, for she wished to give her father all possible time so that he might return unnoticed. And while she slept the sky unpacked its locked courses; the great galleons of cloud went sailing to the west, and thus, fleet by fleet, relieved those crowded harbours. The black cloud-masses went rolling on the sky--They grew together, touched and swung apart and slipped away with heavy haste, as when down narrow waters an armada weighs, filling listlessly her noisy sails, while the slender spars are hauled to the breeze; the watchmen stand at the posts, and the fenders are still hung from the pitching sides; almost the vessels touch; the shipmen shout as they bear heavily on their oaken poles; and then they swing again, the great prows bear away, the waters boil between, and the loud farewells sing faintly to the waves. And now the sky was a bright sea sown with islands; they shrank and crumbled and drifted away, islands no more, but a multitude of plumes and flakes and smoky wreaths hastily scudding, for the sun had lifted his tranquil eye on the heavens; he stared afar down the grey spaces, and before his gaze the mists went huddling and hiding in lovely haste; the dark spaces became white, the dark blue spaces became light blue, and earth and sky sparkled and shone in his radiant beam. * * * * * The camp awakened before Mary did, and again the enquiry went as to the whereabouts of her father: "He will be here shortly," said Mary. "He must have gone along the road to see if there was anything he could find for us to eat," and she delayed the preparation of their breakfast to the last possible moment. She spilled a pot of boiling water to that end, and she overturned the brazier when the water boiled again. They were about sitting to their food when Mac Cann came in sight, and she held the meal until his arrival with his hat far to the back of his head, the happiest of smiles on his face, and a newspaper bundle in his hand. Mary gave him a look of quick meaning: "Were you able to find anything for the breakfast?" said she, and then she was astonished. "I was indeed," he replied, and he handed her the bulky newspaper package. She used that occasion to whisper to him: "Well?" "That's all right," said he, nodding at the bundle, but really in answer to her query. She opened the parcel. There were slices of bacon in it and slices of beef; there were ten sausages in it and the biggest half of a loaf--these, with a small flat bottle full of rum and two pairs of stockings, made up the parcel. "Put the sausages in a pan," said Patsy, "and share them round and we'll eat them." Mary did put them on the pan, and when they were cooked she shared them round, and they were fairly eaten. After breakfast the pipes were lit, but they rose almost immediately to continue the journey. "This evening," said Finaun, "we will be saying good-bye." "Aye," said Mac Cann, "I'm sorry you're going, for we had a good time together." The ass took his instructions, and they went down the road. Their places were now as they had always been--Finaun and Eileen Ni Cooley and Mary Mac Cann went with the ass, and there was no lack of conversation in that assembly, for sometimes they talked to one another and sometimes they talked to the ass, but the donkey listened no matter who was being talked to, and not a person objected to him. Patsy and Caeltia marched sturdily at the tailboard, and they were close in talk. Behind them Art was ranging aimlessly, and lilting snatches of song. He did not know the entire of any song but he knew verses of many, and he was able to relate the tunes of these so harmoniously, with such gradual slipping of theme into theme, that twenty minutes of his varied lilting could appear like one consecutive piece of music. "That lad has a great ear," said Patsy. "He could make his fortune at the music." "He is a musician," Caeltia replied. "That is his business when we are in our own place, and, as you can see, it is his pleasure also." Patsy was in high spirits. Now that he had successfully undone that which he had done a real weight had lifted from him. But the thing was still so near that he could not get easily from it. His head was full of the adventures of the last few days, and although he could not speak of them he could touch them, sound them, lift the lid of his mystery and snap it to again, chuckling meanwhile to himself that those who were concerned did not know what he was talking about, and yet he was talking to himself, or to one cognisant, in hardy, adequate symbol. A puerile game for a person whose youth had been left behind for twenty years, but one which is often played nevertheless and by the most solemn minds. It was with an impish carelessness that he addressed Caeltia: "It won't be long before we are there," said he. "That is so," was the reply. "You'll be feeling fine, I'm thinking, when you get your own clothes on again." "I have not missed them very much." "I hope your wings and your grand gear will be all right." "Why should you doubt it?" returned the seraph. "What," said Patsy, "if they were robbed on you! You'd be rightly in the cart, mister, if that happened." Caeltia puffed quietly at his pipe. "They were robbed," said he. "Eh!" cried Mac Cann sharply. The seraph turned to him, his eyes brimming with laughter. "Aye, indeed," said he. Mac Cann was silent for a few seconds, but he did not dare to be silent any longer. "You're full of fun," said he sourly. "What are you talking about at all?" "Finaun and I knew all about it," said Caeltia, "and we were wondering what would be done by the person." "What did he do?" said Patsy angrily. Caeltia returned the pipe to his mouth. "He put them back," said he. "Only for that," he continued, "we might have had to recover them ourselves." "Would you have been able to get them back?" said Mac Cann humbly. "We would have got them back; there is nothing in the world could stand against us two; there is nothing in the world could stand against one of us." Patsy jerked a thumb to where Art was lilting the open bars of "The Wind that shakes the Barley": "Wouldn't the boy help?" said he. "How old is the lad?" "I don't know," smiled Caeltia. "He remembers more than one Day of a Great Breath, but he has no power for he has never had being, and so did not win to knowledge; he could give help, for he is very strong." "Could you have licked Cuchulain that day?" said Patsy timidly. "I am older than he," replied Caeltia, "that is to say I am wiser than he." "But he was up there with yourself and could learn the tricks." "There is no secrecy in this world or in the others, and there are no tricks: there is Knowledge, but no person can learn more than his head is ready to welcome. That is why robbery is infantile and of no importance." "It fills the stomach," replied Patsy cunningly. "The stomach has to be filled," said Caeltia. "Its filling is a necessity superior to any proprietarial right or disciplinary ethic, and its problem is difficult only for children; it is filled by the air and the wind, the rain and the clay, and the tiny lives that move in the clay. There is but one property worth stealing; it is never missed by its owners, although every person who has that property offers it to all men from his gentle hands." "You're trying to talk like Finaun," said Patsy gloomily. They walked then in silence for ten minutes. Every vestige of impishness had fled from Mac Cann; he was a miserable man; his vanity was hurt and he was frightened, and this extraordinary combination of moods plunged him to a depression so profound that he could not climb therefrom without assistance. Said Caeltia to him after a little: "There is a thing I would like to see done, my friend." Mac Cann's reply came sagging as he hauled his limp ideas from those pits. "What's that, your honour?" "I would like to see the money thrown into this ditch as we go by." Patsy's depression vanished as at the glare of a torch and the trumpet of danger. He nosed the air and sniffed like a horse. "Begor!" said he. "You're full of----. There's no sense in that," said he sharply. "That is what I would like to see, but everybody must act exactly as they are able to act." "I tell you there isn't any sense in it; give me a reasonable thing to do in the name of God and I'll do it." "That is the only thing I want done." "What's the use of making a fool of me?" "Am I demanding anything?" When they had walked a few paces: "What is it, after all!" said Patsy proudly. He thrust his hands into his pockets and exhibited them full of gold and silver. "Just a pitch of my hand and it's gone!" said he. "That is all," said Caeltia. "It's easily done." "So it is," growled Patsy, and he swung his arm. But he dropped the hand again. "Wait a minute," and he called Eileen Ni Cooley to his side. "Walk with ourselves, Eileen, and don't be a stranger. There's something I want to show you." He opened his hand before her and it was flooding and flashing in gold. She stared with the awe of one who looks on miracles. "There's a great deal of money there," she gasped. "There's fifteen golden pounds and some shillings in it," said Patsy, "and here's all I care for them." He flung his hand then and sped the money at the full force of his shoulder. "That's all I care for the stuff," said he, and he gripped her arm to prevent her bounding to its recovery. "Come on, woman dear, and leave the ha'pence alone." Said Caeltia: "There is something I must throw away also, for I am getting too fond of it." "What's that?" said Mac Cann curiously. "It's this pipe," the seraph replied, and he balanced it by the mouthpiece. "Don't throw away the good pipe," cried Eileen Ni Cooley. "Am I walking beside a pair of wild men this day?" Patsy interrupted also. "Hold on for a minute. Give me the pipe and you can take this one." He took Caeltia's silver-mounted briar and he passed to the seraph his own blackened clay. "You can throw that one away," said he, and he popped Caeltia's pipe into his own mouth. "It will do that way," said Caeltia sadly. He held the pipe by the stem, and with a sharp movement snapped it in halves; the head fell to the ground and a small tight wad of burning tobacco jumped from it at the shock. "There it is," said Caeltia. He jerked the piece of broken stem from his hand, and after sighing deeply they marched on. Eileen Ni Cooley was angry. "Padraig," said she, "what made you throw all the golden money away, and the silver money?" Patsy regarded her with the calm eye of a king. "Stick your arm through mine, Eileen," said he, "and let us be comfortable as we go along, for the pair of us haven't had a talk for a long time, and Caeltia here wants to talk to you as well as me." "That is so," said Caeltia. Eileen did put her arm in his, and as they stepped briskly forward she stared at him with eyes that were round with admiration and astonishment. "Aren't you the queer man, Padraig!" said she. "I suppose," said Patsy, "that you'll be slipping away from us some time to-night?" "Not if you want me to stay, Padraig." They opened a new conversation on that. CHAPTER XXXV That day they did not stay their travel, even to eat. Finaun was urgent, and they ate from their hands as they marched. The ass moved his slender legs briskly, the cart rumbled, and the metals in it clashed and thumped as the wheels jolted on the rutty path. They met no person as they went. From the fields near by came the fresh odour of wild grass that out-breathed again to the sun his living breath; and the sun shone, not fiercely, but kindly, tempering down the oblique ways his potent fire; above their heads and slanting away on wide wings the birds were sailing, calling a note as they went and calling again; here were trees once more; their grave shadows slept on the road, stamping the golden light with a die of ebony, and their grave voices whispered busily, quietly, like the voices of many mothers who fold against fruitful breasts the little children; so they crooned and sang rocking their ample greenery on the air. In the afternoon they reached the hill, close to the top of which the angels' finery was buried. When they had ascended this hill for nearly an hour the donkey struck work. He stood, and nothing would induce him to move further in that direction. Indeed, he slewed the cart completely round, and pointed his nose and his shafts in the direction which he considered reasonable. They halted. "He'll not go up there," said Mary, and she pulled the long nose to her bosom. "He will not," said her father. "Will you leave that ass alone, Mary. Give him back his snout and behave yourself like a Christian girl." "You leave me alone," said Mary, "what harm am I doing to yourself?" "It's that I don't like to see a woman kissing an ass." "Well, if you don't look at me you won't see anything." "You're full of fun," said her father sternly. He shrugged his shoulders and turned to Finaun: "He did this once before on us and we going up a tall hill in Connaught, and although I hammered the skin off his back he wouldn't move a step; he's a great ass, mind you, mister, and maybe we ought to have looked for a gentler way up this hill." Finaun was feeding tufts of grass to the donkey, and the donkey was eating these with appetite. "There is no need to come further," said Finaun. "We are almost in sight of the place and can make our adieus here." "Oh! we'll leave the beast," cried Mac Cann, "and we'll all go up to see the last of you." "It is better that we should part here," said Finaun gently. "We do not wish to be seen at the last." "You can have it your own way," said Patsy sulkily. Finaun stood towering over Mac Cann; he placed his hands on Patsy's shoulders and solemnly blessed him in round language, then he kissed him tenderly on either cheek. "Begor!" said Patsy. And Finaun did the same for Eileen Ni Cooley and for Mary, and he kissed the two of them on their cheeks, then he laid his palm on the donkey's muzzle and blessed that beast, and he strode mightily up the hill. Caeltia advanced to Patsy, but Mac Cann was embarrassed. He had been kissed by a man, so he lit his pipe in self-defence and kept it in his mouth. "You're going off?" said he to Caeltia, and he puffed like a chimney. "I'm going off," replied Caeltia in a low voice. Patsy took the pipe from his mouth and put it into the seraph's hand. "Here," said he, "take a last pull at that and ease your heart." Caeltia did take it, and he smoked it, and it did ease his heart. "I'll give you the spade out of the cart," continued Patsy, "for you'll have to dig the things up. There it is, and it doesn't matter whether it's lost or not." "It is good-bye now," said Caeltia, shouldering the spade, and he returned the pipe to Patsy, who put it instantly in his mouth. Caeltia held out his hand and Mac Cann put his own into it. While their hands were together Patsy was seized with compunction--he drew the seraph aside a few paces: "Listen!" said he. "I played a trick on you the time I was taking the money out of my pocket to throw it away." "Yes?" said Caeltia. "I let one of the gold pieces slip through my fingers, and it's lying at the bottom of my pocket at this minute, but I'll throw it away, mister honey, if you say so." Caeltia looked at him, and a smile of great contentment crept over his lips. "If I were you," said he, "I'd keep it." Mac Cann nodded at him very solemnly: "I'll keep it," said he earnestly, "and I'll spend it." Caeltia then said his adieus to the others, and he tramped up the hill with the spade balanced in his hand. The piece of gold was burning in Patsy's pocket. He turned to Art: "Well, young boy! there's my hand and good luck be with you; give up racing about and climbing trees and you'll be all right; you've the makings of a good hand on you, and that's a great thing, and you've got the music." "Good-bye," said Art, and they shook hands. Eileen Ni Cooley took his hand also, then she and Patsy strode to the cart, and with the donkey they moved down the hill. Mary stood in front of Art, and she did not look at him; she turned her grave face away, and stared sidewards where the late sunshine drowsed in gold on the rough slopes. She put her hand out to him. He took her hand and held it between his own; he raised it to his lips and he held it there pressing against his mouth. He dropped it, and stood back a pace staring at her; he struck his hands together in a wild movement; he turned and ran swiftly after his companions. These two had never spoken to each other. Near the top of the hill he came on Finaun and Caeltia, and the three went together. In a little they reached the point in the road where they had slept during their first night on earth, and where they had eaten their first meal on a sunny morning. Distant a few paces they saw the tree. Caeltia dug there until he uncovered the sacks. He pulled these from the clay and opened them, and each of the angels retrieved his own belongings from the medley. Finaun was urgent and thoughtful. He apparelled himself hastily, while, with less speed, Caeltia also achieved his change. But Art sat on the ground fingering his raiment, and seemed to be lost in a contemplation of the grass beside him. Finaun was ready. He stood upright, a kingly figure, shimmering in purple folds. On his head a great crown, closed at the top; across his shoulder a chain of heavy gold, and depending on his breast a broad plaque of gold that blazed. He looked at the others and nodded, then he leaped, and at a hundred feet the sun flashed from his wings, and he looked like a part of the rainbow. Now Caeltia was ready, standing in cloth of gold and lovely ornaments of hammered silver. He scanned once more the drowsing landscape; he smiled on Art; he sprang aloft and abroad and sped upwards in a blinding gleam. Art raised himself. He lifted the crimson robe that was dashed with gold, the crimson buskins feathered at the heel, the wide crown of short points. He placed these on the ground and stood for a time looking down the road, while the many-coloured pinions streamed lengthily from his hand. Suddenly he frowned, and, with the wings still dragging, he ran down the path. In five minutes he came to the place where they had left the ass, but it was no longer there. Far below on the curving ways he saw the donkey moving quietly. Mac Cann and Eileen Ni Cooley were going by each other's side, and Patsy's arm was about the woman. He looked around, and at a little distance saw the girl beside a bush. She was lying on her breast, her face was hidden into the ground, and she was motionless. He walked to her. "Mary," said he, "I have come to say farewell." She moved as at a shock. She rose to her feet, and she did not look at him, and this was the first time that these two had talked together. He bent to her beseechingly: "I have come to say farewell," said he. Again she put her hand into his: "Say your say," quoth she, "and go your road," and with that she did look at him, sternly. He loosed her hand; his eyes flamed; he stamped the road; he swung his arms aloft gripping the wings, and, with a fierce movement, he ripped them in twain; he put the halves together and tore again, then, with a sweep of his hands, fluttered the shining plumes away and on the wind. "Now!" quoth he, with a laugh. "Oh!" she stammered, staring, terrified, incredulous. "Let you and I go down after the people," he said. But Mary was weeping, and as they paced down the narrow track he laid a great arm about her shoulder. Printed in the United States of America. Transcriber Notes: Passages in italics were indicated by _underscores_. Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS. Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is. Throughout the document was creative spelling Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted. On page 202, the quotation marks were corrected around "Bring him here,". On page 203, a quotation mark was added before "Down went the seraph Cuchulain". 
46904	----	THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM THE CASE FOR MEASURES OF RESTRAINT FOR TRAMPS, LOAFERS, AND UNEMPLOYABLES: With a Study of Continental Detention Colonies and Labour Houses. BY WILLIAM HARBUTT DAWSON Author of "The Evolution of Modern Germany," "German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle," "Prince Bismarck and State Socialism," "The German Workman," etc., etc. London: P. S. KING & SON, ORCHARD HOUSE, WESTMINSTER. 1910 "In all ways it needs, especially in these times, to be proclaimed aloud that for the idle man there is no place in this England of ours. He that will not work, and save according to his means, let him go elsewhither; let him know that for _him_ the law has made no soft provision, but a hard and stern one; that by the law of nature, which the law of England would vainly contend against in the long run, _he_ is doomed either to quit these habits, or miserably be extruded from this earth, which is made on principles different from these. He that will not work according to his faculty, let him perish according to his necessity; there is no law juster than that.... "Let paralysis retire into secret places and dormitories proper for it; the public highways ought not to be occupied by people demonstrating that motion is impossible. Paralytic;--and also, thank Heaven, entirely false! Listen to a thinker of another sort: 'All evil, and this evil too, is a nightmare, the instant you begin to _stir_ under it, the _evil_ is, properly speaking, gone.'"--_Thomas Carlyle_, "Chartism." CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE PROBLEM STATED 1 II. THE URBAN LOAFER 47 III. DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES 62 IV. THE BELGIAN BEGGARS' DEPOTS 104 V. THE GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES 133 VI. THE GERMAN TRAMP PRISONS 147 VII. THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE 166 VIII. TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND 179 IX. LABOUR HOUSES UNDER THE POOR LAW 193 X. LABOUR DEPOTS AND HOSTELS 212 XI. RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS 229 XII. APPENDIX I.--THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908, AND VAGRANTS 250 APPENDIX II.--SPECIMEN WAY TICKETS 253 APPENDIX III.--BELGIAN LAW OF NOVEMBER 27, 1891, FOR THE REPRESSION OF VAGRANCY AND BEGGARY 257 APPENDIX IV.--REGULATIONS OF THE BERLIN (RUMMELSBURG) LABOUR HOUSE 263 INTRODUCTION. There is growing evidence that English public opinion is not only moving but maturing on the question of vagrancy and loafing, and its rational treatment. Foreign critics have maintained that we are slow in this country to listen to new ideas, and still slower to appropriate them, partly, it has been inferred, from aversion to innovation of every kind, partly from aversion to intellectual effort. If a national proneness to cautiousness is hereby meant, it is neither possible to deny the accusation nor altogether needful to resent it. Yet while this cautiousness protects us against the evil results of precipitancy and gives balance to our public life, a rough sort of organic unity to our corporate institutions and a certain degree of continuity to our political and social policies, it has also disadvantages, and one of the chief of these is that it has a tendency to perpetuate hoary anomalies and to maintain in galvanic and artificial life theories of public action which are hopelessly ineffectual and effete, if we would but honestly admit it. The principles which underlie our treatment of the social parasite afford an illustration of our national conservatism. Alone of Western nations we still treat lightly and almost frivolously this excrescence of civilisation. Other countries have their tramps and loafers, but they regard and treat them as a public nuisance, and as such deny to them legal recognition; only here are they deliberately tolerated and to some extent fostered. Happily we are now moving in the matter, and moving rather rapidly. A few years ago it was still accepted as an axiom by all but a handful of sociologists--men for the most part regarded as amiable faddists, whose eccentric notions it was, indeed, quite fashionable to listen to with a certain indulgent charity, but unwise to receive seriously--that there was really only one way of dealing with the tramp, and that was the way of the Poor Law. That this was also the rational way was proved by the fact that it had been inherited from our forefathers, and who were we that we should impugn the wisdom of the past? And yet nothing is more remarkable in its way than the strong public sentiment hostile to inherited precept and usage which has of late arisen on this subject. It is the object of this book to strengthen this healthy sentiment, and if possible to direct it into practical channels. The leading contention here advanced is that society is justified, in its own interest, in legislating the loafer out of existence, if legislation can be shown to be equal to the task. Further justification this book will hardly be held to require at its writer's hands, but a few words as to its genesis may not be out of place. It is now some twenty years since I first directed attention to the Continental method of treating vagrants and loafers in Detention Colonies and Labour Houses. Repeated visits to institutions of this kind, both in Germany and Switzerland, together with active work as a Poor Law Guardian, only served to deepen my conviction that prolonged disciplinary treatment is the true remedy for the social parasite whose besetting vice is idleness. At the Bradford Meeting of the British Association in September, 1900, I read (before the Economic Section) a paper in which I developed, in such detail as seemed suitable to the occasion, practical proposals based, with necessary modifications, upon the result of a study of Continental methods. This paper was published immediately afterwards in abbreviated form in the _Fortnightly Review_, and was followed a little later by a second article in the same place, in which the proposals advanced were further elaborated. These proposals attracted great attention at the time; in particular they were discussed by many of the leading London and provincial journals, and it was encouraging and significant that while the novelty of the ideas put forward was admitted, they were all but unanimously endorsed by the Press and by Poor Law authorities. It is desirable to say that the first three chapters of the present book are based on, and to a large extent embody, these writings of ten years ago, though much illustrative evidence of a later date has been added; the remainder of the volume, with the exception of one chapter, although dealing with phases of the subject which I have frequently expounded before, is published for the first time. Nevertheless, two of the pleas originally put forward have now disappeared from my argument, inasmuch as the measures to which they related have, in the meantime, been realised--one, the establishment of public labour registries, the other, the prohibition of child vagrancy, which has been dealt with in that humane law the Children Act of 1908. As a result of the more serious attention given to the vagrancy question at that time, the President of the Local Government Board in 1904 appointed a Departmental Committee of Inquiry, before which I was invited to give evidence. The reader who takes up this book is strongly urged to study the Report of the Departmental Committee as well; it is a most able exposition of the vagrancy problem by serious investigators who were less concerned to emphasise their individual predilections than to help on the settlement of the question by uniting on broad principles of procedure. As the thorough-going recommendations of the Committee differ but slightly from the proposals which I advocated before them and here repeat, the value of the present volume will consist chiefly in the description which it contains of a series of disciplinary institutions in which other countries are actually carrying out the methods whose feasibility we are still discussing. Pressure is happily come from other directions, and particularly from the new school of Poor Law reformers. The publication of the Reports of the Poor Law Commission begins a new era in the history of public relief. The realisation of a constructive policy so large and fundamental as that which the Commissioners have put forward will probably prove to be the work of many years; yet whether our advance on the lines suggested be fast or slow, it must be obvious to everyone that the question of Poor Law reform is now a living one, and cannot again fall into the background. As regards the aspect of Poor Law administration with which this volume is concerned, all those who have laboured as path-makers in this undeveloped province of social experiment must derive satisfaction from the fact that the Commission, simply endorsing the recommendations of the Vagrancy Committee, regard the disciplinary treatment of loafers of all kinds as an essential part of any reorganisation of the Poor Law. For if the deserving poor, the genuine unemployed, and the hopeless unemployables are to be treated more systematically and more humanely in the future than they have been in the past, it will be impossible to withhold from the loafers the special attention which they need. Although the subject of vagrancy is necessarily approached in these pages from the standpoint of repression, I should feel that my advocacy had failed of its purpose if a change of the law simply stamped out the tramp without making ample provision for the _bona-fide_ work seeker. I urge the abolition of the casual wards, not merely because they encourage vagrancy, but also because they are altogether unsuited to the decent workers who are on the road owing to misfortune, and not to fault. While accepting the Vagrancy Committee's conclusion that the retention of the casual wards may be necessary by way of transition, I look to the time when there will be provided for such men in sufficiency, and as part of a national system, hostels or houses of call offering on the easiest possible terms accommodation superior to that of the shelter, the doss-house, or even the so-called model lodging-house. This is done on a large scale in Germany and Switzerland, and it is little creditable to us as an industrial nation that we are so behindhand in a matter of such great social importance. The new system of labour registries, by increasing the mobility of labour, will probably help to bring home to the public mind the need for these way-farers' hostels. With co-operation on the part of public authorities, labour organisations, and private philanthropy the cost should not prove deterrent, while the advantage would be incalculable. _January 1, 1910_ W. H. D. THE VAGRANCY PROBLEM. CHAPTER I. THE PROBLEM STATED. There are two large sections of sociologists who to-day strongly advocate, the one a radical reform of the Poor Law, the other the reform of the Prison system. The modern Poor Law reformer would administer public assistance with greater discrimination, showing more consideration in the treatment of the unfortunate poor, more rigour in the treatment of those whose destitution is deliberate and preventable, more care for the children, with a view to helping them past the dangers of demoralisation and lifelong intermittent pauperisation. On the other hand, the prison reformer desires to see the punitive and retaliatory aspect of imprisonment made subsidiary to the reformative, or at least he would give to the latter greater prominence than it receives at present. Now that concerted endeavours are being made to place both Poor Law and Prison in the crucible, with a view to recasting them in new and improved forms, the time would appear to be specially appropriate for filling up an important gap in our penal system dating from the reorganisation of the Poor Law in 1834. The reform which is urged in these pages appears to me to be the missing link in that long and unique chain of laws and orders and regulations which has in course of time been constructed for the purpose of casting round the residual elements of society influences at once repressive and benevolent, at once deterrent and remedial. While some of these elements have received attention enough--not always wise, perhaps, and often defeating its object--one element has never yet been treated rationally and systematically. I refer to the large and ever-growing class of idlers, who differ from the genuine unemployed in that they will neither seek work nor accept it when offered: the drones of the social hive, the habitual loafers. We may distinguish in this parasitic class several clearly-defined types. (1) There is first the type with which we are most familiar--the nomad of the highway, who is always in motion yet never gets to his journey's end, the unmitigated vagabond, who lives by begging and blackmailing and pillaging. (2) There is also the settled, resident loafer--an urban type in the main, though the country village knows him likewise--who haunts the streets year in year out from morning till evening, living no one knows how, and whose only purpose in life might seem to be to offer disproof in his own obtrusive person of that saying of Adam Smith: "As it is ridiculous not to dress, so it is in some measure not to be employed, like other persons." (3) There is also the intermittent loafer, three-quarters idler, one-quarter worker of a sort, and altogether good-for-nothing, who is almost invariably an inebriate and often has taken upon himself domestic responsibilities which he saddles upon the shoulders of a too-willing community--a character who mostly comes before public notice in connection with Poor Law prosecutions for arrears of maintenance. (4) Not to exhaust the classification, there is a pitiable type for which we must go to an almost hopeless class of the other sex, a type which the Poor Law system knows likewise in connection with default in parental obligations which, but for our exaggerated notions of the limits of personal liberty, our laws would see to it were never incurred. For the virtual encouragement which the Poor Law offers to promiscuous, illegitimate, and irresponsible maternity amongst the lowest class of society should shock the sense and excite the alarm of all who are concerned for the moral and mental health of the race. The idlers of the first two classes keep themselves most persistently before the public gaze, but in any legislative treatment of their shortcomings it is desirable that the other types should not be overlooked, and in these pages the problem of the loafer is viewed as a whole. What society must do in its own interest, and in the interest of the idlers themselves, is to stamp out, as far as well-devised laws can do it--and we need not be too soft-hearted--the social parasite of every kind. His existence is a positive injury to the State in every way; he robs the State not only of the industry which he owes to it, but he consumes the produce of other people's labour and renders it nugatory, by abstracting from the wealth of society without adding to it; his example scandalises honest workers, for while we preach industry and thrift to the labouring classes, we assiduously foster a huge loafing class, which preaches more eloquently on a very different text, viz., that it pays best to do nothing and sponge on the community; he is a standing menace to public order and safety; and for society to tolerate him is not merely to condone, injury done to itself, but absolutely to place a premium upon social treason of a particularly insidious and vicious kind. It is only by the veriest abuse of the modern theory of personal liberty that the Legislature, which is not slow to restrict the free action of its citizens in so many ways, has hitherto thrown a paternal and protecting arm over the loafer and the wastrel. For several generations we have done little but pet and coddle the loafer; we have treated his constitutional laziness not as the personal vice and social crime which it is, but as a venial weakness to be excused and indulged, while the man himself we have surrounded with a nimbus of maudlin sentimentality. Think what we do for the professional idlers. Take the urban type. While honest men are working we give him the free run of our thoroughfares, and set apart for him the best of our street corners. Should he be a vagrant we make it possible for him to travel through England from the Channel to the Tweed without doing one hour's serious work save for the labour tasks which are imposed by some of the workhouses at which he may call. In these institutions--erected at intervals not too far distant to overtask his strength--food is placed before him night and morning, with a bed thrown in; while outside he can always rely upon the alms which he is able to draw from the pockets of the unwisely charitable whom he deceives with his tales of misery, or the unwillingly charitable whom he terrorises into compliance with his demands. This was not, of course, the old English tradition. The very earliest of our Poor Laws drew a very clear distinction between the normal poor--the "aged, poor, and impotent persons compelled to live by alms," as they are described in the Act of 1530--and the idle beggar and vagabond. While provision was made for the due relief of the former, penal measures were consistently directed against the latter.[1] And when such methods of repression as the felon irons, the stocks, the whip, serfage, and transportation no longer commended themselves to the public conscience, there remained the method of summary despatch home to the town or village of legal domicile in the custody of zealous parish constables who relieved the monotony of their dignified calling with many a pleasurable jaunt over country in those old leisurely days. But the noteworthy thing about the old laws against vagrants is that their uniform purpose--whatever their effect--was not the mere restriction of this class within due numerical bounds, or the regulation of its movements within decorous limits of liberty, but its absolute extinction. In those brave days the idea of maintaining the vagrant at the public expense, and of encouraging him in idleness and vice, never occurred to the Legislature. [Footnote 1: An Act of 1495 (11 Henry VII.) ordered local authorities to search for all "vagaboundes, idell and suspecte persones lyvyng suspeciously," to put them in the stocks for three days, giving them bread and water only, and then to turn them out of the town or township; failing their departure they were to be put in the stocks for six days more, yet still they had to go. An Act of 1530 (22 Henry VIII.), said in the preamble to be due to the increase of vagrancy, and consequently of crime and disorder, enjoined whipping as an alternative to the stocks, and extended the statute to fortune tellers; a second offence by the latter was made punishable by whipping on two successive days, three hours in the pillory, and the loss of one ear. An Act of 1535 (27 Henry VIII.) made further provision for the able-bodied and infirm poor, but meted severer punishment to the ruffler, sturdy vagabond, or valiant beggar, who on a second apprehension might have the upper part of the right ear cut off, and on conviction at Quarter Sessions of "wandering, loitering, and idleness," might be sentenced to death as felons. The preamble of the Act of 1547 (1 Edward VI.) lamented that earlier legislation on the subject of vagrancy "hath not had that successe which hath byn wished, partelie by folishe pitie and mercie of them which shoulde have seen the said godlie lawes executed, partelie by the perverse nature and longe accustumed idlenes of the parsons given to loytringe." Accordingly this Act provided that those who would not work nor "offer themself to labour with anny that will take them according to their facultie, and yf no man otherwise will take them doo not offer themself to worke for meate and drynck," also those who ran away from their employment, should be taken as vagabonds before two justices of the peace, who might order them to be branded on the breast with a V and "adjudge the said parsone living so idelye to such presentour to be his slave" for two years. Should the slave run away during the two years he was liable on recapture to be branded on cheek and forehead with an S, and be adjudged a slave for ever, while to run away a second time was felony punishable with death. If private persons failed to set the law in motion the local justices were to do so. In 1572 (14 Elizabeth) a law was passed enjoining that sturdy beggars found begging should be "grevouslye whipped, and burnte through the gristle of the right eare with a hot iron," unless some one would take them into service for one year; a second offence was to be treated as a felony unless some one would take them into service for two years; and a third offence was made felony without benefit of clergy. An amending Act of 1597 omitted the provisions as to branding and ear-marking, but branding with a R in the left shoulder was reintroduced for incorrigible or dangerous rogues in 1603 (1 James I.). (Branding continued to be legal until 1713.) The Act of 1597 also enjoined banishment for dangerous rogues who refused to reform their lives, and an Order in Council of 1603 particularised the countries to which they should be sent--East and West Indies, France, Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. The same power to banish was reasserted by a law of 1662, the destination being now "any of the English plantations." One of the most sensible of the earlier repressive laws was that of 1702-3 (2 & 3 Anne) for the increase of seamen and encouragement of navigation, which empowered justices of the peace to send rogues and vagabonds to "Her Majesty's Service at Sea."] We have so whittled down the laws on vagrancy and idleness, however, that there are now only two ways in which it is possible to convict and punish the tramp and loafer as such. The law regards as "idle and disorderly persons" such persons, being able wholly or in part to maintain themselves or their families by work or other means, who wilfully refuse or neglect so to do, by which refusal or neglect they or their families whom they may be legally bound to maintain become chargeable to the public funds; also any persons wandering abroad or placing themselves in public places, highways, courts, or passages, to beg or gather alms, or causing or procuring children so to do, and the penalty in such cases is imprisonment with labour up to one calendar month, though should a fine be imposed instead of imprisonment hard labour must not be adjudged for default in payment. The law also regards as "rogues and vagabonds" such persons wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air or under a tent or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence, and not giving a good account of themselves, and the penalty is imprisonment with labour for a period not exceeding three calendar months, though on a second conviction such offenders may be imprisoned with hard labour as long as one year. So runs the law, and in theory it does not seem ineffectual; in practice it is wholly so. For the penalties visited on "rogues and vagabonds" are virtually annulled by the care which the Poor Law has taken to allow these offenders to evade apprehension. A vagrant may be as "idle and disorderly" as he likes by day, so long as he pursues his irregular life undetected but at night he has only to present himself at the handiest workhouse, and he is forwith certified to be a deserving citizen, and is lodged and fed at the public expense. And even about the enforcement of the penal provisions against the tramp, when his native wit and cunning fail him, and he is caught in the meshes of the law, there is an unreality and a frivolity which brings both the statute and its administration into disrepute. Nine-tenths of the "idle and disorderly persons," of the "rogues and vagabonds," who come before the justices of the peace are hardened offenders, who know more about the county gaols of the country than the most experienced of Prison Commissioners; yet the view which most commonly prevails in the police courts is that so long as the itinerant mendicant is sent on his way, and is thus got safely out of the district, expedience if not justice is satisfied. To be fair to our justices, it should be remembered that this blind-eyed administration of the law is no modern innovation. It is really only a survival of the ancient custom, already alluded to, of harrying vagabonds from parish to parish--often after a rigorous application of the whip, but in any case after a blood-curdling warning from the local justice, duly followed by a special commination from the parish constable on his own account--lest they should by any mischance fall upon poor funds to which they had no domiciliary claim. The result, however, is the same now as of old. The tramp takes his admonition, and, if need be, his punishment, with stoical indifference, and continues a tramp. The offence is condoned or corrected, as the case may be, but the offender knows that he is free to commit it again--at his peril, of course--directly the law has done with him, and that in the bathroom of the casual ward he may each evening purge the day's offences, and so begin anew on the morrow his career of licensed crime. Who shall wonder, then, that our past indulgent treatment of the vagrant has had the effect of perpetuating and multiplying this class? The dictum of wise Sir Matthew Hale, uttered just two and a half centuries ago, is as true to-day as ever: "A man that has been bred up in the trade of begging will never, unless compelled, fall to industry." As for the casual ward itself, it was to a large extent an accident of legislation, and certainly it was not contemplated when the Poor Law was reformed in 1834. The great constructive measure of that year, introducing the existing type of workhouse, made no reference to vagrants. The Act presupposed only the relief by the new Boards of Guardians of the settled poor. "But," the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy write, "when workhouses had been established vagrants applied for admission to them, representing themselves to be in urgent need of relief. The masters of workhouses had no means of investigating the facts and had to deal with each case on their own responsibility. At that time workhouse inmates who had no settlement were maintained at the expense of the parish in which the workhouse happened to be; this made the relief of the vagrant in the workhouse more difficult, and workhouse masters were pressed by the Guardians to refuse such cases altogether. In 1837 the Poor Law Commissioners, on being appealed to by the Commissioners of Metropolitan Police with regard to the question, expressed the opinion that it was the intention of the Act that all cases of destitution should be relieved, irrespective of the fact that the applicant might belong to a distant parish. They stated that it was the duty of the relieving officer to relieve casually destitute wayfarers and of the workhouse master to admit such cases to the workhouse. These cases were distinguished from beggars by profession, who were to be dealt with under the Vagrancy Act of 1824."[2] In 1838 the Commissioners issued instructions to the Boards of Guardians in the Metropolis pointing out their duties in regard to the relief of the casually destitute, and suggesting the adoption of arrangements for securing the performance by them of task work, and the following year a further Circular threatened with instant dismissal officers who neglected to relieve cases of urgent casual destitution. In this way the right of the vagrant to admittance became asserted: "as a class vagrants came to be recognised by the Central Authority, who from this time issued a series of circulars and orders dealing with them directly or indirectly." As a natural result between 1834 and 1848 vagrancy increased to an alarming extent in all parts of the country. [Footnote 2: Report, Vol. I., p. 9.] It is interesting to recall the fact that as late as 1840 the Poor Law Commissioners, though the vagrancy evil was steadily growing, were "convinced that vagrancy would cease to be a burden if the relief given to vagrants were such as only the really destitute would accept." Hence they recommended that the Central Board should be "empowered and directed to frame and enforce regulations as to the relief to be afforded to vagrants." An Act of 1842 empowered Boards of Guardians to prescribe a task of work for persons relieved in the workhouse "in return for the food and lodging afforded," though no one was to be detained against his will for more than four hours after breakfast on the morning following admission, which meant that the casual might do little or much, according to his whim. The same year the Poor Law Commissioners ordered the setting apart of separate wards for casuals, prescribed special diet for them, and regulated the task-work system. Meantime, the vagrant proved himself more and more the master of the Board of Guardians; his claim to relief having been admitted, he settled down to the view that the casual wards were convenient houses of call, intended the better to facilitate his roaming life, and this view was implicitly accepted by Poor Law authorities. More than anything else, therefore, the casual ward is responsible for the present perplexities of the vagrancy problem. One of the first acts of the new Poor Law Board of 1848 was to inquire into the extent of the casual pauper nuisance and the causes of the abuse of casual relief; and overlooking the fact that the Boards of Guardians had been forced to accept the vagrant against their will, it blamed these bodies and told them that a remedy must be sought "principally in their own vigilance and energy." Among the measures recommended were (1) the refusal of relief to able-bodied men not actually destitute; (2) the employment of police officers as assistant relieving officers for vagrants, and (3) the adoption of a system of passes and certificates (restricted as to time and route) to be issued "by some proper authority" to persons actually in search of work. The first two of these recommendations were widely acted upon, though lack of uniformity in policy seriously hampered the efforts of those Boards of Guardians which honestly tried to do their duty. Of the later measures introduced in the vain hope of checking vagrancy three are specially noteworthy:-- (1) A Poor Law Board Circular of 1868 and a General Order of 1871 recommending the introduction of the separate cell system. (2) The Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act of 1871 empowering Boards of Guardians to detain casual paupers for the following times: If a pauper had not previously been admitted within one month, until 11.0 a.m. on the day following admission; if he had already been admitted more than twice within a month, until 9.0 a.m. on the third day after admission. The Casual Poor Act of 1882 extended the periods of detention as follows: First admissions during the month, until 9.0 a.m. on the second day following admission; second and further admissions during the month, until 9.0 a.m. on the fourth day. (3) An Order of December 18, 1882, making admission to a casual ward dependent upon the order of a relieving officer or an assistant relieving officer, except in urgent cases. In effect it is well known that nearly all cases are urgent. Considering now the extent of the vagrant population, using the term in its wider signification, and not confining it to the casual paupers[3] who are particularly enumerated in Poor Law statistics, the admission must be made at the outset that the data available are very inconclusive. It seems desirable first to call attention to the limitations of strictly official information on the subject. Since 1848 a count of the vagrants relieved in casual wards has been made by order of the Local Government Board on January 1 and July 1 in each year; since 1890 there has also been a count of vagrants relieved on the nights of January 1 and July 1; and since 1904 a count has been taken each Friday night. [Footnote 3: "Casual pauper" is defined in the Pauper Inmates Discharge and Regulation Act of 1871 as "any destitute wayfarer or wanderer applying for or receiving relief" in the casual wards.] According to the Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1908 the average number of casual paupers relieved in England and Wales on each Friday night of that year was 11,491, comparing with an average of 10,401 for the year 1907; the maximum number was 13,798 on August 22 and the minimum 8,341 on July 4. The average relieved on Friday nights in London alone during the year was 1,114. A further return of the number of persons in England and Wales in receipt of relief on January 1, 1909, shows that the casual paupers numbered 15,852, 1,420 being relieved in London unions and 14,432 in provincial unions. As to these numbers, however, the Local Government Board state:-- "These are the total numbers of casual paupers entered in the returns as relieved on January 1, 1909. The total number relieved on the night of January 1, was 9,747. To what extent the former totals include twice over persons who received relief in more than one union on the same day is not ascertainable, and it is possible that the total of the paupers relieved on the night of January 1, although omitting many casual paupers who, after their discharge from the workhouse in the morning, did not again have recourse to the Poor Law on the same day, is the more reliable."[4] That the vagrant population, even enumerated in this partial manner, is increasing is shown by the following table, showing for a period of ten years the number of casuals relieved during day and night on January 1:-- ---------+-------------------------- | Casual Paupers Relieved. +-------------+------------ Year. | At any time | On the | during | night of | January 1. | January 1. ---------+-------------+------------ 1899 | 13,366 | 7,499 1900 | 9,841 | 5,579 1901 | 11,658 | 6,795 1902 | 13,178 | 7,840 1903 | 14,475 | 8,266 1904 | 15,634 | 8,519 1905 | 17,524 | 9,768 1906 | 16,823 | 9,708 1907 | 14,957 | 8,346 1908 | 17,083 | 10,436 ---------+-------------+------------ It would appear from these figures that a certain relationship exists between vagrancy and trade cycles. Of the years of maximum vagrancy, 1904, 1905, and 1908 were years of more or less acute unemployment, while those of minimum vagrancy, 1900, 1901, and 1902, were years of good or fairly good trade. That the fact of an inter-relationship between vagrancy and the state of trade cannot be pressed unduly, however, is proved by the comparatively narrow limits within which, allowing for increase of population, the figures move. Certainly the figures afford no _prima facie_ justification for supposing that trade depression causes any considerable number of genuine workmen to join the highway population. [Footnote 4: "Annual Report" for 1908, p. 10.] Poor Law statistics, however, fail entirely to do justice to the extent of the vagrancy problem. They show the number of vagrants relieved at one time and in one way only; but all vagrants do not receive public help at the same time, and the total number on the road is far larger than the number who call at the workhouses. As to this the testimony of Poor Law Inspectors and all who have studied the vagrancy question at close quarters is unanimous. "A very large number, probably the majority, of vagrants seldom come to the vagrant wards," wrote Mr. J. S. Davy, as Poor Law Inspector for Sussex, Kent, and part of Surrey.[5] "It ought to be remembered," says another Inspector, "that the vagrants admitted to the vagrant wards represent only a very small percentage of the vagrants of the country."[6] [Footnote 5: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, p. 57.] [Footnote 6: _Ibid._, Report of Mr. P. H. Bagenal, p. 147.] The Departmental Committee on Vagrancy of 1904 endorse this view:-- "The returns of pauperism published annually by the Local Government Board give figures relating to casual paupers, that is, vagrants relieved in casual wards, but these represent only a small portion of the total number of vagrants.... The vagrant is to be found in many places--on the road, in casual wards, common lodging houses, public or charitable shelters, and prisons, besides which he has many other resorts, such as barns, brickworks, etc. Then, again, the number of homeless wayfarers varies greatly from time to time, and at different periods of the year, owing to conditions of trade, the state of the weather, or the attraction of seasonal employments."[7] [Footnote 7: Report of Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol. I., p. 16.] Although a simultaneous census of the entire vagrant population has never been taken, certain data exist which furnish the basis for at least an approximate estimate. Several of these will be mentioned. (1) Up to 1868 yearly returns were collected by the Home Office from the different police forces of England and Wales showing the number of vagrants of all kinds known to them. The number on the latest date, April 1, 1868, was 38,179, against 32,528 on April 1, 1867. The number of persons relieved in the casual wards of the country on January 1, 1867, was 5,027, and on January 1, 1868, 6,129, showing that the "casual paupers" at that date represented only about one-sixth of the total vagrant class. If the same proportion to population still held good to-day the number of vagrants of all kinds, based on the mean of the known number of casual paupers on January 1 of the five years 1904-8, viz., 9,355, would be about 56,000. (2) In the county of Gloucester a count has been made for many years on a night of April of the numbers sleeping in casual wards and in common lodging houses, and the results show that the lodging-houses contain five times as many vagrants as the casual wards. Allowing for vagrants who sleep out of doors, the ratio would not seriously differ from that shown by the police enumeration already mentioned. Applying to the whole country the number of vagrants per thousand of the population of Gloucestershire, the nomad army would be shown to be 30,000. It should be remembered, however, that Gloucestershire is a county of small towns, and lies away from the great streams of population; hence it should not feel the full effect of the vagrant movement.[8] (3) An enumeration made on March 17, 1905, by the chief constable of Northumberland, by means of police officers placed at the most important points, of vagrants on the roads between the hours of 7.0 a.m. and 7 p.m. gave a total of 300 (exclusive of Newcastle and Tynemouth), equal to about 1 per 1,000 of the population of the area covered. On this basis he placed the number of vagrants in England and Wales at 36,000. Here the omission of two important towns largely invalidates computation; their inclusion would unquestionably give a much higher ratio. [Footnote 8: "In point of distribution through the country vagrancy is found to cling to the Metropolis and its neighbourhood, and to the manufacturing and coal and iron mining districts; it follows also the track of the navvy when any new works of importance are in progress." Report of Poor Law Commission, Vol. II., pp. 161, 162.] (4) A careful census of vagrants, beggars, migratory poor, etc., is taken by the police for each county, city, and burgh police district in Scotland on two nights in the year, in June and December, showing the number of these persons in (1) prisons or police cells, (2) homes and refuges, hospitals and poorhouses, (3) common lodging-houses or other houses, (4) public parks, gardens or streets, outhouses, sheds, barns, or about pits, brick and other works. The two counts of 1908 gave the following result:-- Men. Women. Children. Total. June 21 6,815 1,843 1,541 10,199 December 27 6,129 1,391 986 8,506 This was equal to 2.1 and 1.8 per 1,000 of the population respectively, and if these ratios were applied to England and Wales they would represent aggregates of 76,000 and 63,000. (5) An enumeration of homeless persons in the administrative County of London, made by the London County Council on the night of January 15, 1909, showed a total of 2,088. On that night there were also 1,188 persons in the casual wards of London, and 21,864 in the common lodging-houses and shelters, of whom 10 per cent. were supposed to belong to the vagrant class. This would give a total of 5,462 vagrants as follows:--homeless (sleeping out and walking the streets), 2,088; in casual wards, 1,188; in common lodging-houses and shelters, 2,186; total, 5,462. As the population of the administrative County of London at the date named was estimated at 4,795,757, this total is equal to a ratio of 1.14 per 1,000 of the population. The same ratio for England and Wales would give a vagrant population of about 41,000. (6) Dr. J. R. Kaye, Medical Officer of Health for the West Riding of Yorkshire, in a report upon the influence of vagrancy in the dissemination of disease, published in 1904, estimated the roving population at 36,000. He has, at my request, explained the basis of his calculation as follows:-- "The estimate of 36,000 refers to England and Wales, and it includes the inmates of casual wards and nomads of the same class who inhabit alternately the casual wards and the common lodging houses according to the state of their pockets. The county police here (West Riding), make an annual census of tramps, and the figure comes out at about 1,000 persons, of whom about 200 are in the casual wards on any given night. Now the Local Government Board reports give the casual-ward population of England and Wales at about 10,000, so that if the same proportions hold good there should be about 50,000 wanderers. Or, on the other hand, if you take our ascertained 1,000 in the county area in relation to our population of 1,249,685, and apply the ratio to the population of England and Wales, we get a figure of 26,000. My figure of 36,000 comes about mid-way between the two estimates given above." (7) A final estimate which may be quoted is that made at the request of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy on the night of July 7, 1905, by the various police forces in England and Wales of persons without a settled home or visible means of subsistence: (_a_) in common lodging-houses; and (_b_) elsewhere than in common lodging-houses or casual wards. The result was as follows:-- (_a_) In common lodging-houses 47,588 (_b_) Elsewhere than in common lodging-houses or casual wards 14,624 ______ 62,212 These totals were made up of:-- (_a_) (_b_) Men 41,439 10,750 Women 4,869 2,436 Children 1,280 1,438 ______ ______ 47,588 14,624 In the opinion of the Vagrancy Committee, a considerable deduction must be made from the number returned for common lodging-houses, though, on the other hand, it appears from some of the returns that many vagrants, who would otherwise have been in tramp wards or common lodging-houses, were at the time engaged in temporary work such as fruit-picking and harvesting, and so were not included in the count. Further, an addition of about 10,000 is necessary to include the vagrants in casual wards. The Committee came to the conclusion that the census could not be accepted as "a trustworthy guide to the actual number of vagrants," and their Report contains the following guarded verdict:-- "The number of persons with no settled home and no visible means of subsistence probably reaches, at times of trade depression, as high a total as 70,000 or 80,000, while in times of industrial activity (as in 1900) it might not exceed 30,000 or 40,000. Between these limits the number varies, affected by the conditions of trade, weather, and economic causes. In our Inquiry we are more concerned with the habitual vagrant, that is, the class whom trade conditions do not affect. Of this class there is always an irreducible minimum, though successive depressions of trade may increasingly swell the numbers. No definite figures as to this permanent class can be obtained, but we are inclined to think that the total number would not exceed 20,000 to 30,000."[9] [Footnote 9: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 22.] It may be added that the estimates of the vagrant population made by witnesses who gave evidence before this Committee ranged from 25,000 to 70,000. The mean of all the seven estimates put forward above, as approximations only, is about 50,000, which is probably below rather than above the actual number in normal times. The estimates differ so widely, however, as to shake one's faith in the possibility of arriving at a safe figure except by a special census on even more comprehensive lines than those which underlay the Home Office enumerations up to 1868. But even when the casual wards, model lodging-houses, shelters, and other resorts of the roaming poor have been enumerated, the full extent of the vagrant population is not told. According to a statement made by the Prison Commissioners to the Vagrancy Committee, 3,736 out of 12,369 convicted male prisoners on February 28, 1905, were, in the opinion of the prison governors, "persons with no fixed place of abode and no regular means of subsistence"; and of 2,595 convicted female prisoners, 372 answered the same description. In other words, one-fourth of the prison population belonged at that date to the vagrant and loafing class. The prosecutions in England and Wales for vagrancy offences in the narrower sense--begging, sleeping out, misbehaviour by paupers, and theft or destruction of workhouse clothes--fluctuated as follows during the ten years 1898-1907:-- --------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | Theft or Year. | Begging. | Sleeping-out. | Misdemeanour | Destruction | | | by Paupers. | of Workhouse | | | | Clothes. ------|----------|---------------|--------------|-------------- 1898 | 15,474 | 9,582 | 3,769 | 589 1899 | 12,659 | 8,515 | 3,632 | 615 1900 | 11,339 | 7,452 | 3,717 | 457 1901 | 14,492 | 9,101 | 5,118 | 576 1902 | 16,184 | 9,598 | 5,959 | 726 1903 | 19,283 | 10,349 | 6,496 | 841 1904 | 23,036 | 11,785 | 7,436 | 937 1905 | 26,386 | 12,636 | 6,314 | 1,005 1906 | 25,083 | 11,540 | 5,176 | 1,016 1907 | 23,023 | 11,164 | 4,633 | 852 --------------------------------------------------------------- At whatever figure we place the vagrant population, there is little doubt that the number tends to increase. The Vagrancy Committee frankly accept this view. "The army of vagrants has increased in number of late years," they state, "and there is reason to fear that it will continue to increase if things are left as they are. It is mainly composed of those who deliberately avoid any work, and depend for their existence on almsgiving and the casual wards; and for their benefit the industrious portion of the community is heavily taxed. We are convinced that the present system of treating casual paupers neither deters the vagrant nor affords any means of reclaiming him, and we are unanimously of opinion that a thorough reform is necessary."[10] [Footnote 10: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 1.] As to the class of men who frequent the casual wards the great mass, both in town and country, are unquestionably unskilled labourers, though nearly all trades contribute a share, larger or smaller, to the sum total of vagrancy. A classification of the men relieved in the casual wards of Hitchin and Brixworth during twelve months ending September, 1906, showed the following result:--[11] --------------------------+----------+----------- Occupations. | Hitchin. | Brixworth. --------------------------+----------+----------- Labourers | 3,830 | 222 Painters | 226 | 14 Grooms | 157 | 12 Bricklayers | 144 | 12 Shoemakers | 133 | 13 Fitters }| | 9 Rivetters }| 123 | -- Boilermakers }| | -- Tailors | 108 | 5 Carpenters and joiners | 106 | 9 Printers and compositors | 74 | -- Stokers, firemen, etc. | 70 | 3 Seamen | 60 | 4 Moudlers and drillers | 58 | -- Gardeners | 37 | -- Clerks | 36 | -- Engineers | 34 | -- Bakers | 33 | -- Harnessmakers and saddlers| 31 | -- Porters | 27 | -- Blacksmiths, etc. | 25 | -- Sawyers | 25 | -- Plasterers | 24 | -- Masons | 22 | -- Silversmiths | -- | 3 Other trades | 446 | 16 +----------+----------- Total | 5,829 | 322 --------------------------+----------+----------- [Footnote 11: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1906-7, pp. 292, 293.] The following classification of the casuals admitted into the wards of a rural union, unnamed, is published by the Poor Law Commission:--[12] ----------------------------------------------- Occupations. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. --------------------|--------|--------|-------- Navvies | 552 | 772 | 613 General labourers | 404 | 485 | 489 Carters | 62 | 56 | 61 Carpenters | 42 | 6 | 37 Masons | 38 | 42 | 48 Grooms | 37 | 40 | 60 Seamen | 34 | 28 | 48 Fitters | 24 | -- | 20 Shoemakers | 23 | 24 | 36 Firemen | 15 | 21 | 31 Tailors | 13 | 16 | 11 Gardeners | 12 | 12 | 8 Miners | 12 | -- | -- Bakers | 4 | 13 | 13 Clerks | 11 | 8 | 38 Ironmoulders | 11 | 5 | 16 Blacksmiths | 9 | -- | 13 Other occupations | 142 | 57 | 69 Professional tramps | 70 | 25 | 66 |--------|--------|-------- Total | 1,512 | 1,610 | 1,673 ----------------------------------------------- [Footnote 12: Report, Vol. III., p. 507.] Of 450 men admitted into the casual wards of the Skipton-in-Craven workhouse during the period September 1 to November 12, 1904, 50 were aged and infirm, while 250 described themselves as general labourers, and 150 as tradesmen. The classification of the latter was as follows:-- Tailors 30 Joiners 15 Mechanics 12 Bricklayers 12 Painters 12 Masons 12 Spinners 12 Weavers 12 Butchers 9 Colliers 8 Printers 8 Shoemakers 8 It must be granted, of course, that every highway wanderer is not a loafer, and that the workhouse casual ward itself offers a rude hospitality to many a decent wayfarer who is deserving of a better fate, though a good deal of misapprehension exists on this subject. There is no means of learning the percentage of _bona-fide_ work-seekers amongst that section of the vagrant population which fights shy of poor relief, but when one enters the casual ward it is possible at once to divide the sheep from the goats. Those who theorise upon the basis of intuition, and much more those who confuse the voting of other people's money with Christian charity, are apt to conclude that, as a matter of course, the casuals "in a lump" are not "bad," but only unfortunate, and deserve all such relief as is afforded them. It would be futile to deny to the most habitual of vagrants the power to impress even the case-hardened listener by fiction which is a good deal stranger than truth, by doubtful emotions and still more doubtful morals. Let appeal be made, however, to the trained observation of the Poor Law clerk and the weather-beaten soul of the workhouse master, and a different story will be learned. Some years ago I questioned all the Poor Law authorities of Yorkshire on the subject; half the answers placed the number of the genuine work-seekers at 5 per cent. of the whole, though in special cases a much higher percentage was allowed. The Vagrancy Committee, on the evidence placed before them, estimated the proportion of genuine work-seekers at 3 per cent. of all casual paupers. These figures are in keeping with all we know of the experience of the Poor Law Inspectors who report from year to year to the Local Government Board upon the vagrancy question. To quote one opinion only by way of illustration:-- "The more I see of the vagrant class the more strongly I am impressed with the conviction that the number of those really in search of work is relatively very small. Over and over again I have gone into the casual wards and have, in answer to my question, been told by the vagrants that they were all seeking work but could not find any; but when I have pointed out that farmers were everywhere advertising for hands, they had nothing to say, except, perhaps, that farm labour did not suit them. In the agricultural districts it may be said, generally, that enough labourers can rarely be obtained, and the local newspapers are scarcely ever without advertisements for them. No doubt some of the able-bodied paupers know nothing of farm work, and if they can be enticed to labour colonies, which would teach them, agriculture may gain, but there is a large demand for absolutely unskilled men which they refuse to supply. For example, last summer, a tradesman in a small town in Somerset asked the master of the workhouse to send him half-a-dozen labourers, to whom he would give permanent employment for 18s. a week. Six of the occupants of the casual wards professed themselves as eager to accept this offer, but, on leaving the workhouse in the morning, all but one slipped away. That one remained, and has been earning his 18s. a week ever since, but the other five have presumably found begging more profitable."[13] [Footnote 13: Annual Report of the Local Government Board for 1902-3; report of Mr. H. Preston Thomas upon the counties of Cornwall, Devon, &c., pp. 164, 165.] The Local Government Board, as we have seen, have endeavoured to check vagrancy by urging Boards of Guardians to adopt the cell system, and to impose upon the casuals systematic labour tasks proportioned to the frequency of their visits. Yet though the cell system has been pressed upon workhouse authorities since 1868, so far only two-thirds of them have adopted it. As to the labour task, the Local Government Board advise that vagrants should, as a rule, be detained for two nights and required to perform a full day's work, but that the period of detention should be extended to four nights in the case of those who seek admission twice within the same month. There is no general practice to this effect, however, for every union follows its own devices for making the life of the tramp hard or easy as the case may be, and in the absence of a uniform policy, few unions take the question of vagrant regulations seriously. The average Board of Guardians attacks all its problems on the line of least resistance, and the line of least resistance in dealing with the tramp is to follow the advice of the incomparable constable Dogberry, and get him out of sight as soon as possible, thanking God that it is rid of a knave. The reports of Poor Law Inspectors have for years abounded with complaints of absence of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants and of the evil results of the existing state of anarchy. To quote several of recent date:-- "While many unions have adopted the Local Government Board's suggestions, others have ignored them. It is useless for one union to take steps for driving casuals away from their workhouses simply to plant them on others."[14] "There is a want of uniformity as regards detention and the task of work in the various casual wards, and it is worthy of notice that at Loughborough, where the guardians, after a short trial of two nights' detention, decided to revert to a one night's detention only, the number of vagrants has increased from 10,751 in 1906 to 12,058 in 1907."[15] "There is a great want of uniformity in the treatment of vagrants as regards accommodation, detention, diet and tasks of work, and guardians are naturally averse to taking any action involving expense pending legislation on the subject."[16] "Some mitigation of the evils of vagrancy might be possible if guardians fully exercised the powers possessed by them. No uniform practice prevails. The system of a two nights' detention, with the imposition of an adequate task, is uncommon in this district. Some kind of task is prescribed in the majority of vagrant wards, but for the most part vagrants are released the following morning after admission. Here and there the regulations are enforced with beneficial results. Guardians are, perhaps, apathetic or disinclined to detain more often, because they are not enabled to deal effectively with this class owing to insufficient accommodation. A system of two nights' detention, combined with proper discretion and supervision on the part of the workhouse master, has generally been followed by a diminution in the number of vagrants, but an absence of any such similar practice in neighbouring unions largely defeats these good results. Vagrants simply avoid these wards, and pass on to those where the restrictions are less severe."[17] [Footnote 14: Mr. G. A. F. Hervey, writing of Norfolk and Suffolk. Report for 1902-3, p. 67.] [Footnote 15: Mr, G. Walsh, reporting on Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, etc. Report for 1907, p. 332.] [Footnote 16: Mr. R. J. Dansey, writing of the Midland Counties. Report for 1908, p. 71.] [Footnote 17: Mr. G. Walsh, writing of the counties of Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham, etc. Report for 1908, pp. 77, 78.] As the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy say:-- "It is much easier for a workhouse master, or the superintendent of the casual ward, to allow vagrants to discharge themselves on the morning after admission without labour, than to detain them, and insist upon their doing the regulation task of work, and the discretion which is left to the officers with respect to the discharge of certain classes of vagrants results in a complete variety of practice."[18] [Footnote 18: Report, Vol. I., pp. 32, 33.] Again:-- "Where a union carries out the regulations as to detention and task of work there is always a reduction in the number of admissions to their casual wards, but the evidence before us shows that severity of discipline in one union may merely cause the vagrants to frequent other unions."[19] [Footnote 19: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 28.] In London, according to the evidence given before that Committee:-- "Some guardians do not detain, some give one task, some another, and some practically none at all.... Some Boards of Guardians say the casuals are working-men honestly looking for work, and there is no doubt they are, but they know where they are going to get it. When they leave, they know to what casual ward they are going, and whether they are going to break stones or pick oakum. The consequence is, that the London vagrants flock to Poplar, Thavies Inn, and the other wards where detention and work are not enforced, or where only a light task is given."[20] [Footnote 20: Report, Vol. I., p. 30.] All experience shows that the frequency with which vagrants visit given parts of the country is in exact proportion to the comfort or otherwise of the casual wards, and a change either way means a difference in the number of loafers entertained. "If a tramp likes the ward he is there again within the month, and perhaps in a fortnight," was the verdict of a witness before the Poor Law Commission. "The slightest relaxation with reference to the quantity or quality of food given in workhouses leads immediately to an increase of vagrants," writes a Poor Law Inspector.[21] [Footnote 21: Mr. J. S. Davy. Report of the Local Government Board for 1902-3, p. 57.] Another Inspector, explaining decreases in the numbers of vagrants in some of his districts, says:-- "A small cause will apparently divert the vagrant stream from its usual course. Where a change of master has taken place, or where gruel has been substituted for bread and water, or _vice versa_, there has frequently occurred, very rapidly, a large increase or decrease in the numbers applying for admission to the casual wards where these changes have taken place."[22] [Footnote 22: Mr. J. W. Thompson. Report for 1908, p. 43.] An illustration of tramp susceptibility to the attractions of the dietary is related by the Poor Law Inspector for Cumberland, Lancashire, and Westmorland, as follows:-- "In 1908 ... the guardians of the Leigh Union decided in the autumn to make an improvement in the dietary at their casual wards, a proceeding in which they did not invite the co-operation of other Boards of Guardians. The result was an influx of vagrants into the union, which swamped the accommodation, and rendered administration impossible. The admission to the Leigh casual wards for the first six months of the year had shown an increase of 33 per cent., as compared with 1907; in the second half of the year, the comparative increase was 164 per cent. The comparative increase for the latter half year in Lancashire as a whole was under 30 per cent., and none of the unions adjoining Leigh showed an increase greater than 60 per cent."[23] [Footnote 23: Mr. A. B. Lowry, Local Government Board Report for 1908, p. 82.] Only those who have had practical experience of Poor Law work know how fastidious the tramp is in the choice of his involuntary tasks. In connection with the casual wards of a Board of Guardians of which I was for many years a member the task imposed was breaking 13 cwts. of stone. We added to this task the riddling and wheeling away of the stone. The result was that many tramps would come to the door, read the regulations, and walk off, while others, who entered and asked what they would have to do, would at once leave with "No, thank you." Several tramps resolutely argued the illegality of the extra task with the master, and tried to evade it. It may be said that the case advanced against the vagrant up to this point rests upon negative grounds. Even were he an idler and a parasite and nothing worse, however, he has no claim to be tolerated. Those who tell us that vagabonds and loafers form, after all, an insignificant proportion of the population, and that the Poor Law holds out severer problems for our solution, forget or undervalue the fact that every one of these people is a centre of moral contagion. To ignore them because they are a small minority in society is just as rational as it would be to ignore gangrene because its effects are local only, or a plague because its victims are as yet few in number. Each of these loafers creates imitators. On the highways he is a walking advertisement of the advantages of idleness; in the model lodging-house, the night shelter, the wayside inn, he acts the part of recruiting sergeant for the great army of sloth and vice. The vices of the vagrant, however, are by no means all of a negative order. From the standpoint of public security and order it is intolerable that the known criminals, which the majority of tramps are, should be afforded every facility for following their irregular calling. Incidents like the following, cited at random, are of weekly and almost daily occurrence in all parts of the country, and bring home better than argument the folly of our present method, or lack of method, of treating the tramp and loafer:-- "An attack on a lady in a lonely country road, between the Potteries and Leek, has been reported to the local police. The lady, who lives near Dunwood Hall, had been visiting an invalid, and on her way home was waylaid by a tramp, who attempted to rob her. A severe struggle took place, during which the lady was viciously handled. In the end the tramp was frightened by something and decamped." "At the Mansion House, a plasterer was charged with vagrancy and assault. On Tuesday night the prisoner knocked at the door of St. Mary Aldermary Rectory, and applied for assistance. The rector's butler, after consulting the rector, told him to go away, whereupon he struck him in the mouth, cutting it, and loosening two of his teeth. The rector went to his man's assistance, and the prisoner placed himself in a menacing attitude and attempted to strike him, saying that he would have his rights. The prisoner placed his shoulder against the door and prevented it being shut. Ultimately he was given into custody.... Sentenced to six weeks' hard labour." The reports of Poor Law Inspectors frequently illustrate this aspect of the vagrancy problem. To quote from one only:-- "Another aspect of vagrancy, peculiar to rural districts, is the sense of insecurity which is created in the minds of people living in remote localities. Sometimes methods of threats and intimidation are resorted to to enforce demands when it is safe to do so. Truculent and insubordinate, as is proved by his frequent appearances before the magistrates for refusing to perform his allotted task, he is a burden to the community, and a nuisance alike to the police and to the Poor Law authorities."[24] [Footnote 24: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1908; report of Mr. G. Walsh for Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, etc., pp. 78, 79.] The laxity with which the law against mendicancy is enforced is notorious, and upon this question also the reports of Poor Law Inspectors contain interesting reading. "It is impossible," wrote Mr. J. S. Davy several years ago, "to deal adequately with the question (of vagrancy) without having regard to the mode in which the police carry out their obligations under the statute, and the action of magistrates when vagrants are charged before them. There are obvious difficulties in the way of the police laying too much stress either on the apprehension of beggars or the prevention of sleeping out, and these difficulties affect magistrates, who occasionally discourage the police from proceeding against offenders under the Vagrancy Act."[25] [Footnote 25: Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1902-3, p. 57.] Another Poor Law Inspector wrote in 1906:-- "With regard to the punishment of vagrant offenders, it is very unfortunate that there is so little uniformity in the sentences in Leeds. While the stipendiary magistrate gives, as a rule, lenient sentences, the West Riding magistrates deal more rigorously with those who come before them. There seem to be no fixed principles governing the cases."[26] [Footnote 26: Mr. P. H. Bagenal in Annual Report of the Local Government Board, 1906, p. 337.] The following extract is taken from a Yorkshire newspaper of April, 1903:-- "Three labourers of no fixed abode (it is the police constable's well-known euphemism for a vagrant), were charged at Skipton with begging at Kelbrook. The prisoners fairly took the village by storm. They were singing and shouting, and swore at women who would not relieve them. One of them kicked a door, and their conduct generally was altogether disgraceful. After they had collected 3-1/2d., they went to the public-house and asked to be supplied with a quart of beer for that amount. The girl who was in supplied them for the sake of quietness, and after drinking the beer the men went out, collected the same amount, came back, and demanded another quart for 3-1/2d. The men were sent to gaol for fourteen days each." Very outrageous, of course, yet very common, and also very natural. For given the implicit licence to beg, why not give the tramp also the licence to spend the proceeds of begging in his own way, and if he gets drunk and is violent, is it not the fault of those who furnished the money? But "fourteen days!" There is the true irony of the incident. For the same men probably served fourteen days a month before, and would serve fourteen days a month later, since the vagrant's time is notoriously divided pretty equally between the gaol and the highway. If, however, our penal laws are intended to be not merely punitive, but also, and mainly, reformatory, a system which consists of sending men into and out of prison at more or less regular intervals is obviously futile and childish. It is the obligation to work which these men, and tens of thousands like them, need to come under. Dislike of regular labour makes them tramps, tramping makes them criminals--the two conditions are inseparably connected as cause and effect, for their kinship lies in the very constitution and instincts of human nature, and the police laws which ignore it are engaged in an encounter from which they must of necessity emerge foiled and beaten. They may hide the tramp for a time from view, but they will not cure him; the very iteration of the futile penalties which are imposed upon him only confirms him in the conviction that vagrancy, mendicancy, rowdyism, and blackmailing are venial offences, the commission of which society almost takes for granted, since it has arranged that they may be compounded for upon terms so easy as to amount to open incitement to illegality. "Evidence is available on all hands, both from magistrates and from those connected with the administration of the Poor Law," the Vagrancy Committee of the Lincolnshire Quarter Sessions of 1903 write, "that the present short-term sentences, especially in view of the improved prison dietary, are a treatment of no deterrent value.... If the present methods are not deterrent, the evidence is also clear that neither are they reformatory. If the man _bona-fide_ out of work and seeking work be excluded, a very large proportion of those convicted for vagrancy are found to be habituals. Many of these cases are either mentally or physically below the normal standard, and it is obvious that such cases cannot be successfully dealt with during the very short periods for which they are brought under the prison influence." The Committee cite one notorious case in which between December 8, 1881, and October 23, 1903, a period of under twenty-two years, a man of thirty-seven years had been sentenced to imprisonment thirty-one times in Lincolnshire, and after he had done all continued an unprofitable servant. His sentences were as follows:-- Sentence of seven days 5 times. " ten days 2 " " fourteen days 9 " " three months 12 " " six months 1 " " twelve months 2 " An interesting feature of these sentences was the way in which shorter and longer sentences alternated. In another case a man of thirty years had been sentenced twenty-three times within five years, _viz._, between July 14, 1898, and June 29, 1903, as follows:-- Sentence of seven days 6 times. " ten days 3 " " fourteen days 4 " " one month 2 " " six weeks 1 " " three months 5 " " six months 2 " To quote the words of the Prison Commissioners:-- "The elaborate and expensive machinery of a prison, whose object is to punish and at the same time to improve by a continuous discipline and applied labour, cannot fulfil its object in the case of this hopeless body of men who are here to-day and gone to-morrow, and who, from long habit and custom, are hardened against such deterrent influences as a short detention in prison may afford."[1] Moreover, our medical authorities are at last on the track of the tramp, and none too soon, for several recent epidemics have convinced them that he is one of the most proficient disseminators of disease. The following incidents, all relating to the last wide-spread epidemic of small-pox, are typical of his services to society in this respect:-- [27]"A tramp who was making his way through the Lake District was found lying by the roadside near Ullswater on Sunday evening in an advanced state of smallpox. He was removed to a smallpox hospital, and it was ascertained that he had been infected by another tramp, who is now in the Penrith Hospital." (_March 5, 1903._) [Footnote 27: Report for the year ended March, 1905.] "At Northwich three more begging cases were dealt with. The chairman said tramps were mainly responsible for the smallpox prevalent in the district. Cheshire was infested, and if vagrancy could be put down they intended to do it." "Smallpox has broken out in a somewhat serious form at Barking, and several families have been removed to the isolation hospital. The outbreak is attributed to a tramp, who was found lying in the roadway at Ripplesdale with a severe attack of the disease."--(_May 19, 1903._) How disease is disseminated by tramps is graphically told in the following newspaper paragraph relating to the epidemic above referred to:-- "On December 20, 1902, a tramp named ---- entered Doncaster Workhouse. He said he came from Worksop way; had been sleeping out; had not had any food for three days; and complained of aches and pains all over him. He was isolated as much as possible in an end ward of the Workhouse Infirmary. On December 26, he was found to be suffering from small-pox, and immediately removed to the Small-pox Hospital. Four inmates who had been in contact with the case were isolated and re-vaccinated, and a nurse, also re-vaccinated, was told off to attend to them, and not allowed to go near the other inmates. "On January 8, a second case of small-pox occurred in the workhouse. This inmate, it appears, had sorted the clothing of the first case. He complained of illness on January 4, and developed the disease on January 8. The amount of trouble that was given in isolation, re-vaccination, and disinfection must have been very considerable, and must all be debited to the tramp who introduced the disease." The report for 1903 of Dr. J. R. Kaye, the West Riding of Yorkshire Medical Officer of Health, stated:-- "Yorkshire towns have had such a visitation of smallpox, that we read with interest the part played by the tramp genus in spreading it. Last year there were 144 cases of the disease in the West Riding. In nearly every centre affected, the tramp was responsible for its introduction. Thus we find at Keighley, where the greatest number of cases occurred, the infection was brought by a man who had been 'on tramp' seeking employment. The 15 cases at Barnsley were attributed to tramps of the lodging-house class. A recent investigation has shown that out of 138 towns having cases of small-pox, in no less than 100 its introduction was attributed to persons of the same class. At Sheffield, out of 28 importations, 21 were brought about by tramps, and at Huddersfield, 8 out of 13 invasions were traced to similar channels. It is significant, that in districts away from the main roads trodden by these nomads, small-pox was unknown. Clearly something will have to be done with this highly objectionable person if we are not to have small-pox always with us." In a paper on "Tramps and the Part they Play in the Dissemination of Smallpox," read in July of the same year at the Sanitary Institute's meeting, Dr. Kaye said:-- "In the recent prevalence of small-pox, some 12,000 cases have occurred in the provinces (since January, 1902), and experience all over the country shows that the most subtle agency of distribution is not to be found in the close commercial intercourse of our communities, but in the wanderings of the relatively insignificant number of people whom we designate tramps." As a result of the discussion which followed, it was resolved to request the Government to "take into consideration the necessity for legislation to deal more effectually with those resorting to common lodging-houses and workhouse tramp-wards, as a constant and dangerous element in the propagation and dissemination of smallpox." The following year Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Medical Officer of Health for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, published an elaborate report on the same epidemic, based upon inquiries addressed to the Medical Officers of Health throughout the country. As a result of the epidemic, which began in the latter part of 1901, and lasted the two following years, 25,341 cases occurred. As to their origin, Dr. Armstrong came to the following conclusions:-- (1) Of the 126 districts from which returns were received, 111 had been invaded by small-pox in the epidemic, and in 57 or 51 per cent. of these, the disease was first introduced by vagrants. In 25 of these latter districts spread of infection from vagrants occurred. (2) Small-pox was introduced secondarily by vagrants into 58 districts, and, perhaps, into two other, at least 305 times. Such secondary introductions of infection took place with the following frequency:-- Number of Times Number Infection was of Introduced. Districts. 1 11 or 12 1 or 2 1 2 11 or 12 3 5 4 5 5 3 6 3 7 2 8 7 9 7 9 or 10 7 11 7 12 7 13 7 23 4 24 4 31 4 34 4 (3) It was found that the vagrants were housed in the workhouse in 41 districts, and in common lodging-houses in 58. The number of cases of small-pox occurring in these lodging-houses was 'at least 606,' and probably more, though 19 districts reported that the disease was introduced into common lodging-houses (169 with 165 cases) otherwise than by vagrants. (4) In 35 districts there was reason to believe or suspect that infection had been carried elsewhere by vagrants leaving those districts--in most cases twice or more. (5) Infection was first introduced by vagrants into 58 per cent. of the 63 large towns to which the inquiries extended, and was carried sooner or later into 72 per cent. of these towns, and on an average about five times to each. The disease had been taken to 30 workhouses and about 70 common lodging-houses, causing a large number of fresh cases, but had been of comparatively slight prevalence in such houses when not brought there by vagrants.[28] [Footnote 28: Report on Small-pox in relation to Vagrancy in England and Wales during the year 1903, by Dr. H. E. Armstrong, Newcastle.] So, too, at the meeting of the Sanitary Institute, held on February 7, 1903, at Manchester, Dr. E. Sergeant, Medical Officer of Health to the Lancashire County Council, reported that "The spread of smallpox was owing most largely to the vagrant class," and he claimed that "these parasites should not be allowed to go about the country spreading disease, and it was very little to ask that they should be vaccinated," for it seems that under present legislation, while the parasite can require you to support him, you cannot require him to protect himself, much less you, against infectious disease! Furthermore, guardians of the poor have become increasingly alive to the fact that one of the most difficult tasks which they have hitherto had to discharge, in the administration of the existing law, will compel them before long to face this wider problem: I refer to the question of child vagrancy. For oftentimes the tramp has both wife and children, and unless a benevolent public interposes and relieves him of their maintenance, they accompany him on his wanderings. Passing over the humane aspect of the question, I would ask: What does this ghastly parody of family life mean? It implies that where there is one vagrant now there will in all human probability be two, three, four, a few years hence. Calling attention to the fact that during the year 1908 3,899 children were admitted to vagrant wards, the Report of the Local Government Board remarks:-- "Debarred from education and all that is essential to the formation of settled habits, they are subjected to great hardships, and it would be strange if, under such conditions, they did not become bound to the road."[29] [Footnote 29: Annual Report for 1908, p. 79.] Our forefathers recognised three and a half centuries ago that vagrancy was hereditary, for an Act of 3 & 4 Edward VI. (1550), reciting that "many men and women going begging carried children about with them, which, being once brought up in idleness, would hardly be brought afterwards to any good kind of labour or service," gave _carte blanche_ to any person willing to appropriate such children and bring them up to honest labour till the age of eighteen years if boys, or fifteen if girls. It may be said that this was legalised kidnapping, and that our modern way of dealing with the children of tramps is better. For we have got so far as to recognise that the liberty of vagrant parents to drag their offspring round the country is a vicious liberty, and should not be tolerated, though we are not agreed on preventive measures. The Poor Law Acts of 1889 and 1899 empower Boards of Guardians, under certain specified circumstances, to assume and exercise parental rights over the children of pauper parents, and the Children Act, 1908, prohibits child vagrancy under penalty, and makes provision for placing in public or other suitable custody the children of persons who are unfit to discharge parental duty.[30] These statutes do not interfere with parents' liability to maintain their children, though in other hands, yet the enforcement of that liability will prove difficult, if not impossible, in the case of a vagrant. Unless such a parent voluntarily abandoned a roaming life, the Poor Law and police authorities would have to choose between the alternatives of perpetually chevying him from pillar to post or letting him go scot free. Obviously, legislation which leaves the question of parental responsibility in so unsatisfactory a position cannot be the final word on the child vagrancy problem. [Footnote 30: The passages in which the question of child vagrancy was dealt with ten years ago have been modified, owing to the passing of the Children Act, 1908, yet important though the provisions of this statute are, they are no final solution. Extracts from the Act are given in Appendix I., pp. 251-253.] Viewing the question of vagrancy from all sides, we shall be compelled to endorse the verdict of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee:-- "The cost to the community of this class is immense, for they produce nothing, they necessitate large additions to our workhouses, involving heavy cost to the rates, and they overcrowd our prisons. At the same time they form a ready recruiting ground for the criminal classes, they are a continual nuisance to rich and poor alike, and they leave behind them families worse than themselves." CHAPTER II. THE URBAN LOAFER. The vagrant is only one type of social parasite, however, and in some respects he is not the most obnoxious. When we leave the casual wards and enter the workhouses themselves, a further loafing element confronts us, adding to the difficulty of our problem. For though these institutions nominally exist for the reception of people who are not only destitute but are unable to prevent their destitution, we find that the able-bodied pauper is to a large extent in possession. It is interesting to recall the fact that when workhouses were established, the tendency which the Poor Law authorities fought against was, that the aged and infirm of the labouring class regarded them as infirmaries for their permanent maintenance. A Report of the Poor Law Commissioners of 1840 protested against the idea that workhouses should be placed on the same footing as almshouses. "If the condition of the inmates of a workhouse," they wrote, "were to be so regulated as to invite the aged and infirm of the labouring classes to take refuge in it, it would immediately be useless as a test between indigence and indolence or fraud--it would no longer operate as an inducement to the young and healthy to provide support for their later years, or as a stimulus to them, whilst they have the means, to support their aged parents and relatives. The frugality and forethought of a young labourer would be useless if he foresaw the certainty of a better asylum for his old age than he could possibly provide by his own exertions...." Nowadays, the difficulty of Poor Law Guardians is to prevent, not the aged and infirm, but the middle-aged and able-bodied from making the workhouse their permanent home. "Once admitted into the workhouse in England," says the Majority Report of the Poor Law Commission, "the pauper is usually left undisturbed, the Guardians seldom exercising their power of discharge." This generalisation is unjust, yet what is said certainly holds good of a large number of workhouses. While, however, Boards of Guardians are mainly to blame, the laws which they have to administer are also, in part, responsible. In the absence of institutions for the detention of loafers such as exist in Continental countries, these loafers are able to abuse the Poor Law at will, and snap their fingers at the police. Within the workhouse they are a cause of perpetual annoyance, and their presence and example are a fruitful source of demoralisation and disorder. Speaking of this class of able-bodied paupers in relation to the Sheffield Union, Mr. P. H. Bagenal, Poor Law Inspector for the West Riding, reports:-- "The master states that this class gives infinite trouble. They have no fear of prison; in fact many of them prefer it, and state that the work is not so hard and the food better. Many of them have got good trades, such as fitters, plumbers, builders, iron workers, etc., and could earn from £3 to £4 a week if they chose. They prefer to go to the workhouse, where, however, they only work under compulsion, and give all the trouble they can to the officers." Commenting upon the fact that of the persons relieved in England and Wales during the year ending September 30, 1907, 26,179 had been relieved five times or more, the Poor Law Commission state: "The number of persons ascertained to have been relieved five times or oftener during the year shows the existence of a troublesome class who make a convenience of the workhouse, and whose improvidence is born of the knowledge that that institution is always at hand."[31] [Footnote 31: Report, Vol I., p. 42.] The Poor Law Inspector for the Metropolis relates that, as a result of a call-over of the 900 inmates of a London workhouse in 1907, it was found that fifty able-bodied men and fifty-three able-bodied women were among them. The Committee reported:-- "In a large number of these cases there did not seem to be any tangible reason why they were in the workhouse at all.... Many admitted that they had done no work for years; in fact could not give the date or place where they had last worked. Many of this class were so reduced in physique on admission that they could not be classed as able-bodied, but with the regular diet and absence of intoxicating liquors they rapidly recovered; but unfortunately for the worst classes the conditions of the house appear to be conducive to their disinclination to shift for themselves. "Upon such cases again coming before the committee, it was found that several inmates, who appeared to be quietly settling down for the remainder of their lives, had awoke to the fact that the guardians were making investigations, and had taken their discharge." The Committee were also impressed by the number of men who "When their wives refused to keep them longer, and as some of them openly expressed it 'the wife turned me out,' came to settle down in the house--in many cases drink and desertion were found to be the causes of the wives' action."[32] [Footnote 32: Annual Report of Local Government Board, 1907; report of Mr. J. S. Oxley, Inspector for the Metropolis, etc.] Mr. Lockwood, another Poor Law Inspector, stated before the Poor Law Commission:-- "Probably, if it is an overcrowded workhouse, it is impossible to prevent the able-bodied class from sharing in the comfort, and I may say the luxuries of the older ones.... You cannot prevent that class finding the conditions of life in a mixed workhouse such as they are not entitled to, and ought not to share in." Another witness, speaking of the Marylebone Workhouse, said:-- "The association in large numbers in the able-bodied blocks becomes an attraction; and it appears to me that some method of breaking up such associations, accompanied by systematic training under healthy conditions, would be advantageous.... The master feels very strongly that what the men require is to be given continuous work, which they are able to do, and to be separated the one from the other. They regard the workhouse as a kind of club house in which they put up with a certain amount of inconvenience, but have very pleasant evenings."[33] [Footnote 33: Evidence before Poor Law Commission, Q. 16,686.] It was stated that the Marylebone workhouse deals with 300 of these men every week. The master of the Bethnal Green workhouse confirmed what has been said. "This class of man," he said, "is well known to the master of every London workhouse as the able-bodied loafer. As a rule he is a strong, healthy fellow, knowing no trade, having a great dislike to work, and possessing all the attributes of the soft-shelled crab, willing to live upon the fruits of the labour of the worker, so long as he can avoid the sharing of responsibility himself. There is no doubt that the moment this man becomes an inmate, so surely does he deteriorate into a worse character still. Unless rigorously dealt with and made to work under strict supervision, he has a fairly good time in the house, and after a month or so he has mastered every trick of the trade, and becomes a confirmed in-and-outer, taking his day's pleasure by giving the necessary notice, and returning the same evening more contented than ever with his lot in the house. Something for nothing is degrading the man, until all of the manhood has left him, and there remains for the ratepayers to keep an idle, dissolute remnant." To quote another witness, who referred specially to the Poplar Union:-- "The pauper in the workhouse intends to be there; he is either going to be there or in some other institution all the days of his life. My experience is, that the average have been in from ten to twelve years, and some of them nineteen years, and they are young men now. The workhouse is no deterrent to any man. It simply harbours them, and as long as the workhouses exist, these men will exist." Similarly, the report of the Stepney Guardians for 1908 states:- "There are too many opportunities in a general workhouse for the vicious of both sexes to meet. The dining hall and other parts of the workhouse common to all classes afford means of communication--generally of an evil character. It is no uncommon event for a man and woman to strike up an acquaintance in a workhouse, which ultimately results in increased burdens on the ratepayers. Messages are conveyed, _billets doux_, ill spelt but tender, are exchanged; an assignation is made, resulting in the amorous couple leaving the workhouse together when, dispensing with the blessing of the Church on their union, they tramp the countryside as man and wife during the summer months. At the approach of winter the man returns, with a sigh of relief, to his old bachelor quarters in the workhouse, where the gleeful account of his exploits is listened to with open-mouthed admiration by the youthful male pauper, and with envy by the hoary sinner. In this manner, a feeble-minded woman and a physically enfeebled man--both chronic paupers and chargeable to this union--begat five children, all of whom were born in the workhouse, and were reared at the expense of the ratepayers." The same testimony comes from rural districts. "It is certain," Mr. B. Fleming, the Poor Law Inspector for Dorset, writes, "that the tendency has been to induce the loafer class to think that they would have provision made for them, and that therefore they need not trouble much about it for themselves."[34] [Footnote 34: Report of Local Government Board for 1907, p. 312.] Writing of the "in-and-out" class of workhouse inmates, the Poor Law Commissioners say:-- "It is not too much to say that this class has been created by our administration of the Poor Law, while the law itself affords no means of checking it now that it has come into existence. These are the men and women who frequent the workhouse for short periods, often taking their families with them, and are constantly taking their discharge. They go out when they want more licence, and return when they need to recruit themselves after a debauch."[35] [Footnote 35: Report, Vol. II., p. 278.] Moreover, the married urban loafer, like the married vagrant, inflicts incalculable injury upon others. While it has been made a misdemeanour to drag children round the country, the pauper of the "in-and-out" type can still with impunity commit a crime no less outrageous upon the offspring for whose decent maintenance he is legally and morally responsible. For the children of such intermittent paupers are introduced to workhouse life and breathe the atmosphere of pauperisation from their earliest consciousness. When the father enters the house, the children go with him, and for them, as for him, life is an alternation of abject dependence and equally abject liberty. "Through these children," says the Report of the Poor Law Commission truly, "the evil (of pauperisation) is being perpetuated to another generation, for they get no chance of education, while they become habituated to constant appeals to the Poor Law, and lack the advantages of either home or school life."[36] [Footnote 36: Report, Vol. II., p. 279.] As a Poor Law Guardian, I had to do, on one occasion, with an able-bodied pauper of this kind, who, on the ground of destitution, obtained admittance to the workhouse with his large family. Once in, he was so satisfied with his new surroundings and freedom from responsibility, that for many months it proved impossible to dislodge him. Under the master's eye he was willing to do the work required of him, but he had no wish to find employment outside, and did not leave the house until he was literally ejected. It is true that the Poor Law Act of 1899 gives power to Boards of Guardians to appropriate neglected children, and so preserve them from the ill effects of their vicious training.[37] That is undoubtedly kind to the child, and in the end it is bound to be advantageous to the public. But here comes in an absurd anomaly: Whatever the theory of the law may be, we practically leave it to the option of the parents to evade responsibility or not as they will. All they have to do is to make themselves scarce, and the Poor Law officials and the police may find them or they may not. I know of one Union in whose workhouse there are, at the moment of writing, six children of one father, and he an able-bodied man, who has fled from the district once, and only refrains from doing so again because he knows that he is under strict police supervision. Rousseau deposited his offspring on the steps of the Foundling Hospital at dead of night, and went away, thinking noble thoughts, for this was a part of the harmonious "Social Contract," and everybody else could do the same. The English loafer yields his children to workhouse care with but the gentlest pretence of unwillingness, and betakes himself to liberty, lightened of a disagreeable burden, and reflecting that of all strange devices for relieving him and his kind of parental responsibility and of encouraging the multiplication of paupers, the Poor Law is the strangest. [Footnote 37: The Poor Law Act of 1899, amending an Act of 1889, provides that a child maintained by a Board of Guardians may be taken into the guardians' control until it reaches the age of eighteen years, the guardians acquiring all rights over it meanwhile, if the child has been deserted by its parent, if the guardians think that the parent, by reason of mental deficiency or vicious habits or mode of life, is unfit to have control of the child, if the parent is unable to perform his or her parental duties by reason of being under sentence of penal servitude or of being detained under the Inebriates Act, 1898, or the parent has been sentenced to imprisonment in respect of any offence against any of his or her children, or the parent is permanently bed-ridden or disabled and is an inmate of the workhouse and consents to the guardians so acting, and if both the parents (or in the case of an illegitimate child the mother of the child), are dead.] Prosecution for maintenance, if the offender can be found, and a short imprisonment if he refuses to pay, are the corrective measures already available against the parents who culpably transfer their parental liabilities to the public, and over 3,000 convictions are registered yearly by the courts for neglect to maintain family.[38] It is notorious, however, that proceedings of this kind are taken by Poor Law authorities reluctantly, since the magistrates in many districts habitually stretch the law in favour of defaulting parents. What we should do, and shall have to do, in such a case, is to take the loafer, too, and after disciplining the idleness out of his nature, give him back his family obligations, and see that he discharges them. [Footnote 38: The figures for six years are as follows:--1902, 2,832; 1903, 3,187; 1904, 3,235; 1905, 3,266; 1906, 3,095; 1907, 3,041.] Furthermore, in all large towns a considerable proportion of the frequenters of the casual wards are not even _bona-fide_ vagrants, but simply idlers of the locality, who, so long as these refuges exist, feel no disposition to work and establish homes for themselves. Of the men admitted to the casual wards of the Manchester and Chorlton Unions in a certain year, no fewer than 4,000 were found on analysis to belong to the neighbourhood. The experience of Birmingham is to the same effect. Of the London casual it has been said:-- "He is in most cases a loafer who simply migrates from one ward to another. He is in Whitechapel to-night, and in St. George's-in-the-East to-morrow night, and he will go across to Kensington the next night, but he does not leave London.... They have their times for excursions, when they go either to the seaside or hop-picking or fruit-picking, but for the greater part of the year they are in London, and they circulate round about the casual wards." The number of admissions to the Metropolitan casual wards in 1907 was 196,470; the number of separate individuals was not known, but 18,009 persons were identified as having been admitted more than once during a month. The Report of the Vagrancy Committee states, indeed, that 98 per cent. of the persons admitted to the casual wards of London are loafers. A witness stated before that Committee:-- "They are not working men. If you give them a job for a day or two days perhaps they might do that, but you must not expect them to work longer; they do not like working longer than a day or two.... A lot of them are young fellows. If you could get hold of them when first they come into the casual ward and get them away, something might be done."[39] [Footnote 39: Qs. 3281, 3347, 3358-9.] By way of substantiating the foregoing statement, it may be recalled that of 689 casual paupers prosecuted at the Metropolitan police courts by the Poor Law authorities in 1907, 538 or 78 per cent. were charged with refusing or neglecting to work. The indulgent spirit in which the urban loafer is regarded in this country is well illustrated by the free hand given in London to the army of work-shirkers and unemployables, irrespective of nationality, to take possession of the public streets for the purpose of demonstrations in every time of acute unemployment. A large number of the men who paraded the streets on the latest occasion of the kind were unquestionably deserving men, who would have accepted any work offered to them, but the vast majority were notoriously only unemployed because they had neither desire nor intention to be otherwise. "Those who are not loafers are worse," was the verdict of a police inspector who had scrutinised one of the processions; "there are very few genuine unemployed among them; most of them never did a day's work in their lives," and another police officer, who analysed a procession at my request, assured me that he knew every man, and not one in fifty would ever do a day's work if he could help it. It was even worse with the London "unemployed" processions of the early months of 1903. When these were in full progress, the Chairman of the Wandsworth and Clapham Board of Guardians wrote to _The Times_:-- "The superintendent of the casual wards at our workhouse has had opportunities this week of seeing the processions of the so-called 'unemployed.' He assures me that he detected amongst the number several hundreds who habitually came before him as vagrants, and it is his opinion, after consultation with others holding similar positions to his own under the Poor Law authorities, that 80 per cent. of those who are allowed to parade the streets belong to the casual class." At a meeting of the Strand Board of Guardians it was reported that "hundreds of the processionists were tramps and workhouse inmates, who had asked leave to look for work and took part in the march so that they might spend their share of the collection in beer." From first to last these demonstrations were organised and engineered by socialistic agents, who called the tunes and paid the pipers generously so long as the public provided the necessary funds. Beginning with a couple of men and a collecting box, they expanded on the snowball principle day by day, until they numbered hundreds of men and scores of collecting boxes, and at last created a street scandal which was daily anticipated with mixed curiosity, disgust, and alarm. There was never any spontaneity about the processions; agitators fixed the rendezvous, marshalled their hosts, conducted the tours, and paid the demonstrators so much per head for the walk round, according to the proceeds of the collecting boxes. So far did the farce go, that police constables were at last told off to assist the loafers to perform their perambulations with due convenience and order. And these bands of "demonstrators," composed of such elements, had the audacity to go through the solemn farce of passing deliberately drawn-up resolutions day after day, protesting that owing to the selfishness of the propertied classes they were doomed to lives of "compulsory idleness," and calling on the Government to adopt measures to remove the "state of famine in time of peace" from which they suffered! It was quite in keeping with the absurdity of the whole proceedings that a strike of the processionists, caused by a deduction from the day's pay by way of contribution towards the expenses of the show, should have threatened the collapse of the parades long before the philanthropy of the spectators was exhausted. And yet while this wholesale begging was condoned by the police authorities, and carried on with their help, isolated mendicants were all the time pursued with the customary rigours of the law. "At the North London Police Court," ran a newspaper record, while the processions were at their height, "a costermonger was sent to twenty-one days' hard labour for begging as one of the unemployed. He admitted that he had hitherto been in organised processions, but thought he would do better by begging alone. A gaoler stated that he had known the prisoner for many years, and he seldom, if ever, did any work." Happily, although public convenience suffered, public security was not seriously threatened during those eventful days, when, out of sheer jealousy lest the sacred principle of the "liberty of the subject" to do what he likes should be infringed, the authorities, day after day, handed over the principal thoroughfares of the Metropolis to a mob, whose will to create anarchy was probably only checked by its physical inability. Under the same favourable circumstances, a well-fed mob might have placed London, for a time, under a reign of terror. What the intelligent foreign observer thinks about English town loafers, and the indulgent way in which we humour their weaknesses, may be judged from the following reflections of a recent German visitor to London:-- "When the Londoners say, 'These are our unemployed,[40] they do not see what strikes a foreigner at once--that all these dirty, ragged figures do not give the impression of out-of-works at all--that they look rather like people who endeavour to keep miles away from work. No man who really wants work looks like the average London unemployed. He has no time to lounge at street corners or patrol the principal streets--which are certainly not places where work is to be found. Doubtless there are thousands of genuine out-of-works in London, but these are not the people whom the foreigner sees. [Footnote 40: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.] "The foreigner naturally asks: How do these people live? And the answer makes him acquainted with an English institution which is probably unique of its kind in the whole world--which is certainly unknown to the German: it is the 'workhouse.' The name recalls our own house of correction, but the 'workhouse' is in fact the opposite of that. As a rule, it is a fine building--in Lambeth we might almost call it a palace--to which every man who is out of work has access. There he receives supper, bed, and breakfast, after which he is able to go in search of work again. If he finds none he may return to the workhouse in the evening, and, as one might expect, this is what he generally does. "The workhouses are maintained at enormous cost, and it is characteristic of the good heartedness of the Englishman--for the Englishman is good hearted--that he pays this cost, out of local taxes, without grumbling. That the institution is a wise one, however, I doubt. The man who says to himself that he must have sixpence or he will have nothing to eat to-morrow will go to far more trouble to get these coppers together than the one who says: "At the worst I can go into the workhouse.'"[41] [Footnote 41: "Berliner Lokalanzeiger," July, 1909.] CHAPTER III. DETENTION COLONIES AND LABOUR HOUSES. In whatever direction we look, misguided indulgence is seen to be shown to classes amongst the least deserving in the community. But our systematic playing with this question cannot relieve us from the duty of facing it in all its seriousness, and of adopting whatever measures a due consideration of public policy may suggest. I come, then, to the question of remedies. What can, what should, be done? Shall we, in despair, settle down to the conviction that the loafer is not to be extinguished, but must be regarded as filling an inevitable, though not, of course, a desirable, place in society? Or shall we try to exterminate him by the expedient of compelling him to perform the social functions which alone establish for him or for anyone a right to any place in the commonwealth? I take the latter view, and I base my contentions upon the maxim of Stuart Mill--no unreasoning advocate of interference with personal freedom:-- "Whenever there is a definite damage, or a definite risk of damage, either to an individual or to the public, the case is taken out of the province of liberty and placed in that of morality or law."[42] [Footnote 42: "Liberty," Chapter IV.] To the proposals originally put forward so many years ago, I return with increased conviction, not only of their practicableness, but of their urgency; with the assurance, moreover, that public opinion now fully recognises their reasonableness and necessity. Proceeding from the presupposition that the maintenance of vagrants at the public expense is contrary to sound economic law, to the common interest, and to commonsense, I contend that the status of vagrancy should be made in reality, what it is already in theory, illegal. That principle admitted, the task which remains will be less to do away with the vagrant than to make the vagrant do away with himself. To do this will entail no revolutionary change of the law; on the contrary, it will only be necessary to put into operation, seriously and systematically, the law as it exists at the present time. And first I would lay down as a foundation principle, as the starting point from which all reformative measures must proceed, the transference from the Poor Law to the Penal Law of the entire tribe of loafers who systematically abuse public relief--the vagrant of the casual ward; the shirker of domestic responsibilities, who throws his family upon the Union and absconds, or who sneaks into the workhouse on every possible pretext, dragging wife and children with him; the drone who makes periodical visits to the labour yard; and the able-bodied pauper whose destitution is due to intemperance or an otherwise irregular life. To the Poor Law and to Poor Law institutions people of these classes emphatically do not belong, and all past failure to make the slightest impression upon them is in my opinion primarily due to the persistent mistake of treating their case as coming under the law of public charity--a mistake which is also a wrong so long as the idle poor are maintained, in any degree whatsoever, at the expense of the industrious poor. The practical measures which would be needful are these. (1) In the first place, let loafing of every kind, and not merely the loafing of the casual pauper, be made a misdemeanour. For if we begin to exterminate the idler of the highway, we must, in fairness, deal with his kinsman of the street and of the workhouse. (2) In sympathy with this measure, restrict the right of free migration in the case of the destitute unemployed to the extent of making it dependent on permission to travel in search of work. (The man with money in his pocket is his own master all the world over.) (3) Further, and particularly, abolish the casual ward, as we logically must do. This may seem a strong measure, but so far as the tramp is concerned, it is really the fulcrum on which the lever of reformation must rest. "The why is plain as way to parish church." If vagabondage is to be regarded as an offence to be punished instead of an innocent weakness (which it never was and never can be) to be humoured, then the vagrant's free lodging-house must disappear. It is obvious that so long as we maintain wayside shelters for the special reception of tramps, it will be hopeless to repress vagrancy. The casual ward invites vagrants and creates them. Moreover, it is entirely incompatible with the laws which already exist for the nominal repression of vagrancy. It is illegal to beg, it is illegal to wander about without means of subsistence, but there is no habitual vagrant living who is not guilty of this compound fracture of the law, and few who have not been punished for it. Nevertheless, we wink at these misdemeanours, and in housing some 10,000 vagrants every night in the casual wards, we offer direct encouragement to known law-breakers to persist in illegality. (4) But at these negative and repressive measures it will be impossible to stop. Their very operation would compel us to go further, for the tramp and the loafer having been hustled from their wonted haunts, and the casual ward having been shut in their faces, they would either have to betake themselves to honest work, or they would fall into the hands of the police, either as mendicants or homeless wanderers. Here is seen the need for a new departure in our penal system. At present no correctional institutions exist suited to offenders whose radical fault is constitutional idleness. Discipline, enforced by all necessary use of compulsion, is their principal need, and this discipline can only be given in special institutions. The ordinary prison has proved its uselessness for the treatment of the vagrant and loafer, for not only has it failed as a reformative agency, but its life has no terrors for him. By the testimony of prison governors and magistrates, the tramp, on the whole, prefers the prison to the present workhouse; an institution that would exercise a deterrent influence must, therefore, offer a severer discipline than either. Complaint was made by the Standing Joint Committee of the Lincolnshire magistrates some time ago that mendicancy had increased 100 per cent. on account of the superiority of the prison dietary. "The professional tramp," said one magistrate, "was no fool, and he very much preferred in many instances to go to prison than to enter the casual wards of the workhouse." The Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee appointed in 1903 to consider the question of vagrancy reported :-- "Frequent cases have come to the knowledge of the Committee in which tramps in the casual wards, when threatened with prosecution before the magistrates as a consequence of a refusal to work, have openly avowed their preference for prison life, and cases are also noted where, after sentence, the prisoners have made a similar statement as to their having no dislike for prison. This failure, they believe, is also partly due to the changes in the form of the 'hard labour' enforced, due to the abolition of tread wheel, crank, etc. Owing to the difficulty of arranging suitable work, and to requirements of the prison for chapel, meal hours, marching to and from work, etc., the hours of actual labour, as well as the severity of the work available, bear no comparison with those of many kinds of free labour outside. Prison conditions, indeed, to many persons with so low a standard of physical comfort as the average vagrant, must be extremely comfortable and even attractive." Evidence to the same effect might be cited in abundance from other quarters. The point is one to which the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy gave special attention. Asked by the Committee "Do you not find that the seven days' sentence given to these tramps induces many of them to commit some small offence to get imprisonment, with a view to being helped along by rail to their destination?" Lieut.-Col. J. Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Vagrancy Committee, replied:-- "I do not think the prison has any terror. For instance, in one union they have had a great number of cases of refractory tramps, and they have always stated, when they have been had up, that they would rather do the hard work in prison than break stones in the workhouse, because it is easier work. I have been told by the governor of a gaol that some of the prisoners said that they liked the fare better than they did that of the workhouse." Another witness, before the same Committee (Mr. A. C. Mitchell), speaking for Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, said:-- "I think that under present conditions the sending of vagrants to gaol is utterly useless. They want to go to gaol; the conditions in gaol are better than those in casual wards, and particularly in bad weather they prefer going to gaol. Over and over again it has come before us: a man commits some petty offence in order to go to gaol for a short period."[43] [Footnote 43: I take the following from a newspaper (January 1, 1904):--"At the Grantham Borough Police Court two vagrants, were sent to gaol for twenty-one days, with hard labour, for refusing to work whilst inmates of the casual ward at the Grantham Workhouse. One of the magistrates said this appeared to be the only way to deal with the question, but the Chief Constable remarked that such men were too comfortable in prison, and that was the reason why they liked going there so much. The master at the workhouse said he heard two others wish they were going with them to gaol."] What are needed in this country are the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses[44] which have long been provided in Continental countries for this type of offender. To these institutions, differentiated according as they were intended for hopeful or for incorrigible cases, all vagrants and loafers should, after due warning, be committed for a period sufficiently long for disciplinary purposes. [Footnote 44: The terms Detention Colony and Labour House are here, for convenience, used synonymously, though strictly speaking, a colony is an establishment in the country to which land for farming and for improvement is attached, while the Labour House may be located in a town.] Besides being penal in character, these institutions might also offer, under suitable conditions, a temporary home to unemployed persons of all kinds. It might be objected that this would be a practical admission of the principle of the Right to Work. For myself I do not care much for phrases, but even if this should be the case, I would reply that the Right to Work is an infinitely better and wiser and safer principle to concede to the masses than the Right to be Idle. And yet the admission of the Right to Work would be no new thing in this country. It was enacted as early as the fourteenth century, in a Poor Law of 12 Richard II. That law drew a distinction between "beggars impotent to serve" and "beggars able to labour." The former were "continually to abide during their lives" in their native towns, or wherever else the enactment of the statute happened to find them, and the latter were to be given work suited to their strength and capacity. It may be recalled, too, how this same principle was carried further by the Poor Laws of Elizabeth's reign. It follows that the Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, by offering admission to unemployed persons willing to enter voluntarily, would allow Poor Law authorities to abolish the labour yards for test work. Few Poor Law workers defend these yards, which under the existing law are flagrantly abused by local able-bodied loafers. Forced labour for the loafer is still more an English tradition, though, like the Right-to-Work principle, long disregarded. The Act of 27 Henry VIII. (1535) enjoined local authorities, besides maintaining the impotent and aged poor:-- "To cause and to compel all and every the said sturdy vagabonds and valiant beggars to be set and kept to continual labour, in such wise as by their said labours they, and every one of them, may get their own living with the continual labour of their own hands." The cost of these institutions was to be defrayed by alms collected by the churchwardens and others, but any parish which neglected to carry out the Act was liable to a fine of 20s. for every month of omission. The Act of I Edward VI. (1548) contained similar provisions. Early in the reign of Elizabeth a proposal was laid before the Government by a Somerset justice of the peace for the erection of houses of correction, adjacent to gaols, for the reception of convicted vagrants, who should be there "kept in work, except some person would take them into service," and, added the memorialist, "I dare presume the tenth felony will not be committed that now is." An Act of 14 Elizabeth (1572) empowered the local justices to use surplus monies collected for the relief of the impotent poor in putting rogues and vagabonds to work in "convenient places," under the control of the overseers. A more systematic plan was that proposed by the Act of 1575, requiring Quarter Sessions to establish "abiding houses or places convenient in some market town or corporate town or other place," to be called houses of correction, and to be stocked with wool, hemp, flax, iron, or "such other stuff as was best suited to the country" (_i.e._, the locality), with implements for the manufacture thereof, and in these houses were to be "straitly kept, as well in diet as work, and also punished from time to time," vagrants and beggars, and other people of questionable utility to the commonwealth. The Act threatened with a fine of £5 every justice who left Quarter Sessions "before conference had touching the execution of this statute," the fines to go towards the cost of establishing and furnishing the houses of correction. Similarly, an Act of 1597 required the justices to provide houses of correction for vagrants to be used in addition to the county gaols. In 1609 an Act was passed exposing to a penalty of £5 every justice of a county in which a house of correction was not provided within two years. These institutions were established on a considerable scale, but in course of time their reformative purpose gave place to a penal one. As the Vagrancy Committee point out:-- "In 1630 a Royal Commission, issued for the purpose of enforcing the vagrancy laws, directed that the houses of correction should be made adjacent to the common gaols and the gaoler made governor of them, so that the prisoners in the gaols might be taught to work as well as those committed to the houses of correction. After this date the houses of correction seem to have been regarded more and more as places of punishment, to which persons were committed for definite terms to do hard labour, rather than to be taught to work; and in many counties the common gaols were used as houses of correction. It is from an amalgamation of the two that the modern local prison has sprung."[45] [Footnote 45: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 67.] Throughout the following century the tendency to regard vagrancy less from the standpoint of public safety and policy than from that of public expense gained the upper hand. Vagrants, as such, had ceased to be obnoxious; what was disliked was their propensity for throwing themselves upon the charity of parishes in which they had no settlement. Hence the policy of whipping these offenders, whether women or men, and restoring them to their legal parishes, was consistently followed in the eighteenth century. It was an irrational and costly policy, though in keeping with the particularist spirit of the times. In 1821 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to consider the abuses which had arisen out of this system of "passing" vagrants, and, as a result, the existing legislation on the subject was repealed in 1822. It was stated in the House of Commons at that time that in Wiltshire and an adjoining county £2,587 had been expended from the county funds in one year in "passing" vagrants and that in 1821, £100,000 had, in the aggregate, been spent in this way. Nevertheless, that the idea of curing the loafer by forced labour was not entirely forgotten, is proved by the fact that in 1848, when the Poor Law Board took the place of the Poor Law Commissioners appointed under the Poor Law Act of 1834, a proposal to return to the old disciplinary method was put forward by one of the first Poor Law Inspectors, Mr. Aneurin Owen, who recommended the establishment of pauper depots on islands off the coast, at which local stone might be broken for road use. I confess to attaching more importance to the disciplinary influence of rigorous restraint, coupled with active exertion, than to any number of periodical months in county gaols. Punishment may do good or may not: but punishment is not enough. It is not--in the main, at any rate--a dangerous criminal class with which we have to do, but for the most part the weak and aimless characters whose great need is the moral tonic of discipline and compulsion. Lodged in such institutions as will be described in later chapters, these evaders of all social obligations would learn, or at least would be taught, both how to work and the duty of industry. As I shall show, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland have all found it advantageous to establish Labour Houses, true to their name, for the special treatment of social parasites of this kind, and while imitation in details may be neither possible nor desirable, their experience throws valuable light upon both sides of the problem--on the one hand, the case of those hardened offenders upon whom indulgence is thrown away and, on the other hand, the case of the budding loafers who have not irrevocably chosen between the life of diligence and that of sloth. The possibilities of the philanthropic Labour Colonies of the Continental pattern, to be conducted by Boards of Guardians, have impressed many Poor Law reformers who have begun to occupy themselves with the tramp. I may claim to know well the work of the best voluntary Labour Colonies of the Continent, having visited some of them, and while agreeing that institutions of this kind--albeit with the addition of compulsory powers of detention, which the Continental colonies do not possess--might do for young and first offenders, I am confident that a _régime_ many degrees stricter and more methodical would be necessary before they could hope to make any impression upon the habitual loafer. Here, however, we see the idea of coddling the tramp, even while we are trying to reform him, creeping in already in a new guise. These good people readily admit that discipline of some kind is necessary; but while they would restrain the tramp henceforth, it would be with cords of love. The poor fellow has been taught by the rude buffeting of the workhouse to hate labour. Who would love work after he had, for years, been passing through the mill of the casual ward, which grinds the instinct of diligence and self-respect slowly, indeed, but exceeding small? This has been the hard experience of the tramp. The continual sight of heaps of stones and oakum, which he was expected to disintegrate according to their kind, by way of paying for his humble bed and board, has created in him a distaste for even more dignified kinds of labour, so that the very sight of a spade, a pick-axe, or a dirty apron gives him quite a turn. So the tramp's tender-hearted, ever-faithful sympathisers are arguing; he shall not be passed under draconian laws if they can help it. There can be no hope of advance on the right lines until this mischievous appeal to sentiment is abandoned. It has been the bane of the Vagrancy Laws for generations, and more than anything else is responsible for the present difficulties of the tramp problem in its several phases. Short of compulsion, the tramp will not work, and the hope of inducing him to take to a life of industry, by placing him in an atmosphere of art and poetry, perfumes and texts, is to go counter to all the lessons of experience, and to utterly misunderstand the instincts of the tramp nature. Else how explain the notorious fact that wherever a workhouse adopts a fairly severe labour test there the tramp cannot be persuaded to go; while, conversely, the easier the terms of admission--or, more truly, of exit--the fuller is the casual ward. I read in the newspapers, at the moment of writing, that "The new labour tests adopted by the Sleaford Guardians are answering very satisfactorily, and at the fortnightly meeting, the master reported that during the past six months there had been a decrease of 250 vagrants at the Union." The fact that this official had also to complain of "dissatisfied vagrants," and "the breaking of windows and other Union property" by these irreconcilable visitors, only confirms the truth that vagrancy and hatred of work are convertible terms. But, if so, it follows that it is only by curing this unsocial aversion to exertion that the unsocial practice of vagabondage will cease to perplex and scandalise society, and to do that, coercive measures of a very definite kind will have to be employed, let the repository of power be as it may. The treatment of the tramp must, of course, be humane--that it should be other is inconceivable in these days, when even the inmates of our prisons are assured a standard of life far beyond the reach and hope of thousands of the poor who help to maintain the prisons and the prisoners--but it must, none the less, be distinctly punitive and deterrent. It must not be desirable to be sent to a disciplinary establishment of this kind; a man must rather be willing to work voluntarily outside than to work compulsorily inside. In addition to those sentenced to detention for vagrancy, the forced Labour Houses would meet the case of several other classes of notorious delinquents. They include the following:-- (1) Husbands who desert their families, and against whom legal redress cannot be obtained. (2) Paupers of the "in-and-out" class who use the workhouse as a means of evading their parental responsibilities. (3) Able-bodied paupers whose destitution is due to idleness and unwillingness to maintain themselves. (4) Dissolute persons whose life is an alternation of more or less regular work and spells of indulgence from which the workhouse is their only hope of recovery. (5) Certain classes of confirmed inebriates. (6) Unmarried women of inferior mental and moral capacity, dependent on the rates, who have had more than one illegitimate child. Some of these offenders would be committed by the magistrates owing to the action of the police in the ordinary way. In Poor Law cases it would be justifiable to dispense with open judicial proceedings, and to empower the Poor Law Authority to commit, on a certificate signed by one or more magistrates, giving the offender (as in Hamburg)[46] the right of appeal, first to the authority itself against the execution of its resolution to proceed, and before the execution of a magisterial certificate to Petty Sessions. [Footnote 46: _See_ pp. 195-197.] There remains another class of persons who constitute a serious social burden and inconvenience, the criminals, loafers, and paupers of alien origin, who probably are more numerous, and certainly are more indulgently treated, in England than in any Continental country. At present a small minority of the criminal aliens convicted are deported after the completion of their sentences. The number of aliens (the Colonies and India not counted), convicted and committed to the local prisons in 1907 was 2,799, or 4.3 per cent. of the total number. The aliens recommended for deportation in that year numbered 289.[47] It is conceivable that deportation will be resorted to upon a very much more extensive scale, and eventually that the duty and expense of punishment, where the alien is detained, will be undertaken by the country of nationality; there is obviously little reason or satisfaction in maintaining criminal aliens in prison when banishment awaits them immediately on release.[48] As for the alien vagabond and loafer we have the example of Continental States to guide us. The laws of Germany, Austria, Belgium, and Switzerland expressly enjoin expulsion as the treatment of such persons; they are simply taken across the nearest frontier, and are warned against returning. It would not be unreasonable to apply to alien loafers the summary treatment which their own Governments do not hesitate to enforce. As to the destitute who fall upon the Poor Law, it should be possible to conclude with Continental Governments treaties applying internationally the principle of "relief settlement," under which each State would either receive its own citizens who became chargeable to the public funds of another country, or at least would refund the costs of their maintenance to the Poor Law Authority which discharged this duty for it. [Footnote 47: The principal offences committed by these guests were: Larceny, frauds, and receiving stolen property, 97; begging and sleeping out, 18; burglary, housebreaking, etc., 25; frequenting public places with intent to commit felony, etc., 11; sexual offences, indecency, etc., 8; brothel-keeping, 50; prostitution, 19; living on prostitutes' earnings, 25; and wounding, assaults, drunkenness, etc., 18.] [Footnote 48: The Prison Commissioners (Report for 1903, p. 119), estimate that the annual net cost per head, after deducting the value of work done, is £22 11s. in local and £29 in convict prisons, exclusive of all charge for buildings.] The latest complete return of alien paupers in England and Wales relates to July 1, 1903, when their number was 1,753, of whom 897 were relieved in London, and 856 in the provinces. They included 587 indoor paupers, 694 outdoor paupers, and 472 insane in asylums. Exclusive of the insane, they consisted of 117 men relieved with wives or children, 95 wives of men relieved, 95 women relieved with children, but not with husbands, 362 other men, 193 other women, 359 children of men and women relieved, and 60 other children. Of the total of 1,753 alien paupers of all classes, 715 or 41 per cent. were from Russia and Poland, 502 or 30 per cent. from Germany, 110 or 6 per cent. from France, 106 or 6 per cent. from Italy, 70 or 4 per cent. from Norway and Sweden, and the remaining 250 represented twenty-three other countries. In London the aliens represented 0.74 per cent. of the total pauperism, in the provinces they represented 0.33 per cent. The support of these outsiders constitutes a public burden for which there seems no moral justification. The question of their treatment is one which should not be approached in a captious, much less a bigoted, spirit, but if it is inequitable--as the law declares it to be--that one English Poor Law Union should support the paupers of another, it is doubly inequitable that the nation should show to other countries an unequally reciprocated generosity in the care of so many of their citizens, and these amongst the least desirable. It would be essential to success that detention should, in all but the most hopeful cases, be for a long period. This is not only the practice of all Continental Labour Houses, but the past prison treatment of vagrants in this country proves the uselessness of short sentences. In Germany the term of commitment may extend to two years; in Belgium it must fall within two and seven years. At the same time discretion should be given to the authorities to curtail the sentence, within fixed limits, where the detainee gives proof of reformation and a desire to follow a regular mode of life. In such a case, release would be on parole, and in the event of a repetition of the offence which entailed commitment, the man would be reapprehended and sent back to the Labour House to complete his sentence without further legal procedure. There are strong reasons why Detention Colonies and Labour Houses should be county institutions, just as they are provincial institutions in Prussia. The fact that many of their inmates, under the organisation proposed, would be defaulters committed on the application of the Poor Law Authorities, is a strong argument for such a local basis. There is reason to fear that if the Colonies and Labour Houses were formally incorporated in the prison system of the country, they would imbibe too much the prison atmosphere and spirit, and would tend to become identical with existing houses of correction, just as the houses of correction of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ultimately lost their special character as reformatory institutions. It might be desirable that offenders sentenced should be removed for detention to the county in which they had legal settlement, in preference to being punished in the county in which the offence was committed, but failing that course, the county or parish of settlement would be liable for all costs of maintenance as in the case of non-settled paupers. While primarily the cost of these institutions would be a county charge, Poor Law Authorities would be required to pay on a fixed scale for the maintenance of all persons detained at their instigation, and it might be expedient to require in respect of every detainee a certain contribution from the parish in which he had legal settlement, as is the case in some of the Swiss cantons. The liability of the detainees themselves would be compounded by their labour, which it would be the business of the Colonies and Labour Houses to employ to the best possible advantage. Although, on this plan, the institutions would be under county management, it would be necessary that the State should exercise far-going powers of control, either through the Home Office, the Local Government Board, or the Prison Board, and that all schemes of organisation, regulations, the more important appointments, and also expenditure of certain kinds, should receive the approval of the Central Authority. It should not be required, nor would it be necessary, that every county should have its own Detention Colony or Labour House. For reasons both of economy and efficiency counties would be allowed to combine. Only in this way would it be possible to secure variety of type in the establishment of these institutions. Not much experience would be needed to show that the same treatment would not suit every class of offender; most of the Colonies, no doubt, would be fairly uniform, but one or more would be required for the more rigorous discipline which would have to be meted to old offenders. Possibly, a single Colony of this kind, organised after the pattern of the Beggars' Depot of Merxplas, in Belgium,[49] would serve for the whole country. If the existing Poor Law is, in the elegant phrase now current, to be "broken up", it might be found that some of the existing rural workhouses would serve as the nuclei of Detention Colonies of the milder type. [Footnote 49: For a description of Merxplas, _see_ pp. 104-132.] It would be a condition of establishing Detention Colonies and Labour Houses, that they should exist for the purpose of hard work, for the art of labour is only acquired by labour. Of such work the average loafer is quite capable, if only the necessary pressure could be applied. As to vagrants, official statistics show that the majority of them are in the able-bodied period of life: of 5,579 casual paupers relieved on January 1, 1900, about 70 per cent. were between thirty-five and sixty-five years of age; 23 per cent. were between sixteen and thirty-five years, and only 5 per cent. were above sixty-five. If the vagrant can, every day, walk the almost incredible distances which he tells us, there is in him immense store of energy which is going to waste. A Detention Colony, properly organised, and infused with an atmosphere of industry, would use this energy for the good of society and of the loafer himself. It would be judicious, as well as equitable, to pay the detained worker wages, or a bonus on output, by way of encouraging him to diligence and exertion, and of providing him with decent clothing, tools, and a small sum of money wherewith to begin life again on regaining his liberty. Even the most conscientious of free workmen is spurred by the thought of the wages which will reward his efforts, and there is nothing ignoble in such a stimulus. The natural atmosphere of a Detention Colony is that of the outside labour market, to which, by right, the detained workers belong, and the existence of a money nexus between the man and his work will be a set-off against the chafing thought of bondage, a constant reminder that the man, in doing well for the colony, is also doing something good for himself, and an incentive to those habits of honesty and application which will alone enable him to regain, and permanently retain, control over his own life. Moreover, the wages or bonus should be held before the worker in the clearest and most definite manner--not as an act of charity, but as a "business proposition," not as largess, but as a right. If the man can be incited to a healthy egoism, so much the better; he will be the less likely to fall back when he has to fight his way outside. In short, payment should be an essential part of Detention Colony policy, and the moral value of the habit of money earning should not be spoiled by too much talk of privileges and favours. The character of the Colonies and of their inmates, the unfavourable conditions under which much of the work would have to be done, and the limited market that would be available for its produce, would necessarily restrict the wages to a very small sum; the essential thing is that they should be paid, and that the workers should be able to estimate the amount of their possible gains beforehand. It would seem expedient that every Colony or Labour House should follow a mixed economy of agriculture and industry. Wherever possible, a farm should be an essential part of it, in order that all such primary necessaries of life as milk, butter, meat, roots, and vegetables, might be produced, as far as practicable, by the aid of the inmates' labour. It would also be advantageous, following the example of the Voluntary Colonies which have been established in this and other countries, to begin each settlement on a tract of land, a considerable part of which, at least, is undeveloped, with a view to the provision of an abundance of rough outdoor labour by means of works of reclamation, and to securing to the Colony the increased value which such works would create. It is also desirable that the Colonies, while lying away from towns, should have good means of communication. On this subject some words may be quoted from a letter recently written to me by Monsieur Louis Stroobant, the energetic director of the Belgian State Beggars' Depot at Merxplas:-- "It is expedient to create establishments like Merxplas in districts but little populated and situated at some distance from towns. It is also indispensable that a colony of this kind should be near a small railway station or a canal, in a healthy country, should be well provided with drinking water, and should be in a locality in which the inmates would be able to make the bricks needed for buildings." While, however, farm and land labour would form an essential source of employment and of gain in the Detention Colonies, the broad basis would need to be industrial. This is proved by the experience of all the forced Labour Colonies of the Continent of which I have knowledge, with the one exception of the Rummelsburg Labour House, near Berlin, and in this exceptional case the labour of the inmates is largely used in working the extensive sewage farms of the Berlin municipality. For obvious reasons, it would be necessary to choose such trades as could be carried on economically. In the first place, comparatively few men of the type suited to a Vagrant Colony are fit for ordinary farm work, which needs far more skill and intelligence than most urban advocates of Labour Colony schemes seem to imagine. After allowing for the relatively small number of inmates whose labour would be needed on the farm all the year round, the remainder, the great majority, would have to be employed on works of improvement, and in the workshops. The former work would necessarily be of an intermittent character, and even so would, in time, be reduced to very limited proportions. Unless outdoor employment altogether outside the establishment, such as road-making, draining, levelling, gardening, and forestry, were to be resorted to, as in some of the German forced Labour Colonies, it would be necessary to fall back on industrial work. Probably it would also be found that training in such work would offer most men the best chance of reinstating themselves in society when they obtained their release, and from the financial standpoint it would undoubtedly yield the best results for the Colony. The question of allowing the products of Detention Colonies to compete with the products of free labour would inevitably arise, and not improbably the bare possibility of such competition occurring would be used as an argument against the establishment of these Colonies. It is obvious, however, that if the object of Detention Colonies is to assist their inmates to go back into the world able to earn an honest livelihood by industry, there must be some slight sacrifice of private interest to public advantage. Clearly, a policy of give and take would have to be adopted. There are products which forced Labour Colonies might legitimately be allowed to send into the open market without injury to the most sensitive outside industry--farm produce, for example, if a superfluity were available--but, as far as possible, the goods produced should be for home consumption and for the public services, as is the case in other countries. The interchange of products between the various Colonies should be encouraged, as it would not only lighten the common burden of maintenance, but would facilitate trade specialisation and the classification and grading of the inmates. It would be unwise to hope, however, that any Labour Colony would be made self-supporting, in spite of some confident opinions to the contrary which were put before the Vagrancy Committee. The very fact that the Colonies would have to be worked with an inefficient class of labour, and the inevitably high costs of administration and oversight, make it impossible to regard them as profit-earning institutions. Nevertheless, if a Colony were well organised, well managed, and not too tightly restricted in the character of its industries and the extent of its market, the costs of maintenance should not be heavy. In this respect the experience of the Belgian and some of the Prussian and Swiss Labour Houses, dealt with later, is very encouraging. More important than any consideration of immediate financial results, however, is the permanent influence of Colony discipline upon the inmates; if that were assured, financial success would also be certain, if not to the Colony itself, then to the community outside, which is practically the same thing. It is imperatively necessary, however, that we should at the outset be perfectly clear, not only as to the object aimed at in setting up Detention Colonies, but as to the practical possibilities of these Colonies. The object must not and cannot be to make perfect men out of most imperfect material; it will be the far more modest one of correcting tendencies of character and conduct which are socially injurious, with a view to returning the objects of care to freedom, if they seriously wish to regain freedom, able, under favourable circumstances, to take an independent place amongst the social hewers of wood and drawers of water. Only by setting before ourselves sane and moderate views shall we be working to serious purpose; to act otherwise will be to waste effort and court certain disappointment. It is hardly too much to say that it will be safer to aim too low than too high in undertaking the difficult task of socialising and moralising the loafer. Let us indulge in no illusions on the subject: the proportion of the detainees who will be really "reformed" will be exceedingly small; those upon whom some wholesome influence, of longer or shorter duration, will be exerted, will form a larger number; but it is possible that the great majority will return again and again to detention and may even prove irremediable and entirely unfit to be restored to society. In the main, therefore, the Detaining Colonies may, in the end, prove to be largely institutions of restraint. Yet even on that basis they are necessary, and the service which they will do to society will by no means be a negative service. They will, in fact, be carrying out the idea which more and more finds favour amongst penologists, and which must inevitably be far more rigorously applied in the future than it is now, that persons whose liberty is injurious to the commonwealth must be deprived of that liberty, permanently if necessary, and in any case so long as they continue capable of social harm. It may be asked, can a place be found in a system of Detention Colonies and Labour Houses for the Voluntary Labour Colonies and Depots of various types which already exist in this country? To my mind, the latter would still be able to do a most important and indispensable work, and to do it under conditions more favourable to successful results than those which prevail at present. There is a fashion in opprobrium as in other things, and it appears to be fashionable to reproach these voluntary institutions with the small percentage of their good cases, and to question their efficiency and expediency. Even if their visible success were far less than it is, the Labour Colonies and Depots established by philanthropic agencies are deserving of the highest praise. They are trying to discharge, with inadequate resources, and with little public recognition, the duty of society towards two large classes of people--the unemployed and the unemployable, and they would have work enough of the same kind to do, even were Detention Institutions of the kind proposed in full operation. The existing Labour Colonies and Depots would be specially useful in dealing with men who were temporarily unemployable owing to physical and moral deterioration. The Detention Colonies could not be expected to yield satisfactory results if they were handicapped with inmates of this kind, who belong rather to infirmaries than to workshops. Hence, in committing a physical wreck, incapable of immediate employment, the magistrates should have discretion to order the first part of his sentence to be passed in one of these Voluntary Institutions, where he would be able to receive more particular, and perhaps more sympathetic, treatment than would be possible in a hard-working Labour House. If, in the opinion of the authorities, the effect of this recuperative treatment made it unnecessary to pass the man, when fit, into a Detention Colony, there to complete his sentence, he would be released on parole, on the understanding that he would be liable to immediate reapprehension if his conduct gave rise to complaint. The Voluntary Colonies would continue to be managed as at present, but they would be entitled to grants of public money, the amount of which should be dependent less upon the exact number of cases received from the magistrates, than upon the rescue work of all kinds in which they were engaged, for this work is one of common advantage, and it is indefensible that the whole burden of cost should be borne by voluntary well-wishers. Before leaving the question of repressive measures, it can hardly be superfluous to say that much could be done at once to discourage vagrancy and loafing if greater discrimination in almsgiving were shown. It sounds paradoxical, but it is true, that many of the people who, by their thoughtless doles, make loafers, are among the warmest friends of institutions called into existence for the one purpose of unmaking them. Nothing in the world is easier than to get rid of an importunate beggar by the gift of a coin; nothing is more difficult than to undo the harm which results, in most cases, from this open incitement to a life of idleness. To the average man all benevolence of this kind is a virtue; Emerson knew better when he spoke of the "vicious shillings" which he gave indiscriminately and against his better judgment. In Tudor times attempts were made by law to check almsgiving, insofar as it encouraged idleness and vagrancy;[50] and as late as 1744 (17 George II.) a law was passed exposing to a penalty of not less than 10s. or more than 40s. (or in default, one month's detention in a house of correction), any person who knowingly gave to a rogue or vagabond lodging or shelter and refrained from handing him over to a constable. Legislation of this kind is still in operation on the Continent. In 1889 the Canon of Schwyz, in democratic Switzerland, passed a law making "persons, who, by giving alms, favour begging from house to house or in the street," liable to a fine of 10 francs. Some time ago, also, a police ordinance was issued in the Uelzen district of Prussia, to the following effect:-- [Footnote 50: Statute of 27 Henry VIII., c. 25.] "(1) The giving of alms of any kind whatever to mendicant vagrants is prohibited on pain of a fine not exceeding 9 marks (9s.). "(2) The giving of food and clothing for the relief of visible want is as before subject to no penalty, provided that there be no possibility of the recipient exchanging such gifts for money or brandy." The legal prohibition in this country of indiscriminate charity, so called, even when offered to mendicants, and thus contributing to illegality, would nowadays be regarded as so serious an invasion of the "liberty of the subject" as to be inconceivable, and no writer who has a due reverence for that august principle would propose it.[51] Much may be done to discourage the practice, however, by educating public opinion to a recognition of the fact that only the philanthropy that is wise and well-directed can be truly helpful and beneficent. [Footnote 51: That this principle was not always the fetish it has become is shown by the following extract from Dr. Burn's "History of the Poor Law," published in 1764:--"But how shall begging be restrained, which by a kind of prescriptive claim hath so long been accustomed to triumph above the laws? All sorts of severities, it appears, have been enacted against vagrants; and yet they wander still. Nevertheless, one would hope the disease is not past all remedy. If it is, let us cease the unequal contention, and submissively give up our fortunes to the next that comes with a pass, and tells us a justice of the peace hath so ordered it; but let beggars and vagrants be doing. There is one infallible way to put an end to all this, and the easiest in the world, which consists merely in a non-feasance. Give them nothing. If none were to give, none would beg, and the whole mystery and craft would be at an end in a fortnight. Let the laws continue if you please to apprehend and punish the mendicants; but let something also be done effectually against those who encourage them. If the principal is punished it is not reasonable the accessory should go free. In order to which, let all who relieve a common beggar be subject to a penalty."] The further question follows: What part, then, might the existing workhouse continue to play in our Poor Law system? In my opinion a part far more important than it has played in the past. For when the tramp and the loafer have been disposed of, there will remain the dependent and infirm poor, to the relief of whose needs it might, under improved conditions, be henceforth exclusively and more intelligently devoted. As, however, it would be no longer a workhouse, even to the extent of its casual wards, it would be expedient from every standpoint to discard for ever the hard name which it now bears, and to return to the earlier and less repulsive name of Poorhouse. One need not be very old to be able to recall the time when the name Bastille ("Basty," with a long "y," was the popular distortion of the word in my native Yorkshire), was the name by which the poorer classes universally expressed their horror of the workhouse: so much of modern French history had reached their contracted minds. That ill-repute has to some extent been outlived, yet the evil that institutions, as well as men, do lives after them, and an intense prejudice against the workhouse is still laudably common amongst the more deserving poor, and it will persist so long as the present name lasts, in spite of all that may be done to humanise our principles and methods of Poor Law administration. Poorhouses, of some sort, however named, we shall need to have so long as a Poor Law is necessary; and when the stigma has been removed from honest poverty, there is no reason to believe that the deserving recipients of public relief would show the old sense of humiliation and dread when necessity decrees their passage through portals which would no longer be those of hopeless indignity but of honourable comfort. Happily, the improvement of these institutions proceeds apace, and to my mind the best thing is to continue improving them until they are good enough to serve as asylums for the most deserving of our aged and infirm poor, and infinitely too good for the idle and worthless. Several years ago the writer of the annual "Legal Poor of London" article in _The Times_ called attention to the ameliorative influences which are so actively working in the metropolitan workhouses, and questioned whether too much was not being done for the inmates of these places:-- "For aged and deserving inmates," he said, "discipline is relaxed, the wards are made comfortable with carpets, window curtains, table covers, and arm chairs, and the cheery day rooms are supplied with literature, while a certain amount of privacy is allowed. The dietary has been improved, the electric light established, and warmth and comfort prevail, the inmates having no care as to the provision of maintenance. It is not surprising that they 'appear to appreciate' such attentions, nor is it matter for wonder that additions are made to their numbers. Nobody desires to see the poor, especially the aged poor, who are compelled to resort to the workhouse, treated otherwise than in a humane way; but sound views should prevail; and if we are to reckon the piling up of comforts in the workhouses as being 'so much to the good in the organisation of the life of the otherwise destitute poor,' we must be prepared to see thousands of ratepayers who are now less eligibly placed than the inmates of the workhouse, and whose burdens, in having to contribute to the maintenance of those inmates in greater comfort than themselves, are annually growing heavier, added to our present mass of indoor pauperism. Old age pauperism, encouraged by the altered conditions of the workhouses, has really become a serious question." That is one aspect of the question, but there is another. The really pertinent point is, are the conditions of life nowadays prevalent in the workhouse in themselves too humane; do they go beyond the requirements of our modern civilisation? If not, there is no justification for holding the reforming hand. The right thing, surely, is to level up the conditions of life outside. Just as the admirable example set by so many public authorities in the treatment of their servants exerts a favourable influence in favour of employees in private service, so the standard of life insisted upon for the public workhouse, infirmary and asylum is bound to react upon the homes and habits of the independent labouring classes. If the workman who is taxed to keep the pauper in tolerable comfort does not enjoy at least equal conditions of existence himself, he will ask himself, and then others, the reason why. And who will blame him for so doing? Least of all the sociologist, who knows that no factor in the civilisation of society is more potent or more irresistible than the expansion of one's view of life and the multiplication of rational needs. There remain the _bona-fide_ seekers of work. For them no adequate provision exists, and the neglect to make it is a crying wrong. The present indiscriminate treatment of all wayfarers works unjustly in every way. It is unfair to the dissolute idler, whom it confirms in his sloth; it is monstrously unfair to the unwilling idler, whom it penalises for his misfortune. When society has done its duty to the tramp, it will not hesitate to recognise its responsibilities towards the genuine unemployed. It will do so not from motives of philanthropy alone, though it is a platitude to say that a society which professes to be based on Christian principles owes far more than it has ever paid or acknowledged to its workless members; it will do it also from considerations of social interest and well-being, recognising that it is the best charity and the truest economy to get an idle man's hands employed as soon as possible, the worst extravagance to allow him to remain unproductive a day longer than can be avoided. Labour is the first element in all wealth-creation, and every idle man is, in greater or less degree, a source of national impoverishment, for he is consuming without producing. Wherever public labour registries have been established as part of a co-ordinated system, as in Bavaria and other parts of Germany, and in Switzerland, it has been found that, short of a free use of the railway, which is no doubt the ideal arrangement, hostels for decent wayfarers of the working class are essential. Those who think that such institutions are superfluous will do well to read the following story told by a working man correspondent in _The Times_:-- "Last summer some two hundred of us were given a week's notice, through slackness of work, by a powerful London company, and, although we all brought characters when we entered the company's service, we were informed on discharge that the company never gave references, and would not answer any letters with regard to our characters. Now, as everyone in London requires a personal character, unless we have influence at our back what chance have we for anything but casual work? One of the men, in despair of finding employment in London, left for the Lincolnshire potato harvest. He tells me that, not having money for all his journey, he walked down, and on several occasions had to put up at a casual ward, where he had to break 13 cwt. of stones in return for the shelter from the rain for the night. He says in some unions one has to lay on boards, with filthy rugs for bedclothes, and only dry bread to eat at meals, except at dinner, when you are allowed 1-1/2 oz. of cheese. To avoid this organised charity he one night crept into a cart-shed. He was there found by the police, and by the goodness of the magistrates was sent on by train to Lincoln, and at the expense of the country provided with free board and lodge for fourteen days at the prison there. On being released he was fortunate enough to obtain work in the harvest fields, and being an all round good worker followed up a threshing machine all the winter till now. This is only one case, due entirely to the fact that many large firms will not give characters to men on discharge." The incidents here recorded afford a striking illustration of a passage in the report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on Vagrancy:-- "With regard to the man seeking work, your Committee are of opinion that the present methods of dealing with vagrancy constitute a real danger.... A certain number of such men find their way into our prisons owing to their failure to establish their _bona fide_ character as working men before the courts. The temptation afterward to drift gradually into the ranks of the professional tramp class is considerable. Loss of manual or technical skill soon follows, and the man who ought to be a producer becomes a costly burden to the community." To distinguish between the genuine work-seeker and the fraud would be no difficult task. All that would be necessary would be to require the former to authenticate himself by a way-ticket or pass, attested either by the police, a trade union, a labour bureau, or a recent responsible employer.[52] On the strength of such a certificate, which a _bona-fide_ applicant should have a right to demand, unless good reasons existed to the contrary, he might well be allowed to proceed on his journey, and be admitted to such public hostels as happened to lie in his way. Vagabondage pure and simple would be a game no longer worth the candle. If the itinerant were an industrial malingerer, the fact would speedily come to light, and with no Poor Law to fall back upon, the sure prospect of detention in a Labour House would await him. The entire supplanting of the so-called "model" lodging-houses by travellers' hostels in public hands would be one of the greatest benefits that could be conferred upon the working classes. [Footnote 52: In my evidence before the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, I fully described the hostel and way ticket system which has for many years been in successful operation in Germany, and the same information was given by Mr. H. Preston Thomas regarding the more recent Swiss system. _See also_ Chap. X. (pp. 212-228), of the present Volume.] It is worthy of note that the use of way-tickets, minus the houses of call now proposed, is not unknown to English legislation on vagrancy. So long ago as 1824 an Act was passed empowering magistrates to grant certificates or passes to vagrants discharged from prison, to enable them to reach their places of settlement, and to obtain relief from parochial authorities on the way, though this pass system appears to have been carried out in four counties only, and to have soon fallen into disuse. Further, a Minute of the old Poor Law Board, dated August 4, 1848, in recommending differential treatment as between the work-seeking and the work-shy wayfarer, urged, in particular, that the former should be helped by a system of way-tickets, applicable to fixed routes and valid for a definite period. "There is obviously a wide distinction," said the Minute, " between those who are temporarily and unavoidably in distress and the habitual tramp or vagrant who simulates destitution; and one of the worst results of the present undiscriminating treatment of all who are commonly denominated 'casuals' is, that some of the most fitting objects of public charity are subjected to the discomforts that were intended to repel the worthless. Among all the unfortunate there are none whose destitution is more unquestionable, and whose hard lot presents stronger claims to sympathy, than the widow and orphan, deprived, at a distance from home, of their natural supporter, and the honest artisan or labourer who is seeking the employment of which accidental circumstances have suddenly deprived him. Yet, under the present system, such persons as these either share the discomforts, the filth, the turbulence, and the demoralising fellowship of the thief, the mendicant and the prostitute, who crowd the vagrant wards of the workhouses, or are compelled to brave the inclemency of the weather and the pains of hunger by reason of their unconquerable aversion to such companionship. "It would not appear to be difficult to establish a system by which this deserving class of persons might be furnished with such evidence of their character and circumstances as might afford a fair presumption of the truth of their plea of destitution. A wayfarer of this class might, at the place where the cause of destitution occurs, be enabled by those who are cognisant of it to obtain a certificate from some proper authority, setting forth his name, the cause of destitution, and the object and destination of his journey. On his presenting this certificate at any workhouse, the master, on finding that it was satisfactory, that the applicant was on the road to his destination, and that he was without money or other means, might at once admit him, and supply him with the usual accommodation of the inmates. In this way the honest but destitute wayfarer, possessed of such credentials, would obtain the advantage of being admitted into the workhouse without reference to the relieving officer, and also of receiving better accommodation, than that at present afforded to him in the vagrant ward." The plan proposed appears to have been followed but little. It was reported to the Poor Law Board in 1865 that it was in force in one county only (Essex), where vagrancy had been practically abolished as a result. It is more to the purpose to know that, at the present time, way-tickets in a modified form are in use in some of the southern counties of England--Sussex, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Berkshire--and in parts of Wales. The best known system is that of Berkshire, which was adopted in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in 1882, and is still in efficient operation. Its object is to enable a work-seeker to move through the county to his destination by the most direct route, and without unnecessary delay, and by providing him with lodging, supper, and breakfast at the casual ward, and with a mid-day meal on his going, to remove all necessity for begging from the public. The system was thus described to the Vagrancy Committee by Lieut. Col. J. Curtis Hayward, Chairman of the Gloucestershire Poor Law Vagrancy Committee:-- "A vagrant on entering the county gets a ticket from the assistant relieving officer who, in most cases, in our county is a police officer. That ticket has marked upon it his final destination and his description. With that he goes to the casual ward, where, of course, he is dealt with in the ordinary way; he gets his food night and morning and he has to do his task. When he leaves, the master puts on the ticket the name of the union which he has to go to next day--it must be on the road to his final destination--and also the name of a bread station. We have got one in nearly every case half-way. Sometimes he has to go a little out of his way to a bread station. It is also a police station. If he arrives there between one and three, he is given a ticket on a baker close by. "If he arrives at the union entered upon the ticket that evening, he has what we call a good ticket; if, on the other hand, he arrives at some other union, or has no ticket at all, he is given a new one and it is considered a bad ticket. Our committee recommend the boards of guardians to detain, for one night only, all those who show they are passing as quickly as they can to the destination which they say they are going to; and to detain for two nights all those without any tickets, or who show that they are not going straight to their destination. "For instance, supposing a man says, 'I am going from Gloucester to Cardiff,' he would have, perhaps, 'Westbury' marked on his ticket to go to; and suppose he turned up at Stroud, which is directly in the opposite direction, we would say:--'That is not where you are going to; this is a bad ticket; you must have a new ticket, and you will be detained two nights.' "We give everybody a ticket. That is different to what they have done in Worcestershire and other places, where they do not give a ticket. They tried to discriminate between ... the _bona-fide_ working men and those who were not _bona-fide_. We never attempt to make any distinction, because we say giving this ticket is taking away the excuse for begging; therefore, we say every man ought to have a ticket in his pocket." The system in force in Wiltshire was described to the same Committee by Mr. A. C. Mitchell, Chairman of the Poor Law Vagrancy Committee of that county:-- "The system was shortly this--that on a tramp applying at the first union he arrived at in the county for relief, he was given a way-ticket on which was entered his description, his final destination, and the places where he would call. Arrangements were made at convenient places where a police constable was stationed, where the tramp could get bread between workhouses which necessitated a fair day's march. This ticket, as long as he proceeded in the direction to the final destination to which he declared himself to be proceeding, entitled him to eight ounces of bread (in Gloucestershire it was a larger amount at first, now it is eight ounces), between the hours of twelve and two at the given stations. As long as he kept on his way to his final destination that held good between union and union. "The man is passed on from point to point, as long as he keeps on the route originally described, and he obtains his meals of bread at a given point in the middle of each day, between the hours of twelve and two. "If that man varies his route, according to the recommendations of our committee--of course we cannot be responsible for the actions of boards of guardians--he would then be in the same position as the man who arrived without a ticket at all, and would be liable to full detention under the Casual Poor Act, 1882. "We advise the boards of guardians that if a man has his ticket in order, he shall be forwarded on his road at the earliest possible time, after having broken the portion of stones for his one night's detention." The same system is in operation in West and East Sussex, and as late as 1908 the Poor Law Inspector for those districts reported to the Local Government Board:-- "As regards vagrancy, the way-ticket system in operation in West Sussex is reported to be working well, and is looked upon as a permanent institution. It has also been extended to East Sussex. A considerable reduction took place in the number of vagrants relieved in Kent and Sussex."[53] [Footnote 53: Mr. J. W. Thompson, in Annual Report for 1908, p. 42.] In the following chapters the measures which have been adopted in Continental countries for dealing with the social parasite will be considered in detail. CHAPTER IV. THE BELGIAN BEGGARS' DEPOTS. The legislation of Belgium for the treatment of vagrants and mendicants experimented in many directions before it established forced Labour Houses and Colonies for the detention of these offenders. As early as 1793, during the Dutch connection, a Decree (October 15) was issued, making vagrancy and mendicancy misdemeanours punishable by detention in a house of correction for one year, while vagrants on a second conviction, and beggars on a third, were liable to transportation. A law of July 5, 1808, again formally prohibited begging, and provided for the detention of offenders in forced Labour Houses; and the Penal Code of October 12, 1810, awarded imprisonment, followed by Labour House detention, to loafers generally. The last-named law does not appear to have been stringently enforced, and it was relaxed in 1848, in consequence of which act vagrancy and begging increased. The result was a new law of March 6, 1866, imposing heavier penalties on able-bodied loafers of all kinds, though vagrancy was punished more severely than simple mendicancy. By reason of this law some of the old Labour Houses were abolished, and a large central institution was established at Merxplas, in the Province of Flanders, for the detention of all classes of offenders for disciplinary treatment. A little later the penalties for vagrancy and begging were reduced, and a more radical amendment of the law took place in 1891, the effect of which was to take away from these offences a penal character. Under this law, the beggar, the tramp, and the loafer are dealt with at the present time. The great difference between the original Belgian Labour Houses and the Beggars' Depots of to-day lies in the fact that the earlier institutions were managed by philanthropic associations, while those existing to-day are State establishments, and form part of the judicial system of the country. The law of November 27, 1891[54] (which came into force on January 4, 1892), for the repression of vagrancy and mendicity required the Government to organise correctional institutions of three kinds, _viz._: (_a_) Beggars' Depots (_dépôts de mendicité_); (_b_) Houses of Refuge (_maisons de refuge_), and Reformatory Schools (_écoles de bienfaisance_). The institutions of the first two kinds are commonly spoken of as Labour Houses or Colonies in Belgium. There are two Beggars' Depots, the central one for men at Merxplas, near Antwerp, and a small one for women at Bruges; and there are three Houses of Refuge, _viz._, Wortel and Hoogstraeten (managed as one establishment) for men, and one at Bruges for women. [Footnote 54: For the full text of the law see Appendix III., pp. 258-263.] The law states that the Beggars' Depots shall be "exclusively devoted to the confinement of persons whom the Judicial Authority shall place at the disposal of the Government" for that purpose. Such persons are of the following classes: (_a_) Able-bodied persons who, instead of working for their living, depend upon charity as professional beggars; (_b_) persons who, owing to idleness, drunkenness, or immorality, live in a state of vagrancy; and (_c_) _souteneurs_. These persons may be committed by the magistrates for a period not less than two nor more than seven years. Moreover, vagrants and beggars who have been sentenced by a Correctional Court to imprisonment for less than a year, may be ordered to undergo detention in a Depot at the end of the sentence for not less than one year or more than seven years, just as offenders of the same kind are sent to Labour Houses in Germany and Austria after undergoing imprisonment. It is provided, however, that the Minister of Justice may, at any time, order the release of persons confined in a Depot, should he be of opinion that their further confinement is unnecessary. In order to give the loafer a chance of voluntary reformation, he is on a first conviction sent to a House of Refuge by way of probation for a period not exceeding one year, or until he shall have earned 12s. On re-conviction, his certain destination is the Depot of Merxplas, with its severer discipline. The House of Refuge is provided for the reception of (_a_) persons handed over by a Judicial Authority to the Government for simple detention, and (_b_) persons whose restraint may be asked for by a Communal Authority, though those of the latter class must enter of their own free will if over eighteen years of age. In general, the House of Refuge is intended for vagrants, mendicants, loafers, and dissolute persons who are not thought to deserve the treatment of incorrigible offenders. The voluntary inmates correspond very closely to the typical unemployed person who applies for task work in our English workhouses. In no case may detention exceed a year, unless with the detainee's acquiescence, and as in the case of the Beggars' Depots, the Minister of Justice may order the immediate discharge of any person whose further confinement may appear to him unnecessary. In the institutions of both types small daily wages are paid, except when withdrawn as a measure of discipline, and a portion of every man's earnings is put away as a leaving fund (_masse de sortie_), to be paid out to him in cash, clothing and tools. In no case is a well behaving colonist allowed to leave penniless. A minimum sum of 4s. is given to every such man, whether he has earned it or not; those guilty of misconduct or idleness take away their savings, however small, and no more. The Minister of Justice approves the scale of payment for every class of work in the two institutions. The cost of maintenance of persons sent by a judicial authority to the Depot or House of Refuge is borne, in equal shares, by the State, the Provinces, and the Communes in which the persons have their settlement, but infirm persons are maintained altogether by their settlement communes, which likewise bear the whole cost in the case of persons detained in a House of Refuge at their own request. Where a person, detained by judicial decision, has no settlement, the costs of maintenance fall on the province in which he was arrested or brought before the Court; in the case of _souteneurs_ the cost is borne by the Communes in which they pursued their practices. Costs of maintenance can, however, be recovered from the persons concerned, or those legally liable for their support. The following were the admissions in the Beggars' Depots and the Houses of Refuge for the first fifteen years after the Act came into force:-- ADMISSIONS TO BEGGARS' DEPOTS. -------+--------------------------------+------------ | Number of Admissions. | Mean | | Number Year. +---------+-----------+----------+ of | Male. | Female. | Total. | Inmates. -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------ | | | | 1892 | 6,147 | 666 | 6,813 | 3,564 1893 | 3,482 | 352 | 3,834 | 4,324 1894 | 4,141 | 393 | 4,534 | 4,193 1895 | 3,722 | 333 | 4,055 | 4,529 1896 | 3,224 | 292 | 3,516 | 4,430 1897 | 3,115 | 266 | 3,381 | 4,076 1898 | 3,339 | 284 | 3,623 | 4,208 1899 | 3,018 | 215 | 3,233 | 4,248 1900 | 3,547 | 253 | 3,800 | 4,058 1901 | 4,348 | 275 | 4,623 | 4,542 1902 | 4,514 | 252 | 4,766 | 4,865 1903 | 4,649 | 386 | 5,035 | 5,054 1904 | 4,615 | 275 | 4,890 | 5,132 1905 | 4,624 | 260 | 4,884 | 5,450 1906 | 4,426 | 268 | 4,694 | 5,351 -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------ ADMISSIONS TO HOUSES OF REFUGE. -------+--------------------------------+------------ | Number of Admissions. | Mean | | Number Year. +---------+-----------+----------+ of | Male. | Female. | Total. | Inmates. -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------ | | | | 1892 | 6,139 | 775 | 6,914 | 2,043 1893 | 4,411 | 942 | 5,353 | 2,145 1894 | 4,593 | 519 | 5,112 | 2,902 1895 | 4,559 | 414 | 4,973 | 2,766 1896 | 3,805 | 360 | 4,165 | 2,314 1897 | 3,745 | 323 | 4,068 | 1,876 1898 | 3,770 | 343 | 4,113 | 1,983 1899 | 3,398 | 258 | 3,656 | 1,823 1900 | 3,586 | 266 | 3,852 | 1,691 1901 | 4,174 | 261 | 4,435 | 1,761 1902 | 4,389 | 252 | 4,641 | 1,876 1903 | 3,428 | 278 | 3,706 | 1,733 1904 | 3,546 | 221 | 3,767 | 1,620 1905 | 3,057 | 195 | 3,252 | 1,352 1906 | 2,505 | 184 | 2,689 | 1,176 -------+---------+-----------+----------+------------- The Labour Colony of Merxplas is unique as a centralised State reformatory for loafers, and, owing to its large extent, the excellence of its arrangements, and not least, the rational principles upon which it is administered, it fully deserves the study and the praise which have been bestowed upon it by foreign observers. On the whole, it would seem to correspond more nearly than any other Continental institution for forced labour to the special needs of this country. The buildings of Merxplas are grouped together in convenient positions, and are of a very substantial kind. The principal blocks contain the offices, the several classes of dormitories, the workshops, the stores, the exercise wings, the dining hall, the church, the hospital, the prison, and the barracks, for a small guard of 150 men is stationed on the premises for cases of emergency. Well-made roads intersect the grounds in various directions, and there is a large amount of open space. The inmates of Merxplas are divided into six classes: (1) Men sentenced for offences against morality and for arson; (2) men sentenced to Colony life as a sequel to a term of imprisonment of less than one year, and men whose past history shows them to be dangerous to the community; (3) habitual vagabonds, mendicants, inebriates, and men generally unable to support themselves; (4) men under twenty-one years of age; (5) infirm and incurable persons; and (6) first offenders. In December, 1907, the inmates were divided amongst these classes in the following proportions: (1) 169; (2) 328; (3) 3,033; (4) 20; (5) 1,425; (6) 40; total, 5,015. The men in Classes (1) and (2) are detained in special quarters, and under special supervision, and work apart from the rest, with whom they have no intercourse whatever, being, in fact, treated as criminals. The only difference between Classes (3) and (4) in regard to treatment is that the younger men are kept separate from the older, and that a portion of their time is devoted to school. The infirm in Class (5) are able to do light work, while the incurables do none. Class (6) explains itself. All the offenders, except those in Class (5), are allowed to earn wages on the scale applying to their employment; those in Class (6) are given canteen money of 3 centimes per day for the purchase of small luxuries. As has been explained, the minimum sentence of detention is two years, but owing to the exercise of the Minister's prerogative of pardon, the average term of confinement is about sixteen months. The small staff of eighty warders (with the military guard to fall back upon), under a chief director and two deputy directors, is found sufficient to control the movements of this great army of "irregulars"; in addition, there are one doctor, two priests, five teachers, nineteen clerks, one manufacturing manager, and six sisters of mercy. Many reliable men are, however, chosen from the ranks of the prisoners to assist in the superintendence of work. The offenders dealt with during the seven years 1902 to 1908 were as follows:-- MERXPLAS BEGGARS' DEPOT (MEN). --------------------------------------------------------------------- | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908. |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|------- Admitted | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426 | 4,212 | 4,431 Discharged | 2,847 | 2,922 | 2,827 | 2,666 | 2,935 | 2,792 | 2,282 Transferred | 501 | 452 | 514 | 439 | 504 | 464 | 478 Absconded | 879 | 1,004 | 1,066 | 1,243 | 1,031 | 919 | 1,055 Died | 125 | 108 | 112 | 94 | 136 | 134 | 139 |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|------- Total | 4,352 | 4,486 | 4,519 | 4,442 | 4,606 | 4,309 | 3,954 |-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|-------|------- Detained on | 4,851 | 5,014 | 5,110 | 5,292 | 5,112 | 5,015 | 5,492 December 31 | | | | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- The admissions shown above included the reinstatements (of inmates escaped) after capture, and the admissions by transfer from other institutions. The direct admissions, the admissions by transfer, and the reinstatements after escape are here shown separately for the years 1901 to 1908:-- ---------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Admitted direct | 3,280 | 3,390 | 3,460 | 3,316 | 3,186 | 3,071 discharged owing to expiration | | | | | | of sentence and Ministerial | | | | | | decision, conducted to the | | | | | | frontier, and deceased | 2,463 | 2,972 | 3,030 | 2,939 | 2,760 | 3,071 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Admitted by transfer | 391 | 353 | 305 | 366 | 341 | 431 Discharged by transfer | 530 | 501 | 452 | 514 | 439 | 504 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Reinstated after escape | 677 | 771 | 884 | 933 | 1,097 | 924 Escaped | 769 | 879 | 1,004 | 1,066 | 1,243 | 1,031 ---------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Those "placed at the disposition of the Government" (for commitment to the Merxplas Depot) under the law of November 27, 1891, during the years 1901 to 1906 belonged to the following classes:-- -----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Able-bodied beggars and vagrants | | | | | | (Article 13) | 4,314 | 4,509 | 4,637 | 4,614 | 4,618 | 4,419 Able-bodied beggars and vagrants | | | | | | for detention supplementary to | | | | | | imprisonment (Article 14) | 14 | 5 | 12 | 1 | 6 | 7 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 4,348 | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426 Deduct reinstatements after escape | 677 | 771 | 884 | 933 | 1,097 | 924 -----------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- The following further table shows the frequency of commitment during a series of years:-- ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Number of Times | | | | | | | Committed. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908. ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- For the first time | 674 | 668 | 558 | 517 | 547 | 519 | 720 For the second time | 546 | 585 | 552 | 595 | 522 | 442 | 561 For the third time | 493 | 472 | 582 | 516 | 488 | 433 | 465 For the fourth time | 446 | 470 | 455 | 406 | 420 | 406 | 425 For the fifth time or oftener | 2,355 | 2,454 | 2,468 | 2,590 | 2,449 | 2,412 | 2,260 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Total number of | | | | | | | admissions | 4,514 | 4,649 | 4,615 | 4,624 | 4,426 | 4,212 | 4,431 ------------------------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- The whole of the men capable of working, either much or little, are employed according to their aptitudes and physical capacity, either in farm and land work, in the workshops, in domestic work in and around the establishment, or in the service of outside employers. On a given day in 1907, 1,279 men were engaged on the farm and land, 1,970 in industrial work for the profit of the Colony, 811 in domestic work, and 525 were lent to other institutions. The men engaged in the fields work in gangs of between fifty and sixty, each under a single overseer. Shelters exist for their accommodation in wet weather, and when it is impossible to do outside work they are employed in the workshops. The trades and occupations are very numerous, but the principal are brick, pipe and tile making, iron founding, button making, wood-working, mat, boot, and shoe making, weaving, tanning, tailoring, carpentering, and printing. Several years ago, a Committee appointed by the Lindsey (Lincoln) Quarter Sessions visited Merxplas and reported as follows upon what they saw of the workshops:--[55] [Footnote 55: Report of the Vagrancy Committee adopted by the Court of Quarter Sessions (Lincolnshire, Parts of Lindsey) on Friday, October 23, 1903.] "Each shop was under a trade instructor. The men appeared to be working cheerfully and diligently. As wages were higher in the shops, we were told that it was made a privilege to work there. All the shops were large and airy, and the following were the principal industries being carried on at the time of our visit. "In the ironfoundry they were making their own patterns, doing their own casting, turning, and finishing for everything in the way of metal used in the establishment, from cast iron window frames to brass pumps. "Next to this was a very large shop for making cement tiles, working for outside firms on a recently invented system of employing hydraulic cement and colours to furnish tiles of elaborate colouring and patterns. This shop was on a large scale, and doing remunerative work, and impressed us very much. "The mat making shop was of the ordinary kind, but on a very large scale. Every description of mat, from the sennet to the thick pile mat worked in patterns, was made. "The weaving shop presented an interesting industry, which could be easily learned by the unskilled, namely that of making yarn of cowhair, which is afterwards worked into carpets. Other men were busy spinning the thread for the warp of the cloth used for the colonists' clothes. A large portion of this shop was also occupied by hand-looms in full work, where the cloth itself was being woven. "The button shop, for making mother of pearl buttons for the outside trade, has been newly started. This shop formed an exception, in that all the lathes were bought from outside, none being made at Merxplas. "In the carpenters' shop was a prison van which was made entirely by colonist labour, with the one exception of the springs. There was an order on hand for 1,100 window frames for a new prison. We also saw there some excellent furniture, large numbers of chairs, travelling trunks, and cabinet work of all kinds. "The cobblers were busy on boots for the Army, which were hand-made throughout. Here they were also making hospital shoes from the selvage of cloth woven on a block; a very ingenious method of utilising waste material. "All the printing required for the colonies is also done in a printing shop. "In another small shop about twenty men were employed in making fine chains for sham jewellery. "The brick works were large, employing thirty-six men at brick-making, exclusive of those employed at the furnaces, and the clay-getters. The usual number of bricks made was about 70,000 daily, the men being paid 15 centimes (1·4_d._) per 1,000. "On an equally large scale was the making of cement conduit pipes. The cement is made at a factory in the neighbourhood, and the white sand is also bought. "After visiting the brickworks we passed through small shops of stone-masons and sculptors to the pottery and the tannery. The last had a large number of hides in preparation, and uses bark from the trees of the estate, but not exclusively. "To the north of the workshops the three-winged building is a store. Here we saw a quantity of bar iron, one of the few materials that Merxplas cannot itself produce. "Here was also the clothing store. The cloth is made throughout by the colonists, with the one exception of the 'fulling' process, which requires special machinery. The material was of several different kinds, including two varieties for officers' uniform, and all that is required for the winter and summer clothing of the colonists. Civilian clothes and tools, also made in the colony, can be purchased by the colonists when they are liberated. In the centre were several large rooms full of the private clothes and other belongings of the colonists, each in their own bag, and all remarkably free from any offensive odour. "The farming seemed to be carried on on the same excellent principles as the workshops. The crops of maize and hemp were remarkably tall (the latter supplies the raw material for rope making), and the fields generally seemed thoroughly worked and tilled. The cowhouse and piggeries were very clean, and all the buildings were of excellent design and well-built. A large number of horses and oxen are kept for farm work, as not much spade cultivation is used. There is a large herd of milking cows to supply the hospital, and a considerable number of young stock and sheep are also kept, the latter being housed and hand-fed in winter. The whole of the products are consumed in the colony, and, as is the practice in the shops, very little machinery is used, whilst a large amount of labour is employed in bringing fresh ground under cultivation. The sandy top-soil is first removed and immense quantities of Antwerp street sweepings and clay rubbish are put on. Large gangs are also employed in hand-weeding, and all the advantages of farming with abundance of cheap labour are conspicuous." The accounts of a recent year show proceeds of trades as follows: Mat making, £4,200; weaving, £5,753; shoe making, £1,324; brick paving, £1,266; forge and foundry, £1,847; tobacco, £1,671; tanning, £1,852; tailoring, £3,600; furniture, £1,346, and brick making, £1,913. The profits on twenty-six trades in 1907 were said to be £4,072. The usual work-day consists of about ten hours in summer, and between seven and nine in winter, broken by three intervals for meals and rest. The day's routine is as follows:-- SUMMER. --------------------+------------------+------------------ _Week-days._ | April 1 to | September 16 | September 15. | to October 31. | | Rise | 4.30 a.m. | 5.0 a.m. Distribution of | | bread | 5.0 " | 5.30 " Work | 5.45 " | 6.15 " Doctor's visit | 7.0 " | 7.0 " First meal and rest | 8.0 " | 8.0 " Work | 8.30 " | 8.30 " Director's report | 10.0 " | 10.0 " Second meal--in | { 10.40 " | 10.40 " two parties | { 11.40 " | 11.40 " Work | 1.15 p.m. | 1.15 p.m. Rest | 4.0 " | 4.0 " Work | 4.30 " | 4.30 " Third meal | 6.45 " | 6.45 " Bed | 7.0 " | 7.0 " _Sunday._ | | General medical | | inspection | After mass. | After mass. Mass | 7.0 and 8.0 a.m. | 7.0 and 8.0 a.m. Vespers | 2.30 p.m. | 2.30 p.m. --------------------+------------------+------------------ WINTER. ----------------------+------------------+----------------- | November 1 to | February 16 _Weekdays._ | February 15. | to March 31 Rise | 6.0 a.m. | 5.30 a.m. Distribution of | | bread and coffee | 6.30 " | 6.0 " Work | 7.15 " | 6.45 " Doctor's visit | 8.0 " | 8.0 " Director's report | 10.0 " | 10.0 " Second meal--in | { 10.40 " | 10.40 " two parties | { 11.40 " | 11.40 " Work | 1.15 p.m. | 1 15 p.m. Third meal | 4.0 " | 5.0 " Bed | 4.30 " | 5.30 " Third meal (artisans) | 6.45 " | 6.45 " Bed | Directly | Directly | afterwards. | afterwards. _Sunday._ | | General medical | | inspection | After mass. | After mass. Mass | 8.0 and 9.0 a.m. | 8.0 and 9.0 a.m. Vespers | 2.0 p.m. | 2.0 p.m. ----------------------+------------------+----------------- It may be noted that the diet of the colonists, while varied, is almost exclusively vegetarian, but the inmates may supplement their ordinary food by extras purchasable at the canteen at cost price. There is no doubt that great organising ability is shown in the industrial management of Merxplas. The ruling principles are the following:-- (1) Machinery is used as little as possible. The lathes in the workshops are driven by hand-power. The weaving is done by hand looms. Even the grinding is done by a large capstan wheel worked by two relays of sixty men each. (2) The raw material is, as far as possible, produced in the Colony. Tobacco, flax, and chicory are grown on the farm; the leather comes from the farm cattle, and is tanned on the spot by bark obtained from the woods; and the hair of the same cattle is spun by the inmates for carpet making. (3) Every effort is directed towards making the Colony self-contained. As far as possible, the buildings, with their fittings and furniture, are done by the colonists. The lathes and tools are made from raw metal. The boots and shoes, cloth, tobacco, and a multitude of other articles are from first to last produced on the spot. The earnings of the inmates depend upon the character of the work done. The existing scale for able-bodied men, as sanctioned by the Minister of Justice in 1903, is as follows (10-1/2 centimes = 1d.):-- Centimes Per Day. Industrial work 15 to 25 Farm work 12 to 21 Domestic, garden, and other work 12 to 18 Offices of trust (writers, porters, hospital and store assistants, shepherds, dairy and stablemen, butchers, etc.) 20 to 30 Punishment and disciplinary sections 10 to 15 The rule is to pay the inmates, at first, the minimum rates which apply to their class of work. Small bonuses and gratuities are given in special cases. Extra duties, such as reading aloud fiction in the dormitories (to prevent conversation), singing in church, and service in the bugle squad, are paid for. Non-able-bodied men receive "canteen money" of 3 centimes per day. The men are paid monthly one half of their earnings to spend as they wish, and the balance goes to their leaving fund, and is paid only on discharge. As a rule, the instalments paid go in the purchase of supplementary food and luxuries, but many frugal workers deposit the whole of their earnings in the leaving fund. The result is that some men, who have been detained a long time, have been known to take away as much as £8 in cash, clothes, and tools. The Colony's chief sources of revenue are; (1) The maintenance charges of 66 centimes (6-1/2d.) per head per day for able-bodied colonists, and 1 franc 50 centimes (1s. 3d.) for non-able-bodied colonists needing special food, paid in equal shares by the State, the Provinces, and the Communes; (2) the proceeds of the colonists' labour, both on the farm and in the workshops; and (3) the profits of the canteen. An estimate of revenue and expenditure for the year 1905, prepared by the Director of Merxplas for the Departmental Vagrancy Committee, contained the following principal items:-- _Revenue._ £ Maintenance grants (3,500 able-bodied inmates at 66 centimes per day, and 1,000 not able-bodied inmates at 1 franc 50 centimes per day) 55,626 Sale of farm produce (milk, vegetables, butter, sheep, pigs, etc.) to private persons 800 Produce of workshops (sold to private persons, prisons, charitable institutions, and discharged inmates) 15,000 Canteen 3,800 Miscellaneous 399 ------- Total £75,625 _Expenditure._ £ Salaries and allowances, permanent staff, etc. 9,329 Office, library, and school 220 Buildings and furniture 2,400 Maintenance and clothing 23,254 Colonists' earnings 11,720 Canteen (goods purchased) 1,960 Workshops (tools, raw materials, etc.) 14,181 Farm and estate (plants, seeds, manures, live stock, straw and fodder, etc.) 2,047 Miscellaneous 1,020 ------- Total £66,131 It will be seen that a credit balance of £9,494 is shown, but this is obviously a paper balance, inasmuch as no allowance is made for rent, interest on capital, or depreciation. On the other hand, in any full balance sheet a large accretion of capital value through improvements would be shown. On this subject Monsieur Stroobant writes to me:-- "The property of Merxplas belongs to the State, and its value increases every year because of the new buildings erected, the plantations, and the improvements made to the land. In 1870, there were only several small farms, heath and fir woods. The land had an area of about 650 hectares, and as the land was poor, its value was probably £12 per hectare."[56] The present value has never been accurately appraised, but I place it at £200,000. The increased value of the estate has been produced entirely by the labour of the detainees, Parliament having made no further grant for new buildings. The whole of the buildings were progressively erected between 1870 and 1895, according to the resources at disposal, but after a fixed plan conceived in a large spirit by the architect, Monsieur Besme." [Footnote 56: The Report of the Lindsey Quarter Sessions Committee on Vagrancy says that the original cost to the Government of the Merxplas estate was £32,000.] Taking the accounts as published, the cost of the inmates during the years 1901 to 1906 was as follows:-- -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------- | 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------- Number of | | | | | | able-bodied| | | | | | detainees | 3,702| 3,799| 3,842| 3,716| 3,645| 3,440 Number of | | | | | | infirm | | | | | | detainees | 987| 1,052| 1,172| 1,394| 1,647| 1,672 Number | | | | | | of days' | | | | | | maintenance|1,505,393|1,619,176|1,685,076|1,714,064|1,825,798|1,801,170 | | | | | | Cost of | | | | | | maintenance|1,253,029|1,367,005|1,427,771|1,508,178|1,669,169|1,689,778 | fr. | fr. | fr. | fr. | fr. | fr. Average per | | | | | | head per | | | | | | day | 83 c. | 84 c. | 85 c. | 88 c. | 91 c. | 94 c. -------------+---------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------- Grouping the infirm with the able-bodied, therefore, the cost ranged from 8d. to 9d. per day during these years. The cost of all inmates together, in 1905, worked out to £14 13s. 11d. per head, but the value of work done was equal to £5 7s. 5d., reducing the cost of the 3,500 able-bodied to £9 6s. 6d., or about 6d. per day. Of this, £3 7s. or 2-1/4d. per day was paid in wages. By way of comparison it may be stated that, according to the Prison Commissioners, the cost of maintenance in English local prisons, after deducting the value of work done, is £22 11s., and that in convict prisons £28, but in these amounts no charge for buildings is included. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Merxplas is the facility of escape offered to the inmates and the frequency with which this facility is used. The escapes during the ten years 1898 to 1907 were as follows:-- 1898 592 1899 565 1900 517 1901 769 1902 879 1903 1,004 1904 1,066 1905 1,243 1906 1,031 1907 919 As the figures already quoted show, a considerable proportion of the men who abscond are captured and sent back--though the number of escapes exceeded the recaptures by 112 in 1901, by 108 in 1902, by 120 in 1903, by 133 in 1904, by 146 in 1905, and by 107 in 1906--but those just given suggest plainly that a definite theory lies at the basis of the Director's usage in this matter. Escape is, in fact, judged very indulgently, and provided the man who gets away is found to have settled down to regular work no attempt is made to recapture him. In such a case it is the practice of the police to report to the Director, and if, during a period of six months, there is no fault to find with the absconder's conduct, he is pardoned; if otherwise, he is sent back to complete his sentence. This apparent laxity of administration is, after all, strictly in keeping with the object of the Colony, which is less to punish than to restrain under discipline, until that discipline has achieved its purpose, and the man is fit to regain his liberty--in the Director's favourite term, to be "reclassed" in society. If such reinstatement is expedited by act of the inmate's will, the aim of the establishment is no less served. I cannot do better than quote from an interesting letter upon this subject which Monsieur Stroobant has been kind enough to send me. "The inconveniences caused by the escape of prisoners," writes Monsieur Stroobant, "are in reality less than they might appear to be. Escapes take place in periods, and at certain epochs--for example, at the beginning of a new year, at carnival, at the return of the busy season, at the beginning of the month when wages have been paid. The gang which intends to escape exchanges paper money for coin which circulates clandestinely in the court yard; thus 1.50 franc paper money is only worth 1 franc outside. The exchange is higher according as the searches ordered by the administration are more frequent. "Most escapes take place amongst the agricultural labourers. About twenty-three gangs, each composed of from 60 to 100 men, work daily in the fields and the fir woods, everywhere a league away from the establishment. Each gang is accompanied by one warder and a sentinel only, hence these agricultural labourers have the greatest possible facility for escaping. Mainly, however, to the signals which are immediately given to the gendarmes, and to the special watch organised by the brigade of gendarmerie in the vicinity of the Colony, a large number of fugitives, recognised by clothing belonging to the establishment which they wear, are quickly recaptured. One may say, in general, that the fugitives of Merxplas are, as a rule, recaptured within fifteen hours of their escape. The men thus recaptured are punished with a fortnight's interment in cell, and are afterwards kept in closed quarters, from which it is impossible to escape again, for a number of months proportionate to their attempts to abscond. Persons guilty of repeated attempts, who are confined in these closed quarters, receive reduced wages. "The virtual certainty that they will be recaptured after a brief interval, the salutary fear of the punishment which awaits them, and the lack of proper clothing are reasons why the number of escapes is not far greater than is the case. "Those who escape are the energetic men who, influenced by some ruling idea--it may be of a family in distress or other motives less laudable--seek to reclass themselves. They are not always, by any means, the most corrupt, and often when I learn, from a police report, that a fugitive is following regular work, I ask the Minister (of Justice) to suspend the order for his recapture. "From the standpoint of the general security of the establishment, the facility of escape constitutes a valuable safety valve, which it is expedient to recognise. In truth, the latent energies which impel a man, at all costs, to seek emancipation from the bondage which he has to endure in the Beggars' Depot are exhausted by flight. If that alternative did not exist, the elements of frequent revolts would exist, and these would compel the administration to increase greatly the existing number of warders." Probably owing to the fact that the yoke of bondage sits lightly on the inmates, serious insubordination is said to be exceptional. The following scale of punishments applies according to the gravity of the offence: (1) three to sixty days' simple cell detention with ordinary diet; (2) three days' detention in punishment cells with ordinary diet; (3) three days' ordinary cell detention with bread and water diet; (4) three days' detention in punishment cells with bread and water diet; (5) confinement in the punishment quarters for serious insubordination. Offenders may also be transferred to inferior classes of work. The punishments awarded in 1907 related to the following offences: Escapes and attempts to escape, 919; refusal to work or idleness at work, 250; malingering, 9; brawling, 60; rebellion against warders, 72; theft and complicity, 57; misconduct, 407; and drunkenness, 18. The small military guard is always at hand to quell disturbance, should it occur, but its services are never needed for this purpose. The fact that between 80 and 90 per cent. of the inmates are habitual offenders proves that Merxplas does not repress vagrancy and mendicity, though that was the purpose in the mind of the authors of the law of 1891; it does, however, relieve the country, at all times, of the fairly constant number of 4,000 loafers, and while public order and morality benefit, the cost to the community is very small. For the discipline of Merxplas proves that the loafer can work, and work well, if he chooses. Some words, on this subject, written by the Lindsey Committee deserve to be quoted:-- "The men at Merxplas have retained a large proportion of whatever manual and technical skill they possessed when they first began to slip out of employment in the outside world. They have entered the colony before the rapid deterioration, which is the inevitable result of the tramp life, has had time to take effect, and the opportunity afforded them to practice their trades has, in most cases, prevented their ever sinking to the level of the average English tramp. In every shop the keen interest the men take in their work is most noticeable; only one foreman and one warder are employed in each shop, and without coercion the men seemed all working with remarkable energy and real interest. This is, in our opinion, perhaps the most striking feature of the whole establishment.... "Inside, away from temptation, they work well, and as long as the sentence does not exceed two or three years, seem content to remain.... Even if permanent re-establishment in society is not frequently secured, this large class of the inefficients, which would otherwise form the great recruiting ground for the criminal classes, is prevented from sinking any lower. Its members are also prevented from propagating their kind, to prey upon the next generation. They have a decent and fairly comfortable life, which is largely self-supporting, and the cost is certainly far less than that of keeping them outside by the agency of charitable doles, interspersed with costly periods of residence in workhouse or gaol. "The workman slipping out of employment is there treated as a patient requiring care, not as a criminal requiring punishment, and his downward career is arrested before his technical skill is lost. The large amount of highly-skilled labour found there, compared to the utter incapacity of the average English prisoner committed for vagrancy, indicates the measure of the difference between the tramp at the commencement of his career and the same man after any lengthy period of life on the road. This skill may not indeed be sufficient to maintain the man outside, especially in face of the drink difficulty, but it is undoubtedly sufficient, inside and in the aggregate, to make him nearly self-supporting and to give a real interest to his life. In addition to thus preserving a national asset of no inconsiderable value, the technical skill of the partly-efficient, the colony system subjects the whole vagrant class to the steadying influence of regular life and regular work for long periods of time. Even where this is insufficient to re-establish the man in independent life, the evidence of the Belgian colonies is emphatic that it is sufficient to make his life both profitable to the community and not unpleasant to himself. It also effectually safeguards his class both from drink and from the attractions of the criminal class, and it certainly largely checks its reproduction." WORTEL HOUSE OF REFUGE. The House of Refuge at Wortel may be regarded as a Detention Colony for the less obnoxious offenders of the vagrant and mendicant class, but it also receives persons who voluntarily enter owing to inability to find employment or homes. The House of Refuge thus performs the functions of the labour yard attached to many English workhouses, an institution useful, and even essential, in any well-organised system of poor relief so long as it is reserved for the proper people, and is used in order to meet purely temporary needs, instead of being converted into a device, as it often is, for evading the duty of seeking regular employment and for living permanently upon the rates. The Colony is worked in two sections, Hoogstraeten and Wortel proper; at the former the helpless and sick are received, at the latter the able-bodied and those who, though infirm, are yet able to do light work. The maximum duration of detention, as has been explained, is one year, but any colonist may take his discharge directly he has saved 12s. from his earnings, or can show that he has work to go to. The average stay of able-bodied inmates is two or three months, but a certain number are allowed to remain beyond the year. The following table shows the numbers who entered and left the Wortel House of Refuge in the years 1902 to 1908:-- ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1906. | 1907. | 1908. +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Admitted | 4,389 | 3,428 | 3,546 | 3,057 | 2,505 | 2,402 | 2,798 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Discharged | 4,034 | 3,372 | 3,413 | 3,116 | 2,318 | 2,105 | 2,215 Transferred | 177 | 138 | 142 | 135 | 125 | 152 | 142 Absconded | 85 | 72 | 40 | 58 | 59 | 91 | 118 Died | 87 | 99 | 99 | 74 | 82 | 92 | 83 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Total | 4,383 | 3,681 | 3,694 | 3,383 | 2,584 | 2,440 | 2,558 +-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- Detained on | | | | | | | December 31 | 2,003 | 1,750 | 1,602 | 1,276 | 1,197 | 1,159 | 1,399 ----------------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------- The frequency of commitment during the same years was as follows:-- -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Number of Times |1901.|1902.|1903.|1904.|1905.|1906.|1907.|1908. Committed. | | | | | | | | -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- For the first time |1,523|1,483|1,281|1,296|1,070| 903| 856|1,222 For the second time| 709| 772| 555| 596| 524| 402| 375| 435 For the third time | 413| 478| 380| 389| 320| 232| 234| 261 For the fourth time| 291| 329| 257| 249| 249| 174| 176| 163 For the fifth time,| | | | | | | | or oftener |1,238|1,327| 955|1,016| 894| 794| 761| 717 +-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Total number of | | | | | | | | admissions |4,174|4,389|3,428|3,546|3,057|2,505|2,402|2,798 -------------------+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+----- Both at Hoogstraeten and Wortel agriculture and industry are carried on; the trades at the former place include brewing, soap making, smithery, joinery, painting, stove making, cart building, and corn milling, and at the latter hand-loom weaving (cotton and woollen), tailoring, shoemaking, saddling, joinery and cabinet making, painting, smithery, and stove making. As far as possible, every man is put to the trade he knows best. The main aim is to produce articles which are needed for use or consumption in the Colony, and the surplus production is sold to other Government institutions. There are two farms, and besides the ordinary work provided by them, a certain amount of reclamation is done. Most of the building needed is the work of the colonists, and nearly all the domestic work is done by them. The actual hours of labour, exclusive of intervals, are ten and a half daily in the summer months (April 1 to September 30), eight and a half in March and October, and eight in the winter months (November 1 to February 28). The daily routine is as follows (Sunday excepted):-- -----------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+-------------- | March. | April 1 to | October. | November 1 to | |September 30.| | February 28. +-----------+-------------+-----------+-------------- Hour of Rising | 5.30 a.m.| 5.0 a.m. | 5.30 a.m.| 6.0 a.m. Distribution of | | | | bread | 6.0 " | 5.30 " | 6.0 " | 6.30 " Work | 6.30 " | 6.0 " | 6.30 " | 7.0 " Visit of doctor | 8.0 " | 7.0 " | 8.0 " | 8.0 " Distribution of | | | | coffee, and rest| 9.0 " | 8.0 " | 9.0 " | [57] Work | 9.15 " | 8.30 " | 9.15 " | -- Dinner, and rest | 12.0 " | 12.0 " | 12.0 " | 12.0 " Work | 1.30 p.m.| 1.30 p.m. | 1.30 p.m.| 1.30 p.m. Rest | 3.0 " | 4.0 " | 3.0 " | -- Work | 3.15 " | 4.30 " | 3.15 " | -- Cessation of | | | | work[58] | 5.0 " | 7.0 " | 5.0 " | 4.30 " Supper | 5.0 " | 7.0 " | 5.0 " | 5.0 " Bedtime | 6.0 " | 7.30 " | 6.0 " | 6.0 " -----------------+-----------+-------------+-----------+-------------- [Footnote 57: In winter coffee is distributed immediately after the bread.] [Footnote 58: On Saturday work ends an hour earlier.] There is a regular scale of money payments, ranging from 9 centimes to 71 centimes per day, according to the class of work and of worker. The following are the daily rates now in force (100 centimes = 9-1/2d.):-- --------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------- | Class A. | Class B. | Class C. | Centimes. | Centimes. | Centimes. +-----------+-----------+----------- Workshops, etc. | 47-71 | 24-47 | 24 Cultivation, | | | plantation, and | | | navvies' work | 42-60 | 21-42 | 21 Domestic and agricultural | | | work | 18-27 | 9-18 | 9 --------------------------+-----------+-----------+----------- Of their earnings one-third is paid to the inmates at once and the balance is given to them on discharge. The costs of maintenance payable by the public authorities which send colonists to Wortel are: For able-bodied persons 7-1/2d. per day, for those not able-bodied 7-1/2d. if they do not require special attention, and 1s. 2-1/2d. if they do. By the admission of the officials of the Wortel Colony the permanent effect of detention upon the character and life of the persons interned is small. This would appear to be proved, indeed, by the return of recommitments, which shows that of the inmates received in 1907 and 1908 over 64 and 56 per cent. respectively were recidivists. It is held that the weak points about the method of treatment are the lightness of the discipline and the shortness of the term of detention. While the maximum term of detention is twelve months, the conditions of discharge are so easy that the average stay is only two or three months, a period far too short to influence permanently the idle and dissolute who form the larger proportion of the inmates. Moreover, many of the latter are confirmed inebriates, needing a special treatment, which is impossible in an institution of this kind. A few words may be added here relative to the Forced Labour Colonies of Holland. These Colonies are of the type found in Belgium, and their mode of working is in general the same. As in Belgium, too, they were originally administered by a Benevolent Society, which was formed about the year 1818 for the establishment of Beggars' Colonies, Voluntary Colonies for free farmers and labourers, and Colonies for old and infirm people and for orphans. To this end an estate of moorland, about 1,200 acres in extent, was acquired, but further purchases increased the area to 13,430 acres, of which 2,900 acres were allotted to the Free Colonies, 1,250 acres to the Veterans' Colonies, and 4,280 acres to the Beggars' Colonies, the remaining 5,000 acres being moorland. The Beggars' Colonies were handed over to the State in 1859, but two Free Colonies are still continued by the same society at Frederiksoord and Willemsoord, and to them two classes of people are admitted: (1) free farmers, who are encouraged to remain permanently on small holdings provided for them on easy terms; and (2) free labourers, who work on the home farms of the Colony, and who, if married, live in separate cottages, and, with such members of their families as can work, are paid wages at a rate lower than that for outside labour. At the present time there are three Penal Colonies under State administration--at Veenhuizen and Hoorn for men, and at Leyden for women; all of them are intended for the reception of vagrants and mendicants, and the men's Colonies also receive habitual drunkards. In addition to agriculture, gardening, and forestry, various trades, such as weaving, carpentering, masonry, smithery, cabinet making, shoe making, and tailoring, are carried on. The buildings have been modernised, and the cubicle system of dormitory is almost universally adopted. Wages are paid to the men as at Merxplas, and the unexpended balance is handed to them on discharge. CHAPTER V. THE GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES. The early legislation of Germany relative to begging and vagrancy was not greatly dissimilar in spirit from our own. Down to the sixteenth century Germany was satisfied with the mere prohibition of these practices. A Resolution of the Diet at Lindau in 1497 simply forbade vagabondage, and ordered the authorities to exercise supervision over beggars of all kinds. In 1532 Emperor Charles V., in Article 30 of his Penal Court Ordinance, similarly enjoined the authorities to "exercise vigilant oversight over beggars and vagrants," and in 1557 the Imperial Police Ordinance sanctioned the issue of begging letters to poor people for whose support local funds did not exist. During the eighteenth century a series of decrees and regulations were issued against begging in various German States, but without suppressing it, and towards the end of the century the evil in many parts of the country had reached proportions which threatened public security. "As late as the third quarter of the eighteenth century, and in some parts of the country until its close, the most shameless and wide-spread mendicity defied at once the severest official prohibitions and the best meant endeavour of the communes and private individuals."[59] [Footnote 59: Biedermann, "Deutschland im 18 ten Jahrhundert," Vol. I., p. 401.] Then it was that the idea of the disciplinary treatment of vagrants and loafers in general took root, leading in time to the institution all over the country of special houses of detention, not inaptly called Labour Houses, for the reception of these offenders, of the work-shy of every description, and of certain other classes of people who followed a disorderly mode of life. When the Empire was established, the practice of the various States was embodied in the Imperial Penal Code, and Labour House treatment is now the recognised mode of correcting sloth, loafing, and habitual intemperance and immorality throughout Germany. Sections 361 and 362 of the Penal Code define as follows the offences which may entail detention in a Labour House:-- "(1) Whoever wanders about as a vagabond. "(2) Whoever begs or causes children to beg or neglects to restrain from begging such persons as are under his control and oversight and belong to his household. "(3) Whoever is so addicted to gambling, drunkenness, or idleness that he falls into such a condition as to be compelled to seek public help himself, or for those for whose maintenance he is responsible. "(4) Any female who is placed under police control owing to professional immorality when she acts contrary to the police regulations issued in the interest of health, public order, and public decency, or who, without being under such control, is guilty of professional immorality. "(5) Any person who, while in receipt of public relief, refuses out of sloth to do such work suited to his strength as the authorities may offer him. "(6) Any person who, after losing his past lodging, fails to procure another within the time allotted to him by the competent authority and who cannot prove that in spite of his best endeavours he has been unable to do so." An Amendment of the Penal Code dated June 25, 1900, added to this list of offenders procurers and _souteneurs_. The law enjoins that persons convicted of misdemeanours as above may be handed over to the State police authorities after undergoing the allotted imprisonment, with a view to their further detention in Labour Houses, there to be usefully employed under strict control. Some of the Prussian Labour Houses are used, to a small extent, for the reception of youths who are taken from parental control owing to bad behaviour. The mode of procedure under this law is very summary, but very effectual. A vagrant, a loafer, or a work-shirker falls into the hands of the policeman, who in Germany is taught to protect both the highway and the street against uses for which they were never intended. By this official he is haled before the _Amtsgericht_, which is a local Court of First Instance for the adjudication of petty cases. As a rule, he is sentenced to a few weeks' imprisonment, and to be afterwards handed over to the _Landespolizei_ or State Police Authority. In effect, he is despatched to the district in which the original offence was committed. The whole of the documents in the case are passed on to the President or Prefect of this district, and it is this official who fixes the term of detention in the provincial Labour House. The maximum period is two years, but whether the man obtains discharge at the end of a shorter sentence depends entirely upon himself. If he shows distinct signs of improvement as the result of his discipline, he may be released. If not the sentence is probably prolonged for six months, or in bad cases to the maximum term, at the end of which the prisoner must unconditionally be discharged, whether reformed or not. In practice it rests entirely with the Director of the Labour House to determine whether a sentence should be prolonged or not, for though the District President nominally decides, it is on the direct representation of the Director, whose recommendation is seldom or never ignored. Thus, the Labour House is not punitive in the technical sense; it exists for the one purpose of training the lazy and the vicious to a life of labour and industry. Labour Houses of this kind are found in almost all the States, in numbers proportionate to the population. Some of them, however, serve for large towns, as in the case of Berlin, Hamburg, and Dresden. Prussia has twenty-five Labour Houses, of which seven are for men only, two for women only, and sixteen for both sexes. The following is a list of these institutions, with the accommodation they afforded in the year 1908:-- GERMAN LABOUR HOUSES. ----------------+--------------+-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------- | | Accommodation for | Number of | +---------------+---------------+------------+-----------+-----------+--------- Labour House | Province. | Detainees. | Wards. | | | | (Locality). | +---------------+---------------+Dormitories.|Workrooms. |Sickrooms. |Cells and | |Males.|Females.|Males.|Females.| | | | Cabins. ----------------+--------------+------+--------+------+--------_------------+-----------+-----------+--------- Tapiau | East Prussia | 392 | 80 | -- | -- | 11 | 9 | 6 | 23 Konitz | West Prussia | 350 | 100 | 170 | 100 | 16 | 8 | 13 | 13 Rummelsburg | Brandenburg | 400 | 300 | 225 | 75 | 20 | 30 | 20 | -- Strausberg | " | 380 | -- | 90 | -- | 10 | 41 | 9 | -- Prenzlau | " | 400 | -- | 80 | 26 | 9 | 23 | 12 | 12 Landsberg a. W. | " | 190 | 40 | 50 | 30 | 7 | 37 | 15 | 3 Neustettin | Pomerania | 150 | 10 | 40 | 20 | 9 | 11 | 13 | -- �ckermünde | " | 340 | 14 | 7 | 7 | 2 Stralsund | " | 120 | 25 | -- | -- | 5 | 4 | 4 | -- Greifswald | " | 110 | -- | -- | -- | 3 | 4 | -- | -- Bojanowo | Posen | 450 | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 26 | 8 | -- Fraustadt | " | -- | 130 | -- | -- | 4 | 5 | 3 | -- Schweidnitz | Silesia |1,200 | 150 | 130 | 50 | 46 | 64 | 16 | 13 Breslau | " | 600 | 300 | -- | -- | 22 | 17 | 8 | 2 Gross Salze | Saxony | 358 | 57 | 90 | 30 | 18 | 39 | 16 | 21 Moritzburg | " | 585 | 55 | 8 | 2 | 14 | 35 | 10 | 19 Glückstadt | Schleswig | 700 | 50 | -- | -- | 15 | 27 | 5 | 19 Bockelholm | " | 300 | -- | -- | -- | 2 | 6 | 3 | -- Benninghausen | Westphalia | 350 | 60 | -- | -- | 21 | 23 | 6 | 3 Breitenau | Hesse-Nassau | 300 | 35 | 30 | 5 | 5 | 14 | 4 | -- Hadamar | " | 236 | 80 | 10 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 5 | -- Brauweiler |Rhine Province|1,090 | 195 | 50 | 105 | 47 | 56 | 16 | 281 Moringen | Hanover | 800 | -- | -- | -- | 21 | 27 | 14 | 16 Wunstorf | " | 300 | -- | 550 | -- | 22 | 26 | 37 | 103 Himmelsthür | " | -- | 125 | -- | 190 | 10 | 7 | 11 | 29 ----------------+--------------+------+--------+------+--------+------------+-----------+-----------+--------- The numbers of persons, detained for correction, dealt with by the whole of the Prussian Labour Houses in the course of the administrative year 1907-8 were as follows:-- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Number at the beginning | | | of the year | 7,200 | 848 | 8,048 Admitted during the | | | year | 6,716 | 731 | 7,447 Discharged during the | | | year | 6,839 | 892 | 7,731 Number at the end of | | | the year | 7,077 | 687 | 7,764 Total number detained | 13,916 | 1,579 | 15,495 Average number detained | | | daily | 6,779 | 749 | 7,528 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- The persons detained were classified in the following groups of occupations:-- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Agriculture, forestry, | | | gardening, fishing, | | | etc. | 923 | 30 | 953 Industry, mining, and | | | building trades | 3,057 | 42 | 3,099 Trade and commerce | 717 | 17 | 734 Domestic service and | | | casual labour | 1,488 | 296 | 1,784 Public service and | | | professions | 114 | 5 | 119 No occupation, or none | | | declared | 8 | 302 | 310 +--------+----------+-------- Totals | 6,307 | 692 | 6,999 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Of 6,990 persons classified by age, 174 were under twenty-one years of age, 262 were from twenty-one to twenty-five years of age, 529 from twenty-five to thirty, 1,664 from thirty to forty, 2,231 from forty to fifty, 1,532 from fifty to sixty, 548 from sixty to seventy, and 50 were seventy years of age and upwards. The offences for which 6,299 male and 692 female inmates were committed to the Labour Houses in that year were as follows:-- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Vagabondage | 328 | 47 | 375 Begging | 4,166 | 69 | 4,235 Begging and vagrancy | | | together | 702 | 31 | 733 Laziness | 97 | 6 | 103 Professional immorality | 188 | 481 | 669 Work-shyness | 8 | 3 | 11 Homelessness | 810 | 55 | 865 +--------+----------+-------- Totals | 5,299 | 692 | 6,991 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- The periods of commitment by the judicial authorities were as under:-- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Three months or less | 20 | 5 | 25 From three to six | | | months | 1,443 | 242 | 1,685 Over six months and | | | under two years | 3,535 | 359 | 3,594 Two years | 1,599 | 85 | 1,684 +--------+----------+-------- Total | 6,297 | 691 | 6,988 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Of the offenders enumerated above, 4,445 or 64 per cent. had been detained in a Labour House before, and 2,293 or 33 per cent. had been so detained more than three times, while 5,865 or 84 per cent. had been in prison. Further, 1,253 or 18 per cent. had been recommitted to a Labour House within twelve months of their last discharge from the same. Most of these Labour Houses are situated in the open country, and follow a mixed economy of agriculture and industry, though the number of men who can be employed usefully in farm work would appear to be small. The following statement of the different modes of employment in force in 1908 comprises young people detained for reformation, in addition to the adults committed by judicial process for disciplinary reasons:-- EMPLOYMENT OF DETAINEES. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Average daily number | | | of detainees | 8,775 | 1,275 | 10,050 Average daily number | | | employed | 7,290 | 904 | 8,194 Character of | | | employment-- | | | 1. For the Labour | | | Houses-- | | | (_a_) Domestic work | 1,524 | 372 | 1,896 (_b_) Agriculture | 551 | 32 | 583 (_c_) Other work | 642 | 85 | 727 +--------+----------+-------- Total (_a_), (_b_),| | | (_c_) | 2,717 | 489 | 3,206 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- 2. For the Provincial | | | Authorities | 1,903 | 88 | 1,991 3. For the Public | | | Authorities | 105 | -- | 105 4. For officers of the | | | establishments | 124 | 23 | 147 5. For outside persons--| | | (_a_) Agricultural | | | work | 704 | 21 | 725 (_b_) Industrial work | 1,737 | 283 | 2,020 +--------+---------+--------- Total (_a_) and | | | (_b_) | 2,441 | 304 | 2,745 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- In considering the industrial methods on which the Labour Houses are administered, it may be well to bear in mind the principles which are applied to Prussian penal establishments in general, for they apply to these institutions. A recent official statement upon the subject runs as follows[60]:-- [Footnote 60: "Statistik der zum Ressort des Königlich Preussischen Ministeriums des Innern gehörenden Strafanstalten und Gefängnisse und der Korrigenden für das Rechnungsjahr 1903," pp. xx-xxii.] "(1) The requirements of the individual establishments, and of the prison administration in general, are as far as possible to be supplied by the prisoners. All domestic work is to be done by the prisoners; clothing and articles needed for bedding, etc., are also to be done by them, and to this end weaving shops are provided in some prisons. Repairs to buildings, works of rebuilding, extensions, and new buildings are to be carried out by prisoners, who are specially to be used in the construction of dwelling-houses for the officers. "(2) The production of useful articles needed by the Imperial and State authorities is to be encouraged as far as possible, and this branch of work increases every year. Tailoring and other equipment work for barracks and hospitals are largely done to the order of the War Office, also furniture for official rooms for the State Railway Administrations. "(3) Criminal prisoners may be used for agricultural improvement works on behalf of State and communal authorities, and also of private persons, provided at least a year of their sentence has expired, their conduct has been good, and the remainder of their sentence does not exceed a year, or in exceptional cases two years. With their consent correctional prisoners who have served six months (and in exceptional cases three months), have been of good behaviour, and have not longer than two years to serve, may be similarly employed. Criminal and correctional prisoners may not be employed together; and they must be kept apart from free workmen. In order to prevent injury to free labour prisoners may only be employed in the manner stated if the works in question would not otherwise be executed for lack of free labourers, or because the high wages of the latter would make the works unprofitable. Under the same conditions, prisoners may be put to agricultural work. These works are done in all the provinces of the Kingdom, and the following works are executed in particular:-- "(_a_) Moor land is cultivated in order to the settlement of farmers. Thus the reclamation of the Augstumal Moor, in East Prussia, 3,000 hectares (7,410 acres) in extent, is in an advanced state, and seventeen settlers have already been established there and provided with houses. The Kehding Moor, in the Stade district, has now been prepared for settlement, and five colonists are established. The Bargstedt Moor is so far reclaimed that settlers may now be taken; fifteen holdings of 12 hectares (30 acres) each are contemplated. In the Eifel district 75 hectares (185 acres) of the High Venn plateau, over 2,200 feet high, have been cultivated, and the first settlers established. "(_b_) Shifting sand dunes are made permanent. "(_c_) Marshy ground is drained, damage done by inundations is made good, water courses are diverted, and channels dug. "(_d_) Fiscal domains are put into an efficient condition. "(_e_) Vineyards are planted for the State on the Moselle. "Experience has proved that prisoners can best be employed on such works in gangs of from forty to sixty, under a chief overseer, assisted by a sufficient number of warders." "The prisoners," says the official document, show themselves to be willing, diligent, and apt in their work; their productivity is inferior to that of free labourers only at the beginning of their employment, and later it is equal. There is no difficulty in maintaining discipline, and attempts at escape occur very seldom. On the other hand the employment of small bodies of men under the superintendence of one or two petty officers, especially if it be in agricultural work, in which it is almost impossible to prevent contact with free labourers, leads to serious abuses:--bribery, insubordination, rebellion against the officers and even gross acts of violence have occurred. Such small bodies of men, therefore, can only be employed in exceptional cases where the conditions for the maintenance of discipline are specially favourable. "(4) The other prisoners are to be farmed to _entrepreneurs_ by public contract for the carrying on of industrial work. Care must be taken, however, that too many prisoners are not allotted to a single employer, and that the number employed in a single industry is not disproportionate to the number of free labourers engaged in the same industry. Since 1869, the number of prisoners employed by industrial _entrepreneurs_ fell from 73 to 27·2 per cent. in 1903,[61] and a further decrease is probable owing to the extension of the work done for the State authorities. Several establishments have entirely discontinued the employment of prisoners in that way. By the restriction of factory work, the individuality of the prisoner can be better studied in the choice of employment for them, and the justification is taken away from the complaints made by free workpeople about the illegitimate competition of cheap prison labour, used by capitalist employers. At the same time, the prison budgets are less satisfactory than formerly as a consequence." [Footnote 61: The proportion in 1869 was 73 per cent.; in 1895, 52 per cent.; in 1896, 52·6 per cent.; in 1897, 49·1 per cent.; in 1898, 45·7 per cent.; in 1900, 40·4 per cent.; in 1901, 37 per cent.; in 1902, 32·8 per cent.; and in 1903, 27·2 per cent.] In the prison accounts no allowance is made for the domestic and farm work done by the prisoners. In calculating the value of all work done for the Imperial and State authorities and for the general Prison Administration wages are reckoned at 40 pfennige (5d.) per head per day. "This rate of wages, which is far less than that paid by employers, is taken arbitrarily, but in order to simplify the trade accounts and particularly accounts with the various State authorities, a uniform rate was necessary. If the rate is low, the Prison Administration must console itself with the reflection that its losses imply saving to other branches of the State service; the State, as a whole, does not suffer injury. Moreover, the full value of the prisoners' work now goes to the State, and not as formerly to private employers, and free labour no longer suffers from the competition of prison work."[62] [Footnote 62: _Ibid._] Wages ranging, according to capacity and diligence, from 1 to 20 pfennige (100 pfennige =1s.) per day in the case of criminal prisoners, and from 1 to 30 pfennige per day in the case of correctional prisoners, are credited to the men, with the object of giving them a favourable restart in life on their discharge. No part of the accumulated bonuses is paid over during imprisonment until 30s. has been earned by criminal prisoners, and 20s. by others, except that payments may be made to a man's family out of his account; but one half of all earnings beyond the minimum stated may be used in the purchase of extra food, books, clothing, etc., though not of tobacco, the smoking of which is not allowed. The following statement gives the yearly cost per head in the financial year April 1, 1907, to March 31, 1908, of the whole of the inmates of the Prussian Labour Houses, with the value per head of the produce and work done and the amount per head which fell upon the public funds:-- ----------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------- | Yearly Cost per | How the Cost was Covered. Labour House. | Head of Average +------------------+----------------- | Number of | (_a_) By Produce | (_b_) Public | Detainees. | of the | Contributions. | | Labour House. | ----------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------- | Mark. Pfennige. | Mark. Pfennige. | Mark. Pfennige. Tapiau | 642 51 | 302 64 | 339 87 Konitz | 383 27 | 204 46 | 178 81 Rummelsburg | 507 21 | 124 21 | 383 0 Strausberg | 434 0 | 215 0 | 219 0 Prenzlau | 547 15 | 280 46 | 266 69 Landsberg a. W. | 401 41 | 234 83 | 166 58 Neustettin | 442 68 | 268 24 | 174 44 Uckermüode | 406 31 | 221 54 | 184 77 Stralsund | 480 77 | 361 05 | 119 72 Greifswald | 340 0 | 220 29 | 119 71 Bojanowo | 355 45 | 172 14 | 183 31 Fraustadt | 694 49 | 145 23 | 549 26 Schweidnitz | 313 40 | 255 17 | 58 23 Breslau | 674 32 | 625 17 | 49 15 Gross Salze | 339 29 | 271 54 | 67 75 Moritzburg | 344 76 | 271 01 | 73 75 Glückstadt | 425 26 | 410 42 | 14 84 Bockelholm | 355 30 | 222 02 | 133 28 Benninghausen | 498 76 | 153 85 | 344 91 Breitenau | 453 84 | 397 70 | 56 14 Hadamar | 278 80 | 140 99 | 137 81 Brauweiler | 396 68 | 271 97 | 124 71 Moringen | 791 09 | 142 0 | 649 09 Wunstorf | 377 61 | 131 64 | 245 97 Himmelsthür | 363 42 | 159 13 | 204 29 ----------------+-----------------+------------------+----------------- It appears from this statement that the gross annual cost per head ranged from £13 18s 10d. in the case of the Labour House at Hadamar (a small institution) to £39 11s. at the Labour House at Moringen, and that the net cost to the State ranged from 14s. 10d. per head in the case of the Labour House at Glückstadt to £32 9s. at Moringen. CHAPTER VI. A GERMAN TRAMP PRISON.[63] The German method of dealing with vagrants and loafers may be studied in its practical details with great advantage by visiting the Labour House of Benninghausen, in the Prussian Province of Westphalia. The establishment is situated in the open country, ten or twelve miles distant from the old town of Soest, and its high boundary walls and spiked fences enclose an area of about twelve English acres. The nearest railway station is four or five miles away, and the visitor's first impression is that of a sparsely populated country, in which the prisoners who from time to time manage to elude the eye of their warders can have but little chance of successful flight. The Labour House was built in 1821 to accommodate 410 persons, and it is administered by the Government of the Province. The books of the establishment value the land at £1,022, while the buildings are insured for £19,950, and the furniture, equipment, and material for £5,329. [Footnote 63: A portion of this chapter was published in the _Fortnightly Review_ of February, 1907.] Benninghausen is an admirable example of the application of the allopathic principle to penology. As sloth is the vice which brings the majority of prisoners within its walls, so rigorous exertion is the method of cure that is followed. The House is the veriest hive of industry. The idea would never occur to you that these groups of diligent workers, engaged in all sorts of useful crafts and employments, were not long ago wandering aimlessly about the country cherishing the delusive idea that work was beneath contempt, and that the dignity of man consists in requiring someone else to tie your bootlaces. Yet one important principle is strictly followed--whatever the work done, it is not allowed to compete with the free labour market. Hence, efforts are first directed to the provision of every possible need of the Labour House itself and of its inhabitants. This applies not only to the provision of food, but also to the weaving of materials, the making of iron and woodwork, the carrying out of repairs, and other matters of domestic economy. Beyond that the similar needs of other provincial institutions--like the Asylums for the Sick, for the Imbeciles, for the Blind, and for the Deaf and Dumb--are supplied as the convenience of the Labour House allows. This is all done, of course, on a business footing. An accurate account is taken of the labour employed, and the wages of this labour, reckoned on a moderate scale, plus the cost of material and a slight profit to cover contingencies, constitute the price charged by the Director for the goods he sells. The Province of Westphalia is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic, but as the Benninghausen Labour House is the only one in the province it has to be conducted on what is known as the "paritative" basis; it serves for both confessions, though each has its special chaplain. At the time of my visit the institution was housing temporarily, in addition to the ordinary subjects of correction, a number of lads and girls, the children of abandoned parents, the charge of whom had been undertaken by the Poor Law Authority in virtue of the law of 1890, and for whom more suitable provision did not exist at the moment. The numbers of detainees dealt with during the financial year 1907-8 were as follows:-- -----------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. -----------------------+--------+----------+-------- Number on April 1 | 307 | 27 | 334 Admitted during year | 377 | 25 | 402 Discharged during year | 329 | 30 | 359 Remained, March 31 | 355 | 22 | 377 Total number dealt | | | with during year | 684 | 52 | 736 Daily average number | 367 | 23 | 330 Maximum number | 355 | 27 | -- Minimum number | 280 | 20 | -- -----------------------+--------+----------+-------- Those committed in 1907-8 had committed the following offences:-- ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Vagabondage | 25 | -- | 25 Begging | 276 | 1 | 277 Begging and vagabondage | | | together | 29 | -- | 29 Idleness | 16 | -- | 16 Work-shyness | 2 | -- | 2 Homelessness | 16 | -- | 16 Professional immorality | 9 | 27 | 36 ------------------------+--------+----------+-------- Of the men newly admitted, 177 had been detained in a Labour House before, 64 of them more than three times, and the great majority had been imprisoned. Structurally, the Labour House is not, perhaps, a model of what such an institution might and should be in these days, nor is this surprising when it is remembered that it has stood now for three generations, yet its arrangements are, within the limits determined by space and the architectural ideas of ninety years ago, excellent, and they are certainly excellently supervised. There are three separate blocks of buildings. The principal one contains the administrative rooms, the day-rooms, the dormitories, baths, and kitchens. Separate departments, without contact of any kind, are provided for the sexes, the women being lodged on the ground floor and the men above. The second block contains the workrooms, of which there are five, besides the large bakery and washhouses, _viz._, a workshop for joiners and carpenters, one for weaving, one for cigar making, one for shoe making and a smithy and machine shop. The third building is the hospital, and is sufficiently isolated. This is not intended, however, for the chronically sick, who, with the physically disabled, are transferred, on medical certificate, to the Provincial Poorhouse and Hospital. Cases of child-birth are removed betimes to the Maternity Hospital, and the mothers afterwards return to the Labour House to complete their terms of imprisonment. The bedrooms are plain yet light and cheerful apartments, not over-large, but as fresh and airy as an abundance of open windows can make them. Each prisoner has his own little iron bedstead, with straw pallet and pillow, and a coloured counterpane, and his name is boldly written at the head. The utmost care is taken to lodge the prisoners according to age, character, and characteristics. "We have separate bedrooms for the old, the middle-aged, and the young, separate rooms also for the first offenders and for the recidivists," said the Labour Inspector who showed me round the institution, "for we study peculiarities as much as possible. We also study their comfort," he added, "for we put all the snorers together." The day begins for the inmates at 4.30 during the summer months (April 1 to September 30), and at 5.30 during winter and on Sundays and festivals. The hours are divided as follows:-- 4.30 a.m.--At the sound of the bell every prisoner has to rise, dress, and wash, and in a quarter of an hour must have arranged his bedclothes and be ready to leave the dormitory. 4.45 a.m.--Assembling in the corridors the prisoners are numbered, after which (so runs the "Order of the Day"), "they shall offer up at word of command (_auf Commando_) a silent prayer." Then the field labourers, the implement room workers, and the bakers go to the dining rooms, and the weavers, tailors, shoemakers, cigar makers, and the female inmates to the workrooms, there to begin at once their work. 4.50 a.m.--The bell sounds for the morning meal (soup and bread), the inmates going to the same in bands in charge of the overseers. 9.0 a.m.--Work is then continued without interruption until 9.0, when there is a pause for a quarter of an hour for bread and beer. 11.40 a.m.--A pause for dinner, which is partaken like breakfast in bands. (For the outside labourers a different order is followed.) 12.0 to 1.0 p.m.--A pause, during which the prisoners have at least half an hour in the open air. 4.0 p.m.--A pause of a quarter of an hour for bread and beer. 7.15 p.m. (in winter and on Sundays and festivals, 6.15).--The bell rings for supper, and work ends for the day. 7.50 p.m.--The prisoners are examined for the detection of forbidden articles, and at 7.55 they are marched off to bed. The work-day is thus about twelve hours in summer. But while, as a rule, the hours are the same for all, work is not altogether measured by time, but according to the capacity of the individual inmate, and where the tasks imposed are unfulfilled at the close of the day, owing to evident sloth or insubordination, some sort of punishment follows. The dietary on ordinary work-days is as follows:-- Morning.--Coffee with milk and bread. Noon.--Peas, beans, or lentils with potatoes; vegetable soup with potatoes; cabbage or turnips, with potatoes (the portion of potatoes allowed is 750 grammes for men and 660 grammes for women); or fresh fish and potatoes. Evening.--Soup, made with rye or wheaten flour, bread, oats, buckwheat, rice or potatoes. (Of bread 550 grammes are allowed to each man and 400 grammes to each woman daily). At Easter, Whitsuntide, Christmas, and on the Emperor's birthday, beef or pork, with beer, is given. Twice a week 100 grammes of meat may be served to men, and 80 grammes to women, instead of the fat which enters into the noon meal. Once a week cheese (100 grammes) is served to men and women, and once also a salted herring. The whole of the prisoners are kept to work of a kind suited to their strength, capacity and sex, their employment being determined by the Director and the resident doctor together. The principal methods of employment are the following:-- (1) Farm work on the provincial estate at Eichelborn, for which purpose men are farmed out as required. (2) Building and earth works in connection with provincial institutions and undertakings. (3) A series of industries carried on within the walls of the house. (4) Works on the buildings, both within and without. (5) Domestic and culinary work such as baking, washing, cleaning, sewing, etc. The baking alone is a very serious task, for a thousand mouths have to be fed every day, since the two large ovens provide, not only for the Labour House itself, but for two other large public institutions situated not far away. In the weaving shop there are fourteen hand-looms for linen, the yarn for which is bought. The work done by the carpenters is various and thoroughly creditable. Furniture in request for provincial institutions is chiefly made, such as tables, benches, chests, chairs, toilette tables, and the like, and some of the work I saw would compare with the best products of free labour. "We have just sent out an account for £2,000 worth of goods," said the labour master with pride. The business of cigar making is not, like the other departments, carried on by the Labour House on its own account. The plan adopted is for labour to be farmed to tobacco manufacturers, who send the raw material with a skilled overseer to direct the various processes of preparation. The administration undertakes no responsibility for the quality of the work done, or for the material spoiled, though, on the other hand, the wages charged to the manufacturer are very low, _viz._, 75 pfennige or 9d. per day. The various employments detailed in a recent official report included locksmithry, joinery and carpentry, basket and chair making, tinning, mason's work, roofing, painting and plastering, weaving and spooling, tailoring, boot and shoe making, saddlery, hair sorting, book-binding, cigar making, machine turning, repairs to tools and implements, copying, manifolding, baking, butchery, knitting, sewing, laundry work, farm and field work, and road making. The weaving department produced 45,547 metres of stuff, the tailoring department produced 158 complete suits and 2,890 single garments, the sewing department 5,099 bed coverlets, towels, shirts, aprons, handkerchiefs, neckerchiefs, etc.; the shoe making department 748 pairs of shoes, the carpentry department 1,319 articles of furniture, and so forth. The total value of the goods produced and of the labour farmed during the year was £6,164, which more than covered the cost of food and clothing. Formerly the Labour House had its own farm, but this was separated some years ago, and it has since been conducted as an independent undertaking, though still by the aid of forced labour. Men are lent to the farm manager as required, at the rate of 60 pfennige or 7d. a day of ten or twelve hours, according to the season, and some forty or fifty are always employed in one way or other on the land. The Labour House buys its rye for bread, its milk, its butter, and its potatoes from the farm management at the full market prices, though, on the other hand, it sells to the farm all the implements of iron and wood which it is capable of supplying, and also makes its repairs. In the year 1907-8 of an average _personnel_ of 330, there were employed in domestic and other work for the institution 152 persons, while 142 were employed on work for the Provincial Administration, 50 were employed by outside persons in farm, industrial, and other work, and 10 worked for officers of the Labour House. The entire cost in that financial year was £24 18s. 9d. per head, this sum including food, clothing, materials, and administration, and of the total expenditure the prisoners earned by their labour £7 13s. 10d. per head, leaving a deficit of £17 4s. 11d. per head, equal to 6s. 7-1/2d. per week, to be made up by the Province. As compared with several years ago, there was an increase in both the gross and the net cost. There is absolutely no contact between the workers of the several trade departments, for all save the bakers work behind locked doors, whose small windows only the officials may approach. The work, too, is strenuous in the full meaning of that hackneyed word. Every man literally works ever in his taskmasters eye; and not only so, but he must complete each day the task which is allotted to him. According to his capacity, and the character of his employment, a fixed _pensum_ is required of him, and unless this is done there is a penalty to pay; while, on the other hand, to the industrious, who exceed the inevitable minimum of effort and output, a small reward is offered. The latter only ranges from a farthing to a penny a day, though by the accretions of a year it may grow into a sum which proves a welcome help to a man on his discharge. This accumulating bonus is, as a rule, kept intact until the time of discharge comes, when it is handed to the Police Authority of the place to which the man elects to go, to be paid to him in instalments or otherwise used advantageously on his behalf. The women's department does not need particular description. It is conducted quite independently of the men's, though, of course, under the same higher officials, and its inmates are put to occupations suitable to their capacity and strength, not a small part of their time naturally being taken up by the domestic, culinary, and other indoor work inseparable from so large an establishment. In this department are found many members of a class which is one of the saddest excrescences of our modern urban life. These women of evil profession are, as a rule, detained in the Labour House for six months after the expiration of their gaol sentence. On discharge they are sent to their legal domicile if without fixed home or regular means of subsistence, but if they cannot establish a legal settlement they are handed over to the Poor Law Authority. It may be noted, however, that Germany does not as yet go as far as certain cantons of democratic Switzerland in the restraint of those single women of known moral weakness, so well known to English Poor Law workers, whose periodical visits to the workhouse imply an ever increasing burden on the public funds. Such persons the Berne Poor Law Authorities, for example, keep under duress indefinitely without the slightest misgiving that the sacred principle of individual liberty, in whose misused name so many wrongs to society and the commonwealth are committed, is being infringed. In Germany, as in England, these persons may, indeed, come under the restraining influence of the Poor Law when physically or intellectually defective, but for the rest the only power of detention resides in the penal provisions applicable, as above shown, to females found guilty of professional solicitation, a class to which most of the moral breakages which find their way into the women's wards of our own workhouses do not in the least belong. Formal prison discipline is enforced in the Labour House at Benninghausen as in others. Possibly the purple patches of relaxation which variegate the lives of the inmates are too few and too far between. Here, however, the German authorities doubtless act according to the teaching of experience, and no one will doubt that a theory--whether satisfactory or not--lies at the basis of their practice. Sunday is, of course, a free day, and the high festivals of the Church are observed by the prisoners of both confessions and of none. Then a great quiet falls upon this house of toil. Black clothes become the order of the day, even to the soft round cap which covers the close-cropped head, and as often as the church-going bell sounds, the inmates are led to and from religious service. For the rest the time is divided between workshop, bed, and board--and unless the rules are scrupulously observed there is a good deal of board about the bed. It goes without saying that the men are treated humanely and justly, but of indulgence there is no pretence, and I confess that as this aspect of Labour House discipline created upon my mind its own clear and vivid impression, I recalled that saying of Prince Bismarck, when he laid down the law of courtesy, "Politeness even to the murderer, but hang him all the same." I do not, however, presume to criticise the _régime_ followed; may be it is the best for the people who pass beneath it. It is the serious side of life, rather than its levities and _insouciance_, which they need specially to know. Why should the tramp have all the ease and the honest worker all the hardships of life? It sounds like the refinement of cruelty, but in this land of Gargantuan smokers not only is the consoling companionship of tobacco forbidden to the mass of prisoners, but even the cigar makers themselves fall under the general ban, and may not test the result of their own deft handiwork. Severe punishment is very seldom necessary, and Benninghausen does not possess the provision for treating acts of extreme misdemeanour which is to be found in some other German Labour Houses. "Arrest" in various grades is the worst penalty awarded. That means imprisonment in a dark cell, with bare boards for a bed and bread and water for diet. Even here, however, every fourth day brings respite and is, for that reason, known as a "good day" (_guter Tag_), for on it the prisoner may again, for one brief space, taste the joy of his accustomed straw pallet, while, to comfort or to tantalise him, he is also given warm food. But it is a fugitive bliss, for next day the pallet goes and warm food with it, and the erring one sleeps again on the floor and quenches his thirst at the water tap. A short time before my visit eight or ten of the incorrigible young "foster-children" of whom I have spoken had escaped from the Labour House while returning from church. A hue and cry was promptly raised, and in a couple of hours they were recaptured. They were birched for their escapade, for under the law referred to above the parental authority is transferred to the public foster parents, even to the extent of the right to inflict due bodily chastisement. With such exceptions, corporal punishment is unknown in the Labour House. The punishment for the loafer, the idler, and the tramp is hard work, and about its genuineness there can be no doubt whatever. But what would you otherwise? It is work which these men need, and want of it which has been their undoing. Look at it in that way. The Labour House is in effect a Continuation School. In it the hapless sons of the commonwealth who have failed to learn the lesson of industry in their early years are enabled to make good this important deficiency in their education. It is also coercive. Just as Germany applies compulsion in the instruction of adults who have failed to master their R's betimes, so it applies compulsion in imparting to the thriftless and shiftless members of society the spirit and habit of orderliness, industry, and self-control. No one who has been inside a Tramp Prison can fail to detect the beneficial influence of rigid discipline upon the physique and bearing of these tramps and loafers of yesterday and the day before. It was hard to believe that the gangs of smart-looking men, who briskly deployed in the quadrangle in their clattering wooden shoes, were members of the same slouching brotherhood whose favourite haunt is the King's highway. One little scene, enacted all in a moment before my eyes, would have done credit to a drill-ground. A band of prisoners were returning along the quadrangle from exercise to their work, a warder behind them. Arrived at the doorway of the workshop, they halted dead at signal, fell into two lines, and stood motionless at attention with the rigidity and solemnity of a military watch, while the warder ponderously passed between them and led the way into the building. For they can, after all, be galvanised into life and vigour, into agility and alertness, these licensed drones of the commonwealth, these worthless hangers-on of the street corner and the highway, whom we are accustomed to regard as "finished and finite clods" whose betterment only a miracle could compass; all that is needed is the will to override their weakness and make them men in spite of themselves. It may be asked, however, what is the practical effect of Labour House discipline on the after life of those who have experienced it? That a large proportion are won to a regular life of industry cannot, unfortunately, be said, nor would it be expected. In proof of this self-evident admission stands the patent fact that many of the inmates are recidivists who have been in and out of the Labour House time after time. Questioned on the point the Director placed the percentage of genuine reformations at 25, and the proportion of those who are directly benefited, without being actually reclaimed, at from a third to a half of the whole. "One half at the outside," was his most sanguine estimate, volunteered, I must add, without reference at the moment to books or memoranda. But cure in even one case out of every four, and improvement in one of every two, is no inconsiderable achievement when we remember the hard and almost hopeless material with which the Labour House has to deal, and the virtual inability of our own method of treating the vagrant and the loafer to effect any reformative result whatever. Obviously, it is impossible to expect accurate statistics on the question, for reasons not by any means confined to the impossibility of following the history of every discharged case, but one fact alone tells an eloquent tale. The Labour House for Westphalia was erected in 1821. Since that time the population of the province has vastly increased, and the economic revolution consummated in the interval has created a new kind of itinerancy, that of machine-bred labour, yet it has not been found necessary to enlarge the Labour House, whose capacity is to-day as adequate to the demands made upon it as it was ninety years ago. Not only so, but (disregarding the abnormal numbers of the last two years) the number of offenders of the kind for whom the institution exists is actually decreasing proportionately to population. The following were the commitments to Benninghausen during the twenty years 1890 to 1909:-- -----+------+--------+-------- | Men. | Women. | Total. -----+------+--------+-------- 1890 | 329 | 71 | 400 1891 | 398 | 64 | 462 1892 | 325 | 44 | 369 1893 | 361 | 51 | 412 1894 | 378 | 41 | 419 1895 | 330 | 45 | 375 1896 | 287 | 51 | 338 1897 | 272 | 64 | 336 1898 | 258 | 49 | 307 1899 | 273 | 53 | 326 1900 | 239 | 65 | 304 1901 | 312 | 46 | 358 1902 | 336 | 42 | 378 1903 | 321 | 57 | 378 1904 | 355 | 39 | 394 1905 | 360 | 45 | 405 1906 | 305 | 35 | 340 1907 | 343 | 24 | 367 1908 | 442 | 40 | 482 1909 | 445 | 48 | 493 -----+------+--------+-------- Other causes have, no doubt, helped to bring about this relative diminution in the number of commitments--amongst them the development of the Voluntary Labour Colonies with their ever-open doors--but at Benninghausen it is believed that the operation of the anti-vagrancy law takes the first place. Probably the question has before now passed through the reader's mind--what becomes of the 300 or 400 men and women who are returned from the Labour House to liberty in the course of every year? When a prisoner has served his time a problem arises which requires the most circumspect handling. What shall be done with him? Shall he be simply turned adrift at the gates in the hope that he will continue to follow in freedom the path of industry which he has entered while under restraint? The Benninghausen Labour House makes no such wreck of its own reformative work. On the contrary, every effort is made to encourage the prisoner to persist in a regular and honest life. He is allowed to choose his destination, and the Police Authorities of the locality are communicated with beforehand, so that they may be ready to provide for his temporary lodging, and either to help him to work themselves or to enlist the offices of private persons able so to do. In towns there always exists some philanthropic society which is ready to take the case in hand; in the country the helping hand is often that of the clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protestant, as the case may be. Here also is seen the utility of the Labour Colony--and to Westphalia, be it noted, belongs the honour of having founded the original Colony, of which the thirty-three others scattered over Germany are copies--which frequently serves as a temporary refuge for men who, having passed through the mill of adversity and humiliation, and been given a glimpse of better things, have no desire to drift into the old demoralising ways. CHAPTER VII. THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE. The Labour House at Rummelsburg, near Berlin, is an example of a house of correction for offenders of the classes dealt with at Benninghausen conducted by a municipality. This institution is maintained entirely by the City of Berlin, and while it exists to meet the requirements of the Imperial Penal Code, as already explained, there is attached to it a large hospital which closely corresponds to an English workhouse infirmary. This hospital is intended for the reception of (1) persons suffering from incurable diseases, also infirm persons who are no longer able to look after themselves, even with the assistance of outrelief; (2) those, who, owing to their past irregular mode of life (intemperance, immorality, criminality, etc.), are unsuited to admission to the usual municipal infirmaries; (3) destitute persons who might still be given outrelief, but who, by reason of their irregular mode of life, as above stated, would be better provided for in a public institution; (4) those in receipt of relief who are believed to be likely to give way to mendicity; and finally (5) persons sentenced to disciplinary detention who are infirm or ill, and incapable of work. In general, the class of persons accommodated are the undeserving infirm poor who are not thought worthy of permanent association with indoor paupers of more or less respectable antecedents. Although under the management of the same Director, and administered by the same Committee of the Town Council, the hospital is entirely independent of the house of correction, and its inmates are disregarded in the statistical data which follow. The numbers detained at Rummelsburg during the financial year 1907-8 were as follows:-- ----------------------+---------+----------+--------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +---------+----------+--------- Number detained on | | | April 1, 1908 | 1,349 | 36 | 1,385 Admitted during year | 1,428 | 102 | 1,530 +---------+----------+--------- | 2,777 | 138 | 2,915 +---------+----------+--------- Discharged during the | | | year | 1,128 | 55 | 1,183 Died | 21 | -- | 21 +---------+----------+--------- | 1,149 | 55 | 1,204 +---------+----------+--------- Number remaining on | | | March 31, 1909 | 1,628 | 83 | 1,711 ----------------------+---------+----------+--------- Of the 1530 persons admitted during the year 1381 (1,282 men and 99 women) had been committed by the Police Authorities of Berlin, and 149 (146 men and 3 women) were reinstated with a view to their completing sentences interrupted owing either to temporary removal to hospital or to escape. The offences which led to commitment were the following:-- ---------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +--------+----------+-------- Vagabondage | 11 | -- | 11 Begging | 655 | 7 | 662 Homelessness | 567 | 61 | 628 _Souteneurs_ | 49 | 31 | 80 +--------+----------+-------- Totals | 1,282 | 99 | 1,381 ---------------------+--------+----------+-------- The duration of the sentences awarded was as follows:-- ---------------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +--------+----------+-------- Six months and under | 252 | 42 | 294 From six months to | | | two years | 545 | 43 | 588 Two years | 485 | 14 | 499 +--------+----------+-------- Totals | 1,282 | 99 | 1,381 ---------------------+--------+----------+-------- Of the 1,183 persons discharged during the year, 84 went to their own homes, 921 had no homes to go to, 113 were handed to other judicial authorities, 13 were removed to outside hospitals or lunatic asylums, and 52 were removed to the infirmary after completing their sentences. Of the persons newly admitted, 20 were twenty-one years of age or under, 76 were between twenty-one and twenty-five years, 126 between twenty-five and thirty years, 346 between thirty and forty years, 389 between forty and fifty years, 322 between fifty and sixty years, 91 between sixty and seventy years, and 11 seventy years and upwards. The occupations of these 1,381 persons were as follows:-- -----------------------+-------+--------+-------- | Men. | Women. | Total. +-------+--------+-------- Agriculture, forestry, | | | gardening, hunting, | | | fishing | -- | -- | -- Industry, mining, and | | | building | 541 | 3 | 544 Trade and commerce | 122 | 3 | 125 Domestic service and | | | casual labour | 618 | 93 | 711 No occupation or | | | none stated | 1 | -- | 1 -----------------------+-------+--------+-------- The inmates of the Berlin Labour House are employed in a variety of ways, but chiefly in the works connected with the irrigation farms belonging to the city. All the men of this class are lodged in barracks near the farms, so as to avoid walking the long distance to and fro every day. The remainder of the men are engaged in miscellaneous trades, such as tailoring, shoe making, clogging, wood-working, basket and brush making, lock-smithery, tinning, straw-plaiting, book binding, etc.; wood cutting is done by the less skilled men; and old men are put to light employments like coffee bean and feather sorting. Most of the women not engaged in domestic work are employed in sewing and washing for municipal institutions, like the hospitals, shelters for the homeless, the cattle market and abattoir, etc. The following table shows the manner in which the labour of the inmates was distributed amongst these employments, with the number of days worked, and the value of the work done, during the year 1908-9:-- _Paid Work._ --------------------------------+-------------+---------- | Number | Value of | of days | Work. | of Work. | +-------------+---------- (1) _Outside the Labour House._ | | | | £ s. Agricultural work on the sewage | | farms during seven months of | | summer | 128,526 | 2,570 10 Work for other municipal | | institutions | 2,884-3/4 | 100 19 Work for officers of Municipal | | Orphanage and Shelter | 90 | 3 3 | | (2) _Inside the Labour House._ | | Sewing (women) | 230 | 6 15 Washing | 7,214 | 1,854 13 Wood-cutting | 20,894 | 361 18 Other inside work | 3,714 | 129 19 Farm work | 1,382 | 48 17 Work for officers in the | | workshops | 5,418 | 135 9 Work for outside employers | 7,403 | 20 19 Oakum-picking | 1,900 | 3 11 +-------------+---------- | 179,655-3/4 | 5,236 13 --------------------------------+-------------+---------- _Unpaid Work._ ----------------------------------------------+--------- | Number | of Days. ----------------------------------------------+--------- (1) Agricultural work on these wage farms, in | five winter months (November to March) | 102,968 (2) Work at the Municipal Shelter | 610 (3) Artisans' work for the Labour House | 34,238 (4) Gardeners' work for the Labour House | 3,170 (5) Work in the kitchens | 13,179 (6) Sempstresses | 12,213 (7) Washing | 14,428 (8) Bookbinding, writing and work of porters, | stokers, etc. | 44,859 (9)Cooking and other domestic work done | at the sewage farms, etc. | 25,544 +--------- | 251,209 ----------------------------------------------+--------- The work of the kinds classified under Nos. 3 to 9 was charged in the books at 58 pfennige (about 7d.) per day, representing an aggregate value of £4,281 5s., making the entire imputed earnings of the inmates £9,517 8s. This amount does not include the wages or bonus paid to the inmates, as stated below. The work-day consists of ten hours, and the time-table for week days and for Sundays and festivals is as follows:-- _Weekdays._ Rise 5.45 a.m. First breakfast 6.0 " Work 6.15 " to 9.0 a.m. Second breakfast 9.0 " to 9.30 " Work 9.30 " to 12.0 noon. Dinner, and rest 12.0 noon to 1.30 p.m. Work 1.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m. Supper 5.0 " to 5.30 " Work 5.30 " to 6.45 " Rest till bedtime. Bedtime, and lights out 7.0 p.m. On Saturdays and the evenings before festivals work ceases at 4.0 p.m., but the intervening time until 5.45 is given to cleaning the washplaces, etc., and bedtime is 6.0 o'clock. _Sundays and Festivals._ -------------------------+-----------------------+---------------------- | Summer. | Winter. +-----------------------+---------------------- Rise | 5.45 a.m. | 6.45 a.m. Breakfast | 6.0 a.m. to 6.15 a.m.| 7.0 a.m. to 7.15 a.m. Exercise in open air | 6.15 " to 8.30 " | 7.15 " to 8.30 " Divine service | 8.30 " to 9.30 " | 8.30 " to 9.30 " Exercise in open air | 9.30 " to 12.0 " | 9.30 " to 12.0 " Dinner | 12.0 " to 12.30 " |12.0 " to 12.30 p.m. Exercise in open air and | | relaxation | 12.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m.|12.30 p.m. to 5.0 p.m. Supper | 5.0 " to 5.30 " | 5.0 " to 5.30 " Rest | 5.30 " to 5.45 " | 5.30 " to 5.45 " Bedtime | 5.45 p.m. | 5.45 p.m. --------------------------+----------------------+---------------------- While, as a rule, the hours of work are the same for all, the tasks allotted are, as far as possible, proportioned to individual capacity. One of the rules[64] of the establishment states:-- [Footnote 64: The full Regulations of the Rummelsburg Labour House appear as an Appendix on pp. 263-267.] "Every inmate is required to perform, without demur and to the best of his ability, the work allotted to him, either inside or outside the establishment. As a rule, all inmates have to work on week-days an equal number of hours, and to perform in that time a task proportionate to their capacity, the completion of which, however, does not exempt them from working to the end of the usual time. The administration may, however, under certain circumstances curtail the duration of the daily hours of work and the extent of the task in individual cases. Anyone who, owing to idleness or negligence, fails to perform his allotted task, or who in general works slothfully or negligently, will be punished. No inmate may, without permission, allow his work to be done for him by another, or do another's work." For the encouragement of diligence and good conduct a small wage is paid. This amounts to 10 pfennige or 1-1/4d. per day for most work, but only half this sum in the case of certain inferior occupations. The rule on the subject says:-- "The proceeds of the work done by the inmates, on the order of the Administration, belong to the Municipality of Berlin, and are paid into the treasury of the establishment. The extra pay credited to the inmates by employers is divided into two equal parts, of which one is placed at the inmate's disposal for the purchase of extra food, the payment of postage, and other necessary expenses, during his detention, while the other accumulates as savings until his discharge." At the beginning of the financial year 1908-9 the bonus account of the various inmates stood at £1,196 10s.; there was added during the year £2,331, and paid out £2,109 10s., leaving a balance to the credit of the inmates of £1,418. The disbursements from this account during the year included £1,249 paid to discharged inmates, £573 paid to detainees for the purchase of extras, £159 paid for clothing needed by departing inmates, and £102 charged for damage done through malice or negligence. The utmost endeavour is made, by firm yet just treatment, to encourage the inmates in the habit of industry; the individuality and aptitude of each man are carefully studied, with a view to his employment in the manner most likely to draw out the best in him; the diligent and trustworthy are selected for the more responsible posts, and all are made to feel that their re-making lies in their own hands. Great stress is laid upon the moral basis of work, without undue obtrusion of the religious motive. One of the regulations runs:-- "The inmates shall live together in peace and quiet, none interrupting another in his work, but rather by industry, order, and decent moral behaviour encouraging each other to reformation of life, and setting each other a good example. Conversation upon past misdemeanours may under no circumstances take place; nor may one inmate reproach another with any crime which he may have committed, or with his past mode of life." The time allowed for leisure and relaxation cannot be called excessive, but such as it is the inmates are encouraged to employ it in reading. Special prominence is given, indeed, to the library, of which the last annual report says:-- "The library is intended to serve the purpose which the administration of the Labour House seeks to achieve, viz., the transformation of the detainees committed to its charge into useful members of society. The educational influence of the use of books should not be depreciated. The administration earnestly endeavours, by offering to the inmates books of an entertaining, instructive and edifying character, and such as may lift them out of their everyday surroundings, and by studying the individuality and educational standard of each person, to offer them healthy stimulus during the hours of leisure. These books and the Sunday magazines which are regularly distributed are read with eagerness. The library is open to all inmates without exception." The fact may be added that no less than £25 a year is spent on the provision of new books. As for other moral influences, religious services are held regularly on Sundays and festivals, and Holy Communion is administered at intervals, for Protestant and Roman Catholic detainees separately. Little fault is found with the general conduct of the inmates, in spite of the fact that the majority are old offenders. The character of the material with which the Labour House has to deal may be judged from the following summary of the punishments which had been undergone by those newly admitted in the year 1908-9:-- ------------------------+-------+--------+------- | | | Mode of Punishment. | Men. | Women. | Total. | | | ------------------------+-------+--------+------- | | | Labour House (house of | | | correction) | 791 | 50 | 841 Labour House more | | | than three times | 558 | 13 | 571 Recommitted within a | | | year of previous | | | detention | 58 | 6 | 64 Close detention more | | | than ten times | 371 | 22 | 393 Close detention more | | | than twenty times | 538 | 33 | 571 Prison | 916 | 59 | 975 Gaol | 127 | 3 | 130 Imprisoned before | | | eighteenth year | 23 | -- | 23 | | | ------------------------+-------+--------+------- Nevertheless, during the year punishments for offenders against discipline were awarded to only 304 inmates in 352 cases. The percentage of the male inmates punished (calculated on the mean daily average detained) was twenty-one, and of the female inmates 12. The punishments begin with mere reproof, and then follow in order of severity: withdrawal of permission to receive visits for a time, withdrawal of permission to write or receive letters, forfeit of the right to supplement the Labour House diet out of the reward of industry, forfeit of earnings themselves, disallowal of open air exercise, curtailment of rations, simple cell detention, and finally imprisonment on hard fare. Only in case of violent insubordination may chains or the straight jacket be resorted to. It is difficult to speak definitely as to the permanent influence upon these people of Labour House treatment. The proportion who leave the House "reformed" in the usual acceptance of the word is, no doubt, small, as the large percentage of re-committals proves. Viewing the institution less from the individual than the social standpoint, however, the fact remains that under restraint the average loafer shows that he is able to work, and to work well. Not only so, but the cost of his detention is not excessive. During the year to which all the foregoing figures relate, the entire cost of maintenance and administration, both of the Labour House and the Hospital, including interest at 3-1/2 per cent. upon the value of the land and buildings, was £55,101, or deducting £5,236 received for work done by the inmates (exclusive of that done for the establishment), £49,865, equal to 1s. 3d. per head per day for the whole of the inmates. The cost of able-bodied inmates only was estimated at a fraction under 11d. per head per day, or 6s. 3d. per week. Tables are added showing the average number of inmates in the Labour House during the years 1899 to 1908, and the commitments for begging only during nineteen years:-- _Average Number of Inmates (all Classes)._ --------------+--------+----------+-------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +--------+----------+-------- 1899 | 1,080 | 124 | 1,204 1900 | 1,107 | 151 | 1,258 1901 | 1,128 | 150 | 1,278 1902 | 1,600 | 152 | 1,752 1903 | 1,660 | 117 | 1,777 1904 | 1,694 | 145 | 1,839 1905 | 1,849 | 129 | 1,978 1906 | 1,685 | 117 | 1,802 1907 | 1,369 | 65 | 1,434 1908 | 1,403 | 58 | 1,461 --------------+--------+----------+-------- _Commitments for Begging._ -----------------------+------------------ 1889-1890 709 | 1900 641 1890-1891 656 | 1901 868 1891-1892 916 | 1902 984 1892-1893 1,253 | 1903 1,053 1894 1,087 | 1904 1,008 1895 925 | 1905 823 1896 824 | 1906 587 1897 715 | 1907 594 1898 633 | 1908 662 1899 735 | -----------------------+------------------ It should be pointed out, however, that the latter figures afford no indication whatever as to the frequency of the offence of mendicancy in Berlin. Detention in the Labour House is a secondary punishment, and those who receive it form only a small proportion of the total number of persons prosecuted for begging. The following statement shows, for a period of twelve years, the numbers apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted in Berlin for this offence (the difference between the apprehensions and prosecutions represents those who were simply warned and discharged):-- -------------+-----------+----------+---------- | | | Year. | Appre- | Prosecu- | Convic- | hensions. | tions. | tions. | | | -------------+-----------+----------+---------- | | | 1894 | 21,678 | 19,244 | 11,216 1895 | 19,318 | 16,780 | 9,434 1896 | 22,048 | 19,064 | 10,058 1897 | 23,434 | 20,343 | 10,681 1898 | 20,378 | 16,931 | 8,781 1899 | 16,556 | 13,672 | 7,043 1900 | 17,334 | 14,097 | 7,246 1901 | 20,674 | 17,054 | 9,885 1902 | 23,582 | 18,962 | 11,545 1903 | 21,576 | 17,524 | 10,706 1904 | 19,019 | 15,562 | 10,069 1905 | 16,148 | 13,197 | 8,301 | | | -------------+-----------+----------+---------- Comparing the average number of apprehensions for mendicancy during the last five years with those of the first five in the table, a decrease will be found of from 21,371 to 20,199, in spite of a large increase in the population. CHAPTER VIII. THE TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND. It is a noteworthy fact that the treatment of the vagrant and the loafer on disciplinary principles has been carried out most systematically in countries so fundamentally different in political government as Germany and Switzerland. In the Swiss Republic this question is regulated by Cantonal laws. The Federal Legislation on the subject, dating from 1850, merely orders that vagrants and mendicants shall be dealt with in the cantons in which they may be arrested in accordance with the laws of those cantons, yet adding that, if of foreign nationality, they shall be expelled from the country. While, therefore, each canton makes its own vagrancy laws, the spirit of these laws is entirely free from the weak sentimentality which, in some respects, characterises our own. The law in force in the canton of Berne, for example, states that: "Vagrancy, namely, the wandering from place to place of persons without means and without the object of obtaining honest employment, is punishable with imprisonment and hard labour not exceeding sixty days, or with committal to a labour institution for a term between six months and two years; on the repetition of the offence the vagrant is always to be committed to a labour institution." Persons who apply for help from a Relief Station and refuse to accept suitable work when offered to them may be treated as "shirkers" (work-shy), and as such they are liable to detention in a labour institution for any period between several months and several years. The police are empowered to arrest beggars without special warrant, and the husbands and fathers who evade their domestic responsibilities, and even the town loafer who hangs about at street corners, may be apprehended and committed to a Forced Labour House by very summary process. These institutions are cantonal, and one of the best is that at Witzwil, established in 1895 by the Canton of Berne, and conducted by the Cantonal Police Authority. The offenders detained at Witzwil are of five classes:-- (1) First offenders convicted of criminal offences or sentenced to a house of correction in the Canton of Berne, where the sentence does not exceed three years. Those likely to abscond, or belonging to other Cantons, are not accepted. (2) Offenders sentenced to simple detention. (3) Bernese offenders sentenced by Military Courts to a gaol or convict prison for not more than three years. (4) Persons sentenced to a Labour House by legal process. (5) Persons belonging to other Cantons. The minimum term of detention is two months, the maximum five years, but one-third of the sentence may be remitted as a reward of good conduct. A twenty years' contract exists between the Cantons of Berne and Neuchâtel under which the latter Canton is empowered on terms to send to Witzwil harmless prisoners whose sentences exceed two months. Some prisoners are also received from the Canton of Geneva. The arrangement is attended by certain disadvantages for Berne, but these are over-ruled by financial considerations. The Witzwil Forced Labour Colony is situated between the lakes of Neuchâtel, Biel, and Murten, upon a tract of land known as the Great Moss, which has for centuries been subject to frequent inundations from the Aare and many smaller streams, but which, at the expense of the adjacent Cantons of Berne, Freiburg, Vaud, and Neuchâtel, assisted by the Federal Government, was, many years ago, brought into cultivable condition by diverting the main streams, and carrying out extensive drainage works. The estate comprises about 2,000 acres, the larger part of which was bought, as marsh-land, from the adjacent communes some forty years ago by an Agricultural Co-operative Society for the purpose of development. On the failure of this Society the Canton of Berne became the owner in 1891 at a cost of about £30,000 for land and buildings, the latter then in bad condition. The communications are good, since there are two railway stations within two miles of the centre of the estate. The land is, on the whole, fertile when properly drained, and a portion of it is of excellent quality and suitable for winter wheat, clover, and grass; other portions are more suited to pasture, vegetables, and forestry, and there is a stretch of peat land and sand. When the estate was adopted for the purpose of a Forced Labour Colony the first works carried out on a large scale were road making, drainage, and building, and these have greatly increased the value of the Colony. There are two distinct farms, Lindenhof and Nusshof, the latter being now used as a Voluntary Labour Colony for discharged prisoners. The Lindenhof Colony is the principal one, and the buildings there comprise (1) the administrative block; (2) a large prison, containing 100 habitable cells, punishment cells, school, church, sickroom, kitchen, offices, workrooms for tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, basket makers, and book binders, with other workrooms in which the prisoners can be employed in straw work, besom making, etc., in bad weather; also living and bedrooms for the attendants, out-buildings and cellars; (3) dwelling-house, with bakery, washhouse, laundry, and bedrooms for officers and attendants; (4) workshops for workers in iron and wood, with rooms for the necessary machines; (5) stalls and sheds for 270 cattle, 30 horses, and 150 pigs, hay and straw lofts, and dwellings for the farm servants and their families; (6) machine room and warehouses. The buildings belonging to the Nusshof Colony comprise (1) two dwelling houses for the superintendent and his family and the assistants, quarters for discharged prisoners who have returned to Witzwil owing to their being without employment, and who receive food, lodging, and a small money payment in return for their labour; (2) stalls and sheds for 100 cows, several oxen, hay and straw lofts and cellars for root crops. The other buildings scattered about the estate include a cheesery, dwellings for hinds and their families and for turbary labourers, cattle-sheds, barns, and peat sheds, etc. There is an electric power and light station, and the principal depots are connected by telephone. For some years all necessary buildings, roads, drainage, etc., have been done by the prisoners under the direction of paid overseers, and in this way the value of the estate has been greatly increased. The number of prisoners varies from 110 to 150. As a rule, from two to five prisoners escape yearly (attempts not counted), but the majority of them are recaptured. Violent and exceptionally contumacious prisoners and those likely to escape are transferred to the convict prison at Thorberg. The principles on which the prisoners are employed are defined as follows:-- (1) Work should, as far as possible, conform to the prisoners capacity and enable him on his discharge to earn his livelihood more easily. (2) Prison work should be productive ("create actual values"), should entail muscular exertion yet not be injurious to health, and should yield as high a return as possible without injuring free labour. (3) The work should be so arranged as to further the educative purpose of punishment. The newly arrived prisoner soon falls into his place. He is at once dressed in the prison uniform and handed over to an overseer, who questions him as to his past occupation and capacity, and he is then assigned to a gang, as a unit of which he begins regular work the following morning. The prisoners' labour is divided between farm work of various kinds, works of reclamation, peat cutting, fruit and vegetable culture, forestry, and handicrafts. The men engaged on the land work in gangs of ten or twelve, each under the control of two unarmed officers. As to the latter it is said that great stress is laid on the importance of their not merely supervising the men, but taking active part in the work, so as to stimulate them by example, and also to get acquainted with them. The day's routine in summer is as follows:--5.30 (6.0 in winter) to 9.0, work; 9.0 to 9.20, interval for a light meal; 9.20 to 11.30 work; 11.30 to 12.30, dinner and rest; 12.30 to 4.0, work; 4.0 to 4.20, interval for a light meal; 4.20 to 7.0, work, followed by supper, house work, and bed. In winter the dark hours of work are spent in the barns or workshops, as may be expedient. The principal occupations in the latter are tailoring, shoe making, smithery, and carpentering, and most of the work done is for the institution. The men sleep, eat, and spend their spare time in separate cells, for intercourse between them is strictly discouraged. Although no claim to payment is recognised a certain sum, not exceeding 2 francs (1s. 6d.) per month, is credited to every man's account, and the aggregate is paid out to him on discharge; his clothes are then thoroughly repaired or new ones are given to him, and his railway fare is paid, as far as the Swiss frontier, if necessary; in case of need relief is also given to a prisoner's dependents during his incarceration. The dietary is as follows:--Morning, coffee with milk, potatoes and bread; noon, soup, with vegetables or flour, with meat and salad twice a week; evening, soup and fresh fruit (the latter being occasionally given with Sunday dinner as well). The daily ration of bread is from 22 to 27 ounces, while soup, coffee and vegetables are served to every man _ad libitum_. The moral interests of the prisoners are not overlooked. There is a school for the benefit of such young men as choose to attend; every Saturday books and magazines of an edifying and entertaining character are distributed for use the following day; concerts and lectures are given from time to time; and the religious needs of the Colony are ministered to by two visiting chaplains. Letter-writing and visits of friends are allowed once a month. The number of prisoners on January 1, 1908, was 156, 279 were admitted and 237 were discharged (including 2 deaths and 2 escapes) during the year, and there remained on December 31, 198. The maximum number detained was 198, and the minimum 154. Of the 279 new prisoners 204 were detained for the first time. Further, 172 were single men, 76 were married, 15 were widowers, and 16 were separated from their wives. As to occupations 107 were agricultural labourers, factory operatives, and general labourers, and the remainder represented more than thirty trades. There were 31 foreigners amongst the new prisoners (13 per cent. of the whole), 13 being Italians, 9 Germans, and 6 French. Of the sentences, 148 were for less than six months, 68 were for six and under twelve months, 51 were for one year and under two years, and 12 were for two years and over. The total number of days worked during the year was 50,531, divided as follows:-- Small earnings 1,525 Domestic service and cooking 1,660 Washing 612 Baking 332 Tailoring 1,332 Shoemaking and saddlery 1,084 Wood working 1,177 Iron working 1,614 Basket-plaiting 279 Turf cutting 782 Building works 3,723 General labour 535 Improvement works 2,587 Agriculture 33,309 ------ Total 50,551 To look after and direct the work of this body of men 48 officers and employees of all kinds were necessary, comprising 3 general overseers, 1 machinist, 28 foremen and chief stockmen in the agricultural departments, 1 saddler, 1 tailor, 1 shoemaker, 1 wheelwright, 1 carpenter, 1 smith, 1 mason (the last seven being skilled men), 3 office employees, and 6 domestic servants. The revenue in 1908 was £5,567, of which £4,602 was derived from the various departments of the farm, £740 from the workshops, and £225 from boarding fees paid by public authorities. The expenditure was £5,647, of which £1,041 fell to administrative costs, £3,997 to food and maintenance, and £445 to rent. It does not appear that interest on the original outlay is allowed for, but, on the other hand, a very considerable addition is made yearly to the value of the estate owing to the improvement works which are carried out. The punishments awarded for offences against discipline during 1908 numbered 53, _viz._, 16 men were imprisoned for one night in the punishment cells for quarrelsomeness, disturbance, and laziness; 29 had one or two days' cell imprisonment for disobedience and contumacy, and 8 had from two to eight days' cell imprisonment for absconding, attempts at the same, and smuggling. "Our general impression of the discipline preserved in the past year," the Director reports, "is not unfavourable; more than one case of punishment might have been avoided if the overseers had always understood their duty better, and if their insubordinates had shown a better spirit, but when one remembers how keenly many of our inmates chafe against the loss of their liberty it is not surprising if now and then one loses control over himself. It is often difficult for the foreigners--especially the French--to obey orders, and with the exception of a Genevan, all the prisoners who tried to escape were foreigners." Every endeavour is made to obtain settled work for discharged prisoners, but some are retained for a time as paid labourers, and others are taken in at the Nusshof branch of the Colony. Nusshof is governed by separate regulations, which run as follows:-- "(1) The Administration of Witzwil has established at Nusshof a home for discharged prisoners, for the purpose of offering to such of them as desire to make a sensible use of their regained freedom, residence for a longer or shorter time by way of transition. "(2) Engagement is by means of contract, which must be signed both by the colonist and the overseer of Nusshof. "(3) The colonists are required so to conduct themselves as to give occasion to no complaints. "(4) The colonists are required to observe the regulation in all particulars. Breaches of the same, such as drunkenness and disorderly behaviour, entail instant dismissal, to which the overseer may resort on his own responsibility. "(5) The colonists may not leave the Witzwil estate without the permission of the Administration. "(6) Colonists who show diligence and ability may find permanent employment in positions of responsibility. "(7) The colonists receive free board and lodging, and in addition working clothes. Special contracts are concluded with artisans ensuring payment in money. "(8) Colonists who enter in winter (_i.e._, between November 15 and the end of February) receive for this time no money payment. Those, on the other hand, who enter in summer and autumn (_i.e._, between March 1 and the end of October), and work to the satisfaction of the Administration, receive in winter also a reduced money payment to be fixed by the overseer. "(9) The money payment ranges from 50 centimes to 1.50 franc (5d. to 1s. 3d.) per day. The overseer fixes the commencing wage. "(10) During the period of the contract the Administration decides the amount of the money payment. Part of the wages shall be used for the provision of clothing and linen; the balance, if not necessary for the support of members of the colonist's family, is put away as savings. The Administration or the colonist's employer fixes the date at which the amount due to a colonist, together with his savings bank-book, shall be paid to him." In 1908 the colonists at Nusshof numbered 62, and they worked 4,136 days, representing an average stay, including Sundays, of about eleven weeks, while money wages of £115 in the aggregate were paid to them. Another Swiss Forced Labour Colony is that of St. Johannsen, near the lake of Bienne, established in 1884 by the Canton of Berne "for the improvement of disorderly and work-shy adults," and likewise administered by the Cantonal Police. It can accommodate 180 persons, but the usual complement is about 160. The area of the farm is some 400 acres, and the land is very similar to that at Witzwil, and has been reclaimed in the same manner. Here, too, farm work and simple trades--shoe making, carpentering, basket making, and smithery--are carried on side by side, and the general conditions of life, the length of the sentences, the prospects of remission, and the results are much the same in the two Colonies. Work is severe at St. Johannsen, and under the discipline some of the younger men are said to shed their idle habits, but little impression seems to be made upon the older ones. A third Forced Labour Colony, at Gmünden, near St. Gall, serves the Canton of Appenzell, and was established in 1884, and its principal inmates are "able-bodied men, who from irregular or dissolute life, or work-shyness become a charge on the district, who require special supervision, who neglect their families, or who are guilty of disorderly conduct in the poor-houses"--such people being committed by the District Council, "in order to accustom them to hard work and regular life"--while others are police law offenders who have failed to pay fines imposed upon them by the magistrates. The estate consists of 100 acres, and the accommodation is for fifty inmates, but the average number is thirty-five. The principal economy of the farm is arboriculture, but part of the land is used as a dairy farm, and the trades of shoe-making, carpentering, and weaving are also followed. The average term of detention is a year in the case of the loafer, and three months in the case of the Police Court defaulters, but by good conduct a man may earn a partial remission of his sentence. As at Witzwil the officers are not armed, but there is no complaint of violence. Work is found for many of the men on leaving, and they often carry away with them a sum of money, the proceeds of a bonus on good work, which helps to give them a new start. The District Council pays £4 per annum for each person whom it commits, and by the aid of this charge and the proceeds of the men's labour the Colony is able to show a profit. The Canton of Basle-Rural has a similar Colony at Liesthal, between Basle and Olten, recruited from the same classes of offenders as those at Gmünden. Only about seventy men can be received here, and special attention is given to plain industrial work, only the older colonists engaging in farm work. The District Councils commit to the Colony mendicants, loafers, habitual drunkards, and men who neglect to maintain their families, and pay between £2 and £3 annually per head for their support, but the Colony is far from being self-supporting. It is maintained that mendicity has greatly decreased in Switzerland during recent years, and all who know the country will agree that, save in districts which are overrun by foreign visitors--yet not in all these--the beggar and the loafer are comparatively uncommon. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to attribute this immunity entirely to the existence of Forced Labour Houses and Colonies, though these have, no doubt, helped. It must be remembered that Switzerland has an excellent system of Relief Stations for wayfarers, and has of late years taken up the Voluntary Labour Colony movement with much zeal.[65] Further, the Swiss workman is far less restive than his colleague in Germany, for example, and the spirit of local patriotism tends to keep him in his native canton and often in his native commune, however small and sequestered it may be. Finally, the Swiss are probably the hardest working, as they are certainly the hardiest, people in Europe, and they deem voluntary idleness to be one of the most disreputable and culpable of social offences. [Footnote 65: There are now four such Labour Colonies in Switzerland.] CHAPTER IX. LABOUR HOUSES UNDER THE POOR LAW. The practice of confining in forced labour institutions persons who, in various ways, have become defaulters under the Poor Law, particularly by neglecting to maintain dependents for whose support they are legally responsible, is no new one; both in Germany and Switzerland Labour Houses of this kind have existed for many years. The German Imperial Penal Code, as we have seen, provides for the commitment to Labour Houses of those who "give way to gambling, intemperance, and idleness" so that they are compelled to seek public relief, either for themselves, or those dependent upon them. Prior to the passing of this law Poor Law Authorities in some of the States were already empowered to put such persons to forced labour. As a result of the Imperial enactment, Prussia repealed its law on the subject (dated May 21, 1855), but Saxony, Wurtemberg, Oldenburg and Mecklenburg Schwerin retained their legislation, and within the last six years Anhalt and the Free City of Hamburg have adopted laws to the same effect. Before speaking in detail of a typical Poor Law Labour House of this kind, it may be well to summarise the provisions of the principal laws on the subject. The Poor-relief Ordinance of Saxony, dated October 22, 1840, states that the power to compel persons who are "work-shy" to labour belongs to the jurisdiction of the Police Authority, with which the Poor Law Authority, when independent of the former Authority, has to agree upon the necessary measures. As a result of this Ordinance the rural Poor Law unions have established district Labour Houses under the administration of the local governors, while some of the larger towns have established institutions of their own, managed subject to regulations approved by the Government. Persons are committed to these Labour Houses both by the Poor Law and Police Authorities, the term of detention being indefinite, but if a man who has been committed on account of neglect of family is able to show that he has provided a home for his dependents, he can require to be discharged. The existing law of Wurtemberg (July 2, 1889) empowers Poor Law Authorities to put to forced labour any man whose wife or children under fourteen years receive public relief; it is not necessary that he should himself have applied for such relief to be granted. The laws of Anhalt (April 27, 1904) and Mecklenburg Schwerin (1871 and 1890) are to the same effect. By the law of Oldenburg (March 14, 1870) the following persons may be committed to the Forced Labour House of Vechta: Drunkards, persons who abuse the poor relief granted to them, women who, having had two or more illegitimate children for whom they have had to seek relief, again become _enceinte_, and (by Ministerial Decree of April 25, 1888) parents who neglect their children so that they fall upon the Poor Law. For a first commitment the period of detention is two years, for repetitions three years. The latest provisions of the kind are those which were embodied in the amended Poor Law of Hamburg in 1907. Section 21 of this law states:-- "Any person who receives public relief, either for himself or for those dependent upon him, may be required by resolution of the Poor Law Labour Committee, in so far as may be requisite in order to remove or diminish existing destitution, to perform work suited to his capacity. In the event of refusal to do the work assigned to him by the Committee, the decision of that body may be put in operation by direct force. In the end the person relieved may be placed in a Labour House against his will. These provisions do not apply to cases of destitution caused by transient circumstances." This compulsion may be applied even when the defaulters dependents are maintained without his consent or against his will. The Committee which exercises these powers consists of five members--a member (a Senator) of the Poor Law Board, as president, two members of that Board elected by the House of Burgesses, and two chairmen of Poor Law districts or almoners. A decision to commit a Poor Law defaulter to the Labour House must be supported by a majority of four votes to one, and appeal is allowed both to the Senate and the ordinary Courts of Law, but a decision remains in operation unless and until quashed. The alleged defaulter is entitled to appear, and to be represented, at the proceedings of the Committee. A person against whom an order of detention has been put in operation can at any time ask for its repeal, but the Committee is only obliged to reconsider its decision after three months have passed; when a year has elapsed, however, the detainee must be released for a period of at least six months in order to test his willingness to meet his obligations. The reason advanced for the amendment of the law was that the number of wife deserters had for a long time been on the increase, and that existing measures had proved ineffectual. There has been a good deal of controversy upon the question whether the enactment of forced labour for Poor Law defaulters conflicts with Section 361, paras. 5, 7, and 10, and Section 362 of the Imperial Penal Code, but the judgment of the Imperial Department of Justice is in the negative, provided that such labour be required by way of restitution of relief afforded, and not as a punishment for misdemeanour, and that no definite term of detention be imposed. Institutions established for the reception of such persons, therefore, must be regarded as reformative in character, and not in any formal sense as penal. It is unlikely that a British Legislature would be willing to depute to Poor Law Authorities, even of the reformed type proposed by the Poor Law Commission, power to put to forced labour defaulters of the kind referred to. Nor does it accord with our national ideas of justice that the same authority--in this case a civil body--should be able to act simultaneously as plaintiff and judge. The Legislature of the State of Hamburg entertained scruples upon both these points, and for that reason, besides allowing an offender to answer a proposal of committal, both in person and by legal adviser, it devised a double form of appeal. In this country the only practicable form of procedure would be by magisterial order, as at present, except that defaulters would, on conviction, be committed to a Labour House for disciplinary treatment, instead of as now to prison. Among the German towns in which Poor Law Authorities possess and enforce the powers here referred to, are the four Saxon towns of Dresden, Leipzig, Chemnitz, and Plauen, also Stuttgart, Hamburg, Oldenburg, Ulm, Heilbronn, Ludwigsburg, Rostock, Schwerin, and Dessau. I have described the Dresden Labour House in another place,[66] and it will be sufficient for present purposes to summarise the principal characteristics of the Leipzig institution. [Footnote 66: "The German Workman: a Study in National Efficiency," pp, 293-301 (London: P. S. King & Son, 1906).] MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE AT LEIPZIG. This municipal Labour House is one of the oldest institutions of the town, for the building was anciently a monastic hospital; later it served for the reception of orphans, deserted and neglected children, imbeciles, etc., and it has been applied to its present purpose for some seventeen years. The Labour House is officially described as serving for "the detention, suitable employment, and moral improvement" of the following classes of people:-- (_a_) Work-shy, intemperate and dissolute persons who, owing to their mode of life, become chargeable, or cause others for whose maintenance they are responsible to become chargeable, to the Poor Law. (_b_) Persons under eighteen years who become a public nuisance owing to demoralisation, neglect, or idleness, and whose detention is proposed by their parents or guardians. (_c_) Children under fifteen years who are in danger of moral contamination until they can be placed in reformatories, in so far as it is inexpedient to admit them into the Municipal Orphanage. (_d_) Homeless persons whom it is inexpedient to place elsewhere (in this case only temporary detention is contemplated). (_e_) Persons sentenced by the police to simple detention with hard labour. (_f_) Persons sentenced by the Police to simple detention who wish to be employed during their term of confinement and who voluntarily enter the House. It may be observed in passing that the regulations of the Dresden Labour House provide for the commitment thereto of fathers who neglect to provide for their illegitimate children, and that though the regulations of the Leipzig Labour House are silent upon the point, the Poor Law Board there likewise commits such defaulters. Persons belonging to the first four classes enumerated above are committed by decision of the Poor Law Board, those belonging to the fourth class by the Police Authority as well, and those belonging to the fifth and sixth classes by the latter authority exclusively. Loafers and disorderly persons (_a_) and (_b_) are committed in the first instance for an indefinite period; "their detention in the institution (runs the regulation), shall, as a rule, last until the principal purpose of their committal, which is their improvement--_i.e._, to accustom them to work, to keep them to an orderly and regulated mode of life, and to train them or make them willing to observe the duty of maintaining the members of their families--appears to have been achieved." Whether this object has been attained or not is judged by the life and habits of the detainee on discharge. Contrary to the principle acted upon at Merxplas, "the mere proof that the detainee is able to find work outside the Labour House does not justify a claim to release." Before any person is discharged the Poor Law Board considers a report made by the Director of the Labour House, and this body previously determines the period during which the conduct of an inmate is to be specially watched with a view to weighing his fitness for release. As a rule a report is required as to the conduct of every detainee a month after committal and it must be made at the latest a year after. The Board may decide to give a person liberty for any period up to six months on trial, reserving the right to require him to report himself in the interval and to detain him again should his record be unsatisfactory. The Labour House has departments for males and for females, in every respect entirely dissociated, and in each department persons under eighteen years are forbidden contact with adults. All persons detained whose physical condition allows of it, are put to work within the institution suited in kind and degree to their capacity, but subject to conditions work outside may also be allotted to them. The general rule is eleven and a half hours of work daily (Sundays and festivals excluded) in summer, and ten and a half hours in winter, but the Director fixes the actual task to be done in every individual case according to his discretion. The regulations state:-- "It is the object of the labour tasks to accustom those detained to regular work, so that on their discharge they may be in a position to earn their livelihood independently in an honest way, and again to live a regular life; at the same time, an endeavour shall be made to use their labour in such a way as shall be most advantageous for the institution." The occupations followed by men include, in addition to work in the establishment, gardening, building, joinery, shoemaking, tailoring, book-binding, lock-smithery, painting and varnishing, wood cutting, coffee sorting, horsehair pulling, and the making of mats, besoms, paper bags, cigar holders, umbrella sticks, boxes, etc. The women are principally employed in domestic and laundry work, sewing and knitting, tobacco packing, and coffee sorting. The hours of work are as follows: Summer, 6.0 a.m. to 12.0 noon and 1.0 to 7.0 p.m.; winter, 7.0 a.m. to 12.0 noon and 1.0 to 7.0 p.m.; with intervals of a quarter of an hour at 9.45 a.m. and 4.0 p.m.; but those who work within closed rooms are allowed, in addition, half an hour's exercise in the open air daily. The utmost diligence is required during work; no talking is allowed; and smoking and tobacco chewing are resolutely forbidden at all times, though snuff-taking is allowed "by special favour." As a reward for "specially good behaviour" certain privileges are granted in the matter of food. While the proceeds of the inmates' labour are claimed by the institution, those who do more than their allotted tasks are credited with money allowances to the maximum of one-fifth of the total value of their work, as calculated at a given rate; and this money (less damage to tools, etc.) may be spent in the purchase of extras, in the support of dependents, etc., the balance, if any, being paid to the creditor on discharge, in one sum or in instalments, either direct or through a third person. Insubordination and other offences are not infrequent, and there is a long gradation of punishments, beginning with formal reproof, either alone or in presence of other detainees, and rising by many steps to cell imprisonment for twelve hours in a cage which allows only of standing and sitting, and finally to corporal punishment, a punishment which has practically fallen into desuetude and which in no case is awarded to women or men over sixty years. The majority of offences are of a minor character and are punished by some curtailment of diet. Counting only the persons who were committed or admitted to the Labour House for reformative reasons, the number dealt with in 1908 was 721; 250 (200 men and 50 women) being in confinement at the beginning of the year, and 471 being newly admitted. The maximum number was 338, and was recorded in February; the minimum was 180, recorded in July; and the daily mean for the year was 253. The Labour House received in addition, however, a large number of persons who had been sentenced by the police to simple detention with or without labour (Classes _e_ and _f_), and a large shelter connected with it lodged 12,655 persons for an aggregate of 36,413 times; of these persons, 634 were proved to be vagabonds and loafers, and the remaining 12,021 were artisans and labourers without employment. The reasons for compulsory or voluntary detention in that year were as follows:-- ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +----------+----------+---------- (1) Destitution by | | | reason of idleness, | | | drunkenness, or | | | irregular life:-- | | | | | | (_a_) Personal | | | destitution | 22 | 6 | 28 | | | (_b_) Destitution of | | | dependants | 90 | 17 | 107 | | | (2) Demoralised persons | | | under 18 years | 19 | 26 | 45 | | | (3) Children detained | | | for observation prior | | | to transfer to a | | | reformatory | 3 | 1 | 4 | | | (4) Temporarily detained | | | by reason of | | | homelessness | 283 | 4 | 287 +----------+----------+---------- Total | 417 | 54 | 471 +----------+----------+---------- Committed on compulsion | 204 | 50 | 254 | | | Entered voluntarily | 213 | 4 | 217 ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- The detainees discharged during the year numbered 421 and were classified as follows:-- ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +----------+----------+---------- Discharged or out on | | | parole | 275 | 24 | 299 | | | Removed to hospital, | | | poorhouse, lunatic | | | asylum, and orphanage | 28 | 8 | 36 | | | Removal to penal or | | | correctional institutions | 19 | 6 | 25 | | | Absconded | 53 | 7 | 60 | | | Deaths | 1 | -- | 1 |----------+----------+---------- Totals | 376 | 45 | 421 ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- The terms of their detention were as follows:-- ------------------------+------+--------+--------+------- | | | | Per | Men. | Women. | Total. | Cent. +------+--------+--------+------- 6 weeks or under | 66 | 10 | 76 | 18·0 | | | | 6 weeks to 3 months | 75 | 9 | 84 | 20·0 | | | | 3 months to 6 months | 131 | 19 | 150 | 35·6 | | | | 6 months to 9 months | 79 | 6 | 85 | 20·2 | | | | 9 months to 12 months | 19 | -- | 19 | 4·5 | | | | Over 12 months | 6 | 1 | 7 | 1·7 +------+--------+--------+------- Totals | 376 | 45 | 421 | 100·0 ------------------------+------+--------+--------+------- During 1908 the inmates performed 65,091-1/2 days of work, the value of which was £3,474; of this sum, £184 was paid to them in wages, so that the net proceeds of their labour amounted to 1s. for every day worked by the inmates. The cost of maintenance (deducting revenue) averaged, during the five years 1903 to 1907, nearly 1s. 5d. per head per day, and the cost of food only 5-1/2d. The institution derives an income of about £1,600 from endowments, and the actual cost to the municipal funds during those years was under 6d. per head per day. It may be interesting to add a statement showing the admissions to the correctional department of the Labour House for a series of years. It will be seen that while there have been fluctuations, no absolute increase is shown. ------+------------------------+-------------------------+--------- | Males. | Females. | Year. +-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+ Total. |On |Voluntarily.|On | Voluntarily.| |compulsion.| |compulsion.| | ------+-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+--------- 1892 | 64 | 111 | 8 | 16 | 199 1893 | 228 | 195 | 25 | 31 | 479 1894 | 194 | 182 | 35 | 31 | 442 1895 | 160 | 227 | 23 | 46 | 456 1896 | 161 | 167 | 19 | 34 | 381 1897 | 200 | 93 | 23 | 26 | 342 1898 | 185 | 154 | 23 | 19 | 381 1899 | 109 | 252 | 7 | 25 | 393 1900 | 70 | 245 | 13 | 22 | 350 1901 | 88 | 313 | 13 | 18 | 432 1902 | 80 | 276 | 16 | 16 | 388 1903 | 76 | 261 | 22 | 10 | 369 1904 | 91 | 241 | 29 | 11 | 372 1905 | 109 | 238 | 37 | 5 | 389 1906 | 90 | 274 | 37 | 4 | 405 1907 | 77 | 222 | 22 | 5 | 326 1908 | 204 | 213 | 50 | 4 | 471 ------+-----------+------------+-----------+-------------+--------- BERNE POORHOUSE OF K�HLEWYL. A Swiss example of a virtual Forced Labour Colony carried on as a part of the machinery of the Poor Law is the Kühlewyl Poorhouse belonging to the municipality of Berne. This institution was created some eighteen years ago for the reception of several distinct classes of inmates (to the exclusion of children), and principally for (1) persons permanently unable to work and support themselves, and having no means of subsistence, and (2) persons either altogether or partially unable to maintain themselves whose lodgment in such an institution seemed "justifiable in the public interest." The latter phrase is a significant one. What it implies will be best understood from a passage in a report addressed to the Municipal Council Committee, which, under the guidance of the mayor of the day, formulated the scheme. "We regard it," they said, "as of the greatest importance that there be established for Berne a Poorhouse in which all such adult poor may be lodged to whom this mode of maintenance is suited. They include, not only a large number of the infirm and incapable, but particularly all the good-for-nothings and depraved people who become a burden on public charity, whose conduct is a cause of annoyance, and who cannot be improved except by systematic discipline, by work, wholesome food and regular life." In fact, one great object was to clear the streets of Berne of the lazy and immoral of both sexes--people who could not, in a democratic country, be arbitrarily packed off to a prison, yet who were rightly regarded as social pests. The first of these two classes certainly far outweighs the second, but the second is by no means a small one. To this extent the Poorhouse has much in common with the Cantonal Labour Houses already referred to. The number of persons who entered or passed through the Poorhouse during the year 1908 was as follows:-- ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- | Males. | Females. | Total. +----------+----------+---------- Detained on January 1 | 202 | 152 | 354 | | | Admitted during the year | 54 | 24 | 78 | | | Discharged during the year | 36 | 26 | 62 | | | Detained on December 31 | 220 | 150 | 370 ---------------------------+----------+----------+---------- Of those admitted during the year, seven were sent because of feeble-mindedness, twenty-two because of bad behaviour, seven because of unemployment, twenty-nine because of age and sickness, and thirteen were convalescents needing care in the country. By reason of the large number of persons who flock to the town of Berne from various parts of the Canton and thus unduly swell the inmates of the Poorhouse, the Cantonal Government makes a liberal annual contribution to the costs of maintenance. Communes other than Berne which send persons to the Poorhouse for care or discipline pay from £10 to £12 per head. The Poorhouse is situated several miles out of Berne, in a sequestered spot at the head of a fertile valley, affording just the isolation and means of effective oversight which are desirable in such a case. Attached to it are some 150 acres of land, which are divided into corn land, meadow and pasture land, plantation, and a large piece of land set apart as kitchen and nursery gardens. The building, which was intended to accommodate about 400 inmates--some fifty more than the usual complement--is a plain but substantial erection, and the arrangement of the various departments has been admirably thought out. In no way is there association between men and women, who both live and work in separate suites of rooms. Work is required of all inmates according to their capacity. The regulations state:-- "Every inmate is required to perform, to the extent of his power and ability, all such work as the director may assign or cause to be assigned to him, whether field work or employment in the workshops. The ordinary work day consists of ten hours, but in times of heavy field work (like harvest), the hours are according to needs. Sundays and general festivals are observed as days of rest, except that the inmates are required to do the necessary work in the house and farm buildings; only in urgent cases (like harvest), is other work required to be done on these days." Whenever possible a man is set to the trade or occupation which he has been accustomed to follow. For farm labourers and gardeners, for example, there is always a place. Where inmates have had no particular training, the occupation in which they are likeliest to be most productive is allotted to them. Thus I noticed at work: smiths, wheelwrights, cabinet-makers, straw-plaiters, tailors, shoe makers, sempstresses, chair makers, wicker workers, bakers, paper bag makers, etc. Almost everything needed in the Colony in the nature of food, furniture, wood-work in general, tools, sewing, and knitting, besides repairs of all kinds, is produced on the spot, and at the time of my visit looms were on order for plain cloth weaving. In addition, a considerable sum is realised annually by the sale of articles made by the inmates and by the farming of their labour. The goods sold include chairs, wicker-work of various kinds, articles of straw, and paper bags. The farm is, however, still more productive. Of the daily production of between 300 and 350 quarts of milk, over one-half is consumed or used for butter, while the rest goes to the Co-operative Dairy of a neighbouring village, there to be turned into marketable cheese. The dietary is largely vegetarian. Breakfast consists of coffee (always with milk), bread, and potatoes (or porridge once or twice a week instead of potatoes); dinner of soup and vegetables, with potatoes or farinaceous pudding and bread, meat being given twice or thrice a week; and supper of soup and bread, or coffee with bread or potatoes, a piece of cheese or other extra being added on Sunday evening. Inmates at work receive, in addition, both in the forenoon and the afternoon, bread with coffee, but cider or wine may be given instead of coffee in summer. On festivals a glass of wine is given at dinner. No special uniform is used in the Poor-house. The inmates are attired in ordinary dress, without any attempt at symmetry, though deserters, when returned, are stamped on the coat as a warning. The mental and recreative faculties of the inmates are not neglected, for thanks to the kindness of private persons, books, magazines, and newspapers are provided in considerable number. It may be asked how order is maintained in a Colony so heterogeneous as this. The answer is that though the Municipal Authorities possess powers of punishment irrespective of the police, these powers have seldom to be exercised. A strong administrator, humane, but firm, who expects honest work from his people and therefore gets it, keeps the wheels of this notable piece of disciplinary machinery in smooth and regular rotation from year's end to year's end. Such of the inmates as can be trusted are even allowed to spend half a day in town once a week without any supervision whatever, and the privilege is seldom abused. They know, in fact, that they are under restraint until they have given proof of reformed habits, and that in the event of misconduct they will draw upon themselves more stringent restrictions. I believe that their amenability to discipline and obedience is but another proof that the besetting sin of the loafer is less active criminal propensity--save in so far as "oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done"--than a corrigible laziness and disorderliness of life. To quote the words of the Director of the institution, as spoken to myself: "The people come here, as a rule, miserable and unhealthy, low and wretched, worn out by careless living and bad food, but they soon become new creatures." They do not all turn out saints by any means, but the percentage of wastrels won back to sobriety and industry is held far to outweigh the moderate maintenance expenditure incurred on their behalf. The merely disciplinary measures which, in case of need, are taken against refractory inmates, include the assignment to them of hard and unpleasant work either in the house, the farmyard, the forest, or the fields, refusal of permission to leave the precincts of the establishment, and refusal of permission to receive visitors. The actual punishments which may be administered increase from reprimand in the case of misdemeanour to simple detention for a term not exceeding ten days, with or without bread and water every second day in the case of gross misdemeanour, and in aggravated cases detention in a separate room with marked clothing and close supervision. Corporal punishment is forbidden; the straight-jacket may be used only for the restraint of violent offenders, but not as a punishment, and it may only be applied for four hours at a time. Further, the Poor Law Authority has the right to transfer dangerous persons to another establishment. On the other hand, the rewards for good conduct include the assignment to an inmate of a superior sleeping place, improved food rations, the payment of premiums, permission to leave the institution on Sunday, and appointment to posts of confidence. The Poor-house is carried on very economically. The entire expenditure in 1908 amounted to £5,254, of which £454 represented the costs of administration, £3,721 the costs of maintenance, and £1,081 interest on capital. The revenue from agriculture was £1,452, from industry £500, and the maintenance charges and Cantonal subsidy amounted to £2,998, leaving a deficit of £306 to be made up by the municipality. Towards a total cost of £15 per head per annum, the inmates earned by agricultural and industrial work £5 11s. per head, leaving the net cost, all expenditure counted, £9 9s. per head per annum, or 3s. 8d. per week. CHAPTER X. LABOUR DEPOTS AND HOSTELS. Although legislation in Germany and Switzerland is severe upon the vagrant loafers, generous provision is made in those countries for _bona fide_ seekers of work. This is done by the complementary systems of public and semi-public Relief Stations and Hostels or popular lodging-houses. The Relief Stations are plain places of entertainment at which passing workmen, if duly accredited, may obtain food and a night's lodging in return for a certain task of work. In Germany they are established and maintained by the Provincial, District, or Communal Authorities, or by all three in conjunction, and where properly organised, as in Westphalia and South Germany, they are located at intervals which do not overtax the walking powers of men of ordinary capacity. The methods upon which the Stations are conducted are best explained by the rules of the Westphalian Federation of Relief Stations, which are as follows:-- "(1) Every wayfarer not possessing more than one mark (1s.) in money, and unable to obtain work in the locality, will be considered as 'without means.' Any person who has more than one shilling in his possession, and who conceals or denies this fact, may not only be required to pay for the relief which he receives, but may also be prosecuted for fraud. "(2) Any person, who, by reason of old age, sickness, or infirmity, is unfit for work, will be referred to the local authorities with a view to his receiving Poor Law relief. "(3) Every wayfarer without means who wishes to receive relief in a relief station is required to produce his travelling pass. The wayfarer is required, provided that he is still in possession of any money, to procure such a pass himself. A pass may be obtained by the payment of 6_d._, or by the performance of at least four hours' work in the relief station. Relief is not given at the station issuing the pass. [This provision applies only to wayfarers able to pay.] A pass may only be issued to persons at least sixteen years of age, who are in a position, by producing a removal certificate or other similar evidence, to establish their identity, and are able to prove by means of insurance receipt, certificate of employment, etc., that they have recently been in work. "Wayfarers who apply for relief at a relief station, but are not in possession of a travelling pass, will first be referred to the police as being 'homeless persons.' Only when the local police authorities certify that they have performed, with due industry, a task of work set by such authorities, and of at least one day's duration, and that no other objection exists to the issue of a travelling pass, can such pass be issued, and such persons be admitted to the regular relief offered by the station. [Persons relieved as 'homeless' are received into the relief station on the first or second day, according as the police require them to work for one day or two days, after completion of their work, and on the following morning they work for such a period as is prescribed by the rules of the station in return for the relief received by them, and then receive their pass.] "The pass and all the other documents must be given up to the proper authorities of the relief station, and will be returned only after the required task of work has been performed. "When a pass is issued, a note to that effect will be stamped on the other documents belonging to the holder. The stamp will show the place and date of the issue of the pass. An insurance receipt may not be stamped. "(4) At each relief station, the wayfarer's pass shall be stamped with the date of his departure, which shall be evidence that the holder has completed the last section of his journey according to regulations, that he has not refused any work offered to him, and has performed the task assigned to him at the station according to regulations. "The hour of departure and the name of the next station to which the holder proposes to travel must on every occasion be entered on his pass. "(5) The holder of a pass is not allowed to make, or permit to be made, any entry in the same. Any such falsification, as also the use of the pass by any person other than the one to whom it was issued, is punishable (Penal Code, Section 363.) "(6) The managers of travellers' hostels and of relief stations are authorised to confiscate any pass of which an improper use shall have been made. "The cardinal principle to be observed is 'Work in the morning, travel in the afternoon.' Relief at a relief station will only be given if the man's pass contains the stamp of the station of departure dated on the same day as his application, and only at the station of destination. The traveller must arrive within such a time after his departure as is consistent with the distance from the station of departure, and with the hour of his departure entered upon the pass. "(7) In special cases, especially in winter, and if the nearest station where the night is to be spent is more than five hours' walk from the station of departure, a wayfarer may be allowed to leave in the forenoon, and be given a meal before his departure. Whenever long distances have to be traversed, light refreshment or an order for a meal at some intermediate place (substation) may also be supplied. "(8) Employment maybe sought only through the intervention of the Labour Registry in connection with the relief station. Going about in search of work is prohibited. "Anyone refusing to accept a suitable situation when offered will not be eligible for work and relief at a relief station. "If a situation cannot be found for a man, he is required to perform the work allotted to him at the relief station. The nature and the duration of this work are determined by the manager of the station. By accepting relief, the wayfarer undertakes the obligation to perform the work allotted to him, and to comply with the regulations in force at the station. Any man, accepting relief, who afterwards refuses to work and leaves the station without permission will be prosecuted for fraud. "(9) Wayfarers who, by reason of their having failed to comply with these regulations, have to be refused relief, and who are destitute, will be referred to the local authorities. Any man who arrives too late shall not be admitted at the relief station, but shall be referred to the police authorities for further relief. On the following morning, he will be required, in exchange for the relief provided for him by the police, to perform a task of work; and at noon he must have his pass stamped at the relief station with the words 'Relieved by the Police,' and thereupon he will again become subject to the regulations for travelling workmen. Any man whose pass does not show the proper continuous sequence of stamps, and who is unable to give a satisfactory explanation of the fact, will be treated as if he did not possess a pass. Any man who may be found in localities or on roads other than those mentioned on the map displayed at the relief station, is liable to be punished as a vagrant wandering without reasonable cause. "(10) On Sundays and other days recognised by the Federation of Relief Stations as holidays, rest and relief (including a mid-day meal) will be allowed in the forenoon to all such persons as arrived the day before at the right time, and with their passes in order. It is expected that every man will attend the religious service of the confession to which he belongs. In the afternoon the men will proceed on their journeys." Hitherto the Provincial Diet of Westphalia has borne one-third of the cost of the Relief Stations in the Province, and the remainder has fallen on the District and Communal Authorities. During the year October 1, 1907 to September 30, 1908, 116,995 persons were helped on the way by these institutions, and the total cost was £5,655. A system of Relief Stations of this kind must cover a given area completely in order to realise its purpose, which is to assist destitute wayfarers to travel in search of work without being under the necessity of begging. The best developed system yet in existence is weakened by gaps here and there, and it was with a view to perfecting the network of Stations in Prussia that the Government of that country, on the initiative of Pastor von Bodelschwingh, passed the law of June 29, 1907, for the establishment of Labour Depots for travelling work-people (_Wanderarbeitsstättengesetz_). This novel law gives power to the Diets of Provinces to require urban and rural districts (circles) to establish, maintain, and administer Labour Depots; such decisions must be supported by a majority of two-thirds of the votes given. It is the purpose of these Labour Depots to "procure work for destitute able-bodied men who are in search of employment away from their place of residence, and meantime to provide them with food and lodging in return for a task of labour." Districts in which Depots are not established may be required to contribute to the cost of Depots elsewhere by which they benefit. While the cost of the Depots falls, in the first instance, on the Districts, the Provinces must refund to them two-thirds of the costs, and the State contributes to the cost of all Labour Registries carried on in connection with Depots. Communes in which Depots are established must co-operate with the Districts in their management, and on payment must provide suitable buildings, so far as these have hitherto been used for the same purpose. A fully organised Labour Depot, as contemplated by this law, comprises, in addition to a workshop or workyard, a Hostel in which work-seekers are lodged and fed in return for a task of work, and a Labour Registry. It is not necessary that either Hostel or Registry should be carried on independently of existing institutions of the kind so long as these are efficient and it is possible to come to a satisfactory working arrangement with them. It is required that the work to be performed shall entail real exertion, yet be suited to every man's capacity, and as far as possible be in keeping with his normal occupation. As to the food supplied, it is stipulated that it shall be simple yet "so abundant that the wayfarer may remain capable of walking and working and may not be compelled to beg on the way." The admission of wayfarers to Labour Depots and their travelling from one Depot to another are to be regulated by rules issued by the Provincial Authorities. Already the law has been put in operation in Westphalia and several other parts of Prussia. The regulations adopted by the Provincial Authorities of Westphalia follow closely those which have hitherto governed the system of Relief Stations there. The Depots only admit males of at least sixteen years, who are destitute and capable of work, and are in search of work away from their place of residence, but a legal right to admission is not recognised. Any wayfarer who does not possess more than one mark (1s.) in money, and cannot find work in his locality is deemed to be destitute in the sense of the law; a man in receipt of adequate travelling benefit is not regarded as destitute, and anyone who has more than a mark and conceals the fact is required to pay for his keep, and is liable to prosecution for fraud. The pass or way-ticket used is substantially the same as that of the German Hostel Association (_Herbergsverein_), and the conditions of its issue are: (1) Possession of a certificate of removal from the Police Authorities of the last place of residence, and an insurance receipt card; (2) possession of official labour certificates, such as a sickness insurance card, showing that the bearer has worked at least six weeks during the preceding three months, or has been incapable of work during that time; (3) the payment of 50 pfennige (6d.) or the performance of one and a half days of work in the Depot for the way-ticket. Men who have been discharged from the army, from Labour Houses, or from prison need only produce their discharge papers, instead of documents 1 and 2 during the first four weeks after such discharge. A way-ticket and other documents of identification must be produced, and the former must be stamped, at each Depot visited. The labour task imposed lasts a day and a half or twelve hours, and the wayfarer may go on his journey after dinner on the third day, provided his task be completed, but when the pressure of inmates is great he may be discharged half a day sooner, _i.e._, on the morning of the third day, and the same relief may be given when the distance to the next Depot exceeds five hours of walking. Food may be given to be eaten on the way, or a ticket for the same may be given instead. Where the distance is very far, where a Labour Colony or a hospital is the objective, and in case of bad weather or physical unfitness, the wayfarer may be given a free railway ticket. Admission is refused, and the way-ticket may be forfeited, if a wayfarer presents himself a second time within six months at the same Depot. Should a way-ticket be withdrawn, a pass to a Voluntary Labour Colony may be issued instead, and after four weeks' work there, or in a similar institution recognised by the Provincial Authority, a new ticket may be issued. Wayfarers who are not, for any reason, admitted to a Depot must be referred to the local authorities as homeless. Such a man, on producing a certificate from these authorities to the effect that he has performed the work assigned to him for two days, and has applied to the police of his last place of residence for a removal certificate and an insurance receipt card, may be maintained in the local Depot until noon of the sixth work-day in return for eight hours of work a day; should the removal certificate arrive in the interval a way-ticket may be issued to him, and in the event of its non-arrival, the Depot may apply to the police to issue a new insurance receipt card. If the removal certificate is not produced, the wayfarer receives a pass to a Voluntary Labour Colony at noon on the sixth work day. It is proposed to introduce a system of Labour Depots in Wurtemberg on the Prussian model, and an Association has been formed to this end. The work to be offered will be street and road making and cleaning, garden and field work, stone breaking, wood cutting, etc. Lodgings will be found for the wayfarer in neighbouring Hostels where they exist, or else in Poorhouses, hospitals, or private houses. Bavaria is already provided with a large and efficient network of public Labour Depots and Relief Stations for the benefit of wayfarers. Their number in 1904 was 347, of which 150 were maintained by the District Authorities, 113 by the Communal Authorities, and 84 by associations. In that year the Depots relieved 644,556 persons, of whom 328,201 lodged for the night, 32,978 were agricultural labourers, 353,356 were artisans, 46,950 builders' or other labourers, 41,007 factory operatives, 14,074 commercial assistants, and 156,191 followed miscellaneous or unknown occupations. The year's aggregate expenditure was £16,652 and the income £17,533, of which £3,795 was received from private persons, £12,066 from District and Communal Authorities, £169 from trade guilds and similar associations, and £305 from miscellaneous societies. The working men's Hostels, on the other hand, while fulfilling the same purpose as the Relief Stations, are carried on by philanthropic societies, generally with public help from various sources. They are decent lodging-houses which, as a rule, admit several classes of persons--wayfarers who are able to pay for the accommodation afforded, those who perform a task of work instead of paying money, and boarders of a more or less permanent kind. Travellers who receive board and lodging in return for work are required to identify themselves by means of a formal way-ticket, which can be obtained at the cost of a day's labour. I have visited many of these Hostels in all parts of Germany, and it is impossible to speak too highly of them. They are quiet and decorous houses of call, where wandering toilers rest and are thankful for the kindly care, the thoughtful foresight, and the paternal solicitude which minister to their well-being. With these "homes from home" to resort to, the respectable workman may make the entire circuit of the country, if needful, under conditions that do not weaken his morality and self-respect. Above all, they give him the opportunity of keeping out of the current of promiscuous humanity--composed of elements so largely degraded, baneful, and turbulent--which is expressed by the pregnant word "trampdom." I cannot do better than enumerate the conditions upon which the way-ticket of the German Hostel Association (an organisation with ramifications in every part of the Empire), is issued since it is accepted by the Police Authorities everywhere as an official document, the exhibition of which protects the possessor against the undesirable attentions of perambulating constables on the look-out for idle mendicants. It is a principle of the association to regard as "without means," and therefore proper subjects for help, any workman who has no more than 1s. in his pocket, and is unable to find employment in the town where he happens to be located. Such a man is received to the full benefits of the Association without formality or fee, though if by reason of age, sickness, or physical infirmity of any kind, he should be unfit for the road, or for work, the services of the Poor Law Authorities are enlisted on his behalf. Thus, a workless artisan or labourer, desirous of going in search of employment, can at once obtain a way-ticket on proof given of his _bona fides_, and so equipped he is able to walk any necessary distance without cost to himself. An official of the local Hostel--for most towns of importance possess at least one--helps him to draw up his plan of route, which is so arranged that after five or six hours of moderate walking each day, he may land at the door of a hospitable Shelter, where food, lodging, and due care for his moral welfare await him. No superfluous _detours_ are allowed; the route chosen is as direct as possible, and is only conditioned by the existence on the way of the necessary places of call. Though the entertainment offered is without money, however, it is not without price; the price being several hours of light employment, suited to the man's character and capacity, before the day's march begins; nevertheless, the task may be omitted where circumstances justify it. The wayfarer may present himself at the Hostel as soon in the afternoon as he likes, but he must not turn up later than seven o'clock. On Sunday no work is required, but a religious service takes its place, though in the afternoon the men are sent on their way as on any other day. Many of these lodging-houses serve simultaneously as Labour Registries, or are associated with such agencies, in which case an attempt is made to provide work for such wandering workmen as are not particular as to their destination. Should suitable employment be offered, it must be accepted on pain of forfeiting claim to further help from the Association and its shelters. Without a way-ticket no one is admitted to a Hostel. This document is handed in immediately on arrival, and is retained until the owner's departure the following day. In the meantime, it is stamped in a place provided for the purpose with the date and the name of the station, and the name of the succeeding station is added in writing by way of direction to the wanderer. The personal data which are entered on the way-ticket are certainly sufficient in number and detail to prevent abuse and fraud. Besides name, place, and date of birth, occupation, last place of work, and religious confession, they include the man's height, the colour of his eyes and hair and the shape of his face, and other notable traits can be added at the Directors discretion. In 1908 the number of Hostels affiliated to the German Hostel Association was 454. During the year 2,622,000 persons were received in the Hostels for 4,547,028 nights, an increase of 551,922 persons and 483,818 nights as compared with 1907. Of those housed, 1,871,271 paid for their accommodation, 716,273 worked in return for it (these 2,587,544 persons being workpeople in transit), and 34,456 were more or less permanent boarders. Work was found by the Hostel Labour Registries for 139,088 persons. Great as is the value of these two types of institutions in helping the unemployed to obtain work, they perform a further useful service in removing from such people the temptation to mendicancy, and in clearing off the mere loafers. For it is a significant fact that the establishment of public Relief Stations has invariably had the same effect upon the tramp which the hardening of casual ward discipline has had in England; where Relief Stations have appeared the tramp has disappeared, for the simple reason that their existence gave him no excuse for begging, while the work which they offered him was not to his mind. Herr von Massow, a prominent worker in the German Relief Station movement, writes:-- "When the system was carefully adopted in wide areas the success was great and auspicious. The itinerant population of the highways greatly decreased, and the houses of correction were empty. It must not be assumed, however, that the vagrants quite abandoned the highways; they rather migrated to districts in which there were no relief stations, and large numbers crossed over the frontier, into Holland, Austria, France, and even Italy."[67] [Footnote 67: "Der Wanderer," 1909, p. 355.] According to Pastor von Bodelschwingh, vagabondage has almost disappeared in those districts of Westphalia in which a rational system of Relief Stations and Hostels has been established. He quotes the Local Authority of Herford as saying that "since the regulation of the way-ticket and Hostel system, the vagrancy and begging nuisance has almost ceased; our boundary inspectors have officially confirmed this." The same effect has followed from the same cause in South Germany. The monthly journal of the German Hostel Association recently stated that:-- "The development of the relief stations created eighteen or twenty years ago has led to the establishment of a central station at Constance, which has been attended by great success. Street and house begging has almost disappeared, and the cases of robbery and theft have greatly diminished."[68] [Footnote 68: _Ibid._, p. 351.] In Switzerland provision is made for wayfarers on much the same lines. Work-seekers possessed of the recognised papers of identification are, on application, supplied by the police with food and lodging, or they may apply to the depots maintained with Government help by the Inter-cantonal Union of Relief Stations. This Union now covers fourteen out of the twenty-two Cantons of the Confederation and its Relief Stations are modelled after the German pattern. In many places accommodation is provided for the wayfarer at the police stations, at others inns and private houses are used; the number of special Hostels is small. Contrary to the practice of the German Relief Stations, however, work is not necessarily required in return for the food and lodging given; if the applicants are regarded as genuine work-seekers they are sent on their way as soon as possible. The official Relief Stations work hand in hand with employment registries and other agencies in the towns, in the endeavour to procure suitable work for those who desire it locally. New garments and shoes are often given to those who need them. The regulations of the Relief Stations do not differ greatly from those in force in Westphalia, as already quoted in full. A wayfarer desiring relief is required first to have his papers "controlled" or examined, and this is done in many cases at the police station. The examination satisfactory, he receives a stamped and dated ticket entitling him to admission to a Station; his name, calling, age and ordinary place of residence being entered in a register for record and future reference. As a rule, no relief is given if the applicant proves not to have been in work within the preceding three months, and if he refuses the work offered to him, though exceptions are frequently made. A wayfarer is only given food or lodging once in six months at the same Station. When he goes on his way he takes with him a stamped and dated way-ticket, which he must present at the next place at which he stops, but he must travel at least two hours from one Station to another in order to qualify again for relief. In case of any abuse of relief, infringement of the regulations concerning lodging, or failure to produce valid papers, the applicant is handed over to the police. Every person carrying a wayfarer's book must have a certificate from his employer stating the date of last employment, and the signature of the employer must be authenticated by the local police or by the stamp of the Relief Station. Summarising the operations of all the Relief Stations affiliated to the Inter-cantonal Union, I find that during 1908, 180,246 persons were relieved, 128,859 being lodged for the night, and 51,387 receiving dinner only. The cost of the Stations was £7,100, of which maintenance represented £5,380. The State contributions towards the expenditure amounted to £2,820, or 40 per cent. of the whole. It appears that 5,625 applicants for relief were referred to the police, and that the waytickets of 117 were confiscated. Of the persons relieved 14·1 per cent. were under twenty years of age, 35·8 per cent. were between twenty and thirty years, 19·8 per cent. were between thirty and forty years, 15·6 per cent. were between forty and fifty, 10·5 per cent. between fifty and sixty, and 4·1 per cent. were above sixty years. Employment was found for 5,356 of the wayfarers by means of the Labour Registries attached to the Stations. As in Germany, so in Switzerland, it has been found that the existence of these Relief Stations, far from encouraging vagabondage, has exactly the opposite effect, thanks to the stringent control which is exercised. The genuine seeker after work knows that he can claim accommodation free, while the idle vagabond knows that his non-possession of a way-ticket inferentially proclaims him to be a pest, whose proper place is the Labour House, and he makes himself scarce. Excellent as is the work done by the Relief Stations, however, it is held that they will be still more efficient when private enterprise, where it still exists, is superseded by public organisation and administration, and this is the inevitable goal of the system. It is obvious that only when the Stations altogether pass into the care of the Administrative Authorities will it be possible to secure that uniformity of management which is so desirable. It is also probable that more will be done to bring the Stations into closer relationship with the labour organisations. Each may be regarded as complementary, the one to the other, though it has not hitherto been possible to secure systematic co-operation between them. CHAPTER XI. RECOMMENDATIONS OF RECENT COMMISSIONS. It is now desirable to review the attitude towards this question of three Commissions who have considered and reported upon it during the past seven years--the Viceregal Poor Law Reform Commission for Ireland, appointed in 1903, the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy appointed by the President of the Local Government Board in July, 1904, and the Royal Commission on the Poor Law, appointed in December, 1905. The Irish Viceregal Commission, in their Report published in 1906, came to the following conclusions:-- "Our opinion agrees with that of the majority of witnesses examined before us, that people who are travelling about the country without employment, without any means of their own, and who have to support themselves by mendicancy or recourse to the Poor Law, or by sleeping out, should be brought by the police before a court of justice. If they could not then, or through the police or other agency after remand, give satisfactory evidence (documentary or other), to the court, of their being habitually hard working and self-supporting, there should, we suggest, be power conferred upon a Court of Jurisdiction to direct them to a Labour House in which the inmates should, as is said to be the case in Belgian establishments, be required to make or produce the food, clothing and necessaries for such an institution. We think that, at all events to begin with, four such Labour Houses might be established for Ireland, and that four disused workhouses might be set apart for the purpose."[69] [Footnote 69: Report of the Vice-Regal Commission on Poor Law Reform in Ireland, Vol. I., p. 55.] It may be observed here that the Royal Commissioners who inquired into the working of the Irish Poor Law in 1833 recommended, in their Report of 1836, that the able-bodied paupers should be employed in the reclamation of waste land, in works of drainage and fencing, and in the building of improved dwellings. They also recommended the establishment of penitentiaries for vagrants, and the deportation of suitable persons as free labourers to a non-penal Colony. Substantially this was the method of treating loafers practised in Holland at that time. The Vice-Regal Commission enumerated the following classes of people as suited to detention in Labour Houses:-- (1) Rural vagrants over fifteen years of age. (2) Urban loafers over fifteen years of age. (3) Mothers of two or more illegitimate children except when nursing infants. (4) All parents who are unfit to be entrusted with the charge of their children, except mothers nursing infants. (5) Any able-bodied soldiers or ex-solders who are not self-supporting or are not supported by the Military Authorities. (6) Any able-bodied adult persons who may, at the instance of the police or the local Poor Law Authority, be considered by a Court of Justice as proper cases, owing to their failure to support themselves. (7) Destitute able-bodied adults who may voluntarily desire to be admitted as inmates; and (8) Any destitute able-bodied adults who may be offered an order of admission to a Labour House by Poor Law Authorities or their officials in the prescribed manner, _i.e._, as a test of destitution.[70] [Footnote 70: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 58.] As to the character of the Labour Houses proposed, the Report of the Commission states:-- "We should be sorry to see in them anything suggestive of more comfort than can be derived from very hard work, enough of simple food, clean healthy buildings, fittings and surroundings, but everything of the plainest, roughest kind. After the first starting and equipment of the Labour House we think that the inmates, all of whom would be able-bodied, ought to be obliged to rely, as far as possible, on their own labours for their support, and as a stimulus they should be individually made to feel the necessity for personal exertion."[71] [Footnote 71: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 55.] The Commission further proposed that these Houses of Detention should be provided and administered by the General Prisons Board and their cost be defrayed by the National Treasury. The English Committee on Vagrancy was the immediate outcome of the more active interest taken in Poor Law circles in the question of vagrant regulation during the years 1901 to 1904, and of the great increase in vagrancy which took place during the trade depression of three of those years. It must be remembered that the Vagrancy Committee were called upon to inquire into the case of wayfarers exclusively; nevertheless, some of their recommendations are equally applicable to loafers of other classes. The terms of reference were--"To inquire and report with respect to England and Wales as to (1) the law applicable to persons of the vagrant class (_i.e._, the statutory provisions and the bye-laws, rules, and regulations made thereunder); (2) the administration of the law applicable to these persons; and (3) any amendments which should be made in it or in its administration." The findings of the Committee are crystallised in the words: "It is clear to us that the present system neither repels nor reforms the vagrant." The negative and positive recommendations which were embodied in the Committee's Report, a document marked by exceptional ability and breadth of view, may be briefly summarised as follows. This Report is the more important since the Poor Law Commission, wisely abstaining from further inquiries into this aspect of Poor Law administration, substantially endorsed the conclusions of the Vagrancy Committee and the remedial measures based upon them. The Committee accept the view that the relief of vagrants should be altogether removed from the jurisdiction of the Poor Law and be entrusted to the police, adding:-- "We have considered in detail the difficulties in the way of this change, and on the whole, we see no reason to doubt that if the importance of effecting it is once realised, the necessary adjustments can be made without serious friction."[72] [Footnote 72: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol. I., p. 34.] In sympathy with this view the Committee would empower the police to provide lodging for genuine wayfarers, but they would detain habitual vagrants in Forced Labour Colonies. "Our view is that means should be provided to allow of the habitual vagrant being dealt with otherwise than under the Vagrancy Act, and that as far as possible, he should be treated not as a criminal, but as a person requiring detention on account of his mode of life. This is the principle which governs the system adopted in Belgium under the law of 1891. For this purpose we propose that a class of habitual vagrants should be defined by statute, and that this class should include any person who has been three or more times convicted during a period of, say, twelve months of certain offences now coming under the Vagrancy Act, namely, sleeping out, begging, refusing to perform task of work in casual wards, or refusing or neglecting to maintain himself so that he becomes chargeable to the poor rate. It will be seen that we do not propose to create any new offence, and that under the existing law, this class could be dealt with as incorrigible rogues. Under this proposal, a means is provided of enabling the Poor Law authorities to deal with the class of "ins and outs" who now cause considerable trouble in workhouse administration. We suggest that persons coming within this definition should be committed by a petty sessional court to quarter sessions or assizes, and there dealt with in the same way as the incorrigible rogue, with the exception that the sentence should be committed to a labour colony for a term not exceeding three years."[73] [Footnote 73: _Ibid._, p. 59.] The Committee further endorse the objections to short sentences which have been advanced times without number by critics of the Vagrancy Laws, and propose that delinquents committed to the proposed Labour Colonies should be detained for not less than six months or more than three years, but that there should be power to curtail a sentence when a prisoner showed good conduct or earned a certain sum of money in wages, as is done at Merxplas. "The evidence we have received shows conclusively that from any practical point of view, it is impossible to defend a sentence of a few days. That it is in no way deterrent to the vagrant is the opinion of all the witnesses.... We are so fully convinced of the futility and needless expense of the short sentence, that we consider it necessary to urge that in any case, where the magistrate deems it expedient to give a sentence of less than fourteen days for a vagrancy offence, the sentence should be for one day only.... A sentence for one day means that the prisoner is detained until the rising of the court, and then discharged. Under our proposal this sentence would be a conviction; the conviction would be recorded, and the offender would be warned by the court that on his second or third conviction he would be imprisoned for a considerable period or, if our later recommendations are accepted, he would be committed for a still longer period of detention in a labour colony as a habitual vagrant."[74] [Footnote 74: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol. I., pp. 51 and 53-54.] The Committee adopted my view that Voluntary Labour Colonies of the German type are useless for persons of the loafing class. "It is clear that a labour colony of the German type is of little use for dealing with persons of the tramp class. Mr. Dawson says that 'it is not disciplinary in the coercive sense: it is purely voluntary; the inmates can stay or not as they please.' Many of this type of colonists come again and again, and are termed 'colony loafers.' They correspond to the 'ins-and-outs' of our English workhouses. The object of the colonies is to effect some moral reformation, but it appears that three-fourths of the colonists have been previously imprisoned, and there is no evidence that any substantial improvement results from the time spent in the colonies. Mr. Dawson expresses his opinion thus:-- 'Speaking generally, I do not think that you can regard them as being reformatory institutions. The inmates do not stay long enough and the discipline is not severe enough.'"[75] [Footnote 75: _Ibid._, p. 66.] They also include the existing English Labour Colonies in the same criticism. "None of these Colonies," they say, "is intended primarily for persons actually belonging to the vagrant class; there is no power of detention, and the conditions are generally superior to what would be desirable in a Colony to which habitual vagrants would be committed."[76] [Footnote 76: _Ibid._, p. 70.] The Committee further agree that a purely agricultural Colony is altogether inferior to one in which trades and industries are carried on in conjunction with farm work, and that only on this twofold basis can a Labour Colony be conducted economically and efficiently. "Apart from the fact that agriculture alone would not pay, the experience of labour colonies is that agriculture could not be relied upon as the sole employment for the colonists: on wet days throughout the year, in frosty weather, and, indeed, during a great part of the winter, but little farm work could be carried on; again, some of the colonists would be quite unfitted for work of this character; and, lastly, there would be difficulty in disposing of the surplus agricultural produce without affecting outside industries. Everywhere the managers of colonies have found it necessary to establish workshops and various kinds of indoor industries in addition to work on the land, and it seems clear that the organisation of indoor industries must take the foremost place in a colony if employment has to be found for a large body of colonists all the year round."[77] [Footnote 77: Report of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, Vol. I., p. 80.] Very wisely and necessarily, too, the Committee have called attention to a danger which, unless closely watched, would discredit past redemption any public Detention Colonies that might be established in this country--the danger of launching into extravagant, foolish, and needless expenditure on buildings and initial installation. "We are strongly of opinion that as regards any buildings coming within our proposals, means should be adopted to protect the ratepayer from any expenditure that is not really necessary for the object in view."[78] [Footnote 78: _Ibid._, p. 87.] The Committee would deal kindly with the private interests which may be expected to raise an outcry against Labour Colony competition in the labour market. While, however, they would restrict competition with free industry as far as possible, they add the reservation that on that principle free labour would not have to compete with the Colonies--in other words, the latter should have a right to supply, if able, the whole of their own needs. The Committee would adopt in full the Continental practice of allowing the inmates to earn wages out of which to supplement their food rations and to save for the day of release. "We realise the futility of establishing labour colonies for the reformation of the habitual vagrant unless some means can be devised of making him work: and it would be undesirable to have to resort to constant punishment to enforce the performance of the daily task. The punishments, too, would be limited; bread and water diet could not be given continually, and confinement to a cell would probably soon lose its effect. Compulsion, therefore, would in some cases be impossible, and the inducements to good conduct and industry which are held out to the inmates of prisons, such as letters or visits from their friends, classification indicating superiority of some kind, and so on, would scarcely appeal to the majority of the inmates of a vagrant colony. We believe that the best and simplest method of securing the desired end would be to allow the colonists to earn by industry and good conduct small sums of money, a portion of which should be retained until their discharge, and a portion handed over to them weekly to spend, if they like, at the canteen of the colony in the purchase of extra articles of food, tobacco, etc.; and the accumulation of a certain amount of earnings might afford an opportunity for earlier discharge."[79] [Footnote 79: _Ibid._, p. 77.] It is worthy of note that the Merxplas theory of social reinstatement is virtually embraced by the Committee, who say:-- "In the case of labour colonies, much expense in the way of buildings and staff can be saved by adopting the view accepted at Merxplas, that it is not worth while to go to great expense in preventing the escape of the inmates. If a colonist escapes, and is able to support himself without coming within the reach of the law, his escape from the colony is no matter for regret; if he breaks the law and comes again before a magistrate a proper system of identification will ensure his being sent back to the colony. If the detention is intended not so much as a punishment, but rather as a means of restraining the vagrant from his debased mode of life, the risk of his escaping need not be regarded so seriously as in the case of a criminal committed to prison to expiate his crime." Considering the question of finding employment for discharged prisoners, the Committee recommend that the superintendent of each police division should be responsible for the collection of information as to work available in his district, and that this information should be transmitted at frequent intervals to the chief constable of the county, who would send complete lists to each police station and to the casual wards for the inspection of those seeking work. This recommendation was made before the decision to establish State labour registries in all the large towns. Where this new machinery exists it would clearly be expedient to use it, and for that purpose it would be necessary for each Labour Colony to keep in constant touch with the nearest official registry, receiving its periodical lists of vacant situations, and notifying such reliable labour as it may have at disposal. The public labour registries would in this way be helpful in assisting discharged inmates to find industrial employment, but in so far as agricultural work might be needed, the Colonies would probably have to rely upon their own sources of information. When they come to discuss the authorities which should establish and be responsible for the maintenance of the Detention Colonies, some of the Committee's recommendations seem to me to call for reconsideration. They object to State-managed Colonies on the ground that the State would provide institutions of the wrong kind, and would be sure to establish either too many or too few,[80] and propose that the County Councils and voluntary philanthropic and religious agencies should be left both to establish and manage these institutions. [Footnote 80: "There are no means of estimating approximately the number of tramps who might properly be committed to labour colonies, and it is even more impossible to estimate how many would actually be committed if provision were made by law for the purpose. The result of any Government Department undertaking to supply sufficient accommodation for all the vagrants committed by the magistrates would either be that the accommodation would be wholly inadequate for the requirements, or, as is perhaps more probable, that public money would be wasted in establishing and fitting up institutions in which, for at all events some years, the provision made would be altogether disproportionate to the number of inmates.... "There is another consideration to which we attach great weight, and it is that labour colonies established by the State would inevitably have to be all of the same type, and we have at present no sufficient knowledge to determine exactly what that type should be."--Report, Vol. I., pp. 75.] The County Councils alone are, in my opinion, the proper authorities to undertake this responsibility, and in entrusting it to them we should only be reverting to the practice of the sixteenth century, when the provision of places of work for vagrants was made incumbent upon Quarter Sessions in every county. Moreover, I hold still to the view, advanced in my evidence before the Committee, that there is no warrant whatever for supposing that private enterprise and philanthropy would be willing to provide the funds necessary for establishing these Colonies. Nor, in my opinion, is there any reason why they should. The disciplinary treatment of the vagrant and the loafer is a public duty, and it cannot safely be left to private effort, however well-meaning that effort might be. The Voluntary Labour Colonies of the Continent and the English Colonies of the Salvation Army type rest rightly on a private basis, for their work is avowedly philanthropic and moral, and the men for whom they exist come and go at will. Detention Colonies, on the other hand, would be an essential part of the penal system of the country, and powers of restraint such as they would exercise could not properly be placed in the hands of private individuals or associations. I reassert the contention, therefore, that the Colonies should be provided by the counties according to requirements, the right being given to several counties to combine for the purpose, with a view to avoiding any unnecessary multiplication of establishments. At the same time private Colonies would prove useful auxiliaries to the public Colonies in the way indicated in the third chapter.[81] [Footnote 81: _See_ pp. 89-91.] One type of Colony alone the Committee would require the State to provide--a Colony strictly penal in character for the reception of bad cases. "Although we have recommended that labour colonies should be established and managed by county councils and voluntary agencies rather than by the State, we are of opinion that it may be necessary to have at least one institution under State control. It will no doubt be found that certain of the habitual vagrants will not be amenable to the discipline of the ordinary labour colonies, or from their repeated escapes, and re-committals will need a more severe treatment. We would suggest that instead of sending such cases to a prison, a labour colony of a penal type should be established by the State. This State labour colony should be conducted generally, on the lines of the ordinary labour colony, except that the discipline enforced should be more severe, and that escapes should be more carefully guarded against. It would also be necessary to secure that it did not possess attractions over the ordinary colonies, either in diet or other respects."[82] [Footnote 82: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., p. 82.] They propose also that all Colonies, however established, should be certified by the Secretary of State, should be managed in accordance with regulations issued by him, and should be subject to inspection by officers appointed by him. The Committee do not assent to the immediate abolition of the casual wards. "We see no likelihood," they write, "of its being possible to dispense altogether with casual wards for the reception of needy wayfarers, at all events for some years,"[83] though they propose to place them under the control of the police. As my own evidence is cited in favour of abolition, it may be advisable to say that as an alternative I suggested, as already explained,[84] the establishment of hostels superior to the casual wards for the accommodation of genuine work-seekers. I contend that the casual wards are too good for the vagabond and not nearly good enough for the honest worker. In Germany and Switzerland, as we have seen, accommodation equal to that of a decent working man's cottage can be had in public hostels by the certified wayfarer for the cost of a dirty bed in an English "model" lodging-house, and if the ratepayer were relieved of the heavy direct and indirect cost of maintaining the tramp, he would probably be willing to make provision on generous lines for respectable wayfarers desirous of finding employment. [Footnote 83: _Ibid._, Vol. I., p. 34.] [Footnote 84: _See_ Chap. III., pp 96-103.] Something may, indeed, be said in favour of abolishing the casual wards by degrees only, but the insuperable objection to their permanence is that to retain the wards would mean the retention and toleration of the tramp. It will be useless to wage war against vagrancy if we leave the enemy in quiet possession of his cover. In any event it is clear that until improved accommodation is provided for _bona fide_ work-seekers, the casual wards will have to continue in some form. When such accommodation exists, however, and the tramp is given the alternative of work with freedom or work under restraint, the excuse for the casual ward will disappear. Meantime, the Vagrancy Committee wish to see genuine seekers of work treated differently from the ordinary casuals, in having a merely nominal task of work to perform, instead of one of nine hours, in return for the relief given. "Some means," they say, "should be adopted of discriminating between the wayfarer who is genuinely in search of work and the idle vagrant. Nearly all the witnesses we have examined have expressed themselves in favour of some system of way-tickets as a means of helping the _bona fide_ work-seeker on his way or of assisting to distinguish such a case from the undeserving mendicant. The proposal is one which has received general support. Although the _bona fide_ work-seeker forms but a very small proportion of the total number of vagrants, it is impossible to exclude this class from any consideration of the vagrancy problem. The fact that under the present system the working man on tramp who goes to a casual ward receives just the same treatment there as the professional mendicant, is a direct encouragement to indiscriminate almsgiving, as persons who give to the beggar on the road have the excuse that he may be a _bona fide_ work-seeker who ought not to be treated like the ordinary vagrant. We are strongly of opinion that some better provision should be made to assist the man genuinely in search of work, not only because his case merits different treatment, but because it is most important to remove the excuse for casual almsgiving. It appears that in the case of members of trades unions there is no need of any provision of this sort.... "We propose the performance of a small task by the holder of a way-ticket. It may be urged that if the man is _bona fide_ in search of work he should not be required to do any task; but we consider that a task of a useful but light nature will help to maintain a spirit of independence, and at the same time act as a check to any abuse of the facilities provided. In return for the food and lodging given, it seems only right that the recipient should do some work, but we think he should be free to do the work as soon as he wishes, either on the day of arrival or the next day, so that he can leave the ward as early as possible. For the way-ticket man we propose that there should practically be no detention, and we think that he should generally have better treatment and accommodation than the ordinary vagrants, and be kept as far as possible apart from them. And it should be open to him to remain at the ward for another night if he desires a rest on his journey."[85] [Footnote 85: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., pp. 43 and 49.] The passport or way-ticket system recommended by the Committee is substantially that which has been carried on for years in Westphalia[86] and other parts of Germany in connection with the Relief Stations, as already described, and upon which the Swiss system was modelled. The Committee say:-- [Footnote 86: For the rules of the Westphalian system of Relief Stations, _see_ Chap. IX., p. 212-215, and for text of way-tickets, _see_ Appendix II., p. 254-257.] "We think that the police should be empowered to issue a way-ticket to a man who can satisfy them either that he has worked at some employment (other than a casual job) within a recent period, say three months, and that he has reasonable ground for expecting to get work at a certain place, and that he is likely to keep to it, or that he has some other good ground for desiring to go to some particular place. A case that might be dealt with under the latter description is the sailor who has missed his ship, and wishes to get to some other port. "The ticket should give the man's personal description, his usual trade, his reason for wanting to travel, and his proposed destination, and should contain his signature, and, possibly, his finger-prints for the purpose of testing his identity. It should be in the form of a book, something like the Swiss traveller's book, with spaces on which should be stamped the name of each casual ward visited. We think that the duration of the book should be limited to a certain period, say one month. With this book, the man would go to the casual ward, and be entitled to a night's lodging, supper, and breakfast, and, after performing two hours' work to help to pay for his food and lodging, he should be free to leave the ward whenever he likes. The name of the next ward on the direct line of his route, which he can reach that night, should be entered in the book, and if he arrived at that place he should be treated in the same manner. The book would thus be a record of the man's journey, and show clearly on the face of it whether he is genuinely in search for work."[87] [Footnote 87: Report of Vagrancy Committee, Vol. I., pp. 48, 49.] There would appear to be no reason, however, why the issue of way-tickets should be confined to the police, and the finger-print method of identification, which is well enough for rogues and vagabonds, would be an indignity in the case of _bona fide_ working men. In both respects a certain degree of elasticity seems desirable. Way-tickets might be issued by the State labour registries, the Charity Organization Societies, and relieving officers, and in the case of organised workers by their trade unions, without reference to the police, and the less reputable class of way farers alone might be required to apply to the local police office. The Poor Law Commission have virtually endorsed the Detention Colony proposals contained in the Report of the Vagrancy Committee, while giving them wider application. The Vagrancy Committee considered the vagrant alone; the Poor Law Commission considered him only in so far as he uses the casual wards and hence falls upon public charity, and even so quite incidentally as one among many types of mischievous paupers with whose case existing Poor Law methods and institutions are unable satisfactorily to deal. The recommendations of the Commission, therefore, cover a wide field, yet so far as measures of discipline and restraint go they coincide broadly with the proposals detailed in the earlier pages of this book. The Commission say in the Majority Report:-- "The last and most difficult class with which the Public Assistance Committee will have to deal are those who, before they have any chance of being restored to independence, require detention, discipline, and training for a prolonged period. We may subdivide this class into two divisions:--(1) Those unwilling to work; (2) those whose character and behaviour are such that no employer will engage them.... It does not seem to us that the maintenance and detention of persons who will not work, or whose recent character and conduct are an inseparable bar to their re-entering industrial life, are within the legitimate functions of a Public Assistance Authority. Detention under disciplinary treatment affords the best hope of their reformation, or of preventing them by their example or conduct from contaminating those with whom they come in contact. They should be handed over to that authority whose special duty it is to detain those whose presence at large is a mischief to the community. Detention Colonies under the control of the Home Office should, in our judgment, be established for the reception of this class. We believe that no system of labour or industrial colonies can be properly worked unless there is in reserve a semi-penal institution, to which those who refuse to comply with the rules and regulations of the colony can be sent upon proof of repeated or continuous misconduct."[88] [Footnote 88: Majority Report, Vol. II., pp. 544, 545.] Elsewhere the Commission more particularly specify the following acts as justifying detention:-- (_a_) Wilful refusal or neglect of persons to maintain themselves or their families (although such persons are wholly or in part able to do so), the result of such refusal or neglect being that the persons or their families have become chargeable to the Public Assistance Committees. (_b_) Wilful refusal on the part of a person receiving assistance to perform the work or to observe the regulations duly prescribed in regard to such assistance. (_c_) Wilful refusal to comply with the conditions laid down by the Public Assistance Authority upon which assistance can be obtained, with the result that a person's family thereby become chargeable. (_d_) Giving way to gambling, drink, or idleness, with the result that a person or his or her family thereby become chargeable. They add:-- "The counterparts of the first two of the above offences are already punishable under the Vagrancy Acts, and a third repetition of them renders the offender liable to imprisonment for not more than one year with hard labour. For this punishment we propose to substitute committal to a Detention Colony for any period between six months and three years. This proposal is in general harmony with the recommendations of the Departmental Committee on Vagrancy, and we believe it to be essential to the proper treatment of the ins-and-outs, the work-shy, and the loafer. Moreover, by removing these cases to the care of another authority, the Public Assistance Authority will be enabled to deal more effectively and more hopefully with the better class of workmen applying for assistance."[89] [Footnote 89: _Ibid._, Vol. II., p. 549.] Again:-- "Stronger measures--particularly detention--should be taken in dealing with the ins-and-outs. Public Assistance Authorities should have power to retain the children of such under their care, and to take proceedings to secure the detention and training of the parents in a suitable institution or colony, until they are prepared to maintain themselves and their families outside. "Feeble-minded ins-and-outs should be detained in suitable institutions according to the recommendations of the Royal Commission on the Feeble-minded. "For able-bodied ins-and-outs, who are incapable of maintaining themselves permanently owing to want of discipline, application, or skill, provision should be made by which they would labour according to their strength, and support themselves as far as possible; more varied work might be furnished, and their labour made more productive in supplying the needs of the institution to which they are admitted. "For those frequenting Public Assistance Institutions who are confirmed drunkards, and persons leading immoral lives there should be power of detention after their incapacity to lead a decent life has been proved. "Paupers well able to work, _i.e._, cases of persistent idleness, should be referred to a Detention Colony under the Home Office."[90] [Footnote 90: Majority Report, Vol. II., pp. 282, 283.] As I have already shown, every one of these social offences is punished by detention and disciplinary treatment in Forced Labour Colonies, variously called, on the Continent. Not only so, but we have seen that the power to commit to these institutions is in many towns exercised by the Poor Law Authorities, either independently of or concurrently with the police and the magistrates. Beyond recommending that the Detention Colonies should be established by the State, and that the local Public Assistance Authorities should pay for the maintenance of individuals detained by their order or request, the Commission do not go into details, but accept the general conclusions of the Vagrancy Committee. Not less gratifying than the attitude towards the question of vagrancy of these official investigators is the widespread support which Poor Law Authorities in general have given during the past several years to the repressive policy which is now before the country. The proceedings of the Poor Law Conferences and the Reports of Poor Law Inspectors testify clearly to the new spirit which has come over public opinion. Wherever we look, indeed, signs of changed opinions, abandoned prejudices, and expectations of a new departure are visible. It is not too much to hope and to ask that one of the first steps in the reform of the law of public relief may be the subjection to wholesome systematic restraint of all those parasitic sections of the population which now abuse public and private charity. Only when they cease to obstruct the path of the social reformer will it be possible to view in its true proportions and relationships the momentous question of society's obligation to the unemployed and the helpless poor. APPENDIX I. THE CHILDREN ACT, 1908, AND VAGRANTS. Section 14 (Part II.) of the Children Act, 1908, provides:-- "(1) If any person causes or procures any child or young person or, having the custody or care of a child or young person, allows that child or young person to be in any street, premises, or place for the purpose of begging or receiving alms, or of inducing the giving of alms, whether or not there is any pretence of singing, playing, performing, offering anything for sale, or otherwise, that person shall on summary conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding £25, or alternatively, or in default of payment of such fine, or in addition thereto, to imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for any term not exceeding three months. "(2) If a person having the custody, charge, or care of a child or young person is charged with an offence under this section, and it is proved that the child or young person was in any street, premises, or place for any purpose as aforesaid, and that the person charged allowed the child or young person to be in the street, premises, or place, he shall be presumed to have allowed him to be in the street, premises, or place for that purpose unless the contrary is proved." The Act (Section 20), also empowers a constable or any person authorised by a justice to take to a place of safety any child or young person in respect of whom an offence of the kind has been, or there is reason to believe has been, committed, and (Section 21) where a person having the custody, charge, or care of a child or young person has been convicted of committing such an offence in respect of a child or young person, or committed for trial for such offence, a Court of Summary Jurisdiction may order the child or young person to be committed to the care of a relative or other fit person until the age of sixteen years, or for a shorter period, and (Section 22) may make an order for maintenance during such period on the parent of or other person liable to maintain the child or young person, up to the limit of £1 weekly. Section 118 of the Act provides:-- "(1) If a person habitually wanders from place to place, and takes with him any child above the age of five, he shall, unless he proves that the child is totally exempted from school attendance, or that the child is not, by being so taken with him, prevented from receiving efficient elementary education, be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding, with costs, 20s., and shall, for the purposes of the provisions of this Act relating to the descriptions of children who may be sent to a certified industrial school, be deemed not to be exercising proper guardianship over the child;[91] provided that this provision shall not apply to a child in a canal boat for whose education provision is made under the Canal Boats Act, 1877, as amended by any subsequent enactment. [Footnote 91: _Inter alia_, children "found wandering, and not having any home or settled place of abode or visible means of subsistence," or "found wandering and having no parent or guardian, or a parent or guardian who does not exercise proper guardianship" (Section 58, _b_).] "(2) Any constable who finds a person wandering from place to place and taking a child with him may, if he has reasonable ground for believing that the person is guilty of an offence under this section, apprehend him without a warrant, and may take the child to a place of safety in accordance with the provisions of Part II. of this Act, and that Part shall apply accordingly as if an offence under this Section were an offence under that Part. "(3) Without prejudice to the requirements of the Education Acts, 1870 to 1907, as to school attendance, or to proceedings thereunder, this section shall not apply during the months of April to September inclusive to any child whose parent or guardian is engaged in a trade or business of such a nature as to require him to travel from place to place, and who has obtained a certificate of having made not less than 200 attendances at a public elementary school during the months of October to March immediately preceding, and the power of the Board of Education to make regulations with respect to the issue of certificates of due attendance for the purposes of the Education Acts, 1870 to 1907, shall include a power to make regulations as to the issue of certificates of attendance for the purposes of this Section." Further (Section 75), if children are sent to certified industrial schools under this Section their parents or guardians may be required to contribute towards their maintenance. APPENDIX II. SPECIMEN WAY-TICKETS. I.--WAY-TICKET USED IN GLOUCESTERSHIRE. _Front of Ticket._ ========================================================================== _Counterfoil._ COUNTY OF GLOUCESTER. PASS NO. . PASS NO.-------CHELTENHAM UNION-------day of--------190 . Name . Name---------------- Occupation------------------------- . Occupation . Age-----Height-----Hair-----Eyes-----Complexion---------- . Age . Other distinguishing marks------------------------------- . Height . Came from-----------------Final Destination-------------- .========================================================== Hair . | Arrival. | Departure. | . Unions | | | Eyes . on Road.| Date. Hour.| Date. Hour.| Signature of Master. .---------+-----+------+-----+------+---------------------- Complexion . | | | | | .---------+-----+------+-----+------+---------------------- Other . | | | | | distinguishing.---------+-----+------+-----+------+---------------------- marks . | | | | | .---------+-----+------+-----+------+---------------------- . | | | | | .---------+-----+------+-----+------+---------------------- . | | | | | .========================================================== Date of . Date.| Bread Station | Bread | Hour.| Signature Arrival . | for the Day. | given.| | of Constable. .------+---------------+-------+------+-------------------- Date of . | | | | Departure .------+---------------+-------+------+-------------------- . | | | | Going from .------+---------------+-------+------+-------------------- . | | | | Final .------+---------------+-------+------+-------------------- Destination . | | | | ========================================================================== _Back of Ticket._ +=======================================================================+ | . | | . CASUAL WARD ADMISSION TICKET. | | . | | . NO OF PASS_________________ | | . Admit__________________________ as described on the other | | . side as being examined and registered by me. | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . Unions. | Relieving Officer's | Hour of |Date and Place.| | . | Signature. | Issue. | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | .CHELTENHAM.| | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .-----------+--------------------------+---------+---------------| | . | | | | | .----------------------------------------------------------------| | . This ticket must be kept, and must be presented to and signed | | . by the Relieving Officer of Vagrants for each Union at which | | . shelter is required. | +=======================================================================+ II.--WAY-TICKET OF THE GERMAN TRAVELLERS' HOSTEL ASSOCIATION (ISSUED IN THE FORM OF A BOOK). Surname of Owner ............................................ Christian Name ............................................. Born........................ 19...... at.......................... District ................... Trade....................... Religious Confession........ Description-- Height...................... Hair........................ Eyes........................ Shape of face............... Special characteristics ..................................... ------------------------------------------------------------- OWNER'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE AND PLEDGE. The undersigned pledges himself by his signature to use this way-ticket according to the regulations, and when using the Stations to observe the travelling and labour regulations printed at the close of this book. (_Signed_)........................................... ------------------------------------------------------------- Observations of the Relief Station or Police Authorities regarding papers of identification, extra task work, etc. .................................................. ............................................................ ------------------------------------------------------------- Issued after production of the following papers of identification:--Removal certificate, insurance receipt card, labour certificate. (Officer to strike out the words which do not apply). Issued in the absence of papers of identification as above, after the fulfilment of regulation 3 _d_, and _e_. (Travelling and Labour Regulations). Place of issue................. District ............... Date .......................... +---------+ | | | | Signature of Officer. | Stamp. | | | ............................................ | | +---------+ Observations of the Station or Police Authorities............ ............................................................. ............................................................. CERTIFICATES OF WORK OR SICKNESS. The periods and places of employment or of sickness may be briefly noted here on the production of reliable evidence. ------------+------------+------------+---------------- | | | Remarks or From. | To | At | Stamp. ------------+------------+------------+---------------- | | | | | | | | | | | | ------------+------------+------------+---------------- TRAVELLING STAMP. To be entered in the order of the numbers with the date of departure. Where the sojourn was for more than one day, a stamp to be recorded for each day. --------------------------+--------+------------------ Stamp of the Station | (Hour) | Departure for of Issue. | ...... | ............. +--------+------------------ | | | | 1. | 2. -------+------------------+--------+------------------ (Hour) | Departure for | (Hour) | Departure for ...... | ............... | ...... | .............. -------+------------------+--------+------------------ | | | | 3. | 4. --------------------------+--------------------------- APPENDIX III. BELGIAN LAW OF NOVEMBER 27, 1891, FOR THE REPRESSION OF VAGRANCY AND BEGGING. Art. 1. For the repression of vagrancy and begging, the Government shall organise institutions of correction under the name of "dépôts de mendicité," "maisons de refuge" and charity schools (écoles de bienfaisance). Art. 2. The institutions of correction mentioned in the preceding Article shall be exclusively devoted to the confinement of persons whom the judicial authority shall place at the disposal of the Government to be shut up in a "dépôt." The "maisons de refuge" mentioned in the same Article shall be exclusively devoted to the confinement of persons whom the judicial authority shall place at the disposal of the Government to be confined there, and persons whose confinement is requested by the authority of the commune. The charity schools shall be devoted to persons who are under eighteen years of age and have been placed by the judicial authority at the disposal of the Government, or whose admission has been applied for by the authority of the commune. Art. 3. Persons over eighteen years of age, whose confinement in a "maison de refuge" has been applied for by the authority of the commune, shall be admitted when they present themselves voluntarily, provided with the copy of the order of the burgomaster and alderman authorising their admission. Art. 4. When confinement in a "maison de refuge" has been requested by a communal authority, the costs of maintenance shall be charged to the commune. Art. 5. Persons under twenty-one years of age confined in the "dépôts" shall be entirely separated from inmates above this age. Art. 6. Able-bodied persons confined in a "dépôt" or "maison de refuge" shall be kept to the work prescribed in the institution. They shall receive daily wages, except when withdrawn as a measure of discipline, on which a reserve shall be made in order to form their leaving fund. The Minister of Justice will fix for the several classes in which the inmates are placed, and according to the labour on which they are employed, the rate of the wages and the amount of the reserve. The leaving fund shall be paid partly in cash, partly in clothes and tools. Art. 7. The routine and discipline of the institutions shall be regulated by royal decree. The inmates may be subjected to solitary confinement. Art. 8. Every person found in a state of vagrancy shall be arrested and brought before the police tribunal. Souteneurs shall be treated as vagrants. The decision of the magistrates concerning souteneurs may be appealed against during the period provided for by the code of criminal instruction. Art. 9. Any person found begging may be arrested and brought before the police tribunal. Art. 10. Adult and able-bodied foreigners not residing in Belgium who are found begging or in a state of vagrancy may be at once conducted to the frontier. Art. 11. Persons arrested under the present law may be provisionally liberated by the Minister of Justice or by the tribunals. Art. 12. The magistrates shall verify the identity, age, physical and mental condition, and the mode of life of individuals brought before the police tribunal for vagrancy or begging. Art. 13. They shall place at the disposal of the Government, to be confined in a "dépôt" for at least two years and not more than seven years, able-bodied persons who, instead of working for their living, depend upon charity as professional beggars, and persons who from idleness, drunkenness, or immorality live in a state of vagrancy, and souteneurs. Art. 14. The correctional courts may put at the disposal of the Government, to be confined in a "dépôt" for not less than a year or more than seven years after the completion of their punishment, vagrants and beggars whom they sentence to imprisonment of less than a year for a breach of the penal law. Art. 15. The Minister of Justice may liberate persons confined in a "dépôt" where he considers it inexpedient to prolong their detention for the term fixed by the tribunal. Art. 16. The magistrates may put at the disposal of the Government, to be confined in a "maison de refuge" persons found in a state of vagrancy or begging, without any of the circumstances mentioned in Article 13. Art. 17. Persons confined in the "maisons de refuge" shall be set free when their leaving fund reaches the amount fixed by the Minister of Justice for the several classes in which the inmates are placed, and according to the trade they follow. Art. 18. Persons confined in a "maison de refuge" shall not in any case be kept there above a year against their will. The Minister of Justice shall set free any persons confined in a "maison de refuge" whose detention he considers to be no longer necessary. Art. 19. The Government may at any time conduct to the frontier persons of foreign nationality who have been put at its disposal for detention in a "dépôt" or "maison de refuge." Art. 20. The managers of the "maisons de refuge" shall give to the inmates, upon their leaving the institution, a certificate of their detention, with attestation of good behaviour, if necessary. Art. 21. The cost of maintenance of persons confined in a "dépôt" under a decision of the judicial authority shall be borne up to a third part by the commune of their settlement. The remainder shall be divided equally between the State and the province. The same rule shall apply to the cost of maintenance of able-bodied persons confined in the "maisons de refuge." When a person confined in a "dépôt" or "maison de refuge" under a decision of the judicial authority has no settlement in Belgium, and his settlement cannot be ascertained, the cost of maintenance to be borne by the commune of settlement under the preceding paragraph shall be borne by the province in which he has been arrested or brought before the court. In the case of souteneurs the cost shall be borne by the commune in which they were pursuing their practices. Art. 22. The share falling on the commune of the cost of maintenance of persons confined in the "dépôts" shall be charged to the communal budget. The share falling on the commune of the cost of maintenance of persons confined in the "maisons de refuge" shall be borne by the almshouses and boards of charity, without prejudice to subsidies by the commune in case of the resources of these institutions being inadequate. Art. 23. When a person placed at the disposal of the Government to be confined in a "maison de refuge" is declared by the managers to be non-able-bodied, the cost of maintenance, except in the case of injury or sickness occurring during the confinement, shall be borne, as long as the incapacity for work remains, by the commune of his settlement. The managers must give immediate notice of any such case to the commune of settlement. Art. 24. When the person brought before the police tribunal under Article 8 or Article 9 of the present law is under eighteen years of age, the magistrate, if habitual begging or vagrancy is proved, shall order that he be placed at the disposal of the Government to be confined in a State charity school until he attains his majority. Art. 25. When a person under the age of sixteen is convicted of having wilfully committed an offence punishable with a police penalty, the court, even in the case of a second offence, shall not sentence him to imprisonment or a fine, but shall record the offence and reprimand the child, or, if the nature and gravity of the offence or the circumstances of the case require it, shall place the child at the disposal of the Government until he comes of age. Art. 26. The courts and tribunals may, when they sentence to imprisonment a person under the age of eighteen, direct that he shall remain at the disposal of the Government from the expiration of the sentence until he comes of age. Art. 27. Persons placed at the disposal of the Government under Articles 25 and 26 of the present law shall be confined in a State charity school. Art. 29. Persons under the age of thirteen at the date of entering a State charity school shall remain, during the whole term of their confinement, entirely separated from persons who enter at a more advanced age. Similarly, persons entering a State charity school at an age of more than thirteen and less than sixteen years shall remain during the whole term of their confinement separated from persons who enter at a more advanced age. Art. 30. Persons placed at the disposal of the Government under Articles 24, 25 and 26 of the present law, or Article 72 of the Penal Code, may, after confinement in a State charity school, be placed in apprenticeship with a farmer or artisan; they may also with the assent of their parents or guardian be placed in a public or private institution for instruction. Art. 31. Persons confined in State charity schools may be returned conditionally to their parents or guardian by direction of the Minister of Justice, if the parents or guardian afford sufficient guarantees of good character and are in a position to take care of the child. Art. 32. Persons returned conditionally to their parents or guardian, as provided in the preceding Article, may, until coming of age, be re-instated in a State charity school, by direction of the Minister of Justice, if it is considered that their residence with their parents or guardian has become dangerous to their morals. For the purposes of the rule established by Article 29 of the present law, they shall be deemed to have been placed at the disposal of the Government at the date on which they were re-instated. Art. 34. The cost of maintenance and education of persons placed in State charity schools shall be charged to the State as regards one-half; and, as regards the other half, to the commune of settlement if they have been placed at the disposal of the Government by a decision of the judicial authority, or to the commune which has applied for their admission. When a person confined in a State charity school under a decision of the judicial authority has no place of settlement in Belgium and when his place of settlement cannot be ascertained, the cost of maintenance and education charged to the commune of settlement by the preceding paragraph, shall be borne by the province in which he has been arrested or brought before the magistrate. Art. 35. The cost of maintenance and education of children placed at the disposal of the Government under Articles 25 and 26 shall be borne by the State. Art. 37. The King will fix annually the price per day of maintenance in the State charity schools, in the "maisons de refuge" and the "dépôts." Art. 38. The cost of relief given in execution of the present law may be recovered from the persons relieved or from those liable for their maintenance. It may also be recovered from those who are responsible for the injury or illness which necessitates the relief. Art. 39. The following are liable to imprisonment from eight days to three months:-- (1) A person who habitually causes a child under sixteen years of age to beg; and (2) A person who procures a child under sixteen years of age or a cripple for the purpose of being used to excite public pity. In the case of a second offence the penalty may be doubled. Art. 42. The present law shall come into force on January 1, 1892. APPENDIX IV. REGULATIONS OF THE BERLIN (RUMMELSBURG) LABOUR HOUSE. (1) The inmates are required to conform with the present regulations, and always to yield punctual obedience to all officers of the establishment, as their superiors, and to the military guard. (2) After the execution of orders given to them, inmates are only allowed to offer criticisms thereupon or make complaints in a modest manner. Complaints and wishes of any kind shall be brought before the Director of the establishment, to which end the inmate must request his sectional overseer to take him to the Director. Every inmate may address the Director or Inspector, and bring to their notice complaints and wishes, in the course of their walks round. Conscious misrepresentations regarding officers of the establishment or the military guard will be punished. (3) The inmates shall live together in peace and quiet, none interrupting another in his work, but rather by industry, order, and decent moral behaviour encouraging each other to reformation of life and setting each other a good example. Conversation upon past misdemeanours may under no circumstances take place; nor may one inmate reproach another with any crime which he may have committed, or with his past course of life, abuse or threaten him, or in any way physically misuse him. No inmate may avenge himself for a wrong done to him by another inmate. (4) It is forbidden to climb upon the windows, to soil or write upon the walls, to defile the landings, stairs, etc., to sing, shout, whistle, play cards, dice, or other games of chance, to be in possession of money, writing materials (paper, ink, pen, pencil), matches, knives, cord, rope, iron tools, to smoke or chew, drink spirit, or secretly obtain spirit. The inmates may not sell, exchange, give, or lend articles of any kind. Articles found must be at once given up to the overseer. (5) In the morning at the time prescribed in the regulations (Section 26) every inmate must carefully wash his face, neck, and hands, and comb his hair, in the place assigned to him. In general every inmate must continually observe the greatest cleanliness in regard both to his body and clothing, and to all the rooms of the establishment. All deliberate or malicious damage to the property of the establishment or of inmates, besides entailing punishment, must be made good. (6) Any inmate who conceals an illness from which he is suffering is punishable, equally with one who feigns illness. Every trace of vermin on body, bed, clothing, or elsewhere must immediately be notified to the overseer. (7) The quitting of a place of work or other assigned position unnecessarily, or without permission, disturbances of quiet and order, the soiling or tearing down of notices, the use of indecent language, all immodest behaviour, and all swearing and abuse will be punished. (8) During divine service, which every inmate who is not formally excused must attend, the utmost quiet must be observed. Disturbances during prayers in the dining room and during divine service will be emphatically punished. (9) Immediately after the closing of the dining room in the evening every inmate shall unclothe himself to his shirt, place his clothing in an orderly way in the place assigned to him, and go to bed, which he may not leave until the general signal for rising is given in the morning, except, etc. (10) The greatest precaution must be used with fire and light, and every unauthorised or careless use of the same, causing or threatening injury to the building or its effects, will be severely punished. (11) Should a signal be given in the night that fire has broken out, every inmate must at once leave his bed, dress himself, and quietly await orders. Every mischievous or malicious disturbance on such occasions will be punished with special severity. (12) Every attempt to evade control or at concealment at locking up time will be punished. Violent attempts will be punished by the criminal court. Any one who escapes from the establishment or from outside work will be punished with detention on his recapture and anyone taking his uniform when escaping will be prosecuted for theft. (13) Whoever foments a conspiracy amongst the inmates will either be punished for breach of discipline or be handed over to the police. (14) Whoever wishes to write a letter must obtain the Director's permission. Letter-writing takes place, as a rule, on Sunday. The clandestine writing, despatch, and receipt of letters is strictly prohibited. Letters received and those to be despatched must first be examined by the authorised officials. All letters received after being read, are to be deposited in the administrative office, there to be put away with other documents referring to the persons to whom they relate. (15) All intercourse with strangers appearing in the establishment, for whatever purpose, and with the military guard, is forbidden, as are also speaking, beckoning, etc., between male and female inmates. Strangers, as well as members of the municipal or other authority visiting the establishment, may only speak with inmates with the permission of the overseers present. (16) Visits to inmates may only be made by near relatives, and such persons as have to discuss business, and then only with the permission of the Director, and in the presence of an officer. Visitors must furnish proof of their identity and of their _bona-fide_ business with the inmates concerned. Conversation between the inmates may only take place in a language known to the attendant officer. Every abuse of the permission to visit an inmate will entail the immediate removal of the visitor and punishment of the inmate according to the circumstances of the case. (17) Every inmate is required to perform, without demur, and to the best of his ability, the work allotted to him, either inside or outside the establishment. As a rule, all inmates have to work on weekdays an equal number of hours, and to perform in that time a task proportionate to their capacity, the completion of which, however, does not exempt them from working to the end of the usual time. The administration may, however, under certain circumstances curtail the duration of the daily hours of work, and the extent of the task in individual cases. Anyone who, owing to idleness or negligence, fails to perform his allotted task, or who in general works slothfully or negligently, will be punished. No inmate may, without permission, allow his work to be done for him by another or do another's work. (18) No work is done on Sundays and Christian festivals. Prisoners of the Jewish religion may, at their request, be exempted from work on the Sabbath and the Jewish high festivals:--Feast of Weeks, New Year, Feast of Expiation, Feast of Tabernacles, and the first two and the last two days of the Passover; in that event they may, on the order of the Director, be employed in noiseless work as Sundays and the Christian festivals. (19) The proceeds of the work done by the inmates on the order of the administration belong to the Municipality of Berlin, and are paid into the treasury of the establishment. The extra-pay paid to the inmates by employers is divided into two equal parts, of which one is placed at the inmate's disposal for the purchase of extra food, the payment of postage, and other necessary expenses, during his detention, while the other accumulates as savings until his discharge. (20) Every inmate must deposit his tools and implements in an orderly manner at the assigned place at the close of work; he may not take anything with him from the workshop. (21) When going to work, church, meals, exercise, or reporting himself, and when going to bed, the inmates must always be completely and orderly dressed. The men's work aprons must always be left in the workshop.... (22) The extra articles of food which inmates are allowed to purchase out of their earnings are given out on Saturday. Like all barter, the exchange of these extras and gifts of the same are strictly prohibited. (23) Sick persons are required to follow strictly the prescriptions given to them by the doctor. Anyone who feels unwell must report himself to the sectional overseer. Visits to the doctor unaccompanied by the overseer are prohibited. (24) Even inmates whose discharge is due are required to follow the regulations strictly while in the establishment, and until they are discharged. Should they be allowed in exceptional cases after completing their sentences to remain for a further period in the establishment they may not abuse the permission by executing commissions for other inmates. (25) All male inmates must have their hair cut short and their beard shaven, but in the event of objection on the ground of religious scruples or health the Director shall decide. (26) Offences against these regulations, in so far as they do not give rise to judicial proceedings, are punished as breaches of discipline. Disciplinary powers are exercised by the Director. The following disciplinary punishments are awarded: (1) Reprimand; (2) withdrawal of permission to receive visits; (3) withdrawal of permission to write letters and to receive them before discharge; (4) withdrawal of permission to dispose of the part of an inmate's earnings set apart for the purchase of food extras, etc.; (5) partial or complete withdrawal of wages; (6) withdrawal of permission to take outdoor exercise; (7) curtailment of rations; (8) detention; (9) close detention. For the momentary curbing of physical resistance or violent outbreaks and shrieking, chains, chair, and straight-jacket may be used. The isolation of an inmate which may be ordered by the Director in the interest of discipline, pending the decision of the matter at issue, is not regarded as punishment. In suitable cases the Director is empowered to propose to the State Police Authority the prolongation of the term of detention. 
51425	----	This eBook is dedicated to the memory of Mary Cole Akers. The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp [Illustration] THE NEWEST BORZOI BOOKS ASPHALT _By Orrick Johns_ BACKWATER _By Dorothy Richardson_ CENTRAL EUROPE _By Friedrich Naumann_ CRIMES OF CHARITY _By Konrad Bercovici_ THE BOOK OF SELF _By James Oppenheim_ RUSSIA'S MESSAGE _By William English Walling_ THE ECHO OF VOICES _By Richard Curle_ THE BOOK OF CAMPING _By A. Hyatt Verrill_ MODERN RUSSIAN HISTORY _By Alexander Kornilov_ THE RUSSIAN SCHOOL OF PAINTING _By Alexandre Benois_ THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOI (1895-1899) THE COLLECTED POEMS OF WILLIAM H. DAVIES Illustration: THE AVTOBIOGRAPHY OF A SVPER-TRAMP BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES PREFACE BY BERNARD SHAW NEW YORK (Decoration) MCMXVII ALFRED A. KNOPF COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Preface by Bernard Shaw PREFACE I hasten to protest at the outset that I have no personal knowledge of the incorrigible Super-tramp who wrote this amazing book. If he is to be encouraged and approved, then British morality is a mockery, British respectability an imposture, and British industry a vice. Perhaps they are: I have always kept an open mind on the subject; but still one may ask some better ground for pitching them out of window than the caprice of a tramp. I hope these expressions will not excite unreasonable expectations of a thrilling realistic romance, or a scandalous chronicle, to follow. Mr. Davies' autobiography is not a bit sensational: it might be the Post Office Directory for the matter of that. A less simple minded supertramp would not have thought it worth writing at all; for it mentions nothing that might not have happened to any of us. As to scandal, I, though a most respectable author, have never written half so proper a book. These pudent pages are unstained with the frightful language, the debased dialect, of the fictitious proletarians of Mr. Rudyard Kipling and other genteel writers. In them the patrons of the casual ward and the dosshouse argue with the decorum of Socrates, and narrate in the style of Tacitus. They have that pleasant combination of childish freshness with scrupulous literary conscientiousness only possible to people for whom speech, spoken or written, but especially written, is still a feat to be admired and shewn off for its own sake. Not for the life of me could I capture that boyish charm and combine it with the _savoir vivre_ of an experienced man of the world, much less of an experienced tramp. The innocence of the author's manner and the perfection of his delicacy is such, that you might read his book aloud in an almshouse without shocking the squeamishness of old age. As for the young, nothing shocks the young. The immorality of the matter is stupendous; but it is purely an industrial immorality. As to the sort of immorality that is most dreaded by schoolmistresses and duennas, there is not a word in the book to suggest that tramps know even what it means. On the contrary, I can quite believe that the author would die of shame if he were asked to write such books as Adam Bede or David Copperfield. The manuscript came into my hands under the following circumstances. In the year 1905 I received by post a volume of poems by one William H. Davies, whose address was The Farm House, Kennington S. E. I was surprised to learn that there was still a farmhouse left in Kennington; for I did not then suspect that the Farmhouse, like the Shepherdess Walks and Nightingale Lanes and Whetstone Parks of Bethnal Green and Holborn, is so called nowadays in irony, and is, in fact, a dosshouse, or hostelry where single men can have a night's lodging for, at most, sixpence. I was not surprised at getting the poems. I get a gift of minor poetry once a week or so; and yet, hardened as I am to it, I still, knowing how much these little books mean to their authors, can seldom throw them aside without a twinge of compunction which I allay by a glance at one of the pages in the faint but inextinguishable hope of finding something valuable there. Sometimes a letter accompanies the book; and then I get a rapid impression, from the handwriting and notepaper as well as from the binding and type in the book, or even from the reputation of the publisher, of the class and type of the author. Thus I guess Cambridge or Oxford or Maida Vale or West Kensington or Exeter or the lakes or the east coast; or a Newdigate prizeman, a romantic Jew, a maiden lady, a shy country parson or whom not, what not, where not. When Mr. Davies' book came to hand my imagination failed me. I could not place him. There were no author's compliments, no publisher's compliments, indeed no publisher in the ordinary channel of the trade in minor poetry. The author, as far as I could guess, had walked into a printer's or stationer's shop; handed in his manuscript; and ordered his book as he might have ordered a pair of boots. It was marked "price half a crown." An accompanying letter asked me very civilly if I required a half-crown book of verses; and if so, would I please send the author the half crown: if not, would I return the book. This was attractively simple and sensible. Further, the handwriting was remarkably delicate and individual: the sort of handwriting one might expect from Shelley or George Meredith. I opened the book, and was more puzzled than ever; for before I had read three lines I perceived that the author was a real poet. His work was not in the least strenuous or modern: there was in it no sign that he had ever read anything later than Cowper or Crabbe, not even Byron, Shelley or Keats, much less Morris, Swinburne, Tennyson, or Henley and Kipling. There was indeed no sign of his ever having read anything otherwise than as a child reads. The result was a freedom from literary vulgarity which was like a draught of clear water in a desert. Here, I saw, was a genuine innocent, writing odds and ends of verse about odds and ends of things, living quite out of the world in which such things are usually done, and knowing no better (or rather no worse) than to get his book made by the appropriate craftsman and hawk it round like any other ware. Evidently, then, a poor man. It horrified me to think of a poor man spending his savings in printing something that nobody buys: poetry, to wit. I thought of Browning threatening to leave the country when the Surveyor of Taxes fantastically assessed him for an imaginary income derived from his poems. I thought of Morris, who, even after The Earthly Paradise, estimated his income as a poet at a hundred a year. I saw that this man might well be simple enough to suppose that he could go into the verse business and make a living at it as one makes a living by auctioneering or shopkeeping. So instead of throwing the book away as I have thrown so many, I wrote him a letter telling him that he could not live by poetry. Also, I bought some spare copies, and told him to send them to such critics and verse fanciers as he knew of, wondering whether they would recognise a poet when they met one. And they actually did. I presently saw in a London newspaper an enthusiastic notice of the poems, and an account of an interview with the author, from which I learnt that he was a tramp; that "the farm house" was a dosshouse; and that he was cut off from ordinary industrial pursuits by two circumstances: first, that he had mislaid one of his feet somewhere on his trampings, and now had to make shift as best he could with the other; second, that he was a man of independent means--a _rentier_--in short, a gentleman. The exact amount of his independent income was ten shillings a week. Finding this too much for his needs, he devoted twenty per cent of it to pensioning necessitous friends in his native place; saved a further percentage to print verses with; and lived modestly on the remainder. My purchase of eight copies of the book enabled him, I gathered, to discard all economy for about three months. It also moved him to offer me the privilege (for such I quite sincerely deem it) of reading his autobiography in manuscript. The following pages will enable the world at large to read it in print. All I have to say by way of recommendation of the book is that I have read it through from beginning to end, and would have read more of it had there been any more to read. It is a placid narrative, unexciting in matter and unvarnished in manner, of the commonplaces of a tramp's life. It is of a very curious quality. Were not the author an approved poet of remarkable sensibility and delicacy I should put down the extraordinary quietness of his narrative to a monstrous callousness. Even as it is, I ask myself with some indignation whether a man should lose a limb with no more to-do than a lobster loses a claw or a lizard his tail, as if he could grow a new one at his next halting place! If such a thing happened to me, I should begin the chapter describing it with "I now come to the event which altered the whole course of my life, and blighted, etc., etc." In Mr. Davies' pages the thing happens as unexpectedly as it did in real life, and with an effect on the reader as appalling as if he were an actual spectator. Fortunately it only happened once: half a dozen such shocks would make any book unbearable by a sensitive soul. I do not know whether I should describe our supertramp as a lucky man or an unlucky one. In making him a poet, Fortune gave him her supremest gift; but such high gifts are hardly personal assets: they are often terrible destinies and crushing burdens. Also, he chanced upon an independent income: enough to give him reasonable courage, and not enough to bring him under the hoof of suburban convention, lure him into a premature marriage, or deliver him into the hands of the doctors. Still, not quite enough to keep his teeth in proper repair and his feet dry in all weathers. Some flat bad luck he has had. I suppose every imaginative boy is a criminal, stealing and destroying for the sake of being great in the sense in which greatness is presented to him in the romance of history. But very few get caught. Mr. Davies unfortunately was seized by the police; haled before the magistrate; and made to expiate by stripes the bygone crimes of myself and some millions of other respectable citizens. That was hard luck, certainly. It gives me a feeling of moral superiority to him; for I never fell into the hands of the police--at least they did not go on with the case (one of incendiarism), because the gentleman whose property I burnt had a strong sense of humour and a kindly nature, and let me off when I made him a precocious speech--the first I ever delivered--on the thoughtlessness of youth. It is remarkable what a difference it makes, this matter of the police; though it is obviously quite beside the ethical question. Mr. Davies tells us, with his inimitable quiet modesty, that he begged, stole, and drank. Now I have begged and stolen; and if I never drank, that was only an application of the principle of division of labour to the Shaw clan; for several members of it drank enough for ten. But I have always managed to keep out of the casual ward and the police court; and this gives me an ineffable sense of superior respectability when I read the deplorable confessions of Mr. Davies, who is a true poet in his disregard for appearances, and is quite at home in tramp wards. Another effect of this book on me is to make me realise what a slave of convention I have been all my life. When I think of the way I worked tamely for my living during all those years when Mr. Davies, a free knight of the highway, lived like a pet bird on titbits, I feel that I have been duped out of my natural liberty. Why had I not the luck, at the outset of my career, to meet that tramp who came to Mr. Davies, like Evangelist to Christian, on the first day of his American pilgrim's progress, and saved him on the very brink of looking for a job, by bidding him to take no thought for the morrow; to ask and it should be given to him; to knock and it should be opened to him; and to free himself from the middle class assumption that only through taking a ticket can one take a train. Let every youth into whose hands this book falls ponder its lesson well, and, when next his parents and guardians attempt to drive him into some inhuman imprisonment and drudgery under the pretext that he should earn his own living, think of the hospitable countrysides of America, with their farm-houses overflowing with milk and honey for the tramp, and their offers of adoption for every day labourer with a dash of poetry in him. And then, how much did I know about hotels until I read this book! I have often wondered how the poor travel; for it is plain that the Ritzes and Metropoles, and even the hotels noted by Baedeker as "unpretending," are not for them. Where does the man with sixpence in his pocket stay? Mr. Davies knows. Read and learn. It is to be noted that Mr. Davies is no propagandist of the illusions of the middle-class tramp fancier. You never suspect him of having read Lavengro, or got his notions of nomads from Mr. Theodore Watts Dunton. He does not tell you that there is honour among tramps: on the contrary, he makes it clear that only by being too destitute to be worth robbing and murdering can a tramp insure himself against being robbed and murdered by his comrade of the road. The tramp is fastidious and accomplished, audacious and self-possessed; but he is free from divine exploitation: he has no orbit: he has the endless trouble of doing what he likes with himself, and the endless discountenance of being passed by as useless by the Life Force that finds superselfish work for other men. That, I suppose, is why Mr. Davies tramps no more, but writes verses and saves money to print them out of eight shillings a week. And this, too, at a moment when the loss of a limb has placed within his reach such success in begging as he had never before dared to dream of! Mr. Davies is now a poet of established reputation. He no longer prints his verses and hawks them: he is regularly published and reviewed. Whether he finds the change a lucrative one I venture to doubt. That the verses in The Soul's Destroyer and in his New Poems will live is beyond question; but whether Mr. Davies can live if anything happens to his eight shillings a week (unless he takes to the road again) is another matter. That is perhaps why he has advised himself to write and print his autobiography, and try his luck with it as Man of Letters in a more general sense. Though it is only in verse that he writes exquisitely, yet this book, which is printed as it was written, without any academic corrections from the point of view of the Perfect Commercial Letter Writer, is worth reading by literary experts for its style alone. And since his manner is so quiet, it has been thought well by his friends and his publishers to send a trumpeter before him the more effectually to call attention to him before he begins. I have volunteered for that job for the sake of his poems. Having now done it after my well known manner, I retire and leave the stage to him. G. B. S. Ayot St. Lawrence. 1907. Contents Preface by G. Bernard Shaw CHAPTER I. Childhood, 1 II. Youth, 12 III. Manhood, 23 IV. Brum, 32 V. A Tramp's Summer Vacation, 39 VI. A Night's Ride, 46 VII. Law in America, 56 VIII. A Prisoner His Own Judge, 66 IX. Berry Picking, 77 X. The Cattleman's Office, 87 XI. A Strange Cattleman, 101 XII. Thieves, 112 XIII. The Canal, 119 XIV. The House-Boat, 126 XV. A Lynching, 138 XVI. The Camp, 147 XVII. Home, 157 XVIII. Off Again, 168 XIX. A Voice in the Dark, 178 XX. Hospitality, 192 XXI. London, 197 XXII. The Ark, 213 XXIII. Gridling, 227 XXIV. On the Downright, 242 XXV. The Farmhouse, 254 XXVI. Rain and Poverty, 267 XXVII. False Hopes, 274 XXVIII. On Tramp Again, 283 XXIX. A Day's Companion, 296 XXX. The Fortune, 303 XXXI. Some Ways of Making a Living, 310 XXXII. At Last, 317 XXXIII. Success, 329 XXXIV. A House to Let, 338 The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp CHAPTER I CHILDHOOD I was born thirty-five years ago, in a public house called the Church House, in the town of N----, in the county of M----. It was kept by my grandfather, native of Cornwall, a retired sea captain, whose pride it was, drunk or sober, to inform all strangers that he had been master of his own ship, the said ship being a small schooner. In those days there was a steam packet, called the _Welsh Prince_, trading regularly between N----and Bristol, and in the latter town we had relatives on my grandmother's side. The fact of the matter was that my grandmother belonged to Somerset, and she often paid a visit to three maiden sisters, first cousins of hers, living, I believe, near Glastonbury, who had a young relative that had gone on the stage, and was causing some stir under a different name from his own, which was Brodrib. My grandmother held very strong opinions about the stage, and when these first cousins met, no doubt the young man, in those early days, was most severely discussed, and, had he not been a blood relation, would have been considered a sinner too far advanced for prayer. My earliest recollection is of being taken as a small boy with an elder brother to Bristol on the _Welsh Prince_ by my grandfather. I believe the frequency of these trips was mainly owing to the friendship existing between the two captains, as my grandfather seldom left the bridge, taking a practical part in the navigation of the ship and channel--except at times to visit the saloon cabin for a little refreshment. On one trip we had a very stormy passage, and on that occasion the winds and the waves made such a fool of the _Welsh Prince_ that she--to use the feminine gender, as is the custom of every true mariner, of one of whom I am a proud descendant--often threatened to dive into the bowels of the deep for peace. It was on this occasion that my grandfather assisted the captain of the _Welsh Prince_ to such purpose that people aboard acclaimed him as the saviour of their lives, and blessed him for the safety of the ship. It is not therefore to be wondered at when the old man ashore, returning at midnight from this rough voyage with me and my brother, would frequently pause and startle the silent hour with a stentorian voice addressed to indifferent sleepers--"Do you know who I am? Captain Davies, master of his own ship." Whether the police were awed by this announcement, or knew him to be an honest, respectable man with a few idiosyncrasies, I cannot say; but it was apparent to me in those young days that they assisted him home with much gentleness, and he was passed on carefully from beat to beat, as though he were a case of new laid eggs. Alas! the _Welsh Prince_ became childish in her old age. She would often loiter so long in the channel as to deceive the tide that expected her, and to disappoint a hundred people who assembled on the bridge--under which she moored--to welcome her. What with her missing of tides, her wandering into strange courses, her sudden appearance in the river after rumours of loss, her name soon became the common talk of the town. Her erratic behaviour became at last so usual that people lost all interest as to her whereabouts, or whither she had wandered, and were contented to know that she arrived safe, though late. They were not curious to know if she had been dozing in a fog or had rested for a day or two on a bank of mud; whatever she had done, she had been too wary to collide, and, being too slow to dash through the waves, had allowed them to roll her over with very little power of resistance. These things happened until she was condemned and sold, and her mooring place to this day is unoccupied by a successor. When I now cross the bridge and look down on her accustomed place, I think with tender emotion of the past. After the _Welsh Prince_ had been deposed in her old age, accused of disobeying captain and crew, charged with being indifferent to her duties, and forgetful of her responsibilities--her captain, losing his beloved ship, idled a few months ashore and died. No doubt he had grown to love her, but she had gone beyond the control of living man, and a score of the best seamen breathing could not have made her punctual to her duties; therefore he could not reasonably answer the charges made against her. Some other company, it was rumoured, had chartered her for the Mediterranean, which would certainly be much better for her time of life; the Mediterranean being so large a body of water as compared with the Bristol Channel, would allow her more scope for manoeuvres. But all this was idle talk, probably a profane sneer at her old age, for it was told me by an eye-witness, that she was run ashore in an isolated pool at the mouth of the river, stripped unceremoniously of her iron, and her wood-work burned. It is only a few years ago since the river was hers, but her name is seldom mentioned at the present day. It was through being born in a public house that I became acquainted with the taste of drink at a very early age, receiving sups of mulled beer at bed time, in lieu of cocoa or tea, as is the custom in more domestic houses. So that, after my school days were over, I required but very little inducement to drink. At last the old people, being tired of business and having a little property, retired into private life; my father, whom I cannot remember, being dead, and my mother marrying the second time, much to the old folks' annoyance. Their own children having all died, they kindly offered to adopt us three children, the only grandchildren they had; and mother, knowing that such would be to our future benefit, at once agreed. When we were settled in private life our home consisted of grandfather, grandmother, an imbecile brother, a sister, myself, a maidservant, a dog, a cat, a parrot, a dove, and a canary bird. I remember those happy days, and often wish I could speak into the ears of the dead the gratitude which was due to them in life, and so ill returned. My school days began, but I played truant day after day, and the maidservant had to lead me as a prisoner to school. Although small of figure I was a good athlete, and so often fighting that some of my relatives thought that prize fighting was of a certainty to be my future vocation. Mother's father and brothers all took great interest in pugilism, and they knew the game well from much practice of their own. They were never so much delighted as when I visited them with a black eye or a bloody nose, at which time they would be at the trouble to give cunning points as to how to meet an opponent according to his weight and height. "He certainly has the one thing essential," they affirm, one to the other, "and that is the heart. Without that experience would be of no account, but with that it will be the making of him." If I took off my coat to battle in the streets, the shirt itself came off in the lanes and fields. When attending school I would accompany a dozen or more boys "following the leader." Needless to say, I was the leader; and, being a good jumper, would leap over ditches that would try every nerve in my body. Two or three would follow a little less successfully, and then we would bully and threaten the less active to make the attempt. Often we had to drag them out by the hair of the head, and it was in this condition that they were led back to school late--always late. The dirtiest boy, who had had the most pressure put upon him, and was truly the most gentle and least guilty of us all--would be punished the most severely for these escapades, owing to his dirtier condition; and most likely receive more punishment afterwards at home. Strange that I was not a bad scholar, and that I passed all my standards with ease. In the last year of my school days I became captain of the school's football team, and was honoured and trusted by being allowed to take charge of the ball, but owing to making private use of the same, and practising in secret with boys of other schools, I was requested by the Committee to forfeit my trust, although I might still continue captain as aforesaid. If I had been contented with these innocent honours, and had not been so ambitious to excel in other and more infamous parts, all would have been well, and my schooldays would have been something of a credit to me. But unfortunately, at this time, I organised a band of robbers, six in number, and all of good families and comfortable homes. It was our wont to enter busy stores, knowing that small boys would not be attended to until the grown people had finished their purchases. Then we would slyly take things up for a curious examination, at the same time watching a favourable opportunity to surreptitiously appropriate them. When accosted by the shopman as to our wants we would innocently ask the price of some article we had agreed on, and receiving answer, would quietly leave the premises. This went on for some time, and I had nefariously profited by a large assortment of miscellaneous articles, such as paints, brushes, books, bottles of scent and various other items that could not be preserved, such as sweets and confectionery. How this continued for six weeks speaks well for our well laid plans, and our dexterity in the performance of them. My girl, Maggie, who had, during our early acquaintance, received only presents of wild flowers and birds' eggs, and occasionally a handful of nuts, was now the happy possessor of valuable presents in the shape of purses, pocket books, bottles of scents, pencils of silver, not to mention having received a hundred different sorts of sweets and cake that was superior to her mother's. Time after time she promised not to betray me; or any of my confederates. The latter often warned me against reposing confidence in the other sex. One produced a book, at that very moment, which told how a woman betrayed a gang of robbers; and it was his firm opinion that the other sex could not be trusted farther than they could be seen. At home I was cured of thieving by what I thought at that time to be a very remarkable incident--no more or less than the result of witchcraft. One day my grandmother happened to be standing before the fire cooking, and above the fireplace was a large mirror, towards which her eyes were turned. Thinking this a favourable opportunity to rifle the sugar basin, I lost no time in making the attempt; but my fingers had scarcely closed on a large lump when the old lady, without in the least turning her head, cried in a shrill voice, "You dare!" For my life I could not account for this discovery, and it sent such a shock through me that I never again attempted in the old lady's presence to be other than honest. She could close her eyes in the arm chair and even breathe audibly, but I never had the confidence to make another attempt. But this incident at home had no detrimental effect on my courage abroad. One day I and my lieutenant played truant from school, and making our way up town, began to execute various little plans that had been concocted the night before. After several desperate sorties on confectionery, with our usual success, we began to meditate on higher game. We blundered at a cigar case in a chemist shop, and had to leave our spoils behind. Although fearful, we entered a large grocery store, and were having great success, when my lieutenant dropped a bottle of scent, and not having the presence of mind to stand his ground and make it appear an accident, made a guilty rush through the open door. I followed him at once, and catching him up, got clear ahead. But the hue and cry was out, and every one shouted, "Stop thieves!" This terrible cry, taken up by one and another, took all the strength out of our legs, and our own sheer terror brought us to a halt. In five minutes we were captured and crying over our ill luck in a prison cell. We made a confession of everything, and the rest of the gang were soon under arrest. Our houses were visited by detectives and searched, and different articles found in cupboards, drawers, desks, and chests which were soon identified by the shopkeepers. Maggie, at the instigation of her mother, gave several articles to the police, with information, proving to me, even in those early days, how little her sex was to be trusted. The unfortunate part of this was that we all had good homes. My grandfather would most certainly have paid a fine of twenty or thirty pounds to save me from punishment, and offered, I believe, to do the same. Alas! the magistrates were inexorable, and I and my lieutenant were sentenced each to twelve strokes with the birch rod, whilst the other four, not being caught red-handed, received six strokes each. I do not at present feel much remorse for those desperate times, but often think of the disgrace to parents. The kindly admonishment of my schoolmaster made me shed the real tears of repentance, not being forced from me by any thought of punishment. This ended my schooldays; and after the breaking up of our gang, I was not allowed much liberty, our elders being afraid of a reorganisation. When I was allowed out for an hour's play, strict injunctions were given me not to leave our own door, and this was not much to my liking. In the dark winter evenings I would sit with my grandfather, my brother and sister, painting ships or reading before a large fire that was never allowed to burn below its highest bar. My grandfather, with his old habits, would pace slowly up and down the half dark passage, shutting himself out in the cold. Every now and then he would open the front door to look at the stars or to inform himself from what latitude the wind blew. The wind never changed without his knowledge; for this wary mariner invariably surprised it in the act of doing so. Three or four times in the evening he would open the kitchen door to see that his family were comfortable, as though he had just made his way from the hurricane deck to enquire after the welfare of passengers in the cabin. When this was done, the old lady would sometimes say, rather peevishly, "Francis, do sit down for a minute or two." Then he would answer gruffly, but not unkindly--"Avast there, Lydia," closing the door to begin again his steady pacing to and fro. At this time I had a boy companion, named Dave, who was a great reader, had enough self-confidence to recite in public, and was a wonderful raconteur of tales. Great things were expected of him in after years. I have heard since that intemperance prevented their fulfilment, but we were too innocent in those days to think that such would be the case. Through him I became a reader, in the first place with an idea of emulating his cleverness, which led to a love of literature for its own self. Of course I began with the common penny novel of the worst type, but acquired a taste for better work in a shorter time than boys usually do. CHAPTER II YOUTH Life was very irksome to me at this period, being led to chapel morning and evening on Sundays, and led back; having the mortification of seeing other boys of the same age enjoying their liberty. The only way to alter these conditions was to apply for work. This was soon done, hiring myself out to an ironmonger, at a weekly wage of five shillings. The old people now began to take a pride in me, advising me to study my master's interests, and without doubt succeed to his business at his decease. My brother, two years my senior, who, as I have said before, was odd in his behaviour, took example by me, and succeeded in being employed at a large clothing establishment. It was there and then that he began and finished his life's work in half a day. Having been sent to the dock with a large parcel valued at two pounds ten shillings, he found on arrival that the _Betsy Jane_ was moored in the middle of the dock. My brother, seeing this, and not being blessed with inventive faculties, placed the parcel on the quay and returned to his master. Naturally the shopkeeper thought it was safely delivered, until the captain of the _Betsy Jane_, coming straight from his ship, entered the shop to make enquiries about his goods. My brother, having a clear conscience, explained matters in his simple way to the open eyed astonishment of his hearers. The result was a summary dismissal, and a letter to my grandfather requesting him to make good the loss of the parcel; which was duly done, my grandfather being extremely afraid of the law. The old people would never admit that my brother was different from other boys, although it was apparent not only to grown folk, but to the smallest child in the street. Some days before the affair just mentioned my grandmother, having to answer the door, ordered my brother to watch some fish, which was being prepared for dinner. When she returned, the cat was enjoying a good meal under the sofa. To the old lady's cry of "Francis, did I not tell you to watch the fish," my brother answered truthfully: for he always told the truth and did what he was told--"So I did, grandmother, and the cat took it." If she had explained to him properly why she wanted the fish watched, at the same time making special mention of a cat's partiality for fish, no doubt he would have watched to better purpose. Nothing could have happened better than this instance of the loss of the ship's goods to undeceive my grandfather as to my brother's state of mind. A sudden blaze of intelligence broke in on the old man's mind, which was not of the most brilliant kind. "Lydia," said he to his wife, "there's something wrong with the boy; to think he did not have sense enough to shout, Ship ahoy." I ventured to say, to show my cleverness, that there might have been several ships in the middle of the dock, and they would have all answered to Ship ahoy. Would it not have been better to cry, _Betsy Jane_, ahoy? The old man paused thunderstruck. "Avast there," he cried, "drop anchor: will ye have more pudding?" In our street almost every woman had some one connected with the sea, and it was my grandfather's pleasure by day to parade the street and inform the women as to what winds and tides were favourable to their husbands or sons. One woman had a husband that had sailed away in a barque, which was never sighted or hailed after leaving port, and was now three months overdue. My grandfather feared to meet this sailor's wife, and would often peep around his door, trying to escape consultation from her, knowing well his own forebodings as to the fate of the barque and her crew. I have mentioned Dave, who was a very studious lad, and who became my one companion and the sharer of my dreams. He had received an old copy of Byron, and we both became fascinated by the personality of that poet. His influence on Dave was so great that it was publicly shown to all the boys and girls in the chapel's schoolroom, where we had gathered for childish games, under the supervision of the elders. While we were playing kiss in the ring, singing and laughing, dancing with merriment, when small white teeth, red lips and bright eyes were all the rage--Dave would lean his figure (not so tall as he would like it) against a pillar, biting his lips and frowning at our merry-making. None but myself knew that his troubles and sorrows were purely imaginary, but they certainly succeeded in causing some sensation, even the notice of the elders being drawn to him. Some time after this we had more trouble with Dave, when we went for a day's trip to the sea-side. On this occasion he took his own path across the sands, a solitary figure, with his head bowed, and when we called him he would not heed us. That night, when it was time to return Dave stood perilously near the edge of the pier, gazing with melancholy eyes on the water. Several women hastened towards him, and drawing him gently away, enquired as to his trouble. On which Dave stood erect, was motionless, frowned, bit his lip, and stalked away into the darkness, without uttering a word. He came back in time to catch the boat. Dave soon got tired of these doings, but the influence of Byron was more lasting on me. It was the first time for me to read verse with enjoyment. I read Shelley, Marlowe, and Shakespeare, indifferent to Wordsworth, but giving him since the attention of wiser days. My grandmother had only read one novel in her life, called "The Children of the Abbey," and had been severely punished by her mother for doing so. She therefore continually warned me against reading such works, but strongly recommended Milton's "Paradise Lost" and Young's "Night Thoughts"; her favourite quotation being from the latter--"Procrastination is the thief of time." It pleased her to tears when a friend saw a likeness between John Bunyan and myself, and she regretted that she saw no prospect of ever tracing a resemblance between our hearts. I was now bound apprentice to the picture frame trade, but owing to my passion for reading, could not apply myself sufficiently to that business so as to become a good workman. The fact of the matter was that I was reading deep into the night and, having to be up early for work, was encroaching on Nature's allowance of sleep. Owing to being young and conceited and not being satisfied at having knowledge concealed, I showed at this time some parts that made older and wiser people of both sexes prophesy good results in manhood. Having no knowledge of metre and very little of harmony, I composed and caused to be printed a poem describing a storm at night, which a young friend recited at a mutual improvement class, making after mention of the author's name, when I was publicly congratulated. Some time after this I--having surreptitiously visited the playhouse on more than one occasion--boldly read out an article to the same class entitled--"In defence of the Stage." This daring performance caused some commotion among the full grown sheep, who thought they detected a wolf in lamb's clothing; but the young lamb--my companions--bleated for pride and joy. My grandmother was told of this, and as she did not take the trouble to enquire the subject of my address, and it was not told unto her, she was satisfied to know I had surprised several members of the congregation and in particular a deacon, for whom she had great respect. It has always been a wonder to me where my conversational power has gone: at the present time I cannot impress the most ordinary men. It must be through associating so many years with companions uncongenial to my taste, a preference for indulging in my own thoughts, and forcing myself to comment on subjects uninteresting to me. I remember at one time being in a lodging house where one man stood out as an authority on books, disease, politics, military tactics, and more especially the meaning and right pronunciation of words. Several times different men have said to me, "That man is a scholar; he is not an ignoramus, as the likes of you and me." It was a secret satisfaction to know that this gentleman to whom they referred, often paid the compliment of knowing more than himself by asking information, which, on my part, was imparted with much secrecy, as I did not wish to appear in any way superior to those with whom I was forced by circumstances to associate. Yet, in those happy days of my apprenticeship, I rarely visited a house but what a second invitation was assured, although a painful shyness marred the beginning. We enjoyed ourselves so much one evening at a friend's house, where the lady had been all day indisposed, that her husband said, on leaving, "My wife has been laughed out of her sickness, and you have certainly saved me an item on the doctor's bill." Instead of this giving more confidence and overcoming my shyness, when I received from them an invitation for a second party I became so overpowered at the thought of what would be expected of me, that for the life of me I could not accept it, knowing I would have made an ass of myself. It is not altogether shyness that now makes me unsuccessful in company. Sometimes it is a state of mind that is three parts meditation that will not free the thoughts until their attendant trains are prepared to follow them. Again, having heard so much slang my thoughts often clothe themselves in that stuff from their first nakedness. That being the case, shame and confusion in good company make me take so long to undress and clothe them better, in more seemly garments, that other people grow tired of waiting and take upon themselves the honour of entertainers. It was in the second year of my apprenticeship that I met a young woman living in a small village adjoining this town of my birth, who was very clever, a great reader of fine literature; and it was to her hands, after I had enjoyed her conversation on several occasions, that I submitted a small composition of my own. Her encouragement at that early time has been the star on which these eyes have seldom closed, by which I have successfully navigated the deeps of misery, pushing aside Drink, my first officer, who many a day and many a night endeavoured to founder me. She was the first to recognise in my spirit something different from mere cleverness, something she had seen and recognised in her books, but had never before met in a living person. I had known her only six months when she died, but her words of encouragement have been ringing in my ears ever since they were uttered. My grandfather had also died; a straightforward, honest, simple man, with a mortal dread of being in debt, and always well prepared to pay his rates and taxes. He had a horror of being a principal in the police courts, but appeared there three times for no offence of his own. Called upon once to examine a rope supposed to be stolen from a ship he proved the rope was of the land, and different from a ship's rope--discharge of the prisoner. On another occasion, Sunday morning, and grandfather being in bed, a detective, disguised as a poor working man that was almost dying for a drink, wheedled the old man's daughter to sell him some liquor over the back wall--the result being a summons for supplying drink during closed hours, followed by a heavy fine, which was at once paid. The third time was at my trial with five other desperadoes, as described in the preceding chapter. There was nothing false about this man, and he had the heart of a lion. He claimed to have beaten the champion of Portsmouth, but undoubtedly this was some drunken fellow who had taken on himself this much coveted title. Grandfather's pet yarn, which I have heard him recount a hundred times, took place in a public house, where a thin partition divided him from another person who was loudly extolling himself to the admiration of others. Grandfather allowed this man to continue for some time, but at last, losing patience, he looked around the partition and cried in a stern voice, "Avast there, Captain Jones: I knew thee when thou wert glad to eat barley bread without butter." Captain Jones looked disconcerted at this remark and then, quickly putting his own head around the partition, whispered: "Hush, hush, Captain Davies; there's nothing like making one's self look big in a strange place." I was now in the last year of my apprenticeship, and was running a bit wild, taking no interest in my trade, and determined in a few months to throw off all restraint. When my time had expired, my master wanted me to continue working for him, which I did for a short time; and, for one who had not yet reached his twenty-first year, received a very fair wage. In three or four months I found some excuse for leaving. I was eager to start for the new world; but my grandmother would not, on any account, supply money for that purpose; so I applied for work at Bristol, was accepted, and worked there six months, being then called home through the death of the good old lady. The licence indulged in during these six months, being in a strange town and unknown, was sufficient to wreck the brains and health of any man beyond recovery, and for the time being deadened all literary ambition. It could not have continued this way much longer, and no doubt, it was her death that prevented the collapse of my life, by a change of circumstances. Her estate was in the hands of a trustee, and its profits were to be divided weekly among her three grandchildren. She was a good old soul, and I have lived long enough to cherish every hair of her head. She was a Baptist, stoutly opposed to other creeds--called the stage the Devil's Playground--abhorred second marriages--and thought as much of me in life as I think of her in death. Many of the little kindnesses that were given to her in life were done more out of a sense of duty than from the gratitude of which she was so worthy. But the good old soul died without suspecting any other than gratitude. Mine is the shame and sorrow that she did not receive it, as I am even now, thirteen years after her death, living on her bounty. When my grandmother died, I joined home with mother and her second family, but after a month or two of restlessness, I sought the trustee, got an advance from him of some fifteen pounds, and full of hope and expectation embarked for America. CHAPTER III MANHOOD On arriving at Liverpool, I made the acquaintance of a man who had been in America some years previously, and not having his hopes realised at that time, had returned desperate to England, taken in a fresh cargo of hopes, and was now making a second attempt with as much enthusiasm, if not more, than others in making their first. In him I placed implicit confidence, and received such an extraordinary description of that country, the number of stories of some of its highest buildings which were called skyscrapers; the houses of wood which could be moved from one street to another without in any way interfering with the comfort of the people within, cooking, sweeping and washing going on without hindrance; the loneliness of its prairies and deserts; engineering triumphs over high mountains; and how the glorious South was flushed with roses what time the North could not save a blade of green from the snow; all this happening under the one wide spreading flag: this made such an impression on me that I at once went to the steerage cabin and wrote a full description of the country, that very first evening aboard; telling of my arrival in America, and the difference between the old and the new world. This letter was given to the steward at Queenstown, and was written to save me the trouble of writing on my arrival, so that I might have more time to enjoy myself. Several years elapsed before it occurred to me how foolish and thoughtless I had been. The postmark itself would prove that I had not landed in America, and they would also receive the letter several days before it would be due from those distant shores. I can certainly not boast a large amount of common sense. It was in the month of June, when we made this voyage, and the great Atlantic was as smooth as an inland river. Every one sought to escape the thoughts of home, and to do so, we often worked ourselves into a frenzy of singing and dancing. Sometimes our attention would be drawn to an iceberg on the port side, very innocent and beautiful to the eyes of passengers, but feared by mariners, who saw into its depths. And then a ship full sail; or another great Atlantic liner on the starboard bow. There was a total lack of ceremony aboard, strangers familiar with strangers, and the sexes doing each other little kindnesses, who had never met before and probably would never meet again, parting without even enquiring or giving each other a name. As we neared the coast we had a thunderstorm, and I was surprised and somewhat awed at the sound of its peals, and at the slower and larger flashes of lightning. Nature, it seemed, used a freer and more powerful hand in this country of great things than is her wont among our pretty little dales, and our small green hills. I thought the world was coming to an end, and in no way felt reassured when an American, noting my expression, said that it was nothing to what I would see and hear if I remained long in God's own country of free and law abiding citizens. My impression of Americans from the beginning is of the best, and I have never since had cause to alter my mind. They are a kind, sympathetic race of people and naturally proud of their country. The Irish-American is inclined to be the most bitter, remembering from his youth the complaints of his parents, who were driven through unjust laws from their own beloved land; and such a man is not to be idly aggravated, for life is a serious subject to him. This man is not to be aggravated, especially under the consideration that our conscience is not too clean in this respect, and that we are apt to be very slow in making that open confession which is good for the soul. The most pleasing trait in Americans, which cannot for long escape us, is their respect for women and the way in which the latter do their utmost to deserve it. No sight of a woman behind the saloon bar listening to the ribald jests of drunken men, and no woman at the bar's front drinking glass for glass with her associates. However weak in this respect a woman may be in private, she is certainly too strong to make a public exhibition of her weakness. Husband and wife may be unhappy, but you seldom hear of a woman carrying the marks of a man's brutality as witnesses against him which is so common in the police courts of old England. A man in a fit of ungovernable passion may kill his wife; and better so, I should say, than to leave her half killed at the foot of the stairs every Saturday night and holidays for twenty or thirty years, and blacken her eyes before they can recover their natural colour, the brutality that shamed me so much in after years in the slums of London, hearing it so often recorded as a jest. I was so anxious to see the different states of America that I did not stay long in New York before I succumbed to the persuasion of my Liverpool acquaintance to visit with him some friends in a small town in the state of Connecticut, at which place we soon arrived, with something like ten dollars between us. America, at this time, was suffering from a depression in trade, and people were daily returning to the old country, most of them with the intention of returning again to America at a more favourable time. Not being able to get employment at once, and resolved to be independent of the bounty of strangers, I walked out alone, and sat on a seat in the park, trying to conceive some plans for the future. My box, full of clothes, books, brushes, etc., would amply compensate, I thought, for the week's lodging which I had had. Yes, I would see Chicago: and, suddenly becoming aware of a man occupying the other end of the seat, I enquired of him the way to Chicago, as though the distance was a paltry ten miles, instead of a hundred times greater. This man looked at me in astonishment, and at last asked me if I intended to beat my way. Seeing my lack of understanding, he enquired as to my financial resources. On shaking my head in the negative, implying that I had no money, he said. "No more have I: and if you are agreeable, we will both beat our way to Chicago." This was Brum, a notorious beggar, who made himself at home in all parts of the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, and from the northern provinces of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The easy and sumptuous way of his catering made me indifferent to all manual labour. In that country, where food was to be had for the asking, where it often went begging to be received, and people were not likely to suffer for their generosity, I became, under Brum's tutorage, a lazy wretch with but little inclination for work. Cockneys make good beggars. They are held in high esteem by the fraternity in America. Their resources, originality and invention, and a never faltering tongue, enable them to often attain their ends where others fail, and they succeed where the natives starve. But my friend Brum held them in great scorn, for their methods were not his methods. Brum was a genuine beggar, who did not make flashes in the dark, having one day plenty and nothing on the next day. What he required he proceeded to beg, every morning making an inventory of his wants. Rather than wash a good handkerchief he would beg an old one that was clean, and he would without compunction discard a good shirt altogether rather than sew a button on--thus keeping up the dignity of his profession to the extreme. He scorned to carry soap, but went to a house like a Christian, and asked to be allowed to wash, with a request for warm water if the morning was cold. Begging was to him a fine art, indeed, and a delight of which he never seemed to tire. I have known him, when surfeited with an abundance of common food, such as steak, chops, etc.--to beg lozenges and sweets, complaining I suppose, of throat troubles. Even in a new country like America, there are quite a number of hostile towns, owing to their lying on the main roads between large cities that are not far apart; but Brum never seemed to fail, and would certainly never lower his dignity by complaining of difficulty. In every street, he said, there lived a good Samaritan, and seeing that a good beggar knocks at every door, he must ultimately succeed. She may live in the last house, and therefore the unsuccessful beggar, having no patience and perseverance, fails in his calling. Brum was a slow man in action and went about his business in a dogged way. And that reminds me of how this slowness of action once saved his life. We had built a camp fire in the woods, within a mile or more of a small town. Now, it was Brum's habit, before lying down for the night, to wind his handkerchief around his neck, and this he had done. Next morning I was the first to rise, and Brum, deliberately following my example, began in his own easy way to slowly unwind this handkerchief, when to my horror a large tarantula fell from its folds. Now, had Brum been an impulsive man, no doubt the spider would have been squeezed, and would have then fastened on his neck and poisoned his blood mortally. I was soon initiated into the mysteries of beating my way by train, which is so necessary in parts of that country, seeing the great distances between towns. Sometimes we were fortunate enough to get an empty car; sometimes we had to ride the bumpers; and often, when travelling through a hostile country, we rode on the roof of a car, so as not to give the brakesman an opportunity of striking us off the bumpers unawares. It is nothing unusual in some parts to find a man, always a stranger, lying dead on the track, often cut in many pieces. At the inquest they invariably bring in a verdict of accidental death, but we know different. Therefore we rode the car's top, so as to be at no disadvantage in a struggle. The brakesman, knowing well that our fall would be his own, would not be too eager to commence hostilities. Sometimes we were desperate enough to ride the narrow iron rods, which were under the car, and only a few feet from the track. This required some nerve, for it was not only uncomfortable, but the train, being so near the line, seemed to be running at a reckless and uncontrollable speed, whereas, when riding on the car's top, a much faster train seems to be running much slower and far more smooth and safe. Sometimes we were forced to jump off a moving train at the point of a revolver. At other times the brakesmen were friendly, and even offered assistance in the way of food, drink or tobacco. Again, when no firearm was in evidence, we had to threaten the brakesman with death if he interfered with us. In this way Brum and myself travelled the States of America, sleeping at night by camp fires, and taking temporary possession of empty houses. One night, when darkness had overtaken us, before we could find a fit and comfortable place for camping, we spied a house, and seeing no light in the window, presumed it to be unoccupied. We knocked at the door, and the hollow sound which followed convinced us that no living person was then on the premises. When we lifted the latch and entered we were surprised to see chairs, a table and various articles of domestic utility scattered in confusion on the floor. In spite of this we proceeded to make ourselves easy for the night, and coming out again began to feel in the darkness for wood. Being successful in our search we returned and made a fire, and there we slept until morning. As usual, I was the first to rise on the following day, and went forth in quest of water to make our breakfast coffee. This I soon found, and was bearing it along, when my attention was drawn to a board nailed to the front of the house. There I saw the letters "Haunted," painted large, and ragged, as though by a hand that had shaken with fear. If we had seen this board on the night previous, no doubt we would have hurried on in dread of our lives, but as it was, we made our coffee and laughed heartily in the daylight. At this time I took a notion to work for a few days, but Brum showed his grinning face so often that I grew ashamed of him, and discharged myself. He seemed to have taken a strange liking to me, and would not leave me, but swore that not even for my sake would he become a working man. CHAPTER IV BRUM Brum was a man of an original turn of mind and his ideas were often at variance with others. For instance, all tramps in America travel on the railroad, whether they walk or take free rides. Therefore it seems reasonable to infer that the people who live on the outskirts of a town, being farthest from the track, would be more in sympathy with tramps, for they would see and hear less of them. But Brum laughed at this idea, and claimed that his own success was through being of a different mind. "For," said he, "as all tramps are of that opinion, therefore the outskirts are begged too much and the centre of the town too little. For instance," he continued, "here is the railroad depot, with its restaurant; now, not one tramp in a hundred would visit such a place, for it is on their direct road, and they believe that it receives far too many appeals. This opinion, being so common, must prove it to be false. However, we will test it and see." Saying which Brum boldly entered the restaurant, leaving me to wait outside. It was a considerable time before he reappeared, and I began to think that he was being supplied with a meal on the premises, but at last he came, carrying in his hand a large paper parcel. "The place is as good as gold," said he, "for here we have a day's provisions for two. Take it down the track to that clump of woods," said he, "for the waiter promised that did I bring a jug or can he would supply me with hot coffee." I started at once towards the woods with this bag, the weight of which proved the presence of either much meat or pudding; while Brum made his way to a small house near the railroad to see if he could borrow a can. It was not long after this when we were seated in the shady green wood with the contents of this parcel before us, which were found to consist of a number of chops, bread and butter, some potatoes and cake. These, with a quart or more of good hot coffee, made such a meal as a working man could only reasonably expect once a week--the day being Sunday. One of Brum's peculiarities was, on approaching a town, to look out for a church steeple with a cross, which denoted a Catholic church, and therefore a Catholic community. Making his way in the direction of that cross he would begin operations in its surrounding streets, "and," said he, "if I fail in that portion of the town, I shall certainly not succeed elsewhere." I shall never forget the happy summer months I spent with Brum at the seaside. Some of the rich merchants there could not spare more than a month or six weeks from business, but, thanks be to Providence, the whole summer was at our disposal. If we grew tired of one town or, as more often the case, the town grew tired of us, we would saunter leisurely to the next one and again pitch our camp; so on, from place to place, during the summer months. We moved freely among the visitors, who apparently held us in great respect, for they did not address us familiarly, but contented themselves with staring at a distance. We lay across their runs on the sands and their paths in the woods; we monopolised their nooks in the rocks and took possession of caves, and not a murmur heard, except from the sea, which of a certainty could not be laid to our account. No doubt detectives were in these places, but they were on the look out for pickpockets, burglars and swindlers; and, seeing that neither the visitors nor the boarding house keepers made any complaint, these detectives did not think it worth while to arrest tramps; for there was no promotion to be had by doing so. "Ah," I said to Brum, as we sat in a shady place, eating a large custard pudding from a boarding house, using for the purpose two self-made spoons of wood--"Ah, we would not be so pleasantly occupied as tramps in England. We would there receive tickets for soup; soup that could be taken without spoons; no pleasant picking of the teeth after eating; no sign of a pea, onion or carrot; no sign of anything, except flies." Two-thirds of a large custard pudding between two of us, and if there was one fault to be found with it, it was its being made with too many eggs. Even Brum was surprised at his success on this occasion. "Although," as he said, "she being a fat lady, I expected something unusual." Brum had a great admiration for a fat woman; not so much, I believe, as his particular type of beauty, but for the good natured qualities he claimed corpulence denoted. "How can you expect those skinny creatures to sympathise with another when they half starve their own bodies?" he asked. He often descanted on the excellencies of the fat, to the detriment of the thin, and I never yet heard another beggar disagree with him. After seeing Brum wash the dish, and wipe it with his pocket-handkerchief, with a care that almost amounted to reverence, and trusting in my own mind that the good lady would have the thought and precaution to wash it again--I settled to a short nap, till Brum's return. For there was no knowing how long he might be away; he might take a notion to beg a shirt, a pair of trousers or shoes, or anything else that came to his mind. Now, when Brum left, he had on a dark shirt, but I was so accustomed to seeing him change his appearance with a fresh coat, or a different shaped hat, that I was not at all surprised on waking to see him sitting before me in a clean white shirt with a starched front. I said nothing about this change, and he was too good a beggar to give unsolicited information, which would look too much like boasting of his own exploits. That he had met another of his favourite fat ladies, or perhaps the same one had added to her kindness--there was not the least doubt. Brum's first words rather startled me, for he continued the conversation from the place I left off previous to my sleep. "When I was in England," he began, "I did not experience such hardship as is commonly supposed to exist. Beggars there, as here, choose the wrong places, and not one in three knows which are the best." "Surely," I said, "a good clean street of houses with respectable fronts, of moderate size, and kept by the better class mechanics, are the best?" "And so they would be," he answered, "if every beggar did not think so. But let me tell you, for your benefit if ever stranded in England, the best places for beggars to operate." How I learned the truth of his wise teaching, in after days! Every fine looking street you chance upon, pass it; but every little court or blind alley you come across, take possession without delay, especially if its entrance is under an arch, which hides the approach to the houses, making them invisible from the street. Such little out of the way places are not only more profitable than good streets, but are comparatively safe where the police are unusually severe. Then again you should avoid every town that has not either a mill, a factory, or a brewery; old fashioned towns, quiet and without working people--except a few gardeners, coachmen, domestic servants, etc: such places where you see a sign at the free libraries warning tramps not to enter, and every plot of land has its sign--"Beware of the Dog." In towns where working men are numerous, and the idle rich are few, such signs are not to be seen. "Of course," he continued, "your object in England must be money, for you cannot expect to get meat, cake and custard pudding in a land where even the rich live poorer, with regards to diet, than the labouring classes of this country." I remembered these wise thoughts of Brum, uttered on the shores of the Atlantic, and if I did not profit much by them in my own experience in England, I certainly made enough attempts to test their truth. I always kept a keen eye for blind alleys, and quiet courts under arches, and I invariably came out of one richer than I went in. And what nice quiet places they are for drinking cups of tea on a doorstep, with only a neighbour or two to see you, and perhaps thousands of people passing to and fro in the street at the other side of the arch. There is no thoroughfare for horses and carts; no short cut for business men, and the truth of the matter is that a number of the inhabitants themselves, born and bred in the town, know not of the existence of such places; and others, knowing them, would be ashamed to confess their acquaintance with them. But Brum knew where to find the kindest hearts in England, not in the fine streets and new villas, but in the poor little white-washed houses in courts and alleys. CHAPTER V A TRAMP'S SUMMER VACATION We were determined to be in the fashion, and to visit the various delightful watering places on Long Island Sound. Of course it would be necessary to combine business with pleasure, and pursue our calling as beggars. With the exception of begging our food, which would not be difficult, seeing that the boarding houses were full, and that large quantities of good stuff were being made, there was no reason why we should not get as much enjoyment out of life as the summer visitors. We would share with them the same sun and breeze; we could dip in the surf at our own pleasure, and during the heat of the day we could stretch our limbs in the green shade, or in the shadow of some large rock that overlooked the Sound. However we could no longer stand the sultry heat of New York, where we had been for several days, during which time we had been groaning and gasping for air. So I and Brum started out of the City, on the way towards Hartford, Connecticut, with the intention of walking no more than six miles a day along the sea coast. What a glorious time we had; the people catered for us as though we were the only tramps in the whole world, and as if they considered it providential that we should call at their houses for assistance. The usual order of things changed considerably. Cake--which we had hitherto considered as a luxury--became at this time our common food, and we were at last compelled to install plain bread and butter as the luxury, preferring it before the finest sponge-cake flavoured with spices and eggs. Fresh water springs were numerous, gushing joyously out of the rocks, or lying quiet in shady nooks; and there was many a tramps' camp, with tin cans ready to hand, where we could make our coffee and consume the contents of paper bags. This part of the country was also exceptionally good for clothes. Summer boarders often left clothes behind, and of what use were they to the landladies, for no rag-and-bone man ever called at their houses. The truth of the matter was that in less than a week I was well dressed from head to foot, all of these things being voluntary offerings, when in quest of eatables. Brum, of course, had fared likewise, but still retained the same pair of dungarees, which he swore he would not discard except at the instance of a brand new pair of tweeds. It was this pair of working man's trousers which had caused a most regrettable mistake. We had just finished begging at one of these small watering-places and, loaded with booty, were on our way in the direction of the camp which, Brum informed me, was half a mile north of the town. When we reached this camp we found it occupied by one man, who had just then made his coffee and was about to eat. On which Brum asked this man's permission to use his fire, which would save us the trouble of making one of our own. The stranger gave a reluctant consent, and at the same time moved some distance away, as though he did not wish further intimacy. While we were gathering wood and filling our cans at the spring, I could not help but see this stranger glaring hatefully at my companion's trousers, and expected every moment to hear some insulting remark. At last we were ready and Brum proceeded to unload himself. He had eight or nine parcels of food distributed about his clothes, but in such a way that no one could be the wiser. It was then that I noted a change come over the stranger's face, who seeing the parcels, seemed to be smitten with remorse. In another moment he was on his feet and coming towards us, said impulsively--"Excuse me, boys, for not giving you a more hearty welcome, but really--"glancing again at my companion's trousers--"I thought you were working men, but I now see that you are true beggars." Brum laughed at this, and mentioned that others had also been deceived. He explained that the said trousers had been given him against his wish, but on seeing that they were good, and were likely to outlast several pairs of cloth, he had resolved to stick to them for another month or two. "I regret having had such an opinion of you," said the stranger, in a choking voice, "and trust, boys, that you will forgive me." Thus ended in a friendly spirit what promised at first to become very unpleasant. This stranger turned out to be New Haven Baldy. We had never had the pleasure of meeting him before, but had often heard of him. He had a great reputation in the State of Connecticut, which he never left--except for an annual trip through Massachusetts to the city of Boston. There was not one good house in the former State that was not known to Baldy. This was put to the test in our presence, that very day. A man came to the camp who, poor fellow, claimed to be a hard-working man. He had lost his job and had been robbed of his savings, now being forced to walk home to Meriden. He had never begged in his life, and had now been without food for two days, and was almost too weak to continue his journey. "Yes," said Baldy, "and when you are settled at home, and the wrinkles are taken out of you, what sympathy will you have with us? You will tell us to go and work for our living, the same as yourself." The poor fellow protested, saying that he had never known his mother to refuse any man food. At this Baldy pricked up his ears and enquired of the stranger his mother's address. On hearing the name of the street Baldy at once proceeded to describe the one--and only one--good house to be found there: "That is our house," said the stranger. Baldy, not yet convinced, asked for a description of the old lady and her husband. This was given, to Baldy's satisfaction. "Well," said he, "I have had many a meal at your house, and you shall now have one with me." Saying which he gave the stranger a parcel which, being spread on the grass, was seen to contain several meat sandwiches and a number of small cakes. After eating these, and others from Brum, the stranger left, saying that he would not again feel hungry until he reached home. After the stranger had gone Baldy laughed immoderately. "That man's father," said he, "was a railroad man, who became boss, and at last retired on a comfortable little sum. In the kitchen, where the old people have often fed me, the old man has hung on the wall the shovel which he had used in his early days. There it is to be seen tasselled and kept shining bright, and treated reverently as a family heirloom. How I have laughed," continued Baldy, "to see that shovel, to think what a simple old fellow he must be to take a pride in showing how he toiled in his early life. Every time I go there the old man points at the shovel with pride, and I have as much as I can do to keep a calm face in listening to its history. But in spite of all that the old man is a good sort, and I am glad to have been able to assist his son." Alas, what a disastrous end was ours! When we reached the town of New Haven, we began to beg from passersby in the open streets and in less than an hour were in jail. On being brought up next morning before the judge, we were each sentenced to thirty days. But what hurt our feelings most was the personal comment of the judge--that we were two brawny scoundrels who would not work if we had the chance. However true this might be as applied to us in a moral sense, it certainly was not a literal fact, for we were both small men. People who, not seeing us, would read this remark in the local paper, would be misled as to our personal appearance. I am doubtful whether any Judge is justified in using such a term. At any rate, thirty days had to be served. We were in a far better position than an Italian who was waiting to be tried for murder, and whose cell was not far distant from ours. At this jail we had to perform the light labour of caning chairs, and were well treated in the way of food and sleeping accommodation and, in addition, received a liberal supply of chewing tobacco. Being interested in the Italian, the first thing we did on regaining our liberty was to enquire as to his fate. We were told that he had received a life sentence; or, as our alien informant strangely expressed it--"Antonia, he didn't get some of de time, but he got all of de time." Thus what promised to be a summer's outing full of enjoyment, came to a disastrous close sooner than we expected. And, when we were again free, the summer season was practically over, the visitors were gradually leaving for their town houses; which meant that our treatment at the boarding houses would become colder and colder in accordance with the number of boarders. At this time I accepted employment as a woodchopper, but unfortunately the work did not last; and just as I began to feel the inclination for this more respectable life, I was discharged, much to Brum's delight, who was apparently disgusted with this new innovation called work, and could not understand any man's desire for it. CHAPTER VI A NIGHT'S RIDE Although I had at this time become lazy, losing almost all sense of respectability, I often reproached Brum for the aimlessness of this existence; telling him we must seek work and attend to other wants than those of the body. I would tell him of the arts, and how the cultivation of them was lost to us through a continual lack of funds. I told him of the pleasures of reading, visiting picture galleries, museums and theatres, and of the wonders of instrumental music, and of the human voice. Once when we were passing through a street in New Orleans, I paused to listen to a woman singing. Brum, like the faithful companion he was, waited my pleasure, until he too seemed to become impressed by some unusual feeling. The song ended, and as we went our way, I said--"There, Brum, what do you think of that?" "O lor," he answered, awestruck, "wasn't she a blooming cat!" making me laugh heartily at such a strange expression of praise, knowing that it was meant to be truthful and sincere. Having done a few days' work, as mentioned in the preceding chapter, I resolved to come to an understanding with Brum at once as to our future plans. With this end in view, I invited him to a drink, and thus began: "What do you intend doing? Your life is not mine. We often go for days without reading matter, and we know not what the world is saying; nor what the world is doing. The beauty of nature is for ever before my eyes, but I am certainly not enriching my mind, for who can contemplate Nature with any profit in the presence of others. I have no leisure to make notes in hopes of future use, and am so overpacking my memory with all these scenes, that when their time comes for use, they will not then take definite shape. I must go to work for some months, so that I may live sparingly on my savings in some large city, where I can cultivate my mind." Now, Brum's method of begging was different in large cities from what it was in the country. In the latter he found no use for money, except for hair cutting or shaving; and when this became necessary he never failed to get the requisite amount for his purpose. When he was ready to have this office performed, it was his custom to interview the Catholic priest of the community, and beg the use of his razor, knowing it was part of that person's creed to shave continually. Of course, the priest would not think of lending his razor to an entire stranger, but seldom refused the ten cents that were necessary for that operation. But in the large cities, Brum scorned private houses, and begged money in the streets, and in their various stores; purchased his meals at a restaurant, and paid his lodgings like an honest man. Therefore, thinking my discontent was mainly owing to the lack of funds, he said--"All this haste from place to place is not at all to my liking. If you wish to settle in a large city, I can guarantee two dollars a day at the least, between us, for a visit to the theatre, music hall, for books, papers, or an occasional glass of grog." "No, no," I said, "we must either work or part. There are three dollars, half of my earnings, so please yourself whether we work or part, whether you go or stay; for I have already decided my own course. What is it to be?" "Well," said he, after a long pause, "we are now near to the hop country, and they start picking sometime next week; that is about the only work to be had at this time of the year." Upon this we had several drinks, for I was so pleased at Brum's decision, that I ordered drink after drink with bewildering succession. Brum informed me of a freight train that was to leave the yards at midnight, on which we could beat our way to a small town on the borders of the hop country. Not knowing what to do with ourselves until that time arrived, we continued to drink until we were not in a fit condition for this hazardous undertaking--except we were fortunate to get an empty car, so as to lie down and sleep upon the journey. At last we made our way towards the yards, where we saw the men making up the train. We kept out of sight until that was done and then in the darkness Brum inspected one side of the train and I the other, in quest of an empty car. In vain we sought for that comfort. There was nothing to do but to ride the bumpers or the top of the car, exposed to the cold night air. We jumped the bumpers, the engine whistled twice, toot! toot! and we felt ourselves slowly moving out of the yards. Brum was on one car and I was on the next facing him. Never shall I forget the horrors of that ride. He had taken fast hold on the handle bar of his car, and I had done likewise with mine. We had been riding some fifteen minutes, and the train was going at its full speed when, to my horror, I saw Brum lurch forward, and then quickly pull himself straight and erect. Several times he did this, and I shouted to him. It was no use, for the man was drunk and fighting against the overpowering effects, and it was a mystery to me how he kept his hold. At last he became motionless for so long that I knew the next time he lurched forward his weight of body must break his hold, and he would fall under the wheels and be cut to pieces. I worked myself carefully towards him and woke him. Although I had great difficulty in waking him, he swore that he was not asleep. I had scarcely done this when a lantern was shown from the top of the car, and a brakesman's voice hailed us. "Hallo, where are you two going?" "To the hop fields," I answered. "Well," he sneered, "I guess you won't get to them on this train, so jump off, at once. Jump! d'ye hear?" he cried, using a great oath, as he saw we were little inclined to obey. Brum was now wide awake. "If you don't jump at once," shouted this irate brakesman, "you will be thrown off." "To jump," said Brum quietly, "will be sure death, and to be thrown off will mean no more." "Wait until I come back," cried the brakesman, "and we will see whether you ride this train or not," on which he left us, making his way towards the caboose. "Now," said Brum, "when he returns we must be on the top of the car, for he will probably bring with him a coupling pin to strike us off the bumpers, making us fall under the wheels." We quickly clambered on top and in a few minutes could see a light approaching us, moving along the top of the cars. We were now lying flat, so that he might not see us until he stood on the same car. He was very near to us, when we sprang to our feet, and unexpectedly gripped him, one on each side, and before he could recover from his first astonishment. In all my life I have never seen so much fear on a human face. He must have seen our half drunken condition and at once gave up all hopes of mercy from such men, for he stood helpless, not knowing what to do. If he struggled it would mean the fall and death of the three, and did he remain helpless in our hands, it might mean being thrown from that height from a car going at the rate of thirty miles an hour. "Now," said Brum to him, "what is it to be? Shall we ride this train without interference, or shall we have a wrestling bout up here, when the first fall must be our last? Speak?" "Boys," said he, affecting a short laugh, "you have the drop on me; you can ride." We watched him making his way back to the caboose, which he entered, but every moment I expected to see him reappear assisted by others. It might have been that there was some friction among them, and that they would not ask assistance from one another. For instance, an engineer has to take orders from the conductor, but the former is as well paid, if not better, than the latter, and the most responsibility is on his shoulders, and this often makes ill blood between them. At any rate, American tramps know well that neither the engineer nor fireman, his faithful attendant, will inform the conductor or brakesman of their presence on a train. Perhaps the man was ashamed of his ill-success, and did not care to own his defeat to the conductor and his fellow brakesmen; but whatever was the matter, we rode that train to its destination and without any more interference. As we neared the town we saw a large camp fire in a small dingle near the track, at which a man lay asleep. Seeing this comfortable sight, and being cold and tired, we made up our minds to jump off the train as soon as possible, and to return to that fire for a few hours' comfort. The whistle blew for the station, and the train began gradually to slacken speed, when we jumped from the bumpers; and our limbs being stiff, we staggered and fell, but received no hurt. It must have been a mile or more back to that place, but we arrived there in due time, and without waking its solitary occupant, were soon stretched out fast asleep on the other side of the fire. When we awoke the stranger had already been to town, had returned with food, and was now making coffee in a tomato can, all of which he generously offered to share with us. This I gladly accepted, but Brum declined with thanks, saying that he was always capable of getting his own meals, and if needs be, could beg enough for half a dozen others. I gave this stranger my entire confidence, and soon learnt that he had come to these parts for the same purpose. "We three," said he, "will work together on the same land, and under the one master. I am a moulder by trade," he continued, "and a week ago I had a hundred dollars saved, but went on the spree, and am now probably without a cent." To my surprise, at this stage of the narrative, he unlaced his right boot and began to feel in its toes, at the same time shaking his head despondently. After which he put it on again and laced it. "Yes," he said, taking off his coat and feeling the lining, "a week ago I had a hundred dollars saved." Brum, having now returned from town laden with sandwiches, cakes, etc., and he having had a hot dinner from a convent we packed those necessaries for future use, and started on foot for the hopfields. Every now and then the stranger--whom Brum at once called Australian Red, owing to his being born in that country, and his having a florid complexion--would try our patience extremely by sitting on fallen timber and taking off his boot, sometimes the two; and after feeling in them, replacing them on his feet, with a sigh of disappointment. Often he would take off his hat and minutely examine the lining, to our unfeigned astonishment. At one time we lost patience with him. He had seen a low stack of timber, and requested a few moments delay. On this being granted, Australian Red began to take off his garments one by one, and to examine them. Not one article was placed aside without having undergone a thorough scrutiny, until nothing but his shirt remained. All this waste of time was very trying to our patience, and when he was again dressed, we requested him at once for all to put a stop to such manoeuvres. We walked on in silence, but had scarcely covered a short mile, when Red was seen to be preparing to strip for another investigation. On seeing which Brum, losing a little patience, said:--"Look here, old fellow, if such is going to be your conduct, you can't, on no account, travel any further with us." For a time Australian Red looked undecided, and then let his coat slip back to its position. "It is like this," he said, "I am a moulder by trade; a week ago I had a hundred dollars saved, but where are they now? It is always my custom," he continued, "when I go on the spree, to secrete my money in some safe place. Although I have no recollection of doing so, I am positively assured that such has been the case; and would not be surprised at any moment to discover a twenty dollar bill in the lining of my clothes; but, with regards to the boots, I am now thoroughly satisfied." When I became better acquainted with Australian Red, this peculiarity was often made apparent to me. Perhaps he did secrete money, for I have oftened wondered as to where it had vanished. Whether or not, it was certainly never to be found on his person, and must have been slipped under the mat in strange places, dropped into vases, or hidden behind looking glasses. In a day or two we reached the hop-fields and all three succeeded in being hired by the same farmer. This could not have very well been different, as neither one would have otherwise worked. The season, if I remember right, lasted between three and four weeks, which we began and finished, but were not very well satisfied with the financial result. Our total earnings were, clear of all expenses, about forty dollars, and with that amount we walked to the nearest large town intending to beat our way to New York and paint it a forty dollar red. We reached the said town, and made enquiries of a switchman as to when the next freight train would be leaving for New York. The sight of a flask of whiskey in the hands of Australian Red enlightened us considerably as to the time of trains, their qualification for carrying human freight, and the cruel or kind disposition of their attendant crews. We made choice of a train leaving about dusk, and finding an empty car on a side track, we entered it, to wait as patiently as possible until that time came. We were not so quiet as we should have been, considering that we were trespassing on the railroad; and that is why we were soon startled by a voice crying: "What are you doing there? Do you know that you are trespassing on the railroad?" With that the marshal of the town stood before the open door, showing the star of his authority on his dark clothes. "I can't get any sleep day or night, through you fellows," he said; "consider yourselves under arrest." Saying this, he marched us off at the point of a revolver, and began seeking the judge for our trial at that strange hour of the night. CHAPTER VII LAW IN AMERICA As he marched us along, he made several enquiries as to our finances, to know if we were prepared to pay a fine. Being assured of this he took a very despondent view of our case. Brum explained afterwards, when it was too late, that trespassing on the railroads was always considered a very serious offence during this month of the year, when men were returning with their small earnings from the hopfields; which were not sufficient to enable them to travel as passengers. He explained that trespassing on the railroad was not only overlooked, but was openly encouraged when men had to pick hops to fill their pockets; but as soon as those pockets were filled by picking hops, the local magistrates lost no time in giving the police strict orders to fall to, arrest and detain, so that a picker's pocket might be picked by them of his little earnings. The marshal stopped several citizens, enquiring as to the whereabouts of a person named Stevens. To my surprise, we were not lodged for the night in the common jail, but were led into a public house, which in that country is referred to as a saloon. As we entered this place, and stood in front of its bar, we did not look much like prisoners. Brum called for four drinks, and the marshal drank his respect for us in a very friendly manner indeed. After which he took the landlord aside for a short consultation, in which I heard the man Stevens mentioned more than once. Then he came back and had another drink, this time at the expense of Australian Red. Some customers now arrived, followed by a lean, solemn looking person, whom the marshal took no time in accosting as Judge Stevens. This gentleman at once called for whiskey, then looked from the marshal to us, and from us to the marshal, at the same time nodding his head approvingly to the latter. The marshal cleared his throat and began: "I found these men trespassing on the railroad, and at once arrested them." The judge again nodded his head in approval to this red, burly individual, who had made a claim of being robbed of his sleep day and night, and turning to us said: "Boys, we have to put a stop to these things, drink and follow me." He led the way into a small back room, and we followed with the marshal, the citizens bringing up the rear. The marshal gave evidence of our arrest, making special mention of our possession of money. The judge wished to be informed of the exact amount, and being told that it was something like ten dollars each, summed up the case at once. "Boys," he said, "I fine you each five dollars, in default of which you must go to Syracuse for thirty days"--at which place was the county jail. Now, I was always outspoken, and was never forced by fear, under any circumstances, to conceal my thoughts, which if I saw real injustice or hypocrisy, would be blurted out in a more dignified court than this. This mock trial, which at first had been highly amusing, exasperated when it came to paying half of my hard earnings, so I told this judge plainly that my friends might please themselves, but that he would not get one cent out of me. Brum supported me in this, but Australian Red began to finger his dollars, whereat the marshal quickly snatched them out of his hand, deducted five dollars, which he gave to the judge, and returned the rest. Judge Stevens looked at us steadily for a time, and then asked this astounding question: "Boys, how much are you prepared to pay?" Brum, who had very little sense of justice, and being such a good beggar, set very little value on money, asked the judge if he would accept three dollars from each of us. If I had been alone at this time I would have paid nothing, but to save Brum from going to prison, who I knew would support me through all, I satisfied myself that, if the judge approved of this amount, I would pay it without further comment. The judge appeared to weigh the matter seriously, and then cried, with a magnanimity that was irresistible--"Pass over the dollars, boys; you shall have a chance this time." The trial was not here ended, as most of us believed. A citizen, who had been an interested spectator of this scene, and who had been fidgetting in his seat for some time, now rose to his feet, and said--"Where is the justice of this? These men are all guilty of the same offence, and yet one is fined five dollars, and the other two get off more leniently, with the loss of three dollars each; this certainly cannot be called justice." At this the Judge showed the first signs of passion. "Sir," he shouted in wrath, "who is the Judge, I or you? If you ever again interfere with our proceedings, in this manner, I shall fine you for contempt of court--contempt of court, sir, contempt of court." This citizen and lover of justice, collapsed stricken with awe, bluffed and discouraged. "Come, boys," said the Judge, and he led the way back to the bar. There, he produced a two dollar bill, which was part of our fine, and called for drinks for the house. We followed his example, late prisoners and citizens, and were all happy together until a late hour. The marshal, who seemed to have a little respect for me, for having shown the spirit of free speech before the judge, took me aside and asked whether we intended to take advantage of the invitation given by the citizen who had been threatened for contempt of court--to spend the night at his house. "I don't think so," I said; "we have had enough of this town, and intend leaving it to-night." Shortly after these words we left the saloon, but had scarcely reached the street end, when I heard steps following, and to my surprise, the marshal was soon at our side. Now comes the most extraordinary part of this story, which I have often been diffident in relating, thinking it would not be credited. "Boys," said this burly fellow, who could not get any sleep day or night, "get you to the railroad, and if any one interferes with you, tell them that the marshal sent you; I shall be with you in about twenty minutes." We were soon at the railroad, were not interfered with, and the marshal followed in a short time. "Listen," he said to us, who were again trespassers on the railroad, at his pleasure and instigation: "There is a train already made up to start in five minutes' time; get into this empty car, and by heavens, no man shall interfere with you." Which we did, and when the train started, the marshal was there, beside the car, wishing us a pleasant good-bye. "Why," said Brum, when I commented in astonishment at all this, "it is nothing unusual. One day," he began, "I was in a small town in Ohio. Seeing a freight train leaving the station, I leaped into an empty car, just as the train started. When safe inside, I turned and stood in the open doorway, and looking out, saw the marshal standing on the platform, looking after me, so I waved him a sarcastic farewell. But the train, instead of increasing in speed, began to slow, and coming to a standstill, began at once to back towards the station. Before I could decide on my course of action, we were again standing in front of the station, with my car facing the marshal, who seemed to have waited, expecting this to happen. 'Hallo,' he cried, 'come out of that for you are under arrest.' I was lodged in jail, and was next morning brought up for trial. The marshal gave evidence as to seeing me jump the train, and I was charged with that offence. Having no money, I was about to be sent to jail when the judge asked the marshal to examine my hands which, although I had done no work for a number of years, were still hard and horny. I said that I was a seafaring man, and exhibited pictures of boats and anchors tattooed on my arms, at the same time offering to show the _Polly Jane_ in full sail across my breast. My strange calling, in that inland town more than a thousand miles from the coast, appeared to greatly interest the judge, who, after several friendly questions, discharged me with a caution. Instead of at once taking advantage of my freedom, I sat down, waiting the end of the court. Another prisoner was then brought up, who had been seen loafing on the station platform all the previous day. This prisoner pleaded guilty, and said that he had waited in vain for hours for a freight train to carry him to his destination, he having no money to pay his fare as a passenger. "Hold," cried the marshal, "that is a lie, for I myself saw a train steaming out when you were loafing indifferently on the platform." "Ten dollars, or sixty days," said the judge. This will show you how one prisoner was charged for stealing a ride on a freight train, and another prisoner was charged for not doing so as the opportunity occurred, happening in the same court, and under the same judge. Again," continued Brum, "I know a prisoner, in an adjoining state, who was sentenced to ten years for embezzlement. The money was never recovered, and he probably has it safe until his time expires. This prisoner is receiving a salary of ten dollars a week for keeping the prison books, is allowed to converse with any one, and is entrusted to go the rounds of the turnkey. He is the one man allowed to wear private clothes, and is even allowed at night the liberty of a stroll in the open air, and unattended, with the one stipulation that he returns before a certain hour at night. And," continued Brum, "what with the money he has concealed--held probably by a relative--and his weekly salary of ten dollars as the bookkeeper of the prison, he will never need work more, after his sentence is served. But, listen to me," continued Brum more earnestly, "some of these queer laws are to a tramp's advantage. The winter is already here, and promises to be a most severe one. Now, if you would like to rest and grow fat during the coldest months, come with me to Michigan. You can there enter jails without committing offence of any kind, and take ten, fifteen, twenty or thirty days, all at your own sweet discretion. No work to do, good food to be had, and tobacco daily supplied. There is nothing else but begging before you, for the coming winter," said Brum, warming to his subject, "but if you like to enter with me those blessed havens of rest, where one can play cards, smoke or read the time away, you will become strong and ready for work when the spring of the year arrives." This project did not seem to me to be very attractive. For one thing, it was a long journey to that part of the country, and the weather being cold, we were forced to travel at night and sleep in the day. I was certainly not a very pleasant companion at this time, being occupied so much with my own dreams, which ever took the one shape of a small comfortable room with a cosy fire; books, papers, tobacco, with reading and writing in turns. At any rate, we decided to follow Brum's suggestion, and, instead of going to New York, we got off, and took another road. We had a rough time in beating our way to Michigan. We were marched out of one town by the marshal, where we were waiting to catch a train. This necessitated us either to walk three miles to catch a train as it was on a grade, or to walk ten miles to the next watering tank, where all freight trains stopped. We decided on doing the former. To do this required an activity of which I hardly thought Brum to be capable. The grade was long and before the train reached the top, its speed would be slackened to about ten miles an hour, or less, if it had heavy freight. It was necessary to lie low, and out of sight, until the train appeared, and then run beside it, so as to leap and catch the handle bar, the feet at the same time catching the iron step; after doing which we could step on to the bumpers, or climb the ladder to the top of the car. If either the hand or foot failed to do its duty, it meant a fall, and a very serious accident or death. I was the youngest and most active, and leapt the first part of the train. As soon as I was safe I looked around the car, and had the pleasure of seeing Australian Red succeed just three cars behind, and Brum succeeding on the next car to him. When we reached the next stopping place, we all got together on the same car, so as to be prepared for any trouble with the train's crew. A brakesman passed over the top, and shouted to us in a friendly manner; passed and re-passed several times before the train reached its destination, but treated our presence with the utmost indifference, which is often the case in that part of America. What a difference it made in our feeling, this changing of seasons! It seemed but a few days ago the birds were singing, the orchards were heavy and mellow with fruit, and we could sleep in the open air all night. It was now necessary to light great fires, when the front parts of our bodies burned whilst a cold chill crept up and down the spine; and the first fall of snow, which was likely to occur at any time, would soon make it difficult to enjoy even this small comfort. At last we reached a small town in Michigan which, Brum informed us, was the county town; and which, said he, chuckling with delight, had an exceedingly pleasant jail. CHAPTER VIII A PRISONER HIS OWN JUDGE "Now," said Brum, as the freight train steamed into the town and came to a standstill, "we must see the marshal." With this end in view we walked towards the passenger depot, which, Brum informed us, was visited by the marshal several times a day, so that he might the better accost such tramps as were going through that town. We arrived at that place and stamped up and down the platform, to circulate our blood, for it was now snowing heavily, and the wind blowing in small gusts that discovered us, shelter wherever we would. How the snow falls in the north! Flake on flake falling incessantly, until the small dingles are almost on a level with the uplands. It throws itself on the leaves of Autumn, and holds them down in security from the strongest winds. It piles great banks against people's doors, and mothers and daughters are made prisoners to their own hearths, until fathers and sons set to and cut a path to the open thoroughfare. Special snow trains are at work clearing the track to make the way easier for passenger trains and freight trains that run on passenger lines, being loaded with cattle or other perishable goods; whilst other freight is often delayed for days, and sometimes weeks. We had been here some fifteen minutes, when we saw the marshal coming down the road leading to the station, the bright star of his authority being seen distinctly on his breast. "Now," said Brum, "let me be the spokesman, and I will arrange for a month's comfort." By this time the marshal stood before us. "Boys," he began, "cold weather for travelling, eh?" "We don't feel the cold," was Brum's reply. "You will though," said the marshal, "this is but the beginning, and there is a long and severe winter before you, without a break. You would certainly be better off in jail. Sixty days in our jail, which is considered one of the best, if not the best, in Michigan, would do you no harm, I assure you." "As for that," said Brum, "we might take thirty days each, providing of course, that you made it worth while. What about tobacco and a drink or two of whiskey?" "That'll be all right," said the marshal, "here's half a dollar for a drink, and the sheriff will supply your tobacco." "No, no," objected Brum, "give us a dollar and three cakes of tobacco, and we will take thirty days, and remember, not a day over." The marshal produced the three cakes of tobacco, seeming to be well prepared for these demands, and giving us a paper dollar, requested us to go to Donovan's saloon, which we would find in the main street, where he would see us later in the day; "when of course," he added, winking, "you will be supposed to be just a bit merry." "What is the meaning of all this?" I asked Brum, as we went our way to Mr. Donovan's saloon. "It simply means this," he said, "that the marshal gets a dollar each for every arrest he makes--in our case three dollars; the judge receives three or four dollars for every conviction, and the sheriff of the jail is paid a dollar a day for boarding each prisoner under his charge; we benefit by a good rest, warmth, good food and plenty of sleep, and the innocent citizens have to pay for it all." We had not much difficulty in finding Donovan's saloon, which we entered, and called for whiskey. It so happened that two strangers were there, who had made a considerable stake in the backwoods, and had come to this town to squander their earnings. We therefore came into many a free drink, through the liberality of these men. About an hour and a half had elapsed when we discovered ourselves to be alone in the bar, and without means of procuring more liquor. "We had better be going," said Brum, and we passed into the street. Brum saw the marshal coming up the road and began singing in a lusty voice, to the astonishment of some of the storekeepers. Australian Red, being the worse for drink, and forgetting that we had only to feign this part, began to roar like a bull, merry in earnest. On this the marshal quickly crossed the street and in the hearing of several citizens, shouted in an authoritative voice:--"I arrest you for being drunk and disorderly," and we followed him like lambs. We were then led to the sheriff's house, adjoining the jail. That gentleman, being in, received us with open arms saying--"Welcome, boys, you want thirty days, and thirty you shall have, no more or less; and you will be none the worse for it, I promise you, at the end of the month." He then made a few casual items in a large book, roughly descriptive of our weight, height, and personal appearance, and then led the way through two or three corridors, until we were confronted by a large iron door. This he opened with an iron key, and we were ushered into a large room, where were assembled between thirty or forty prisoners. Some were reading, some were pacing to and fro, and several batches of them were playing cards. What a reception we had, bringing in a fresh supply of information from the outside. "Have you seen Detroit Fatty?" asked one. "Or the Saginaw Kid?" asked another. "Or Chicago Slim?" asked another. Brum, who seemed to know these wonderful persons, answered according to his knowledge. In this large room, for the common use of the prisoners, were twenty or more cells, to which they retired for sleep, but were never locked in--except maybe, an occasional prisoner, who might be waiting trial under a charge of grand larceny, manslaughter, or murder. Supper was soon brought in, and it was a good substantial meal. Its quantity seemed to be more than idle men needed, if they had three such meals every day, and its quality would satisfy me in any position in life. What a pleasure it was that night to be in warmth, and with our minds eased of a month's anxiety. "What time are you going to do?" asked one. "Thirty days," answered Brum. "Plenty," said the other. "There is more jails than this, and not much difference in them, and to go out in the cold for a day or two makes us better appreciate the warmth and comfort within." Next morning we were taken by the sheriff to the court-house, where a number of town people were assembled, owing to the more interesting trial of a local man. I have often thought with amusement of this scene. Despite the judge's severe expression, and his solemn deliberate utterance, we knew what to expect,--thirty days, no more or less. The sheriff whispered to the judge, and the judge nodded sagely, at the same time casting his eyes in our direction. We were charged with being drunk and disorderly, and with disturbing the public peace. "He did not see," he said, "why peaceable citizens should be disturbed in this way by drunken strangers, and would fine us seven dollars and costs, in default of which we would be lodged in the county jail for thirty days." We were then led back by the sheriff, and when we were again among the prisoners, they seemed to express very little curiosity as to our sentences, knowing it was our wish that we should receive thirty days, and that the judge was at our pleasure--we being in fact our own judges. Every morning the sheriff required half a dozen prisoners to sweep and clean the court-house, which was situated about half a mile from the jail. Australian Red and myself went with him several mornings, for a little fresh air, but prisoners could please themselves, and Brum, I know, never left the jail during the whole thirty days. It was an understood thing that any prisoner could discharge himself on these occasions, if inclined, without any fear of capture. The Marshal and the Judge had had their dollars for arrest and conviction, and I suppose, the sheriff charged for board and lodging, without mention of a prisoner's escape. Perhaps they were afraid of bringing back an escaped prisoner, for fear he might make some awkward disclosures. At any rate, liberty could be had by a very deliberate walk and there was certainly no need to make a desperate dash for it. Of course, there was no reason why any prisoner should seek to escape these conditions, which were of his own seeking, and which, during this unpleasant time of the year, could not in any way be bettered by homeless men. After serving our sentence, and the sheriff exacting a promise from us to return again that winter, if not the following, we sought another jail some twenty miles from the last, which prisoners had spoken highly of. We were told that there was no necessity at this place of going through the form of an arrest, but that we could go straight in out of the cold. The Sheriff would at once receive us at his house, learn our wants, while the judge would attend to us on the following morning. We arrived at this place, and everything turned out as described. The jail was no different from the other. We were catered for as customers that would, if treated with courtesy and good living, return winter after winter, and patronise this place in preference to visiting the more congenial climate of the south. At this place we sentenced ourselves to another thirty days. Our room, like the other, was a large iron cage, in which were twenty-four cells in a double row, main floor and gallery, like little cages within it. As we entered this large cage, the sheriff opening the iron door, a number of jail-birds were singing merrily, not for liberty, but enjoying such captivity. There was only one real prisoner here, who was waiting trial under a charge of manslaughter, and he was the one prisoner to be locked in his cell at night; and, in that cell, had waited trial a most cold blooded murderer. Here we had the usual amusements of card playing, singing and relating experiences. The real prisoner--for none of the others had been guilty of any offence, having entered of their own free will--was very unfortunate in having a pair of wags quartered in the cell above him. These two practical jokers made a figure of their bed clothes, and letting it down, dangled it in front of this prisoner's cell. The poor wretch, happening to be awake, and thinking this was Bill Henderson, murderer, and late occupant of the cell, come to haunt him, leaped from his bed, crying with a horror-stricken voice--"Bill Henderson, by God!" Before he could recover from his fear and make a more calm investigation, the figure was withdrawn. All this happened as expected, and the prisoners were delighted, for they had been hinting all day about Bill Henderson's ghost, so that it might take hold of this poor wretch's nerves. Once only during the night was this accomplished, so that their victim might have no suspicion as to its being a genuine ghost. Every time the sheriff appeared the prisoner complained to him of this ghost murderer, pleading for a removal, or an early trial. That gentleman invariably listened with a sarcastic smile, seeming to have some notion of the truth, by glancing at the faces of the other prisoners. How these sheriffs, marshals and constables, despise cowardice, and how they respect the intrepidity of dangerous men. Many a sheriff, I believe, has surrendered his prison keys to the lynchers and the lawless mobs, forgetting his duty in disgust at the exhibition of fear in one for whom he is responsible. And many a sheriff would lay down his life to protect a criminal who with cool nerve faces his cell, callous and indifferent. We visited, and were entertained, in several jails during this winter, and emerged from the last in the middle of April. I have heard since that this system of boodle, as it was called, was in the following winter entirely squashed. A sheriff, it seemed, being of an avaricious disposition, had interfered with the quality and quantity of the prisoners' rations. Therefore, when respectable citizens visited the jail to speak a few sympathetic words to the prisoners, which they usually did on Sunday, those discontented jail-birds complained of insufficient picking; and informed the citizens that they had been guilty of no offence; that they had entered the jail through being promised enjoyment, and that those expectations had not been realised. On hearing this, the citizens formed a committee, and soon discovered the whole system to be rotten. Seeing how they had been robbed, they deposed several officers and the upshot of it was that travellers never again visited that part of America in quest of comfortable jails. For a day or two the least exertion tired us, owing to our winter's inactivity, but take it all in all, we were certainly in good bodily condition. It was now that Australian Red made his first proposal. He knew a fruit farm, where he had been previously employed, "in this very State," said he, "on the shores of Lake Michigan." "How long does the work last?" I asked. "All the summer," he answered, "and good pay for an active man." "All right," I said, "if I can make a pretty fair stake, I shall then return to England and home." Brum agreeing to this, we lit a fire that evening near a water tank, intending to take the first freight train that came our way. When the train arrived, we still dallied at the fire, which was a considerable distance from the track. It whistled before we expected and began its journey. "Break away," cried Australian Red, making a rush for the departing train. The speed of the train was increasing and when I reached its side I was almost afraid to attempt to board it. Australian Red succeeded, but when we reached the next stopping place, we were greatly disappointed to find that Brum had been left behind. We got off and waited the arrival of other trains, thinking that he would soon follow us, but as Brum did not appear on any of them, we continued our journey, thinking to see him later. I never saw him again. He had complained of the year not being sufficiently aired for freedom, and had proposed another short term in jail. No doubt, after losing us he had done this. CHAPTER IX BERRY PICKING We reached the fruit country a week or two before picking commenced, but although we were in advance of time, and without a cent, the generosity of the farmers supplied all our wants. The authorities did not in the least interfere with us, though we lit large camp fires on the outskirts of the towns, took possession of hay ricks and empty out-houses, and loafed for hours in their principal streets. They knew well that the assistance of every man would be needed to strip the vines of their berries, which promised a supply exceeding that of former years. Friday morning, it being generally known that picking was to commence on the following Tuesday, Australian Red remarked that it was now time to interview the farmer, for whom he had previously worked. With this object in view, we left the pretty inland port of St. Joseph, and strolling leisurely, we reached that farm in two hours, it being only five miles from the town. The farmer and his wife, who employed several servants of both sexes, but were without children of their own, at once recognised Australian Red, and gave him a kindly welcome, which spoke well for Red's gentlemanly behaviour in the past. The old man told him, in his bad English, that there would always be plenty of work for Red, and for others whom he might bring with him. I was about twenty-three years of age at this time, appeared much younger and not in any way looking like a dangerous youth, was soon on the best of terms with the old people. So much so, that at the end of the summer, when the pickers were leaving, the result being as satisfactory to themselves as to the farmer, the kind old couple inveigled me into a private place and proposed to adopt me as their own son, and that they would teach me how to run the farm, which they said would become mine at their death. The only way to answer these kind people was to say that I already had a good home, and parents living in England, and that I intended to return there with the profits of this summer's work. The earliest fruit was the strawberries, whose vines grew from six inches to a foot above the ground. We knelt in the hot blazing sun which beat so powerfully on our bended necks that the flesh became in a day or two the dark colour of walnut stain. The soil, being dry and sandy burned through the clothing until our knees were covered with a rash. The effect of this extreme heat often affected people's reasons, and sometimes killed them outright. Berry picking in the South has other dangers of a worse kind. I shall never forget seeing a man leap screaming to his feet, at the same time wringing his right hand in agony. He had parted the thick vines, in quest of the berries that were concealed under the leaves, and in doing so, had disturbed a deadly snake, which had bitten his offending hand. The snake was very small, but far more deadly than many others of twenty times its length and weight. Several deaths occurred this way in my berry picking experience in the South. There was not much fear of this happening in the State of Michigan, but we often wished we could crawl under the low green leaves of the vine to escape for a time the rays of the sun. The farm extended to the shores of the lake, and when our day's work was at an end, we hastened there, and plunged into the cold and unsalted water which never grew warm, and could be swallowed with impunity. After which we would return, cook supper in the open air, and wrapping ourselves in blankets lie all night under the thick foliage of a tree. The berries were sent every night to Chicago for the morrow's market; but, there being no market on Sunday our day of rest was Saturday, and we picked on Sunday for Monday's market. Early every Saturday morning Australian Red would go to town in the farmer's buggy, and return to us later in the day with papers, tobacco, matches, and such provisions as we needed; for eggs, butter, milk, potatoes and fruit could be had of the farmer, the latter delicacy being free for the trouble of picking. Red seemed to me to be a man above the average intelligence, and, as far as my knowledge went, seldom made an error in grammar or the pronunciation of words. But that he should think words required a different pronunciation in reading from what they did in speaking, was a great shock to me, and made some of his most illiterate hearers look from one to another with stupefaction. Now, I was always greatly interested in fights and glove contests, and Red, claiming to have personal acquaintance with the best of Australia, and himself claiming to be an amateur middle weight, whose prowess many a professional had envied, often entertained me with little anecdotes of them, which had escaped the notice of sporting papers. So, on the first Saturday of our picking, Red returned from town with a paper which gave a full and graphic account, round by round, of a contest for the light weight championship of the world, the principals hailing respectively from Australia and America. Red's sympathies, of course, were with the former, who, to his elation, had defeated his opponent. Being a very modest man, Australian Red had always quietly perused his paper, making few comments, so as to avoid all argument; but on this occasion, he opened his paper and began to read with a boldness that astonished me. But what surprised me most was the way in which he made use of an expletive syllable, which sounded so quaint as to make laughter irresistible. For instance, this passage occurred in describing the fifth round: "After he was knocked down, he picked himself up painfully, and the blood flowed from his nostrils in copious streams." I could not help laughing out at his strange delivery, and Red, thinking my sympathies were with the bruiser from the Antipodes, chuckled with a real, but more quiet delight. We had enough food for conversation that day, in commenting on this contest. I like to see a good scientific bout by men who know the use of their hands, but would rather walk twenty miles than see animals in strife. Although of a quiet disposition, my fondness for animals is likely at any time to lead me into danger. After reading cases of vivisection I have often had dreams of boldly entering such places, routing the doctors with a bar of iron, cutting the cords and freeing the animals, despite of any hurt I might receive from bites and scratches. Perhaps I should cut a ridiculous figure, walking through the crowded streets with a poor meek creature under each arm, but that would not bother me much in the performance of a humane action. After a good month's work at the strawberries, we had three weeks at picking raspberries, followed by four weeks blackberry picking. There was good money to be made at the strawberries, but much less at the raspberries. The blackberry picking was as lucrative as the strawberry, and, being cultivated on the low bushes that seldom required us to stoop, was not such a tedious occupation as the latter, whose vines were often half buried in the soil. After paying all expenses, I had, at the end of the season, cleared over a hundred dollars. It was now the last of the picking, and the farmer paid us off. He was a German, and nearly all the farmers in that part of the country were the same, or of that descent, and they used the German language at every opportunity, and never used English except when it was necessary to do so. "You vos come again, next summer," said he to Australian Red and myself as we were leaving--"for I know you two plenty." This remark made me blush, for it seemed as much as to say that his knowledge of us was more than he desired--but we understood his meaning. He offered to drive us to St. Joseph, but we preferred to walk, as we had all day and half the night to wait before the boat started from that place to Chicago. "Now," I said to Australian Red, as we jogged along, "I am going to hoard the bulk of my dollars, and shall just keep two or three handy for food and incidental expenses, for I am now about to beat my way from Chicago to New York. From the latter place I shall pay my passage to Liverpool, clothe myself better, and then take train for South Wales, and still have a pound or two left when I arrive home." "Come and have a drink," said Red, "and I will then inform you how any man without former experience on sea or ship, neither being a sailor, fireman or cook, can not only work his passage to England, but be paid for doing so." We had had no intoxicating liquor for several months, and, though we had passed one or two of these places on our way to St. Joseph, on which he had gazed in a rather too friendly manner, his courage, up to this moment, had not been equal to an invitation. "Well," I said, pleased with the prospect of not only saving my passage money, but also of earning my train fare in England--"it will certainly be cold, taking this deck voyage across the lake in the early hours of morning, and a glass of whiskey will keep some warmth in us." Alas! the usual thing happened--we got full; and what with the dead effects of the drink, and a rough passage across, we arrived in Chicago feeling cold, stiff, and in many other ways uncomfortable. I have often heard salt water mariners sneer at these fresh water sailors, but, after crossing the Atlantic some eighteen times, and making several passages across the lakes, my opinion is that these vast inland lakes are more dangerous to navigate, and far less safe than the open seas. Of course, we had to have more whisky, after the voyage, and, having had to sleep, its effect was almost instantaneous. Not altogether losing my senses, I suggested to Red that we should go to some hotel, have breakfast, and then go to bed for an hour or two, say till dinner time, which would refresh us. It was now eight o'clock in the morning, and Red had unfortunately got into conversation with a gentleman who knew something of Australia. "Yes," he said, gravely, after listening to my proposal--"you are young, and you certainly look drunk and sleepy, and had better follow your own advice. The hotel is next door but one to this, and you will find me here when you return." Not liking to take him by the shoulder, and to gently try to force him away from this stranger in whose conversation he evidently seemed to take a great delight, not to mention doing such an action before the landlord's face, I left him, made arrangements at the hotel for two, and then went to bed. Having had a good sleep, and a substantial meal, and feeling thoroughly refreshed, I now returned to Red, whom I found in the centre of half a dozen loafers, besides the gentleman to whom I have already referred. On my appearance, he staggered to his feet and came to meet me, and then, taking me on one side, began in this way: "You have just come in the nick of time, for the glasses, as you see, are empty. Pay for all drinks called for, and I will make it all right with you in the morning." "What is the matter?" I asked. "What have you done with over eighty dollars?" Winking artfully, and with a smile meant to be cunning, he said--"I have hidden my money, as I usually do in these cases. Most likely it is in the lining of my coat; but, wherever it is, you may depend on it as being quite safe." If he had had the assistance of a score of the most inveterate drunkards, I know he could not in this short time have squandered between eighty and ninety dollars. Red had earned ninety-five dollars and a half, and, up to the time of my leaving him, had spent but very little. I came to the conclusion that he had been robbed, and that this befell him in all his sprees. After calling for a round of drinks, I left the house, knowing that Red would soon follow, which he did, and at once. I persuaded him to bed, and the next morning saw the same peculiarities as before--his going into corners, up side streets, to feel the lining of his clothes. He was not satisfied at seeing no tear in the lining of his cap, but must hold it in his hand and feel every inch of it. "Somewhere on my person," he reiterated, "I have secreted three twenty dollar bills. I have a distinct recollection of doing so, but for the life of me I cannot remember what part." "You have been robbed," I answered, with a little disgust. Not willing to leave him in his present circumstances, and only too sorry that I had not done so when he was almost as well off as myself, I shared my dollars with him, saying in an offended manner--"The sooner we squander this stuff the better it will please us." We spent it in one week in Chicago, and were again without a cent. "Again," I said with some exaggeration, "winter is here, and we are in the same position as at the end of last summer. What now?" "We are without money," said Red, "but there is still nothing to prevent us from our first intention of visiting England. We will beat our way to Baltimore without delay. I am known in that port by the cattle foremen and owners, and we are almost sure of a ship as soon as we arrive." After all, I thought, eager for a new experience, one trip will not come amiss. CHAPTER X THE CATTLEMAN'S OFFICE We found the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad easy to beat, and were at the end of our journey in a very few days. When we entered the cattleman's office, from which place owners and foremen were supplied with men, it was evident to me that Red was well known in this place, hearing him make enquiries of Washington Shorty, New York Fatty, Philadelphia Slim, and others. At this place I made the acquaintance of Oklahoma Sam, an extremely quiet man, very much respected in that he had a cold blooded fashion of whittling wood and paring his nails with a steel blade nearly a foot long. Another queer character was Baldy, of whom Australian Red related this anecdote. When stranded in Liverpool and hungry, he once took up a position in front of a confectioner's shop, and, being an extremely lazy man, placed his shoulder against the lamp-post, and settled himself for a long reverie. He might have been there an hour or more, when the baker came out and complained of Baldy's person, being ragged and dirty, as the reason why people hurried past his establishment; telling Baldy straight that his presence was detrimental to the trade of any shop that catered to the inner man. Baldy, too lazy to speak, much less show any signs of anger, took a firmer bearing on the post and settled to a more prolonged reverie. Two or three hours elapsed when the baker, who had come several times to stare at him through the window, rushed out and shouted with much irritation--"For Heaven's sake, go: here, take this sixpence, and let me see the last of you." Baldy, who had not wished the baker good morning, wished him good afternoon, and strolled quietly away, with the price of a good meal in his hand. Nobody, who thoroughly understood Baldy's disposition, would wonder at this; for this success, after all, was only the result of laziness, but most of his companions gave him credit for using unique strategy in obtaining money. Shelter only was supplied at this office, and that of the barest kind, being no other than the hard floor, and blanketless. Owing to this the men, who, after making a trip often had to wait sometimes two or three weeks for another chance, were all good beggars. Some of them had begged Baltimore off and on for ten years, and knew every good house in the city. One would say--"I shall go to the dressmaker for my breakfast"; another intended to go to the dairy, the fat woman, or the dentist; the latter being always good for money in the shape of a ten cent piece. We had been at this office three days, when the shipper sent Australian Red and myself, with four others, to rope cattle at the yards. Seven hundred and fifty head of cattle had to be shipped that night, and the ropes had to be placed on their necks or horns, with which they had to be fastened to their places aboard ship. After Red had taken a rope, and given me a practical illustration of what was to be done, the cattle began to arrive. They were very wild, having just come from the plains of the west. There was a long narrow shoot in the yards, with one end blocked, and when a number of cattle had been driven into this, and had wedged themselves too close and fast to be capable of any wild movement, it was our business to slip a noose around their horns, or necks, draw this rope as tight as possible, and fasten it with a knot, so as to prevent it from slipping. When this was accomplished, the end of the shoot was opened, and they were rushed out with their ropes dangling, and a fresh batch were then driven in and served likewise. After which they were put in cars and sent to the ship. Now the foreman, knowing Red, asked him if he would like to go with him, to which Red answered yes, at the same time putting in a good word for me, which at once met with the foreman's approval. We were not therefore surprised, on our return, when the shipper called us into his private office to sign articles--Red to receive two pounds for the trip, and myself thirty shillings, an amount seldom paid to a raw hand, except on the recommendation of owner or foreman. I shall never forget the first night's experience, when the cattle were brought to the ship in a train of cars. A large sloping gangway was erected to span the distance between ship and shore, and up this incline the poor beasts were unmercifully prodded with long poles, sharpened at the end, and used by the shore cattlemen. The terror-stricken animals were so new to the conditions, that they had no notion of what was expected of them, and almost overleaped one another in their anxiety to get away. What with the shout of savage triumph, the curse of disappointment, and the slipping and falling of the over-goaded steers, I was strongly tempted to escape the scene. As the cattle were being driven aboard, we cattlemen, who had signed for their future charge, caught their ropes, which we were required to fasten to a strong stanchion board. Sometimes one would run up behind, and prevent himself from turning. On one of these occasions, I crossed the backs of others, that had been firmly secured, so as to force this animal to a proper position. The animal, whose back I was using for this purpose, began to heave and toss, and at last succeeding in throwing me across the back of the other, this one tossing and rearing until I was in danger of my life, only the pressure of the other beasts preventing him from crushing my limbs. Taking possession of his rope, I held it to a cattleman, who was standing waiting and ready in the alley, and he quickly fastened this refractory animal to the crossboards. Now the foreman had been watching this, and coming to the conclusion that I was a good man with cattle, said he would like me to be the night watchman. This undoubtedly does require a good man, as I soon discovered, on the first night out. There were two lots of cattle aboard, and for these two foremen, two lots of cattlemen, and two watchmen. As all hands are available in the day, any difficulty with the cattle can soon be attended to; if necessary, all hands taking part. But when there is any trouble at night, one watchman only has the assistance of the other, who, of course, expects the same aid from him, in cases of emergency. Now if a number of cattle have broken loose, and worked themselves into intricate positions, the watchman is supposed to awake the foreman and his men to assist him, but one would rather struggle all night with his difficulties than to take these men at their word, knowing their peevishness and dislike for a man who has disturbed them from a sound sleep. A watchman is therefore told to call up all hands, if he cannot cope with the cattle under his charge, but he is never expected to do so. What soon breaks the spirit of these wild animals is the continual motion of the vessel. There is always plenty of trouble at first, when they slip forward and backward, but in a few days they get their sea-legs, and sway their bodies easily to the ship's motion. The wild terror leaves their eyes, and, when they can no more smell their native land, they cease bellowing, and settle calmly down. This restlessness breaks out afresh when nearing shore on the other side, and again they bellow loud and often, long before the mariner on the look-out has sighted land. We also had on this trip two thousand head of sheep, quartered on the hurricane deck. When we were six days out there came a heavy storm, and the starboard side was made clean, as far as pens and sheep were concerned, one wave bearing them all away. This happened at night, and on the following morning the sheep men were elated at having less work to do during the remainder of the voyage. The cattle, being protected on the main deck, and between decks, and their breath filling the air with warmth, make the cattleman's lot far more comfortable than that of the sheep-men. The condition of the cattle can be seen without difficulty, but ten or fifteen sheep lying or standing in the front of a crowded pen, may be concealing the dead or dying that are lying in the background. For this reason it is every morning necessary to crawl through the pens, far back, in quest of the sick and the dead, and it is nothing unusual to find half a dozen dead ones. The voyage would not be considered bad if thirty sheep only died out of two thousand. What a strange assortment of men were these cattlemen and sheepmen. One man, called Blacky, a bully without being a coward, fell in love with a small white cat, which we had found in the forecastle. His ruffianism at once disappeared, and every time he was at liberty, instead of looking for trouble with his fellow-men, he could be seen peacefully nursing this cat, at the same time addressing it endearingly as "Little White Dolly," and such simple language as a child might use. It was our duty to keep the cattle standing, and not to allow them to rest too long on their knees; and not let them, on any account, stretch full length in the pens. One reason for this was that a kneeling steer would be overstepped by his nearest neighbour, and if the latter happened to rise, their ropes, which were so fastened as to give them very little freedom, would be tightened and crossed, bringing their heads together in such close proximity, that they would make frantic efforts to escape each other's presence. And another reason for not allowing them to lie down for any length of time was that their joints would become so stiff as to make them almost incapable of rising, though goaded by the most heartless cruelty. I used the most humane methods to attain this end, and sought to inspire terror in them by the use of the most ferocious war-cry, which often succeeded. If that failed to raise them, I struck them with a flat stick on the haunches, which they could scarcely feel, at the same time not forgetting to use my voice. Not succeeding in this, I resorted to the old remedy, which rarely fails, standing at their backs and twisting their tails. A bullock can kick in any direction. There is terrible power in his side kick, also his front kick, throwing his hind leg forward with a speed that is remarkable for such an unwieldy animal. But his back kick, when you stand back to back with him, has not the least power to cause hurt. The other watchman and myself had about an equal number of cattle under our charge, and when I was in difficulty he kindly came to my assistance, and I did likewise for him, although he seldom seemed to need other help than his own. We made our rounds about every half hour. Sometimes I found a steer in the alley; by some means or other he had cleared the head board and, still being a prisoner, stood fastened outside the pen instead of inside. Another time we would find one standing with his tail to the head-board, instead of his head, owing to the rope getting loose, or being broken; after which he had turned himself around to see if there was any way of escape behind him. It required great care, in cases of this kind, to place them again in their original positions. Up till the fourth night we had experienced no bad weather, and the cattle had been quiet and requiring little care. On this particular night my attention had been drawn several times to a big black steer, which, time after time, had persisted in lying down. At last, in pity for the poor beast, I let him rest, thinking to get him into a standing position at the last moment, when I went off duty, after calling the foreman and his men. But when that last moment came I failed in all my efforts to raise this animal, whose joints, I suppose, had become stiff after a prolonged rest. I was not therefore greatly surprised when the foreman came, after I had gone off duty, to the forecastle, with the complaint of having found a number of cattle lying down, and one, he said, in particular, which must have been lying down half of the night. "When I left the cattle," I said, "nothing seemed to be wrong." "Come up and see this one," he answered. I followed him on deck, and there I saw several cattlemen standing in front of a pen, in which I recognised the big black steer. He was now lying full length in the pen, the others having had to be removed for his convenience. "See this," said the foreman, "this creature should be standing. Twist his tail," he continued, to a cattleman, who at once obeyed. During this operation another cattleman fiercely prodded the poor creature's side with a pitchfork, which must have gone an inch into the body. At the same time another beat the animal about the head with a wooden stake, dangerously near the eyes. The animal groaned, and its great body heaved, but it made no attempt to move its legs. "Wait," said the foreman then, "we will see what this will do." He then took out of his mouth a large chew of tobacco, and deliberately placed it on one of the animal's eyes. My heart sickened within me, on seeing this, and I knew that I would have to be less gentle with these poor creatures to save them the worst of cruelty. In a second or two the poor beast, maddened by pain, made frantic efforts to rise, tried again and again, and after seeing its great sides panting, and hearing a number of pitiful groans, it succeeded in the attempt. These cattlemen are, as a rule, great thieves, and well the sailors and firemen know it, and especially the steward and cook. One evening, when the men had finished their day's work, and I was preparing to go on duty for the night, I heard Blacky propose a night's raid on the captain's chickens, which were kept in a small coop under the bridge, and rather difficult to rob, considering the bridge was always occupied by the captain or one of his first officers. But, next morning, on coming to the forecastle I was not greatly surprised to smell a peculiar and a not unpleasant odour, coming from that place. Blacky and another had made their raid during the previous night, leisurely killing the chickens on the spot, which was certainly the best plan. When I descended the forecastle steps, I saw that the stove was red hot, on which was a large tin can full of potatoes, onions and chicken. I am not ashamed to say that I did not scruple to partake of this rogue's mess, knowing from experience how this company ran their boats, allowing their stewards such miserly small amounts for provisions, that the common sailors and firemen did not get sufficient food to eat, bad as its quality was. When we arrived at Liverpool, we were not long clearing our decks of cattle. After one is forced to lead, which is often difficult to do, they all follow, and it is the same with the sheep. It is more often necessary to control their mad rush than to goad them on. We received payment aboard--Red two pounds, myself thirty shillings, one other a pound, and the rest ten shillings each, which was to board and lodge us ashore for six days, when we would have passenger tickets back to the port from which we had sailed. If the ship, from any cause, was delayed over this number of days, we were to receive an extra half a crown for every day over. Red, having been in Liverpool several times previously, led the way to a cheap house, at which place I persuaded them to pay down six nights' lodging, so as to make sure of some shelter, not forgetting to caution them against drink, as they would need every penny of the remainder for food, which would be more difficult to obtain in this country than their own. These cattlemen are recognised as the scum of America, a wild, lawless class of people, on whom the scum of Europe unscrupulously impose. They are an idle lot, but, coming from a land of plenty, they never allow themselves to feel the pangs of hunger until they land on the shores of England, when their courage for begging is cooled by the sight of a greater poverty. Having kind hearts, they are soon rendered penniless by the importunities of beggars. Men waylay them in the public streets for tobacco, and they are marked men in the public houses--marked by their own voices. First one enters and makes a successful appeal, who quickly informs another, and others as quickly follow. These wild, but kind-hearted men, grown exceedingly proud by a comparison of the comfortable homes of America with these scenes of extreme poverty in Liverpool and other large sea-ports, give and give of their few shillings, until they are themselves reduced to the utmost want. And so it was on this occasion. The next day after landing, I made my way to the public library, for I had not enjoyed books for a considerable time. When I returned from this place, Australian Red at once approached me to borrow money, with his old hint of having some concealed. On questioning the others, six in number, I found that these men had not the price of a loaf of bread among them. As for myself, I had not been drinking, and had only spent seven shillings, and a part of that had been given away in charity. For even in the coffee-house ragged lads set their hungry eyes on one's meal, and sidle up with the plaintive remark that they will be thankful for anything that is left. In such cases, who could help but attend to them at once, before attempting to enjoy his own meal? As far as my money went I maintained Red and the others, but the day previous to sailing, there was not one penny left. We were to sail the following night, but would not be supplied with food until breakfast time the next morning. When that hour arrived we were all weak from hunger, not having had food for over forty hours. When the food did arrive in the forecastle, these hungry men strove for it like wild beasts, without any system of equal shares. What a monotonous life we now had for thirteen days. No work; nothing to do but to eat and sleep. And how I had intended to enjoy this part of the trip! The few hours I had spent in the library, had brought back my old passion for reading, and, had it not been for the distress of others, I had now been the happy possessor of some good books. This was not to be; for I was to lie in my bunk with but one consolation--that I had sufficient tobacco under seal with the steward to last me until the end of the voyage. This new experience was a disappointment, and it was my firm resolve, on returning to Baltimore, to seek some more remunerative employment, to save, and then to work my passage back to England in this same way, and go home with my earnings. We had a rough passage back, the ship being light, with little more than ballast. One night the vessel made a fearful roll, and the lights went dark, and we thought every moment that she would turn over. A coal bunker was smashed by the waves, and large pieces of coal bounded across the deck with a force that would have broken every bone in a man's body. Pieces of heavy wood, that would have cut off a man's feet as clean as a knife, slid across the deck from side to side. We thought the end had come, especially when we saw an old sailor rush on deck in his bare feet, his shirt being his only apparel. Sleep was out of the question for some hours, for we were forced to cling to our bunks with all our strength, to save ourselves from being thrown out, when we would be rolled here and there, and soon battered into an unconscious state. We reached Baltimore on the thirteenth day, and at once made our way to the cattlemen's office, intending on the morrow to make better arrangements for the future. CHAPTER XI A STRANGE CATTLEMAN It was now the beginning of October, and the mornings and the evenings were getting colder. Although Baltimore is a southern town, and was therefore free from the severe cold of towns further north, it was not so far south as to make plenty of clothes dispensable. We two, Australian Red and myself, tramped this city day after day for work, but without success. There were only two courses left open to us: to make three or four more trips on cattle boats, until the coming of spring, when there would probably be work in abundance, or to go oyster dredging down the Chesapeake Bay, a winter employment that was open to any able-bodied man in Baltimore, experience not being necessary. Red soon placed the latter beyond consideration by relating his own hard experience of the same. First of all the work was very hard, and of a most dangerous kind; the food was of the worst; and, worse than all, the pay was of the smallest. A man would often cut his hands with the shells, which would poison and swell, and render him helpless for some time to come. "Again," said Red, "a man is not sure of his money, small as it is. A few years ago," he continued, "it was a common occurrence for a boat to return and have to report the loss of a man. These dredgers were never lost on the outward trip, but when homeward bound, and the most hazardous part of their work was done. The captain, on coming to shore, would report a man lost, drowned, and his body unrecovered. This drowned man, being an unknown, no relative came forward to claim wages from the captain. How the man met his death was no secret among the dredgers, and they had to keep a wary eye on their own lives; for a captain would often move the tiller so suddenly as to knock a man overboard, accidentally, of course. A board of enquiry looked into these things, and a captain was tried for murder, and escaped with a sentence of seven years' imprisonment. There were not so many accidents after this, but they have not altogether ceased." After hearing this account, I was not very eager for more practical knowledge of this profession, called dredging, so I agreed with Red to make three or four more trips as cattlemen, until the spring of the year made other work easy to be obtained. We returned to the office, where between thirty and forty men were waiting an opportunity to ship. As I have said before, some of these men were notorious beggars, and the kind-hearted people of Baltimore never seemed to tire of giving them charity. One man, called Wee Scotty, who had been a cattleman for a number of years, begged the town so much in some of the rather long intervals when he was waiting a ship, that he could take a stranger with him three times a day for a month, to be fed by the different good people that were known to him. He could take up a position on a street corner, and say--"Go to that house for breakfast; come back to this house for dinner, and yonder house with the red gate will provide you a good supper." In this way he kept me going for two weeks when, at last, I was asked to sign articles to go with cattle to Glasgow. Some days before this, a man came to the office, whose peculiar behaviour often drew my attention to him. He asked to be allowed to work his passage to England, and the skipper promised him the first opportunity, and a sum of ten shillings on landing there. This was the reason why some of us had to wait so long, because, having made trips before, more or less, we required payment for our experience. The man referred to above, had a white clean complexion, and his face seemed never to have had use for a razor. Although small of body, and not seeming capable of much manual labour, his vitality of spirits seemed overflowing every minute of the day. He swaggered more than any man present, and was continually smoking cigarettes--which he deftly rolled with his own delicate fingers. In the intervals between smoking he chewed, squirting the juice in defiance of all laws of cleanliness. It was not unusual for him to sing a song, and his voice was of surprising sweetness; not of great power, but the softest voice I have ever heard from a man, although his aim seemed to make it appear rough and loud, as though ashamed of its sweetness. It often occurred to me that this man was playing a part, and that all this cigarette smoking, chewing tobacco and swaggering, was a mere sham; an affectation for a purpose. I could not, after much watching, comprehend. He was free of speech, was always ridiculing others, and swore like a trooper, yet no man seemed inclined to take advantage of him. Blackey took him under his protection, laughing and inciting him to mischief. He was certainly not backward in insulting and threatening Blackey, which made the latter laugh until the tears came into his eyes. The men were spellbound at his volubility. He shook that red rag of his, and a continuous flow of speech ensued, and the surrounding creatures were mute, but not at all infuriated. His audacity may have slightly irritated one or two, but no man had the least idea of inflicting on him corporal punishment. I and Red were called to the office to sign articles for Glasgow, and, when doing so, Blackey and this strange new companion of his were signing for England, the two ships leaving for their destination on the same tide. We were sorry to lose this man's company, knowing that his tongue would have gone far to amuse our leisure hours aboard. We had a very pleasant voyage, and this line of boats gave us very little cause to complain, either of sleeping accommodation or diet, the officers and ship's crew also being sociable in their dealings with us. The same thing happened at the end of this voyage, and we would have suffered the same privation--had it not been for an accident. On the fourth morning ashore there was not a penny among us, and the boat would not sail for another two days. Australian Red was rummaging his pockets and piling before him a large assortment of miscellaneous articles. "I wouldn't care much," said he, "if I had the paltry price I paid for this," at the same time throwing on the table a thick, heavy, white chain. Picking this up, for an indifferent examination, I became interested, and enquired as to how it came into his possession. It seemed that a poor fellow had offered to sell Red the chain for a penny. Red, seeing the man's condition of extreme want, had given him sixpence, at the same time refusing to accept the chain. The poor fellow had then persisted that Red should accept it as a gift. Red, being now filled with his own troubles, wished that he could dispose of the chain to the same advantage. The chain was, without doubt, silver, being stamped on every link. "What!" cried Red, suddenly roused, while the cattlemen in their deep interest moved forward, making a circle several feet smaller--"What!" he cried, "silver did you say? Let me see it!" He snatched the chain and, without looking at it, or putting it in his pocket, rushed out of the room without another word. In five minutes he returned, and throwing towards me eight shillings, the value of the chain in pawn, said: "None of this for drink; keep a tight hand on it for our food supply until the boat sails." He knew his own weakness. On first coming to shore I had taken the precaution to buy several books, to make sure of them, indifferent whether we suffered hunger or no. For this reason I thoroughly enjoyed the voyage back, and we arrived safely at Baltimore, having been away a little over five weeks. The first man we met, on entering the cattlemen's office, was Blackey, who, having made a shorter trip, had returned some days previous. "What became of your strange friend, Blackey?" I asked. "Did he remain in England, or return to America?" "Why, haven't you heard about it all?" asked Blackey; "the English papers were full of the case." "We have heard nothing," I said, thinking the poor fellow had either been kicked to death by one of the wild steers, or that he had either leaped at the waves in a mad fit of suicide, or that the waves had leaped at him and taken him off. "He worked side by side with me for eleven days," said Blackey, "and by his singing, laughing and talking, he made a play of labour. Down in the forecastle at night he sang songs and, in spite of our limited space, and the rolling of the ship, he gave many a dance, and ended by falling into his low bunk exhausted, and laughing still. In all my experience this was the first time that I was not eager to sight land, and fill myself with English ale. On the eleventh day out, we were hoisting bales of hay for the cattle, and he was assisting me in the hold of the vessel. I know not whether we failed to fasten properly the bales, or whether the cattlemen on deck blundered when receiving them, but all at once I heard a shout of--'Look out, below!' and down came a heavy bale, striking my companion on the shoulder. He spun around once or twice, and then fell unconscious into my arms. The ship's doctor was at once called, and the poor fellow was taken aft. Several times a day I made enquiries about him, and heard that he was out of danger, but needed rest. I never saw him again. When we landed in England he was not to be seen, and I thought, perhaps, that he was too ill to be removed without the assistance of a vehicle. Next day I happened to pick up a paper, in which was a full and lengthy account of how a woman had worked her way as a cattleman from the port of Baltimore, making mention of the ship's name. My companion was that woman, and I never had the least suspicion," continued Blackey, "although, I will say, that I always thought him a queer man." I had scarcely been in the office a week, when I was offered a boat for London. Only one two-pound man was required, all the others, with the exception of one, who was to receive fifteen shillings, were ten-shilling men. Red had no chance on this boat, and I was not sorry, knowing how his extravagant habits would spoil the trip's enjoyment. This was a voyage of some delight, both aboard and ashore. Having been in London before, I knew what enjoyment could be had with but little expense--of museums, parks, gardens, picture galleries, etc. I made friends with a decent fellow, who had been a schoolmaster, and, persuading him out of Deptford, we procured lodgings in Southwark, and from that place we paid our visits to the different scenes. We saw none of the other cattlemen until the hour of sailing. Many of the poor fellows had lost their money on the first night ashore, and now had strange experiences to relate of workhouses, shelters, soup-kitchens, and unsuccessful begging. When we arrived at Baltimore it wanted one week to Christmas Day, and there was not much chance to ship again for two or three weeks, owing to the number of men waiting. As I have said before, the people of Baltimore are extremely kind-hearted, and no man need starve if he has the courage to express his wants. The women seem to be as beautiful as they are good, for I have never seen finer women than those of Baltimore, and a man would not be making the worst of life if he idled all day in a principal street, reading the face of beauty, and studying the grace of forms that pass him by. But it is of their kindness and generosity that I would now speak. For Christmas Eve had come, and Australian Red, accompanied by Blackey, had taken me on one side, the former beginning in this way: "Will you join this night's expedition? What we want you to do is to carry a small bag, no more, and all the begging will be done by us." I had visions of the police stopping me and enquiring the contents of such a strange burden, but being an unsuccessful beggar, and feeling too independent to have others perform this office for me, without making some little effort to deserve their maintenance, I agreed to their proposal, and that evening at six p. m., we sallied forth together. They both started on a long street, Red taking one side and Blackey the other, whilst I waited the result some yards in advance--a safe distance away. They could scarcely have been refused in one house, for in less than ten minutes they were both at my side, dropping paper parcels into the empty bag, the mouth of which I held open. All at once Blackey disappeared, having been called in to supper. The same thing happened to Red, two or three minutes after. When they approached me again with other parcels, they both agreed to accept no more invitations to supper, but that they would excuse themselves as having families at home. They continued this for half an hour, hardly more, when the bag was full to the mouth. "Now," said Blackey, "take this to the office, and we will remain to fill our pockets, after which we will follow as soon as possible. Or do you prefer to wait for us?" I preferred to go, and, avoiding the main streets and lighted places, succeeded in getting back without rousing the curiosity of the police. They soon followed, with another supply stored in their capacious pockets. What delighted them most--but of which I took very little account, knowing to what use it would be put--was that they had received several small amounts in money, the total being one dollar and seventy-five cents. I shall never forget this begging expedition. When the different parcels were unrolled, we beheld everything that the most fastidious taste could desire, for not one parcel, I believe, consisted of simple bread and butter, much less the former by its own common self. There were fried oysters, turkey, chicken, beef, mutton, ham and sausages; Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes and yams; brown bread, white bread; pancakes, tarts, pie and cake of every description; bananas, apples, grapes and oranges; winding up with a quantity of mixed nuts and a bag of sweets. Such were the contents of over sixty parcels, got with such ease. Blackey had been refused at three doors; and Red had failed at five, but had been requested to call back at two of them, and had not troubled to do so, not having properly located the houses. CHAPTER XII THIEVES Cockney More was a cattleman, hailing from the port of Baltimore. He was a born thief and, strange to say, nearly blind; but without doubt, he was a feeler of the first magnitude. If he borrowed a needle, and the said article was honestly returned, it behoved the lender, knowing the borrower's thievish propensities, to carefully examine it to see that the eye had not been abstracted; for, as Donovan remarked--"Cockney More could steal the milk out of one's tea." When I have looked at Cockney's long thin fingers, I have often wondered whether he had power to disjoint them at will, letting them down the legs of his trousers to rummage the locality, while he stood innocently talking to us with his hands in his pockets. That honour which is supposed to exist among thieves, was not known to Cockney More, for he would rob his best friend, and do it in such a way that no man could take umbrage. For instance, six of us had landed in Liverpool, having been paid off that morning. Cockney, knowing the ins and outs of that city, and its numerous pitfalls for strangers, escorted us at once to a cheap lodging-house, where we paid in advance for a week's bed, thus being assured of shelter until the ship was ready to return. The next morning we sat six disconsolate men in the lodging-house kitchen, not one of us having the price of his breakfast. Cockney, being the last to rise, entered at last, and noting our despondent looks enquired as to the cause. On being told he went out and returned in a few moments with tea, sugar, bread and sausages. In fact, he continued these kind deeds during our week ashore. The others, being mostly strangers, blessed him for a good fellow, but it occurred to me that he was simply returning us our own, for he spent three times more money during those few days than he had received for the trip. I remembered a mean little trick that he had performed on one of the cattlemen that very first morning ashore. True, we were all getting drunk fast, but I never thought Cockney would be daring enough to attempt such a deed in our first stage of intoxication. He had asked this cattleman for a chew of tobacco and the man had generously offered him the whole plug to help himself. Cockney took this plug and, biting off a piece, returned the bitten part to the owner, and himself pocketed the plug. I was speechless with astonishment at seeing this: and more so when the strange cattleman innocently received the bitten part, and put it in his pocket without having perceived anything wrong. Cockney and myself were on the best of terms, and yet, some time previous to the above episode, he had served me a trick which ought to have severed our friendship for ever. I was at the shipping office and had that morning signed for a trip to London. "Have you sufficient tobacco, and a spoon, knife, fork and plate?" enquired Cockney. "Yes," I replied, "and I have also a new pack of cards, so that we may enjoy our leisure hours aboard." Cockney was pleased to hear this, although he was not to accompany me on this trip. "Let me see them," said he. This I did and being, as I have said, nearly blind, he took them to the window for examination, but returned them almost immediately. Then came a shout for all men who had signed for the London trip, and, hastily wishing Cockney and others good-bye, I left the office. On the second day out we were all at leisure for an hour or more, and enquiries went around as to who had a pack of cards. My cards were at once produced and, taking partners, we were about to settle to a little enjoyment. Alas, when my cards were taken out of the new case, they were found to be a dirty, greasy old pack with several missing, and, of course, card playing was out of the question. I at once knew what had happened: Cockney had substituted these old ones for the new, what time he pretended to be interested at the window. That little trick meant twelve days' misery for eight men, for we could not get another pack until we landed in London. On that trip, when I had the pleasure of Cockney's company, we had with us Donovan who, as a thief, certainly ran Cockney a good second. The truth of the matter is that all cattlemen are thieves, and the one who complains of going ashore without his razor, often has in his possession another's knife, comb or soap. On the second day out I missed my pocket-knife and, without loss of time boldly accused Cockney More to his face, telling him that however much I admired his dexterity in other people's pockets I had not the least suspicion that he would be guilty of such a trick on an old pal. "No more have I," said he. "What kind of knife was it?" On being told, he advised me to say no more about it, and that he would endeavour to find it. He succeeded in doing so, and the next day Donovan was shouting indignantly--"Who has been to my bunk and stolen a knife?" After this I lost my soap, but did not think it worth while mentioning such a petty loss. On approaching Cockney More for the loan of his, he--giving me strict injunctions to return it at once, and not leave it exposed to the eyes of thieves--lent me my own soap. This trip was a memorable one, and no doubt Cockney made the best haul of his life. We were together in Liverpool, Cockney, Donovan and myself, and as usual drinking. A stranger, hearing by our conversation that we hailed from America, invited us to drink; and in the course of conversation expressed a regret that he was out of work, and had no means of visiting America. "Nothing is easier," said Cockney, "if you place yourself unreservedly in our hands. We are to sail on Thursday, and I can stow you away, as I have successfully done with others." "Many thanks," replied the other, and so it was agreed. On the following Thursday we went aboard, the Cockney carrying a large bag which contained the stowaway's clothes, etc. When the ship's officers entered our forecastle the stowaway was, of course, not present, but when they were searching other places, the stowaway was then sitting comfortably among us, these things being well managed by Cockney More. After this search they would pay us no more visits, and the stowaway was safe, and could go on deck at night for fresh air. The only danger now was to land him in America. This, the Cockney affirmed, was a danger of little account. Now, as I have said, this stowaway had a bag, and Cockney More and Donovan were great thieves. Therefore, it was not at all surprising to hear that the poor fellow was soon without a second shirt to his back. He had lent me a book, the value of which I did not think him capable of appreciating, and I had made up my mind that it should not be returned until asked for. But when I heard him complain of losing so many things, through pity I became honest and returned it. But where was his watch and chain, his brushes, and where were his clothes, his tools, razor, strop, and many other useful articles? All these things were in possession of Donovan, and Cockney knew it and appeared to be grieving over lost chances; for he was supposed to have that honour which is among thieves, and as Donovan had been too fast for him, he had no other option than to sit quiet under the circumstances. On the day before our arrival at Baltimore, I happened to enter the forecastle and found Donovan, his face pale, feverously rummaging Cockney More's bunk. "What do you think?" said he. "That blasted Cockney has robbed me of everything." And so he had. He had allowed Donovan to do all the dirty work, of abstracting the goods one by one, as the chance occurred; he had allowed him the pleasure of their care and possession for many days, and then he had robbed him. But the artful part of the business was this: he had not left Donovan any chance to recover the goods, for he had made friends with one of the sailors--the latter having a forecastle to themselves--and had prevailed on that person to take charge of a parcel for him until all the cattlemen landed; "for," said he, "these cattlemen are born thieves." Yes, he had done the business neatly, for the desperate and much aggrieved Donovan who intended on landing to recover the goods by force, saw Cockney More walk ashore as empty-handed as himself, and he was almost shaken in his belief that the said Cockney was, after all, the thief triumphant. CHAPTER XIII THE CANAL I now left Baltimore, travelling alone, making my way as fast as possible towards Chicago, where a canal was being built to facilitate commerce between that large inland city, and deep water, at which place I soon arrived. On the banks of that canal were assembled the riff-raff of America and the scum of Europe; men who wanted no steady employment, but to make easy and quick stakes--for the pay was good--so as to indulge in periodical sprees, or in rare instances, for the more laudable purpose of placing themselves in a better position to apply for more respectable employment. They came and went in gangs, for the work was so hard that there were few men that did not require a week's rest after a month's labour. So much for the rough but honest working element. But unfortunately these canal banks were infested by other gangs, who did not seek work, and yet were often to be seen loafing about the various camps. Then how did these men live? For they could not successfully beg, seeing that work was to be had for the asking. Perhaps the explanation is that seldom a day passed but what a dead body was dragged out of the water, and more than two-thirds of these bodies bore the marks of murder. The bodies were not those of men coming from the city in search of employment, but of such men as had been known to have quit work a few days previous, having then had a month's or more pay on their persons, and who had been on the way to the city for enjoyment. Yes, these loafers were undoubtedly the thugs and murderers, and if a man was inclined to hazard his life, all he had to do was to make it known that he on the following day was to draw his earnings, with the intention of walking the canal banks to one of the distant towns. It was hardly likely that he would reach his destination, but would be taken out of the canal some days later--a murdered man. To defeat the purpose of these unscrupulous life-takers, the more timid workmen waited for one another until they were sufficiently strong in number to discharge themselves and travel without fear. But alas! there was many a man who prided himself on his own heart and muscles for protection and dared the journey alone. At the time of which I write there had been no houses built on those banks, therefore no women walked to and fro, and no children played there. No doubt such are to be seen there at the present day, innocent of the violence and the blood that was shed there in the past. I had applied for work at one of these camps and being sickened of the same in a little more than three weeks demanded my earnings at the same time Cockney Tom and Pat Sheeny drew theirs, with the intention of accompanying them to Chicago. Being somewhat delayed in business, owing to the absence of the timekeeper, and being then compelled to remain for dinner, we soon saw the impossibility of reaching the city before midnight. Therefore it was arranged between us that we should settle for the night at some place half way between the camp and the city, and rise early so as to enter the latter before noon on the following day. With this intention we started, after receiving dinner and pay, and after several hours' walk settled down. There would be six hours' darkness and it was proposed that I should keep awake for the first two hours' watch, after which Cockney Tom would relieve me, and Pat would then keep watch until daybreak. Now, in my two hours' watch I had on several occasions heard a stir in the adjoining bush, but not being able to see whether it was a man or a beast, I had not thought it necessary to alarm my companions. At last I considered my duty to be at an end, and, after rousing Cockney Tom, settled myself for sleep. Before I closed my eyes I noticed that the second watch was still lying recumbent, although he seemed to be wide awake; but I was too intent on my own sleep to care whether he would be faithful to his trust or not. I don't think I could have been asleep more than fifteen minutes when I was startled by a loud shout and, springing to my feet was just in time to see Cockney Tom in pursuit of one who was then entering the bush. The Irishman was also up, and we both followed the chase. We soon reached our companion, finding him standing dazed and confused as to which way the quarry had gone. He explained to us that when on watch he was lying down with his eyes closed, but with his ears wide open, and all his mental faculties at work. Suddenly, he heard a step near and opening his eyes saw a stranger standing within three feet of him. It was at that moment that he gave the alarm, but the stranger was too fleet to be overtaken. "No doubt," said Cockney, "there is a gang of them at no short distance from here and if we are wise, we will continue our journey at once. I have seen the man's face before, at the camp, and know I shall recognise him if we meet again." His advice of continuing our journey was hardly necessary, for sleep was now out of the question. In less than a week after the above incident we three, having squandered our earnings in Chicago, were back at the old camp seeking re-employment. There happened to be only one vacancy, which the Irishman persuaded Cockney to accept, whilst we two would travel on to the next camp, a distance of two miles. We were about to do this when the boss ganger asked me if I would like a position in the boarding shanty as assistant cook. Knowing that an assistant cook meant no more than carrying water, peeling potatoes, washing dishes, keeping a good fire and opening cans of condensed meat and preserves--I felt quite confident in undertaking such a position. So the Cockney and I started to work at once, but before doing so, arranged for the keep of Pat until a vacancy occurred, his meals to be entered to our account. The next morning his chance came and he was set to work. We had been working four days, and on the evening of that fourth day we three and a number of others were resting ourselves in a quiet place near the camp. Whilst seated there, smoking and talking, there came along four strangers, who seated themselves some distance from us, but within earshot of our conversation. No one paid much heed to them, for it was not unusual to be visited by strangers in quest of work. But there was one man who could not keep his eyes from them, and that was Cockney Tom. "Yes," he said to me after several long puffs at his pipe, "that stranger, showing us his side face, is the very man who attempted to rob us." Saying this the Cockney took off his cap and laying it carefully on the ground with its inside uppermost, placed therein his dirty clay pipe, as gently as a woman putting a sleeping babe in its cradle--and to the no small surprise of his companions began to address them in this oratorical fashion: "Gentlemen, some time ago a man attempted to rob me and two others, and ever since then I have been longing to meet him face to face. At last we meet, and I would like to know what is to be done with him." "Why, give him a good hiding, of course," cried several angry voices. On hearing this the Cockney at once turned towards the strangers--whom he had hitherto pretended not to notice--and in three bounds was standing over them. Placing his hands on the shoulders of one he said in a calm voice, "This is my man." The man referred to rose deliberately to his feet, as though he had expected this, and his companions did likewise. "Well," said he, "what is the trouble?" "You know quite well," replied the Cockney, "so you may as well strip without further question." Whatever the stranger was, he certainly was no coward, for his coat and waistcoat were soon in the hands of his companion. The Cockney lost no time, and the next minute they stood squaring before each other in such a scientific way as promised the onlookers a most interesting exhibition. Although the stranger was the taller of the two, the Cockney seemed to possess the longer reach. Round after round they fought, and in spite of their heavy and muddy boots the footwork was neat, and the dodging of their heads, and the feinting of their arms made the more gentle onlookers overlook the drawing of blood. There was no wrestling, or mauling on the ground, and there was no attempt at foul blows, for each of the principals seemed to value the favour of that most appreciative assembly. It looked more like a friendly exhibition than two men attempting to take life. The spectators laughed approval and buzzed with admiration until even the bleeding men, hearing this, chaffed one another, and smiled at each other grimly with their battered faces. Yes, it seemed friendly enough until the tenth round when the Cockney, who the round previous seemed to show signs of weariness, called to his assistance some latent force which set his arms to work like a pair of axes on a tree, and down his opponent fell, and the battle was lost and won. The stranger was borne away by his companions, and Cockney Tom returned to the camp to dress his injuries, which did not prevent him from work on the following day. The Cockney was well pleased with this exploit, and if his opponent was one of those thugs and murderers, who had taken an active part in perhaps fifty or sixty murders, he would certainly be lucky if he never met with severer punishment. CHAPTER XIV THE HOUSE-BOAT I worked long enough on this canal to save fifty dollars, and then quit, feeling the old restlessness return, which had unsettled me for some time. With this comfortable sum in my possession I kept beating my way west until I arrived at St. Louis, a large city on the Mississippi, having up till now lived frugally, and spent nothing on travelling. This kind of life was often irksome to me, when I have camped all night alone in the woods, beside a fire, when one good sociable companion might have turned the life into an ideal one. Often have I waked in the night, or early morning, to find spaces opposite occupied by one or two strangers, who had seen the fire in the distance, and had been guided to me by its light. One night, in Indiana, when it had rained heavily throughout the day, I had made my fire and camped under a thick leaved tree, where the ground was dryer than in the open. Sometime about midnight, I felt myself roughly shaken, at the same time a sudden shower fell that pinned me breathless to the earth. I looked here and there, but could see no one. Then I left the shelter of the tree and saw to my surprise, that the night was fine, and that the stars were thick and shining. As I replenished the fire with wood, of which I always gathered in an abundance before darkness came, it puzzled me much to account for this. Although I thought the shaking must have been a dream, my wet clothes were a sufficient proof of the rain's reality. Every man I met on the following day enquired where I had lodged during the earthquake shock on the previous night, and that question explained everything. The earth had shaken me, and the leaves of the tree, which had been gathering all day, the rain drops had in one moment relinquished them all upon my sleeping form. On reaching St. Louis I still had something like forty dollars, and being tired of my own thoughts, which continually upbraided me for wasted time, resolved to seek some congenial fellowship, so that in listening to other men's thoughts I might be rendered deaf to my own. I had bought a daily paper, and had gone to the levee, so that I might spend a few hours out of the sun, reading, and watching the traffic on the river. Seeing before me a large pile of lumber, I hastened towards it, that I might enjoy its shady side. When I arrived I saw that the place was already occupied by two strangers, one being a man of middle age, and the other a youth of gentlemanly appearance. Seating myself, I began to read, but soon had my attention drawn to their conversation. The young fellow, wanting to go home, and being in no great hurry, proposed buying a house-boat and floating leisurely down the Mississippi to New Orleans, from which place he would then take train to Southern Texas, where his home was. "We will go ashore," he said, "and see the different towns, and take in fresh provisions as they are needed." The elder of the two, who had a strong Scotch accent, allowed a little enthusiasm to ooze out of his dry temperament, and agreed without much comment. "Excuse me, gentlemen," I said, "I could not help but hear your conversation and, if you have no objection, would like to share expenses and enjoy your company on such a trip." The Texan, being young and impetuous, without the least suspicion of strangers, jumped to his feet, exulting at the social project. Scotty, more calm, but with a shrewd eye to the financial side of the question, said that he thought the trip would certainly be enjoyed better by three, and that the expense would not be near so great per head. We had no difficulty in purchasing a house-boat. Hundreds of these are moored to the banks, lived in by fishermen and their wives, and others in various ways employed on the river. But, of course, the one we required was to be much smaller than these. We found one, at last, rather battered, and ill-conditioned, for which we were asked eleven dollars. Scotty, to our unfeigned disgust, acted the Jew in this matter of trade, and had succeeded in beating the price down to nine dollars and a half when we to his annoyance offered to pay that sum without more ado. But Scotty, although mean in these business matters, was strictly honest and just in paying an equal share; for, after I had paid the odd half a dollar, he did not forget that amount when we came to stocking the boat with provisions. We lost no time in getting these, and then went ashore for the evening's enjoyment and the night's sleep, intending to start early the next morning. And with these prospects before us, a very pleasant evening we had. At nine o'clock the following morning, we weighed anchor--our anchor being a large stone--and drifted into the current, the young Texan using an oar as a tiller. And what a strange voyage we had, fraught with more danger than many would dream. This Mississippi river often had only a few yards for navigation purposes, even when the distance from bank to bank was between two and three miles. Sometimes we were in the middle of this broad river, and yet were in extreme danger of floundering, for we could touch the bottom with a short stick. Yes, we were in danger of floundering, and yet our ship drew less than six inches of water! Trees, whose branches were firmly embedded in the mud, had their roots bobbing up and down, bobbing up unawares, and we were often in danger of being impaled on one of these ere we could steer clear of it. Sometimes we would see villages and small towns that in the remote past had been built flush on the banks of this river: now they were lying quiet and neglected a mile or more away, owing to the river's determination to take his own course. Hundreds of lives had been sacrificed, dying of swamp fever, in building levees and high banks to prevent this, and millions of dollars utilised for the same purpose--but the Father of Waters has hitherto had his own will, and can be expected to be seen at any place, and at any time. Towards evening we would put ashore on a sand bar, making a fire with the driftwood, of which there was an abundance. Here we cooked supper, slept and enjoyed breakfast the next morning. There was no other water to be had than that of the river, which the natives of the south claim to be healthy. We had no objection to using it for cooking and washing, but it was certainly too thick for drinking cold--or rather lukewarm, for it was never cold in the summer months. We would fill a large can and let the water settle for twenty or thirty minutes, and, after taking great care in drinking, a sediment of mud would be left at the bottom a quarter or three-eighths of an inch deep. We put ashore at one place where a number of negroes and white men had assembled in expectation of work, when man again proposed putting forth his puny strength against the Mississippi, where we decided to wait a day or two and take our chance of being employed. Unfortunately the ill feeling which invariably exists between these two colours came to a climax on the first day of our arrival. The negroes, insulting and arrogant, through their superiority of numbers, became at last unbearable. On which the white men, having that truer courage that scorned to count their own strength, assembled together, and after a few moments' consultation, resolved to take advantage of the first provocation. This came sooner than was expected. A negro, affecting to be intoxicated, staggered against a white man, and was promptly knocked down for his trouble. The negroes, whose favourite weapon is the razor, produced these useful blades from different parts of concealment, stood irresolute, waiting for a leader, and then came forward in a body, led by a big swaggerer in bare feet, whose apparel consisted of a red shirt and a pair of patched trousers held up by a single brace. These white men, who were so far outnumbered, said little, but the negroes were loud in their abuse. This soon led to blows and in the ensuing fight, knives, razors and fists were freely used. Only one shot was fired, and that one told. When the negroes, whose courage had failed at such a determined resistance, were in full flight, the tall swaggerer was left behind with a bullet in his heart. Several men were wounded, with gashes on necks, arms, and different parts of the body. Small fights continued throughout the day, but it was left for the night to produce a deed of foul murder. A white man was found next morning with his body covered with blood from thirty-nine wounds. Half a dozen razors must have set to work on him in the dark. The razor is a sly, ugly-looking weapon, but is far less dangerous than a knife, a poker, or even a short heavy piece of wood; and as it cannot pierce to the heart or brain, that is why this man took so long in the killing. This deed roused the sheriff and his marshal, and they followed the black murderers to the adjoining state, but returned next day without them. We embarked again, but owing to the young Texan being taken sick with malarial fever, resolved to put ashore for medicine at the first large town. This malarial fever is very prevalent in these parts, especially this state of Arkansas, which is three parts a swamp. He suffered so much that we decided to call on the first house-boat seen, and ask assistance of the fishermen, and soon we had an opportunity of doing so. Seeing a large house-boat moored at the mouth of a small creek, we put the tiller--which as I have said, was an oar--to its proper work, and sculled towards the shore. We ran to land within ten yards of the other boat, and the fisherman, who had seen us coming, stood waiting on the sands to know our wants. He was a typical swamp man, with a dark sickly complexion, thin-faced and dry-skinned and, though he was nearly six feet in height, his weight, I believe, could not have exceeded one hundred and twenty pounds. His left cheek was considerably swollen, which I thought must be due to neuralgia until the swelling began to disappear from that side; and, after witnessing for a few seconds a frightful, even painful contortion of the face, I saw the right cheek come into possession of the same beautiful round curve, leaving the left cheek as its fellow had been. It was now apparent that the one object of this man's life was to chew tobacco. To him we related our troubles, asking his advice, and for a little temporary assistance, for which he would be paid. Up to the present time he had not opened his lips, except a right or left corner to squirt tobacco juice, sending an equal share to the north and south. "I guess there's some quinine in the shanty boat," he said, after a long silence, "which I reckon will relieve him considerably, but he ought ter go home ter th' women folk, that's straight." He led the way to his boat, and we followed. We soon had the young Texan in comfort, and Scotty and myself returned to transfer some provisions to the fisherman's house-boat, for the evening's use. While doing so, we decided to sell our own boat, at any price, when we would walk to the nearest railroad, and send the young fellow home; after which we would seek some employment and settle down. We cooked supper, and then slept in the open air, beside a large fire, leaving our sick friend comfortable in the boat. The next morning we offered our house-boat for sale for six dollars, with all its belongings. The fisherman explained to us that he not only had no money, but rarely had use for it. Everything he needed he paid for in fish, and often went months at a time without a glimpse of money of any description. To my surprise the one thing that did seem to claim his attention, for which he could not help but display some greed, was the large stone which we had brought with us from St. Louis, and which we had used for anchor. This stone certainly had no vein of gold or silver in it, it was not granite or marble, and could boast of no beauty, being a very ordinary looking stone indeed, but it seemed to have a strange fascination for this man. The fisherman had no money, and had nothing to barter which might be of use to us, so we made him a present of the whole lot, and left him sitting on the stone, watching our departure. "He seemed very eager to possess that stone," I remarked to Scotty, as we followed a trail through a thicket, so that we might reach the high-road. "Yes," said Scotty, "for in this part of the country, where there is little but sand, wood and mud, a stone, a piece of iron, or any small thing of weight, can be put to many uses." After reaching the road we had twenty miles to walk to reach the nearest railway station, at which place we arrived late that night, the young Texan being then weak and exhausted. A train was leaving at midnight for New Orleans, and, after seeing him safely aboard, we sat in the station till daybreak. Early the next morning we were examining the town, waiting for business to start, so that we might enquire as to its prospects for work. This seemed to be good, there being a large stave factory which employed a number of men. We succeeded in our quest, starting to work that morning, and at dinner time received a note of introduction to an hotel. That evening we associated with our fellow-workmen, and, in the course of conversation, we discovered that there was no particular time to receive wages, there being no regular pay day. Sometimes wages ran on for a month, six weeks, two months, etc. At the present time no man had received wages for over two months. "Of course," he explained to us, "anything you require you can easily get an order for on the stores." We worked two weeks at this factory, when I was taken ill myself with malaria, and not being able to eat, soon became too weak for work. In this condition I went to the office for my money, but could not get it, and saw that nothing else could be done than to get an order on the stores, and take my wages out in clothes, shoes, etc. Scotty was scared at this, and quitted work at once to demand his wages in cash, and there I left him, waiting for a settlement. I intended going to Memphis, the nearest large town, and placing myself in its hospital, whilst Scotty was going to New Orleans, where I promised to meet him in a month, providing I was sufficiently recovered to do so. I don't know what possessed me to walk out of this town, instead of taking a train, but this I did, to my regret. For I became too weak to move, and, coming to a large swamp, I left the railroad and crawled into it, and for three days and the same number of nights, lay there without energy to continue my journey. Wild hungry hogs were there, who approached dangerously near, but ran snorting away when my body moved. A score or more of buzzards had perched waiting on the branches above me, and I knew that the place was teeming with snakes. I suffered from a terrible thirst, and drank of the swamp-pools, stagnant water that was full of germs, and had the colours of the rainbow, one dose of which would have poisoned some men to death. When the chill was upon me, I crawled into the hot sun, and lay there shivering with the cold; and when the hot fever possessed me, I crawled back into the shade. Not a morsel to eat for four days, and very little for several days previous. I could see the trains pass this way and that, but had not the strength to call. Most of the trains whistled, and I knew that they stopped either for water or coal within a mile of where I lay. Knowing this to be the case, and certain that it would be death to remain longer in this deadly swamp, I managed to reach the railroad track, and succeeded in reaching the next station, where most of these trains stopped. The distance had been less than a mile, but it had taken me two hours to accomplish. I then paid my way from this station, being in a hurry to reach Memphis, thinking my life was at its close. When I reached that town, I took a conveyance from the station to the hospital. At that place my condition was considered to be very serious, but the doctor always bore me in mind, for we were both of the same nationality, and to that, I believe, I owe my speedy recovery. CHAPTER XV A LYNCHING Upon leaving the hospital, I remained several days in Memphis, spending most of my hours enjoying the shade and sunshine of a small park, which is pleasantly situated in the main portion of that town. One morning, while doing this, I was accosted by one whom I soon recognised as a fellow worker of mine in the stave factory. From him I learnt that the firm had smashed, no pay day had come, and the stores had all absolutely refused to honour the firm's orders; while some men had left the town disgusted, and others were patiently waiting a settlement that would never come. This man was going north, so I left him at Memphis, intending to beat my way to New Orleans, and from that town to the state of Texas. These states of Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi and Louisiana, are the homes of the negroes of old. It is a strange contrast to see the old negroes, who in their young days were slaves, reverently raising their hats to any seedy looking white man whom they meet, calling him such titles as captain, major, colonel and even general--and the half defiant gloom of the free, young generations, who are still in some respects slaves to the white men. These negroes lived in small wooden shanties, and rarely received money for their labour. They worked for the planter at so much a day. This gentleman kept on the plantation a large general store, and supplied their wants at such an exorbitant price that the negroes were seldom out of debt, when the busy season commenced. In the cities, silk would be far cheaper than the common flimsy muslin which poor black Dinah so much coveted from her master's store. I have heard many an old negro say that he was far worse off as a freeman than as a slave. The prisons in the north were like hotels, but here in the south went to the extreme of cruelty. In some places a man would be tried and perhaps fined ten dollars and costs. A citizen, having need of a cheap labourer, would pay this fine, take possession of the prisoner, and make him work out his fine on the farm. This citizen would buy the prisoner cheap overalls, dungarees, shirts, shoes, etc., for a few dollars, and charge the prisoner four times their amount. The prisoner was not free to refuse these, and being forced to work out their price, was kept in this way twice the number of his days. I was very much afraid of all this, although a wandering white man was not in nearly so much danger as a negro. Some days after leaving Memphis, I arrived at a small town, where I was surprised to see an unusual amount of bustle, the surrounding country for miles having sent in all its able bodied men. Every man was armed with a gun, and they stood in small groups talking outside the various stores. It seemed as though there had been rumours of an invasion, and that these men were organising to defend their homes and country, but I had not the least idea of what had really happened. The small groups now began to join together into larger ones, and the larger groups joined until they became one large body of men. This one body then shouldered guns and moved quickly along the main street, the men's faces being drawn and pale. I followed on, perhaps the one unarmed man among them, curious to know the meaning of it all. They came at last to a halt, and, to see the reason for this, I stepped across the way, and saw that they had halted before a large building, which, by its barred windows, I had no difficulty in recognising as the jail. One man had curled around his shoulders a long rope, and this man with two others knocked loudly with the butt ends of their guns on the prison door. Almost in an instant the door was flung wide open, and the sheriff stood in the open way to know their wants. The men must have demanded the prison keys, for I saw the sheriff at once produce them, which he handed to these men without the least show of resistance. This man with the rope and several others then entered the jail, and the silent crowd without cast their eyes in that direction. Up to the present time I had not heard a distinct voice, nothing but the buzz of low whispering. But suddenly from the jail's interior there came a loud shriek and a voice crying for mercy. Men now appeared in the open doorway, dragging after them a negro at the end of a rope. This unfortunate wretch was possessed of a terror that is seldom seen in a human being. He fell on his knees to pray, but was jerked to his feet ere he could murmur the first words, O Lord. He staggered to and fro and sideways, at the same time howling and jabbering, foaming at the mouth, and showing the horrible white of his eyes. I can well understand a man screaming, trembling and crying for mercy, when actually enduring bodily pain, but that one should show such a terror at the thought of it, filled me more with disgust than pity. That this prisoner should have been so brutal and unfeeling in inflicting pain on another, and should now show so much cowardice in anticipation of receiving punishment inadequate to his offence, dried in me the milk of human kindness, and banished my first thoughts, which had been to escape this horrible scene without witnessing its end. For it was now I remembered reading of this man's offence, and it was of the most brutal kind, being much like the work of a wild beast. They now marched him from the jail, their strong arms supporting his terror stricken limbs, but no man reviled him with his tongue, and I saw no cowardly hand strike him. Soon they came to a group of trees on the outskirts of the town, and, choosing the largest of these, they threw the rope's end over its strongest branch, the prisoner at the same time crying for mercy, and trying to throw his body full on the ground. When this was done a dozen hands caught the rope's end, made one quick jerk, and the prisoner's body was struggling in the air. Then all these men shouldered their guns, fired one volley, and in a second the body was hanging lifeless with a hundred shots. In five minutes after this, nothing but the corpse remained to tell of what had occurred, the men having quietly scattered towards their homes. A few days after this, I was in New Orleans, intending to spend a week or two in that city, before I started on my journey to Texas. It was in this city, three days after my arrival, that I became the victim of an outrage which was as unsatisfactory to others as to myself. Having been to the theatre, and being on my way back home late at night, half a dozen men, whom I scarcely had time to recognise as negroes, sprang from a dark corner, and, without saying a word, or giving the least chance of escape or defence, biffed and banged at my face and head until I fell unconscious at their feet. Their motive, without a doubt, was robbery, but having my money concealed in a belt next to my body, they had to be satisfied with a five cent piece, which was all my pockets contained. Such brutal outrages as these are seldom committed by white men, who having the more cool courage, demand a man's money at the commencement, and do not resort to violence, except it be their victim's wish. But this not very intelligent race half murder a man without being sure of anything for their pains. White men will search a man as he stands, and if he possesses nothing, he may go his way uninjured, followed perhaps, by a curse or two of disappointment; but these negroes prefer to murder a man first, and then to search the dead body. They are certainly born thieves. On the river boats, that ply the Mississippi from St. Louis to New Orleans, which are all manned by negroes, with the exception of those holding the higher offices, a negro thief will often spoil a six dollar pair of trousers in robbing his victim of a twenty-five cent piece. When a man is asleep the negro will bend over him, feeling the outside of his trousers where the pockets are. If he feels the shape of a coin, instead of working his fingers carefully into the mouth of the pocket, he takes out his razor and, holding the coin with the fingers of his left hand, cuts it out, bringing away coin, part of the lining, pocket and trousers. When the victim wakes he, or some one else, sees the hole, and they at once know the meaning of it. I remember a trip on one of these boats when a white man feigned a sleep, lying on his back on a bale of cotton, with his hands in his coat pockets. In his right pocket was a revolver, which his right hand held ready cocked for use. These negroes are always on the look out for sleepers, and one of these thieves was soon bending over his expected victim. He had felt a coin and, taking out his razor, was in the act of cutting it out, when there was a sharp report, and the negro fell back shot through the brain. The supposed sleeper quietly rose to his feet, and when the captain and some officers came, he simply pointed to the negro and the fallen razor, and no other explanation was needed. At the next stopping place the captain had a few words with the authorities, and the dead body was taken ashore, but the white passenger continued his journey without being bothered about a trial or examination. There was no more thieving during that trip. I soon left New Orleans, being possessed with a restless spirit, and, after visiting Galveston, Euston, and many more towns of less importance, I made my way through the heart of Texas to the town of Paris, which lies on the borders of the Indian territory. It was in a saloon in the main street of this town that I had my attention drawn to a glass case, wherein was seen hanging a cord, at the end of which was something that looked very much like a walnut. On looking closer, I saw a small heap of dust at the bottom. Seeing that this case contained no stuffed animal, nor any model of ingenious mechanism, I began to read the printed matter, curious for an explanation. This small thing dangling at the end of the cord purported to be the heart of a negro, whom the people had some time previously burned at the stake. He had suffered a terrible death: so had his little victim, a mere child of a few years, who had been found in the woods torn limb from limb. This negro had been arrested by the sheriff, and sentenced to a short term adequate to his offence. After he had been released, he had taken his revenge on the sheriff's child, bearing her off when on her way to school. The sheriff's wife, being the child's mother, had with her own hand applied the torch to this monster, and if her hand had failed, any woman in this land of many millions would have willingly done her this service. I left Paris that night, catching a fast cattle train, and arrived the following morning at Fort Smith, Arkansas. Bill Cook, the train and bank robber, and his gang, were being tried this morning, and a special train was now waiting to convey them to the penitentiary. I saw this notorious free-booter, when he was brought to the station--a young man between twenty and thirty years, receiving a sentence of forty years' imprisonment. One of his gang, Cherokee Bill, a desperado of nineteen years, was indicted for murder, and remained in Fort Smith to be hanged. The train steamed out with its many deputies to guard a few prisoners--few, but proved to be very dangerous. CHAPTER XVI THE CAMP Who would have dreamt that so many well known beggars would have met together at one camp, without any prearranged plans? The time was morning and the scene was on the outskirts of Pittsburg, and the characters were Philadelphia Slim and Wee Shorty, who had all night ridden the freight car and had now dismounted near the camp, which they knew of old. They both had cold victuals in plenty, with dry coffee and sugar, and they were not long in making a blaze and fetching water from the spring before they were seated comfortably to their breakfast, after which they intended to sleep, for they were more weary than working men. They were not without money; for Wee Shorty and Slim had, the day previous, been encamped with others about a hundred miles from the present spot, at which place there had come to the camp an unfortunate blacksmith who possessed society papers but lacked courage to beg with them. On which Wee Shorty had conceived a most daring plan, which was to borrow the aforesaid papers, with the blacksmith's consent, and to make his way to the nearest blacksmith's shop. With this idea in his mind the Wee Man had bound his hand in white linen, so that he could plead disablement in case the blacksmith doubted him to be the legitimate owner of the papers, and to prove his veracity, would test him with a little job. After binding his hand in this way, Wee Shorty, who was no more than five feet in height, and who had small white hands and a pale face, and whose weight never exceeded seven stone and a half, and who looked more like a sickly tailor than a blacksmith--after taking this precaution, Wee Shorty made his way to the blacksmith's shop. In less than twenty minutes he had returned with a dollar in small change, and had returned the poor blacksmith his papers, and generously given him one-fourth of his makings. Yes, it would indeed be a hard town if this wee fellow failed to make money. As I have already said, Slim and the artful one were tired after their night's ride, and they were well pleased to find the camp unoccupied by strangers. But they had scarcely made their coffee and swallowed the first mouthful, when the dried twigs were heard to crack beneath a heavy tread and, the next moment, there walked into the camp the Indian Kid, whom the present proprietors had not seen for over twelve months. What a meeting was there, and what confidences were exchanged. There was good reason for the Kid not having been seen, for he had been incarcerated in a jail. He had committed his first and last burglary, which had not been done with an eye to profit, but out of a mean spirit of revenge. He had been refused charity at a house and, on leaving the place, had spied a small outhouse in which he saw many things easy to carry, and easily to be converted into money. Bearing this in mind he had returned after dark, scaled the back wall, and was soon in possession of a large bundle consisting of shirts, frocks, shoes and various carpenter's tools. All this had been done through a spirit of revenge, for the Kid swore that he could have begged the worth of the bundle in half an hour. Being in possession of that bundle at that strange hour of the night, he was afraid to carry it into the town for fear that the police would enquire his business, so he hid it in the bushes, which in the night looked so dark and thick; after which he had artfully walked some distance away, and laid himself down to sleep until morning. It must have been daylight for several hours when the Kid rose hastily and went in quest of his bundle. But the bundle had disappeared, and the Kid had been cruelly robbed, by early workmen he at first thought, who had spied the bundle in the bushes, which appeared so much less heavy by day than by night. However it was not the early workman who had done this, but a plain clothes policeman who still hid behind the bushes and, seeing the Kid searching for his bundle, sprang from concealment, saying--"You are looking for a bundle, and I am looking for you." Such was the Kid's story, recited at great pains, for he often rambled in his discourse to laud himself as a successful beggar who would, on no account, commit burglary for profit; all of which accounted for his twelve months' disappearance. His story was scarcely at an end when who should walk into the camp but Windy, the talkative Windy, whose tongue had entertained many a camp with strange and unique experiences. Of course, at his heels was Pennsylvania Dutch, a faithful friend enough but a poor beggar, who was no more than a pensioner on Windy's bounty, and acted the part of a man-servant. But there was another surprise to follow; for English Harry, who had been in Pittsburg for some time past, having now walked out of the city to take a glance at the camp, walked into it at this very time, and to his astonishment and joy found the place in possession of good beggars instead of common work seekers, as he had at first feared. Only imagine all these notorious men meeting together haphazard in this manner. They could scarcely recover their astonishment. There was nothing else to be done but to make a muster of what money was in the camp, and to send Pennsylvania Dutch for its worth in whisky, so as to celebrate such an event by a carousal. This was at once done, and Windy's pensioner shook off his laziness from head to foot, which made Wee Shorty sarcastically remark--"Dutchy would rather buy than beg." To which Windy, in a voice of despair, answered--"He will never make a beggar and, if I did not keep a sharp eye on him, or anything occurred to part us, he would live in orchards and turnip fields until he saw a chance to become a working man. He confessed, when I first met him, that he had lived for ten days on green corn and apples, so I took him in hand and kept him, thinking my example would rouse him to action, but it was of no use, for the poor fellow has not the heart. However, I never forget poor Dutchy when I am foraging," said Windy, rather tenderly. It was not long before the object of these remarks returned and placed before his companions two bottles of whisky. "Now, boys," said Windy, after he had become affected by several lots of spirits--"Now, boys, I propose that we hold this camp down for a whole week, and we will all rag up"--meaning that they would beg clothes and put on the appearance of gentlemen. His proposal was unanimously seconded, and was quickly followed by a suggestion from the Indian Kid that they should finish the whisky, which also met with no objection. "We will hold the camp," cried Windy, "against all comers." They would certainly find no necessity for defending their privacy, for one glance at these six men, especially in their present condition, would have been sufficient to deter any decent-minded person from entering. This camp was now far more private than Mrs. Brown's house in town, who had a neighbour that never entered other people's doors without first knocking; but which neighbour never gave Mrs. Brown, or any one else, the chance to remove sundry things that were better concealed, nor waited to hear the cry "come in"; for she entered as she knocked, saying--"Don't be alarmed, Mrs. Brown, it is only Mrs. White." Alas, the whisky soon gave out, and there was no more money, and what was to be done? "I propose," said English Harry, "that we leave Pennsylvania Dutch in charge of the camp while we go out foraging for an hour." To this they all agreed, and made their way towards the town. On reaching the suburbs they divided and went in different directions, with the understanding that each man should be returned to the camp in less than two hours, and that each one should have no less than half a dollar. How it was done was a mystery, but Wee Shorty was back in less than an hour, not only with half a dollar but with twenty cents' worth of whisky in a bottle. He was soon followed by Windy, who had begged fifty-five cents. After which came in English Harry and the Indian Kid together, each with half a dollar. But where was Philadelphia Slim, Wee Shorty's boon companion? For these were good beggars all, who could have almost persuaded the birds to feed them in the wilderness, and Slim was by no means the worst, even though the Wee Man was by a small degree the best. Until they knew the fate of poor Slim they felt very little inclination to continue their carousal. It might have been three-quarters of an hour after the return of English Harry and the Kid, when they heard a step coming through the bush and, turning their eyes that way, were soon confronted by their late companion Slim. He had a large bundle under his arm, but to the surprise and anxiety of his companions, was holding to his nose a blood-stained pocket handkerchief. "Who has done that, Slim?" cried Wee Shorty, who had surreptitiously fortified himself with whisky, and who, being the smallest man, was naturally the most ferocious--"Who has done that?" he cried, springing to his feet and, with his hands dangerously clenched, standing to his full height. Slim did not answer this question at once, but threw down his bundle; after which he produced a dollar bill and placed it thereon. Pointing then to the twain with his right hand--his left hand still being occupied with his bleeding nose--he said, "Here is a suit of clothes and a dollar bill, and I have well earned them." Such words were mysterious to his associates, for they knew that Slim would never at any price perform labour, and they came to the conclusion in their own minds that he had forcibly taken these things in a very high handed fashion, and had suffered in the act. What a disgrace to the profession! After enquiring if there was any whisky to be had, and being supplied with the same by his particular friend Wee Shorty, Slim proposed that Pennsylvania Dutch should be again despatched with all speed for a fresh supply. Seeing this done he then seated himself and proceeded to give his experience. It seems that Slim had had more difficulty than was expected. A full half hour had elapsed, and Slim had not received one cent, although he had told his pitiful story to a number of people. He almost began to despair of success, but firmly resolved not to return without something to show for his trouble. Seeing a very large house he went to the front door and rang the bell, but the door remained unanswered. Not to be baffled by this, and beginning to feel desperate, he made his way to the back of the house, and was just about to knock at the back door when a voice hailed him from an adjoining shed. Turning his eyes in that direction he saw a man in his white shirt sleeves, who seemed to be the master of the house. Now, as Slim looked across, he saw into the shed, and behold there was a punching ball hanging from the ceiling, which was still moving as though this gentleman had only that moment finished practising. On Slim explaining his wants, which had been increasing in number through his ill-success, the gentleman quietly went to a shelf and taking therefrom a pair of boxing gloves told Slim that if he would oblige him with ten minutes' practice with the same, he would reward him with a dollar. Now it happened that these things were not entirely unknown to Slim, and once or twice in his life he had actually had them in his hands--but not on--and he had come to the conclusion that they could do but very little hurt. Therefore he donned the gloves, being as eager to earn an easy dollar as the master of the house was eager to practise. Alas! it was this difference in their motives which gave the gentleman an overwhelming victory and poor Slim a bloody nose and such aching bones. "For," said Slim to us, "suppose I had knocked him out, who was to pay me my dollar'? He attacked me like a mad bull, and all I dare do was to act on the defence. Several times he left an opening which, had I taken advantage of, would have ended in his collapse; and if he had died, there had been no witness to hear what bargain had been made between us. Being at such a disadvantage as I was," Slim continued, "he would, no doubt, have made matters worse if my nose had not bled, which I began to wipe with the gloves. Seeing this he was afraid my blood would be conveyed by means of gloves to his own person, so he asked me if I had had enough. I thanked him that I had and, as we made our way towards the house, told him I would be thankful for any old clothes to replace my own, which were now stained with blood. He seemed to be so pleased at having drawn my blood that I believe he would have given me anything I asked for. Here are the clothes, but I don't know what they are like." Such was Slim's experience. On an inspection of the bundle it was found to contain a clean shirt, a pair of socks, two handkerchiefs, and an almost brand new suit of clothes. Just as Philadelphia Slim ended his story, Pennsylvania Dutch returned with the whisky, and we all caroused until sleep overpowered us. CHAPTER XVII HOME I had now been in the United States of America something like five years, working here and there as the inclination seized me, which, I must confess was not often. I was certainly getting some enjoyment out of life, but now and then the waste of time appalled me, for I still had a conviction that I was born to a different life. The knowledge that I had the advantage over the majority of strangers in that country, often consoled me when feeling depressed. For my old grandmother had left me one-third profit of a small estate, my share at that time amounting to ten shillings per week, and during these five years I had not drawn one penny, therefore having over a hundred pounds entered to my account. So, when one would say how much he desired to return to his native land, but had no means of doing so, I would then explain how it could easily be done on the cattle boats. And if he protested, saying that he had not the courage to return penniless after so many years abroad, although I had no answer to console him, his objection was a pleasant reminder of my own expectations. It was this knowledge that made me so idle and so indifferent to saving; and it was this small income that has been, and is in a commercial sense, the ruin of my life. It was now the end of October, and I was in Chicago squandering a summer's earnings, having, during the previous months, worked on a fruit farm in Illinois. I had been idling for three weeks, visiting the various theatres at night, and reading during the day. One Sunday, I had bought a weekly paper, wherein I read an appreciation of the poet Burns, with numerous quotations from his work. My thoughts wandered back to the past, the ambition of my early days, and the encouraging words of my elders. "Ah!" I said, with a sigh, "if during these five years I had had the daily companionship of good books, instead of all this restless wandering to and fro in a strange land, my mind, at the present hour, might be capable of some little achievement of its own." These thoughts haunted me all day, and that night a great joy came over me; for after my thoughts had tugged and pulled at my heart, all pointing in the one direction, which I saw was towards England, I settled with myself to follow them to that place. So, that night, I resolved to leave Chicago early the following day, beat my way to Baltimore, work a cattle boat to either Liverpool or London, and from one of these places make my way back to where I belonged. With this object, I was up early the next morning, had breakfast, and in as happy a mood as when I first landed in America, left Chicago for the last time. The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was an easy road to beat. I had taken with me a good lunch, with a small flask of whisky, so that I might attend to travelling for twenty or thirty hours without suffering thirst or hunger. At the end of thirty-six hours I got off a train, now being hungry and thirsty, at a small town, having by then traversed half the distance between Chicago and Baltimore. Without staying any length of time in Pittsburg, I caught a train for Connesville, and, arriving there in a few hours, had to dismount and wait the next train for Cumberland, in the State of Maryland. A train was now being made up, consisting of flat cars loaded with iron rails, and coal cars, also loaded. There was not much necessity on this road of concealing oneself, so I boldly mounted a coal car, and there I sat, exposed to the elements, and to the curious gaze of people at the various small towns through which we passed. What surprised me not a little was that I seemed to be the only man that was beating his way on this train, whereas, this being such an easy road, most trains had a number of tramps, some of them having two score or more. It did not take me long to notice that these people at the different stations and villages stared at me with something like awe, had pale faces, pointed at me in an unusual manner and whispered to each other. Now, between Connesville and Cumberland, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad crosses the Allegheny mountains, and often the train, if heavy, can scarcely crawl up, after which it runs down at a terrific speed. We had just mounted a steep elevation, had reached the top, and the train men were making fast their brakes for the steep incline on the other side of the mountain, when my attention was drawn to a large number of people assembled in the valley below, some distance ahead. I then saw that the mountain side was covered with coal, and between forty and fifty trucks lay in a heap at the foot of the mountain. This train had apparently, through some cause or another, jumped the rails, and the cars had rolled over and over from top to bottom. When I reached Cumberland, still being stared at, and pointed out at the various stations and villages on the way, it was not long before an explanation was forthcoming. I, it seemed, had followed a train that had killed forty-four men--two brakesmen, the engineer, conductor, and forty tramps who were beating their way. On coming down the mountain side, the brakes had refused to work, the fireman had jumped off in time to save his own life, and the others had all been precipitated with the train into the valley and killed. It had run with such a reckless speed that it could not possibly maintain its hold of the rails. And this accounted for my being the one traveller on this train, and how horror-stricken the people had seemed at my temerity, which, of course, was no more than ignorance of the mishap. After this ride I never again felt comfortable on a train, much preferring to take my chance on the water, however stormy it might be. It made me pause when this same night an unknown man was struck down by a fast express train, mangled and cut into pieces. Two or three trains left this town of Cumberland before I could summon sufficient courage to ride. I was standing, still wondering whether I should ride or walk from this town to Baltimore, when a switchman, who had just helped finish making ready a train, said--"Hello, lad; which way are you going, to Baltimore?" On answering in the affirmative, he said, pointing to this train, "Jump on: you will be there early in the morning!" Which I did, at the same time saying to myself, "This is my last train ride in America, whether I live or die." No sleep that night, and I was not sorry to reach Baltimore. I had something like fifty dollars at this time, and intended to go at once to the cattleman's office, and to ship at the first opportunity, so that I might still have a few pounds left when I landed in England. So, when I reached Baltimore, I soon made my way to that place, and on entering, recognised several of the old cattlemen, among whom was no less a person than Australian Red, who it seemed had lost all ambition for a more respectable life. I invited him out, with two others, and we had several drinks, and at night visited the theatre. "Now," I said, after leaving the theatre, well knowing that these men would unscrupulously bleed me to the last cent, and would take a cunning delight in robbing me and bearing all expenses themselves--"now," I said, "one drink more, and we have reached the end of my resources." Shipping, Red explained to me on the following day, was rather slow for experienced hands. He had been begging Baltimore for more than six weeks, and was still without prospect of making a trip. He explained that he could go at any time for a pound, and had had a chance or two to go for thirty shillings, but very few two-pound men had been called for during the last three months. "Are you going out for breakfast?" he asked. "If you have any more money left, don't be foolish enough to spend it on food, for I can get you more than you want of that, and the money can be used for pleasure." "You already know that I have no more money," I said to him, feeling myself change colour with guilt, which he did not notice. "Wait here till I return," he said. "If you don't feel inclined to beg, for a day or two, you need have no fear of starving." He then left me, and, after he had gone, I followed, and feeling guilty and ashamed, turned into a restaurant for breakfast. Later on, when I returned to the office, Red was waiting for me with an abundance of food, for he had made extra exertion on this particular morning. "Come," he said, "you must be hungry by this time." Knowing that I had this part to keep up, I sat down, but after slowly eating a morsel or two, which had been difficult to swallow, I found it necessary to plead a full stomach. Red was persistent, and so dissatisfied at this that I could not help but feel grateful for such kindness, and, feeling more shame than ever at playing such a part, I arose, telling him I would wait for him outside the office. He soon followed, and, leading the way to another part of the city, I commenced with him a spree that ended in a week's debauchery. Both of us then being penniless, we returned to the cattleman's office, to find that a good chance had been lost in our absence, when the shipper had enquired for us. "What," cried Red, "go home for good next trip, eh? Why, you are cursed, like myself, by restlessness, and, mark me, you will not remain six months in your native town." "Perhaps not," I said, "but I assure you, that neither this town, nor this country, shall again feel my tread!" Some days after this I was sent with several others to rope cattle at the yards, and there met a foreman under whom I had made a former trip. "Hallo," said he, "I have not seen you for some time; are you going with this lot of cattle?" "I don't know," was my answer, "but I should certainly like to, if there is need of a two-pound man." "Well," he said, "I'll put in a good word for you at the office." That night the shipping master approached me on the subject. "Look here," he said, "I can only give you thirty shillings for this trip. If you like to wait, you can have two pounds, but I warn you, the chance may be a long time coming. What do you say?" "I'll sign for thirty shillings," I said, with difficulty trying to conceal my eagerness; which was at once done. I was alone on this trip, among strangers. Had Australian Red accompanied me, no doubt I should have spent my train fare, and been forced to return to America on the same boat. What an enjoyable trip this was from beginning to end! What music heard in the weighing of the anchor, and what a delightful sensation when the good ship moved slowly from her dock! I performed my duty with a new pleasure, leaping here and there at any sign of danger, giving one steer longer or shorter rope, as the case required, knowing what pleasant dreams would be mine at night, when the day's work was done. And when this pleasant time came, I would lie in my bunk and take an inventory of all the old familiar things which had been stored in my memory, unthought of for over five years, and nothing would now escape me. I had written home only three times during this long absence, three short letters in my first year abroad. Probably they had given me up for dead, and I would appear at their door as a visitant from another world. One thought often troubled me, and that was to be going home without money, after such a long stay in a new country. For every man thinks that fortunes are more easily made in other lands than his own, and I knew that people would expect me to be in possession of ranches, flourishing towns and gold mines; and I felt much shame in having to admit that I had returned poorer than ever. Had it not been for the money saved during my absence, which had not been convenient for use, this thought had been likely to prevent my return for some years longer, perhaps for my whole life. On the tenth day we were passing Ireland, on which I gazed with deep feeling, taking her to my heart as a sister isle, knowing at the same time that her heart was her distressful own. When I reached Liverpool, and the cattle had gone ashore, I received my pay, and, slipping away from the other cattlemen, went alone up town, made a few purchases in the way of clothes, and arrived at the railway station with three shillings and a few coppers over my fare. With this insignificant amount, the result of five years in a rich country, and something like one hundred and twenty pounds standing to my account, I arrived that evening at my native town. Here I wandered lost for several hours, making enquiries for my people, who, during my stay abroad, had moved from the place I knew. I had just made up my mind to seek a favourite aunt of mine, who, previous to my leaving England, had been a number of years in one house, and did not then seem likely to leave, when a strange woman in the street where I was making enquiries, recognised me by my likeness to mother, and at once directed me to her place. I knocked on the door and mother, who always was and is full of premonitions, and is very superstitious in the way of signs and dreams, opened the door at once, knew who I was in the dark, though we could not see much of each other's form or face, and, to my surprise, called me by name. "That's me, mother," I said. "Yes," she answered, "I thought it was your knock," just as though I had only been out for an evening's stroll. She said in the course of the evening, that they had all given me up for dead, except herself, and that she had also, three years before, given up all hopes of seeing me again, having had a dream wherein she saw me beat about the head and lying bloody at the feet of strangers. She mentioned the year, and even the month of this year, and a little consideration on my part placed its date with that of the outrage at New Orleans, but I did not then trouble her with an account of this. When I was very small an aunt took me to live with her for a couple or more months in a small town in Gloucestershire, a county in which mother had never been. But she had a dream in which she saw me leaving the house with my uncle's dinner, and that I had to follow the canal bank to his works. She saw me returning that same way, and, beginning to play near the water, fall in head first, she, in her dream, just reaching the spot in time to save me. Early the following morning, after this dream, mother came by train to this village, walked the canal bank to my aunt's house, without enquiring its whereabouts, and demanded her son before he was drowned. There was certainly a possibility of this happening, for I was very small at that time, and the canal was deep. She had never before been in this place, but the locality seemed to be well-known to her as it was seen in her sleep. CHAPTER XVIII OFF AGAIN Of course at this homecoming I vowed that I would never again leave my native town. True, I found great difficulty in sleeping on a soft bed, and lay awake several hours through the night, tossing and turning from one side to another. The food itself did not seem so palatable coming out of clean pots and shining ovens, as that which was cooked in close contact with the embers, and in the smoke and blaze of a camp fire. The unplucked chicken, covered with a thick crust of mud and baked under a pile of hot ashes, after which the hard crust could be broken to show the chicken inside as clean as a new born babe, with all its feathers and down stuck hard in the mud--this meat to me was far more tasty than that one at home, that was plucked and gutted with care, and roasted or baked to a supposed nicety. This food of civilisation certainly seemed to suffer from a lack of good wholesome dirt, and I should like to have had my own wood fire at the end of the backyard, were it not for shame. For several weeks I walked the streets, renewing old acquaintance, accosted here and there by my old school-mates. Most of them were married, but married or single, they all seemed to be poor and unsuccessful. I began to drink immoderately at this time, meeting one and the other, and very soon began to realise that my hundred and twenty pounds were going at the rate of a sovereign a day. Scarcely had I been home one month, when, to escape from so much drink, I made a trip to Bordeaux, on one of the local steamers. But it was of no use: for I saw the time coming when I would again be without prospects. I had not worked at my trade since leaving Bristol, six years before, and had no intention of doing so again. The fever of restlessness that had governed me in the past, broke out afresh, and after two months of this idle life, I suddenly made a pretence of being filled with a desire for business, saying it was my intention to open a bookshop in London, and as soon as possible, which I have often had thoughts of doing. With this end in view, I drew the remainder of my money, which in two months had dwindled by a half, divided a few pounds among the family, and took train for London. "Yes," I repeated to myself, several times on this journey. "I will open a bookshop and settle down to a quiet life of study, for which there will be ample time during the intervals of business." In London I saw a number of vacant shops that would have answered the purpose, but unfortunately, I had not the least notion of how or where to obtain books, the greater part of which were to be second-hand. If, when on this quest, I could have bought a bookshop ready fitted and filled, no doubt I would have closed with the offer at once, and settled quietly down. Not seeing any way out of this difficulty, I continued my rambles through the city, day after day, invariably visiting the theatre at night. This happened for over a week, and the money was still going out and none coming in, and poverty never appeared worse to me than at that time. One afternoon, when passing through Trafalgar Square, I bought an early edition of an evening paper, and the first paragraph that met my eye had this very attractive heading--"A Land of Gold." It was a description of the Klondyke, and a glowing account of the many good fortunes that daily fell to the lot of hardy adventurers. It would cost me sixty pounds, or more, to travel to that remote part of the world, and forty-four pounds were all I now possessed. This thought did not for long discourage me from making the attempt. I knew that I could beat my way across the Canadian continent, without using a cent for travelling, and I could save these few pounds for food, and cases in which payment would be absolutely necessary, when forced to travel on foot, at the other end of Canada. That night I exchanged thirty pounds for their equivalent in paper dollars, placing the latter in a belt which I wore next to my skin, determined that this money should not see the light until my journey was nearly done. It was now the month of March, and the navigation of the St. Lawrence had not yet opened, so that I would be compelled to beat my way from Halifax, or St. John's, to Montreal, which would not be necessary later in the Spring, when the latter port would be the destination of all emigrant ships. I was very happy at this time, with these prospects in view, which were really too bright to decoy any man who had an average amount of common-sense. My conception of that wonderful land, for all my travels, was childish in the extreme. I thought the rocks were of solid gold, which so dazzled the sun that he could not concentrate his glance on any particular part, and that his eye went swimming all day in a haze. I pictured men in possession of caves sitting helpless in the midst of accumulated nuggets, puzzled as to how to convey all this wealth to the marts of civilisation. What I wanted with all these riches I cannot say, for it was never a desire of mine to possess jewellery, fine raiment, yachts, castles or horses: all I desired was a small house of my own, and leisure for study. In fact I made up my mind not to waste time in hoarding more wealth than would be necessary to these small comforts, but to return home satisfied with a sum not exceeding two thousand pounds, the interest from which would, I thought, be ample for any student who remained true to his aims, and was sincere in his love for literature. In this month of March, the first day in the second week, I left Euston Station at midnight, and arrived cold and shaking in Liverpool, early the next morning. On making enquiries, I learnt that a ship was leaving for St. John's on the following Wednesday, from which place emigrants must needs go by train to Quebec or Montreal, owing to the ice-bound condition of the river. I decided on making St. John's my destination, from which port I would beat my way towards the west, going easy at first, and faster as the spring of the year advanced. The accommodation for steerage passengers on this ship was abominable, and their comfort seemed to be not in the least considered. This was owing to the small number of English speaking people that were travelling as steerage passengers, and the disgusting, filthy habits of the great majority, who were a low class of Jews and peasantry from the interior of Russia. None of the ship's crews could be expected to treat these people as one of themselves, seeing them sit to eat in the filth of their skin and fur clothes, without the least thought of washing; and again, hiding food in their bed clothes, making the cabin too foul to sleep in. After seeing the first meal fought for, and scrambled for on the steerage floor, where it had fallen, we Englishmen, five in number, took possession of a small table to ourselves, only allowing one other, a Frenchman, to sit with us. This did not succeed without some protest. On the second day out, when we went below for our mid-day meal, we found the table to be already occupied by these people, who maintained our seats, looking defiantly at us to show that they had taken no accidental possession of the same. It was owing to these defiant looks that we determined to re-possess this table. "Stick close together," said a young Englishman, who was a blacksmith, with the accredited brawny arms. Saying which he caught one of the usurpers in his arms, and with great force threw him in the midst of his people, knocking several of them down. There was great commotion at this. Two hundred of these haters of soap and water began to jabber and wildly gesticulate, and no doubt every foul word in that unknown tongue was used against us. Instead of seating ourselves at once at the table, which was now unoccupied, we stood in our small body waiting with a quiet determination which did not seem at all to their relish. This attitude conquered them; and, as none of us were quarrelsome, and did not again in any way interfere with them, either on deck or below, the trip was ended without any further trouble. So many of these aliens were landing in Canada at this time, that when I approached the Custom House officers, one of them, judging by my features and complexion, which were not much unlike those of a native of the south, addressed me in an unknown tongue. I looked at him in surprise, which made him repeat his question, probably in another tongue, equally unknown. Being rather incensed at this, and flushing indignantly at this tone to a dog, I lost no time in answering him according to Billingsgate. "Ho, ho!" he laughed, "so you are a blooming cockney, and so am I. Why didn't you say so at once?" The blacksmith had booked through to Quebec, and would take train to that place before morning. Three other Englishmen had booked through to Winnipeg, and would travel with him by the same train. The other Englishman, a carpenter by trade, had relatives in Montreal, and, having only a couple of dollars in his possession, was willing to take instructions from me how to get there. I promised to get this man to Montreal in three or four days, providing he did not at any time question my actions. He kept his promise and I kept mine, for on the fourth day after landing, I wished him good-bye outside his sister's house, which he had had some difficulty in finding. I was now alone, and seeking a companion for my journey west. Now, once upon a time, there lived a man known by the name of Joe Beef, who kept a saloon in Montreal, supplying his customers with a good free lunch all day, and a hot beef stew being the midday dish. There was not a tramp throughout the length and breadth of the North American Continent, who had not heard of this and a goodly number had at one time or another patronised his establishment. Often had I heard of this famous hostelry for the poor and needy, and the flavour of its stew discussed by old travellers in the far States of the South. When I thought of this, I knew that a companion for any part of America could most certainly be found on this man's premises, and I would there hear much valuable information as to the road I was about to travel. So I went strolling along quietly, intending to wait until I met some needy looking individual before I made enquiries. Now, whenever Joe Beef's name had been mentioned it had invariably led to the mention of French Marie, and the name of the latter as invariably introduced the name of Joe Beef, for these two establishments seemed to be patronised by the same class. These names were well-known to me, for, as I have said, their fame was abroad throughout America. I was strolling along with these thoughts, when I met the man of my desire, leaning lazily against a post. Not wishing to accost him outright, and yet eager for his conversation, I stood beside him lighting my pipe, striking several matches for this purpose and failing, owing to the wind blowing in small gusts. Seeing my dilemma, the man quickly produced matches of his own, and striking one, held it lighted between the palms of his hands, leaving just enough space for the bowl of my pipe to enter. For this I thanked him, and secondly, invited him to a drink, asking him where we should go, being in hopes he would mention Joe Beef. "Well," he answered, pointing to the opposite corner, "the nearest place is French Marie's." We entered that place and, in the course of conversation, I told him how I had beat my way from state to state, but that this was my first experience in Canada. "The United States," said this man sagely, "are nearly played out, and of late years there are far too many travellers there. You will find the Canadian roads better to beat, and the people's hearts easier to impress, for they are not overrun. When did you get here?" Knowing that this man was under the impression that I had just beat my way into Canada from the States, and not willing to undeceive him, I answered quickly "This morning," and for a time changed the conversation into a praise of the beer. "Where are you going to sleep?" he asked. "Meet me here in half an hour, after I have begged the price of my bed, and a drink or two--and we will both go to Joe Beef's, where I have been for this last week." Not wishing to lose sight of this man, I told him that my pocket could maintain the two of us until the next day. "All right," said he, appearing much relieved, "we will go at once and settle for our beds, and come out for an hour or so this evening." Leaving French Marie's we walked beside the river for some distance, when my companion halted before a building, which I knew must be Joe Beef's, having just seen two seedy looking travellers entering. We followed, and to my surprise, I saw it was a rather clean looking restaurant with several long tables, with seats and a long bar on which the food was served. But what surprised me most was to see a number of Salvation Army men and officers in charge of this place. Without saying a word to my companion, I took a seat at one of the tables, to order a beef stew, asking him what he would have, and, for his sake, the order was doubled. "When Joe Beef kept this place," whispered my companion, "he was a true friend to travellers, but you don't get much out of these people except you pay for it!" Although I winked at him, as though the same thoughts were mine, I noticed that the meals were well worth what was charged for them, and, in after days, I often compared this place favourably with similar institutions in London, that were under the same management, and where men did not get the worth of their money. CHAPTER XIX A VOICE IN THE DARK At this place I remained several weeks, watching the smiling Spring, which had already taken possession of the air and made the skies blue--unloosing the icy fingers of Winter, which still held the earth down under a thick cover of snow. What a glorious time of the year is this! With the warm sun travelling through serene skies, the air clear and fresh above you, which instils new blood in the body, making one defiantly tramp the earth, kicking the snows aside in the scorn of action. The cheeks glow with health, the lips smile, and there is no careworn face seen, save they come out of the house of sickness of death. And that lean spectre, called Hunger, has never been known to appear in these parts. If it was for one moment supposed that such a spectre possessed a house in this country, kind hearts would at once storm the place with such an abundance of good things that the spectre's victim would need to exert great care and power of will, if he would not succumb to an overloaded stomach. This spectre is often seen in the overcrowded cities of Europe, and one of its favourite haunts is the Thames Embankment, in front of the fine hotels where ambassadors and millionaires dine sumptuously. Where they sit or stand at their windows watching the many lights of the city, and to see the moon dipping her silver pitcher in the dark river, and they swear, by Jove! it is worth seeing. But they cannot see this spectre of Hunger, moving slowly, and sometimes painfully, from shadow to shadow, shivering and anxious for the sun, for they have no other fire to sit before, to make their dreams of the past pleasant. I remained three weeks in this inexpensive hotel, and decided to travel on the following Monday, although the snow was still deep in Montreal, and would be yet deeper in the country. I had a small room for sleeping purposes, at a cost of fifteen cents per night. There were several others of the same kind, each divided one from the other by a thin wooden partition, which was high enough for privacy, but did not prevent curious lodgers from standing tip toe on their beds, and peering into another's room. Going to bed early on Sunday night, previous to continuing my journey on the following day, I was somewhat startled on entering my room, to hear a gentle rap on the partition which divided my room from the next. "Hallo!" I cried, "what do you want?" The man's wants, it seemed, were private, for he seemed frightened into silence at this loud tone of demand, which would most certainly draw the attention of others. At last he cleared his throat by a forced fit of coughing, and then whispered, in a low distinct voice--"I want a match, if you can oblige me with one." Of course, smoking was not allowed in the bed-rooms, but in this respect we were nearly all breakers of the law. Taking a few matches from my pocket, I threw them over the partition, and heard him feeling in the semi-darkness, after hearing the sound of them falling. Then he gently struck one, and, by its light, gathered in the others. In a moment or two he addressed me in his natural voice, and, to my surprise, it sounded familiar, and filled me with curiosity to see this man's face. I encouraged him to talk--which he seemed determined to do--thinking a word might reveal him to me, and the circumstances under which we had met. His voice in the dark puzzled me, and I could not for my life locate it. A hundred scenes passed through my memory, some of them containing a number of characters. In my fancy I made them all speak to me, before dismissing them again to the dim regions from which they had been summoned, but not one of their voices corresponded with this voice heard in the dark. Above this voice I placed thin and thick moustaches, black, grey, brown, red, and white; under this voice I put heavy and light beards of various hues, and still, out of all my material, failed to make a familiar face. Still sending Memory forth in quest of the owner of this voice, and she, poor thing! bringing forward smiling men and stern men, thin men and fat men, short men and tall men, tame men and wild men, hairy men and bald men, dark men and fair men--until she became so confused as to bring back the same people the second time; still sending her forth on this vain quest, I fell asleep. It was a dreamless sleep; no sound broke its stillness, and no face looked into its depths; and, when I awoke the next morning, this voice seemed to be already in possession of my thoughts. I lay awake for about ten minutes, and was just on the point of rising, thinking the man had left his chamber, when I heard a stir coming from that direction. He was now dressing. Following his example, but with more haste, so as to be the first ready, I waited the unbolting of his door, so that I might meet this man face to face. I unbolted my own door, and opened it when I was but half dressed, but there was no necessity for doing this, for my arms were in the sleeves of my coat when his bolt was slipped back, and we simultaneously appeared, at the same time wishing each other good morning. I recognised this man without difficulty, but apparently had the advantage of him. To make no mistake, I looked at his right hand, and saw the two fingers missing, knowing him for a certainty to be Three Fingered Jack, who had been a cattleman from Montreal, whom I had met in Glasgow when I had gone there from Baltimore, three years previous to this. On that occasion I had been in this man's company for only half an hour, and since that time had heard thousands of voices, but was still positive that I had heard this voice before. We stood side by side washing, and preparing for breakfast, and, although I remained a stranger to him, as far as former acquaintance was concerned, I mentioned to him in confidence that I was going west that very morning, after breakfast. "So was I," he said, "as far as Winnipeg, but thought to wait until some of this snow cleared. Anyhow, as a day or two makes little difference, we will, if you are agreeable, start together this morning. I know the country well," he continued, "between Montreal and Winnipeg, having travelled it a number of times, and, I promise you, nothing shall be wanting on the way." This man had lost his two fingers at work in the cotton mills, some ten years before, and ever since then had been living in idleness, with the exception of two or three trips he had made as a cattleman. Certainly he lived well on the kindness of these people, as any able bodied man might do in this country, without being in any way afflicted. Though he was going to Winnipeg, he was in no hurry, had no object in view, and had not the least idea of where that town would lead him, and he soon tired of one place. Three Fingered Jack was a slow traveller for, as he with some emotion said--"It broke his heart to hurry and pass through good towns whose inhabitants were all the happier for being called on by needy men." This slow travelling suited me for the time being, for we were having another fall of snow, and I half regretted having left Montreal, although, day after day I was certainly getting a little nearer to the gold of Klondyke. But I determined to shake off this slow companion on the first approach of fine weather. We loafed all day in the different railway stations, in each of which was kept a warm comfortable room for the convenience of passengers. Although we were passengers of another sort, and stole rides on the trains without a fraction of payment to the company, we boldly made ourselves at home in these places, being mistaken for respectable travellers, who were enjoying the comforts for which we paid. Sometimes a station master would look hard on us, suspecting us for what we were, but he was very diffident about risking a question, however much he was displeased at seeing us in comfortable possession of the seats nearest to the stoves. Towards evening we made application for lodgings at the local jail, at which place we would be accommodated until the following morning. I was now without money, with the exception of that which was concealed and reserved for the most hazardous part of the journey, which would be its western end. Now, in all these jails we were searched and examined before being admitted for a night's shelter, but often in a very indifferent manner. One night we arrived at a small town where a double hanging was to take place in the yard of the jail early the next morning. A woman, it seems, had called on her lover to assist in the murder of her husband, which had been brutally done with an axe, for which crime both had been pronounced guilty and condemned to die. Thousands of people had flocked in from the neighbouring country, which in this province of Ontario was thickly settled, and a large number of plain clothes detectives had been dispatched from the cities, there being supposed some attempt might be made at rescue, owing to one of the condemned being a woman. We arrived at this town early in the afternoon, and were surprised at the unusual bustle and the many groups of people assembled in the main thoroughfares. Thinking the town contained, or expected, some attraction in the way of a circus or menagerie, we expressed little curiosity, but returned at once to the railway station, intending to possess its most comfortable seats against all comers, until the approach of darkness, when we would then make application at the jail for our night's accommodation. When this time came, we marched straight to the jail, and boldly hammered its door for admittance. It was at once answered by a police officer, to whom we explained our wants, and he, without much ado, invited us indoors. Expecting the usual questions, and being prepared with the usual answers--expecting the usual indifferent search, and having pipe, tobacco and matches artfully concealed in our stockings--we were somewhat taken by surprise to find a large number of officers, who all seemed to show an uncommon interest in our appearance. The officer, who was examining us previous to making us comfortable for the night, had finished this part of the business to his own satisfaction, when one of these detectives stepped forward, and said--"We cannot admit strangers to the jail on the present occasion, so that you had better make them out an order for the hotel." This order was then given to us, and we immediately left the jail; and it was then, curious to know the reason for this action, that we soon made ourselves acquainted with the true facts of the case. When we arrived at the hotel, we were informed that every bed had been taken since morning, and that, as it was, a number of men would be compelled to sit all night dozing in their chairs, and it was with this information that we returned to the jail. For the second time we were admitted, and were advised to walk to the next town. This, Three Fingered Jack absolutely refused to do, saying that his feet were too blistered and sore to carry him another hundred yards. All these detectives then got together, and, after a rather lengthy consultation, one of them came forward and, after plying us with a number of questions, proceeded to examine our clothes, and that so thoroughly that I feared for the result. At the beginning of the search, I gave him my razor, a small penknife, my pocket-handkerchief and a comb, but he was not satisfied until his hands were down in my stockings, and bringing up first my pipe, then my tobacco, and lastly the matches. What worried me most was the belt next to my body, which contained my money. I had not much fear of Three Fingered Jack, when confronting each other openly, though he was a tall active man, but had he known of these dollars, I had not dared in his presence to have closed my eyes, believing that he would have battered out my brains with a stone, wooden stake or iron bar, so that he might possess himself of this amount. This detective certainly discovered the belt, and felt it carefully, but the money being in paper, and no coin or hard substance being therein, he apparently was none the wiser for its contents. At last this severe examination was at an end, and we were both led through an iron corridor and placed in a cell, the door of which was carefully locked. I don't believe we slept one moment during that night but what we were overlooked by a pair, or several pairs of shrewd eyes. They could not believe but that we were other to what we pretended, and had come there with designs to thwart the ends of justice. Next morning our things were returned to us, and we were turned adrift at a cold hour that was far earlier than on ordinary occasions. The snow was still deep and the mornings and evenings cold when, a week after this, we reached Ottawa. This slow travelling was not at all to my liking, and I often persuaded my companion to make more haste towards Winnipeg. This he agreed to do; so the next morning we jumped a freight train, determined to hold it for the whole day. Unfortunately it was simply a local train, and being very slow, having to stop on the way at every insignificant little station, we left it, at a town called Renfrew, intending that night to beat a fast overland passenger train, which would convey us four or five hundred miles before daybreak. With this object we sat in the station's waiting-room until evening, and then, some twenty minutes before the train became due, we slipped out unobserved and took possession of an empty car, stationary some distance away, from which place we could see the train coming, and yet be unseen from the station's platform. This train would soon arrive, for passengers were already pacing the platform, the luggage was placed in readiness, and a number of curious people, having nothing else to do, had assembled here to see the coming and going of the train. At last we heard its whistle, and, looking out, we saw the headlight in the distance, drawing nearer and nearer. It steamed into the station without making much noise, for the rails were slippery, there still being much ice and snow on the track. "Come," I said to Jack, "there is no time to lose;" and we quickly jumped out of the empty car. This fast passenger train carried a blind baggage car, which means that the end nearest to the engine was blind in having no door. Our object was to suddenly appear from a hiding place, darkness being favourable, and leap on the step of this car, and from that place to the platform; this being done when the train was in motion, knowing that the conductor, who was always on the watch for such doings, rarely stopped the train to put men off, even when sure of their presence. If he saw us before the train started, he would certainly take means to prevent us from riding. When we had once taken possession of this car, no man could approach us until we reached the next stopping place, which would probably be fifty miles, or much more. At that place we would dismount, conceal ourselves, and, when it was again in motion, make another leap for our former place. Of course, the engineer and fireman could reach us, but these men were always indifferent, and never interfered, their business being ahead instead of behind the engine. The train whistled almost before we were ready, and pulled slowly out of the station. I allowed my companion the advantage of being the first to jump, owing to his maimed hand. The train was now going faster and faster, and we were forced to keep pace with it. Making a leap he caught the handle bar and sprang lightly on the step, after which my hand quickly took possession of this bar, and I ran with the train, prepared to follow his example. To my surprise, instead of at once taking his place on the platform, my companion stood thoughtlessly irresolute on the step, leaving me no room to make the attempt. But I still held to the bar, though the train was now going so fast that I found great difficulty in keeping step with it. I shouted to him to clear the step. This he proceeded to do, very deliberately, I thought. Taking a firmer grip on the bar, I jumped, but it was too late, for the train was now going at a rapid rate. My foot came short of the step, and I fell, and, still clinging to the handle bar, was dragged several yards before I relinquished my hold. And there I lay for several minutes, feeling a little shaken, whilst the train passed swiftly on into the darkness. Even then I did not know what had happened, for I attempted to stand, but found that something had happened to prevent me from doing this. Sitting down in an upright position, I then began to examine myself, and now found that the right foot was severed from the ankle. This discovery did not shock me so much as the thoughts which quickly followed. For, as I could feel no pain, I did not know but what my body was in several parts, and I was not satisfied until I examined every portion of it. Seeing a man crossing the track, I shouted to him for assistance. He looked in one direction and another, not seeing me in the darkness, and was going his way when I shouted again. This time he looked full my way, but instead of coming nearer, he made one bound in the air, nearly fell, scrambled to his feet, and was off like the shot from a gun. This man was sought after for several weeks, by people curious to know who he was, but was never found, and no man came forward to say--"I am he." Having failed to find this man, people at last began to think I was under a ghostly impression. Probably that was the other man's impression, for who ever saw Pity make the same speed as Fear? Another man, after this, approached, who was a workman on the line, and at the sound of my voice he seemed to understand at once what had occurred. Coming forward quickly, he looked me over, went away, and in a minute or two returned with the assistance of several others to convey me to the station. A number of people were still there; so that when I was placed in the waiting room to bide the arrival of a doctor, I could see no other way of keeping a calm face before such a number of eyes than by taking out my pipe and smoking, an action which, I am told, caused much sensation in the local press. CHAPTER XX HOSPITALITY I bore this accident with an outward fortitude that was far from the true state of my feelings. The doctor, seeing the even development of my body, asked me if I was an athlete. Although I could scarcely claim to be one, I had been able, without any training, and at any time, to jump over a height of five feet; had also been a swimmer, and, when occasion offered, had donned the gloves. Thinking of my present helplessness caused me many a bitter moment, but I managed to impress all comers with a false indifference. What a kind-hearted race of people are these Canadians! Here was I, an entire stranger among them, and yet every hour people were making enquiries, and interesting themselves on my behalf, bringing and sending books, grapes, bananas, and other delicacies for a sick man. When a second operation was deemed necessary, the leg to be amputated at the knee, the whole town was concerned, and the doctors had to give strict injunctions not to admit such a number of kind hearted visitors. At this time I was so weak of body, that it was hopeless to expect recovery from this second operation. This was soon made apparent to me by the doctor's question, as to whether I had any message to send to my people, hinting that there was a slight possibility of dying under the chloroform. A minister of the gospel was also there, and his sympathetic face certainly made the dying seem probable. Now, I have heard a great deal of dying men having a foresight of things to be, but, I confess, that I was never more calm in all my life than at this moment when death seemed so certain. I did not for one instant believe or expect that these eyes would again open to the light, after I had been in this low vital condition, deadened and darkened for over two hours, whilst my body was being cut and sawn like so much wood or stone. And yet I felt no terror of death. I had been taken in a sleigh from the station to the hospital, over a mile or more of snow; and the one thought that worried me most, when I was supposed to be face to face with death, was whether the town lay north, south, east or west from the hospital, and this, I believe, was the last question I asked. After hearing an answer, I drew in the chloroform in long breaths, thinking to assist the doctors in their work. In spite of this, I have a faint recollection of struggling with all my might against its effects, previous to losing consciousness; but I was greatly surprised on being afterwards told that I had, when in that condition, used more foul language in ten minutes' delirium than had probably been used in twenty-four hours by the whole population of Canada. It was explained to me that such language was not unusual in cases of this kind, which consoled me not a little, but I could not help wondering if the matron had been present, and if she had confided in her daughter. The latter was a young girl of sixteen years, or thereabouts, and was so womanly and considerate that her mother could very well leave her in charge of the patients for the whole day, although this had not been necessary during my stay. For three days after this operation I hovered between life and death, any breath expected to be my last. But in seven or eight days my vitality, which must be considered wonderful, returned in a small way, and I was then considered to be well out of danger. It was at this time that the kindness of these people touched me to the heart. The hospital was situated at the end of a long road, and all people, after they had passed the last house, which was some distance away, were then known to be visitors to the matron or one of her patients. On the verandah outside sat the matron's dog, and, long before people were close at hand, he barked, and so prepared us for their coming. When it was known that I was convalescent, this dog was kept so busy barking that his sharp clear voice became hoarse with the exertion. They came single, they came in twos and threes; old people, young people and children; until it became necessary to give them a more formal reception, limiting each person or couple, as it might be, to a few minutes' conversation. On hearing that I was fond of reading, books were at once brought by their owners, or sent by others; some of which I had not the courage to read nor the heart to return; judging them wrongly perhaps by their titles of this character:--"Freddie's Friend," "Little Billie's Button," and "Sally's Sacrifice." With such good attendance within, and so much kindness from without, what wonder that I was now fit to return to England, five weeks after the accident, after having undergone two serious operations! My new friends in that distant land would persuade me to remain, assuring me of a comfortable living, but I decided to return to England as soon as possible, little knowing what my experience would be in the years following. When the morning came for my departure, the matron, in a motherly way, put her two hands on my shoulders and kissed me, her eyes being full of tears. This, coming from a person whose business was to show no emotion, doing which would make her unfit for her position, made me forget the short laugh and the cold hand shake for which my mind had prepared itself, and I felt my voice gone, and my throat in the clutches of something new to my experience. I left without having the voice to say good-bye. On my way I had to wish good-bye to every one I met, and when, at last, this ordeal was over, and I was in the train on my way back to Montreal, I felt that I was not yet strong enough to travel; my courage forsook me, and I sat pale and despondent, for I never expected to meet these people again, and they were true friends. Soon I reached Montreal. Only two months had elapsed, and what a difference now! Two months ago, and it was winter, snow was on the earth, and the air was cold; but I was then full limbed, full of vitality and good spirits, for summer like prospects golden and glorious possessed me night and day. It was summer now, the earth was dry and green, and the air warm, but winter was within me; for I felt crushed and staggered on crutches to the danger of myself and the people on my way. I soon got over this unpleasant feeling, roused by the merry-makers aboard ship, the loudest and most persistent, strange to say, being a one-legged man, who defied all Neptune's attempts to make him walk unsteady. Seeing this man so merry, I knew that my sensitiveness would soon wear off; and, seeing him so active was a great encouragement. I was soon home again, having been away less than four months; but all the wildness had been taken out of me, and my adventures after this were not of my own seeking, but the result of circumstances. CHAPTER XXI LONDON Sitting at home, thinking of future employment, manual labour being now out of the question, it was then for the first time that I expressed gratitude for my old grandmother's legacy, which, on my home coming from the States had been reduced from ten shillings to eight shillings per week. In the past it had been sniffed at and scorned, being called several ill-natured names, such as "a week's tobacco," "a day's grub," or "an evening's booze without cigars." I had been very bitter, on the reading of her will, that the property had not come into my hands, to sell or retain, spend or save; but a little common sense now told me that if such had been the case I would, at the present time, have been without either property or income, and had been so less than twelve months after her death. The old lady, no doubt, had noted my wildness, and to save me the temptation to squander my brother's share, who was incapable of taking charge of his own affairs, and whose share I must have ill managed, after the passing of my own she had wisely left this property to remain in the hands of a trustee, which now turned out as lucky for myself as for my brother. I was now more content with my lot, determined that as my body had failed, my brains should now have the chance they had longed for, when the spirit had been bullied into submission by the body's activity. It was now the middle of Summer, and daily I sat dreaming, reading, and occasionally writing in a leafy bower in the garden. I could now dispense with crutches, having just received from London an artificial limb, and on this was practising, taking short walks at night, with a success that was gratifying. A far different Klondyke had opened up before my eyes, which corresponded with the dreams of my youth. I pictured myself returning home, not with gold nuggets from the far West, but with literary fame, wrested from no less a place than the mighty London. This secret was never divulged to my people, and, in the after years, this reticence saved them from many a pang of disappointment, and freed me from many an awkward question. Determined to lose no time in the conquest of that city, which I expected would be surrendered to me some time within twelve months, I began, without wasting more time in dreams, to make preparations for this journey. Alas! how many greater men failed in a lifetime at this attempt, although they now stand triumphant in death, holding in their spiritual hands the freedom and keys of the whole world's cities! With a cotton shirt, a pair of stockings and a handkerchief in a brown paper parcel, and the sum of two pounds in my pocket, after the expense of train fare, I started for London, filled to the brim with the aforesaid designs. My failure in the States, and again in Canada, had made me a little more chary with my confidence, but I was not in the least the less optimistic. My first dreams were, and are, my best. I scorn clothes and jewellery; I would rather take a free country walk, leaving the roads for the less trodden paths of the hills and the lanes, than ride in a yacht or a coach; I would rather see the moon in the ruins than the gaslight of an assembly room; gluttony I despise, and drink is seldom taken except at the invitation of other eyes: then what, in the name of everything we know, would be to me the silver and gold of all Alaska! I arrived in London early the following morning, and at once made my way towards Lambeth. Early that night, being tired with the exertion of an unusually long day, I went seeking for lodgings in Blackfriars Road, and, seeing several signs that claimed to accommodate working men with good clean beds at sixpence per night, entered one of these establishments, paid the amount demanded, and was then ushered into a long kitchen, preferring to sit and smoke for an hour before retiring for the night. Some thirty or forty men were in this kitchen, but the British Workman had either not yet arrived, was out drinking his pint, or had gone early to bed. This was not by any means my first experience in England of lodging houses, for I had been forced to live in similar places on my visits in cattle ships from America; but I certainly did not like the look of this place, where no sign of authority was to be seen, and which seemed to be entirely left to the control of these noisy men. Some of these lodgers had been old soldiers, had just received their pensions--the accumulation of three months. A number of them were bringing in cans of beer, and the kitchen was in an uproar. Many of them were too drunk to perform this task, but were sufficiently sober to sit awake and give money and orders to others, and there was no lack of willing hands to bring them what they required. I left the kitchen at once, determined to seek another place, without troubling the landlady to refund my money. As I left the kitchen, two drunken men began to fight; others interfered, and this fight threatened to become an all round affair. When I had reached the top of the stairs, feeling my way in the dark, I found the landlady standing at the office door. Seeing me, as I was about to pass her, she said, in a voice which was the worse for drink--"So you want to go to bed? Here, Jim, show this gentleman to his bed." Jim obeyed, a small, pale-faced child, whom I mechanically followed up two flights of stairs, which were better lighted than those leading to the kitchen, which was in the basement of the house. He then showed me into a room where there were a number of beds, and, pointing to one, said--"You are number forty-five," when he left the room. Many of the beds already contained sleepers. I sat down on the edge of mine, wondering if there would be any disturbance in the night, whether any of these men would take a fancy to my clothes, or in the dark were likely to rummage their contents. The man in the next bed coughed, and then, turning towards me, said gently--"The beds are good, I admit, but that is about all you can say of this house." Second voice, not far away: "You've come to a good house, you have, and yer don't know it." First voice: "If I hadn't been drunk last night and got chucked out of Rowton's, I wouldn't, on any account, be here." A third voice, distant, but loud and angry: "Give over, will yer: when are you coves going to sleep? I ain't done any labour for three weeks, and now as I've got a chance at four in the mornin', blow me if I ain't robbed of my slumber. Take care I don't set about yer at once, yer blooming lot of bleeders. If I come arter yer body, yer'll know it, and no mistake about it, either." No more was said after this. I at once made up my mind to try Rowton House on the following day. That they had refused this man a bed owing to his being drunk, and, more than likely, quarrelsome in drink, was a strong recommendation to me after my experience here, where it would be impossible to either read, write or think, or to even partake of my meals in comfort. The following morning, after having had breakfast at an eating house, I enquired for Rowton House, and when the first person I addressed asked which one I wanted, I answered him--"the nearest one." This proved to be in Newington Butts and, after receiving instructions, I proceeded accordingly, and was soon standing outside that place, where I was to remain for two years, without in the least impressing London. To my surprise, I found this house to be a fine large block of red buildings, with an imposing front, and a fine entrance, polished and clean; and, facing its many front windows, was an old church tower and clock, set in an old leafy churchyard that had stones for the dead and a number of wooden seats for the living. On making an application for a bed, I learnt that this could not be granted until nine o'clock in the evening, but was courteously allowed the privilege of remaining indoors until that time. This place surprised me by its accommodation of dining rooms, library, sitting rooms, baths, lavatories, etc., all being kept clean and in thorough good order by a large staff of men, its charge being sixpence per night. On making my way into the library, and seeing two large cases of books, one containing fiction, and the other being enriched by the poets, historians, essayists, with biography and miscellaneous literature, and hearing how quiet this room was, in spite of the presence of over a hundred men, I at once made up my mind to pay a week's lodgings down, indifferent whether the sleeping accommodation was good or bad. This I did at nine o'clock, after which I sat sometimes reading the paper, and again watching the faces of this mixed assembly. Some of them were of refined appearance, with their silk hats, their frock coats, cuffs and collars, and spoke in voices subdued and gentle. Some of them were of such a prosperous appearance that no doubt I had already passed them in the street, thinking they were either merchants or managers of great concerns; and, more likely than not, the paper boys had followed on their heels, and the cabmen had persistently hailed them. If I wanted to devote my time to study, living on eight shillings per week, this was apparently a suitable place for my purpose. Being my own barber, doing my own plain cooking, and living abstemiously, renouncing drink and the pleasures of theatres, and other indoor entertainments, and retaining tobacco as my sole luxury--I saw no reason why this could not be done, at the same time making up my mind that it had to be done. I had been here little more than a week, when I set to work in earnest, and the result of two months' diligence was a tragedy, written in blank verse, and which I called "The Robber." Never dreaming but what it would at once meet with success, owing to its being full of action--a very difficult thing to marry to verse, but which I thought was successfully accomplished--I was somewhat taken aback to have it returned to me on the third day, with the manager's regret. Now it seemed that the Rowton House had a bad name, owing to the great number of criminals that were continually in the Police Courts giving that address. Some of these lodgers, for that very reason, had their correspondence addressed to various small shops, where they were customers for tobacco, papers, and groceries. On having this tragedy returned, I, thinking of this, came to the conclusion that no respectable person would be likely to consider or respect any work, or application for the same, that emanated from a house of this name. I spoke to a gentleman with whom I had become acquainted, on this difficult subject, and he agreed with me, saying that such were the true facts of the case. "But," said he, after a thoughtful pause, "as your means are so limited, and the shopkeepers charge one penny for every letter they receive on a customer's behalf, would it not be as well to still have your correspondence addressed here, but in another way, of which you probably have not heard? Give your address as number one Churchyard Row, and, although people will not recognise this house under that name, yet the post office authorities will know it for its proper address." This I did, without further question, and "The Robber" was despatched on a second journey. Fourteen days after my robber returned to number one Churchyard Row. Bothering my head to account for this, I came to the conclusion that my tragedy had not been read farther than the front page, and that a tragedy that was born and bred in such a place as Churchyard Row--the address being so appropriate to the nature of the work--was enough to make any man, who had the least sense of humour, condemn it with a laugh. My conceit, at this time, was foolish in the extreme, and yet I was near my thirtieth year. The next work was a very long poem, in which the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and even the fishes of the sea, met in a forest glade to impeach man for his cruelty to them, and went on to describe their journey at midnight to the nearest town, and the vengeance they then took on the sleeping inhabitants. My confidence in this work being accepted could not have been altogether whole-hearted, for the following reason: I made two copies of this poem, and posted them simultaneously to different publishers. I felt quite satisfied that one of these would be accepted, but when a whole week had passed on, and I had received no communication from either publisher, I was then horrified to think that they both were giving the poem such a consideration that there was a probability that both of them would accept it, and that both publishers would call on me to make terms, perhaps at the very same hour. This thought so preyed on my mind that I did not feel at all easy until I had one of the copies returned; but it was a great disappointment to receive the second copy on the following day. Thinking that short poems would stand a better prospect of being accepted, I set to work on a hundred sonnets, writing five, and sometimes six a day, but when this number had been accomplished and submitted, this work met with the same failure. After this I wrote another tragedy, a comedy, a volume of humorous essays, and hundreds, I believe, of short poems. I was always writing at this time, either beginning or finishing a work, but, strange to say, none of this work was being sent out, but was safely treasured, under the impression that it would some day find its market. After having had twelve months' practice, in the last months of which no attempt had been made at publication, I decided to make one more effort, this time with a small volume of short poems. This was immediately sent to a well known publisher, who in a few days returned answer, offering to publish at the author's expense, the sum needed being twenty-five pounds. This success completely turned my head. With all my heart I believed that there would not be the least difficulty in procuring money for such a grand purpose, and at once wrote to several well known philanthropists, writing six letters. Two of them never murmured, and the other four set their secretaries to snap me up in a few words. Exasperated at this I wrote to several others, all my trouble being to no purpose. Now, when I first entered this lodging house, I had something like thirty shillings to the good, being ahead of my income, and up to the present had no reason for spending this amount. Could I put this to some use? My mind had several plans, and one in particular seemed good and feasible. I would write three or four short poems on a page, get them printed, and sell them from door to door. Two thousand of these sheets, sold at threepence per copy, would be twenty-five pounds, and, no doubt, I could sell quite a hundred of these copies a day, providing I went from house to house, from street to street, from early morning till late at night. With this object I lost no time in seeing a job printer, and was told that thirty-five shillings would be needed to defray expenses. This large amount disappointed me not a little, but I paid a deposit and went back to the house, where I lived and nearly starved in saving four shillings that were short, which was done in two weeks out of the sixteen shillings that were to maintain me in food and lodgings for fourteen days. At last, after great privation and sacrifice, it was done, and I received from the printer two thousand and some odd copies. Early the next morning I was to be seen in the suburbs of London, with my hands and pockets full of these copies, going from door to door. I mentioned to the inhabitants that I had had an offer from a publisher, and that he could not undertake to publish my work under twenty-five pounds. All these people did was to stare, none of them seeming to understand, and no one seemed inclined to ask questions. I had, I believe, visited the doors of some thirty houses or more, and had not sold one copy. Most of these people were poor, and some had become sufficiently interested to enquire the price of my copies, seeming inclined and willing to trade with me in a small way, but none of them seemed to be anxious to give threepence for a sheet of paper which they did not understand. At last I chanced upon a house that was much larger than the others, at which place a servant answered the door. I lost no time in relating to her the true facts of the case, and she was standing there silent and puzzled as to my meaning, when her mistress called to her from the top of the stairs--"Mary, who's there?" On which the maiden gave answer in a halting voice--"Some man selling some paper." At this there was a pause, and then the same voice said, from the direction of the stairs--"Give him this penny, and tell him to go away," and, almost instantly, that copper coin fell at the bottom of the stairs, and came rolling rapidly towards us, as though aware of its mission. The girl handed me this penny, which I took mechanically, at the same time persisting in her taking a copy to her mistress. That lady, hearing our further conversation, and perhaps, guessing its import, cried again, this time in a warning voice--"Mary, mind you don't take anything from him." This crushed the last hope, for I began to think that if this lady, who might be a woman of some cultivation and rich, could only see and read what had been done, she might have at once, in her deep interest, merged the whole twenty-five pounds, at the same time befriending me for life. Alas! I have been unfortunate all my life in believing that there were a great number of rich people who were only too eager to come forward and help talent in distress. I was so disgusted at receiving this single penny, and being so dismissed, that I at once put the sheets back in my pockets and returned to the city. How long would it take to get twenty-five pounds, at this rate? What am I talking about! Money was lost, not even this single copper was a gain; for this penny-a-day experience had cost me three pennies in tram fare, without mention of a more expensive breakfast than I usually had. When I got back to the house I started, with the fury of a madman, to burn the copies, and did not rest until they were all destroyed, taking care not to save one copy that would at any time in the future remind me of my folly. It was at this time that I came under the influence of Flanagan. That gentleman, seeing me often writing and apparently in deep thought, at once gave me credit for more wisdom than I possessed. He was a very illiterate man, having no knowledge of grammar, punctuation or spelling. The upshot of this acquaintance was that he informed me in confidence that he was the lawful heir to nearly half the county of Mayo, in Ireland; on which estate was a house like the King's palace. In exchange for this confidence I told him that I was the author of a book of verse, which could not be published except the author defrayed expenses. On which Flanagan expressed much sympathy--more especially when I read him aloud a few lines expressing my disapproval of landowners and rich tyrants--and promised sincerely to relieve me of all difficulty providing, of course, that he made good his claims to the estate. Flanagan then proposed that I should put some of his arguments in grammatical form, which he would immediately forward to the proper authorities. This I began to do at once, and some of Flanagan's arguments were so strong that I am surprised at the present day at being a free man. I told one eminent statesman that he should retire and give place to a more honest man, and another that though he was born in Ireland and bore the name of an Irishman, yet he was a traitor, for his heart had ever been in England. Despite these powerful letters, the County Mayo never to my knowledge changed hands, and I was disappointed in my expectations, and Flanagan grieved daily. At that time, I must confess, I thoroughly believed Flanagan, perhaps through being blinded by my own ambitions as an author. Even at the present time, though I have cut down the estate considerably, from half a county to half an acre, and have taken out quite a number of windows from the estate's residence--after doing this, I still believe that poor Flanagan was robbed of a cottage and garden by an avaricious landlord. This was at the time of the Boer War and Flanagan's long dark beard and slouched hat gave him the exact appearance of one of those despised people. Therefore we seldom took a walk together but what we were stoned by boys in the street, and even grown up people passed insulting remarks. In fact everywhere we went we were regarded with suspicion. Our clothes not being of the best, drew the attention of attendants at museums and art galleries, and we, being swarthy and alien in appearance, never paused near a palace but what sentry and police watched our every movement. One morning we were passing through Whitehall, what time a regiment of soldiers were being drilled and inspected by a gentleman in a silk hat. Now Flanagan was a man of great courage and never thought it necessary to whisper. Therefore a vein of savage satire broke in Flanagan's heart when he beheld a man in a silk hat inspecting a troop of soldiers. "See!" he cried, "there's a sight for the Boers." A number of bystanders resented this remark, and there were loud murmurs of disapproval. On which Flanagan asked the following question: "Will the best man in the crowd step forward?" But no man seemed inclined to attempt Flanagan's chastisement, without being assisted. Although I did not entirely approve of him on this occasion, still, seeing that the words could not be recalled, I was quite prepared to be carried with him half dead on a stretcher to the nearest hospital; for I liked the man, and he certainly seemed to like me, since he always took his walks alone when I did not accompany him. CHAPTER XXII THE ARK I had now been two years in London, at the same place, and though my literary efforts had not been very successful, I must confess that the conditions had not been the most unfavourable for study; and, no doubt, I had cultivated my mind not a little by the reading of standard works. The conditions of this place could not have been bettered by a person of such small means, and probably I would have continued living here until I met with some success, had I not known of one who would be thankful of a couple of shillings a week, and resolved to make a little sacrifice that would enable me to send them. To do this it was necessary to seek cheaper lodgings where, rent not being so high, this amount could be saved. I had heard something of such a place in Southwark which was under the control of the Salvation Army. A bed was to be had there for two shillings per week, therefore one and sixpence would be saved at the onset, as I was now paying three and sixpence. Following my first impulse, as usual, but with much regret at having to leave a place where I had not by any means been unhappy, I gathered up my few things and left, and that night settled in Southwark Street. Speaking after six months' experience at the Salvation Army Lodging House, I am very sorry that I have nothing at all to say in its favour. Of course, it was well understood by the lodgers, whatever people on the outside thought, that no charity was dispensed on the premises. Certainly the food was cheap, but such food as was not fit for a human being. I do not know whether the place came under the control of the London County Council, being regarded as a charitable institution, or whether, in case of a surprise visit from its inspectors, beds were removed in the day: what I do know from experience is this, that it was with difficulty that a man could find room between the beds to undress. A row of fifteen or twenty beds would be so close together that they might as well be called one bed. Men were breathing and coughing in each other's faces and the stench of such a number of men in one room was abominable. I was fortunate in having a bed next to the wall, to which I could turn my face and escape the breath of the man in the next bed. The officers in charge were, according to my first opinion, hypocrites; which seemed to be verified some time after from Head Quarters, for both the Captain and his Lieutenant were dismissed from the Army. However, the Captain was well liked by the lodgers, and I have often seen him assist them out of his own private purse. As for the Lieutenant, he was very gentle and fervent in prayer, more so than any man I have ever heard, but in conversation he had not a civil word for any one, except, of course, his superior officer. He sometimes made his deceit so apparent that I have been forced to laugh out. When the Captain arrived at night, or in the morning--he was a married man and did not live on the premises--he would stand with his back to the restaurant bar, looking down the long room at the faces of his many lodgers. It was at such a time that when I have looked up from my meal, I have been surprised, and not a little startled, to see this Lieutenant's pale thin face looking down through a glass window, eager to see what his superior officer was doing. So engrossed would he be that he would entirely forget that he exposed his deceit to the eyes of a number of men who had their faces turned towards him. Sometimes he would creep tiptoe to the kitchen door and peep in for an instant, and then creep back to the office. I have often wondered that the Captain never turned and surprised him in these doings, for there was not a lodger in the house that had not one time or another seen him perform them. On Sunday afternoons, these two, the Captain and his Lieutenant, would conduct a meeting; the latter commencing it with a short prayer, after which the former would preach a sermon which was, I must confess, often interesting, and invariably eloquent. In all my life I have never heard a more pathetic address and prayer than that which was delivered by this Captain, on one of these Sunday afternoons. It so chanced that in this place there lived a poor half demented lodger, who was known by the name of Horace, whose profession was that of a flower seller. Every night this man would dress and garland himself with his unsold flowers, and return home drunk to the Ark. Now, this man suddenly disappeared, and, at the same time, a man committed suicide from London Bridge, which was well known to be the haunt of the man Horace. Whereat the following Sunday our Captain preached a funeral oration, giving for our interest the few facts he had gleaned from the past life of the deceased, who, the Captain affirmed, had received a good education and had come of a respectable family. The Captain wept copiously, being overcome by his feelings, and the Lieutenant approved and encouraged him by an unusual number of sighs and broken sobs. The meeting then ended with an earnest prayer for the soul of the drowned Horace. About six days after this meeting had taken place, there came to the Ark a man drivelling and laughing idiotically, with wreaths and posies all over his person--no other than the lamented Horace. The Captain came out of his office, followed by his Lieutenant. The Captain looked at Horace with a melancholy annoyance; the Lieutenant looked first at his superior officer and, after receiving his expression into his own face, turned it slowly on Horace. The Captain then turned slowly on his heels, at the same time shaking his head, and, without saying a word, returned to the office, while his subordinate followed him in every particular. Never, after this, did this Captain treat Horace as a living man, and all chaff and familiar conversation was at an end between them. How the Captain came to the belief that the drowned suicide was Horace, the flower seller, was very strange, for this man was known to mysteriously disappear several times in the year, he, invariably, like the drowned man he was supposed to be, coming to the surface on the seventh day, seven days being the extreme penalty of his simple and eccentric behaviour. There was no lack of strictness at this place; whether a man was ill or not, whether it rained, snowed or hailed, every lodger was compelled to quit the premises at ten o'clock in the morning, after which it would remain closed for cleaning purposes until one o'clock. And yet there was not a man in the house could keep himself clean. It was not thought necessary to close other establishments of this kind, that were not connected with the name of religion, which were kept cleaner without making the lodgers suffer any inconvenience. Why things should be carried on in this high handed fashion I cannot understand, seeing that there was not the least charity doled out. Whatever good the Salvation Army did for the homeless and penniless in their shelters, they certainly did not cater well for these poor, but independent, fellows whose wages ranged from a shilling to eighteenpence a day--being paper-men, sandwichmen, toy-sellers, etc., who receive nothing but what they paid for. I had been at this place something like four months, when I determined to make another attempt at publication. My plans at this time seemed to be very feasible, for I gave them a full half year for execution. I applied at the local police station for a pedlar's certificate, intending to stock myself with laces, pins, needles and buttons with which I would hawk the country from one end to the other. At the end of this time I would be some ten pounds in pocket, the result of not drawing my income, and would, no doubt, save between nine and ten shillings a week as a hawker. Being very impulsive, I proposed starting on this interesting business at once, but one idea--which could not for long be overlooked--brought me to a halt: my artificial leg would certainly not stand the strain of this enforced march from town to town on the country roads, that were so often rough and uneven. For even now it was creaking, and threatened at every step to break down. On mentioning these difficulties to a fellow lodger, he at once advised me to go to the Surgical Aid Society for a wooden leg, of the common peg sort; which, he was pleased to mention, would not only be more useful for such a knockabout life, but would not deceive people as to my true condition. This society was visited by me on the following day; at which place I was informed that fifteen subscription letters would be required for my purpose, and after paying sixpence for a subscription book, in which were the names and addresses of several thousand subscribers, I lost no time in buying stamps and stationery. Eighteen letters were without loss of time written and posted to their destination. These eighteen succeeded in bringing in two subscription letters, several letters of regret from people who had already given theirs away; several of my letters were returned marked "not at home," and a number of them elicited no response. Twelve more letters were quickly despatched, with the result of one subscription letter. To be able to do this I was forced to use the small weekly allowance that I had been making. In six weeks I had written nearly a hundred letters and was still several letters short of my allotted number. I again consulted my fellow lodger, who had at first referred me to the Surgical Aid Society, and his explanation was, undoubtedly, reasonable and true. He explained that not only was the time of the year unfavourable, it being summer, and most of the subscribers were away from home on their holidays--but, unfortunately, the South African war was still in progress, and numbers of soldiers were daily returning from the front in need of artificial assistance one way or another. Although I ruminated with some bitterness on the idea that I would almost pay in postage the value of that which I required, before it became mine, I still had enough common-sense to see that no one was actually to blame. Several letters were received, offering to assist me on certain conditions. One lady would assist on a clergyman's recommendation, and another subscriber would have no other than a Roman priest. I offered to get these ladies a Salvation Army Officer's recommendation, which, apparently, would not do, for our correspondence came to an end. One lady, who did not recognise the house of Salvation under the address of 96 Southwark Street, regretted that she had already given her letters away, but advised me to go to the Salvation Army, who would most certainly attend to my wants. I explained to this person that I was already at one of their places, and had been here over five months; and that I had not been seen drunk in the place, and that my behaviour had not, at any time, raised objections, also that I was on the most friendly terms with the officer in charge; but that I could live here for many years to come, and no man would enquire my wants or offer to assist me. One afternoon, when I returned to the Ark, after having been out all day, I was surprised to hear from a lodger that two gentlemen had been there that afternoon to see me. After which another lodger came forward with the same information, and still another, until I was filled with curiosity to know who those gentlemen could be. "What did they look like?" I asked one. "Like solicitors," he answered. "What kind of looking men were they?" I asked of another. "Very much like lawyers," he answered at once. "Don't forget to remember yer old pals," chimed in another, "when yer come into the property." First I examined my mother's side of the family, and then my father's, but could find no relative, near or distant, at home or abroad, whose death would be likely to befriend me. At last I went to the office, but found this place closed, the Lieutenant being out walking, and the Captain not yet having arrived. Never in my life did I have such an excitable half hour as this. When I saw the Captain coming forward, smiling, with an envelope in his hand, I went to meet him, and, taking the letter in my own hand, began to examine its outside. "Of course," said the Captain, "you know who it is from?" "Not the least idea," I said, "how should I?", and proceeded to open it. It was a short note, with a request that I should call on the Charity Organisation, between the hours of ten and eleven a. m. on the day following. The Captain went back to his office, and I sat down, thinking of what this would amount to. Again I decided to consult the Canadian, the lodger who had first mentioned to me the Surgical Aid Society. "As to that," said this man, "it's a wonder to me that you have not run foul of these people before now. My friend, who sells papers in the city, was continually meddled and interfered with by these people, but they gave him no assistance, although they seemed curious to know all about him." This information surprised me not a little, but I came to the conclusion that the Canadian's friend was addicted to drink and other bad habits, and was an undeserving case. The next morning I arose, lighthearted in anticipation of hearing something to my good, and was leaving the house when I saw the Captain standing at the front door. Feeling some misgiving, I turned to this gentleman and asked him point blank--what was his opinion of the Charity Organisation. "Well," he replied slowly, "to give you my candid opinion--although I may be mistaken--the object of the Charity Organisation is not so much to give alms, as to prevent alms being wasted." How I remembered these words in the light of my after experience with these people! At ten o'clock punctually, I was at their office in the Borough Road, and was at once shown into a side room, where I sat waiting patiently, for an hour. At last a gentleman in black came forward, saying, very politely--"Mr. Davies, will you please come this way." I followed him up two or three flights of stairs, and we entered a quiet room on the top floor. Seating himself at a table, and taking pencil and paper, he then asked me to be seated and began. "Mr. Davies," he said, "I have received a letter from a lady who has become interested in your case, and wishes to better your conditions. So as to answer this lady, it is necessary to know something of yourself, for which reason I propose asking you a few questions, which, of course, you need not answer except you think proper." This he proceeded to do, at the same time making notes of my answers. After answering a dozen or more questions truthfully, dealing with particulars of my family, and my past life--he brought the case up to that time. "Surely," he said, "you do not live on eight shillings a week. I should have thought that to be impossible." "As for that," I answered, "not only has that sum been sufficient for myself, but I have been able to make another an allowance of two shillings a week, but have not been able to do so since I applied to the Surgical Aid Society." "Now tell me what is the matter with that leg?" asked this gentleman. "I should have thought that it would last for another two years at least. Excuse me, did you get that through the Society?" "No," I said, "it cost me twelve pounds, ten shillings, when I could ill afford the money, but, unfortunately, I knew nothing then of the Surgical Aid Society." "The Society, no doubt, does a large amount of good," continued this gentleman, "but I don't altogether agree with their methods. You have written quite a number of letters?" he asked; "and I don't suppose any of the subscribers helped you with the postage, sending you a trifle to defray expenses?" At this point he made a long pause, and I began to tell him that all the help I had received was from a gentleman who, having no letters left to assist me with, had very considerately sent twelve stamps to help my correspondence. The Charity Organisation showed much interest at this point of the conversation, and said that he thought quite a number of subscribers would have done the same. "As I have already said," he continued, "I don't altogether agree in the methods of the Surgical Aid Society; their cases are maintained too long without result, and allows too good an opportunity for writing begging letters." Not even now could I see the drift of this man's questions--that he suspected me of being an impostor, of writing begging letters. Yes, I, who was bitter at having to bear all this expense, and was grieved at having to withhold two shillings a week from one who was very poor, so that I might be enabled to do so. "How many letters do you now need?" he asked. "Two," I answered, "but I don't intend to be at any further expense in postage; I will take in what letters I have already received, and explain to the Surgical Aid Society the difficulty I have had in trying to obtain the requisite number." This ended our interview, and I went away satisfied that the Charity Organisation would come to my rescue in the near future. But I did not again hear from them for over two years, which will be explained in another chapter. How they answered the kind lady who had become interested in me, I cannot say, but it could not have been other than to my discredit. The day following this interview, three letters were at the, office, all three coming by the first post. One of them contained a subscription letter, so that I now only lacked one of the required number. One of the other letters came from the Surgical Aid Society, saying that a subscriber had forwarded to them a letter to be entered to my account, and that if I would call at their office with the letters I then had, the Society would make up the number deficient. The required number was now made up, without having need to draw on the Society. I now took these letters to their office, and in a day or two received the article which had caused me so much bother in writing letter after letter, and such an expense in postage. By a sad irony, the worry and expense was by no means at an end, as I had expected. People were now returning from the continent, and other places where they had spent their summer holidays. Letters came to me daily from people returning home. Some of my own letters, which had been posted three, four, five and six weeks before, were now being considered. Several subscription letters came to hand--too late for use. Others wrote asking if I was still in need of assistance. I was now at as great an expense as ever, returning these subscription letters with thanks; and writing to others to tell them that I had now succeeded in obtaining the required number. Letters were still coming when I left the Ark for the country; and, it was told me afterwards, that a goodly number had come, been kept for a number of days, and returned during my absence. I was more determined than ever to tramp the country until I was worth thirty pounds, for an offer had again been made by a publisher, during my stay at the Ark, and this offer was much the same as the other. Seeing that there was no other way of getting this amount than by hawking the country, I determined to set out as soon as possible. So, when my business with the Surgical Aid Society was at an end, I spent three or four shillings on laces, needles, pins, buttons, etc., and started with a light heart and not too heavy a load. The Canadian, who had had some experience in this kind of life, prophesied good results from it, adding that a man situated the same way as I was, need carry no other stock in trade than that which I had received from the Surgical Aid Society, and that success was assured, on that very account. CHAPTER XXIII GRIDLING It was a beautiful morning in September when I left the Ark with every prospect of fulfilling this mission. As I advanced towards the country, mile after mile, the sounds of commerce dying low, and the human face becoming more rare, I lost for the time being my vision of the future, being filled with the peace of present objects. I noted with joy the first green field after the park, the first bird that differed from the sparrow, the first stile in the hedge after the carved gate, and the first footpath across the wild common that was neither of gravel nor ash. I had something like nine shillings in my pocket, and I felt that business was out of the question as long as any of this remained. Reaching St. Albans on the first night, I walked through that town, and, making a pillow of my pack, lay down on the wild common. It seemed as though extra bodies of stars had been drafted that night into the heavens to guard and honour the coming of age of a beautiful moon. And this fine scene kept me awake for two or three hours, in spite of tired limbs. This seemed to me a glorious life, as long as summer lasted and one had money to buy food in towns and villages through which he passed. For three or four days I walked and idled, standing on culverts and watching the water burst from darkness into light; listening to the birds; or looking at a distant spire that was high enough, and no more, to show that a quiet town was lying there under a thousand trees. I reached Northampton, and it was in this town that I intended to start business on the following day, though I still had a few shillings left, having slept in the open air since leaving London. With this object I proceeded to examine my pack, with the intention of filling my pockets with the different wares, to draw them forth one or two at a time, as they would be needed. So, that night, previous to the great business that was to be transacted on the following day, I sought a quiet corner in the lodging house, and began to unroll my paper parcel. As I proceeded to do this, it seemed to me that the inner part of the parcel was damp, and then I remembered the two or three heavy showers that we had on the second day of my travels. On a further examination I discovered, to my horror, that the goods were entirely unfit for sale; that the parcel had been so bent and misshapen one way and the other, during my night's repose, that the needles had cut through their rotten packets, and were stuck in the pin papers, and that a great number of pins had concealed their whole bodies in the needle packets, showing plainly the guilty tops of their heads. The laces were twisted and turned, and their tags were already rusted. This was a great blow to me, as there seemed nothing else to do but send home for the few shillings that had now become due. But on second thoughts I made up my mind to travel without stock of any kind, not doubting but what I would rise to the emergency after the last penny had been expended, and I was under the force of necessity. Thinking Northampton too large a town in which to starve, I determined to remain here until my funds were exhausted, when desperation would urge me to action. With this idea I took life very easily for a couple more days, even inviting poverty by being unusually extravagant, going to the extreme of buying milk for my tea. But when I became reduced to the last sixpence, I decided to make all speed to Birmingham, as the resources of that city, it being so much larger, would be a better place to serve my wants. Starting on this journey, without any more delay, I was soon going into the town of Rugby, tired, penniless, and hungry. What was I to do? Something had to be done, and that at once. I had to face the horrible truth that I was now on the verge of starvation. Whilst busy with these unpleasant thoughts, I heard a voice shout to me from the roadside, and, looking in that direction, saw a man sitting in the grass, eating from a paper parcel, which was half spread before him. On going over to see what this man wanted, I found an apparently tall man and large in proportion, who was dressed in seedy looking clothes, which were torn and patched in a good many places. In fact, something seemed to have been gnawing night after night at the bottom of his trousers, taking advantage of him in his sleep, for these hung in tatters and rags just below the calves of his legs. The man had a freckled face, which was almost lost in an abundance of red hair, and his head was as thick with the same. What helped to make his appearance strange, and perhaps ridiculous, was a schoolboy's small cap to cover the crown of such a large head. "Have a mouthful of this," he said, inviting me to partake of some bread and meat. "It is dry eating, I must say, but, as we go into Rugby, we can wash it down with a pint or two of beer." I thanked him for his kindness, and, accepting his invitation, seated myself on the grass. "What's in your bundle," he asked, looking askance at a small brown paper parcel, which contained a clean shirt, socks and a handkerchief, "are you selling anything?" I explained to him that I was a licensed hawker, but had not yet been long enough at the business to make a success of it. "What," he cried with some surprise, "a one legged man not to be successful? I get all I want by just opening of my mouth," although he added with some scorn, "I know that some people cannot beg unless they have something in their hands to sell. But if you travel with me, all you will have to do is to pick up the coppers." After I had finished eating, he proposed to set off immediately; and, as we walked leisurely along, I wondered how it was possible for a big healthy fellow like this to be able to exist in any other manner than by selling. On coming to the first public house he politely invited me to enter, which I did, when he called for two pints of beer. He then became communicative, telling me he was a gridler, and a good one too; which I understood to mean a grinder, although I had not seen tools of any description either in his hands or in his pockets. He paid for two or three pints of beer in quick succession, and, not having had much drink for a considerable time, I began to feel somewhat elated, and began to make a laughing joke of my circumstances. "Now," said this man, "to business; for we must get the price of our beds and a little breakfast for the morning, not to mention the night's supper. All you have to do," he said again, "is to pick up the coppers as they come." Wondering what these words could mean, I followed him, on this pleasant afternoon, up several side streets, until we came to the end of one very long street, which had respectable looking houses on either side of the road. My strange companion walked several yards down this street, and then came to a sudden halt in the middle of the road. "Now," said he, for the third or fourth time, "all you have to do is to pick up the coppers. I ask you to do no more; except," he added, grinning rather unpleasantly, "except to see that we are not picked up by the coppers." His joke appeared simple enough, and I could not fail to understand it, but it was not at all to my relish. The last named coppers were police officers, who would be likely to take hold of us for illegally appropriating the copper coins of the realm. "Are you going to pick up the coppers?" he asked a little impatiently, seeing me standing irresolute and undecided as to what to do. Scarcely knowing how to answer him, I said that if I saw any coppers he need have no fear but what I would pick them up. "All right, that's good," he said, at the same time moving several feet away from me. I stood still watching these mysterious movements, and thinking of the coppers, wondering from what source they would be supplied. He now turned his back, without more ado, and, setting his eyes on the front windows before him, began, to my amazement, to sing a well known hymn, singing it in the most horrible and lifeless voice I have ever heard. In spite of the drink, which had now taken effect, making my head swell with stupidity, I still felt an overwhelming shame at finding myself in this position. I stood irresolute, not knowing whether to wait the result of this, or to leave him at once with short ceremony. But, whilst ruminating in this frame of mind, I heard a window open with a loud creak, saw the shaking of a fair hand, and then heard a copper coin fall on the hard earth within a yard of where I stood. Being penniless I was nothing loth to take possession of this coin, and had scarcely done so, when a front door opened on the other side of the street, and a fat florid old gentleman appeared and beckoned me across to him. Going immediately to this gentleman, I received twopence and, after thanking him, joined my companion in the road. Now, as I belong to a race of people that are ever prone to song, whether it be in a public house or a prayer meeting, it will not surprise many to know that ere long I was making strong attempts to sing bass to this man's miserable treble, and only ceased to do so when it became necessary to stoop and pick up the coppers, which continued to come in at the rate of two to the minute. The effect of my voice on my companion was immediately apparent. His limbs shook, his knees bent and knocked together, and his voice quivered and quavered with a strong emotion. He was now singing another well-known hymn, better known perhaps than the last; and what with his tall form bent double to half its height, and the wringing of his hands in despair--a poor wretch who was apparently broken both in body and spirit--he was, at this particular stage, the most miserable looking mortal I have ever beheld. He was in this old man's broken attitude when, to my surprise, he suddenly straightened his great body, and gazed about one second down the street. After which he quickly turned on his heels, saying, in short peremptory tones--"Quick march," at the same time suiting the action to the words, in sharp military steps. What the people, in their different windows, and on their doors, thought of this change, I cannot say. I looked down the street, and then saw that a police officer had just turned its far corner, and was coming slowly in our direction. My companion waited for me at our end of the street, where I joined him as soon as possible. "It is getting harder every day for a poor man to get a living," he said, when I stood beside him. "Suppose you count the earnings," he said. "We work together well." On doing this, I found twenty pennies to be in my possession, and, at his suggestion, we there and then shared them alike. "Friend," he began, "before we commence again, let me give you a word or two of advice. First of all, you sing in too lusty a voice, as though you were well fed, and in good health. Secondly, you are in too much of a hurry to move on, and would get out of people's hearing before they have time to be affected. Try to sing in a weaker voice: draw out the easy low notes to a greater length, and cut the difficult high notes short, as though you had spasms in the side. Your object is to save your voice as much as possible, indifferent to the demands of music, or the spirit of the song. When we start in another street," he continued,--but at this admonitory point I cut him short, telling him that I had had enough of--eh--gridling. "What, enough of chanting?" he cried in amaze. "Why, my dear fellow, it is the best thing on the road, bar none. All right," he said, seeing my determination not to make a fresh start, "we will make our way to the lodging house: it is not far from here." We were soon comfortably settled in this place, and when, after having had a good tea, I was sitting smoking, and enjoying a newspaper, I felt more pleased than ashamed of what I had done; for I was going to bed with an easy stomach, and had coppers in my pocket for a good breakfast. Therefore, when a fellow lodger, a hawker, who was now taking an inventory of his wares, and who had probably seen and heard us singing that day, when following his own calling--when this man enquired of me if the town was good for gridlers, I answered him very pleasantly indeed, that there was nothing to complain of. After breakfast, the next morning, my companion of the preceding day proposed putting in a good eight hours' work, but I at once cut him short saying that such a business was not in my line. Now, several women were at this place; some of them were married, and some single, and most of them made and sold fancy work of embroidery. After I had spoken so decisively to my companion he had sat near to one of these women, at the other end of the kitchen. This woman, who seemed to be the wife of a knife and scissors grinder, had a little girl of about seven years of age. "Yes," said this woman, in answer to some question my companion had made, "you can have the kid all day; it's not the first time, by a long way, for Mary Ann to be used by gridlers, and she knows as well as you what's wanted of her." Not long after this remark my companion and the woman's child left the kitchen together. This I, subsequently, often saw done. Almost any woman, if she called herself a true traveller, would lend her child for this purpose; the woman or child, of course, deriving some part of the profit: so that when a man is seen with one or more children, it is not always to be granted that he is the father of them. These children are rarely subjected to ill usage--except that of enforced tramping--but are more often spoilt by indulgence, especially if they show early signs of that cunning which is needed for their future, and which is the boast of their parents. What a merry lot of beggars were assembled here; and how busy they all seemed to be, making articles for sale, and washing and mending their clothes! two or three of them sitting shirtless during the process of drying. It has become a common expression to say "dirty tramp," or, "as dirty as a tramp"; but this is not always true, except occasionally in the large cities; although such a term may be applied morally to them all. There is one species of tramp who wanders from workhouse to workhouse; and this man, having every night to conform strictly to the laws of cleanliness, is no less clean, and often cleaner, than a number of people whose houses contain bath rooms which they seldom use. Another species of tramp is proud of being a good beggar, who scorns the workhouse, but who knows well that a clean appearance is essential to his success. For this reason, any one that enters a common lodging house can at once see what efforts are being made to this end. It seems strange to say, but the dirtiest looking tramp is often the most honest and respectable, for he has not the courage to beg either food or clothes, nor will he enter the doors of a workhouse. I have seen this so often the case that I would much prefer to believe a dirty ragged tramp who might tell me that he had a good home six months previous, than to believe his cleaner namesake, who seems so eager to impart this information unsolicited. It is certainly the man who has had a good home, and has been waited on by other hands, who soon succumbs to a filthy condition, when it becomes necessary to wait on himself by washing and patching his own clothes; and the higher his former position has been the lower he sinks in the social strata. It is no difficult matter to get company when travelling. The pedlar, whom I have mentioned before, asked me if I was going towards Coventry, and if I intended to do business on the road. To this question I answered that such might be the case, but I could not say for sure--at the same time knowing that it was very unlikely. "Come along then," he said, "and do business if you feel inclined; but, I warn you, it is a very poor road for a gridler." We started at once, and, in the course of our journey I told him everything--my first experience of gridling and my dislike to it, and how my wares had been spoilt by the rain, which had prevented me, through having no stock, nor money to buy it, from earning my living in a respectable manner as a pedlar. "Of course," he said, "you have a pedlar's certificate?" I answered him in the affirmative, and added that I had not earned one penny with it up to that moment. As we jogged along talking in this way, we came to a small village, when the pedlar, stopping short, asked if I would like to help him to do a little trade. Knowing that something had to be done, as I had but twopence halfpenny in my pocket, I assured him that I would. Hearing this he took two bundles of laces from his pack, leather and mohair, and placed them in my hands, at the same time saying--"You work on one side of the village and I'll attend to the other." I passed several houses before I had the courage to knock at their doors, but seeing him go calmly from door to door, I nerved myself to follow his example, and was soon doing the same, and, as far as I could see, was meeting with more success. This so encouraged me that I was soon regretting that I had no more houses left on my side of the village. But, instead of waiting patiently until he had done, I took a desperate notion and went back to the houses which I had at first passed. After this we jogged on towards Coventry, which we reached that evening. We worked Coventry together for four or five days, and the result was nine shillings and some odd pence in my pocket. This pedlar was going to spend a week or two with a brother in Birmingham, whom he had not seen for a number of years. But, before we left Coventry, he persuaded me to stock myself with three shillings' worth of stuff, and, said he, "never let a day pass you without doing some business, however little; and never allow your stock to get low." We reached Birmingham, and, after he had shown and recommended a lodging house, he wished me good-bye, with many hopes that we might meet again. As usual, my first enquiry after I had settled for my lodgings, was for the public library. This place I found so much to my liking, what with its variety of journals, its number of papers, and so much comfort and accommodation for its visitors--that business was entirely out of the question until the third day, when I woke to the awkward fact that my last three coppers were then being spent on a meal. At this I made up my mind to hawk on the outskirts of Birmingham for a month or more, so that my evenings might be enjoyed in its library. But, apparently, I was not cut out for this kind of business. Hawking required a perseverance which I certainly did not possess. For when a person declined to make a purchase, instead of crying up the cheapness of my wares, I walked away dumbfounded to the next house. Yes, the success or ill success of this buying and selling was all a simple matter of tongue. A big able-bodied fellow, with a persistent tongue, can talk charity out of the people who indifferently pass the silent blind man. Of course this business of hawking with a few cheap laces, and a few packets of common pins or needles, was after all only another name for begging, and it was well for us that the people knew it, for they often paid for what they declined to receive. They knew that these things were to be had much cheaper at a store. In exoneration of this fraudulent selling, a man was expected to tell some tale of distress. This I found difficulty in doing, except on being asked direct questions; and the people would often stand after refusing to purchase with their hands in their pockets ready to assist on the first confession of distress. The number of times people have called me back, after I have left their doors, and assisted me, has often proved to me how they have waited to have their first feelings of pity strengthened by some recital of poverty. No doubt there was some sort of a living to be made in this way, providing a man talked incessantly and went for hours from house to house, and from street to street; and when he failed in the line of business to plead for the sake of charity. It must have been over two hours and my takings had amounted to ninepence, nearly all profit I admit. Looking at this paltry amount I now reversed my former opinion as to the resources of a large city, and came to the conclusion that the small country towns and villages were after all more willing, if not better able, to support me. Therefore, instead of returning to the city I took the road towards Warwick, intending when I reached that town to use my tongue to some purpose. And how many houses have I visited with this same resolution, but, alas, many of the towns were passed through without any one hearing the sound of my voice. CHAPTER XXIV ON THE DOWNRIGHT On my way towards Warwick I joined company with a grinder, and we travelled socially together towards that ancient town. When we arrived, we lost no time in seeking a lodging house, which we soon found, but, to my surprise, the landlady, a big raw-boned, slatternly woman said, looking sternly at my companion: "I will have no grinders in my house." Of course, I did not know at that time what I have heard subsequently. Of all the men on the road, following various occupations, the grinder is, I believe, the most thoroughly detested. As a rule he is a drunken dissolute fellow, a swearer, and one who, if he picks up a quarrel, which is usually the case, is in no hurry to drop it. The more unpretentious lodgers hate his presence, seeing that he makes himself more at home than the landlord himself. I have often heard travellers tell of a small village in the north of England, which grinders dare not enter, pass through or lodge therein for the night, and it is the regret of many travellers that there are not more villages of its kind distributed throughout the country. It seems that some years ago, a great wind had visited that particular town, and floored the roofs of the houses, and grounded the church steeple, many of the inhabitants being injured, and not a few killed. Now, it happened that the day following this great disaster, two unfortunate grinders, who had arrived in town the night before, and slept at the village inn, appeared in the streets and made a great shout in soliciting orders. Some way or another the inhabitants connected these poor wretches with the great wind, and set upon them, and proceeded to beat them out of the town, coming near to killing them; and, since that day the town has been visited by neither grinders nor great winds. Even in larger towns these people often experience great difficulty in procuring lodgings. This state of affairs was not known to me at this time, or I should certainly not have been anxious for the company of one of these despised people. We were admitted at the next lodging house, but even here the landlady seemed to have some compunction at so doing; for she followed us to the kitchen and without saying a word, placed her two hands on her broad hips, at the same time looking severely at my grinder, as much as to say--"If you are going to start any of your capers, let it be at once, my hearty grinder, now I am watching you, and we'll soon see who's who." We sat down quietly, and the landlady, thinking that this attitude had had its desired effect, left the kitchen, not forgetting to throw a last glance at my grinder, who was trying his best to hide his nervousness by puffing hard at his pipe and nearly choking in the attempt. Some ten or fifteen men were in this room, some of them busy preparing work for the next day. Two were busy making artificial flowers; one was working with copper wire, turning and twisting it into toasting forks, plate holders, and hangers to suspend flower pots. Two others were in the rag and bone trade, for I had seen them when I first entered, overlooking their stuff in the backyard. One man was a pedlar, for there was his pack, towards which he often turned his eyes, in distrust of his company. One was a musician, for there, sticking out of the top pocket of his coat, was a common tin whistle. "There," said I to myself, glancing at a man on my right hand--"here is the only respectable working man among them all." This man had on a clean moleskin pair of trousers, a pilot cloth coat, and on his neck a large clean white muffler. "Grinder?" asked this man, catching my eye before I could avoid it. "No," I answered, "a pedlar." "Oh," said he, "I didn't notice you carrying a pack when you came in." Alas! my little stock could easily be carried in my pockets. "No," I answered, "as a rule I don't carry much stock." "I shouldn't think you would," he said, glancing at my leg, "a bible ought to be enough for you, and a good living too." Now it happened that when I left London, I had made room in my pockets for two books which, up till that time, I had very little opportunity of reading. One was the bible, and the other was a small printed and cheap paper cover edition of Wordsworth. So, hearing this man mention a bible, I became extremely curious to learn how a man could earn a living by carrying a book of this kind. Seeking this information I said to this man--"I shouldn't think that there was much money to be made by carrying a bible." "Why not," he asked; "if you carry in your hand a decent rake (a comb), a flashy pair of sniffs (scissors) and a card of good links and studs--that is certainly a good bible for a living; but there is not much profit in a pair of stretchers (laces) or a packet of common sharps (needles). As for me," he continued, "I am on the downright, and I go in for straight begging, without showing anything in my hand. That grinder, whom I thought you were with, and am glad you are not, works very hard at dragging that old ricketty contrivance with him all over the country; and is he any better off than I am? I never fail to get the sixteen farthings for my feather (bed), I get all the scrand (food) I can eat; and I seldom lie down at night but what I am half skimished (half drunk), for I assure you I never go short of my skimish." Being curious to see this man at work, and to hear the tales with which he approached people, I told him I would accompany him the next day as far as Stratford, that was if he had no objection to my company, as I also intended to visit that town before I made my way towards London. To this proposal he seemed perfectly agreeable. The next morning arrived and after having had breakfast, we set out. We had scarcely set foot outside the lodging house, when I saw this downrighter dodge in and out of shops with an astonishing alacrity, more like a customer than a beggar; but with what success I could not tell. He seemed to go in smiling, and to come out the same, until we were at last at the business end of the town. He did not confide in me as to his success or failure; but generously invited me to a smoke. We filled our pipes, but just as I was about to strike a match, my companion interrupted me with--"Wait until we are on the other side of the sky pilot." Looking down the road I saw a clergyman approaching us at a fast rate, carrying something in his hand which proved on nearer view to be a book of prayers. When this black cloth was within three or four feet of us, my companion began to address him in a very serious voice, calling him in his ignorance, or perhaps, excitement--"your reverend highness." The gentleman in black cloth seemed to have been expecting something of this kind, for, without turning his head either to the right or left, he passed on, going if possible, at a greater speed. On seeing which my companion shouted in a jeering voice--"Go it, old hearty, and remember me in yer prayers." As we proceeded on our way he laughed immoderately. "Yes," he said, "I have always found a bible or a prayer book in a person's hand to be the sign of an uncharitable disposition. Seldom do I get anything from them, but I like to pester them. Now, if this had been a man with a bottle, or jug of beer in his hand, I would have had a civil answer at the very least." The indifference of this reverend gentleman, and the experience my companion seemed to have had of this kind in general, surprised me not a little; for this man I was with certainly had the appearance of an honest working man of the better class; his clothes were good, and his flesh was clean, and he certainly had not forgotten the barber. My companion allowed no person to pass us without making an appeal, and it was made apparent to me that he was successful in a number of cases. In times of failure people listened to this respectable looking fellow, and regretted that they had left home without having brought coppers with them. At one time we saw a man who had dismounted to examine his bicycle, probably having heard some part of it go click and fearing an accident, had paused for an investigation. We stood before this man, and my companion in straightforward, manly tones, asked him for assistance. The gentleman began to stammer, to hem and to haw, at the same time saying that he regretted that he was not at that moment exactly in the position to----"Friend," broke in my bold downrighter, in a stern solemn voice, laying his heavy hand on the man's shoulder; "friend, you see before you two men in extreme want, who must be relieved in this very hour." We were standing in the man's way, and he could not possibly escape without knocking us over. Apparently the man was afraid, for he first looked at our faces, and after looking backward and then forward, he produced a silver sixpence, saying he trusted that that amount would be of some service to us. We made sure of this and then cleared ourselves from his path, allowing him space to mount and ride, an opportunity of which he quickly availed himself. This looked very much like highway robbery, but strangely, I was better satisfied at this open independent way of transacting business than by whining forth pitiful tales of want, however true they might be. We were now entering the town of Stratford-on-Avon, and my companion was advising me as to my behaviour at the common lodging house. "It is the only lodging house in the town," he said, "and the old lady is very particular and eccentric. Our very appearance may dissatisfy her, and then we will be compelled to walk some miles to the next town. She keeps a shop attached to the lodging house," continued the downrighter, "and if strangers, not knowing this to be the case, when applying for lodgings, have bread, tea, sugar, meat, etc., in their hands, that is bought elsewhere, this eccentric old landlady declines to receive them as lodgers, and they are forced, often late at night, to walk to the next town. Some time ago," he continued, "a lodger bought at her shop a half pound of cornbeef, which he thought was underweight. Going to the public house opposite for a glass of beer, he requested the publican to weigh this meat, which being done, it was found to be two ounces short of the required weight. On returning to the house this lodger went quietly to bed, but the next morning he spoke his mind to her in a very straightforward manner, making mention of the publican as a witness. Ever since that time, any man who visits that public house is not allowed to sleep on her premises. If seen entering that place by day, they are objected to at night, and if seen visiting that house after their beds are already paid for, on their return their money is at once refunded without the least explanation." It certainly spoke highly for our respectable appearance when this particular landlady received our money, and admitted us without much scrutiny into the kitchen; although she lost no time in following us there, and stood for several minutes watching our movements. No doubt if one of us had thrown a match on the floor, or sat too near the fire; or complained that the kitchen only contained two tea pots, cracked and half spoutless, among the ten lodgers now patiently waiting a chance to make tea; and that there were only three cups, and one half rimmed plate like a vanishing moon--no doubt if we had uttered one complaint, our money would have been returned without advice or warning, and we would have found no other lodgings that would have answered our small means in the town. But we fortunately knew the old lady too well to implicate ourselves and we gave her no chance to complain. After tea I wandered alone about the town, and as I went here and there in this enchanted place, ambition again took possession of me, stronger than ever. It filled me with vexation to think that I was no nearer my object, for I was, comparatively speaking, penniless. Two months had I wandered, during which time I had not been able to concentrate my thoughts on any noble theme, taking all day to procure the price of a bed, and two or three coppers extra for food. True I had by now some three pounds saved, the income that I had not touched, but at this rate, I would never be able to attain my ends. November was here, and I was suddenly confronted with a long winter before me, and I pictured myself starved and snow bound in small out of the way villages, or mercilessly pelted by hailstones on a wild shelterless heath. Side by side with these scenes I placed my ideal, which was a small room with a cosy fire, in which I sat surrounded by books, and I sickened at the comparison. The following morning I was up and on my way before the downrighter had put in an appearance. In two or three days I was again back on the outskirts of London, walking it round in a circle; sometimes ten miles from its mighty heart, or as far distant as twenty miles; but without the courage to approach nearer, or to break away from it altogether. Whatever luck I had good or bad, I always managed to escape the workhouse; and was determined to walk all night, if needs be, rather than seek refuge in one of those places. One desperate hour possessed me every day, sometimes in the morning, or in the afternoon, but more often in the evening, when I would waylay people on the high roads, go boldly to the front doors of houses, interview men in their gardens, stables or shops at the same time flourishing before their eyes a whip of a dozen laces. In this hour I seemed to be impelled by a fatality like that of the wandering Jew, cursed at having to perform something against my will. When this mad fit was at an end, during which I generally succeeded in getting a shilling or more, people might then come and go without fear of being molested, for I was satisfied that the workhouse was once more defeated for another night. One morning at the beginning of December, I made up my mind to tramp home for Christmas. This was a new idea, and not much to my liking, for I had always written them hopeful letters, and although they knew that I had left London, they knew nothing of my present condition. As usual, under these active impulses I made astonishing progress, being on the borders of Wales in less than a week. The greater part of the journey accomplished, being now less than thirty miles from my native town, I regretted having started with such an intention, and tramped over the Welsh Hills day after day, ultimately finding my way to Swansea. I did not remain long in that town, but began other rambles, and the day before Christmas eve, was in a town twenty-seven miles from home; sleeping there that night I rose early the following morning and started for home. Keeping up a pace of three miles an hour, in spite of the one leg and the rough uneven roads of the hills, I accomplished the journey in nine hours, arriving home just after dark, without having once rested on the way. I had now been tramping for over three months and thought myself entitled to a little rest, if such could be had. After all, why had I done this, and to what end had I suffered? For I would now draw the few pounds that were due to me, would return to London in a week or two, and would again commence writing without any prospect of success, for I would once more be living on a small income. And such was the case: three weeks' comfort improved me wonderfully and vitality returned stronger than ever after the low state into which it had fallen. What cut me to the heart was not so much that I had not practised writing during these four months, but that I had been forced to neglect reading and had therefore been taking in no means to justify my hopes in the future of being capable of writing something of my own. The poor man, who has his daily duties to perform, has his quiet evenings at home, with friends to lend him books, and being known in the locality, a library from which to borrow them, but what privileges has the wanderer? Feeling myself fit, I drew what money was due to me and returned to London. CHAPTER XXV THE FARMHOUSE Yes, I returned to London, and to my surprise, began to look forward with pleasure to be again frequenting the old haunts for which, when leaving I had felt so much disgust. This feeling seems to be natural; that I felt inclined to see familiar faces, although they were red and blotchy with drink; to hear familiar voices, however foul their language might be. Therefore, on the first night of my return wonder not when I say that I was sitting comfortably in the Ark, as though I had not slept one night away. I looked in vain for my old friend the Canadian. Many recognised and spoke to me. One in particular, a toy seller, who was curious to know where I had been. Seeing that he suspected that I had been incarcerated in a jail, I told him something of my wanderings, and ended by making enquiries of him as to the whereabouts of the Canadian. Of this man he knew nothing, but gave information that "Cronje," the fish porter, another of my acquaintances, was staying at the Farmhouse, and no doubt would be glad to see me, he having been at the Ark to enquire of me during my absence. Of course it was not my intention to stay long at the Ark, so I at once made my way to the Farmhouse, to see "Cronje," where I found him. The Farmhouse is very particular about taking in strangers, which certainly makes it a more desirable place than others of its kind; but, at "Cronje's" recommendation, I was without much ceremony accepted as a lodger. This man, nicknamed "Cronje," who had been for a number of years in Australia, and had so many wonderful anecdotes to relate, was a sharp little man, the very image of a Jew in features, but fair, red, always happy and laughing, for a contradiction. He was clean in his habits, extremely generous to the poorer lodgers, and was well liked by all. It is true that many considered him to be a liar; but no man contradicted him, for no man was capable of talking him down. In his early days he had had a phenomenal voice, which he claimed to have lost through auctioneering. As a rower he had defeated all comers on the river Murrumbidgee, and had publicly disgraced the champion of Wagga Wagga at billiards. On seeing a man taking a hair out of his food, Cronje declaimed on the danger of swallowing this, relating how his friend Skinner of Australia--who had taken down all the best fencers of Europe--had swallowed a single hair which, taking root in his stomach, had grown to such a length that it had killed him before an operation could be performed. Again: hearing some one mention the names of two famous singers, one a tenor and the other basso, Cronje, eager to create wonder, said that it was a most remarkable case that the tenor had at first become famous as a basso, and that the basso had at first received recognition as a tenor, and that each man's voice had changed after he had become famous. What a strange house was this, so full of quaint characters. Some of these men had been here for fifteen, and twenty years. "Haymaker" George was here, and had been here for some time; for he claimed to have gone haymaking from this very house, when he first came here; going and returning daily without the assistance of trains, busses or cars. "Salvation" Jimmy was here; who had been so emotional that he had been desired as an acquisition to the Salvation Army, which he had joined, and donned the red jersey. At last the poor fellow had become so very emotional, probably influenced by such stirring music and the ready hallelujah of the members, that really, his frequent laughter, his fervent cries and his down-on-the-knees-and-up-in-a-trice, had provoked so many smiles and sarcastic remarks from his audience, that not only was he not promoted to rank from a private, but was discharged the service altogether. Even to this day, he knew no reason for his dismissal. He was mad enough now, in these later days, laughing, dancing and singing up and down the Farmhouse kitchen, so that I can imagine the effect on his nerves when marching to the sound of loud music, under the spread of a blood red banner. Even now, in these days, he drew every one's attention to his eccentric behaviour, so that what must he have been then? I soon knew them all by name, that is, by their nicknames, by which most of them preferred to be known. It was very interesting to hear, morning after morning, "Fishy Fat" and John--the latter being in the last stages of consumption, and poor fellow peevish withal--sit down to breakfast and to abolish the House of Lords. It was often a surprise to me to see this noble edifice still standing, after hearing it abolished in such fierce language, and in terms of such scathing reproach. Strangely, these men had very little to say during the day; and did one get up earlier than the other in the morning, he would stand silent with his back to the fire, or pace quietly up and down the kitchen waiting the appearance of his friend. When one saw the other preparing breakfast, he would at once follow his example and when everything was ready, both would seat themselves opposite each other at the same table. Up till this time nothing would have been said, until each had tasted and sugared his tea to his own liking. After this being done, one would suddenly ejaculate a sentence of this kind "Smother them lazy rotters in the h'upper 'ouse, the bleeding liars." In accordance with that remark, the other would immediately answer--"Perish 'em all." And then would follow oath after oath of the blackest character, and daring cold-blooded designs that would have gladdened the heart of Guy Fawkes. Brown was also here, and always in a state of wonder. He had very little faith in print, and every hour things happened which made him--to use his own words--"know not what or what not to believe." He presumed that the laity was a certain kind of religious sect, but to him they all seemed without difference. The only difference he could see between a vicar and a curate was that one had a larger corporation and a redder nose than the other. Brown, who was a simple, kind-hearted fellow, said that we were all born of woman; that we were born and that we must all die; that it was a great pity, and made his heart bleed, to see a man come down in life after he has been high up; and that we had to face a cruel fact--although it was almost beyond belief--that a man's own relations often caused the man's downfall which, with his own eyes, he had seen done. "Gambling" Fred was here, looking over the daily paper with "Red Nosed Scotty." They are both short sighted, and, unfortunately, have but one pair of spectacles between them, which is now being used by "Scotty." Suddenly the red nosed man sees the name of a horse. "There you are," he cries exultingly; "there's a sure winner." "Where?" asks his fellow gambler, taking the spectacles and adjusting them on his own nose. "How can I show you now?" asks the red nosed gambler, in a fretful voice, "haven't you got the specs on?" At last matters are arranged to the satisfaction of both, and Fred approaches his friend "Yanks" for the loan of sixpence, to back this horse. But "Yanks" unceremoniously tells his friend to go to hell. At this the gambler sulks all the evening and unfortunately the next day his favoured horse wins. On this transaction the gambler would have been ten shillings in pocket. After this another horse won, which Fred, in his penniless state, professes to have favoured. He would have backed this horse with his ten shillings won from the other race, and would now have been five pounds in pocket. "Yes," says the gambler, pointing to his friend "Yanks"--"that man has done me out of many a golden pound." Poor old "Scotty" Bill was here, a seller of fly papers; who disturbed the kitchen all day, because of the scarcity of flies, as though the lodgers were to blame. "We are having damn strange summers of late years," he said, "different from my younger days; for there is now scarcely a fly to be seen." Here dwelt "Hoppy" the bootblack, who had a rival in business on the opposite corner. He was certainly the dirtiest man I have ever seen going in and out of a house, but he earned good money, and often came home drunk to this lodging house in a cab, causing a great sensation among the poorer lodgers. His rival did less trade, and could afford to do less, a lodger remarked, seeing that his mother kept a flourishing cats' meat shop. When I have passed near these rival bootblacks, I have often wondered how the thousands of people walked daily between them without being singed, not to mention scorched, by their baneful glances, which were fired at each other across the way. Here too had "Irish" Tim come; a very small man with a sarcastic tongue; an out-of-date printer broken on the wheels of new machinery. Did you not want to be subjected to the ridicule of the kitchen it was necessary when expressing an opinion, to look this man straight and sternly in the face, and to speak with the utmost deliberation. He always sat at the same table, and in the same seat, if not already occupied; and his particular table was known as the House of Parliament, owing to the number of arguments conducted there, of which he was the leader. He passed judgment on public men, and although he rarely had a good word for any one, I must say, to Tim's credit, that he never lost an opportunity to stroke the cat. I believe Tim had just a little friendly feeling for simple, eccentric and impulsive Bob; whom he could scorn and contradict without being threatened or bullied in return. Bob was an idealist, a dreamer with a strong imagination; and it was Tim's delight to beat this dreamer to the thorny paths of his daily life, speaking in the name of common sense. Bob was full of the wonders of Nature, marvelled much at the undertakings of men, to make railways to cross mountains and bridges to span canyons; and was deeply interested in the early growth of things, ere they were manufactured into a form that every person could recognise. He was a most brilliant conversationalist, and was interestingly dramatic in his readings. He was a good companion for others, but, as I soon discovered to my disappointment, seldom had a comfortable moment when alone with himself. I had a small bedroom to myself, and unfortunately the near cubicle to mine was Bob's. Bob, who, probably five minutes before, had been in the kitchen laughing, or reading with childish delight of the gorgeous pageantry of a coming play or pantomime, or had been seriously wondering at some new discovery, would scarcely set foot in his own quiet room ere he was clutched by a devil. I have become accustomed to foul language from one man to another, but his bold way of directly addressing his blasphemy to his Maker, stiffened the laughter on my lips, and shocked me, in spite of an indifferent faith. This unusually clever man--a genius, if this world ever had one--disappointed at his circumstances, after an indulgence of his ideal, would sit on his bed and try to throttle himself, night after night; and then would smother his face in his bed clothes, and invariably end his mad fit by sobbing. When he reached this pitiful state, this simple, impulsive and childlike man, I felt like standing to his side, before the outraged face of his Maker, so great was my pity for him. Many others were here, whom I was to become better acquainted with--such as the "Major," "Australian" Bill, "Never Sweet," "Cinders," and "The Snob," who was sent to prison so often through having an over-liking for other people's pockets; and who, when questioned as to his absence, always said he had been to see his youngest brother. All of these were here, with many others of note. For the "Blacksmith" was here, who, every time he saw me preparing to go out, thought I must be on a begging expedition, and he trusted that I would find the ladies kindly disposed. On thanking him for this kind wish, he confided his intention of visiting Deptford, saying that he had given that part of the city a long rest. "Boozy" Bob was here, "Drunken Dave" and "Brummy Tom"; three small men with a large capacity for taking ale. All these men were quiet or at least not objectionable, and none of them could disturb me in my room. The sleep of the house was disturbed more from without than from any cause within. Cats--by day the most docile of God's creatures, every one of them in the night enlisting under the devil's banner--took the place by storm after the human voice had ceased. But perhaps the one who accounted for more than two-thirds of my sleepless nights, was a woman, an outsider living in an adjacent block. It was her custom to come home drunk early in the morning, singing and swearing. "Little Punch," a sickly consumptive, who had lived in this neighbourhood of Southwark all his life, had no difficulty in recognising the voice of Mrs. Kelly. So whenever I enquired as to the origin of a disturbance, the name of Mrs. Kelly was the beginning and the end of it. Mrs. Kelly was not satisfied with a single fight; she occasionally instigated a riot. On the night of that memorable day when Southwark, and in particular the Borough, was visited by royalty, this was the lady that murdered sleep. The police always appeared tolerant with her, and more so on this occasion. As a general rule it is people that live in private houses who have to complain of the presence of a common lodging house, of being disturbed by its low-class inmates; but this lodging house, with beds for nearly two hundred men, was kept as quiet as a large mansion with its one small family and half a score of servants. In its kitchen was a continual din up till twelve o'clock at night; but this did not disturb the sleepers in other parts of the house. Seldom would a loud voice be heard inside; but it was nothing unusual to hear at night the fighting and swearing of men and women, and the screaming of children. This could be expected without fail on Saturday nights and the close of holidays. These horrible and inhuman cries so affected me on one Saturday evening, when, for the sake of the study, I had retired early to bed, that I could neither think, sleep nor lie quiet, and felt compelled to get up and return to the kitchen. This I did, and found thirty or forty men assembled there, most of them more or less drunk, but none of them appeared quarrelsome. Of course it was impossible to sit long here before I was surrounded by them; and sat fearing to breathe deep enough to inhale the fumes of drink which came from both their mouths and clothes; and being in good favour with these hopeless fellows, was continually invited good naturedly to shake hands with them. Instead of going back to my room, I left the place and entered a public house for the first time in three months. "Brummy" Tom was there, with another fish porter of his acquaintance. "Have a drink with me," he said, "I have often thought to ask you, but thought you were a teetotaller and would refuse." "'Brumm,'" I said, rather bitterly, "a teetotaller who lives in a common lodging house is to be heartily despised, for he shows himself to be satisfied with his conditions." With "Brummy" Tom and his friend for companions, I took a number of long sleeping draughts, and just after twelve o'clock that night was fast asleep in bed. The following morning some of the lodgers were telling of murder cries heard just after midnight, but I praised the power of Bacchus that I had not heard them. It was always a mystery to me that these men respected me and never failed in civility in their dealings with me, for I did everything that these men disliked. I wore a white collar, which they at once take to be a challenge that you are their superior. Few other men in the house, except they were fighting men, could have produced a toothbrush without being sneered at. True it induced Brown to ask the question whether I felt any actual benefit from cleaning my teeth; that he had heard so many different opinions that he did not know what or what not to believe; saying that he had often watched me, and wondered at so unusual a custom. They all detested the "Masher," because he was earning more than a pound a week on a good paper stand, and was also in receipt of a good pension; and they all cried shame on him for living in a common lodging house. This man, to my discomfort, showed so much inclination to confide in me, pointing out the different lodgers who owed him money, and calling them low vagabonds and ungrateful scamps, in a voice that was not meant to be a whisper, that I was almost afraid of losing their good will in listening to such words, without saying something on their behalf. Again I was almost a teetotaller, and that was the worst charge of all. In spite of all this, I do not believe that I made one enemy, and am certain that I never received other than kindness and civility from the lodgers of the Farmhouse. CHAPTER XXVI RAIN AND POVERTY The greatest enemy to the man who has to carry on his body all his wardrobe, is rain. As long as the sun shines he is indifferent, but if he is caught in a wet condition after sunset he is to be pitied. He does not fear any ill consequences to health from being wet through, as does his more fortunate brother, but he does not like the uncomfortable sensation of shivering and not being able to keep warm. This unsettled feeling is often made worse by an empty stomach. In fact a full stomach is his one safeguard against the cold, and he cares not then if the rain and the wind penetrate his clothes. No seaman ever searched the heavens for a dark speck, or astronomer for a new light, as does this homeless man for a sign of rain. To escape from the coming deluge he seeks shelter in the public library, which is the only free shelter available; and there he sits for hours staring at one page, not a word of which he has read or, for that matter, intends to read. If he cannot at once get a seat, he stands before a paper and performs that almost impossible feat of standing upright fast asleep, so as to deceive the attendants, and respectable people who are waiting a chance to see that very paper. To be able to do this requires many unsuccessful efforts, which fail on account of hard breathing, nodding and stumbling against the paper stand; but success has at last been attained, and there he stands fast asleep and apparently absorbed in a most interesting paragraph. He attains such perfection in this one act that he has been known to stand like a marble statue before a large sheet of costly plate glass, what time sleep had overpowered him in the act of admiring a baker's art. The homeless man must always remember one thing, that though he may sit on wooden seats and stone parapets, eat in public and go in rags, he must not, on any account, sleep. Working men only are allowed that privilege and those who can afford to remain idle. No policeman would think of indulging in a short nap until he made sure that there was no vagrant sleeping on his beat. And what respectable householder could rest in bed knowing that a tramp was sleeping in his doorway? If necessity is the mother of invention, sleep must certainly be necessary to a human being, or the tramp, according to his many chances of experiments, would be the first to prove the contrary. So much for the very lowest men. But there are others who, in that they have a shelter at night, scorn the name of being called homeless men. These men live in common lodging houses, and are well satisfied with a place to sleep and enough food to keep body and soul together. Most of these men earn their living, such as it is, in the open air, and they earn so little that they are seldom prepared for a rainy day. Therefore, when comes this rainy morn, and the poor fellow rises penniless from his bed, it is then that you see a little seriousness come over him; for he cannot expose his wares to spoil in the rain and, did they not spoil, who would be foolish enough to tarry in bad weather to make an idle purchase? The rain would spoil his paper-toys, his memorandum-books, or his laces and collar studs. In truth, as long as the rain continues his occupation is gone. The paper seller can take his stand regardless of weather, and earn enough for the day thereof, at the expense of a wet skin. Sometimes he is fortunate enough to be stationed near some shelter, but sometimes his stand happens to be outside an aristocratic club or hotel, and he dare not enter its porch, not even if the devil was at his heels. Then there is the "downrighter," the man who makes no pretence to selling, but boldly asks people for the price of his bed and board. On a rainy day he has to make sudden bursts between the heaviest showers and forage the surrounding streets, which, being near a lodging house, are invariably poor and unprofitable, whereas his richest pastures are in the suburbs or better still the outskirts of them. The bad weather is, of course, a blessing to those distant housekeepers, however hard it is on the "downrighter," for it comes as the Sabbath day to their bells and knockers. Then there are the market men who work two or three early hours in the morning, when the majority of people are asleep. These men are returning in their wet clothes between eight and nine o'clock and their day's work is done. Often they have no change of clothing, therefore it is not unusual for two men to be standing at the same fire, the one drying his wet socks and the other toasting his dry bread, with the articles in question almost embracing one another on the most friendly terms. It is on this rainy day that one sees those little kindnesses which are only seen among the very poor: one who has not sufficient for himself assisting some other who has nothing. One man who has made eighteen pence at the market, returns, pays fourpence for his bed, buys food, and then in addition to paying for another man's bed, invites yet another to dine with him and in the end gives his last copper to another. One, who happens to have done well the previous day, gives here and there until he is himself penniless. The consequence of all this is that whereas you saw in the morning dull and anxious faces, at midday you see more than half of the lodgers cooking, their beds already paid for. All worry is at an end, and they are whistling, humming songs, or chaffing one another. It is on this rainy day when they are made prisoners without spare money to pay into the beer house, that they mend and wash their clothes, repair their boots, and have abundant time to cook vegetables. It is a day for Irish stews and savoury broths. It was on one of these days, when the kitchen was so crowded, that I unfortunately attempted to make pancakes. I knew that such an unusual experiment could not fail to cause a sensation which I did not desire, so I placed myself in a dark corner and quietly and without being observed, made the flour into paste, exactly as I had seen another lodger do some time previous. The flour had been in my possession ever since that occasion, but my courage had up to the present failed. Three or four men were now at the stove, and a number of others were idly walking up and down. I had made half a basin of paste, and this was to make one big thick fat pancake. But how was I to get it into the frying pan without attracting notice? I covered the basin with a saucer, placed the frying pan on the stove, with butter therein, and waited my chance. I had taken the precaution of having in readiness a large plate. At last my chance came, for two cooks were having high words as to whether cabbage should be put into cold or boiling water. Others joined in this argument, so without receiving notice, I dropped the paste into the frying pan and quickly covered it with a large plate. So far, so good: my only difficulty now would be to turn it; for after it was cooked I could carry the pan and its covered contents to the dark corner where I intended to dine; and where, although men might see me eat, none would be the wiser as to what I was eating. Five minutes had passed and no doubt its one side was cooked. The argument was still in full swing, for each man stoutly maintained his opinions, and almost every man who took part cited his mother or sister as an authority, except one, who proudly mentioned a French chef in an Australian gold diggings. Now was my chance. I cast one furtive glance around, rose the hot plate with a stocking, which I had been washing, made one quick turn of the wrist, spun the pancake in the air, caught it neatly and promptly, clapped the plate over it--the whole process done, I believe, in less than ten seconds. The difficulty was now over and I breathed relief. I went to my dining corner and sat down, intending to fetch the pancake in five minutes time. Three minutes perhaps I had been seated when I heard a loud voice cry--"Whose pancake is this burning on the stove?" How I did detest that man: he was always shouting through the kitchen--"Whose stew is this boiling over?" or "Whose tea is stewing on the fire?" The man always seemed to be poking his nose into other people's business. I did not think it worth while drawing every one's attention by answering him, but made my way as quietly as possible towards the stove. Alas! the idiot, not thinking that I was the owner of the pancake, and was then on my way to attend to it, shouted the second time, louder, and it seemed to me, too impatiently--"Whose pancake is this?" If I was vexed when I heard that second enquiry, imagine how I felt when every lodger in the kitchen, not seeing or hearing from the pancake's lawful claimant, began to shout in angry voices, "Whose pancake is that burning on the fire?" My own patience was now exhausted. "The pancake is mine," I said, "and what about it? What is all this fuss about? It is the first pancake I have ever attempted to make and by heavens! if it is to cause such a stir as this, it will be the last." But while I was making this speech another voice, which froze the blood in my veins cried angrily--"Whose pancake is this?" It was a woman's voice, it was the Mrs. of the house; and I now knew that something more serious was happening than the burning of a pancake--I was burning her frying pan. If I dallied in respect to my pancakes, I must certainly not make further delay in saving the frying pan. To her I at once apologised, but I gave that meddler a look that for ever again kept him silent as to what belonged to me. Such are the doings in a lodging house, vexatious enough at the time, but amusing to recall. CHAPTER XXVII FALSE HOPES The Farmhouse was under the management of an Irishman and his wife. He with a generous heart that always kept him poor, for he often assisted lodgers towards paying for their beds, who, I am sorry to say, were sometimes ungrateful in return. She, more circumspect, but kind hearted and motherly where she thought the case to be a deserving one. With regards to literary ambition I always kept my own counsel, confiding in one man only--"Cronje"; a man to be relied on, whose sympathetic ears were always open to receive either good or bad news. I must have been in this house something like twelve months, when I took a sudden notion to send some work to a literary man, asking him for his opinion of the same. In a few days I received a letter stating that want of time prevented him from passing judgment on my work, which he regretted he would have to return unread. This did not offend me in the least, although I was greatly disappointed, for I knew that a man in his position could have little time to spare, and no doubt was pestered with correspondence of a like nature. But, unfortunately, the MS. returned in an ill condition, having been roughly handled through the post, and arrived at the Farmhouse with the ends of the envelope in tatters. When I received this ragged and disreputable parcel from the Manager, I knew that the cat was out of the bag, and that the secret which I had guarded so jealously was now the property of another, but I made no confession, thinking that he would broach the subject, which he did on the following morning. On enquiring if the parcel I had received on the day previous was a manuscript, I lost no time in telling him everything. The upshot of this was that he persuaded me to send some work to a publisher, and if that gentleman thought the book worth publication, he, the Manager, had no doubt that one of the many rich people who were connected with the Farmhouse Mission could be induced to assist me. Hearing this I was sorry that I had not confided in him of my own accord, for I had often seen these rich people coming and going, looking, perhaps for deserving cases. With these golden projects before me, I again set to work, and, in less than a month, the MS. was ready and in the hands of a publisher. That gentleman wrote in a few days saying that he thought there was literary merit, and that the cost of production would be thirty pounds. The publisher's name was well known, and the Manager was quite satisfied as to its being a genuine offer from an old and respectable firm. Quite contented in my own mind, my part having been performed without difficulty, I gladly allowed this man to take possession of this correspondence, and a few specimen books of verse, which the publisher had sent with it, and, having full trust in the man's goodness and influence, made myself comfortable, and settled down in a fool's paradise. I have never had cause to doubt his goodness, but he certainly overrated his power to influence the philanthropists on the behalf of a lodger. Several weeks passed, and I had received no encouraging news. No mention had been made of my affairs, and I gave myself over to the influence of the coke fire. After going out in the morning for two or three hours, I would return at midday, often earlier, and sit hopelessly before this fire for ten or eleven hours, after which I would retire to my room. What a miserable time was this: the kitchen, foul with the breath of fifty or sixty men, and the fumes of the coke fire, took all the energy out of a man, and it was a hard fight to keep awake. It has taken the play out of the kitten, and this small animal lies stretched out, overcome by its fumes, without the least fear of being trodden on. Sometimes, when I endeavoured to concentrate my mind, with an idea of writing something, it was necessary to feign a sleep, so that these kind hearted fellows might not disturb me with their civilities. On these occasions it was not unusual for me to fall into a real sleep. And, when I awoke, it sickened me to think of this wasted time; for I was spending in bed more hours than were necessary for my health, and it was a most cruel waste of time to be sleeping in the day. This fire exerted a strange influence over us. In the morning we were loath to leave it, and we all returned to it as soon as possible. Even the books and magazines in the libraries could not seduce me longer than an hour. There was one seat at the corner of a table, which I have heard called "the dead man's seat." It was within two yards of this great fire, which was never allowed to suffer from want of coke. It was impossible to retain this seat long and keep awake. Of course, a man could hardly expect to keep this seat day after day for a long winter, and to be alive in the spring of the year. This was the case with a printer who, unfortunately, had only three days' work a week. The amount he earned was sufficient for his wants, so, in his four idle days, he would sit on this seat, eating, reading, but more often sleeping, until before the end of the winter, he was carried away a dying man. Some of these lodgers claim to be able to recognise in the public streets any strangers who are suffering from this coke fever. Weeks passed and then months, and I still heard nothing about my book. The Manager had failed, of that I at last became certain. I avoided him as much as possible, because of the confidence I had reposed in him. It was certainly very awkward for the both of us, and I felt much sympathy on his account. When he was near I felt extremely uncomfortable, and I am sure he felt none too easy in my presence. Spring at last came, and I broke away from the lodging house fire, to indulge in the more pure rays of the sun. I began to absent myself from the house longer every day, until I at last began to regret that there was any necessity to return to it at all. The happiness and stir of Nature, at this time of the year, began to fill me with her own energy. I was in my room, one of these bright mornings, and was looking in the mirror, adjusting my scarf--the mirror and bed being the whole furniture. In this mirror I looked long enough to see a white hair on the side of my head. Thinking this to be hardly true at my time of life, I shifted the glass to a better light, thinking it must have played me false; but sure enough, here it was--a single hair, as white as snow. Yes, I thought, with some bitterness, this comes of waiting to be fulfilled the promises of other people; and you will never rise if you do not make some effort of your own. Thinking of this white hair, I left the house, wondering what I could do to help myself. And, this particular morning, an idea occurred to me, so simple, so reasonable, and so easily to be accomplished, that it filled me with surprise that such a plan had not presented itself before. I had an income of eight shillings per week; then what was to prevent me from borrowing forty or fifty pounds, even though I paid for it a little more than usual interest? Again I was full of hope and happiness, for I could see nothing to prevent the accomplishment of this. My eight shillings were being received in sums of two pounds every five weeks. Two shillings a week were forwarded home, and I lived abstemiously on the remainder. My five weeks' money was due on the following week, so I at once began making preparations for a trip home. When this money arrived I determined to lose no time in executing these plans, for I had visions of being a white headed man, if I remained under these hopeless conditions for another year or two. The money came on Saturday night, when it was due, and everything being prepared, I was that very night on my way to Paddington Station, after having told the manager that I was going home for a week, and that I would forward him my rent, if I remained longer than that time. Full of this idea I arrived at home. The following Monday I invaded the office of my old granny's lawyer, and telling him I wished to set up in business, consulted him as to the best way of borrowing the money, some forty or fifty pounds being necessary. He saw nothing to prevent this from being done, but strongly advised me not to do so; "at any rate," he said, "see your trustee, ask him if he can lend you the amount, and, if he cannot see his way clear to do so, let me know!" In half an hour I was with the trustee. That gentleman had not the amount on hand, but had plans of his own which, if I strictly adhered to, would be more to my advantage in the long run. "It is now June," he said, "and if you allow your income to stand until the beginning of the New Year, you will then have ten pounds saved to your account, and I give you my promise to advance another twenty pounds without a question of interest, making the amount thirty pounds!" Now it happened that three weeks before I left London, I had sent a work to a printer and publisher, who had priced two hundred and fifty copies at nineteen pounds; so that I knew well that thirty pounds would be ample to meet all expenses. But how was I to live for the next six months? Determined to make any sacrifice to attain this end, I closed with the trustee's offer, and, getting an advance from him of one pound, intended to return at once to London, but was persuaded to remain at home for another three weeks. At the end of this time I paid my fare back to London, and again took possession of my room, for which I had forwarded the rent during my absence. In less than four days after my return, I was very near penniless, and saw no other prospect than to start on another half year's wandering. How foolish all this was! Why did I not start my travels from home, instead of wasting money on a return fare to London? Why did I pay three weeks' rent for the sake of returning to a room for as many days? Well, I had a faint hope that the Manager might, at last, after six months, have succeeded in his attempt. I told the Manager that I was going on the road for a month or two, but mentioned no purpose, for I was now resolved to act for myself. "You will always find room at the Farmhouse," he said; "do not doubt that." Trying to appear as cheerful as possible, for I knew this man was also disappointed, I left him, determined never to set foot in that house again until I could dispense with the services of others. At this time I had two silver shillings and some odd coppers, and would soon need assistance as a man, without any question as to my work as an author. Again I was leaving London, not knowing how much I would have to suffer. One idea consoled me not a little; that I would not require money for a bed for at least three months to come; that the nights, though cold, would not be so dangerous as to kill. Whatever the consequence might be, even if this rough life threatened to injure my health permanently, I was firmly resolved to sacrifice the next six months for whatever might follow them. CHAPTER XXVIII ON TRAMP AGAIN NOW followed a strange experience, an experience for which there is no name; for I managed to exist, and yet had neither the courage to beg or sell. Certainly at times I was desperately inclined to steal; but chance left nothing for my eyes to covet, and I passed harmlessly on. When I suffered most from lack of rest, or bodily sustenance--as my actual experience became darker, the thoughts of the future became brighter, as the stars shine to correspond with the night's shade. I travelled alone, in spite of the civilities of other tramps, who desired company, so as to allow no strange voice to disturb my dreams. Some of these men had an idea that I was mad, because I could give them little information as to the towns and villages through which I had that very day passed. They enquired as to the comforts and conditions of a town's workhouse, of which I knew nothing, for I had not entered it. They enquired as to its best lodging house, of which I was again ignorant, having slept in the open air. They enquired how far I had come that day, which I could not immediately tell them; and they were curious to know how far I was going, which I did not know. The strangest part of this experience was that I received help from people without having made a glance of appeal, and without having opened my mouth. When I asked for water, tea or milk was often brought, and food invariably followed. I began to look on this as a short life of sacrifice, killing a few worthless hours so as to enjoy thousands of better ones; and I blessed every morning that ushered in a new day, and worshipped every Sabbath night that closed another week. After tramping from town to town, from shire to shire, in two months I was in Devonshire, on my way to Plymouth. I felt continually attracted to these large centres of commerce, owing, I suppose, to feeling the necessity of having an object in view; but was generally starved out of them in a very short time. A gentleman on horseback, whom I met near Totnes, saved me from suffering from want, for a couple of days, at least, when I would reach Plymouth. This gentleman drew his horse to a halt, so that he might enquire my destination. He seemed to be much surprised when I told him it was the town of Plymouth. "Ah, well," he said, glancing towards the ground, "there is only one foot to get sore, if that is any consolation to you; perhaps this will help you a little on the way," dropping into my hand three silver shillings. Without having this case in mind, I certainly fared better in Devonshire than in other counties, and found its people more like the prosperous settlers in new lands. In spite of this, my roughest experience was in this county, owing to the inclemency of the weather, and the difficulty of finding shelter. One night I had gone into the fields, and, getting together a dozen or more wheatsheaves, proceeded to build a house of them, making a dry floor on the damp earth, with walls to shelter from the wind, and a roof to shelter from the dew, leaving just space enough at one end to admit my body. I had been in here comfortable and warm for some time, when it began to rain. In half an hour the rain leaked in large drops through the roof, and in less than an hour these drops had become streams. There was nothing to do but to remain, for it was now too dark to seek shelter. For ten hours it rained incessantly, and I was literally wet to the skin, and no drier than a person immersed in water--not wet to the skin as people commonly express it when they are damp after a few showers. I was nothing daunted, looking on this as one of the many hard experiences that I was compelled to undergo. The next morning I chose a secluded spot in the open air, so as to lie down where the sun, coming out warm and strong, would dry me while I slept. Two or three times have I suffered in this way, but have never felt any ill effects after. My worst experience of this kind was in the adjoining county of Somerset, at the end of September, when I was again making my way back to London. But it was not the blowing of the wind, or the patter of the rain; not the rustle of the leaves on the swaying branches; not the discomforts of having wet clothes, and being without sign of a barn or empty house in which to shelter; it was none of these that took the courage out of me: it was a wild laugh, harsh, and apparently in savage mockery. I had skirted what appeared to be a park, for something like two miles, and was weary to see the end of it. This at last seemed to come, for I could see through the trees a large open field wherein were wheatsheaves, stacked in their threes, and in their usual rows. Now, had this been a field right up to the roadside, I would most certainly have had no compunction in spending the night there, being tired of carrying such a distance my wet and heavy clothes. As it was, I paused, not feeling inclined to proceed further on my journey, and yet not half liking to cross that narrow strip of park, thinking it might contain game that would be well looked after, making trespassing a serious offence. When in this irresolute state of mind, I caught sight of a white gate, and a small footpath leading to the field. Night seemed to be coming on at the rate of a darker shade to the minute, and I knew well that in another quarter of an hour it would be difficult to distinguish a house from a barn. Seeing this, I summoned courage, opened the gate, and made my way quickly along the path that led to the wheatsheaves. Standing amidst these I waited silently, listening for any that might be in that locality. Satisfied that there were not, I picked up a sheaf, and was about to lay it flat, when I heard a loud startling laugh, coming from the direction of the road. Dropping the sheaf at once, I bent low, not for a moment doubting but what some one had seen me from the road, and was taking a heartless delight in letting me know his discovery. Although I regretted this, thinking he would inform others, and I would surely be disturbed before morning, perhaps that very hour--I determined to travel no further that night, if I could help it, and proceeded to make my bed, under the impression that he had passed on. I stood up in full, but had scarcely done so, when my appearance was greeted by several long shouts of derisive laughter. Now, a homeless man has no time to be superstitious, he fears the living and not the dead. If he is sleepy he is not particular about feeling in the darkness of cellars or vaults; and, if he were sleeping on a grave, and was awakened by a voice crying--"Arise from off this grave," he would at once think it the voice of a grave digger, or the keeper of the cemetery, rather than the ghostly owner of the same. Therefore, I had not the least idea but what this was the voice of a human being, although it sounded uncanny and strange. I moved again, and again heard that loud peal of laughter. This voice evidently only mocked when I moved, for when I stood still, not a sound was to be heard. This time I gave up all thoughts of making a bed, and being now filled with fear, picked up the thick stick with which I travelled, and stood on the defensive, every moment expecting to see a madman burst from under the trees and in three leaps and a bound be at my side. These movements seemed to cause some merriment, but the laughter again ceased when I stood watching and waiting, and puzzled how to act. Rest was now out of the question, and I made up my mind to leave that accursed place instantly. With this intention I made my way towards the gate. I had scarcely moved in that direction, when the laughing began, this time continuing for a long time, as though jeering its last at my defeat. When I reached the gate, and passed through to the open road, my courage returned, and I looked with some bitterness to see the figure of some country lout hurrying into the darkness, after succeeding in robbing me of my sleep; but, to my surprise, I heard no one, and could see no figure on the road before or behind. It was now that superstition took hold of me, and I got off with all possible speed, often looking back to see if I was pursued; and I did not stop until a human settlement lay between me and that accursed park. Often have I thought of that night. It is natural to suppose that a thoughtless ploughman, or farm labourer, would have stood at the roadside and laughed or shouted once or twice, and then passed on, but it is scarcely probable that he would have remained there to carry his joke so far. Granted that he had had the courage to laugh so many times, taunting one at a distance, where was his courage now that he had run away, or still stood concealed behind the trees? The voice sounded human, but still seemed wild and a little unnatural. After much consideration the only conclusion I could put to the affair was that the voice came from a bird in the trees; an escaped pet bird that could imitate the human voice. This solution of the mystery did not altogether satisfy me, for I have never had cause to believe that any bird could so perfectly imitate the human voice. Superstition must have thoroughly possessed me for the once in my life, or I should not have walked all night, after the painful exertion of the day. If I settled towards night time in any place where a bird came hopping restlessly from branch to branch, making a series of short cries of fear, to let me know that I was lying too close to its nest, I would without hesitation shift my position, often to my own discomfort; but at the same time, people could pass to and fro to my indifference. I would never beg, unless forced to the last extremity, for I feared the strange fascination that arises from success, after a man has once lost his shame. On one occasion I saw a well dressed couple wheeling their bicycles up an incline, which was too steep to ride. Evidently they were lovers, for they seemed to be in no hurry to reach the top of the hill and end their conversation by riding. As I drew near the lady produced her purse, and, placing something in her companion's hand, motioned over her shoulder in my direction. On which the gentleman nodded, and immediately glanced back towards me. Now, these people could not very well make the first overtures, for the simple reason that they know not whether a man is in want, or is a poor, but proud and respectable inhabitant of one of the adjacent villages. I preferred to impress them with the latter opinion, for, when I reached them, I put on an extra spurt, and was soon beyond their hearing. No, I would never make a good beggar, for here was money in readiness, to come at the sound of my voice, or to be drawn by the simple side glance of my eye. When I was some distance away, I looked back, and saw the lady looking rather disappointed, receiving back her coin. Her companion was laughing, no doubt consoling her by saying that I was hardly likely to be in actual need, or I would have asked for assistance, and probably my home was somewhere near. The truth of the matter was that at this time I had not a copper to bless myself with. Days, weeks, and months went on, and it was now the month of October. It was now that I began to find the necessity of having a bed every night, having been satisfied up till then with a bed once or perhaps twice a week, according to the coppers received. I was back again in Swindon, having been there some time previous, when on my way to Devonshire. The first three months of sacrifice were over, and I was very little the worse for it; but the next three months required different means, to correspond with the difference in the time of year. Shelter was necessary every night, and to meet these stern demands, I needed something to sell, so as to be sure of coppers for this purpose. With this idea, I bought two dozen laces with the last three coppers I had, and re-opened business as a hawker. The success with which I met in this town astonished me, owing, I believe, to its being a working man's town, and not filled with half-pay officers and would-be aristocrats that cannot afford, but still feel it their duty, to live in fine villas in the locality of a royal residence. The poor, sympathetic people seemed to understand a man's wants. Business was often transacted without the utterance of words. Taking a pair of laces, they would give a copper, and, smiling their sympathy, close the door. Often one would pay for these useless things and not take them. The kindness of these people so filled me with gratitude, that I found it impossible to continue selling after I had received enough to supply the day's wants, which would often be in less than half an hour. I remained here for two weeks, being able to allow myself half an ounce of tobacco and a halfpenny paper every day. The only thing that worried me in this town was the persistence of an old beggar in the lodging house. Night after night, this man would advise me to go out and stand pad. This was, he explained, that a man, who is afflicted with the loss of an arm, a hand or a leg, blind, paralysed or lame, should stand or sit in a public place in the town, holding in his hand matches, laces or any other cheap trifle, so that he might invite the charity of passers by. This old man could not understand why this was not done, seeing that it required no eloquence--the very act and the affliction speaking for themselves--and was so successful a dodge that even able-bodied men could often pick up a shilling or two in this way. At last I became so impressed with this old man's eloquence, that I left the lodging house three times in one night with a firm resolution to stand pad, and three times I returned without having done so. On the last occasion I did make a little attempt, but foolishly took up a position where no one could see me. Before I left Swindon I wrote to a friend of mine in Canada, requesting him to forward me a pound to London, as soon as possible, which would be returned to him at the beginning of the new year. I did this so that I might have a couple of weeks at the end of December to prepare my MS. and to be ready for business as soon as that time arrived. It was now the latter end of October, and this pound could not reach London far short of a month. Thinking I was not likely again to suffer for want of a bed or food, after this success in Swindon, I bought a good stock of laces and left that town, with the intention of working the towns on the outskirts of London, so that when ready to enter I would be within a day's march. Unfortunately, after leaving Swindon, success deserted me, which was certainly more my fault than that of the people, for I made very little appeal to them. Arriving at Maidenhead, I had the bare price of my bed, with a dry bread supper and breakfast. My laces were being exhausted, and I was without means to replenish them. From town to town I walked around London, sometimes making sixpence, and always less than a shilling a day; and this small amount had to purchase bed, food, and occasionally a couple of dozen laces. The monotony of this existence was broken a little at Guildford, where I was arrested on suspicion of crime. A plain clothes officer happened to be in the office of the lodging house, who, when he set eyes upon me, requested a few moments conversation, at the same time leading the way out into the yard. He then came to a halt under a lamp, and, taking from his pocket some papers, began to read, often raising his eyes to scrutinise my person. "Yes," he said, at last, "no doubt you are the man I want, for you answer his description." "I suppose," was my answer, "it is a case of arrest?" "It is," he said, "and you must accompany me to the station." On my way to that place he asked many a question of what I had done with my overcoat, and as to the whereabouts of my wife. It had been several years since I had owned the former, and the latter I had never possessed; but this man could not be convinced of either. "Which way have you come?" he asked. To which I mentioned one or two shires. At this he pricked up his ears, and asked if I had been in a certain town in one of those shires, which I had, and saw no reason to say otherwise. Unfortunately this was the town where the guilty man had operated. The detective was certainly not very smart when he took this confession as evidence of guilt, for the guilty man would have mentioned that particular town as one of the last places to visit. I certainly answered to the description of the man wanted, with the exception of not having a blotchy face, which had been characteristic of the guilty man. But on my face they saw no blotches, nor signs of any having been there in the past. Of course, I was discharged in an hour, and returned to the lodging house for the night. The following day I happened to be in Dorking, and was walking through that town, when I heard quick steps behind me, and a voice cry--"Halt: I want you." Turning my head I saw it was a police officer. This man at once took possession of me, saying that he fortunately had been looking through the police station window, when he saw me passing, and that I answered to the description of a man wanted--"for that affair at Cheltenham," I added. "Ha," he said, his face lighting with pleasure, "how well you know." We returned quietly to the police station, and when I confronted his superior officer, I asked that person if I was to be arrested in every town through which I passed; telling my experience the night before at Guildford. After one or two questions, and a careful reading of the description paper, also an examination of my pedlar's certificate, he told me I was at liberty to go my way, at the same time saying that no man with any sense would have arrested me. After this I was not again troubled by police officers, owing perhaps, to their having arrested the guilty man. CHAPTER XXIX A DAY'S COMPANION I had many a strange experience in those days, especially one with an old man, who must have been between seventy and eighty years of age. He accosted me through the hedges and, looking in that direction, I saw him in the act of filling a quart can with blackberries, aided by a thick long stick with a crooked end. "Wait a moment," said he, "for I also am going Bedford way." I was nothing loth to wait, for I was a stranger in that part of the country, and required information as to which was the best cheap lodging house for the night. I knew that in a town of the size of Bedford there must be more than one common lodging house, and one must be better than another, if only in the extra smile of a landlady, regardless of clean blankets or cooking accommodation. For this reason I waited, and, in less than three minutes, the old man joined me. His answer to my first question was disappointing, for it seemed that the number of lodging houses which Bedford could boast were all public houses, and there was not one private house that catered for beggars. This was a real disappointment, for I knew that whosoever made tea at such a place, did so under the ill favoured glance of a landlady or landlord, perhaps both, who sold beer ready made. In fact the facilities for making tea, cooking, or even washing one's shirt, were extremely limited at such a place, which made it very undesirable for a poor beggar like myself, who had great difficulty in begging sufficient for his bed and board, and did not wish to be reminded of beer. "Surely," I said, "there must be in a town the size of Bedford one private lodging house, at least, to accommodate tramps." "Well," said he, "as a tramp I have been going in and out of that town for over thirty years, and I never heard of such a place. You can make enquiries, and I should like to know different," he continued, rather sarcastically that I had doubted his knowledge. "The two best houses are the 'Boot' and the 'Cock,' but seeing that the former takes in women, the latter I think would be the best for us. Are you going to do business on the road?" he enquired. "Not to-day," I answered him, "for I have enough for my bed, and an extra few coppers for food." "All right," said he, "we will travel together, and if I do a little business on the way it won't interfere with you, and we have plenty of time to reach the lodging house before dark." Having no objection to this proposal we jogged pleasantly along. We were now descending a steep incline and my companion, seeing a man coming in the opposite direction, walking beside a bicycle, lost no time in confronting that gentleman and pushing the blackberries under his nose. "No," said the man, gruffly, "do you think I am going to carry those things? but here's a copper for you." Well, thought I, this man will never sell his berries if he does not show more discretion and offer them to more likely customers. Just after this we met a lady and gentleman, both well dressed and apparently well to do. Touching his cap to these people my companion soon had his blackberries within a few inches of their eyes, at the same time using all his persuasive powers to induce them to make a purchase. In this he failed, as was to be expected, but continued to walk step by step with them for several yards, until the gentleman hastily put his hand in his pocket and gave the old fellow sixpence, the smallest change that he had. Several others were stopped after this, and although my fellow traveller failed to sell his perishable goods, a number of people assisted him with coppers. In one instance I thought he surely could not be of sound mind, for he had seen a party of ladies and gentlemen seating themselves in a motor car, and was hurrying with all speed in that direction. In this case he failed at getting a hearing, for before he was half way towards them, the party had seated themselves and the car was moving rapidly away. My companion's lips trembled with vexation at seeing this. "Wait a moment," said he, crossing the road to a baker's shop--"I am going to exchange these berries for buns." Waiting outside I was soon joined again by this strange old fellow who then carried in his left hand four buns, his right hand still being in possession of the blackberries. "You will never sell them," I said, "if you do not offer them at more likely places. See, there is a shop with fruit and vegetables: try there." "Why," he answered with a grin, "how do you think I could make a living if I sold them? The market value of these berries is about one farthing, and it takes sixteen farthings to pay for my feather (bed) not reckoning scrand (food), and a glass or two of skimish (drink). In fact," said he, "my day's work is done, and I am quite satisfied with the result." Saying which he tumbled the blackberries into the gutter and placed the can--which he used for making tea--into a large self-made inside pocket. On getting a better view of them, I remarked that no person could buy such berries, for they were about the worst assortment I had ever seen in my life. "It would not pay to make them very enticing," said he, "or they would find a too ready sale." "But what do you do when the season is over?" I asked, "for you cannot pick blackberries all the year round." "Oh," he answered, "I have other ways of making a living. If I can get a good audience in a public house, I can often make a day's living in a quarter of an hour, with several drinks in the bargain." "What, by singing or dancing?" I asked. "No," said he, "but by reciting. Listen to this." With that he began to recite a long poem, line after line, until I began to hope his memory would fail him. What a memory it was! Hundreds of lines without a break. When he came to the most dramatic parts he paused for action, and I knew that he was heedless of the approach of night, and had forgotten that Bedford was still afar off. There was now no stopping of him; poem after poem he recited, and he introduced his subjects with little speeches that were so different from his ordinary conversation, that it was apparent that he had committed them also to memory for the benefit of a fit audience. If he was so zealous after a weary day's walk, and without stimulants, what would he be under the influence of several glasses of strong ale? I shuddered to think of it. We were now about a mile from Bedford, and my companion had for the last hour been reciting; as for myself I was travelling alone, for I had forgotten him. Sometimes to my confusion he would startle me by a sudden question, but seeing that he made no pause for an answer, I soon understood that no answer was required of me, for that he was still reciting. As we entered the outskirts of Bedford, my companion found it necessary, owing to increase of traffic, to raise his voice, which he continued to do until at last the traffic became so very great that he could not make himself heard. I had not heard his voice for the last five minutes, when he suddenly clutched my shoulder and demanded what I thought of that. "You have a wonderful memory," I said. "Oh," said he, "that is nothing; I could entertain you for several days in like manner, with fresh matter each day. Here we are at the 'Cock.' I like your company and, if you are travelling my way to-morrow, let us go together. It is not every man that I would travel with two days in succession." And, thought I, it is not every man would travel in your company two days in succession. "Which way are you going?" I asked him. "Towards Northampton," said he. "Alas," I answered, "my direction is altogether different." We now entered the "Cock," and after calling for two glasses of ale, enquired as to accommodation for travellers, which we were informed was good, there being plenty of room. Sometimes, if ale is not called for, they are disinclined to letting beds, especially in the winter, when they find so little difficulty in filling the house. On entering the kitchen we found it occupied by a number of men, some of whom recognised my fellow traveller, and spoke to him. But, strange to say, although this man had proved so garrulous with one for a companion, with the many he had very little to say, and sat in a corner all through the evening smoking in silence, and paying no heed to others either by tongue, eye, or ear. Once or twice I saw his lips move, when filling his pipe, or knocking out its ashes, and I thought that he was perhaps rehearsing and training his memory for the following day, in case he would be again fortunate in picking up with an easy fool like myself. For, no doubt, the poor old fellow had been often commanded to desist from reciting, and ordered to hell by impatient and unsympathetic men whom he had at first mistaken for quiet and good natured companions. I had not by a look or a word sought to offend him, but one day of his company was certainly enough. CHAPTER XXX THE FORTUNE It is not unusual to read of cases where men who have descended to the lowest forms of labour--aye, even become tramps--being sought and found as heirs to fortunes, left often by people who either had no power to will otherwise, or whom death had taken unawares. Therefore, when one fine morning a cab drove up to a beer-house, which was also a tramps' lodging house, and a well dressed gentleman entered and enquired of the landlord for a man named James Macquire--the landlord at once pronounced him to be a solicitor in quest of a lost heir. "Sir," said he, "we do not take the names of our lodgers, but several are now in the kitchen. James Macquire, you said?" On receiving answer in the affirmative the landlord at once visited the lodgers' kitchen, and standing at the door enquired in a very respectable manner if there was any gentleman present by the name of Macquire, whose christian name was James. At which a delicate looking man, who had arrived the previous night, sprang quickly to his feet and said in a surprised voice--"That is my name." "Well," said the landlord, "a gentleman wishes to see you at once; he came here in a cab, and, for your sake, I trust my surmises are right." With the exception of having on a good clean white shirt, the man Macquire was ill clad, and he looked ruefully at his clothes, and then at the landlord. "Please ask the gentleman to wait," said he, and, going to the tap, began to wash his hands and face, after which he carefully combed his hair. The strange gentleman was seated quietly in the bar when the man Macquire presented himself, and the landlord was engaged in washing glasses and dusting decanters. "Mr. James Macquire?" asked the gentleman, rising and addressing the ill-clad one in a respectful manner, which the landlord could not help but notice. "That is my name," answered Macquire, with some dignity. "Do you know anything of Mr. Frederick Macquire, of Doggery Hall?" asked the gentleman. "I do," said the ill-clad one; and, after a long pause, and seeming to give the information with much reluctance, he added--"Mr. Frederick Macquire, of Doggery Hall, is my uncle." Several other questions were asked and answered. "That will do, thank you," said the gentleman; "will you please call at the 'King's Head' and see me at seven P. M.? You have been advertised for since the death of Mr. Frederick Macquire, some weeks ago. Good morning," he said, shaking James Macquire by the hand in a highly respectful manner, as the landlord could not fail to see, totally regardless of the man's rags. The ill-clad one stood at the bar speechless, apparently absorbed in deep thought. "What will you have to drink?" asked the landlord kindly. "Whisky," answered Macquire, in a faint voice. After drinking this, and another, he seemed to recover his composure, and said to the landlord--"I am at present, as you must know, penniless, and you would greatly oblige me by the loan of a few shillings, say half a sovereign until I draw a couple of hundred pounds in advance. Whatever I receive from you, you shall have a receipt, and, although nothing is said about interest, the amount owing will be doubled, aye trebled, you may rest assured of that, for I never forget a kindness." "You had better take a sovereign," said the landlord, "and, of course, the Mrs. will supply any meals you may need, and drink is at your disposal." "Thank you," said Macquire, in a choking voice--"let me have a couple of pots of your best ale for the poor fellows in the kitchen." What a surprise for the poor lodgers when they were asked to drink Macquire's health! On being told of his good fortune, they one and all cheered and congratulated him. But the easy way in which this man Macquire threw his weight about the kitchen and, for that matter, the whole house was extraordinary. Now it happened that there were at this house two stonemasons who, although heavy drinkers, had been working steady for a week or more, for their job was drawing to a close, and they knew not how many idle weeks might follow. These men were at breakfast and, being repeatedly offered drink, grew careless and resolved to quit work there and then and draw their money, which amounted to three pounds ten shillings between them. Macquire favoured this resolution and, said he, "Before your money is spent, I shall have a couple of hundred pounds at my disposal." The landlord was present at the passing of this resolution and, though he said nothing, apparently favoured it, for he laughed pleasantly. In less than half an hour Macquire and the two stonemasons were back in the lodging house kitchen, and drinking ale as fast as they possibly could. In a number of cases the former received money from his new friends to buy the beer, but, according to after developments he must have pocketed this money and had the beer entered to his account, in addition to that which he fetched of his own accord. However, when evening came Macquire, though seemingly possessed of business faculties, was not in a bodily condition to keep his lawyer's appointment. As he himself confessed--"he was drunk in the legs, but sober in the brain." What an evening we had! Not one man in the house retired sober, and the kindness of the ill-clad one brought tears into a number of eyes, for he made the stonemasons spend their money freely, and he made the landlord fetch pot after pot, and all he did in the way of payment was to utter that name, grown strangely powerful--James Macquire. Now when the next morning came there seemed to be a suspicion that all was not right. For, as soon as James Macquire put in an appearance, one of the stonemasons abruptly asked when he intended to see the lawyer. At this moment the landlord entered, and, though he had not heard the question, he too, would like to know when Macquire intended seeing his lawyer. "Don't bother me," said Macquire, "you see what a state I am in, trembling after drink?" "I'll soon put you right," said the landlord, leaving the kitchen, and entering the bar. The stonemasons offered their future benefactor a drink of beer, which he waved aside, saying that he must first have a short drink to steady his stomach. "You don't mind giving me a saucerful of your tea?" said Macquire to me, for I was then at breakfast. "With pleasure," said I, and, filling the saucer pushed it towards him. "Thank you," said he, after drinking it--"that saucer of tea has cost me a sovereign!" "Nonsense," said I, inwardly pleased, "it is of no value whatever." "Have you any tobacco?" he asked. At this question one of the stonemasons, in fear that Macquire would promise me more money, sprang forward with tobacco. "I am not asking you for tobacco," said Macquire slowly--"but am asking this gentleman." This was said in such a way as could not give offence; as much as to say that he already knew that the stonemason's heart was good, but that he felt disposed to test mine and, if he found it generous, he would not forget me when he came into his estate. Not setting great value on a pipeful of tobacco, I offered him my pouch to help himself. After he had filled his pipe, he said, in an abrupt manner, as he was walking towards the bar--"Please remember, friend, I am five pounds in your debt." "What a fine fellow he is," said the stonemason to me; "for the few kindnesses we did him yesterday, he has promised me and my pal twenty pounds each out of his first advance, and larger sums to follow." At this moment the postman entered with a letter addressed to James Macquire, Esq. If the landlord, or any one else, had the least suspicion earlier in the morning, it certainly vanished at the sight of this letter. Macquire opened the letter and, after reading it, passed it to the landlord. That gentleman's face beamed with satisfaction, although it was but an ordinary note saying that the lawyer had expected Macquire the night previous, and trusted that he would keep the appointment at the same hour on the following day, by which time the lawyer would be able to advance him some money. "That's something like business," said Macquire, to which every one agreed, the landlord and the stonemasons showing the most approval. "Now," said James Macquire to the landlord, "you had better let me have some money." "What for?" asked that gentleman; "you can have anything that you require, as I told you before." "Just for my own satisfaction," said Macquire. "I am going to walk out for a while, so as to keep myself sober for business." "You can't go out in those rags," said the landlord--"you had better take my best suit." In ten minutes or less the ill-clad one was standing at the bar in the landlord's best suit of clothes, after which the said landlord gave him all the money available, amounting to thirty shillings. "How much am I in your debt?" asked Macquire. "Oh, about three pounds," was the answer. "We will call it fifty pounds," cried Macquire and, drinking his whisky, he left the house, followed closely by the faithful stonemasons. In half an hour the stonemasons were back, having lost their companion in the market place, and were at the bar awaiting him, thinking he might have already returned. Yes, and they could wait, for that was the last of Macquire, and, to the surprise and mortification of the landlord and the two stonemasons, the house received no more visits or letters from lawyers. CHAPTER XXXI SOME WAYS OF MAKING A LIVING No doubt laces are the best stock to carry, for a gross of them can be had for eighteen pence, sometimes less, which, sold at a penny a pair, realises six shillings; and, counting the number of pennies that are tendered free in pity for the man's circumstances, who must be cunning enough to show only two or three pairs at a time--he has nothing to complain of in the end. Although he sometimes meets a lady who persists in regarding him as a trader and bargains for two pairs for three halfpence, and ultimately carries them off in triumph--in spite of his whine of not being able to make bed and board out of them--in spite of these rare instances, he must confess that in the end he has received eight or nine shillings for an outlay of eighteen pence, and, what is more, an abundance of free food. Then, again, laces are light, they are easy to carry and can be stored in one coat-pocket. Another great advantage is that although a man may get wet through, or roll on his laces in the grass, he does not spoil his living. In fact, if they become crumpled and twisted and their tags rusty, he makes them his testimony that he was wet through, being out all night, which story rarely fails in coppers and he still retains his laces. But with all these advantages of a light and profitable stock, there are two men who scorn to carry even these and will not on any account make any pretence at selling. These two men are the gridler and the downrighter. The former sings hymns in the streets, and he makes his living by the sound of his voice. Professional singers are paid according to the richness, sweetness, and compass of their voices, but the gridler's profit increases as his vocal powers decline. The more shaky and harsh his voice becomes, the greater his reward. With a tongue like a rasp he smoothes the roughness off hard hearts. With a voice like an old hen he ushers in the golden egg. With a base mixture of treble, contralto and bass, he produces good metal which falls from top story windows, or is thrown from front doors, to drop at his feet with the true ring. Then, if the voice be immaterial, where lies the art of gridling? No more or less than in the selection of hymns, which must be simple and pathetic and familiar to all. Let the gridler supply the words sufficiently to be understood, and the simple air with variations--a good gridler often misses parts of the air itself for breathing spells and in stooping for coppers--let him supply the words, I say, and his hearers will supply the feeling. For instance, if a gridler has sung an old well known hymn fifty or sixty times a day for ten or fifteen years, he cannot reasonably be expected to be affected by the words. It would be extremely thoughtless to request of such an one an encore without giving a promise of further reward. In fact this man is really so weary of song that if there is any merry making at the lodging house, he is the one man who will not sing, not even under the influence of drink; and, what is more no man would invite him for, being a gridler and earning his living by song, we know well that his voice is spoilt, and that he cannot sing. The gridler considers himself to be at the top of the begging profession, for his stock never gets low, nor requires replenishing; and his voice is only a little weak thing of no weight, the notes of which are born into the world from his throat, and was never roused from sleep in the depths of his chest. There is no strain or effort in giving these notes to the world--despite the gridler's affectations--and he neither grows pale nor red with the exertion. But the downrighter not only scorns grinders, pedlars, etc., but he even despises the gridler for being a hard worker. "I," says he, "do not carry laces, needles, matches, or anything else; and I do not advertise my presence to the police by singing in the streets. If people are not in the front of the house, I seek them at the back, where a gridler's voice may not reach them. I am not satisfied with getting a penny for a farthing pair of laces--I get the whole penny for nothing. People never mistake me for a trader, for I exhibit no wares, and tell them straightforward that I am begging the price of my supper and bed." The fact of the matter is that all these men have different ways of making a living, and each man thinks his own way the best and fears to make new experiments, such an opinion being good for the trade of begging. Sometimes, owing to the vigilance of the police, and their strict laws, the gridler has to resort to downright begging, but his heart is not in the business, and he is for that reason unsuccessful. He longs to get in some quiet side street where he can chant slowly his well known hymns. But everything is in favour of the more silent downrighter; who allows nothing to escape him, neither stores, private or public houses, nor pedestrians. All he is required to do is to keep himself looking something like a working man, and he receives more charity in the alehouse by a straightforward appeal as an unemployed workman, than another who wastes his time in giving a song and a dance. People often hurry past when they hear a man singing, or see one approaching with matches or laces, but the downrighter claims their attention before they suspect his business. When I met Long John at Oxford, we had much talk of the merits of different parts of a beggar's profession. He, it seemed, had carried laces; he had also gridled sacred hymns in the streets, and sung sporting songs in the alehouses; he had even exerted himself as a dancer, "but," said he, "I must confess, after all, that as a downrighter my profits are larger, at the expenditure of far less energy." In the course of conversation Long John informed me that he also was travelling London way, and if I was agreeable we would start together on the following morning. "And," said he, in a whisper, so that other lodgers might not hear--"there is a house on our way that is good for a shilling each. He is a very rich man and has been an officer in the army. He pretends to be prejudiced against old soldiers, and when they appeal to him, he first abuses them, after which he drills them and, after abusing them again rewards each with a two shilling piece. Do you know the drills'?" "No," I answered, "I have never been in the army." "That is a great pity," said Long John, "for we lose a shilling each. However, we will not say that we are old soldiers, for fear of losing all, and be satisfied with the two shillings between us." So it was agreed. In less than two hours we were at the gentleman's lodge. Passing boldly through the gates we followed the drive until we saw before us a fine large mansion. Reaching the front door we rang the bell, which was soon answered by a servant. To our enquiries as to whether the master was in the servant replied in the negative, but intimated that the mistress was. Of course, this made not the least difference, as many a tramp knew, except that had we been old soldiers the lady not being able to test us by drill, would therefore not have given more than the civilian's shilling. Now, almost unfortunately for us, the downrighter, knowing that the lady would not drill us, and thinking that there might be a possibility of getting the master's double pay to old soldiers, without danger of drill or cross examination--suddenly made up his mind to say that we were two old soldiers. For, thought he, if it does no good, it cannot do any harm. Therefore, when the lady appeared smiling at the door Long John, being spokesman, told a straightforward tale of hardship, and added that we had both served our country on the battlefield as soldiers. He had scarcely mentioned the word soldiers when a loud authoritative voice behind us cried--"Shoulder Arms!" I was leaning heavily on a thick stick when this command was given, but lost my balance and almost fell to the ground. We both turned our faces towards the speaker and saw a tall military looking gentleman scrutinising us with two very sharp eyes. Giving us but very little time to compose ourselves he shouted again--"Present Arms!" This second command was no more obeyed than the first. Long John blew his nose, and I stood at ease on my staff, as though I did not care whether the dogs were set upon us or we were to be lodged in jail. After another uncomfortable pause the retired officer said, looking at us severely--"Two old soldiers, indeed! You are two imposters and scoundrels! Perhaps you understand this command"--and in a voice fiercer and louder than ever he cried, "Quick March!" Long John and I, although not old soldiers, certainly understood this command, for we started down the drive at a good pace, with the military looking gentleman following. When we reached the public road, he gave another command--"Halt!" But this was another of those commands which we did not understand. However, on its being repeated less sternly we obeyed. "Here," said he, "you are not two old soldiers, but you may not be altogether scoundrels; and I never turn men away without giving them some assistance." Saying which he gave us a shilling each. But what a narrow escape we had of being turned penniless away, all through Long John's greed and folly! CHAPTER XXXII AT LAST In spite of these occasional successes with Long John and others, I was often at my wits' ends to procure food and shelter. This always happened when I travelled alone. I was now heartily sick of this wandering from town to town, and every day seemed to get more unfortunate; until the first day in December, when, forced by extreme want, I resolved to enter the city at once, knowing that a pound was already there waiting my pleasure. That night I was back in the Farmhouse; and what a genial spirit seemed to animate the old coke fire! Not at all like the death dealer, the waster of time, who robbed a human being of his energy and a kitten of its play. Oh, no; for this one night we were the best of friends, and sunny smiles passed between us until bed time. I had been away five months, and would still have to suffer owing to this early return; knowing that I would not have courage to sell in the streets of London, and that I would be compelled to eke out a living on five shillings a week, until the beginning of the new year--this being a half crown for lodgings, and the same for food. I was very well satisfied with myself at this time, with the prospect of the new year before me; and at once began to get my work ready for the press. When all original composition was done, and it was necessary to make ready a copy for the printer, even at this time I was confronted with a foolish hindrance. One library in Lambeth, which at one time had a table with pens, ink and blotting pads for the convenience of visitors, had had these things removed; but seeing no sign to the contrary, I still thought I would be allowed to take possession of a corner of this table and write, providing I supplied my own material. So, this library was chosen for my week's writing, but I was warned off at the commencement. Thoroughly incensed at this fresh and paltry hindrance, I sought a library where I knew my work could be continued without interference, even if the writing of it took some years. This library was not so convenient as the other, being some distance away, but there I at last succeeded in performing my task. Now came the new year when, independent of others, I would be enabled to assist myself. If I failed in making success, the disappointment would be mine only, and if I succeeded, there would be none other to thank but myself. On receiving this money, in the first week in January, I lost no time in seeing the printer and arranging for an edition of two hundred and fifty copies, the cost to be nineteen pounds. This amount certainly did not cover expenses, and here began the series of kindnesses which, after a few more disappointments, were to follow. This printer placed the MS. in the hands of a good reader, and that gentleman was put to considerable trouble, being baffled and interested in turns. The last two lines of a poem entitled "The hill side park" are entirely his, both in thought and expression. I mention this because two or three correspondents liked the poem in question, and one thought the last two lines the best; so, I take this opportunity to clear my conscience. There was nothing to complain of, both printer and reader being at great pains and patience to make the work better than it was. Naturally, I thought if there was any interest shown, it would not be in the author's personality, but in the work itself, and for this reason, gave the Farmhouse, a common lodging house, as my address. I was under the impression that people would uninterestedly think the Farmhouse to be a small printing establishment, or a small publishing concern of which they had not heard; to which they would forward their orders, and business would be transacted without their being any the wiser. In the first week in March I received my first printed copy. The printer had sent thirty copies or more to the various papers, and I was now waiting the result, which at last came in the shape of two very slim reviews from the North; a Yorkshire paper saying that the work had rhymes that were neither intricate nor original, and a Scotch paper saying that the work was perfect in craftsmanship rather than inspired. This was very disappointing, more so to know that others, who were powerless to assist me, were interesting themselves on my behalf. Although I still had confidence that the work contained some good things, I began to think that there must be some glaring faults which made the book, as a whole, impossible to review. This first thought became my first belief when other notices did not follow. Weeks and weeks went by and, having now started to drink, and losing control of my will in this disappointment, I had come down to my last ten shillings, and had a good seven months to go before my money was again due. First of all I had serious thoughts of destroying this work--the whole two hundred and odd copies, which were under lock and key in my room, and to then set to work carefully on new matter, and, when my income was again due, to again mortgage it in another attempt. Being very impulsive, this no doubt would have been there and then commenced, had I not been confronted with the difficulty of doing so. There was only one way of doing this properly, and that was by fire, which would require privacy. My room was the only place where I could do this without being seen, but that contained neither stove nor grate; and, even if it had, two hundred books would take a number of sleepless nights to render into ashes. I thought with some bitterness of having to go on tramp again, and it was in one of these bitter moments that I swore a great oath that these copies, good or bad, should maintain me until the end of the year. For I would distribute the books here and there, sending them to successful people, and they would probably pay for their copies, perhaps not so much for what merit they might think the work contained, as for the sake of circumstances. This idea no sooner possessed me than I began preparing for its execution. For this purpose I obtained stamps and envelopes, and six copies were at once posted. The result was seen in a couple of days--three letters, two containing the price of the book, and the third from the Charity Organisation, the latter writing on behalf of a gentleman who had become interested, and would like to come to my assistance. Remembering these people in the past, through my former experience with them, I had no great hopes at the present time, in spite of the kind hearted interest of the gentleman in question. However, I called on them the next morning, and after the usual long wait in a side room--which, I believe, is not through any great stress of business, but so as to bring one's heart down to the freezing point of abject misery, and to extinguish one by one his many hopes--after this weary waiting, I received an interview. There is not sufficient venom in my disposition to allow me to describe this meeting in words fit and bitter for its need. This life is too short to enable me to recover from my astonishment, which will fill me for a good many years to come. The questions and answers which had passed between us on our former interview,--two years previous, were now before them. But they questioned again in the same strain, and my answers corresponded with those of the past, for I told no lies. Apparently they had no chance here, so they came at once to the business in hand. "You have written to a gentleman, asking for his assistance?" Not liking this way of explaining my conduct, I said--"No, not exactly that, but have been trying to sell him some work that I had done." It seemed that they knew nothing of this work--or that it better suited their purpose to appear ignorant--so it was necessary to give them the full particulars. "Was not the book a success?" they asked. Not caring to admit failure, and still thinking the work worthy of a little success, I answered--"Not yet, but it is too early to judge it as a failure." Then I gave it in confidence that a gentleman, well known in Southwark, and who often wrote articles on literary subjects, had promised to review it in one of the evening papers, which might lead to other notices. "What is the name of this gentleman?" The name was at once mentioned, for there was no reason that I knew of, to withhold it. But instead of this name doing me good, as I then expected, it probably made this case of mine more unfavorable; for I have been told since that this gentleman had more than once attacked the ways and methods of this Organisation, both on the public platform and through the press. Not knowing this, at that time, I thought it extremely fortunate to be enabled to mention the favour of such a well known local man. All went smoothly for a while--although I could plainly see that these people did not recognise the writing of books as work, and were plainly disgusted at the folly of sacrificing an income to that end. Their next question confirmed this opinion--"Do you ever do anything for a living?" I mentioned that I had tramped the country as a hawker, during the previous summer, but had suffered through want of courage, could not make anything like a living, and was often in want and without shelter. There was a rather long pause, and the Charity Organisation rose slowly to their feet, and said--"Mr. Davies, do you really expect this gentleman, who has written to us, to maintain you? Is there anything the matter with you?" What was the matter with me did not seem to escape many people, and it was most certainly noted by the smallest toddler that played in the street, but the Charity Organisation did not think proper to recognise any other than an able man, strong in the use of all his limbs. "No," said these people, "you must do the same as you did last summer;" which, in other words was--go on tramp, starve, and be shelterless as you were before. And then in the deep silence which followed, for I was speechless with indignation, a voice soft and low, but emphatic and significant, said--"We strongly advise you to do this, but you really must not write any more begging letters. Mr. Davies, we do not consider ourselves justified in putting your case before the committee." That ended the interview, and I left them with the one sarcastic remark, which I could not keep unsaid, "that I had not come there with any great hopes of receiving benefit, and that I was not leaving greatly disappointed at this result." These people passed judgment in a few minutes, and were so confident that they did not think it worth while to call at the Farmhouse for the opinion of a man who had known me for a considerable time. No doubt they had made another mistake. For, some time before this, an old pensioner, an old lodger of the Farmhouse, had interviewed these people, telling them a story of poverty, and of starving wife and children. The story was a fabrication from beginning to end, yet they assisted this man on his bare word to the extent of ten shillings, so as to enable him to lie about the Farmhouse drunk for several days. Then, some days after this, the Charity Organisation called at the Farmhouse to see the manager, and to make enquiries of this man whom they had so mysteriously befriended. "What," cried that gentleman, "you have assisted this drunken fellow on his bare word, and when I send cases to you, that I know are deserving, you sternly refuse to entertain them." Perhaps it was this instance, fresh in their minds, which gave them an idea that no good could come out of the Farmhouse. Yet, as far as my experience goes, the object of these people was not so much to do good, but to prevent good from being done; for here, for the second time, they stepped between me and one who might have rendered me some aid. What I found the most distasteful part of their system was the way in which they conceal the name of a would-be benefactor. I had sent six books, three to men and three to women. One man had replied with a kind encouraging letter and the price of the book enclosed, and one of the two others had written to the Organisation, but, on no account, would they mention his name. Now, when these people answer a letter of enquiry, they have no other option than to say one of two things--either that the applicant is an impostor, and deserves no notice, or that the case is genuine and deserving consideration. They, of course, answered in the former strain, withholding the gentleman's name, so as to leave no opportunity to vindicate one's character. The interference of these people put me on my mettle, and I was determined not to follow their advice and tramp through another hard winter. I had something like three shillings, at the time of this interview; so, buying two shillings' worth of stamps, I posted a dozen books that very night, being still warm with resentment. The result of these were four kind letters, each containing the price of the book. Only one or two were returned to me, whether purchased or not, which was done at my own wish. Before I again became penniless, off went another dozen. In this way I disposed of some sixty copies, with more or less success; some of these well known people receiving the book as an unacknowledged gift, and others quickly forwarding the price of the same. The strangest part of this experience was this: that people, from whom I expected sympathy, having seen their names so often mentioned as champions of unfortunate cases, received the book as a gift; whilst others, from whom I had less hope, because they appeared sarcastic and unfeeling in their writings, returned the price of the work. The Manager was astonished at my receiving no answer from two or three well known people whom he had recommended. At last, after disposing of sixty copies in this way, two well known writers corresponded with me, one of whom I saw personally, and they both promised to do something through the press. Relying on these promises, I sent away no more copies, being enabled to wait a week or two owing to the kindness of a playwriter, an Irishman, as to whose mental qualification the world is divided, but whose heart is unquestionably great. Private recognition was certainly not long forthcoming, which was soon followed by a notice in a leading daily paper, and in a literary paper of the same week. These led to others, to interviews and a kindness that more than made amends for past indifference. It was all like a dream. In my most conceited moments I had not expected such an amount of praise, and they gathered in favour as they came, until one wave came stronger than the others and threw me breathless of all conceit, for I felt myself unworthy of it, and of the wonderful sea on which I had embarked. Sleep was out of the question, and new work was impossible. What surprised me agreeably was the reticence of my fellow lodgers, who all knew, but mentioned nothing in my hearing that was in any way disconcerting. They were, perhaps, a little less familiar, but showed not the least disrespect in their reserve, as would most certainly have been the case if I had succeeded to a peerage or an immense fortune. The lines on Irish Tim, which were several times quoted, were a continual worry to me, thinking some of the more waggish lodgers would bring them to his notice. Poor Tim, no doubt, would have sulked, resenting this publicity, but, if the truth were known, I would as soon do Tim a good turn as any other man in the Farmhouse. Boozy Bob, I suppose, had been shown his name in print; but Bob thought it a great honour to be called Boozy; so, when he stood drunk before me, with his face beaming with smiles of gratitude for making use of his name, at the same time saying--"Good evening, Mr. Davies, how are you?"--I at once understood the meaning of this unusual civility, and we both fell a-laughing, but nothing more was said. What a lot of decent, honest fellows these were: "You must not be surprised," said a gentleman to me, at that time, "to meet less sincere men than these in other walks of life." I shall consider myself fortunate in not doing so. CHAPTER XXXIII SUCCESS However much cause I may have at some future date to complain of severe criticism, I have certainly no complaint up to the present against any connected with the making of books. Some half a dozen lines of work were submitted to publishers, and three times I received letters with a view to publication, which, of course, failed through the want of friends to assist me. Knowing how rough and unequal the work was, and that critics could find--if so inclined--plenty to justify extreme severity, has undeceived me as to my former unreasonable opinion, that critics were more prone to cavil than to praise. I would like it to be understood that I say this without bidding for any future indulgence; for I am thankful to any man who will show me my faults, and am always open to advice. As I have said, the first notice appeared in a leading daily paper, a full column, in which I saw myself described, a rough sketch of the ups and downs of my life, in short telling sentences, with quotations from my work. The effect of this was almost instantaneous, for correspondence immediately followed. Letters came by every post. Of course, all my thoughts had been concentrated on the reading world, so that I was much surprised when two young men came to the house and requested a photo for an illustrated paper. I could not oblige them at that moment, but with a heart overflowing with gratitude was persuaded to accompany them at once to the nearest photographer, now that interest was at its high point. "Now," said one of these young men, when I was on my way with them, delighted with this mission--"now, if you could give me a few lines on the war in the East, to go with your photograph, it would be of much greater interest to the public." Not caring to blow the froth off my mind in this indifferent manner, and feeling too conscientious to take advantage of public interest by writing in such haste, which, to tell the truth, appeared a difficult task--I quickly turned the subject to other matters, thinking he would soon forget his request. But it was of no use; for, every other step or two, he wanted to be informed whether I was concentrating my mind on the war. At last, being under the impression that my natural reserve and feeble attempts at conversation would lead him to believe that something was being done in that direction, I made a great effort to become voluble, and, I believe, succeeded until the photograph was taken. When I left him, his last question was--"What about the war?" The next morning, after the last mentioned episode, being Sunday, I was enjoying a stroll through the city, which is so very quiet on this one morning of the week; and was thinking of nothing else but my own affairs, more especially of the photo that was soon to appear. The street was forsaken, with the exception--yes, there they were: two men with a camera, and both of them looking my way, anxiously awaiting my approach. "This," I said to myself, "is fame with a vengeance." I felt a little mortification at being expected to undergo this operation in the public streets. One of these photographers quickly stepped forward to meet me, and, smiling blandly, requested me kindly to stand for a moment where I was. It certainly shocked and mortified me more to learn that they desired to photograph an old fashioned dwelling of brick and mortar, and that they considered my presence as no adornment to the front. A few days after this first review, a critic of fine literature, who had interested himself privately on my behalf, sent a notice to a weekly literary paper; and it was the respect due to this man's name that drew the attention of some other papers of good standing, for their representatives mentioned this man's name with every respect, knowing, at the same time, that he would not waste his hours on what was absolutely worthless. What kind hearted correspondents I had, and what offers they made, what questions they asked! and all of them received grateful answers--with one exception. This gentleman, who did not require a book, presumably being more interested in the strange conditions under which I had lived and worked, offered me a pleasant home in the country, where I could cultivate my talents surrounded with a little more comfort and quieter scenes. The letter was long, delightful, poetical, and worked warmly on my imagination, sentence for sentence; until the last sentence came like a douche of cold water on a warm body--"Of course," finished this gentleman, "it is necessary to supply me with strict references as to honesty and respectability." Where was I to get these? after having failed to get a library form signed, which would entitle me to borrow books. No doubt the manager of the Farmhouse would have willingly done the latter, as was afterwards done by him, but I was then under the impression that the keeper of a lodging house was ineligible for such a purpose, knowing this to have been the case elsewhere. Where could I obtain these references, seeing that I knew no one who would take the responsibility of doing such a petty kindness as signing a library form? This gentleman's letter, I need scarcely say, remained unanswered, for which, I believe, none will blame me. Several other letters were received, which I found extremely difficult to answer. One addressed me familiarly in rhyme, beginning--"Dear brother poet, brother Will;" and went on to propose that we two should take a firm stand together, side by side, to the everlasting benefit of poetry and posterity. Another had written verse, and would be glad to find a publisher, and another could, and would, do me many a good turn, if I felt inclined to correct his work, and to add lines here and there as needed. Not for a moment would I hold these people to ridicule, but it brought to mind that I was without a publisher for my own work, and I believed, in all sincerity, that better work than mine might go begging, as it often had. In the main my correspondents were kind, sympathetic and sensible, making genuine offers of assistance, for which I thanked them with all my heart, but thought myself now beyond the necessity of accepting them. As a matter of fact, no one man in a common lodging house is supposed to be regarded with any special favour. The common kitchen is his library, his dining room and his parlour, and better accommodation cannot be expected at the low price of fourpence per night. We are all equal, without a question of what a man's past may have been, or what his future is likely to realise. Any man who puts on superior airs is invariably subjected to this sarcastic enquiry--"How much do you pay?" or the incontrovertible remark that one man's fourpence is as good as another's. The Manager has to use great tact in not indulging in too long a conversation with one particular man, and a lodger must not jeopardise his popularity by an overweening anxiety to exchange civilities, or to repose confidence in those who are in authority; for these lodgers are in general distrustful and suspicious. If a fish porter--a good number of these men were here--was warned after any misconduct, he would turn to one of his pals and say--"Billingsgate, I see, is not favoured in this place." And if a paper-seller--of which there were about an equal number--was called to account in the same way, his remark would be that had he been a fish porter the misconduct would have been overlooked. Such was the state of feeling in the Farmhouse, although the caretaker, time after time, almost daily, reiterated the remark that one man was as good as another, and that no distinction was made between the two classes. Knowing this state of feeling, and the child-like distrust and jealousy of these honest fellows, it was no wonder that I felt a little awkward at the change of circumstances; for, after all, I was still a lodger, and paying no more than them for the same conveniences. In spite of this, I don't believe I suffered the least in popularity when the Manager, determined that I should not suffer any longer for want of privacy to pursue my aims, threw open his own private rooms for my convenience. And, every time I took advantage of his kindness, the Manager's wife would take advantage of this by supplying a hot dinner or tea, as the hour might be, so that my studies might not be interrupted, or food postponed through an anxiety to perform a certain task. The Manager was astonished at my success, and, after he had read several notices, it certainly must have made him bitter against those whom he had approached on my behalf. "Yes," he said, "I must confess to failure, in your case, and I am left wondering as to what kind of cases these people consider worthy of assistance." The man, being in a subordinate position, dare not openly speak his thoughts, or appear to force the hands of those rich visitors, but he certainly lost no opportunity in showing some honest Irish blood in his references to the Charity Organisation. "Miss So and So has been here," said he, one morning; "and I lost no time in relating your experience with the Charity Organisation. She was very much offended and shocked, and she has now gone there to seek some explanation." "As for that," I answered, knowing these people had all the power to make good their own case, and that I would not be called upon to sift the false from the true--"As for that, this lady will return satisfied, as you will see." The Manager did not altogether believe this, saying that he thought the lady in question was not a blind believer in anything, and had an unusual amount of common sense. She certainly did return satisfied, saying that she thought they were justified in their conduct, to a certain extent. On being questioned by the Manager, who claimed it justice that the truth should be known, she said that she dare not make public the sayings and doings of the Society. I am now giving my experiences honestly and truthfully, and thought for thought, if not word for word, as they happened. As a man whose ambition above all other things is to impress every one favourably, I have come to the conclusion that my work has been praised far more than its worth, owing to having met the writers of some of those articles, and impressing them in a simple, honest way. I am writing these experiences with a full knowledge of human nature, knowing that many people will remark: "Take no heed of that man, for he has not a good word for any one or anything;" but, as far as my knowledge and experience goes it is the truth, and, if that seems false and sensational, it is no fault of mine. Certainly I have led a worthless, wandering and lazy life, with, in my early days, a strong dislike to continued labour, and incapacitated from the same in later years. No person seemed inclined to start me on the road to fame, but, as soon as I had made an audacious step or two, I was taken up, passed quickly on from stage to stage, and given free rides farther than I expected. CHAPTER XXXIV A HOUSE TO LET Apparently the ill luck which had pursued me so close in the past, would not let me escape without another scratch. In my pleasant walks in my native town, my eye happened to fall on a beautiful house, untenanted in a neighbourhood so quiet that every other house seemed to be the same. The very name, Woodland Road, was an address for a poet. It was a four storied villa, standing on the top of a hilly road, from where one could see on a clear mistless day the meeting of the Severn and the Bristol Channel; and, looking in another direction, could see the whole town without hearing one of its many voices. Unfortunately, I coveted this house as a tenant, thinking to get more pleasure in one glance from its top window on a bright summer's morning than from the perusal of many books. Even now, in Winter, it presented a warm, comfortable appearance, with its evergreens and its ivied walls. A tall, spreading rose bush stood facing its lowest window, and I imagined the bashful red roses looking in at me, as though I would not come out of doors to please them. There were primrose leaves green on the rockery, and one yellow flower still stood, withered and bent, in this last week of November. There was also an apple tree and a pear tree, so that the front of the house was both a park and an orchard. Blackbirds, robins, and thrushes visited the grounds daily; and I believe that this house was their nearest approach to town. It only wanted a few touches of Spring, and here were shady nooks, and leafy boughs for birds to sing unseeing and unseen. Thinking that this beautiful place would not remain untenanted for long, I at once made application, being recommended by my old master of the days of my apprenticeship. Had I known that the house was always empty and untenanted, and that people came and went at short notice, I should certainly not have been in such a hurry to take possession, in spite of its natural beauties. It was neither haunted by ghosts nor animal noises, but by the landlady, who lived in the next house. This lady I did not see, nor have I seen her up to the present time, one of my family having taken the place in my name. Probably if I had transacted business personally, and had had an opportunity of seeing this landlady's face, I had not coveted the house, and, according to a right judgment of human nature, would have saved myself the money and disappointment that was to follow. However, the house became mine, and I received the key which was to let me possess this house and its interesting grounds. I idled a week about town descanting with great pleasure on the beauties of my future home; but I was somewhat taken by surprise at the unfavourable reception with which my news was received. "Who is the landlady?" asked one. "Mrs. S," I answered; "she lives next door." "It is very unfortunate," said this person, "that the landlady lives next door." "Every one can please themselves," said another, "but as for myself, I would never dream of living next door to my landlady." "What": cried another, "the landlady lives next door? What a great pity, to be sure." Although the last named depreciator was the respectable wife of a retired tradesman, and had given her own landlady satisfaction for a number of years; in spite of this, I was highly amused at these remarks, taking the uncharitable view that these people were really not so respectable as they seemed, and would not be allowed to live under the watchful eyes of a particular person. My landlady, I thought, be she ever so watchful, dare not interfere without some cause; and, as the house must needs be kept very quiet for my own purpose of study, noises that are not allowed to reach me in the same house, surely will not be able to reach the house next door. The eventful day arrived, and I gathered together my small family, one from her limited possession of two small rooms, being very pleased to have me with her, which could not otherwise have been. At last we were in full possession, and at once proceeded to arrange the furniture, and to make the house comfortable. On the second day I began to work in earnest, having been unsettled and indisposed for several weeks. When I came downstairs to dinner, on this second day, I was informed that the landlady had already been there to say that she objected to us keeping animals. On being told there was not the least intention of doing the same, she said that she certainly thought such was our intention, seeing that we were in possession of wood, and that she strongly objected to any other than that which could be kept indoors. The wood, which had caused all this suspicion, was simply a clothes prop and three shelves which had not yet been removed from where they were first placed. I laughed heartily at this unwarranted interference, but the feminine portion of the family strongly resented it. The third day I continued my work, the others again working on the comfort of this large house; one being outside trimming the evergreens, and taking a general pride in our half orchard and half park. Ditto the third day, and so on day after day, until the rent became due. This was the first time for me to take a personal hand in my affairs, and, when the agent called, I thought it more business like to put in an appearance, for the first rent day, at least, seeing that the house was in my name, after which others might attend to it. I paid the rent, 9s. 6d.--the house, as I have said, was a fine large villa, and was really worth fifteen or sixteen shillings a week; and this small amount demanded for it, was a mystery at which any sensible person would have sniffed. This agent then gave me a book, with the rent entered to my account. After this he handed me a letter, which, said he, was sent from the office. Not dreaming of its contents, I there and then opened this letter, and to my astonishment saw that it was a notice to quit within one week of that date, at the orders of Messrs. H. and B., her solicitors. This notice was a severe blow, for, up till then, the place had been unsettled, and we had only been enjoying the expectation of future comfort. "Who, or what does this lady object to?" I asked the agent, with some bitterness. "I need absolute quiet for my work, and the amount I have done in the past week proves that I have had it. What then has disturbed my landlady, that has not interfered with my work? To make a person suffer the expense, and worse, the worry of moving twice in a few days, should not be done without due consideration, and some definite reason." But the agent knew or pretended to know nothing of the affair, and he left me at the door, feeling more shame and mortification than I have ever felt before. There was nothing else to do but to pack up again as soon as possible and to seek fresh quarters, which, after great difficulty, were found. To think that I have lived thirty-five years, and not to have known the folly and ill policy of living next door to one's landlady! But this particular landlady is eccentric, can afford to be independent, and I verily believe she would not sell a house for even twice its worth if she thought the would-be purchaser to be a man incapable of taking charge of property. Her house is more often unoccupied than let, as I have since been told, for the most respectable people cannot live near her. Apparently this is the case, for the house was still empty several weeks after I had quit, in spite of its unreasonably low rent and the beauty of its surroundings. A robin came to the back door every morning and was fed. Perhaps this time wasted on the robin might have been better employed in winning the good graces of the landlady. What a pity such an eccentric person should have such power to receive people as tenants for a few days, and then to dismiss them without warning or giving any definite reason. And what a harvest her idiosyncrasies must be to her solicitors. They even followed me up and demanded another week's rent, after the expense of moving to the top of a high hill and down again, which, up to the present, I have not paid. A lawyer would certainly be a lucky man to be allowed control over the interests of half a dozen such clients, and he could dress his wife and daughters in silk, and thoroughly educate his sons on his makings. I have been told that she is a deeply religious woman. Therefore, although she said in her own heart--"on no account can these people live in a villa of mine," she must have prayed that room would be reserved for us in the many mansions above. This chapter should justify itself for the sake of the worldly wisdom contained in the simple words--"Never live in a house next door to your landlady or landlord;" which deserves to become a proverb. Many people might not consider this warning necessary, but the hint may be useful to poor travellers like myself who, sick of wandering, would settle down to the peace and quiet of after days. Such has been my life, rolling unseen and unnoted, like a dark planet among the bright, and at last emitting a few rays of its own to show its whereabouts, which were kindly received by many and objected to by a few, among the latter being my late landlady. Perhaps I am deceived as to the worth or worthlessness of certain people, but I have given my experience of them without exaggeration, describing as near as memory makes it possible, things exactly as they occurred. I have made no effort to conceal my gratitude for those who have befriended me, and I have made every effort to conceal bitterness against enemies. If I have not succeeded in the latter it is with regret, but if I have failed in the former, for that am I more truly and deeply sorry. If I have appeared ignorant of certain matters I claim exception from sin through a lack of prejudice which is, after all, the only ignorance that can be honestly named with sin. These have been my experiences; and if I have not omitted to mention trouble of my own making, for which no one but myself was to blame, why should I omit the mention of others, whom I blame for hours more bitter? People are not to be blamed for their doubts, but that they make no effort to arrive at the truth. However much people of a higher standing may doubt the veracity of certain matters, I have the one consolation to know that many a poor man, who is without talent or means to make his experiences public, knows what I have written to be the truth. It is but a poor consolation, for such an one is the sufferer, and not the supporter, and he is powerless in the hands of a stronger body. THE END 
45322	----	FROM NORTH CAROLINA TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA WITHOUT A TICKET AND HOW I DID IT GIVING MY EXCITING EXPERIENCES AS A "HOBO" BY JOHN PEELE [Illustration] PUBLISHED BY EDWARDS & BROUGHTON PRINTING COMPANY 1907 Copyright, 1907, by JOHN PEELE. Sent postpaid on receipt of price, 50 cents in stamps. Address J. L. Peele & Bro., Tarboro, N. C. [Illustration: "Good-bye, brother. If I never return again, be good to mother."] TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE. Off for California--My Troubles Begin in Wilmington--Taken for a Deserter--A Drummer Comes to My Rescue 9 CHAPTER II. Run Out of Town by the Chadbourn Police--Cash Running Low--Getting Schedules Mixed--The First Blush of Shame 20 CHAPTER III. Snatched from Death--Forty-nine Miles on a Hand-car--Finding a Partner 30 CHAPTER IV. "Look Out for Hoodlums!"--Retribution for Deception--Stranded in New Orleans--Meet With Kind Hearts 52 CHAPTER V. A Hungry Ride of 308 Miles--"Hello, Hello in the Pipe There!"--To Work Again--Nabbed by a Cop 80 CHAPTER VI. Across the Line Into New Mexico--Barren Sand Hills--Jack Rabbits--Prairie Dogs--A Glorious Sunset, etc. 95 CHAPTER VII. Get a Job in a Law Office--Dirty, Ragged Clothes Put Off--Smallpox Starts Me Off Again 105 CHAPTER VIII. "For God's Sake, Give Me a Drop of Water" 109 CHAPTER IX. Thrown Into Jail at Los Angeles 119 PREFACE. After a good deal of persuasion upon the part of my relatives and immediate circle of friends, I have decided to write an account of a few of the many adventures and dangers that befell me while making my way, practically without a penny, from Tarboro, North Carolina, to Tucson, Arizona; and thence to the stricken city of San Francisco, Cal., and other points of interest throughout the West, including New Orleans, Dallas, Texas, Fort Worth, El Paso, Dalhart, Texas, Alamogordo, New Mexico, Juarez, Old Mexico, Bisbee, Arizona, Los Angeles, California, San Pedro, California, Searchlight, Nevada, Denver, Colorado, and more than a hundred other points of interest, coming back home on a telegraphed ticket, via Chicago, Cincinnati, and Richmond, Virginia. The book bears no relation to fiction, as the reader will discover before reading many of its pages. The writer, believing it will be more interesting, will unreservedly show up all his faults and mistakes along the trip, as well as his good qualities. There is nothing in the book pertaining to the supernatural, nor is it of a highly sensational character, but the writer believes it will prove more than interesting to the intelligent mind. It is a true story from real life that every boy in America can read and profit thereby. The book is a record of facts and incidents, which were written down in shorthand, and transcribed at different stages of the journey by the author. The story is backed by the indisputable evidence of testimonials and correct addresses of the most prominent people with whom the writer came in contact. This book demonstrates the value of physical culture and education to the American youth as the author believes no other work upon the market has yet done. The writer graduated at the Massey Business College, Richmond, Va., in bookkeeping, etc. Feeling the need of rest and recreation after several years of hard study at school, and being a great sufferer from asthma, the author, hearing of the dry and beneficial climate of Arizona and New Mexico to those who have weak lungs, decided almost immediately after leaving school at Richmond, Va., to go to Tucson, Ariz., and personally verify these reports, and probably settle there permanently himself. The author, John Peele, of Tarboro, N. C., is just nineteen years of age, and though he had knocked about the world considerably prior to the opening of this story, he had heretofore always held a ticket to his destination. And now, dear readers, follow him patiently and he will attempt to show you how he turned the trick of getting West without a ticket. Trusting the book may be of value to mothers in restraining their wayward sons to stay at home, however humble it may be, I beg to subscribe myself, sincerely, the author, JOHN PEELE. $50.00 REWARD. $50.00 I am a poor man, but if the darkey, who twice saved my life by catching me while standing up on the end of a loaded flat-car fast asleep, and preventing my falling between the wheels of a rapidly moving freight train about ten or fifteen miles from the town of Woodbine, Fla., on a certain night in May in the year 1906, and who afterwards accompanied me forty-nine miles on a hand-car to Jacksonville, can prove his identity, by telling me what happened when we parted on the railroad in the suburbs of that city, and will communicate his intelligence to John Peele, Tarboro, N. C., he will receive the sum of fifty dollars ($50.00). JOHN PEELE. TESTIMONIALS. SEARCHLIGHT, NEV. John Peele was in my employ here for some time, first as porter, then as bar tender in the Searchlight Hotel. I hereby give Mr. Peele the privilege of printing this testimonial, both in his book and in the newspaper columns, advertising the book. FRED. ULLMAN. JOHN:--Whenever you come out West again, you can get another job. You are all right. U. CHIPLEY, FLA. This is to certify that John Peele, being pulled down in this town from under the boiler of a morning passenger train bound for Pensacola, Fla., was employed by me at my brick yard. I hereby give Mr. Peele the privilege of printing this testimonial, both in his book and in the newspaper columns advertising the book. J. D. HALL. [Illustration: JOHN R. PEELE.] From North Carolina to Southern California Without a Ticket. CHAPTER I. _Off For California--My Troubles Begin in Wilmington--Taken for a Deserter--A Drummer Comes to My Rescue._ The details of my former life will not be given here, but as I stood waiting on the depot platform at Tarboro, N. C., with my brother Joe, who had come to bid me good-bye, one fine day in early May, in the year 1906, I could, at least, say that no other chap of my acquaintance could name any more varied occupations in which he had been engaged than I could. I had been grocery clerk for my people at Tarboro; water boy at the age of 14 at the Buffalo Lithia Springs in Virginia, where I made scores of friends from all parts of the country; drygoods salesman for Chas. Broadway Rouss, New York City; waiter in a Coney Island restaurant; bell-boy in the Fifth Avenue Hotel, New York City; waiter in Buffalo, N. Y., where I had gone to be treated by the famous Dr. R. V. Pierce for asthma; traveling agent through the South for Jas. M. Davis, New York, with stereoscopic views, at which I cleared over $400.00 in one summer's canvass, nearly ruining my vocal organs; Bible agent through the country for J. S. Peele & Co.; stenographer, bookkeeper, and scores of other things I engaged in, too numerous to mention. The train, which was to mark the beginning of more adventures, hardships and trials than I, at that time, could possibly imagine, pulled into the station at Tarboro, N. C., and bidding my brother good-bye, I got aboard. I had four dollars in money, several letters of recommendation, and a ticket. Among the letters was a note of commendation, kindly given me by Mr. John F. Shackelford, of the Bank of Tarboro, and another one, equally as highly appreciated, from Mr. Frank Powell, the editor of the _Tarboro Southerner_. The ticket was labeled Wilmington, N. C., and had been purchased merely as a blind to my parents, who were unaware of the fact that I had come home from school "flat-broke," and as a consequence, of course, unable to purchase my fare to the West. Parting with my mother affected me no little, for it was my intention not to return home for several years. Tarboro was soon left behind, however, and now other and graver thoughts began to take possession of me. What was I to do in Wilmington with only four dollars? And how was I to get out of the town anyway, unless I purchased another ticket? During all of my travels, I had never yet beaten the railroad company out of a penny, and just how I was going to board a train without being caught and locked up was the question. Little did I think at that time how expert and bold I was to become at this kind of thing before reaching far off Tucson, Arizona. The train pulled under the shed at Wilmington just after dark. It was with great reluctance I got out of my seat; in fact, all the other passengers had alighted when I got my bundles together. I would have sworn that there was a big, blue-coated officer waiting to put handcuffs on me the moment I stepped from the car platform, but no such thing happened. Instead the whole train was deserted and the porter informed me that I had better hurry, if I wanted to get through the exit before it closed. Regaining courage, I hurried along in the direction the other passengers had taken, and a few moments later emerged on Front street, Wilmington's busiest thoroughfare. I was by no means a stranger to Wilmington, and, therefore, had little trouble in finding a good place at which to put up, without going to an expensive hotel. Leaving my few belongings behind, I started out afterwards to retrace my steps back to the depot and railroad yards for the purpose of obtaining any information I could regarding the schedule of the trains. About midway the bridge, which connects the depot with Front street, I noticed two colored men engaged in watching the trains shift in and out of the yards. I at once decided that here was an opportunity to start the ball rolling, and accordingly approached them and told them where I wanted to go. In return they informed me that they were not trainmen, as I had supposed, but were employed on the steamboat _Perdy_. The name of their Captain was Archie Marine, they said, and added that he was a good, freehearted sort of a man, and might be able to help me get down the coast on a boat. One of them offered to conduct me to the _Perdy's_ wharf, and a short time later we were on board. The engineer of the boat was the only man on board when we arrived, and he informed me that the Captain hadn't shown up since late in the afternoon. A significant twinkle of the eye accompanied this remark, and not being altogether blind, I concluded that the _Perdy's_ captain was in some respects the same as all other sea-faring men. "Do you know where he generally holds forth when on shore?" I asked. "No, but probably some of the crew on shore can tell you, if you can find them," he replied. Disappointed, I made my way up town again. Entering a drug store, and calling for a directory, I soon found Marine's residence address, and a half hour later I had reached his home. Several children met me at the door, and in response to my query, summoned their mother, a very pleasant-faced woman, as I recall her, who at once seemed to know that I was in trouble. She gave me explicit directions how to find her husband. "Please tell him to come home at once, if you find him," she said. It was after 11 o'clock when I bade the lady good-night. After losing all this time, I was determined to find Marine now, if I had to traverse every street in Wilmington. Having canvassed views in the town, I had no trouble in finding the section the lady had directed me to. The place I entered was a kind of half grocery store and half saloon--the saloon, of course, being in the rear. On entering, my attention was directed to a party of four men, evidently seamen, judging from their language, who were in the front part of the store engaged in a conversation that could easily have been heard a block away. At last I felt sure I had cornered my man. It has always been my belief that I was especially blessed with the knack of making friends with a stranger, and this talent, which is the only one I think I ever possessed, had certainly had ample opportunity in my varied life to develop into an art. "Hello, mates!" I sang out, approaching the quartet with a smile--what wonders a smile will work when used right--"I'm looking for Archie Marine, fellows. Do you know where he is to-night?" Immediately one of the men stepped forward. "My name is Marine," he said, "What's up?" He had a pleasant way of speaking, and it was soon apparent that he embodied all the good qualities which the two darkies on Front street bridge had invested him with. "It's something important, Marine; come with me and I'll tell you." Without a word the man turned his back upon the jolly companions with whom he had been lately carousing, and together we left the place. We went two blocks up the street, and here, under the shelter of a drug store, I told him I wanted to get as far down the coast as Jacksonville, Fla. He said he thought he could help me do so. "The boats no longer run from here to Georgetown, S. C.," he said, "but there's a boat from Wilmington to Southport, N. C., daily for seventy-five cents, and you can easily walk across the sands from Southport to Georgetown in a day and a half. You'll not be lonesome," he added, "for there are houses every few miles, and I'll write you a note to a friend of mine in Georgetown, who'll take you to Charleston, S. C., and another note to the engineer who runs between Charleston and Jacksonville." This was great! I was to get nearly a thousand miles on my journey without incurring the risk of beating a train. The mere contemplation of beating a train seemed to stir up all the animosity in my nature towards all train officials. What! I, John R. Peele, the boy who had always been so careful at home about washing his face and keeping his clothes brushed, attempt to hide on a train, and beat his fare? No, I was to preserve my dignity and travel like a gentleman on a large steamboat to Jacksonville, and then other means would surely present themselves, as probably another boat ran from Jacksonville to Galveston, Texas. Splendid idea! Why the trip was going to prove easy--a regular "cinch," and I could afford to laugh at the train people now, and that for a good long time, too, but alas! my joy was short-lived, for I was soon to learn the truth of the old adage: "The best laid plans ofttimes go astray." We entered the drug store, and Marine, after much effort, composed the notes, which he wrote down in my memorandum book. The following is a reproduction of one of them, verbatim, taken from the same little book, which I yet own: "ENGINEER, Mr. J. Dunn wil you bee kind enough to help my yung friend over to J. and let me hear from you oblige" ARCHIE MARINE. I was also given a letter of introduction to his brother, William Marine, who is a very popular Jacksonville citizen, and who is superintendent of the Clyde Line Docks in that city. The author desires to publicly thank Mr. Marine through this book for that service, and feels confident, had he ever reached Georgetown, the notes would undoubtedly have been of much assistance. At 2 p. m. the following day I boarded the boat for Southport, and knowing how I was to travel on leaving home, I had only brought along one suit of clothes, which I had on. It was a nice fitting khaki suit, with prominent brass buttons, and seemed to be the very thing for the wear and tear of a long journey. It was a homeguard suit, though I was no homeguard, and had never been one, but purchased the suit just before leaving home. Now, as the reader may not be aware, Southport is a favorite camping resort of North Carolina's home guards, and as luck would have it, there was a company encamped there at this particular time. [Illustration] Up to this time I had paid no heed to what I was wearing, but it was soon obvious that I was attracting unusual attention. There were three or four men in blue uniforms on the boat, who seemed to give me their whole attention, for everywhere I went on the boat they would follow me and begin their whisperings, and it was fast becoming a nuisance, when, finally, one of them stepped up to me and asked: "Are you a home guard?" "I am not," I replied civilly, realizing my clothes warranted the question. "The reason I asked," he said, "there has been a desertion in one of the companies lately, and the description of the deserter fits you. If you were to land there now and suddenly make off across the sands towards Georgetown--I had informed him of my intention--you would quite likely be overtaken and held three or four days for identification," he said. Having never been a home guard, I did not know whether the man was playing a practical joke on me or was telling the truth, but I did not want to be detained there for several days, and I was inclined to believe what he said was the truth. However, I did not betray this fact. Instead, I laughed and remarked that I was not afraid; but all three of the men stoutly maintained that they had tried to do me a favor, and seeing that I appeared to take it as a joke, one of the men finally got angry and wished me all sorts of bad things, and said he hoped I would be arrested as soon as the boat landed. The cabin was filled with passengers, and soon it was the topic of conversation, and some thought I would be held, while others took the opposite side. Sitting almost in front of me was a well dressed man, whom, I noticed, had taken no part in the conversation, and he, catching my eye for a moment, winked at me and arose and left the cabin. Soon after I followed him to a deserted part of the boat. "I am a Philadelphia drummer," he said, "and don't know which side to stand on, but if you will go to the engine room, I will follow soon with a sample grip of cheap clothing, and you may pick out a cheap suit free of charge, if you will cut the buttons off your khaki coat and give them to me," and I readily agreed and the change was soon effected. Whether I was the victim of a practical joke or not, I have never learned, but if so, I was ahead of the game in the clothing by a long sight, for I had selected a good, warm suit. And now the strangest part of all, I had decided not to land in Southport. It was seventy-two miles to Georgetown, and bad walking in the sand, I was told. The more I thought of it, the sicker I became, and now what was I to do? Turn tramp? Never! Beating the trains would be infinitely preferable, and I would go back to Wilmington and do so. The boat landed and discharged the passengers, when, to everyone's surprise, I remained on board, and just what they thought I am unable to say. Quite likely the Philadelphia drummer thought the joke was on him, for I had told him I was so eager to get to Georgetown. Passengers returning to the city now filed on, and in a short time the boat cast off and headed for Wilmington. On the return trip I noticed I was charged twenty-five cents more than when coming down, and I supposed the home guards were allowed this discount. We landed in Wilmington just after dark. My lodging, breakfast and dinner had deprived me of seventy-five cents, and the trip to Southport had cost $1.25, which left me the sum of $2.00, but I had no occasion to regret my trip down the river, for as a result I was now wearing an early spring suit. All of my fond hopes of reaching Jacksonville easily were now cast to the ground. Gathering up my bundles and the khaki suit, I made my way on shore. CHAPTER II. _Run Out of Town by the Chadbourn Police--Cash Running Low--Getting Schedules Mixed--The First Blush of Shame._ It would be hard to describe my feelings as I started up town. I was hungry and ate a good supper, though I felt like crying as the cashier took my twenty-five cents, for I had never been penniless in a strange town in my life, and now my stock of nerve was weighed exactly by just what money I had left; but the worst thing that hindered my progress, I was heartily ashamed of what I was going to attempt to do. Arriving at Market Square, I experienced no difficulty shortly afterwards in striking an acquaintance with a rather shabbily dressed young man, who seemed to know all about the trains. Finding that I was eager to leave at once, he remarked: "You have just about fifteen minutes to leave Wilmington on a freight train to-night. The last freight train pulls out at 8:15 to-night, and it is now 8 o'clock." Luckily what little baggage I owned was with me, and in another moment I was rapidly walking to the place named. I quickly saw this wouldn't do, though, for it was nearly a mile to the depot, and turning into a residence street, I broke into a run. Panting for breath I reached the railroad yards. There was no sign of a train pulling out, nor was there one making up, and so far as I could see there was not the slightest evidence of life about the yards, and it began to look like another practical joke had been played on me. Just across the tracks at this point are a good many small tenement houses, for the most part occupied by colored people, who are employed by the railroad company. Calling out one of the occupants of these houses, I asked him if the 8:15 freight had gone. "The schedule's been changed, and there ain't no 8:15 freight," said the darkey. "The last night freight for Florence left about an hour ago." To reach Jacksonville, I would have to go through Florence, S. C., and Savannah, Ga. "If you'll go to Hilton Bridge to-morrow evening," said the darkey, "you might be able to catch a passenger train that passes about 3 p. m. on Sundays." Hilton Bridge spans the Cape Fear River near this point, and all trains are required by the law to slow up before crossing. For this information the man received a buttonless khaki suit. The next morning was Sunday, and after paying my lodging I had but $1.35. Hardship was certainly beginning to stare me in the face at an early stage of the trip. Oh! how I wished now I had stayed at home, where my every wish had been gratified by tender, loving hands, but it was too late! My pride was up in arms, and I would see the game through to the bitter end. On this day I ate neither breakfast nor dinner, and early in the afternoon I repaired to the bridge to wait. The man who runs a small "pop shop" on the Wilmington side of the bridge amused me with stories of the many young men he had seen beat their way from this point, and I got him to tell me just how the others had done, and was becoming quite brave, till he began describing how he had seen one man miss his footing, and showed me the spot where the cars had run over both legs. The train was coming! And the supreme test of the trip was at hand. I took up a position at the curve, which is about two hundred yards from the bridge. The engineer bestowed a quick glance at me as he passed, then his gaze wandered ahead. Grabbing up the two bundles, which were hidden behind a telegraph pole, I made a quick dash forward and succeeded in boarding the first coach from the engine, commonly known as the "blind baggage." I didn't stop on the car platform, as is usually done, but crawled to the top of the tender, which was well loaded with coal. As near as possible I made things comfortable by placing the largest lumps of coal out of reach, thus enabling me to partly conceal myself by lying down. Exultation was now mingled with excitement. I had just begun to congratulate myself when, to my dismay, I noted that the train was slackening speed. A moment later it stopped. Footsteps now sounded, hurriedly approaching the engine. I lay quite still, almost afraid to breathe, as the conductor and porter came up. "Come down from there! Come down!" cried the conductor. I raised up intending to ask him to let me go. "Come down, quick!" he cried. "Tramps and hobos are not allowed on this train." This was quite enough for John Reginald Peele, and without any more ado he crawled down. My first impulse was to knock out my insulter with a lump of hard coal, but better judgment prevailed, and I soon reached the ground by his side. After all, I reasoned, he was only performing his duty in putting me down, and he was fully justified in calling me a tramp and a hobo, for I was not only acting both these parts very well, but was now looking the part. [Illustration: "Come down quick!" he cried. "Tramps and hobos are not allowed on this train."] Before boarding the train I had been spotlessly clean. Now my hands were black, my white collar soiled, and my new clothes nearly ruined. This was the picture I presented to a score or more of curious passengers, who had poked their heads out of the car windows to ascertain the cause of the delay. In deep shame I hung my head, and it seemed that everyone of those passengers had recognized me. This was mere fancy, of course, for I was then over a hundred miles from home. At any rate, there was one thing certain. I had been left and the train was now belching forth black smoke far up the road. Those who had witnessed my defeat from the "pop shop" on the other side were now eagerly awaiting me as I recrossed the bridge, and they were ready with sympathy as I told them how I had been put down. "That train goes to Charlotte, anyway," said the storekeeper. "I think the next one, which is due in about twenty minutes, is the Florence train." A good many men will live half their life in a place and yet never know the exact time a certain train is due, nor where it is bound, and I would have to rely on my own luck, for it was quickly apparent that he was one of the class who are never profoundly sure of anything. Had I gone to Charlotte I would have been taken completely out of my way, at the very outset, causing all kinds of trouble, and this served a good deal to show me the exact size of the job I had undertaken. Most of my fear had now vanished. No real harm had resulted in my first attempt at beating a train, and the tinge of excitement had proven quite fascinating. Of course the local authorities of the hundreds of towns I must pass through had to be considered, and indeed this was now my greatest fear, for, in a good many towns, as the reader is perhaps aware, a man caught beating a train suffers the penalty of from one to twelve months hard labor on the county roads. A second train was coming; and now was the time for me to make good! This time I boarded the train without exciting suspicion. A repetition of my former antics quickly followed, and I was soon lying flat upon the coal, gripping the top of the tender now, though, for my uncomfortable bed of coal had suddenly assumed the motion of a cradle, as the result of the train's sudden increase of speed. Wilmington rapidly receded from view, and with a feeling of joy, savored with suppressed excitement, I closed my eyes for a moment. Where I was going and what I would do when I got there were thoughts that chased through my brain. I tried to picture far off Arizona, with its mountains and barren deserts, and wondered if it would cure or benefit my asthma--I would go direct to Solomonsville, Arizona, where our State Treasurer, Lacy, had been cured. Suddenly I sat up. "What a fool I am," I muttered. "Sitting here in plain view, to be arrested at the first station we stop." In a few moments I had dug out a large hole in the coal and crawled into it, placing the largest lumps around the edge of the opening to help shield me from view. Every thing went well until about dark, when we reached the small town of Chadbourn, N. C., fifty-seven miles from Wilmington. Here the man at the pump house, which is located close to the depot, had seen an uncovered foot, and called the conductor's attention to it. The conductor, who was a good sort of a man, had discovered my presence on the train long before reaching Chadbourn, and so had others of the train's crew. The man in the baggage car was even taking care of my bundles, which he had allowed me to deposit in a corner of the car. Unaware of the fact that I had been discovered, I lay perfectly still, afraid to move hand or foot, and it seemed to me the train would never start. Several people approached the engine, including a policeman of the town and the conductor. "Come down off that coal pile," cried the conductor. There was no mistaking the command, and I crawled down. If I was a sight before, I was a whole show now, for I was smutty from head to foot. "I didn't know he was up there," said the conductor. Inwardly I thanked the conductor, whom I knew had been trying to help me along. "I'll take charge of this young man," said the policeman. "Please get my things," I said. "I hid them in the baggage car." [Illustration: "I'll take charge of this young man," said the policeman.] CHAPTER III. _Snatched From Death--Forty-nine Miles on a Hand-car--Finding a Partner._ Two-score people had seen me pulled down from the tender, and were now watching the result of my sudden discomfiture with interest, and with a look of deep humiliation and embarrassment--for the most part assumed--for my vanity had materially suffered in that fifty-seven mile ride, I now stood in the presence of the policeman. Apparently I could not even look up at the cruel, cold-staring crowd of country folks that thickly gathered around me. Evidently the policeman was touched, and unaware of the fact that I was playing on his sympathy, he questioned me as to where I lived, where I was going, etc., all of which I answered in a straightforward manner, adding that I was going West to cure the asthma, and that I had letters of recommendation. I had several other letters of this kind in my pocket, but remembering that home reference is said to be the best, I selected only two from the bunch--those of Mr. John Shackelford and Mr. Frank Powell, and here I must beg their pardon, most humbly, for using their kind notes of praise like this, and am sure they'll forgive me, for I was in a tight box. After reading the two papers over carefully, he slowly remarked, with a puzzled look on his face: "Look here! it's against my rule, but I'm going to let you go this time. Just scoot down that track, now, and remember," he added, as I started through the increasing throng, "if you return I shall run you in." There was nothing to do but walk, and I started down the tracks, walking--I knew not where. My scheme had worked and I was free, but far from being in a happy frame of mind. A small hand-mirror showed me a face that frightened me with its blackness, and my hands were in even a worse condition. "Oh, if my people could only see me now!" I mused. A sudden recollection quickened my pace--in the terms of the law I was a vagrant, and what, if the Chadbourn official should change his mind about letting me go. This was a phase of the case I had not considered before, being a vagrant, and darkness had settled down, and I had been silently walking along the pathway of the track for some time, when my melancholy musings were suddenly put to flight. A quarter of a mile ahead a light was shining. "Some farm-house built near the railroad," I speculated; "wonder if they'll give me shelter." Drawing nearer, I discovered my mistake. The light was issuing from the windows of a small store. A large railroad board in front of the place told me I had reached the town of Grice--containing three or four small dwellings, one store and a town pump; the place is hardly on the map, though it was a boon to me just now. On entering the store I was surprised to find a good number of people trading, notwithstanding the fact it was Sunday. Several darkies were in the place, and calling one of them outside, we headed for the pump. "Been hoboing?" asked the darkey, beginning to pump water for me to wash. "Yes," I replied, not relishing his familiarity, "I'm going down to Florida." Now its a fact, though not generally known, that between South Carolina and Florida, both being warm sections, a good many of the colored gentry are continually traveling back and forth the year round, but very little, if any, of this migration reaches up to North Carolina or Virginia. "I'm going South myself to-night," said the darkey. "Can't I go along with you?" My ablutions ceased. "Say that over again, my man. Did you want to go with me, you say?" He was a large, powerfully built fellow, with a face calculated to give a timid man chills, and that the suggestion frightened me, I must admit, for suppose he attacked me during the night, thinking I had money with me. Creepy sensations began to steal over me, and yet it will be better than being alone, I thought. "I know the ropes pretty well, young feller," he added. This settled it, for I did not know the "ropes," as he expressed it. "You may go with me," I said. I was dying for some kind of companionship, and being the possessor of unusually good strength myself, as a result of years of physical culture, I saw no serious cause for fearing my formidable looking companion, providing I could keep awake during the night, so, purchasing a bite to eat at the store and some smoking tobacco for my colored friend, we began to discuss a plan of action. "We'll have to go back to Chadbourn and lay for a late freight to-night," said he, "for the trains seldom stop in Grice." I was afraid the authorities of the town would nab me, but he only laughed at my timidity. We left Grice about 8 p. m. and set out for Chadbourn, some three miles off. We had gone perhaps a mile on the return journey when I observed another darkey leading up a close rear. I didn't like this for a cent, however I kept quiet, and our dusky follower soon came up quite close. My grandfather, Dr. Hicks, of Rocky Mount, N. C., famous for his writings and adventures of Civil War life, has many a time illustrated to me where strategem is better than strength. On one occasion, when he was a young man, he was proceeding along a lonely country road. It was nearly dark and several miles to the nearest house, and in those days houses were scarce and the people were more lawless, and, suddenly, a thick set, fierce looking man, holding a stout cudgel in his hand, emerged from the dense woods, which were on either side of the road, and began quickly to overtake him. That my grandfather was pretty well scared can well be imagined, but being a ventriloquist and full of tricks, he soon dispatched his enemy. Glancing into the woods nearby, he shouted: "Come on Jim!" then using his powers of ventriloquism, a hoarse voice close at hand seemed to say, "All right, be there in a minute." The next moment the man who had been following him plunged deep into the forest and grandfather was left to proceed alone. That these two men were in collusion and had designs on robbing me I now felt convinced. Our late addition had drawn up dangerously close. It was pitch dark, and evidently he was unaware I had discovered his presence in the party, and the other fellow was exerting himself about this time to keep me entertained with stories of "hobo" life. It was up to me to use strategem, and use it quick! "Confound the luck!" I exclaimed, "I forgot those pistol balls back at the store, but it is all right, Bill"--Bill was the name he had called himself at the pump--"my little Iver Johnson is full loaded, and good for at least five brakemen. Ha! ha! ha! they had better let us go through to Florence, I guess." Most darkies are afraid of a gun in a white man's hand, and these were no exceptions. The third man was not long in speaking out, and as if he had just joined us. "Howdy, gentlemen," was the expressive salutation, "going over to Chadbourn?" "Yes," I retorted. "We's gwyne down to Florida," supplemented Bill. "Dat's strange, I'se gwyne dat way myself," muttered the darkey, "let me go too." "We don't own de roads," shrewdly observed the man named Bill. "Well, I'll go den," declared the newcomer, and thus they arranged it to suit themselves, and I said nothing, though I mentally concluded to shift them both at the first opportunity. One at a time we filed across the main street of Chadbourn an hour later, and, undiscovered, made our way to a large pile of railroad ties some two hundred yards from the depot. The darkies, unconcerned, stretched out full length upon the timber, and their heavy snoring soon denoted that they had passed into the land of dreams, but their lively trombone music quickly became disgusting, forcing me to seek another pile of the timber for rest. My thoughts drifted back several years to the scores of positions and hundreds of places I had been in, but none ranked so low as this; and again, thoughts of the warm, comfortable home I had left stole over me. About midnight my reveries were disturbed by the labored puffing of a heavy laden freight train, which had just begun to ascend the long grade outside of Chadbourn. My companions were awakened and had silently joined me in the darkness. The train had pulled up the grade now and the cars had attained a dangerous speed. As the engine dashed by, my companions came near knocking me down in their greedy endeavor to secure the handles of the first two cars from the engine. With the throttle open a car's length is a serious matter to the man on the ground, but I caught the third car safely and climbed aboard. Chadbourn was left like a flash, and a few moments later we went hurling through Grice like a shot out of a gun. The train was a through freight, and we were bound for Florence. Crawling back on my hands and knees through the darkness several car lengths, I found an empty coal car. In this car I would be shielded from most of the cold wind, which was blowing at a terrific rate over the top of the train. Carefully descending to the car and peering over the edge I was surprised to find another passenger, a mild looking mulatto, who, upon finding that I was not a brakeman, as he at first had supposed, became quite sociable. "I'm also bound for Jacksonville," said he, "and we'll go along together." The proposal suited me to a T, as he added that he was an expert at the business, having been over the same road several times before, and knew every move to make to avoid being "nabbed." The other two men now got into the car, at which the mulatto immediately drew off to the opposite end. "Two together is safer," he said, as I joined him. A drizzling rain set in and we were left to ourselves. "What have you got there?" he asked, some hours later, stumbling against my paper bundles. "Medicine and clothes," I retorted. He laughed. "You'll never get to Jacksonville with all that truck," he said. "You'd better get clear of it." So far my baggage had been a source of constant annoyance, and I, therefore, readily agreed to part with it. It had ceased raining now, and the dim light in the east told of the near approach of day. The lights of Florence could be seen faintly gleaming in the distance as we rapidly drew near, and there was no time to lose, so throwing off coat, shoes and hat, I quickly tore open both bundles, and out in a heap rolled shirts, collars, socks, photographs, cough syrup, quick asthma cures--but space forbids naming all the things. The bundles had been carefully packed by a loving mother, who had thoughtfully placed in one of them a small Bible. I felt better as I placed the little book in an inside pocket, and I would read it and daily pray to God to take me safely through the long journey before me. My next move was to astonish the negro at the number of shirts and socks I got into. "Put on all you can and be quick," I exclaimed, in answer to his questioning gaze. He needed no second invitation, and I now began to stuff my pockets with the smaller things, again inviting him to follow suit. About the first thing he grabbed up was a $1.50 razor, which I politely deprived him of. Within a few minutes the train slackened speed and pulled into the yards. Quickly alighting and bidding me to follow, the negro made off from the tracks at full speed. At first I thought he was running away with my things, but the wisdom of the move was soon apparent, for at a safe distance, he pointed out to me two slow moving lights going up and down both sides of the train we had just deserted. "Spotters," he whispered, breathing heavily. I realized then just how green I was at the profession of hoboing. Undoubtedly I would have again been picked up, and this time it might not have gone so easily with me as at Chadbourn. For nearly an hour we walked about the streets of Florence looking for a restaurant, but it was yet too early for them to open, and, disappointed, we returned to the railroad yards. Two or three trains were beginning to pull out when we arrived. Plunging between two long freights, and walking rapidly, my companion began to scan the car doors. "In here," he presently whispered, drawing up before an empty car. "This is the Junction train, and will leave in a few minutes." Afraid of going wrong and being pretty well frightened, I hesitated. "What Junction? Are you sure this is the right train?" I questioned, fearing the cars might be made up for Atlanta or Columbia. His reply was to furtively glance up and down the tracks, and the next instant he had vanished through the half open door. Greatly frightened, I followed. Quickly and silently we closed the door, leaving us in impenetrable darkness. It was not long before an engine bumped against the cars, and shortly after we pulled out. The day dawned beautiful and clear, and being warm, we opened the car door to enjoy the sunshine. We had gone some fifty or sixty miles down the road, perhaps, when the mulatto declared his intention of getting out to buy something to eat. "You had better stay in here," I called, but the next moment he was gone. To my dismay a few minutes later the train slowly began to move off, then faster and faster. Downhearted, I sat down in the end of the car alone. The wheels began to roar and sing with increasing speed. Once more I cast a last despairing glance at the door. Suddenly a hand was thrust into the opening! In a flash it had disappeared. Rushing to the door and looking out I was horrified to see the man who had lately left me lying helpless, stretched upon the ground. No doubt, in jumping he had miscalculated the position of the rod under the door, and as a result of the misstep, had been thrown from the car with considerable force. Being unusually intelligent, and of a quiet kind of disposition, I had taken quite a fancy to the fellow by this time, and it was with a sigh of genuine relief I noted he had not been run over. Struggling to his feet with one hand pressed against his head, he waved to me for a moment and then slowly staggered off the pathway of the track. The man who had claimed to be an "expert" was left, and I was soon miles away, but such is life. Going back into the car, and being exhausted from hunger, I soon fell asleep. My last conscious thought was a desire to wake up in Savannah, Ga. Two hours later it would be time to change trains at Charleston Junction for Savannah, but being blissfully ignorant of this fact, my slumbers were undisturbed. I slept long and sound--then with a start awoke. The car was no longer moving. I listened intently for a brakeman, but the grave-like silence was unbroken. Darkness had long since settled down. Now fully awake and being of a logical turn of mind, I began to speculate. Evidently, we had run into Savannah late at night and were now in the train yards. Noiselessly I tiptoed to the door--imitating my late companion--and with great caution poked my head out. [Illustration: "Surely my hunger must be causing some horrible nightmare--"] The moon was just rising from behind a distant cloud-bank. Surely my hunger must be causing some horrible nightmare, and directly in front of me was a large cabbage patch--the largest I had ever seen, in fact. Countless thousands of cabbage were growing on every hand, and as far as the eye could reach large nice ones they were, too, some of them growing so close to the railroad track as to be almost under my feet. I had eaten but once since my arrival in Wilmington Saturday night from Southport, and it was now Monday night. I ceased to remember I was trying to reach Savannah, nor did I speculate long as to the reality of the vision before me. Springing from the car door into the patch, I sat down before one of the largest of the vegetables and had eaten nearly half of it when I heard some one approaching. With a guilty start I sprang to the railroad track. Now would be a good time to locate my position. The man soon came up. "Hello! my friend, how far is it to Savannah?" I asked. "About 150 miles, sir," said the man looking at me curiously. The truth dawned upon me instantly, while sleeping I had been switched off on the wrong road. The man started down the track. "Say, hold on there a minute!" I cried. "How far is it to Charleston Junction?" "Forty-seven miles," replied the man. "Well, how far is it to the next town, then?" The fellow's short answers were exasperating in the extreme. "Three miles," he hollered, fast getting out of ear shot. I must confess I completely lost temper. Making a trumpet of my hands, I shouted: "I say, you escaped lunatic, what is the name of the town?" "Meggetts," came back the faint reply, and the man passed out of range. The solution of the problem was now easy. Not knowing I must change trains at Charleston Junction, I had been carried forty-seven miles out of my way down a branch road. Twenty-four empty box-cars had been side-tracked to be loaded with cabbage, and I had been in one of the cars. After an hour's walk I arrived at Meggetts. It was near 11 p. m., though all the stores, five, I think, were open. Appeasing my hunger at a small restaurant in the place, I had just $1.05 of the original $4.00 I had left home with. Upon inquiry, I found that a freight would leave Meggetts at 2 a. m. that night bound for the North. The train was loaded with early vegetables, and I was told would make a short stay at the Junction. Eighteen colored men, whose homes were in Charleston, boarded the train that night when I did. The men had been sent down from Charleston to help load the train. The brakemen, whose instructions were to let the men ride free kept to themselves on the train, and without stop we ran back to the Junction. The men clambered down and were soon walking the remaining few miles to their homes. There are several tracks at Charleston Junction, but before departing the men showed me the track leading to Savannah. About daylight a freight pulled upon this track and came to a short standstill. Once more I was fortunate in finding an empty car, and getting into it unobserved. I was not absolutely sure the darkies had not deceived me, but then a man beating the roads has got to take all kinds of chances, and I was fast learning the fact. At noon that day I arrived safely in Savannah, that is to say, I arrived within a mile of the town proper, where I ran the risk of breaking my neck by jumping off, but that was much better than being pulled into the yards in broad open daylight to be arrested. There is one thing peculiar about Savannah, which can't fail to impress a stranger on his first visit. For the size of the town, I think it contains three times as many colored people as any other city in the United States. That afternoon I found the time to read a chapter in the little Bible my mother had given me. I shall always believe it was the work of a kind Providence that sent me upon the streets of Savannah that night in quest of some one to go with me to Jacksonville. Luckily for me this time too, as subsequent events will prove. It was past midnight. Again my conveyance was a freight train; this time bound for Jacksonville, Fla., and again I had a darkey for a traveling companion. We boarded the freight one mile from the city limits at a slow-down crossing. There was no empty car to get into and the only other place was on the end of a loaded flat-car, where we were shielded somewhat from the cold winds blowing over the train. The rain was coming down in a steady downpour, and had been for two hours or more. We were still standing close together on the end of the car, and had entered Northern Florida, and lying or sitting down in the rain would have been courting death of cold. There was nothing to do but stand up and take our medicine quietly. The cold winds had chilled us to the very marrow. Weak and faint from the loss of food and sleep, and from the high nervous strain I had been subjected to, I was fast becoming insensible. I forgot that I was standing on the end of a wildly rocking flat-car rushing through inky darkness at the rate of forty miles an hour. The danger seemed fading away now, and I imagined I was home again resting in my own comfortable bed. The limit of human endurance had been reached, and poor, exhausted nature gave up the battle. Slowly my eyes closed. "It will be for just one sweet moment, just one," I promised, and the next instant I was fast asleep. Two rough hands reached out and encircled me about the waist just as I was toppling between the swift running cars, and drew me back to safety. "Good God! young feller, don't trifle wid your life like dat," exclaimed the frightened darkey. In a vague way I realized my danger and promised to do better, but I was too sleepy to be much frightened, and inside of a half an hour I had again closed my eyes, promising not to go to sleep, but the promise was broken, and once more I was indebted to the faithful colored man for saving my life. [Illustration: "Good God! young feller, don't trifle wid your life like dat," exclaimed the frightened darky.] It was now breaking day and the train was slackening speed. The next stop was Woodbine, Fla. Here the conductor discovered us and we were put off. It was not long before the stores opened up. There are but two or three stores in Woodbine, though one of them is a very large one. It was in this store we got something to eat. A young lady waited on us, who informed me that Jacksonville was forty-nine miles away. Guessing our intention, she remarked: "You can't walk it, for twelve miles from here is a long trestle, which is patrolled by a man with a Winchester rifle. He is in the employ of the government and it's his duty to see that no one crosses over on foot. Every twelve hours he is relieved by a man who watches the bridge at night." "When is the next freight due?" I asked. "To-morrow morning," was the reply, "it's the same one you just got off." Things were beginning to assume a gloomy aspect. "Is there a ferry?" I asked, brightening up. "There was so little travel the ferry was abandoned over a year ago," replied the young lady. "Well, good-bye; if there is no other way, we'll have it to swim." We had gone probably a mile down the track and had begun to look out for a place to put in a few hours sleep, when looking back, I was overjoyed to discover a hand-car rapidly overtaking us. Stepping into the middle of the track I signalled the car to stop. "Hello, captain! we want to help you peddle that car across the bridge. Do you go that far?" "Yes, I'm the track inspector, and go as far as Jacksonville," was the reply. "Let us go?" I questioned. "I don't know; I need two more men, but white men, as a rule, are no good peddling these cars on a long run," was the retort. "I'm as strong as either of the two men now propelling you, sir," and, to prove the assertion, I rolled up my sleeve. The man's eyes opened wide in astonishment, for notwithstanding I'm an asthma sufferer, his gaze rested on an arm that had undergone five years of hard physical culture training. "You may go," he said, "and I'm glad to get you." We passed the man with the Winchester rifle safely, and at 3 p. m. I got off in the suburbs of Jacksonville, parting with the darkey, who is the right owner of the reward offered in the front pages of this book, and whom the track inspector had engaged for railroad work at $1.00 per day. It was nearly two miles down town, and being fatigued from my recent exertions, I invested five cents in a street car ride. The car was full of gaily dressed people, white being the prominent color, all of whom seemed bent upon some kind of pleasure, judging from their happy faces. Race prejudice is strong here. Half the car was devoted to the white passengers and the other half to the colored, and is rigidly enforced. The gay costumes on the streets, and the brisk, business-like air of the people, next attracted my attention. Nearly all of the streets are broad and well paved, and some of the business blocks remind one of Baltimore, Md. The whole scene was an entire surprise to me. But what impressed me more than all else was the long line of beautiful palms, extending quite close on either side of the street car line. CHAPTER IV. _"Look Out for Hoodlums"--Retribution for Deception--Stranded in New Orleans--Meet with Kind Hearts._ I left the car at a point near the Clyde Line docks, and shortly after succeeded in finding William Marine--Archie Marine's brother--who informed me that the boats were no longer running between Jacksonville and Gulf points. "There's but one way I could help you, young fellow. If you desire, I'll get you on a boat, as a cook's assistant, that will take you to New York City, from which point you might be able to work your way to San Francisco on an ocean liner." "I thank you, but will risk working my way overland," I replied, and left the wharf. Sometime during the afternoon I smeared nearly a whole bottle of vaseline upon my face and neck, which had begun to burn like fire, as a result of my exposure to the sun while peddling the hand-car. At 9 p. m. that night I made my way to the Union Depot. Some five or six passenger trains were under the shed. A man in the crowd pointed out to me the train he thought was bound for New Orleans. Five minutes later I was in the express car. A pleasant looking young man, I should say about twenty-two years of age, was checking off the express, assisted by an older gentleman. "Does this train go to New Orleans?" I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. "No, it goes to Montgomery," replied the young man, eyeing me closely for a moment, and then turning to his work. "May I go with you to Montgomery?" I whispered. The young man again glanced at me, but vouchsafed no reply. Though not well known, it's no less a fact that most roads of the United States to-day employ numerous detectives--known as 'spotters'--who travel over the road in various disguises, and whose business it is to discover any employee of the road assisting some poor chap to beat the train. Sometimes the detective thus employed dresses himself like a tramp or hobo and appeals to the engineer, baggageman or conductor to help him get to a certain point. Woe be unto the kindhearted employee who does help him, for a few days later he is discharged almost without notice. Later on he finds that his goodness of heart was bestowed upon a railroad detective. Those who understand this can more easily appreciate my present difficulty. Desperate diseases require desperate remedies; and I hereby admit that I told the express messenger a falsehood. There was little time to lose. Every moment the express packages were being hurled through the door, and the train would soon be ready to depart on its long four hundred mile journey. "I can show positive proof, in the way of letters, etc., that I'm no 'spotter,'" I whispered. "For Heaven's sake don't refuse, old man. My parents formerly lived in North Carolina, as the heading of this reference shows, but years ago they moved to Texas, and I went to New York. My parents are poor and I'm their only support. Having been robbed in New York and learning by letter that my mother is near death's door, I've decided to work my way to her. Pardon me saying it; you look to be a pretty square sort of fellow. Please don't refuse the chap who stands before you down and out this time." The work of checking up had been finished, and the elderly man, after whispering something in the young express messenger's ear, crawled out of the car door to the ground. A moment later the door shut with a bang. I had succeeded, and five minutes later was again traveling up the road without a ticket. I've confessed to telling a lie, and I must now confess to having acted the part of a fool. I had been sleeping on some express packages in the forward end of the car, and upon awakening glanced at my watch. It was 4 a. m. Throughout the night the train had been running at a high rate of speed and I figured we ought to be somewhere near Montgomery. It'll be a great joke to tell him where my home really is, and to let him know how I fooled him, for being near Montgomery, he'll hardly trouble to put me down anyway now, I reasoned, and without thinking, I gave him the whole story of just how neatly I had deceived him. Instantly the young man's manner changed. "So you fooled me, eh! Well, the next stop is Valdosta, Ga. You'll have to get off there," was the sharp retort. A half hour later I was walking the streets of Valdosta, a much wiser man. How true is the old saying: "A wise man keeps his tongue in his heart, but a fool keeps it in his mouth." It was near daylight and bitter cold. A night cop directed me to a lodging house. After I had rung the bell several times the landlady appeared. She had hastily dressed and, with a frown on her face, stood shivering in the cold. "Madam, have you any vacant rooms?" "You might share a room with my son," she replied hurriedly. "Thank you ever so much. What will it cost?" I asked. "Twenty-five cents," was the pistol-like retort. "Do you want the room?" "I now got to the point. "Madam, the night is most over, and my money is low; would you accept 15 cents for the rest of the night?" "I suppose I shall have to let you in," she said. Five minutes later I had waked up her son, who began saying uncomfortable things about some people coming in at all times of the night; but the remainder of his remarks fell on deaf ears, for I was fast asleep. It was the first bed I had been in since leaving home. About 10 a. m. I awoke much refreshed. The depot was close by, and the ticket agent informed me that the train bound for Madison, Fla., would pull out in a few minutes. The fare from Valdosta to Madison is eighty-five cents, and I only had sixty cents. Acting upon the impulse I boarded the train without purchasing a ticket. Madison is on the main line between Jacksonville and Pensacola, and would, therefore, afford a better opportunity to catch a west-bound train than if I went to Montgomery. In due time I was confronted by the conductor. "How much to Madison?" I asked, feeling in my pockets. "Eighty-five cents," said the conductor. "I haven't but 60 cents, conductor; carry me as far as you can for that, and I'll walk the rest of the distance." A well-dressed young man looked up. "If you'll pardon me, I'll loan you 50 cents," said he. "If you'll provide me with an address to which I can return the amount, I'll accept with thanks," I replied. Taking my book he wrote down, J. M. Turner, Jr., Gainesville, Fla. "I'm cigar salesman for a Gainesville house," he said. About this time another passenger spoke out. "I'll loan you twenty-five cents myself," said he, "if you need it." Without loss of time I handed over my book, and he wrote down R. T. Davis, Hopewell, Fla., and handed me twenty-five cents. (As yet I have been unable to locate one of these gentlemen since returning home.) Madison is the Southern terminal of the road, and at this point I left the train in company with the conductor, who invited me to lunch. The freight bound for Tallahassee pulled into Madison at 4 p. m. I had no trouble in enlisting the sympathy of the conductor, a very genial sort of fellow, who told me to go back to the caboose and keep out of sight until we reached Tallahassee. We reached the capital city sometime after dark. Here are a few points about Tallahassee which are in great contrast to Jacksonville. There are no paved streets in Tallahassee; if so, I didn't see them. They are all ill-lighted--one greasy street lamp post about every six blocks. Little business. In fact, one store out of every three was vacant--those that were open were not selling anything. All the stores are on one big Main street. A street car line was started, but the town couldn't support it, and it went to smash. The leaves and other rubbish had collected upon the sidewalks in great drifts. The fine dust floating in the air came near giving me the asthma, and with a feeling of relief I wended my way back to the railroad yards. To keep warm that night I helped the darkey fire the engine at the ice factory, which is located near the depot, until 10 p. m., when I boarded a freight train bound for Grand River Junction, ninety-nine miles away, at which place I landed about 3 a. m. The next division was a stretch of a hundred miles or more from the Junction to Pensacola. This was the L. & N. road. I have since learned that it is about the hardest road in the United States to beat. No long freights pass over the road--most of the trains are "mixed," that is to say, a few box-cars and a few passenger cars. On this night the train for Pensacola had already made up. It consisted of two or three box-cars and the same number of passenger coaches. The conductor was in the depot working on some freight bills, when I approached him, requesting permission to ride on the "blind baggage" to Pensacola. "The same old story," said he, looking up. "Sorry, young man, but we can't carry you on this road." I next went to the engineer, and there met with the same refusal. Then to the express car I hurried, for the train would soon start; but again, I was met with a rebuff. There were no stores in sight, and few houses. Surely Grand River Junction would be a most dismal place to get left in, especially in my condition--only fifty cents, and that borrowed money. In desperation I ran to the front part of the engine. In the intense darkness, both fireman and engineer failed to observe a silent form spring upon the cow-catcher. The wheels began to revolve, and barring all accidents, I was due to reach Pensacola in time for dinner. Being thinly dressed and facing the damp night winds at a fifty-mile an hour rate is certainly not an enviable position. In a short time my body was so benumbed with cold I could scarcely move. Another thing, it would soon break day, and unless I could hide myself better, a discovery would follow and I would be put off. There's an old saying, which I afterwards learned: "To hobo the roads successfully, one has to give up all thought of life or death." That continued hardship lessens a man's fears of death, I have certainly learned by personal experience. With slow deliberation, I worked my way under the boiler of the engine, and among the machinery. At last I was stretched out full length under the boiler, with only one foot sticking out, which I must risk being seen. The boiler was rather warm, of course, and every moment I stayed under it it was becoming warmer. Perspiration started out in huge drops. In running from the extreme of cold I had met the extreme of heat. Only a few moments sufficed to thaw me out and then a warm, hot time began in earnest. My clothes, pressed almost against the boiler, would become so hot every few minutes I was forced to turn over upon my side and ride for a while; only to revert to the original position and torture again. Things were getting unbearable. I had heard of hobos riding under the cow-catcher. Yes, I would risk it! The train came to a standstill. The delay would hardly be a long one, for it was only a cross-roads station. I would have to work with lightning-like rapidity. About midway the boiler was an opening in the machinery, barely large enough to admit the passage of a man. Squeezing through this opening, I dropped upon the cross-ties under the engine. On all-fours I made my way along the track to the front axle of the engine, which I passed under. I had now reached the cow-catcher, but my trouble had been for naught. For some unexplainable reason the space under the cow-catcher had been nailed full of cross-beams, thus effectually barring further progress. Now, fully realizing the danger of my position, a sudden fear assailed me, and I began trembling from head to foot. It had required scarcely thirty seconds to make the discovery, and within the same minute I had turned and was again squeezing under the terrible looking axle. Clang! clang! sounded the engine bell. Considerably bruised about the hands and knees, I reached the opening just as the engine pushed off. Securing a firm grip upon a piece of machinery above the opening, and taking a step forward with the slowly moving engine, I drew myself up to safety. About 8 a. m. we reached Chipley, Fla. Here the station agent saw me, and I was pulled down. I was greasy and black, and my clothes were torn, but no limbs were missing. The conductor, agent and others came hurrying to the engine to see the man who had dared hobo under the boiler. Chipley is a fine little town of about 1,200 inhabitants, and a more sociable lot of people I've never met. It was soon mouthed about the streets how I reached the town, and for a time I was the cynosure of all eyes, though no one offered to arrest me. There are some five or six saw-mills around Chipley. About two miles from the town is a large saw-mill and brick kiln owned by J. D. Hall. A young merchant of the town informed me that Mr. Hall was badly in need of labor and was paying good prices. Even to hobo the roads, a man needs money, and I decided to stake up a bit before continuing my way. Sometime before noon I arrived at the mill. Mr. Hall looked me over quite critically. "Did you ever do any hard labor?" he asked. "Yes, sir," I untruthfully replied, for, to be candid, I had never done a day's hard work in my life. "Well, you don't look it," was the compliment. "However, I'll give you a trial at $1.50 per day. You can board with Mr. ...... for thirty cents a day." "That's unusually cheap for board," I said. "A man doing hard labor needs plenty to eat and I'm perfectly willing to pay at least $3.50 per week." Evidently he misconstrued my meaning. "My men furnish plenty to eat for any man," said he, "but you won't get any pie or cake," he retorted, eyeing me with undisguised disapproval. "O, that's all right! I can eat anything," I hastened to say. "Very well, Mr. Peele, you may come to work this afternoon. It's not far to your boarding place. Just keep the straight path through the woods there, and its the first house you get to." I'll not expose my landlord's name, but for the sake of convenience we'll call him Mr. Black. In due time I reached the Black household. The scene which met my gaze was altogether uninviting and unappetizing. I can't describe the house. There was one living room, a kitchen, and a shed room. The day was warm and several Black children were in the yard playing as I reached the gate. Upon seeing a stranger approach there was a general stampede for the back yard, some of the smaller children taking refuge behind Mrs. Black, who at that moment appeared in the open doorway. If appearances count for anything, Mrs. Black had certainly not combed her hair within several weeks, and the grime on her face and clothes was a sickening sight to contemplate. "Good morning, madam; my name is Peele; I'm to work at the saw-mill, and Mr. Hall says you'll furnish me board." "All right, just make yourself at home," she invited bashfully, and the next moment she disappeared into the dark recess of the only living room. Strictly on time, Mr. Black arrived for the noonday meal, and forthwith we proceeded to the dining-room. Both Mr. and Mrs. Black began making apologies, but, with a few jokes, I set them at ease, assuring them that I wouldn't be hard to please. To see the hard side of life would make a better man of me anyway, I reflected. There was no attempt to have clean dishes, for two sets or more of children had already eaten, and others were yet coming in. The meal consisted of rice, honey and bread. So far as I could see there was nothing else. I now saw how a man could be boarded for thirty cents a day. They'll have something more substantial for supper, I thought, beginning to crust the top of a black-looking, half-done biscuit. The biscuits were unusually large ones, weighing nearly two pounds each. A little rice and honey and the huge top of the biscuit formed my meal. There was no denying the fact, I was hungry and was enjoying my portion quite well, when Mr. Black took a sudden notion to either become funny, or spoil my appetite, I don't know which. He had been kicking up a great fuss drinking his coffee, when all at once the noise ceased. He had caught a fly in his cup. Holding up the fly by the hind leg high into the air, he smilingly announced: "I've caught a sucker!" To my astonishment Mrs. Black took it as a great joke, and began laughing heartily. Thoroughly disgusted I kept silent. It was not long before Mr. Black caught another fly. Holding up the unfortunate fly between his thumb and forefinger, and with true Florida slowness, he drawled: "Well, darlin', I've caught another sucker." I'll not dwell upon all the funny things that happened during my short stay with the Blacks. I slept in the little shed room, and every night went to bed at dark, for there was no way of obtaining anything to read. Rice and honey continued in evidence on the table throughout. Only twice was the menu changed. On these two occasions Mrs. Black's ten-year-old son varied the diet by visiting the lakes, which were near the house, and fairly teeming with fish. Wild honey and fresh fish are both good, but at the end of a hard week's work at the saw-mill, I was ready for other fields of adventure, and settling my board bill, bade Mr. and Mrs. Black good-bye. As a result of my week's labor I now had the sum of seven dollars. Mr. Hall seemed sorry at my leaving. "You'd better be careful if you intend to beat to Pensacola," said he, "for I hear there are twenty-two white men working the county roads there for hoboing." "Well, I can only wish for better luck, sir, and I must now bid you good-bye." It was late Saturday afternoon when I reached Chipley. Straightway I proceeded to the only restaurant in the little town, and my next half hour was indeed a busy one. The bill was sixty cents, but I had no regrets. The passenger train bound for Pensacola was due in Chipley just before dark. Someone told me that I could catch the train at a long trestle about four miles from the town. I set out on foot at a rapid gait for the trestle and reached it slightly in advance of the train. Having but three or four coaches and running at full speed, the engineer was unable to check the train's flight before running almost midway of the bridge. Just in the nick of time I reached the brass handles, and swung upon the lower steps of the rear car, as the train once more resumed its journey. The top part of the rear door had been let down--I suppose for ventilation. Every moment, fearing discovery, my eyes were fastened in a steady stare upon the door. I had been crouching upon the steps scarcely five minutes ere a lady passenger peered out into the fast gathering darkness. For the space of a second the head was framed in the open doorway, when, with a quick jerk, it disappeared into the brilliantly lighted car. There was no doubt she had seen me and was very much frightened. "Hey! what the ---- are you doing there?" shouted the conductor a moment later. "Going to Pensacola, if you'll allow me, sir. I'll always appreciate it, Captain, if----" "I'll wire to Caryville and allow you to be arrested if you don't either get down off this train or pay your fare," shouted the conductor. As will be remembered, I was still on the L. & N. Road, and remembering Mr. Hall's caution, decided to pay my fare. Ten minutes later I was riding on a first-class ticket to Pensacola. Out of the $5.00 bill I handed the conductor I received only twenty cents. He had taken out the full fare from Chipley, charging me for the four miles I had walked. At 10 p. m. the train pulled into the station at Pensacola. "Is there a night freight from here to Mobile?" The question was directed to a young man about my own age, who had just come out of a barber shop. "No, but there's a midnight freight to Flomaton, Ala., which is about half way, I believe. Going to hobo it?" "Yes, I may do so." "Then I'd advise you to be careful in this town, my friend. You're likely to get a job making "little rocks out of big ones." There are twenty-two of 'em at it now, and a night cop at the depot waiting to catch others. Now, the best thing you can do," he continued, "would be to walk from this town to Flomaton, and if you're going on to New Orleans, you'd better walk through all of Southern Mississippi to the State line of Louisiana, for if you're caught 'hoboing' in Mississippi, you'll get eleven months and twenty-nine days in prison. Upon being released you're allowed one day to get out of the town, and upon failing to do so, you're again arrested and thrown into jail for a like term for vagrancy." Upon hearing this I admit that I was considerably frightened; but it would never do to give up in this manner, for the trip was hardly begun yet, and if I had heeded all the advice of this nature I had received since leaving Wilmington, the probabilities are I would not yet have reached Jacksonville. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained," and I decided to either leave Pensacola on the next train or get thrown into jail for the attempt. Accordingly I started for the depot at which I had recently been landed as a first-class passenger, and reached it just as the Flomaton freight was pulling out. There was no cop in sight, for which I was deeply thankful. The train was an extremely short one and was rapidly getting under headway when I arrived. A quick glance up and down the train sufficed to show that there were no empty or flat cars along. My ride must be either in the cold winds on top or between the cars. I chose the latter place. In this position a man has to stick close to the end of only one of the two cars he is riding between, for there is always danger of the cars breaking loose and dashing him to instant death upon the tracks beneath. He can hold on to the break rod with his hands and the car bumper affords him a narrow standing room. It was six long, weary hours later--just sunrise--when, more dead than alive, I stepped from the train in Flomaton, or rather I fell off the train in Flomaton. My limbs had become cramped and stiff from standing in one position during the night's long ride, and in trying to jump off the train in the suburbs of the town, I was thrown violently to the ground, sustaining a badly bruised hand and several smaller hurts. A negro who lived near by furnished me with soap and water, though I was minus a handkerchief and was compelled to dry my face with old newspapers. Flomaton is a small town, not more than a mile from the Florida State line, and derives most of its importance from being a railroad center. I started down town in search of a restaurant, but had not proceeded far when I was overtaken by a man who inquired: "Have you heard the news?" "What news?" I asked. "Why, a railroad man was shot and instantly killed near the depot this morning, just before light." "Who shot him?" I asked. "As yet they have no clew," replied the man, looking at me keenly, "but it is thought he was shot by a stranger." We were now near the depot. A passenger train was steamed up. "Where does that train go," I asked. "It leaves in a few minutes for Mobile," he replied, parting with me at a nearby street corner. No sooner was he out of sight than I started on a 2:40 pace for the engine. All thoughts of breakfast fled. A man had been shot dead in the town, and as yet there was no clue as to the identity of the murderer. The citizens of the place would soon be up and astir on the streets, and I stood a fine chance of being arrested on suspicion. With a single bound I was in the engine cab, and the next moment I was pleading with the engineer to take me to Mobile. That my pleading was earnest need not be said, for I won the case. "Wait until we get a good start and then swing the 'blind baggage.' I won't see you," he grinned, "but its rather risky going into Mobile on a passenger train in broad open day, for there's generally two or three cops hanging 'round the depot, and the yard is full of detectives." The word "detective" as used here is what is termed in North Carolina a town constable. In making arrests of this kind the constable is not required by the State to show a warrant. Southern Alabama and Mississippi are full of these detectives; and seldom it is that a man gets through without a scratch. Sometime between 11 and 12 o'clock that day we ran into the suburbs of Mobile. Darting from the closed doorway, in which I had been standing, to the car platform, I cautiously peeped out. Several men standing on the sidewalk near a large factory saw me, and motioned violently with their hands for me to jump off, but the train was running too fast for that, and with a feeling of indescribable fear, I quickly sprang back and jammed myself tightly against the closed door--careful even to turn my feet sideways, with my face pressed flat against the door. All hopes of safely alighting in the suburbs was given out. The houses were fast getting thicker and stores began to flash by. Presently, to my surprise, the train turned into one of the principal business streets of Mobile. Large mercantile houses towered above me on every side. The train ran several blocks down this street before stopping at the depot. A man stepped in front of me to uncouple the engine. Not daring to move, I whispered: "Which side is the depot on?" "Get off on your right, quick!" he whispered, without glancing up. In an instant I was upon the ground and walking towards the boat wharves, but a few blocks distant. Only by prompt action in getting off the train, and knowing which side to alight on, had I been able to escape the wide-awake officials at Mobile. I felt like laughing as I reached the wharves and noted that no one had pursued me. Evidently, I was getting to be an expert "hobo"--but my joy was of short duration, for now I was as anxious to reach New Orleans as I had been to reach Mobile--and what if I was thrown in jail for a long term in Southern Mississippi? Well, my people should never hear of it, I resolved. Going on a small vessel I asked for soap and water. I was given a big cake of dirty looking soap, half as large as my head, and told to draw my own water. Seizing a water bucket to which a long rope was attached, I cast overboard and soon drew into view a big bucketful of slimy looking water, that at home my own dog would have sniffed at contemptuously. But a chap buffeting against the world, as I was now doing, soon learns not to be too choice. After awhile he forgets the luxuries that were once his, and in most respects life assumes a different aspect. Having washed up, I thanked the boatman and left the wharves. A good dinner made me feel better, and I decided to stay in town over night and rest up. I noticed but few automobiles in Mobile. After dinner I found a nice room and paid for a night's lodging in advance. About one o'clock in the afternoon I retired to sleep, determined to get as much rest as possible for my money before next morning. I slept probably two hours, and then awoke with an uncomfortable feeling. I had been dreaming of beating trains and of several narrow escapes from death. A cop chasing me dangerously close had awakened me. The bed seemed moving and the whole room whirling around. As soon as my eyes became accustomed to objects in the room and I saw that I was really safe from harm, I again tried to go to sleep, but it was no use, for the bed now seemed literally flying through space, and though lying in the middle, it seemed all I could do to maintain my position. In disgust I arose and dressed. The train for New Orleans would leave at 4:30, and I yet had over an hour to reach the depot. The man who uncoupled the engine of the Flomaton passenger that morning showed up just before train time. I told him I intended trying to beat the train to New Orleans. He promised he would fix it up with the engineer for me, but that I must look out myself for the conductor, as he didn't know him. "You'd better look out going through Mississippi, though," he said. "The train makes but three regular stops--Scranton, Biloxi and Gulf Port. If you are not sharp you'll get run in at one of those places." "Don't turn your head!" he suddenly whispered, "there's a detective under the depot looking at you now. We'd better not be seen talking together." "Good-bye, young fellow, and I hope you may get through safe." The 4:30 passenger arrived in Mobile on time, and a few moments later pulled out bound on its long journey to New Orleans. Hidden between two box-cars farther up the road, I waited for the engine to pass. The train was going at a rapid clip when I sprang out and made a headlong dash for the "blind baggage," which I caught safely. Either the conductor had not seen me or was waiting for me to get picked up down the road. The train's speed was increasing every moment, and Mobile was soon left miles behind. Sunday evening just before dark we pulled into Scranton, Miss. A great throng of people, including a good many beautiful young girls, had turned out to see the train. Their voices told me which side the depot was on. No sooner had the train stopped than I was upon the ground on the opposite side. I heard someone running towards the engine on the other side of the track. Trembling with fear for a moment I stood still. Another train filled to overflowing with passengers and headed towards Mobile had side-tracked for the New Orleans train. Jumping aboard the Mobile train, I mingled with the passengers. In a few moments, by looking through the car window, I noted with satisfaction that the New Orleans train was again on the move. One, two, three car lengths passed. With a single bound I sprang from the Mobile train, and a never-to-be-forgotten race for the "blind baggage" ensued. I soon passed from between the two trains, and now it was an open track race. As I passed the last coach of the Mobile train two forms loomed up on the side-track. "There he is! He is the fellow!" cried one of the men. "Yes, I'm the fellow," and stiffening my forearm, I delivered the sheriff, who stepped out to intercept me, a right swing under the chin----crack! The man received the full benefit of the motion of my body and went to the ground like a ten pin. It was a blow I had been taught at the Ardell Club while taking boxing lessons under Cy Flinn, a pugilist of considerable local fame in Buffalo. The engineer, sitting backwards in his cab, had witnessed the trouble, and as I vanished between two mail cars, the whole train jumped with a sudden burst of speed. Evidently the kindhearted engineer was keeping up his part of the contract to take me through. It was dark when we reached Biloxi and Gulf Port, and by careful dodging I escaped the men who had searched the train at these points. The biggest part of the journey was now over the Gulf waters, and at an extremely slow rate of speed. At nine o'clock that night we crossed the Mississippi, and the train came to a standstill at the depot on Canal street, New Orleans. I stayed in New Orleans one week. I arrived in the Crescent City with less than a dollar, and on the second night my money was gone and I was forced to sleep upon one of the wharves near the foot of Canal street. The next day I got a job unloading bananas off the boats at the I. C. wharves at two bits an hour. I found a room now at No. 1006 Iberville street, in a lodging house run by a Mrs. M. P. Westmoreland. Mrs. Westmoreland is a well-to-do widow, and also a very kind-hearted lady. She refused to accept anything for my lodging, saying she would be amply repaid if I would write her a letter when I got to Tucson. "I shall always think you were accidentally killed if I never hear from you," she said. I was always a poor writer, and have never sent her the letter, but if this little pamphlet is ever published, I shall take pleasure in sending her a copy, together with my best greetings. Only three banana steamers arrived while I was in the city. The fruit is loaded in the West Indies. I made $4.50 at this job. New Orleans is a fascinating town and the easiest place in the world to spend your money. A few days later, when I made preparations to leave for Texas, my $4.50 had dwindled to $0. There are more beautiful yellow girls to be seen on the streets of New Orleans in one day than one would see in most cities in a lifetime. They are called Creoles, or something of the kind, and can be seen walking around, all over the town, in every direction. Even down at the wharves every afternoon about boat time you'll see them lined up in great numbers. There was a lot of talk about the "Hoodlums" while I was in New Orleans. All the city newspapers, as well as some of the State papers, had long articles concerning the doings of this remarkable organization. Nearly every section of the city had been visited at one time or another and terrorized by them. I recalled the words of the engine coupler at Mobile. When I parted with him, his last remark was, "Look out for the Hoodlums." They are a set of young city bloods and toughs of the worst stripe, banded together to rob, murder and steal. I met a well dressed young man in a large park there one night, who told me confidentially that he was a "Hoodlum"; said he thought he and I would make good friends, and that he might be able to get me in as a member, but I declined the invitation with thanks. Yes, New Orleans is a great place in many ways. On the day I left, while standing on the street corner taking a last view of the place, a man bearing a large basket, carefully covered over, approached me and said: "Crawfish? Crawfish?" "What about crawfish?" I asked. He looked at me in surprise. "Good to eat," he said; "only five cents a pint." I told him they were used down home for fish bait, whereupon he got mad and went strutting up the street. I had caught a glimpse of the crawfish, though. There was no mistaking it; they were real crawfish all right, and were what we term "little teenie" ones. The man said they had been cooked very carefully and were well done. Of course the head is thrown away, and it is only the tail part that is eaten. CHAPTER V. _A Hungry Ride of 308 Miles--"Hello, Hello in the Pipe There!"--To Work Again--Nabbed by a Cop._ Late one afternoon I crossed the river on a freight ferry to the Texas Pacific railroad yards. That night I beat a freight train 208 miles to Boyce, La., reaching Boyce about 11 o'clock next morning. Another freight on the same day bore me to Marshall, Tex., 100 miles from Boyce. All day long I had had nothing to eat and it was 9 o'clock at night when we reached the city of Marshall. I had just one hour to get something to eat and get back to the depot, for the Dallas freight would pull out at 10 p. m. I went four or five blocks up a side street and knocked on a cottage door. The occupants had retired, but a second knock brought the madam to the door. I told the lady a sad story of how hungry I was, and ended up by asking for a pan of water to wash my face and hands, if it would not cause her too much trouble. She called to her husband, who came hurrying into the hall in his stocking feet. After I had told my story again a pan of water was brought into the hall and I was invited in. They told me, while I was washing, they had nothing in the house to eat. I took out my note book. "If you will loan me five cents," I said, "I'll take your address and return it. I'm very hungry, sir, and will appreciate it more than I can tell you." The man loaned me a dime, but would furnish no address; and hastily thanking them, I hurried out the gate and started on a run for the railroad restaurant. A big, fat fellow runs the railroad restaurant at Marshall--a Dutchman or Irishman, I couldn't decide which, but he is as good natured as he is large. There was nobody in but the proprietor when I entered. "My friend, I am very hungry, and am broke--I have just ten cents, and am thousands of miles from home. Give me ten cents worth of supper, and please understand I want quantity and not quality." The meal that good-hearted fellow spread out on the table caused me to blush with shame, but I was hungry, and shame was set in the background. It was chicken fricassee, sausage, beef, etc., and more of each than I could eat, hungry as I was. In a short time I left the restaurant. It was already time for the Dallas freight to leave, and I went hurrying down the track through the darkness to where the train was making up. I came upon two brakemen struggling in a vain endeavor to close a tight car door. (From this point throughout the West the brakemen are white men.) The men were cursing and swearing at a great rate at their failure to close the door, but with the united effort of all three of us, it was finally pushed to and sealed. "I want to go to Dallas. You fellows care if I get on?" "We'll take you for $1.00" said the brakemen. I told them I didn't have the money. (In this part of the country a brakeman makes almost as much carrying hobos as his wages amount to. A dollar is the usual charge for a division, which is anywhere from one hundred to two hundred miles, but when a hobo attempts to go without paying, he is generally treated pretty rough, if not thrown from the train and killed.) "Four bits, and we'll carry you," said one of the brakemen. "I give you my honest word, I haven't got a cent, fellows." "Then don't get on this train. Do, you'll get kicked off," said the men. I left them and went hurrying through the darkness down the long line of cars. I found a car half full of cross-ties. The door had not been sealed, and crawling into the back end of the car I pulled off my coat--for the night was very hot--and folding it up into a nice pillow, I lay down to sleep. I never knew when the train started, but about forty miles down the road the brakemen found me, and shining their lanterns within a foot of my face, woke me up. Instead of "kicking" me off, as threatened, they talked fairly sociable. "We'll not put you down in this storm, here on the prairie, for there's nothing here but a side-track, but the next stop is Longview, and you'll have to get off," they said. I went to the door and looked out. The rain was coming down in great sheets, and the heavens were lit up by an almost constant glare of lightning. It was the worst storm I had ever seen. As far as I could see in every direction was a vast expanse of rolling prairie. It was the first time I had ever seen the prairies, and I felt deeply impressed. I noted that the air seemed purer and fresher too than any I had ever breathed before. At Longview the men came to the car to put me down, but I had already gotten down, and not finding me, they left. The train started, and rising up from the ground, where I had been hiding, I crawled into the car of ties again. I was run out of the same car three times that night. The last time I was put off; the brakemen told me if I got back on the train again they would shoot me. I had reached the town of Big Sandy, Tex., and decided I had better wait for another train. It lacked but a few minutes of 12 o'clock as I made my way over to a small drug store, not far from the depot. A sharp featured man was talking to the druggist as I entered. He slightly bowed at me, and presently said: "You're a stranger here, are you not?" Something told me he was a detective. I told him yes, I was a stranger and trying to reach Dallas, and a good many other things I told him I don't remember. He finally admitted he had just searched the train I had left, but as he hadn't caught me in the act, he would let me go, comforting me with the assurance that I would get caught anyway at Mineola. "Why, they are so bad after hobos in Mineola they break open the car door seals, searching for them," he said. Two hours later I was standing on the "blind baggage" platform, behind the coal tender of a passenger train bound for Dallas. It was raining pretty hard when we got to Mineola, and no one came to bother me. Shortly after daylight we steamed into Dallas. I jumped from the train as it began to slow up at the State Fair Grounds in the edge of the city. I had at last gotten to Dallas, but I was certainly in a bad fix--penniless, wet to the skin, cold, sick, and deathly sleepy. I went over to a small grocery store, near the fair grounds, run by a Mrs. Sprague. A beautiful young girl about fifteen years old, who was clerking in the store, brought me a pan of water to wash. "Didn't you beat that passenger train in town?" asked the elderly lady, as I began washing. "I did, madam, and I am sorry that circumstances necessitated my doing so," I replied. "I thought I saw you jump off," she said, whispering something to the young girl, who vanished into the back part of the store. It took nearly twenty minutes of hard scrubbing for me to get the cinders and grease out of my hair and eyes. As I finished, the young lady re-entered the store and approached me: "Come and have some breakfast," she said in a low voice, "its all ready and the coffee's hot." For a moment I felt worse than at any time since leaving home. I tried to refuse, but they allowed me no chance. "I've got a dear son myself wandering somewhere over this big world," said the good woman, putting a handkerchief to her eyes. [Illustration: "Come and have some breakfast," she said in a low voice, "it's all ready and the coffee's hot."] There was no help for it, and I humbly assented to take a cup of coffee. The hot, steaming coffee was of the best quality, and four times did my beautiful young waitress see that my cup was filled. Sometimes I think that coffee saved my life. Upon leaving Mrs. Sprague's I walked down town from the fair grounds, a distance of about three miles. The first man I asked for a job was F. P. Holland, the rich editor of the _Texas Farm and Ranch_. He said he had no work at present. Before leaving, I told him I was sick, cold and hungry, and had nowhere to sleep that night. I asked him to loan me $1.00 until I could get on my feet and pay him back. He loaned me 25 cents, which I was glad to be able to pay back in a few days. Leaving the rich man and his luxury, I took a long tramp back to the fair grounds, where someone said I could get a job. Secretary Sidney Smith was in charge of the work, and after hearing my story, kindly furnished me a place to sleep and eat, and gave me a job helping to repair the fair grounds. "I don't really need any more labor," he said, "but I believe in helping a man when he's down." He secured me a place to board at No. 270 South Carroll Ave., with one of the foremen, Mr. R. Downey. That night I was surprised to learn that the young lady, who had waited on me so nicely at the store, was Mr. Downey's daughter. While at Mrs. Downey's I was taken down with a high fever, and for the first time since leaving home I had a hard spell of asthma. This only increased my desire to get to Arizona or New Mexico. Good cotton choppers around Dallas are paid $1.75 per day and board. About two weeks later I left the city. After paying for my board and buying a few articles of clothing, I had but $3.00. I left Dallas one Sunday evening on a street car for Fort Worth. The distance is about 22 miles. That same afternoon an employment bureau run by Glenn & Co. shipped me for $1.00 from Fort Worth over the Fort Worth and Denver Road to Iowa Park, Tex., to do railroad construction work. I was trying to reach El Paso, which is only 600 miles over the Texas Pacific Road from Fort Worth, but while in Fort Worth I was told it was almost as much as a man's life was worth to try to beat the T. P. road between these points, on account of the extreme cruelty of the brakemen, so I decided to go around the longest way, which would take me through New Mexico. On the way to Iowa Park, I fell in with a young man from Chicago, who had also shipped out. That night we deserted the train at a small station just before reaching Iowa Park. We were now nearly two hundred miles from Fort Worth and had ridden the entire distance for $1.00. I have forgotten the young man's name, but will call him White. He said he had left his home in Chicago to settle somewhere in the West and make his fortune. We decided to travel along together awhile. About daylight we caught a freight train. A long smokestack of some kind was loaded on a flat-car. Into the smutty stack we crawled, he entering one end and I the other, and crawled until our heads met in the middle. When we came together White was trembling all over. "I've done everything since leaving home but hobo," said he. He reminded me of my own experience through South Carolina and Georgia. We made a lot of noise getting into the stack, and had not more than become comfortable when a brakeman's lantern was thrust into one end. "Hello! Hello! in the pipe there," he shouted. We crawled out and asked him to let us go, but it was "no go." "Give me a dollar apiece, or off you go at the next stop," said the brakeman, and he kept his word. We were put down at a little town sixteen miles from Vernon, Texas. We immediately set out to walk to Vernon, and had proceeded along the track about ten miles when a large farm wagon containing seven or eight farmers overtook us. They were going to Vernon and offered us a ride. At this time of the year the farmers are walking up and down the streets of Vernon offering as high as $2.00 per day and board for men to work in the harvest fields. In fact, at no time of the year a farm laborer in this part of Texas is not paid less than $30.00 per month and board. I had never heard of farm hands getting such high wages, and suggested to White that we work in Vernon long enough to pay our way to Arizona or New Mexico, but like all young fellows who stay in the West awhile, he had caught the fever of roving and rambling from one green pasture to another--content no where--and put up a strong kick. He wanted to work in Vernon but a few days only. "You're from the East, and you know nothing about good wages," he said. "Why this is nothing to what we can make in Roswell, New Mexico, gathering apples." I had heard of the wonderful apple orchards around Roswell, and then, too, the climate would be better for me. I decided White was right, and that we would not stay long in Vernon. Late that afternoon a ranchman took us out in his buggy to a ranch about five miles from town. He had offered us $2.00 per day and board to shock wheat. Neither of us had ever shocked any wheat, but he said we could soon learn. Judging from my companion's conversation since I had met him, I had a suspicion he was a better pool player than he was wheat shocker, but the wealthy ranch owners of Texas at this season of the year, when their thousands of acres of land are lying in unshocked wheat, are glad enough to get a man, even if he is a slow worker and from the city. Some time after dark we came upon a small, one-room hut. Near the hut was a large, covered wagon. "Here's where you sleep," said the ranchman. "Just go right in and make your bed out of wheat." Everything was very still in the hut, considering the fact that the one room contained some ten or a dozen men; but the men who had labored long and hard under the hot Texas sun that day were now scattered here and there about the hut floor, wrapped in a deep, sweet sleep. (Each of these men was from a different city or State, as I afterwards learned.) There was plenty of wheat strewn about the floor for us to lie upon, and soon two other weary, footsore travelers, lulled by the soft breeze blowing in the window, had fallen easy victims to the soothing caresses of Morpheus. It was about 4 a. m. that we were roused out of bed by a man announcing that breakfast was ready. For once I didn't care to eat. "Come and get it, or I'll throw it out--Come and get it or I'll throw it out," yelled a loud voice from the vicinity of the wagon. "What's he going to throw out?" I asked the fellow who had disturbed my sleep. "It's the cook calling the men to breakfast," said he, "and you'd better hurry if you want any." "Where is a place to wash?" I asked. "Over there at the end of the wagon," said the man. I reached the spot and found some seven or eight men washing from one small tin vessel about half full of soapy water. Water is a scarce article on the prairies and but little of the precious fluid is used for washing purposes. I washed the corners of my eyes, but there was no towel, comb nor brush to be had, and I made my way to the breakfast table. The table was one long plank, supported at either end by a barrel. The plates, saucers and knives were all made of tin. The grub was well cooked and of good variety. The table was soon cleared and it was now to the wheat fields. On the third day at noon both White and myself had gotten enough of the harvest fields and, receiving our pay, set out on foot for Vernon. That night we caught a passenger train and beat it one hundred miles to Childress, Tex., where we were put off. But not to stay long. An emigrant, who was moving his household effects to the Indian Territory, allowed us to get in the car where his furniture was and carried us over two hundred miles to Dalhart, Tex., landing there late the next day. I parted with White at Dalhart. He had changed his mind about going to Roswell, and now wanted to go to Denver, Colo. Two hours after he had caught the Denver train I was safely hid in a coke car on an El Paso freight train. I had no trouble in catching the train at Dalhart, for just as it pulled out a rough fight took place on the depot platform, both parties using firearms, which served momentarily to take attention from me. It's doubtful though whether I'd have been bothered in Dalhart anyway, for it is one of those rough little Western towns 'way up in the Texas Panhandle, in which "everything goes." And, say, that was a funny fight, too. A big, rough-looking fellow, presumably a miner, had been cutting up too much fuss on the depot platform. The agent came out and asked him to be quiet, but instead of quieting him, he made matters worse. The big fellow began cursing everybody on the platform. A cop was called and in a moment there was a mix up. The cop pecked the fellow all over the head with his pistol, but the miner gamely came back at him with his own pistol, neither of them uttering a word. In a few minutes blood was streaming from both. The big fellow finally gave in and put up his gun. "Come on now," said the cop, grabbing the man by the arm, and starting up the street. I was wondering where the jail was, when to my surprise the cop released the man before they had gone a block. The cop now came back to the depot, smiling. "I got rid o' him," he said, but he was mistaken, for the other fellow, by this time, had also reached the depot. Walking up close to the cop, he leered: "Do you think I'm afraid of you?" and then another fight, even rougher than the other, began. It was at this juncture, unobserved, I slipped into the coke car. Within a short time after leaving Dalhart we crossed the State line into New Mexico. CHAPTER VI. _Across the Line into New Mexico--Barren Sand Hills--Jack Rabbits--Prairie Dogs--A Glorious Sunset, etc._ The train had now entered a country that is simply indescribable for its bleak barrenness. On every hand, as far as I could see, was nothing but barren sand hills, broken here and there by high mountain ridges. In some places we would go forty or fifty miles without seeing a sign of human habitation, then suddenly we would come upon a small collection of adobe huts, that is, huts built of sun-dried, mud bricks. These little houses have a flat roof, and some of them are no taller than a man's head. They are occupied by Mexicans and Indians. A big rain would destroy all these dwellings; but rain is almost as scarce in this desolate, sun-baked region as snow is in the Torrid Zone. When it does rain there and a man's clothes are wet, it takes but ten minutes for the air to dry him off again. From where I was sitting in the door of the coke car thousands upon thousands of jack rabbits, cotton tails and prairie dogs could be seen dodging in and out among the rocks and cactus trees. Once, just before dark came on, a solitary cowboy, wearing high boots and a big sombrero, mounted on a spirited young pony, dashed across the tracks ahead of the train and disappeared behind the low mountain ridges toward the sunset--and such a grand, beautiful sunset that was!--the sun slowly sinking behind the distant mountain peaks, and the whole heavens lit up with a perfect flood of golden beauty, was a scene, though I live to be a hundred years old, I shall never forget. Nowhere else in all the world, I believe, are the sunsets so gloriously beautiful as in Arizona or New Mexico. Lost in spell-bound admiration and silent reflection, I sat in the car door until long after dark. The night air at home had always given me the asthma, but there was no asthma feeling about me now; instead I felt that it would be an impossibility to wheeze. I inhaled great draughts of the dry, pure air, which seemed to penetrate to my very toes, and open every air cell in my body. Surely for those whose lungs are affected this is God's country, I thought. Then and there I registered a solemn vow that when my parents were no more, I should return to this country and pass the remainder of my days. All of this part of New Mexico is devoted to sheep raising. White men are in demand as sheep herders, and are usually paid $30.00 per month and board. That night I slept in the coke car, and at sunup next morning we reached the first large town in all the 200-mile stretch from Dalhart--Santa Rosa--a town of 700 population. No one discovered the poor, thirsty hobo in the coke car. (In this country three hours is a long time for a man to do without water.) Inside of an hour the train had changed crews, another engine had been coupled on, and the long 175-mile ride across the dreary waste to Alamogordo (the next division point) was begun. During this long ride there was no change of scenery. I never went to the door without seeing thousands of jack rabbits and an occasional coyote. Once in a while a large tarantula (spider) as large as a man's hand could be seen scampering among the rocks for shelter. Extreme thirst is caused by the alkali dust which floats in the air. Before the day was over my lips had become a fiery red and cracked open, and my tongue had swollen nearly twice its normal size. Many a poor hobo has been put down in this country by a heartless brakeman, and left to die on the desert, of thirst, but, as yet no one on the train had seen me. Once, as darkness was closing down, I heard a brakeman coming, and quickly crawled into the back end of the car, where it was very dark. Slabs had been nailed across the open door within two feet of the top to prevent the coke from rolling out. The brakeman climbed upon these slabs, and taking up a piece of coke, threw it into the dark end of the car, where I was hiding, with considerable force. Though he could not see me, his aim was true, and the coke struck me a glancing blow upon the cheek, cutting a long gash, and starting the blood. The pain was intense, and it was all I could do to keep from crying out, but the brakeman, unconscious of my hurt, hurled a piece of coke into the other end of the car, and upon hearing no one, sprang from the car door, and soon his footsteps could be heard going to some other part of the train. Late that night we reached Alamogordo. While here I wrote home to my folks. Alamogordo is 4,000 feet above the sea level, and has one of the finest natural parks in the United States. The town is also noted for the luscious fruit raised by the Mexican ranchers nearby. My night's lodging was on a large pile of telegraph poles piled near the railroad. No dew falls in that country and a good many of the people who live there would rather sleep on the ground during the summer months than on a good feather bed. A man can sleep on the ground there nine months in the year without taking a cold. I left Alamogordo the next day on a passenger train as a "coal passenger," that is, I had to help the fireman shovel coal for my fare to El Paso. About half of this trip lay in the foothills of the mountains, and then we reached the mountains proper. Gradually the train rose foot by foot (the train was going very slowly now) until we had attained a height of over 5,000 feet above the level of the track. The journey was now through the clouds, and in some places the fog was so thick I could not see the cars that were following behind us, but in a few moments the spiral winding tracks would carry us on the other side of the mountains, where the sun was shining brightly, and I could see far down the beautiful valleys to some distant mountain peak over seventy-five miles away. It was the first time I had ever seen the mountains, and enraptured with their beauty, I forgot to throw coal down for the fireman. The engineer, noticing my abstraction, called: "Hey, come down here a minute." I crawled into the cab. "Where are you from?" he asked, good naturedly. "I'm from North Carolina working my way to Tucson." "I thought you were from the East," he said. "How far do you think it is to that mountain peak over there?" "It looks to be about five miles," I answered. "That's where this clear air fools you. Why that peak is over forty miles away," he laughed. The rest of this trip I was treated exceptionally good. Both the fireman and engineer seemed to take a delight in pointing out to me things of interest. Presently a very high mountain caught my eye. "That's Mt. Shasta," said the fireman. "It's over two miles high, and snow lies up there about nine months in the year. There's a railroad built up there now," he continued, "and its an ideal summer resort." About 8 or 9 p. m. we reached El Paso, Tex. At one time, years ago, El Paso was one of the roughest border towns in the West, but the modern El Paso is altogether a different town. The population now numbers over 50,000, of which 15 or 20 per cent are Mexicans. Just across the Rio Grande River is the Mexican city, Ciudad Juarez. I spent nearly a day in this quaint looking city. In the center of the town is a large park. Seated on one of the beautiful rustic benches, placed close together along the shaded avenues of the park, you are quite free from the hot, scorching sun beating down overhead. Just above your head a large frame work, extending over the entire park, has been constructed, and upon it a thick growth of vines and beautiful flowers are entwined in endless profusion. Wherever I spent a small American coin, I was sure to receive nearly a handful of Mexican coins in change. A toll bridge spans the river and connects the two cities. An American collects the toll on the El Paso side and a Mexican on the Juarez side. It cost me two cents to cross each way. While in El Paso I heard a great deal of talk about the high wages paid laborers in Bisbee, Ariz., and as it was only a few miles out of my way going to Tucson, I decided to stop over there a few days. I shoveled coal on an El Paso and Southwestern freight train from El Paso to Douglas, a distance of 200 miles. Douglas, Ariz., is a small place of about two thousand population, and is twenty-seven miles from Bisbee. When we reached Douglas the engineer and the fireman invited me to take dinner with them. The engineer offered to get me a place in the large railroad shops located there as apprentice boy at $2.50 per day, but I told him I would go on to Bisbee and try that town for a job first. In this country a man willing to work can always find dozens of jobs waiting for him. Nearly everything is white labor, and its very seldom you are offered less than $3.50 to $4.50 per day for eight hours work. The largest smelter plant in the world is located at Douglas. (Its the old plant removed from Bisbee.) The ore train (heaviest tonnage train in the world) hauls the crude ore from the mines in Bisbee to the Douglas smelters. I stayed over one night in Douglas, and the next morning at daylight caught the ore train with its long line of empty, iron-bound cars, bound for Bisbee. At Osborne Junction a miner got into the car I was in. He was also going to Bisbee. We left the cars on a side-track at Don Luis and started out to walk the remaining two miles to Bisbee, "The Greatest Mining Camp on Earth." My first impression of Bisbee was certainly not a very favorable one. The town is surrounded by high mountain ranges, making a sewerage system next to impossible. The waste matter of Bisbee is hauled away in wooden boxes with teams. On account of this poor sewerage Bisbee suffers every summer with an epidemic of typhoid fever and smallpox. There is always the presence of a fearful stench upon the streets. All of the streets are very narrow, winding and short. Most of the dwelling houses are built one above the other up the mountain sides, and are reached by narrow, winding paths. Main street and Brewery Gulch are the two principal business streets. On either of these streets, day or night, one always finds a large crowd of miners and gamblers--speaking of gambling, Bisbee is a typical Western town in this respect. There are over twenty public gambling halls there. Every saloon has its gambling hall, and in the rear a band of musicians. The doors are thrown wide open and the window shades are never drawn. Strolling into one of these brilliantly lighted dens of iniquity, you'll find every known gambling device under the sun. "Dice throwing," "21," "Faro," "Roulette," "Poker"--they are all there, and many others. The Indian, Chinaman, Mexican and American all play at the same table, and unless you are a good poker player you had better stay out of the game. In these games the ante is seldom less than $1.00. The people in the Far West talk but little while the game is going on. There is no wrangling or misunderstanding. The cards are dealt quickly and deftly, and without a word the betting begins. Sometimes the pot swells to a thousand dollars or more, but even then the same quiet among the players prevails. The winner hardly smiles as he pockets his money, and the loser, if he goes broke, quietly gives up his seat and some other gentleman takes a hand. On the 10th and 12th of every month the mines around Bisbee pay out to the employees the sum of $70,000, so it is no wonder the gambling halls do a good business. There are no one cent pieces used in Bisbee, (not even in the post-office); nothing less than five cents. Bartenders in Bisbee receive $6.00 for an eight-hour shift serving drinks. There are no colored people in Bisbee. Board and room can be obtained for $30.00 per month and up. Clothing cost but little more than in the East. CHAPTER VII. _Get a Job in a Law Office--Dirty, Ragged Clothes Put Off--Smallpox Starts Me Off Again._ It was an afternoon in July that I strolled into Bennett & Williams' law office on Brewery Gulch and asked for a job. A sign in the window read: "Stenographer Wanted." It was in response to this ad I had entered. Right here a description of me might not be out of place. My spring suit had been ruined, and long since discarded for a suit of overalls that I had purchased in Dallas. Hard knocks had rent them in several places, and they were full of train grease. My shoes were worn completely out. For a hat I was wearing a wide-brimmed sombrero, purchased from a Mexican merchant at Alamogordo. I was strapped again, but that was a thing I was getting used to. Taken all in all, I'm sure I looked anything but a stenographer. Williams was typewriting when I entered and asked for the job. He refused to look at the various references I produced, saying they would have no weight with him, but glancing up at me, broke out into a broad smile. "So you are a shorthand writer, eh! Well, come back to-morrow morning and I'll give you a trial," was the promise, but it was quite easy to see he thought I was more of a tramp than a shorthand writer. Needless to say, though, I went back at the appointed time, and though I failed miserably in getting down the first letters he dictated, I was given the job. "You'll soon get back in practice," he said, "and when you do, your salary will be $125.00 per month." Three days later, as I began to improve, Williams bought me $17.00 worth of clothes and a nice dress suit case. I was also given a $5.00 meal ticket on the English Kitchen, and room rent was paid for me one month in advance at the LeGrand Hotel. Both my employers provided me with spending money from time to time, but the most of this money I saved. I had been in Bisbee nearly three weeks when several cases of smallpox and typhoid fever broke out. Two cases of smallpox broke out in the LeGrand Hotel. Several people deserted the town post-haste, and among the number was myself. I resigned my position as stenographer, and bidding my kindhearted employers and other friends good-bye, I purchased a ticket to Tucson. It took nearly all my money to buy this ticket, but I didn't like the idea of hoboing to the town I was to make my future home in. I would, at least, have plenty of nice clothes when I got there, and if it came to a pinch about getting something to eat, I could sell some of my clothing. The first thing that met me when I stepped from the train in Tucson was a sandstorm, filling my eyes, ears and nose full of fine dust and covering my clothes. (Sandstorms are of common occurrence in this section.) It is a good deal warmer in Tucson at all times than at Bisbee, for Tucson is 2,000 feet lower. Tucson is on the Southern Pacific Railroad, and is but a few miles from the line of Old Mexico. Climatic conditions render it a most desirable place to live, but owing to Mexican labor competition wages are not as good as at Bisbee. In Tucson the laboring man receives but $2.50 per day for eight hours. (This is just twice what is paid a laborer in North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia, however.) Board is cheap in Tucson, $5.00 per week and up. In the West Tucson is called the "lunger" town. The name comes from the large number of people who visit Tucson every winter from all parts of the United States for lung troubles. It is never cold enough in Tucson to wear an overcoat. There are more hotels and boarding-houses there than in any other city of its size on the globe. One hotel has a large sign up which reads: "Any Day that the Sun Fails to Shine Upon this Hotel, we will Give Our Guests Free Board." It's very seldom they have to give away any of their free board. CHAPTER VIII. "_For God's Sake, Give Me a Drop of Water._" I stayed in Tucson one night, and while knocking about the streets the next day I met a young man down at the depot who introduced himself as J. C. Allen, from some town in the East, which I have forgotten. Allen had landed in Tucson but a few days before with about the same intentions I had, but for some reason had taken a violent dislike to the town, and now wanted to go to Los Angeles. I had caught the fever of traveling pretty hard myself now, and as Allen was a sociable sort of chap as well as a good talker, it didn't take him long to convince me that Tucson was a poor town for us to remain in. Then, as two young fellows will, we soon came to an understanding that we would stick by each other through thick and thin and work our way to Los Angeles, Cal. Like most fellows who stay in the West long, Allen was a great bull-con man (hot air man). He told me they were already picking oranges around Los Angeles, and paying pickers the highest kind of prices. My own common sense ought to have told me that this wasn't true, and that Allen merely wanted me to go with him for company, but I hadn't been in the West long, and the poorest kind of bull-con dealer found in me an easy mark. I readily became as anxious to reach Los Angeles as Allen himself. "How do you propose going?" I asked. "A Mexican railroad foreman is going to ship me to Gila City, Ariz., to-night to do construction work, and I'll try to get him to ship you too," he promised. Late in the afternoon the Mexican in question showed up at the depot. Allen took him aside and had a long talk with him, during which time the Mexican glanced at me several times. Finally he got up and went into the depot. Allen now hurried over to me. "---- the luck," he exclaimed, "what are you wearing that white collar for?" The Mexican has gone after me a pass, but he says you look too sporty. "Hurry to your stopping place, quick! and get off them togs and I'll try him again." I had put up within a block of the depot, and in a short time I had made the change and returned, bringing my dress suit case. Allen had already received his pass and was anxiously waiting for me. "Hide your dress suit case!" he whispered. I had barely done so when the Mexican came out of the depot. It was nearly dark now and there was a surging crowd of ladies and men on the depot yards waiting to meet the incoming train. Allen pushed his way through the crowd and once more directed the Mexican's attention towards me. The Mexican had no sooner glanced at me than he took out a pencil and wrote something on Allen's pass. A few moments later he left the depot and went hurrying up the street; and Allen approached me with a smile. Upon his pass had been scrawled the two words, "And friend." Shortly after, we were comfortably seated in a Southern Pacific passenger coach and bound far out upon the desert to Gila City, 180 miles away. Allen had but thirty-five cents, while I was again stranded without a penny. Just as day was breaking we were roused by the conductor and put down at Gila City. Its an unusual thing for a passenger to get on or off at Gila City. Some of the passengers straightened up in their seats and watched us with interest, as we slowly got our things together and left the car at this desolate spot, located almost in the very middle of the desert. We were yet 300 miles from Los Angeles, though Yuma, the next town, was but twenty miles away. Gila City contains one small store, about the size of a man's hand; two small dwellings, and a miniature depot. The population numbers but four or five people. One thing is plentiful there, though--long-eared jack rabbits and cotton tails by the thousand. This section abounds with thousands of quail, too, and on warm days not a few rattlesnakes can be seen sunning in the desert. The shanty cars of the construction company stood on the side-track, and as there was nothing else to do we went over to them. The men were already up and the section foreman's wife was preparing breakfast. We told the foreman that the Mexican had sent us down from Tucson, and were engaged by him at $1.50 per day and board. Presently we were invited into one of the cars for breakfast. The men seated around that table presented a picture seldom seen. Besides Allen and myself, there were three dark-skinned Mexicans, a half-breed Indian, the foreman, who was a Texan, and two ex-cowpunchers, besides an Irishman and a Chinaman. As for the breakfast itself, I have never eaten better grub anywhere, and the cooking was splendid. Notwithstanding the motley crew around us, both Allen and myself made a hearty meal. The teams were soon hitched, and after proceeding down the track about a mile the day's work commenced. I was given a scraper team to drive, and Allen was put at pick and shovel work. As soon as the sun rose it quickly got hot, and by 8 o'clock it began to sting through our clothes. At 10 o'clock the heat was so intense that all hands quit work and went back to the shade of the shanty cars. Neither Allen nor myself had ever worked under such a hot sun before. Both of us came near fainting, and even when we reached the shanties, perspiration was still running from every pore. All work was suspended until 4 p. m. (In this part of the world, owing to the intense heat, a day's work commences at 5 a. m. and lasts until 10 a. m. In the middle of the day you take a six hours' rest. Commencing work again at 4 o'clock in the afternoon you work until 7 p. m., making an eight-hour day.) On the morning of the second day, Allen got pretty badly hurt. A big bowlder, becoming dislodged from above his head, rolled down the cliff where he was at work, and struck him a painful blow upon the back of his hand. Already overheated from exertion in the hot sun, his injured hand threw him into a hard chill, and he was forced to quit work. Some of the Mexicans and others standing around began laughing as if they thought it a great joke. The foreman, instead of sympathizing with him, joined in the laugh. (The entire gang had put us down as tenderfeet.) There was no use getting mad, for these tough-looking chaps were too many for us, and we did the next best thing. We gave up our job and walked back to the shanties. At 10 o'clock the men came in for dinner, when we informed the foreman that we had thrown up our job and that he could settle with us. "Settle nothing," said the big fellow, laughing. "You've not worked enough to pay your fare from Tucson yet. You can get your dinner here, and after that, meals are fifty cents apiece, if you dine in these cars." We walked over to the little store with the intention of investing Allen's thirty-five cents in groceries for our dinner, but there was nothing doing. The man's stock consisted mostly of pop and cigars, which articles he probably got from Los Angeles. "How much for pop?" I asked. "Fifteen cents a bottle," was the reply. A barrel of ginger snaps stood in one corner of the store. "How much a pound?" I asked, giving the cakes a wistful look. "Twenty-five cents a pound," said the grocer. We left the store without purchasing anything and made our way back to the cars, forced to accept the ill-given hospitality of the section foreman. That afternoon a lucky thought came to me. We yet had plenty of clothing, and why not auction it off? In my grip was a mouth harp that I had bought in Bisbee. Allen, who was a good harmonica player, struck up several lively airs, and in a few minutes every man in the camp had gathered around us, including the foreman. Some were popping and slapping their hands in applause, and others were dancing jigs in time to the music. I gave Allen the signal to stop and, opening up both our grips, began auctioneering off small pieces of goods. Every thing put up was sold to advantage, though the smaller articles brought the best prices. The harmonica, which had cost me twenty-five cents, caused the liveliest bidding, and was finally knocked down to a cowboy for eighty cents. The foreman secured a nice comb and brush at a bargain, and was so well pleased with the music he invited us to take supper with him, and to play the harmonica again for him and his wife. About nine o'clock that night a freight train stopped in Gila City, which we boarded with our grips and easily beat to Yuma. Yuma has a population of 7,000 Indians, Mexicans and Americans, and like Bisbee, gambling forms a part of the revenue of the saloons. [Illustration: I gave Allen the signal to stop, and opening up both our grips, began auctioneering off small articles of clothing.] Most of the houses in Yuma are built of wood or brick, though there are a good many adobe houses occupied by the poorer classes. Some claim Yuma is fifty feet above the sea level; others say it is one hundred and fifty below the sea level. I don't know which of these statements is correct, but I do know that Yuma is by far the hottest town I was ever in. As early as half-past seven o'clock next morning the sun began to get uncomfortably hot, and by nine o'clock both Allen and myself were suffering from the heat. We spent the biggest part of the day in the shade of the large Reservoir building opposite the depot, and but a few feet from the Colorado River. That night a Mexican living in one of the adobe houses near the railroad yards supplied each of us with a large bottle of water for the long two hundred and eighty mile journey across the desert, but in dodging the brakemen while attempting to board a Los Angeles freight train, we became separated and it was the last I ever saw of my friend Allen. I managed to hide in a car loaded with scrap iron. Only once did I leave this car. We reached the first division point, Indio, Cal., about 3 o'clock in the morning. My bottle of water had long since run dry, and I was once more beginning to suffer the acute pangs of desert thirst. With as little noise as possible, I slipped from the car and into the pump house (which is about the only building of any kind that Indio contains). In fact, between Yuma and Indio, for a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, there isn't a single town--nothing but desert and cactus trees. The man in the pump house filled my bottle from a hydrant, and taking a big drink from a large tin cup, which I also filled from the hydrant, I hurried through the darkness to the scrap iron car nearly a half mile down the track. I was about crawling in, when a low groan from under the car attracted my attention. Peering under the car, I was amazed to see a man on the rods. "For God's sake give me a drop of water," he begged piteously. I passed him the bottle of water, and invited him to drink half of it. The poor fellow eagerly took a long pull at it, passing it back scarcely half full, with a grateful "Thank you." "I could drink five bottles like that," he said, smacking his lips. The train now started, preventing further conversation, and I quickly crawled back into the scrap iron car. The next day about 11 a. m. we pulled into the yards at Los Angeles. As soon as the train stopped in the yards I jumped out of the car and looked for the man on the rods, but he was gone. CHAPTER IX. _Thrown Into Jail at Los Angeles._ Upon seeing no one near, I lifted my grip from the car door and started down town in search of a lodging place. I found a nice place at No. 128 E. First street, and the following day I got a job with the S. P. Railroad Company, trucking freight at 20 cents per hour. Los Angeles is probably the greatest fruit market in the world. Oranges, grapes, peaches and apricots are among the principal fruits raised. During the orange season you can buy oranges for ten cents per dozen. A careful estimate places the number of oranges grown in California every year at 900,000,000. All fruit is cheap. The finest kind of malaga grapes can be purchased on the streets of Los Angeles for 2½ cents per pound. You can live on fruit there over six months in the year. The winters there are no ways as cold as in North Carolina. The rainfall is scarcely ten inches a year, making it possible for the laboring man to work out doors every working day in the year. Laborers get $1.75 to $2.50 per day, and are always in demand. There are numerous restaurants in Los Angeles that set out a good, substantial meal for ten cents. San Pedro is the port of entry for Los Angeles. With the exception of Chicago, Los Angeles contains more employment bureaus than any other city in the United States. While standing in one of these labor bureaus a few days later, I learned that a certain hotel in San Pedro wanted a hotel clerk. I gave up my job trucking freight and took the street car for San Pedro. After having a short talk and showing my references to Jennings and White, proprietors of the Angelus Hotel, I was offered the place as clerk at $15.00 per month, board and room. I accepted the position. The little town of San Pedro bears the distinction of being one of the nine corners of the world. The Pacific Ocean is in full view from the front entrance of the Angelus Hotel. From this point it is only a two-hours run on the steamboat Cabrillo to the famous fishing grounds of Santa Catalina Island. If you are a good fisherman with hook and line, two hours in these waters will supply you with from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty pounds of fish. I had been clerking for Jennings & White about six weeks, when one day a man registered in the hotel from Searchlight, Nevada. The man praised up Searchlight in glowing terms. "Everything in Searchlight is on a boom," said he. "Wages are good, and it's the very place for a young man to make money." I was not making anything and had already grown tired of the little, sleepy town of San Pedro. The fever of travel was once more infused within me. I would go to Searchlight, and if I found it like the man had said, I promised myself I would settle down there and stop traveling about. To hold my position as clerk in the hotel I had been compelled to invest all of my small salary in clothing. When I resigned the job I had saved just $2.00. Mr. Jennings said I was doing a bad thing starting to Searchlight broke, and that he would give me a letter of reference to a Los Angeles street car Superintendent. I reproduce his letter in this book, though I never used it, for I was bent now upon going to Searchlight, and that afternoon took the car for Los Angeles. I knocked about the streets of Los Angeles three or four days trying to get up courage to begin beating trains again. During my six weeks of ease and contentment at the hotel I had grown almost as timid as when I first left home. Hardly before I knew it I was stranded in Los Angeles without a penny. My grip had been left in charge of Jennings & White, to be forwarded to me in case I reached Searchlight safely. I told some kind-hearted gentleman on the street of my trouble, and he kindly advised me to apply to the Los Angeles Chief of Police. "He'll get you a place to sleep to-night," said the man, giving me the street and number of the Chief's office. I lost sight of the fact that I was again dressed for hoboing the railroad, and that the chief might be unfavorably impressed with my appearance. I reached his office, which was located in a large stone building, just after nightfall. He listened to my story a moment or so, but instead of furnishing me with an address and the wherewithal to obtain a night's sleep at some lodging house, he tapped a bell on the desk. The next moment a blue coat entered the office. I now began to grow suspicious, but it was too late. "Take that man around for a night's lodging," said the Chief, and before I could gather my wits I was whisked from the Chief's presence into another department. "Search the prisoner," commanded the pompous looking individual presiding in this office. The cop searched my pockets and all my things were put in a large envelope, sealed and locked in a large iron safe. I now found my tongue and began using it pretty loud. The disgrace of spending a night in jail seemed more than I could bear. "Turn me loose, I don't want lodging. Please let me go," I cried. But it was no go. "Dry up there!" came the command. "If the Chief hears you, you may get thrown in a year for vagrancy." I could have 'phoned to Jennings & White, and no doubt they could have gotten me out of the scrape, but I was ashamed for them to know of my predicament, and kept quiet. A large book was thrust at me. "Sign your name!" came the command. Anyone looking over the Los Angeles records for 1906 will find the name "Robert Smith," signed for a night's lodging. The city prison was in the back of the building, and a short time later I was locked behind the bars in an iron-bound cell containing twenty or more prisoners. Within ten minutes every man of them had asked me what I had been "run in" for. "You're liable to be kept in here several months for vagrancy," said the prisoners. I'll not dwell upon the horrors of that night. I didn't sleep a wink throughout the long night, and was wideawake next morning at six o'clock when the prison warden approached the cage door and shouted: "Robert Smith"-- [Illustration: "Robert Smith--is Robert Smith in there?" shouted the prison warden.] "Robert Smith in there?" he called to some of the prisoners a moment later. I sprang up. I had forgotten that I had signed Robert Smith on the books. "I'm the man!" I cried, and five minutes later I was a free man, again breathing the pure, fresh air of the outside world. With rapid footsteps I hurried from this unpleasant locality and made my way down town. At the time I write the railroad hadn't yet reached Searchlight. The nearest point of construction was Manvel, Cal., twenty-three miles away. By mere good fortune I learned that morning that the railroad company was shipping men through the Red Cross Employment Bureau to Manvel for construction work. I lost no time in visiting the Red Cross Agency, and was given a pass over the Santa Fe Railroad to Manvel. There were thirty-odd men in the crew I shipped with, mostly foreigners. We rode all night, and about 12 o'clock next day we reached Manvel. By keeping my eyes and ears open along the trip I easily spotted the men who had shipped out of Los Angeles as a means of reaching Searchlight. At midnight when the rest of the camp was wrapped in deep slumber six men silently stole from the tents and struck out across the desert for Searchlight. The lights of the town could be plainly seen from the railroad camps, and it hardly seemed possible that those bright looking lights were twenty-three miles across the desert. Footsore, thirsty and tired we reached Searchlight next morning. Searchlight contains fifteen business houses, and eleven of them are saloons, though its a very quiet and well-governed little town, and about the only excitement is when some lucky prospector arrives with rich specimens of gold ore, discovered somewhere nearby in the surrounding desert--and this happens quite often. While I was there Mike Walsh, a very poor man, discovered a rich gold claim three miles north of Searchlight and sold it for $10,000. Any one can prospect if he's able to buy a grub stake. Eighty dollars will buy two burros and a three-months' grub stake for two men, and but little trouble is experienced in finding some veteran prospector who'll accompany you in search for gold on halves. There are several good paying gold mines within a half mile of the town. One gold mine there is in full operation within thirty feet of Main street. It is worked by only three young men, who are the owners, and it is supposed they are making a small fortune. I got a job with Cook & Co. assisting to survey town lots, for which I was paid $3.50 per day. Later on I got a job with Mr. Fred. Ullman, proprietor of the Searchlight Hotel. I was taken on as porter in the bar-room and hotel, but upon learning to mix drinks, I was engaged as bartender, which job I held until Mr. Ullman sold out a few weeks later to a firm in Los Angeles. This threw me out of a job, but out of my salary I had placed $50.00 in the Searchlight Bank. I now took a job at Doc's Kitchen washing dishes at two dollars and seventy-five cents per day. While engaged in this work my brother wrote me a long letter from home, saying they were all very anxious to see me and that mother had been taken seriously ill, worrying about me. For the first time since leaving home I began to feel homesick, so much so I had to give up my job. I decided to make a short visit to San Francisco and then start home. I bought a stage ticket to Nipton, Cal., and from that point purchased a ticket to Los Angeles. Next day I shipped from Los Angeles to Weed, Cal. Weed is in the Siskiyou Mountains, six hundred miles from Los Angeles. I deserted the train at Stockton, Cal., with another young fellow, and we took the boat from this point to 'Frisco. By this manoeuvering I saved nearly half the fare from Searchlight to San Francisco. I had a hard time finding a lodging house in 'Frisco, for over four-fifths of the hotels had gone up in the big fire. After several hours of weary tramping about the streets, I found the St. George Hotel, a large frame building, erected temporarily on Mission street. Lodging in 'Frisco was high and board brought fabulous prices. Two weeks later I awoke to the realization that my $50.00 had dwindled to $5.00. Part of this money had gone for a new suit of clothes, but the other had been spent for living expenses. I couldn't start for home with but $5.00, and only one other course was left--I must go to work. I didn't care to work in 'Frisco, though, for it was only skilled labor that was commanding high prices. I met a young man in the hotel, P. A. Franck, from No. 3851 Juniata street, St. Louis, Mo., who had left his St. Louis home to make a fortune in San Francisco, but disappointed with the poor wages paid for labor in 'Frisco compared with the high cost of living expenses, he readily agreed to leave with me. Murray & Ready's Employment Bureau, on Tenth and Market streets, shipped us three hundred miles to the Sugar Pine Mountains, in central California to work at a saw-mill. We left the train at Madera, Cal., at which town was located the Sugar Pine Company's office. From Madera we took a sixty-mile stage ride through the Sugar Pine Mountains to the saw-mill, arriving there late one afternoon. That night we learned that the mill owners had decided to close down the mill until the following spring, and that, if we went to work, in all probability the job would give out by the time we had worked out our fare from San Francisco. That night we slept on the bare floor of a little log hut up the mountain side, the man in the company store saying all his bed covering had been sold out. The next morning we were both frozen nearly stiff; we awoke before light and struck the trail back to Madera. I had a thirty-pound grip of clothing and Franck was weighted down with a still heavier grip and an overcoat. All day long we tramped over the mountains, and all the following night. By morning of the second day we were making scarcely a mile an hour, and were so near played out we were forced to rest every ten or fifteen minutes. Once Franck's shoe became untied, and in stooping to tie it he pitched heavily forward upon his hands and knees. Only once did we get anything to eat, the halfway house sold us a scanty meal for 50 cents each. [Illustration: THE HOMEWARD JOURNEY. Good-by, dear old Arizona. Good-by, sunny California. (Pro tem) to you both.] At last, scarcely able to stand up, we reached Madera. Afraid that the Sugar Pine Company would indict us for deserting, we spent our last penny for a ticket to Fresno, Cal. We got a job at Madera's planing mill in Fresno and found a lodging house at No. 846 I street, run by a Mrs. Dora Harrell, a widow. Two days later we were discharged, Mr. Madera saying that we were the slowest two young men that had ever worked for him. The fact is, the two days he paid us for was like finding money, for after that long tramp in the Sugar Pine Mountains we were too weak to work. It was about all we could do to stand around the mill and watch the others work. Franck now placed his grip in the express office and bade me good-bye, saying he was going to hobo it to Los Angeles. I refused to accompany him, relating my "Robert Smith" experience, but he was bent upon going, and with tears in our eyes we parted. Not long after I was taken ill, and for two weeks I was unable to leave my room. My money was all gone and I was in debt to my landlady for board. About this time I received another long letter from my brother, offering me a half interest in his grocery store, and advising me to come at once if I expected to find mother alive. I lost no time in telegraphing the following reply: "Will come immediately if you send ticket; otherwise I can't." Late the next day I received a telegraph order for ninety dollars. The telegraph company wrote out a check, which I got the Principal of the Fresno Business College to endorse. I purchased a ticket via Denver and Chicago, and after a long and tedious journey, I arrived in Tarboro. My mother was sleeping and dreaming of her boy in far off sun-bathed California, when, with a light kiss, I awoke her. I will never forget the glad cry that escaped her lips when she saw me home once again, safe and sound. It was Horace Greeley, the great American author, who said: "Young men go West." From what little I saw of this great, grand country beyond the Mississippi, I think it is good advice. There are more opportunities to make money and more money to be made, and the climate is better; but unless father and mother are dead, take the well-meant advice of a young man who has recently been West; only to learn that there was but one place on earth--"HOME." THE END. San Pedro, Cal., Aug. 8th, 1906. M. F. Vanranker, Esq., Supt. Dear Sir:--This will introduce Mr. John Peele, who would like to make application with you for work. I know him personally, and can recommend him to be an honest, sober, and energetic young man, and will make you an A.1. conductor, for he is very bright and quick. If you can use him you will make no mistake. Very respectfully yours, J. W. JENNINGS. St. Louis, Mo., Jan. 29, 1907. My Dear Friend Jack: I received your letter of the 11th inst. I have also been very busy--have been working steady since I got back home. I am very glad to hear that you appreciate my poor efforts at letter-writing. Too bad about your girl getting married. You are right about the girls all wanting to marry a man with money. I guess that's the reason I'm not married. Never mind, old chap, you will find another girl--there are others, don't you know. You state in your letter that since returning home you have been troubled with the asthma, and on account of the moist air and the land being so low and full of malaria you feared an attack of pneumonia. I hope you are well again and are rid of the cold. I see you are in the grocery business. That proposition is all right, if you stay at home for a few years. Stick to it, old chap, for awhile, anyway. I intend to stay at home for awhile, and any time I do go away I will let you know about it. Perhaps we may meet again out in the tall and uncut wild and wooly. Say, Jack, do you remember in San Francisco "Murry & Ready," the "St. George" where we stopped, "Madera," the "Sugar Pine Co.," the sixty-mile "stage ride," the run-away, the comfortable little cabin on the side of the hill where we slept that night, the long tramp next day out of the Sugar Pine Mountains, and the boss we had in Fresno at the Madera Planing Mill? Them were some great old times. My folks are all well, thank you. Trusting the same of yours, I will close, with kindest regards and best wishes, Your old side partner in California, PHIL. P. A. Franck, 3851 Juniata St., St. Louis, Mo. I was never in Paris or London, and have never crossed the pond anywhere. My only experience on the deep blue was a trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I agree with you we did a foolish stunt when we parted at Fresno, Cal. I am getting along real nice, working hard, staying at home, and saving my money. Am still an advocate of Physical Culture, and take my daily exercises, and perhaps this week will join the Central Y. M. C. A. here. I have not been able to find anything that weighs 35 lbs., so do not know if I can muscle it out, but will let you know as soon as I do. Pretty good work, old man, muscling out 35 lbs. Keep up the good work. 
59904	----	generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 59904-h.htm or 59904-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59904/59904-h/59904-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/59904/59904-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/tonyheroorbraveb00alge Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by plus signs is in bold face (+bold+). [Illustration: Tony set to work with rapid hands to tie the prostrate tramp hand and foot.--(See page 73.)] TONY, THE HERO; --Or,-- A Brave Boy's Adventures With a Tramp. BY HORATIO ALGER, JR., Author of "Tom, the Bootblack;" "Joe's Luck;" "Frank Fowler, the Cash Boy;" "Tom Temple's Career;" "Tom Thatcher's Fortune;" "The Errand Boy," etc., etc. Illustrated. [Illustration: Logo] New York. A. L. Burt, Publisher. Copyright 1890, by A. L. Burt. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. THE TWO WANDERERS. 7 II. THE FARM-HOUSE. 14 III. RUDOLPH'S DISAPPOINTMENT. 20 IV. SETTING A TRAP. 26 V. AN ATTEMPT AT BURGLARY. 33 VI. ABNER'S RUSE. 37 VII. A STRANGE HOTEL. 47 VIII. TONY HIRES OUT AS A COOK AND HOUSEKEEPER. 54 IX. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW. 61 X. THE TRAMP'S UNEXPECTED DEFEAT. 68 XI. THE PRISONER. 74 XII. TONY STARTS OUT ONCE MORE. 81 XIII. TONY GETS A PLACE. 88 XIV. TONY'S RIVAL. 92 XV. THE BOYS' DUEL. 96 XVI. RUDOLPH ESCAPES AND SEES AN ADVERTISEMENT. 103 XVII. THE LADY AT THE ST. NICHOLAS. 110 XVIII. TWO CONSPIRATORS. 116 XIX. THE WICKED COMPACT. 123 XX. THE FIGHTING QUAKER. 130 XXI. RUDOLPH HEARS OF TONY. 134 XXII. RUDOLPH FINDS TONY. 137 XXIII. THE NEGLECTED WELL. 142 XXIV. THE DEED IS DONE. 145 XXV. "I HOLD YOU TO THE BOND." 152 XXVI. TONY'S ESCAPE. 159 XXVII. TONY IS DISCHARGED. 166 XXVIII. THE WORLD BEFORE HIM. 173 XXIX. A STRANGE ADVENTURE. 180 XXX. BREAKFAST AT THE ST. NICHOLAS. 187 XXXI. TONY AND HIS GUARDIAN SET UP HOUSEKEEPING. 194 XXXII. HOME AGAIN. 201 XXXIII. CAPTAIN GREGORY LOVELL. 208 XXXIV. TONY ASTONISHES HIS OLD FRIENDS. 215 XXXV. TONY'S BAD LUCK. 223 XXXVI. "I HATE YOU!" 230 XXXVII. MRS. MIDDLETON AND HER LOVER. 236 XXXVIII. A STORMY INTERVIEW. 240 XXXIX. TONY'S ESCAPE. 243 XL. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. 249 WHITMARSH'S REVENGE. 254 THE BOY IN THE BUSH. 264 THE MIDNIGHT RIDE. 273 A THOUSAND A YEAR. 281 A. L. BURT'S PUBLICATIONS 1 TONY, THE HERO. CHAPTER I. THE TWO WANDERERS. A man and a boy were ascending a steep street in a country town in Eastern New York. The man was tall and dark-complexioned, with a sinister look which of itself excited distrust. He wore a slouch hat, which, coming down over his forehead, nearly concealed from view his low, receding brow. A pair of black, piercing eyes looked out from beneath the brim. The first impression produced upon those who met him was that he was of gipsy blood, and the impression was a correct one. Where he was born no one seemed to know; perhaps he did not himself know, for all his life he had been a wanderer, but English was the tongue that he spoke, and, apart from the gipsy dialect, he knew no other. His companion was a boy of fourteen. Between the two there was not the slightest resemblance. Though embrowned by exposure to the sun and the wind, it was easy to see that the boy was originally of light complexion. His hair was chestnut and his eyes blue. His features were regular and strikingly handsome, though, owing to the vagrant life he was compelled to lead, he was not able to pay that attention to cleanliness which he might have done if he had had a settled home. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and the boy looked weary. He seemed scarcely able to drag one foot after the other. His companion turned upon him roughly. "What are you dawdling that way for, Tony?" he demanded. "You creep like a boy of three." "I can't help it, Rudolph," said the boy, wearily; "I'm tired." "What business have you to be tired?" "I've walked far to-day." "You've walked no farther than I. I don't dawdle like you." "You're a man. You're stronger than I am, Rudolph." "And you're a milksop," said the man contemptuously. "I'm nothing of the sort," said the boy, with a flash of spirit. "I'm not made of cast-iron, and that's why I can't stand walking all day long. Besides, I have had no dinner." "That isn't my fault, is it?" "I didn't say it was, but it makes me weak for all that." "Well," said Rudolph, "perhaps you're right. I feel like eating something myself. We'll go to some house and ask for supper." Tony looked dissatisfied. "I wish we were not obliged to beg our meals," he said; "I don't like it." "Oh, you're getting proud, are you?" sneered Rudolph. "If you've got money to pay for your supper, we won't beg, as you call it." "Why can't we do as other people do?" asked Tony. "What's that?" "Live somewhere, and not go tramping round the country all the time. It would be a good deal pleasanter." "Not for me. I'm a vagrant by nature. I can't be cooped up in one place. I should die of stagnation. I come of a roving stock. My mother and father before me were rovers, and I follow in their steps." The man spoke with animation, his eye flashing as he gazed about him, and unconsciously quickened his pace. "Then, I'm not like you," said Tony, decidedly. "I don't want to be a tramp. Were my father and mother rovers like yours?" "Of course they were," answered Rudolph, but not without hesitation. "Ain't I your uncle?" "I don't know. Are you?" returned Tony, searchingly. "Haven't I told you so a hundred times?" demanded Rudolph, impatiently. "Yes," said the boy, slowly, "but there's no likeness between us. You're dark and I am light." "That proves nothing," said the elder tramp, hastily. "Brothers are often as unlike. Perhaps you don't want to look upon me as a relation?" The boy was silent. "Are you getting ashamed of me?" demanded Rudolph, in a harsh tone. "I am ashamed of myself," said Tony, bitterly. "I'm nothing but a tramp, begging my bread from door to door, sleeping in barns, outhouses, in the fields, anywhere I can. I'm as ignorant as a boy of eight. I can just read and that's all." "You know as much I do." "That don't satisfy me. When I grow up I don't want to be----" Tony hesitated. "You don't want to be like me. Is that it?" asked Rudolph, angrily. "No, I don't want to be like you," answered Tony, boldly. "I want to have a home, and a business, and to live like other people." "Humph!" muttered Rudolph, fixing his eyes thoughtfully upon his young companion. "This is something new. You never talked like that before." "But I've felt like that plenty of times. I'm tired of being a tramp." "Then you're a fool. There's no life so free and independent. You can go where you please, with no one to order you here nor there, the scene changing always, instead of being obliged to look always upon the same people and the same fields." "What's the good of it all? I'm tired of it. I've got no home, and never had any." "You've got no spirit. You're only fit for a farm-boy or an apprentice." "I wish I was either one." "Sit down here if you are tired," said the man, abruptly, throwing himself down under a wide-spreading tree by the roadside. Tony stretched himself out at a little distance, and uttered a sign of relief as he found himself permitted to rest. "Have you been thinking of this long?" asked Rudolph. "Of what?" "Of not liking to be a tramp?" "Yes." "You have not spoken of it before." "I've been thinking of it more lately." "How did that come?" "I'll tell you," said Tony. "Don't you remember last week when we passed by a school house? It was recess, and the boys were out at play. While you were away a few minutes, one of the boys sat down by me and talked. He told me what he was studying, and what he was going to do when he got older, and then he asked me about myself." "What did you tell him?" "What did I tell him?" said Tony, bitterly. "I told him that I was a tramp, and that when I got older I should be a tramp still." "Well," said Rudolph, sharply, "what then?" "The boy told me I ought to get some regular work to do, and grow into a respectable member of society. He said that his father would help me, he thought; and----" "So you want to leave me, do you?" demanded Rudolph, fiercely. "Is that what you're coming to, my chicken?" "It isn't that so much as the life you make me lead. I want to leave that, Rudolph." "Well, you can't do it," said the man, shortly. "Why not?" "I say so, and that's enough." Tony was silent for a moment. He was not greatly disappointed, for he expected a refusal. He changed the subject. "Rudolph," he said, "there's something else I want to ask you about." "Well?" "Who am I?" "Who are you? A young fool," muttered the tramp, but he appeared a little uneasy at the question. "I want to know something about my father and mother." "Your mother was my sister. She died soon after you were born." "And my father?" "He was put in jail for theft, and was shot in trying to make his escape. Does that satisfy you?" "No, it doesn't, and what's more, I don't believe it," said Tony, boldly. "Look here," said Rudolph, sternly. "I've had enough of your insolence. Do you see this strap?" He produced a long leather strap, which he drew through his fingers menacingly. "Yes, I see it." "You'll feel it if you ain't careful. Now get up. It's time to be moving." CHAPTER II. THE FARM-HOUSE. "Where are we going to stop to-night?" asked Tony ten minutes later. "There," answered Rudolph, pointing out a farm-house, a little to the left. "Suppose they won't let us." "They will admit us into their barn, at least, if we play our cards right. Listen to what I say. You are to be my son." "But I am not your son." "Be silent!" said the other tramp, "and don't you dare to contradict me. You have been sick, and are too weak to go farther." "That is a lie, Rudolph." "That doesn't matter. If they believe it, they won't turn us away. Perhaps they will let you sleep in the house." "Away from you?" "Yes." Tony was puzzled. It seemed as if Rudolph wanted him to be more comfortably provided for than himself, but the boy knew him too well not to suspect that there was some concealed motive for this apparent kindness. "Well, what are you thinking about?" demanded Rudolph, suspiciously, as he observed the boy's earnest gaze. "Why do you want me to sleep in the house?" he asked. "I will tell you. When all the family are asleep, I want you to steal down stairs, open the back door, and let me in." "What for?" asked the boy, startled. "Never you mind. Do as I tell you!" "But I don't want to do it. You never asked me to do that before." "Didn't I? Well, I had no occasion. I ask you now." "What are you going to do? Are you going to harm any one?" "No. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, but mind you, if you breathe a word to any being, I'll cut your tongue out." Tony looked troubled, but not frightened. "Go on," he said. Rudolph continued in a rapid tone. "I want money to carry out a plan of importance. This farm belongs to a farmer who is rich, and who keeps a part of his money in the house." "How do you know that?" "A friend of mine stopped there last week, and found out. He put me on the scent. The old man keeps from two to three hundred dollars in his desk. I must have that money." "I don't want to help you in this, Rudolph," said Tony. "I won't betray you, but you mustn't compel me to be a thief." "I can't get along without you, and help me you must." "Suppose we fail?" "Then we must take to our legs. If we're caught we're both in the same box. I don't ask you to take any risk that I don't run myself." Tony was about to remonstrate further, but it was too late. They had already reached the farm house, and caught sight of the owner standing under a tree in the front yard. "Remember!" hissed the older tramp. "Follow my lead, or I'll beat you till you are half dead. Good evening, sir." This last was said in a humble tone to the farmer, who advanced to the gate. "Good evening," said the farmer, ingeniously. He was a man of sixty, roughly dressed to suit his work, with grizzled hair, a form somewhat bowed, and a face seamed with wrinkles. He had been a hard worker, and showed abundant traces of it in his appearance. "We are very tired and hungry, my boy and I," whined Rudolph. "We've traveled many miles since morning. Would you kindly give us some supper and a night's lodging?" "My wife'll give you something to eat," said the old man. "Thank Heaven! we've got enough for ourselves and a bit for the poor besides. But I don't know about lodging. I don't like to take in strangers that I know nothing about." "I don't blame you, sir," said Rudolph, in a tone of affected humility. "There's many rogues going round the country, I've heard, but I'm a poor, hardworking man." "Then why are you not at work?" "Times are hard, and I can get nothing to do. I am in search of work. I can do almost anything. I'm a carpenter by trade." Rudolph knew no more of the carpenter's trade than the man in the moon, but that would do as well as any other. "Where are you from?" "From Buffalo," he answered, with slight hesitation. "Is business dull there?" "Nothing doing." "Well, my friend, you haven't come to the right place. There's nothing but farming done here." "I don't know anything about that," said Rudolph, hastily, for he had no disposition to be set to work in the fields. "I don't need any extra hands," said the farmer. "I am glad of that," thought the tramp. "Go round to the back door, and I will speak to my wife about supper," said the old man. "Come, Tony," said Rudolph, motioning to take the boy's hand, but Tony did not see fit to notice the movement, and walked in silence by his side. A motherly-looking old woman made her appearance at the back door. "Come in," she said. "Come right in, and sit down to the table. Abner, make room for the poor man and his son." Abner was a stalwart youth of eighteen, hard-handed and muscular. He was the only permanent "hired man" employed on the farm. In haying time there were others transiently employed. A farmer's table is plentiful, though homely. The two tramps made an abundant meal, both doing justice to the homely fare. The farmer's wife looked on with hospitable satisfaction. She could not bear to have anybody hungry under her roof. "You'll excuse our appetite, ma'am," said Rudolph, "but we've had nothing to eat since breakfast." "Eat as much as you like," said she. "We never stint anybody here. Is that your son?" "Yes, ma'am." Tony bent his eyes upon his plate, and frowned slightly. He wanted to deny it, but did not dare. "He don't look a bit like you," said the woman. "He's light, and you're very dark." "His mother was light," said Rudolph. "He takes after her." "How old is he?" "Tony, tell the lady how old you are." "Fourteen." "He is well grown of his age." "Yes; he will make a good-sized man. He's been sick." "Has he? What has been the matter?" "I don't know. Poor folks like us can't call in a doctor." "He don't look sick," said the farmer's wife, thoughtfully. "He's delicate, though he don't look it. It's sleeping out in the open air, I expect." "Do you have to sleep out in the open air?" "Yes; we can't afford to pay for lodgings, and people won't take us into their houses. I don't mind myself--I'm tough--but Tony can't stand it as well as I can." While this conversation was going on, Tony fixed his eyes upon his plate. He was annoyed to have such falsehoods told about him; but if he should utter a word of objection he knew there would be an explosion of wrath on the part of his guardian, and he remained silent. The farmer's wife was a simple-minded, kind-hearted woman, and though Tony did not look at all delicate, she never thought of questioning the statement of Rudolph. Indeed she was already revolving in her mind inviting the boy to sleep in the house. She was rather prejudiced in favor of Rudolph by his show of parental solicitude. When supper was over, having in the meantime consulted her husband, she said to Rudolph: "My husband says you may sleep in the barn, if you don't smoke. We can find a bed for your son with Abner. You won't mind taking him into your room?" "He can come," said Abner, good-naturedly. So it was arranged. At half-past eight, for they retired at that early hour in the farm house, Rudolph left the fireside, and sought the barn. As he left the room he looked suspiciously at Tony, and shook his head warningly. CHAPTER III. RUDOLPH'S DISAPPOINTMENT. Abner slept in a large room in the attic. It had been roughly partitioned off, and was not even plastered. The beams were plainly visible. Upon nails which had been driven into them hung Abner's limited wardrobe. There were two cot-beds in the room, as a part of the year the farmer employed more than one hired man. "You can sleep there, youngster," said Abner, pointing to one of the beds. "This is my bed." "Thank you," said Tony, politely. "I s'pose you've traveled round considerable," said Abner, with curiosity. "Yes, a good deal." "Do you like it?" "No; I'm tired of it." "How do you make your livin'?" "As we can. We often go hungry." "Why don't your father settle down somewhere?" Tony thought of disclaiming the relationship implied, but he reflected that Rudolph would be angry, and merely answered: "He prefers to travel round." "Was you ever in New York?" asked Abner. "Do you mean the city of New York? Yes." "I'd like to see it," said Abner, regarding Tony with new respect. "I've heard a sight about it. It's powerful big, isn't it?" "It's very large." "There's as many as a thousand houses, isn't there?" "There's a hundred thousand, I should think," answered Tony. "Sho? you don't say so!" exclaimed Abner, awestruck. "I'd like to go there." "Didn't you ever visit the city?" "No; I never traveled any. I never was more'n fifteen miles from home. Dad wouldn't let me. When I'm a man, I'm bound to see the world." "Ain't you a man now?" inquired Tony, surveying his Herculean proportions with astonishment. "No; I'm only eighteen." "You're as big as a man." "Yes, I'm pooty big," said Abner, with a complacent grin. "I can do a man's work." "I should think you might. I thought you were more than four years older than me. I'm fourteen." "I guess I weigh twice as much as you." "I'm not small of my age," said Tony, jealously. "Maybe not. I'm a regular bouncer. That's what dad says. Why, I'm half as big again as he is." "Does he ever lick you?" asked Tony, smiling. "I'd like to see him try it," said Abner, bursting into a roar of laughter. "He'd have to get upon a milkin' stool. Does your dad lick you?" "No," answered Tony, shortly. "He looks as if he might sometimes. He's kinder fractious-looking." Tony did not care to say much on the subject of Rudolph. He felt that it was his policy to be silent. If he said anything he might say too much, and if it got to Rudolph's ears, the man's vindictive temper would make it dangerous for him. "We get along pretty well," he said, guardedly. "Do you get up early?" "Four o'clock. You won't have to, though." "What time do you get breakfast?" "Half-past five, after I've milked and done the chores. You must be up by that time, or you won't get anything to eat." "That's pretty early," thought Tony. "I don't see the use of getting up so early." "I guess I'll go to sleep," said Abner. "I'm tuckered out." "Good-night, then," said Tony. "Good-night." The young giant turned over, closed his eyes, and in five minutes was asleep. Tony did not compose himself to sleep so readily, partly because Abner began to snore in a boisterous manner, partly because he felt disturbed by the thought of the treachery which Rudolph required at his hands. Tony was only a tramp, but he had an instinct of honor in him. In the farm house he had been kindly treated and hospitably entertained. He felt that it would be very mean to steal down in the dead of night and open the door to his companion in order that he might rob the unsuspecting farmer of his money. On the other hand, if he did not do this, he knew that he would be severely beaten by Rudolph. "Why am I tied to this man?" he thought. "What chance is there of my ever being anything but a tramp while I stay with him?" He had thought this before now, but the circumstances in which he now found himself placed made the feeling stronger. He had been often humiliated by being forced to beg from door to door, by the thought that he was a vagrant, and the companion of a vagrant, but he had not been urged to actual crime until now. He knew enough to be aware that he ran the risk of arrest and imprisonment if he obeyed Rudolph. On the other hand, if he refused, he was sure of a beating. What should he do? It was certainly a difficult question to decide, and Tony debated it in his own mind for some time. Finally he came to a determination. Rudolph might beat him, but he would not be guilty of this treachery. He felt better after he had come to this resolve, and the burden being now off his mind, he composed himself to sleep. He did not know how long he slept, but he had a troubled dream. He thought that in compliance with his companion's order he rose and opened the door to him. While Rudolph was opening the farmer's desk, he thought that heavy steps were heard, and Abner and the farmer entered the room, provided with a lantern. He thought that Rudolph and himself were overpowered and bound. Just as he reached this part he awaked, and was reassured by hearing Abner's heavy breathing. "I'm glad it's a dream," he thought, breathing a sigh of relief. At this instant his attention was called by a noise upon the panes of the only window in the room. He listened, and detected the cause. Some one was throwing gravel stones against it. "It's Rudolph!" he thought instantly. "He's trying to call my attention." He thought of pretending to be asleep, and taking no notice of the signal. But he feared Abner would awake, and ascertain the meaning of it. He decided to go to the window, show himself, and stop the noise if he could. He rose from his bed, and presented himself at the window. Looking down, he saw the dark figure of Rudolph leaning against the well-curb, with his eyes fixed on the window. "Oh, you're there at last," growled Rudolph. "I thought I'd never wake you up. Is the man asleep?" "Yes," said Tony. "Then come down and let me in." "I would rather not," said Tony, uneasily. "What's the fool afraid of?" answered Rudolph, in a low, menacing tone. "The man might wake up." "No danger. Such animals always sleep heavily. There's no danger, I tell you." "I don't want to do it," said Tony. "It would be mean. They've treated me well, and I don't want to help rob them." "Curse the young idiot!" exclaimed Rudolph, in low tones of concentrated passion. "Do you mean to disobey me?" "I can't do as you wish, Rudolph. Ask me anything else." "I wish I could get at him!" muttered Rudolph, between his teeth. "He never dared to disobey me before. Once more! Will you open the door to me?" demanded Rudolph. Tony bethought himself of an expedient. He might pretend that Abner was waking up. "Hush!" he said, in feigned alarm. "The man is waking up. Get out of sight quick." He disappeared from the window, and Rudolph, supposing there was really danger of detection, hurriedly stole away to the barn where he had been permitted to lodge. He came out half an hour later, and again made the old signal, but this time Tony did not show himself. He had made up his mind not to comply with the elder tramp's demands, and it would do no good to argue the point. "I wish I knew whether he was asleep, or only pretending, the young rascal," muttered Rudolph. "I must manage to have him stay here another night. That money must and shall be mine, and he shall help to get it for me." CHAPTER IV. SETTING A TRAP. At half-past five Tony got up. He would have liked to remain in bed two hours longer, but there was no chance for late resting at the farm house. Rudolph, too, was awakened by Abner, and the two tramps took their seats at the breakfast table with the rest of the family. Rudolph furtively scowled at Tony. To him he attributed the failure of his plans the night before, and he was furious against him--the more so that he did not dare to say anything in presence of the farmer's family. "Where are you going to-day?" asked the farmer, addressing Rudolph. "I am going to walk to Crampton. I may get employment there." "It is twelve miles away. That's a good walk." "I don't mind it for myself. I mind it for my son," said Rudolph, hypocritically. "He can stay here till you come back," said the farmer, hospitably. "If you're willing to have him, I will leave him for one more night," said Rudolph. "It'll do him good to rest." "He can stay as well as not," said the farmer. "When are you coming back?" "Perhaps to-night, but I think not till to-morrow." "Don't trouble yourself about your son. He will be safe here." "You are very kind," said the elder tramp. "Tony, thank these good people for their kindness to you." "I do thank them," said Tony, glancing uneasily at the other. When breakfast was over, Rudolph took his hat, and said: "I'll get started early. I've a long walk before me." Tony sat still, hoping that he would not be called upon to join him. But he was destined to be disappointed. "Come and walk a piece with me, Tony," said Rudolph. Reluctantly Tony got his hat, and set out with him. As long as they were in sight and hearing, Rudolph spoke to him gently, but when they were far enough for him to throw off the mask safely, he turned furiously upon the boy. "Now, you young rascal," he said, roughly, "tell me why you didn't obey me last night." "It wasn't safe," said Tony. "We should both have been caught." "Why should we? Wasn't the man asleep?" "He stirred in his sleep. If I had moved about much, or opened the door, it would have waked him up." "You are a coward," sneered Rudolph. "When I was of your age, I wouldn't have given up a job so easily. Such men sleep sound. No matter if they do move about, they won't wake up. If you had had a little more courage, we should have succeeded last night in capturing the money." "I wish you'd give it up, Rudolph," said Tony, earnestly. "You don't know what you're talking about," said the tramp, harshly. "You're a milksop. The world owes us a living, and we must call for it." "I'd rather work than steal." "There's no work to be had, and we must have money. More depends on it than you think. But we've got one more night to work in." "What do you mean to do?" asked Tony, uneasily. "Thanks to my management, you will sleep in the same room to-night. Look round the house during the day; see if the key's in the desk. If you can get hold of the money, all the better. In that case, come and hide it in that hollow tree, and we can secure it after the hue and cry is over. Do you hear?" "Yes." "But, if there is no chance of that, look out for me at midnight. I will throw gravel against your window as a signal. When you hear it, steal down stairs, with your shoes in your hands, and open the door to me. I will attend to the rest. And mind," he added, sternly, "I shall take no excuses." "Suppose I am caught going down stairs?" "Say you are taken sick. It will be easy enough to make an excuse." "Are you going to Crampton?" asked Tony. "Of course not. Do you think I am such a fool as to take a long walk like that?" "You said you were going." "Only to put them off the scent. I shall hide in yonder wood till night. Then I will find my way back to the farmhouse." "Do you want me to go any farther with you?" "No; you can go back now if you want to. Don't forget my directions." "I will remember them," said Tony, quietly. The two parted company, and Tony walked slowly back to the farm. He was troubled and perplexed. He was in a dilemma, and how to get out of it he did not know. It was not the first time that he thought over his relations to Rudolph. As far back as he could remember he had been under the care of this man. Sometimes the latter had been away for months, leaving him in the charge of a woman whose appearance indicated that she also was of Gipsy descent. He had experienced hunger, cold, neglect, but had lived through them all, tolerably contented. Now, however, he saw that Rudolph intended to make a criminal of him, and he was disposed to rebel. That his guardian was himself a thief, he had reason to know. He suspected that some of his periodical absences were spent in prison walls. Would he be content to follow his example? Tony answered unhesitatingly, "No." Whatever the consequences might be, he would make a stand there. He had reason to fear violence, but that was better than arrest and imprisonment. If matters came to the worst, he would run away. When he had come to a decision he felt better. He returned to the farm and found Abner just leaving the yard with a hoe in his hand. "Where are you going?" he asked. "To the corn field." "May I go with you?" "If you want to." So Tony went out to the field with the stalwart "hired man," and kept him company through the forenoon. "That's easy work," said Tony, after a while. "Do you think you can do it?" "Let me try." Tony succeeded tolerably well, but he could not get over the ground so fast as Abner. "Why don't you hire out on a farm?" asked Abner, as he took back the hoe. "I would if I could," answered Tony. "Why can't you? Won't your father let you?" "He wants me to go round with him," answered Tony. "Wouldn't he take me instead of you?" asked Abner, grinning. "I'd like to travel round and see the world. You could stay here and do farm work." "If he and the farmer agree to the change, I will," answered Tony, with a smile. At noon they went back to the farm house to dinner. Tony stared with astonishment at the quantity of food Abner made away with. He concluded that farm work was favorable to the appetite. The afternoon passed rapidly away, and night came. Again Tony went up into the attic to share Abner's room. He got nervous as the night wore on. He knew what was expected of him, and he shrank from Rudolph's anger. He tried to go to sleep, but could not. At last the expected signal came. There was a rattling of gravel stones upon the window. "Shall I lie here and take no notice?" thought Tony. In this case Rudolph would continue to fling gravel stones, and Abner might wake up. He decided to go to the window and announce his determination. When Rudolph saw him appear at the window, he called out: "Come down quick, and open the door." "I would rather not," answered Tony. "You must!" exclaimed Rudolph, with a terrible oath. "If you dare to refuse, I'll flay you alive." "I can't do it," said Tony, pale but resolute. "You have no right to ask it of me." Just then Tony was startled by a voice from the bed: "Is that your father? What does he want?" "I would rather not tell," said Tony. "You must!" said Abner, sternly. "He wants me to open the door and let him into the house," Tony confessed, reluctantly. "What for?" "He wants to get your master's money." "Ho, ho!" said Abner. "Well, we'll go down and let him in." "What!" exclaimed Tony, in surprise. "Call from the window that you will be down directly." "I don't want to get him into trouble." "You must, or I shall think you are a thief, too." Thus constrained, Tony called out that he would come down at once. "I thought you'd think better of it," muttered Rudolph. "Hurry down, and waste no time." Five minutes later, Abner and Tony crept down stairs, the former armed with a tough oak stick. CHAPTER V. AN ATTEMPT AT BURGLARY. Unsuspicious of danger, Rudolph took a position on the door-step. He was incensed with Tony for having given him so much unnecessary trouble, and he was resolved to give the boy a lesson. It was quite dark in the shadow of the house, and when the door opened, Rudolph, supposing, of course, it was Tony who had opened it, seized the person, whom he saw but dimly, by the arm, exclaiming venomously, as he tried to reach him: "I'll teach you to keep me waiting, you young rascal." He was not long in finding out his mistake. Abner was considerably larger and more muscular than the tramp, and he returned the compliment by shaking off Rudolph's grasp, and seizing him in his own vise-like grasp. "You'll teach me, will you, you villain," retorted Abner. "I'll teach you to come here like a thief." "Let go," exclaimed the tramp, as he felt himself shaken roughly. "Not till I've given you a good drubbing," returned Abner, and he began to use his cudgel with effect on the back and shoulders of the tramp. "You've come to the wrong house, you have." Rudolph ground his teeth with ineffectual rage. He lamented that he had not a knife or pistol with him, but he had made so sure of easy entrance into the house, and no resistance, that he had not prepared himself. As to brute force, he was no match for Abner. "The boy betrayed me!" he shrieked. "I'll have his life." "Not much," said Abner. "You'll be lucky to get away with your own. It isn't the boy. I was awake, and heard you ask him to let you in. Now take yourself off." As he said this he gave a powerful push, and Rudolph reeled a moment and sank upon the ground, striking his head with violence. "He won't try it again," said Abner, as he shut to the door and bolted it. "I guess he's got enough for once." Tony stood by, ashamed and mortified. He was afraid Abner would class him with the tramp who had just been ignominiously expelled from the house. He was afraid he, too, would be thrust out of doors, in which case he would be exposed to brutal treatment from Rudolph. But he did not need to fear this. Abner had seen and heard enough to feel convinced that Tony was all right in the matter, and he did not mean to make the innocent suffer for the guilty. "Now let us go to bed, Tony," he said in a friendly manner. "You don't want to go with him, do you?" "No," said Tony. "I never want to see him again." "I shouldn't think you would. He's a rascal and a thief." "I hope you don't think I wanted to rob the house," said Tony. "No; I don't believe you're a bit like him; what makes you go with him?" "I won't any more." "He isn't your father?" "No; I don't know who my father is." "That's strange," said Abner, who had seen but little of the world. Every one that he knew had a father, and knew who that father was. He could not realize that any one could have an experience like Tony's. "I wish I did know my father," said Tony, thoughtfully. "I'm alone in the world now." "What do you mean to do?" "I'll go off by myself to-morrow, away from Rudolph. I never want to see him again." "Have you got any money?" They had now got back into the chamber, and were taking off their clothes. "I've got five cents," answered Tony. "Is that all?" "Yes; but I don't mind; I'll get along somehow." Tony had always got along somehow. He had never--at least not for long at a time--known what it was to have a settled home or a permanent shelter. Whether the world owed him a living or not, he had always got one, such as it was, and though he had often been cold and hungry, here he was at fourteen; well and strong, and with plenty of pluck and courage to carry with him into the life struggle that was opening before him. Abner's training had been different, and he wondered at the coolness with which Tony contemplated the future. But he was too sleepy to wonder long at anything, and with a yawn he lapsed into slumber. Tony did not go to sleep immediately. He had need to be thoughtful. He had made up his mind to be his own master henceforth, but Rudolph, he knew, would have a word to say on that point. In getting away the next morning he must manage to give the tramp a wide berth. It would be better for him to go to some distant place, where, free from interference, he could make his own living. There was another thought that came to him. Somewhere in the world he might come across a father or mother, or more distant relative--one of whom he would not be ashamed, as he was of the companion who tried to draw him into crime. This was the last thought in his mind, as he sank into a sound sleep from which he did not awaken till he was called to breakfast. CHAPTER VI. ABNER'S RUSE. To say that Rudolph was angry when he recovered from the temporary insensibility occasioned by his fall, would be a very mild expression. He had not only been thwarted in his designs, but suffered violence and humiliation in presence of the boy of whom he regarded himself as the guardian. He thirsted for revenge, if not on Abner, then on Tony, whom it would be safer to maltreat and abuse. Anger is unreasonable, and poor Tony would have fared badly, if he had fallen into Rudolph's clutches just then. It made no difference that Abner had exonerated Tony from any share in the unpleasant surprise he had met. He determined to give him a severe beating, nevertheless. There is an old proverb: "You must catch your hare before you cook it." This did not occur to the tramp. He never supposed Tony would have the hardihood or courage to give him the slip. The remainder of the night spent by Tony in sleeping was less pleasantly spent by Rudolph in the barn. He meant to be up early, as he knew he was liable to arrest on account of his last night's attempt, and lie in wait for Tony, who, he supposed, would wait for breakfast. He was right there. Tony did remain for breakfast. The farmer--Mr. Coleman--had already been informed of Rudolph's attempted burglary, and he did Tony the justice to exonerate him from any share in it. "What are you going to do, my boy?" he asked at the breakfast table. "I am going to set up for myself," answered Tony, cheerfully. "That's right. Have nothing more to do with that man. He can only do you harm. Have you got any money?" "I've got five cents." "That isn't enough to buy a farm." "Not a very large one," said Tony, smiling. Abner nearly choked with laughter. This was a joke which he could appreciate. "I don't think I'll go to farming," continued Tony. "You can stay here a week or two," said the farmer, hospitably, "till you get time to look round." "Thank you," said Tony. "You are very kind, but I don't think it will be safe. Rudolph will be on the watch for me." "The man you came with?" "Yes." "Guess he won't touch you while I'm round," said Abner. "I don't think he'll want to tackle you again," said Tony. "Didn't I lay him out though?" said Abner, with a grin. "He thought it was you, ho! ho!" "He didn't think so long," said Tony. "I haven't got such an arm as you." Abner was pleased with this compliment to his prowess, and wouldn't have minded another tussle with the tramp. "Where do you think that chap you call Rudolph is?" he asked. "He's searching for me, I expect," said Tony. "If I'm not careful he'll get hold of me." Just then a neighbor's boy, named Joe, came to the house on an errand. He was almost Tony's size. He waited about, not seeming in any hurry to be gone. "Abner," said the farmer, "if you've got nothing else to do, you may load up the wagon with hay, and carry it to Castleton. We shall have more than we want." "All right," said Abner. "May I go, too? May I ride on the hay?" asked Joe, eagerly. "Will your father let you?" asked the farmer. "Oh, yes; he won't mind." "Then you may go," was the reply. "Do you want to go, too, Tony?" Tony was about to say yes, when an idea seized him. "If the other boy goes, Rudolph will think it is I, and he will follow the wagon. That will give me a chance of getting off in another direction." "So it will," said Abner. "What a head-piece you've got," he added, admiringly. "I wouldn't have thought of that." Abner's head-piece was nothing to boast of. He had strength of body, but to equalize matters his mind was not equally endowed. The plan was disclosed to Joe, who willingly agreed to enter into it. This was the more feasible because he was of about Tony's size, and wore a hat just like his. The hay was loaded, and the wagon started off with Abner walking alongside. Joe was perched on top, nearly buried in the hay, but with his hat rising from the mass. This was about all that could be seen of him. They had gone about half a mile when from the bushes by the roadside Rudolph emerged. He had seen the hat, and felt sure that Tony was trying to escape him in this way. "Well," said Abner, with a grin, as he recognized his midnight foe, "how do you feel this morning?" "None the better for you, curse you!" returned the tramp, roughly. Abner laughed. "That's what I thought," he said, cracking his whip. Rudolph would like to have punished him then and there for his humiliation of the night before, but Abner looked too powerful as he strode along manfully with vigorous steps. Besides, he had a heavy whip in his hand, which the tramp suspected would be used unhesitatingly if there were occasion. The prospect was not inviting. But, at any rate, Rudolph could demand that Tony be remitted to his custody. "Where's my boy?" asked the tramp, keeping at a safe distance. "Didn't know you had a boy," said Abner. "I mean that villain Tony. Is that he on the load of hay?" "Kinder looks like him," answered Abner, grinning. Rudolph looked up and caught sight of the hat. "Come down here, Tony," he said sternly. Joe, who had been instructed what to do, answered not a word. "Come down here, if you know what's best for you," continued the tramp. "Guess he's hard of hearing," laughed Abner. "Stop your wagon," said Rudolph, furiously; "I want to get hold of him." "Couldn't do it," said Abner, coolly. "I'm in a hurry." "Will you give me the boy or not?" demanded the tramp, hoarsely. "He can get off and go along with you if he wants to," said Abner. "Do you want to get down, Tony?" "No!" answered the supposed Tony. "You see, squire, he prefers to ride," said Abner. "Can't blame him much. I'd do it in his place." "Where are you going?" demanded the tramp, who hadn't discovered that the voice was not that of Tony. "I'm going to Castleton," answered Abner. "Are you going to leave the hay there?" "Yes, that's what I calc'late to do." "How far is it?" "Six miles." "I'll walk along, too." "Better not, squire, you'll get tired." "I'll risk that." Of course Rudolph's plan was manifest. When the hay was unloaded, of course Tony would have to get down. Then he would get hold of him. "You can do just as you've a mind to," said Abner. "You'll be company to Tony and me, but you needn't put yourself out on our account, hey, Tony?" There was a smothered laugh on top of the hay, which the tramp heard. His eyes snapped viciously, and he privately determined to give Tony a settlement in full for all his offenses just as soon as he got hold of him. So they jogged on, mile after mile. Abner walked on one side, swinging his whip, and occasionally cracking it. The tramp walked on the other side of the road, and the boy rode along luxuriously embedded in his fragrant couch of hay. Abner from time to time kept up the tramp's illusions by calling out, "Tony, you must take keer, or you'll fall off." "I'll catch him if he does," said Rudolph, grimly. "So you will," chuckled Abner. "You'd like to, wouldn't you?" "Certainly. He is my son," said Rudolph. "Do you hear that, Tony? He says you're his son," said Abner, grinning again. There was another laugh from the boy on the load of hay. "You won't find anything to laugh at when I get hold of you," muttered Rudolph. So they rode into Castleton. From time to time Abner, as he thought how neatly the tramp had been sold, burst into a loud laugh, which was echoed from the hay wagon. Rudolph was not only angry, but puzzled. "Does the boy hope to escape me?" he asked himself. "If so, he will find himself badly mistaken. He will find that I am not to be trifled with." "Say, squire, what makes you look so glum?" asked Abner. "Maybe it's because I didn't let you in when you called so late last night. We don't receive visitors after midnight." Rudolph scowled, but said nothing. "How long has the boy been with you?" asked Abner, further. "Since he was born," answered the tramp. "Ain't I his father?" "I don't know. If it's a conundrum I give it up." "Well, I am, and no one has a right to keep him from me," said the tramp, in a surly manner. "I wouldn't keep him from you for a minute," said Abner, innocently. "You are doing it now." "No, I ain't." "I can't get at him on that hay." "He can come down if he wants to. I don't stop him. You can come down if you want to, Tony," he said, looking up to where the boy's hat was visible. Tony did not answer, and Abner continued: "You see he don't want to come. He'd rather ride. You know he's been sick," said Abner, with a grin, "and he's too delicate to walk. He ain't tough, like you and me." "He'll need to be tough," muttered the tramp, as he thought of the flogging he intended to give Tony. "What did you say?" "Never mind." "Oh, I don't mind," said Abner. "You can say what you want to. This is a free country, only you can't do what you've a mind to." Rudolph wished that he had a double stock of strength. It was very provoking to be laughed at and derided by Abner without being able to revenge himself. A pistol or a knife would make him even with the countryman, but Rudolph was too much of a coward to commit such serious crimes when there was so much danger of detection and punishment. At last they entered Castleton. The hay was to be delivered to a speculator, who collected large quantities of it, and forwarded over the railroad to a large city. It had to be weighed, and Abner drove at once to the hay scales. "Now," thought Rudolph, with exultation, "the boy must come down, and I shall get hold of him." "I guess you'd better slide down," said Abner. "I can't sell you for hay, Tony." There was a movement, and then the boy slid down, Abner catching him as he descended. Rudolph's face changed ominously when he saw that it wasn't Tony who made his appearance. "What does this mean?" he demanded furiously. "What's the matter?" "This isn't Tony." "Come to look at him, it isn't," said Abner, with a twinkle in his eye. "Didn't you say it was Tony?" asked the tramp, exasperated. "I guess I was mistaken, squire," said Abner, grinning. "Where is he?" "I don't know, I'm sure. It seems he didn't come. Guess he must have given us the slip." The tramp, unable to control his rage, burst into a volley of execrations. "Hope you feel better, squire," said Abner, when he got through. The tramp strode off, vowing dire vengeance against both Abner and Tony. [Illustration: "What does this mean?" demanded the tramp furiously. "This isn't Tony."--(See page 45.)] CHAPTER VII. A STRANGE HOTEL. From the upper window in the farm house, which was situated on elevated ground, Tony saw his old guardian follow Abner. Thus the way was opened for his escape. He waited, however, a short time to make sure that all was safe, and then bade farewell to the farmer and his wife, thanking them heartily for their kindness to him. "Won't you stay longer with us?" asked the farmer. "You can as well as not." "Thank you," answered Tony, "but I wouldn't dare to. Rudolph may be back for me, and I want to get away before he has a chance." "Are you going to walk?" asked the farmer's wife. "Yes," said Tony. "I've only got five cents in my pocket, and I can't ride far on that." "I'm afraid you will be tired," said she, sympathetically. "Oh, I'm used to tramping," returned Tony, lightly. "I don't mind that at all." "Can't you put up some dinner for him, wife?" suggested the farmer. "It'll make him hungry, walking." "To be sure I will," she replied, and a large supply of eatables were put in a paper, sufficient to last Tony twenty-four hours, at least. The farmer deliberated whether he should not offer our hero half a dollar besides, but he was naturally close, so far as money was concerned, and he decided in the negative. So Tony set out, taking a course directly opposite to that pursued by Abner. In this way he thought he should best avoid the chance of meeting Rudolph. He walked easily, not being in any special hurry, and whenever he felt at all tired he stopped by the way side to rest. Early in the afternoon he lay down under a tree in the pasture and fell asleep. He was roused by a cold sensation, and found that a dog had pressed his cold nose against his cheek. "Haven't you any more manners, sir?" demanded Tony, good-naturedly. The dog wagged his tail, and looked friendly. "It's a hint that I must be on my journey," he thought. About five o'clock he felt that it was about time to look out for a night's rest. A hotel was, of course, out of the question, and he looked about for a farm house. The nearest dwelling was a small one, of four rooms, setting back from the road, down a lane. "Perhaps I can get in there," thought Tony. An old man, with a patriarchal beard, whose neglected and squalid dress seemed to indicate poverty, was sitting on the door-step. "Good evening," said Tony. "Who are you?" demanded the old man, suspiciously. "I am a poor traveler," said Tony. "A tramp!" said the old man, in the same suspicious tone. "Yes, I suppose so," said Tony, although he did not like the title overmuch. "Well, I've got nothing for you," said the old man, roughly. "I don't want anything except the chance to sleep." "Don't you want any supper?" "No, I've got my supper here," returned our hero, producing his paper of provisions. "What have you got there?" asked the old man, with an eager look. "Some bread and butter and cold meat." "It looks good," said the other, with what Tony thought to be a longing look. "I'll share it with you, if you'll let me sleep here to-night," said Tony. "Will you?" the other answered. "Yes; there's enough for both of us." The old man was a miser, as Tony suspected. He was able to live comfortably, but he deprived himself of the necessaries of life in order to hoard away money. His face revealed that to Tony. He had nearly starved himself, but he had not overcome his natural appetites, and the sight of Tony's supper gave him a craving for it. "I don't know," he said, doubtfully. "If I let you sleep here you might get up in the night and rob me." Tony laughed. "You don't look as if you had anything worth stealing," he said, candidly. "You're right, quite right," said old Ben Hayden, for this was his name. "I've only saved a little money--a very little--to pay my funeral expenses. You wouldn't want to take that?" "Oh, no," said Tony. "I wouldn't take it if you'd give it to me." "You wouldn't? why not?" "Because you need it yourself. If you were a rich man it would be different." "So it would," said old Hayden. "You're a good boy--an excellent boy. I'll trust you. You can stay." "Then let us eat supper," said Tony. He sat down on the door-step, and gave the old man half of his supply of food. He was interested to see the avidity with which he ate it. "Is it good?" he asked. "I haven't eaten anything so good for a long time. I couldn't afford to buy food." "I am sorry for you." "You haven't got any left for breakfast," said the old man. "Oh, somebody will give me breakfast," said Tony. "I always get taken care of somehow." "You are young and strong." "Yes." "Do you travel around all the time?" "Yes; but I hope to get a chance to go to work soon; I'd rather live in one place." "You might live with me if I were not so poor," said the old man. "Thank you," answered Tony, politely; but it did not appear to him that it was exactly such a home as he would choose. "Do you live alone?" he asked. "Yes." "I didn't know but you might be married." "I was married when I was a young man, but my wife died long ago." "Why don't you marry again?" inquired Tony, half in fun. "I couldn't afford it," answered Hayden, frightened at the suggestion. "Women have terrible appetites." "Have they?" returned Tony, amused. "And I can't get enough for myself to eat." "Have you always lived here?" "No; I lived in England when I was a young man." "What made you leave it?" "Why do you ask me that?" demanded old Ben, suspiciously. "Oh, if it's a secret, don't tell me," said Tony, indifferently. "Who said it was a secret?" said the old man, irritably. "Nobody that I know of." "Then why do you ask me such questions?" The old man surveyed Tony with a look of doubt, as if he thought the boy were laying a trap for him. "Don't answer anything you don't want to," said our hero. "I only asked for the sake of saying something." "I don't mind telling," said old Ben, more calmly. "It was because I was so poor. I thought I could do better in America." "And didn't you?" "When I was able to work. Now I'm weak and poor, and can't always get enough to eat." "Do you own this place?" "Yes, but it's a very poor place. It isn't worth much." "I shouldn't think it was," said Tony. "You're a good lad--an excellent lad. You see how poor I am." "Of course I do, and I'm sorry for you. I would help you, only I am very poor myself." "Have you got any money?" asked Ben, with interest. "I've got five cents," answered Tony, laughing. "I hope you've got more than that." "A little more--a very little more," said Ben, cautiously. The old miser began to consider whether he couldn't charge Tony five cents for his lodging, but sighed at the recollection that Tony had already paid for it in advance by giving him a supper. When eight o'clock came the miser suggested going to bed. "I haven't any lights," he said; "candles cost so much. Besides, a body's better off in bed." "I'm willing to go to bed," said Tony. "I've walked a good deal to-day, and I'm tired." They went into the house. There was a heap of rags in the corner of the room when they entered. "That's my bed," said old Ben; "it's all I have." "I can sleep on the floor," said Tony. He took off his jacket, and rolled it up for a pillow, and stretched himself out on the bare floor. He had often slept so before. CHAPTER VIII. TONY HIRES OUT AS A COOK AND HOUSEKEEPER. Tony was not slow in going to sleep. Neither his hard bed nor his strange bed-chamber troubled him. He could sleep anywhere. That was one of the advantages of his checkered life. Generally he slept all night without awaking, but to-night, for some unknown reason, he awoke about two o'clock. It was unusually light for that hour, and so he was enabled to see what at first startled him. The old man was out of bed, and on his knees in the center of the room. He had raised a plank, forming a part of the flooring, and had raised from beneath it a canvass bag full of gold pieces. He was taking them out and counting them, apparently quite unconscious of Tony's presence. Tony raised himself on his elbow, and looked at him. It occurred to him that for a man so suspicious it was strange that he should expose his hoard before a stranger. Something, however, in the old man's look led him to think that he was in a sleepwalking fit. "Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven," Tony heard him count; "that makes nine hundred and seventy dollars, all gold, good, beautiful gold. Nobody knows the old man is so rich. There's another bag, too. There are one hundred pieces in that. Three more, and this will be full, too. Nobody must know, nobody must know." He put back the pieces, replaced the bag in its hiding-place, and then putting back the plank, laid down once more on his heap of rags. "How uneasy he would be," thought Tony, "if he knew I had seen his treasures. But I wouldn't rob him for the world, although the money would do me good, and he makes no use of it except to look at it." If Tony was honest, it was an instinctive feeling. It could not have been expected of one reared as he had been. But, singular as it may seem, beyond a vague longing, he felt no temptation to deprive old Ben of his money. "Let him get what satisfaction he can from it," he said to himself. "I hope he'll keep it till he dies. I am only afraid that some night some one will see him counting the gold who will want to take it." Tony went to bed again, and slept till six. Then he was awakened by a piteous groaning, which he soon found proceeded from the other bed. "What's the matter?" he asked. "Who's there?" demanded Ben, terrified. "It's only I. Don't you remember you let me sleep here last night?" "O, yes; I remember now. I'm sick; very sick." "How do you feel?" "I'm aching and trembling all over. Do you think I am going to die?" he asked, with a startled look. "Oh, no, I guess not," said Tony, reassuringly. "Everybody is sick now and then." "I never felt so before," groaned Ben. "I'm an old man. Don't you think--don't you really think I shall die?" He looked appealingly at Tony, as if the fiat of life and death lay with him. Tony, of course, knew nothing of medicine or of diseases, but he had the sense to understand that the old man would be more likely to recover if his terror could be allayed, and he said, lightly: "Oh, it's only a trifle. You've taken cold, very likely. A cup of hot tea would be good for you." "I haven't any tea," groaned Ben. "It costs a great deal, and I'm very poor. I can't afford to buy it." Tony smiled to himself, remembering the hoard of gold under the floor, but he would not refer to it, at least not at present. "Are you sure you haven't got a little money?" he asked. "If you want to get well, you must be made comfortable." "It's hard to be poor," whined Ben. "I guess you've got some money," said Tony. "You'd better let me go to the store, and buy some tea and a fresh roll for you." "How much will it cost?" asked Ben. "I can get some bread, and tea, and sugar for thirty or forty cents," answered Tony. "Forty cents! It's frightful!" exclaimed Ben. "I--I guess I'll do without it." "Oh, well, if you prefer to lie there and die its none of my business," said Tony, rather provoked at the old man's perverse folly. "But I don't want to die," whined Ben. "Then do as I tell you." Tony jumped out of bed, unrolled his coat, and put it on. "Now," said he, "I'm ready to go for you, if you'll give me the money." "But you may take it, and not come back," said the old man, suspiciously. "If you think you can't trust me, you needn't," said Tony. "I've offered to do you a favor." "I think I'll go myself," said Ben. He tried to raise himself, but a twinge of pain compelled him to lie down again. "No, I can't," he said. "Well, do you want me to go for you?" "Yes," answered Ben, reluctantly. "Then give me the money." Still more reluctantly Ben produced twenty-five cents from his pocket. "Isn't that enough?" he asked. "Better give me more," said Tony. He produced ten cents more, and vowed it was all the money he had in the world. Tony decided not to contradict his assertion, but to make this go as far as it would. He put on his hat and started out. He meant also to call at the doctor's, and asked him to call round, for he thought it possible that the old man might be seriously sick. First, however, he went to the grocery store, which had only just been opened, and obtained the articles which he had mentioned to Ben as likely to do him good. Next he called at the house of the village doctor, obtaining the direction from the storekeeper. In a few words he made known his errand. "Old Ben sick!" said Doctor Compton. "What's the matter with him?" Tony explained how he appeared to be affected. "How did you happen to be in his house?" asked the doctor, with curiosity. "You are not a relation of his, are you?" Tony laughed. "I don't think he would let me into the house if I were," he said. "He would be suspicious of me." "Then how does it happen that you were with him?" Tony explained. "He has been repaid for taking you in," said the doctor. "I'll put on my hat, and go right over with you." After Tony left the house, old Ben lay and tormented himself with the thought that the boy would never come back. "Just as like as not," he thought, "he will go off with the money, and leave me here to die." Then he tried to sit up, but without success. Half an hour later he was relieved by seeing the door open, and Tony enter. But he looked dismayed when he saw the doctor. "What did you come for?" he asked, peevishly. "To see what I can do for you, Mr. Hayden. Let me feel your pulse." "But I can't afford to have a doctor. I am poor, and can't pay you," whined old Ben. "We'll talk about that afterward." "You can't charge when I didn't send for you." "Make your mind easy. I won't charge for this visit. Let me feel your pulse." Old Ben no longer opposed medical treatment, finding it would cost nothing. "Am I going to die?" he asked, with an anxious look. "You need nourishing food and care, that is all," was the reply. "You have had a chill, and you are reduced by insufficient food." "I have some bread and tea here," said Tony. "Do you know how to make the tea?" asked the doctor. "Yes," said Tony. "Then make a fire, and boil it at once. And, by the way, Mr. Hayden needs somebody to be with him for a few days. Can you stay with him and look after him?" "If he will give me money enough to buy what he needs," said Tony. "Will you do it, Mr. Hayden?" asked the doctor. Old Ben whined that he was poor, and had no money, but the doctor interrupted him impatiently. "That's all nonsense," he said. "You may not have much money, but you've got some, and you'll die if you don't spend some on yourself. If you don't agree to it, I shall advise this boy here to leave you to your fate. Then your only resource will be to go to the poor-house." This proposal was not acceptable to Ben, who was unwilling to leave the house where his treasures were concealed. He therefore reluctantly acceded to the doctor's conditions, and Tony got his breakfast. Despite his sickness, he relished the tea and toast, and for the moment forgot what it cost. "Well," thought Tony to himself with a smile, "I've got a situation as plain cook and housekeeper. I wonder how long it will last, and what'll come of it. I don't believe Rudolph will look for me here." But in this Tony was mistaken. CHAPTER IX. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW. Tony was not only cook and housekeeper, but he was sick-nurse as well. Nor were his duties easy. The main difficulty was about getting money to buy what was absolutely necessary. This was very aggravating, especially since Tony knew what he did about Ben's hidden treasure. Moreover, he had reason to suspect that Ben had more money concealed elsewhere. One morning Tony went to Ben for money, saying: "There isn't a scrap of food in the house, except a little tea." "You can make some tea. That will do," said Ben. "It may do for you, but it won't for me," said Tony, resolutely. "I ain't going to stay here to starve." "It costs a sight to support two people," whined the old man. "I don't know about that. I've only spent two dollars in six days. You don't call that much, do you?" "Two dollars!" ejaculated the old man, terrified. "O, it's too much. I am ruined!" "Are you?" said Tony, coolly. "Then all I can say is, you're easy ruined. I want half a dollar." "I shan't give it to you," snarled Ben. "Do you mean to starve?" "I won't part with all I have. You are robbing me." "That won't make much difference, as you'll be dead in three days," said Tony. "What?" almost shrieked Ben, in dismay. "Who told you so? The doctor?" "No." "You ain't goin' to murder me, are you?" "No; you are going to murder yourself." "What do you mean?" demanded Ben, peevishly. "You're not willing to buy anything to eat," explained Tony, "and you can't live above three days on nothing." "Is that all? What made you frighten me so?" complained Ben, angrily. "I only told you the truth. Are you going to give me the money?" "Perhaps you'll tell me where I am to get so much money?" said Ben, in the same tone. "I will tell you if you want me to," answered Tony. "Where?" asked Ben, eagerly. "Under the floor," returned Tony, composedly. "What!" screamed Ben, in consternation. "Just where I said. There's plenty of money under that plank." "Who told you?" groaned the old man, livid with terror. "Have--have you taken any?" "Not a dollar. It's all there. You needn't be frightened." "Have you been spying when I was asleep?" demanded Ben, incensed. "No, I haven't. That ain't my style," answered Tony, independently. "You did. I know you did." "Then you know too much." "How could you find out, then?" "If you want to know, I'll tell you. The first night I was here you got up in your sleep and took up the board. Then you drew out two bags of gold pieces and counted them." "Oh, I'm ruined! I'm undone!" lamented Ben, when he found that his secret had been discovered. "I don't see how you are." "I shall be robbed. There's only a little there--only a few dollars to bury me." "I guess you mean to have a tall funeral, then," said Tony, coolly. "There's as much as a thousand dollars there." "No, no--only fifty," answered the old man. "There's no use talking, I know better. If you don't believe it, suppose I take up the bags and count the pieces." "No, no!" "Just as you say. All is, you've got plenty of money, and I know it, and if you ain't willing to use some of it, I'll go off and leave you alone." "Don't go," said Ben, hastily. "You're a good boy. You wouldn't rob a poor old man, would you?" "Nor a rich old man either; but I don't mean to starve. So give me fifty cents, and I'll go over to the store and get some fresh bread and butter, and tea and sugar." "No matter about the butter. It costs too much." "I want butter myself. My constitution requires it," said Tony. "You needn't eat it if you don't want to." Ben groaned again, but he produced the money required, and Tony soon returned from the grocery store with small supplies of the articles he had named. "Now we'll have some breakfast," said Tony, cheerfully. "Don't you feel hungry?" "A--a little," acknowledged Ben, reluctantly. "I wish I wasn't. It costs so much to live." "I don't think it costs you much," said Tony. "This morning I'm going to give you a boiled egg besides your tea and toast." "Where did you get it?" "I bought it at the store." "I can't afford it," groaned the old man. "You may as well eat it as it's here. I bought two, one for myself." "How much did you pay?" "Three cents for two." Ben groaned again, but when breakfast was ready he showed an unusually good appetite, and did not refrain from partaking of the egg, expensive as it was. Dr. Compton came in the next morning, and pronounced the old man better and stronger. "Shall I be able to get up soon, doctor?" asked Ben. "In a day or two, I think." Ben heaved a sigh of relief. "I'm glad of it," he said. "I can't afford to be sick." "Has it cost you much?" asked the doctor, amused. "It costs a sight to live. He eats a good deal," indicating Tony. "He's a growing boy; but he's worth all he costs you. You'd better ask him to stay with you a few weeks, till your strength is entirely recovered." "No, no; I can't afford it," said Ben, hastily. "He's a good boy; but he's very hearty--very hearty." Tony laughed. "Don't vex him, doctor," said our hero. "I'm tired of staying here. I want to get out on the road again. There isn't much fun in staying shut up here." Ben looked relieved. He had feared that Tony would be reluctant to go. "Right, boy," he said, "you're right. It's a dull place. You'll be better off to go." "You have been lucky to have him here during your sickness," said the doctor. "Without his care, or that of some one else, you would probably have died." "But I won't die now?" asked old Ben, anxiously, peering up into the doctor's face. "Not at present, I hope. But you must live better than you have been accustomed to do or you will fall sick again." "I shall be glad to get away," said Tony, hurriedly, to the doctor, outside of the house. "I'm used to tramping, and I can't stand it much longer. There's one thing I want to tell you before I go, and I might as well do it now." "Go on, my boy." "I'm afraid the old man will be robbed some time." "Is there anything to steal?" "Yes; I think I had better tell you about it." Tony, in a low tone, imparted to Dr. Compton the discovery he had made of the old miser's hoards. "I suspected as much," said the doctor. "I will do what I can to induce Ben to have the gold moved to a place of safety, but I don't feel confident of my ability to do it. Such men generally like to have their hoards within their own reach." * * * * * * Two nights later, Tony woke shortly after midnight. It was a bright, moonlight night, as on the first night he slept there. Again he saw Ben crouched on the floor, with the plank removed from its place, engaged in counting his hoards. The old man had recovered enough strength to get out of bed without assistance. This time, too, he was broad awake. Tony was not the only witness of the spectacle. Casting his eyes toward the window he was startled by seeing a dark, sinister face, pressed against the pane, almost devouring the old man and his gold. It was a face he well knew, and he trembled not alone for Ben, but for himself. _It was the face of Rudolph, the tramp._ CHAPTER X. THE TRAMP'S UNEXPECTED DEFEAT. "Has Rudolph tracked me, or is it only accident that has brought him here?" This was the thought which naturally suggested itself to our hero, as in a very disturbed state of mind he stared at Rudolph through the uncertain light. He decided that it was accident, for as yet the tramp did not appear to have discovered him. His eyes were fastened upon old Ben with unmistakable cupidity. It was the gold that attracted him, and between him and the possession of the gold it seemed as if there were no obstacle to intervene. What was the old man's feeble strength, more feeble still through disease, against this powerful man? Tony felt the difficulties of the position. Not only would the gold be taken, but as soon as Rudolph discovered him, as he would, he too would fall into the power of the tramp. Old Ben had not yet discovered the sinister face at the window. He was too busily occupied with his pleasant employment of counting over his gold for the hundredth time, it might be, to be aware of the dangerous witness at the window. But he was speedily aroused by the noise of the window being raised from the outside. Then he turned with a startled look which quickly deepened into astonishment and dismay as he caught the lowering look fixed upon him. There was more than this. There was recognition besides. "You here?" he gasped, mechanically gathering up the gold in his trembling fingers, with the intention of replacing it in the bag. "Yes, Ben, it's me," answered the tramp, with a sneer. "May I come in?" "No, no!" ejaculated the old man, hastily. "I think I must," returned the tramp, in the same mocking tone. "I came to see you as an old friend, but I never dreamed you were so rich. That's a pretty lot of gold you have there." "Rich!" repeated Ben, with his usual whine. "I'm very poor." "That looks like it." "It's only a few dollars--enough to bury me." "Very well, Ben, I'll take charge of it, and when you need burial I'll attend to it. That's fair, isn't it?" Rudolph, who had paused outside, now raised the window to its full height, and despite the old man's terrified exclamations, bounded lightly into the room. "Help! help! thieves!" screamed Ben, almost beside himself with terror, as he spread his feeble hands over the gold which he had so imprudently exposed. "Hold your jaw, you driveling old idiot," said Rudolph, harshly, "or I'll give you something to yell about." "Help, Tony, help!" continued the old man. The tramp's eyes, following the direction of Ben's, discovered our hero on his rude bed in the corner of the room. A quick gleam of exultation shot from them as he made this discovery. "Ho, ho!" he laughed with a mirth that boded ill to Tony, "so I've found you at last, have I? You served me a nice trick the other day, didn't you? I owe you something for that." "I hoped I should never set eyes on you again," said Tony. "I've no doubt you did. You undertook to run away from me, did you? I knew I should come across you sooner or later." While this conversation was going on, Ben glanced from one to the other in surprise, his attention momentarily drawn away from his own troubles. "Do you know this boy, Rudolph?" he inquired. "I should think I did," answered the tramp, grimly. "You can ask him." "_Who is he?_" asked Ben, evidently excited. "What is that to you?" returned Rudolph. "It's a boy I picked up, and have taken care of, and this is his gratitude to me, and I've had a long chase to find him." "Is this true?" asked Ben, turning to Tony. "Some of it is true," said our hero. "I've been with him ever since I could remember, and I ran away because he wanted me to join him in robbing a house. He calls me his son sometimes, but I know he is not my father." "How do you know?" demanded the tramp sternly. "Didn't you say so just now?" "It was none of the old man's business, and I did not care what I told him." "There's something within me tells me that there's no relationship between us," said Tony, boldly. "Is there, indeed," sneered the tramp. "Is there anything within you tells you you are going to get a good flogging?" "No, there isn't." "Then you needn't trust it, for that is just what is going to happen." He advanced toward Tony in a threatening manner, when he was diverted from his purpose by seeing the old man hastily gathering up the gold with the intention of putting it away. Punishment could wait, he thought, but the gold must be secured now. "Not so fast, Ben!" he said. "You must lend me some of that." "I can't," said Ben, hurrying all the faster. "It's all I have, and I am very poor." "I am poorer still, for I haven't a red to bless myself with. Come, I won't take all, but some I must have." He stooped over, and began to grasp at the gold pieces, some of which were heaped up in piles upon the floor. Even the weakest are capable of harm when exasperated, and Ben, feeble as he was, was gifted with supernatural strength when he saw himself likely to lose the hoards of a lifetime, and his anger rose to fever heat against the scoundrel whom he had known years before to be utterly unprincipled. With a cry like that of a wild beast he sprang upon the tramp, who, in his crouching position, was unable to defend himself against a sudden attack. Rudolph fell with violence backward, striking his head with great force against the brick hearth. Strong as he was, it was too much for him, and he lay stunned and insensible, with the blood gushing from a wound in his head. The old man stood appalled at the consequence of his sudden attack. "Have I killed him? Shall I be hanged?" he asked, with anguish. "No, he's only stunned!" said Tony, springing over the floor with all his wits about him. "We have no time to lose." "To run away? I can't leave my gold," said Ben. "I don't mean that. We must secure him against doing us any harm when he recovers. Have you got some stout cord?" "Yes, yes," said Ben, beginning to understand our hero's design. "Stay, I'll get it right away." "You'd better, for he may come to any minute." The old man fumbled round until in some out-of-the-way corner, where he had laid away a store of odds and ends, he discovered a quantity of stout cord. "Will that do?" he asked. "Just the thing," said Tony. The boy set to work with rapid hands to tie the prostrate tramp hand and foot. He was only afraid Rudolph would rouse to consciousness while the operation was going on, but the shock was too great, and he had sufficient time to do the job effectually and well. "How brave you are," exclaimed the old man, admiringly. "I wouldn't dare to touch him." "Nor I if he were awake. I didn't think you were so strong. He went over as if he were shot." "Did he?" asked the old man, bewildered. "I don't know how I did it. I feel as weak as a baby now." "It's lucky for us you threw yourself upon him as you did. A little more cord, Mr. Hayden. I want to tie him securely. You'd better be gathering up that gold, and putting it away before he comes to." "So I will, so I will," said Ben, hastily. Scarcely was the money put away in its place of concealment, when the tramp recovered from his fit of unconsciousness, and looked stupidly around him. Then he tried to move, and found himself hampered by his bonds. Looking up, he met the terrified gaze of old Ben, and the steady glance of Tony. Then the real state of the case flashed upon him, and he was filled with an overpowering rage at the audacity of his late charge, to whom he rightly attributed his present humiliating plight. CHAPTER XI. THE PRISONER. "Let me up!" roared Rudolph, struggling vigorously with the cords that bound him. Ben was terrified by his demonstration, and had half a mind to comply with his demand. But Tony had his wits about him, and felt that there was no safety in such a course. "Don't you do it, Mr. Hayden!" he exclaimed, hastily. "What! young jackanapes," said the tramp, scowling fiercely. "You dare to give him this advice?" "Yes, I do," said Tony, boldly. "He will be a fool if he releases you." "If he don't I'll kill him and you too," returned Rudolph. "What shall I do?" added Ben, hopelessly. He turned for advice to the boy, who was fifty years his junior. Strong and resolute spirits naturally assume the place of leading at any age. "Do you know what he'll do if you untie him?" asked Tony. "What will I do?" demanded Rudolph. "You will steal this old man's money. It was what you were about to do when you fell over backwards." "He threw me over," said the tramp, now gazing resentfully at Ben. "I didn't mean to," said the terrified old man. "You almost stunned me." "I'm very sorry," stammered Ben. "If you're very sorry, untie them cords and let me up." "I didn't tie you." "Who did?" "The--the boy." "You _dared_ to do it?" exclaimed Rudolph, turning upon Tony with concentrated fury. "Yes, I did," said Tony, calmly. "It was the only way to keep you out of mischief." "Insolent puppy; if I only had my hands free I would strangle you both." "You hear what he says?" said Tony, turning to old Ben. "Are you in favor of untying him now?" "No, no!" exclaimed Ben, trembling. "He is a dreadful man. O, why did he come here?" "I came for your gold, you fool, and I'll have it yet," said Rudolph, losing sight of all considerations of prudence. "What shall I do?" asked the old man, wringing his hands in the excess of his terror. "Let me up, and I won't hurt you," said the tramp, finding that he must control his anger for the present. "Just now you said you would strangle the both of us, Rudolph." "I'll strangle you, you cub, but I will do no harm to the old man." "You will take his gold." "No." "Don't you trust him, Mr. Hayden," said Tony. "He will promise anything to get free, but he will forget all about it when he is unbound." "I'd like to choke you!" muttered Rudolph, who meant thoroughly what he said. "But what shall I do, Tony? I can't have him in here all the time." "I'll go and call for help to arrest him," said Tony. "And leave me alone with him?" asked Ben, terrified. "No; we will lock the door, and you shall go and stay outside till I come back." Tony's proposal was distasteful to Rudolph. He had a wholesome dread of the law, and didn't fancy the prospect of an arrest, especially as he knew that the testimony of Tony and the old man would be sufficient to insure him a prolonged term of imprisonment. He made a fresh and violent struggle which portended danger to his captors. "Come out quick," said Tony, hastily. "It is not safe for you to stay here any longer." The old man followed him nothing loth, and Tony locked the door on the outside. "Do you think he will get free?" asked Ben, nervously. "He may, and if he does there is no safety for either of us till he is caught again." "The door is locked." "But he may get out of the window." "Oh, my gold! my gold!" groaned Ben. "He may get it." "Yes, he may; our only hope is to secure him as soon as possible." "I am so weak I can't go fast. I am trembling in every limb." "You must conceal yourself somewhere, and let me run on," said Tony, with decision. "There is no time to be lost." "I don't know of any place." "Here's a place. You will be safe here till I come for you." Tony pointed to an old ruined shed, which they had just reached. "Will you be sure and come for me." "Yes; don't be alarmed. Only don't show yourself till you hear my voice." Ben crept into the temporary shelter, glad that in his weakened condition he should not be obliged to go any farther. To be sure he tormented himself with the thought that even now the desperate tramp might be robbing him of his treasures. Still he had great confidence in what Tony had told him, and hope was mingled with his terror. "He's a brave boy," he murmured. "I am glad he was with me, though he does eat a sight. Oh, how many wicked men there are in the world." Tony hurried on to the village, where he lost no time in arousing a sufficient number to effect the capture of the burglar. He no longer felt any compunction in turning against his quondam guardian, recognizing him as his own enemy and the enemy of society. "I owe him nothing," thought Tony. "What has he ever done for me? He is not my father. Probably he kidnapped me from my real home, and has made me an outcast and a tramp like himself. But I will be so no longer. I will learn a trade, or do something else to earn an honest livelihood. I mean to become a respectable member of society, if I can." It took him half an hour before he could rouse the half-dozen men whom he considered necessary to effect the arrest and get them under way. Meanwhile Rudolph was not idle. It may be thought strange that he should have so much difficulty in freeing himself from the cords with which Tony had bound him. But it must be remembered that the boy had done his work well. The cord was stout and strong, and he had had time to tie it in many knots, so that even if one had been untied, the tramp would have found himself almost as far from liberty as ever. After he had been locked in, Rudolph set about energetically to obtain release. He succeeded in raising himself to his feet, but as his ankles were tied together this did not do him much good. By main strength he tried to break the cords, but the only result was to chafe his wrists. "What a fool I am," he exclaimed at length. "The old man must have some table-knives about somewhere. With these I can cut the cords." It was not till some time had elapsed, however, that this very obvious thought came to him. Further time was consumed in finding the knives. When found, they--there were two--proved so dull that even if he had had free use of one of his hands it would not have been found easy to make them of service. But when added to this was the embarrassment of his fettered hands, it will not excite surprise that it required a long time to sever the tough cords which bound him. But success came at length. His arms were free, and he stretched them with exultation. His ankles next demanded attention, but this was a much easier task. "Now for revenge!" thought the tramp. "The boy shall rue this night's task, or my name is not Rudolph." Whatever else he might do, he must secure the miser's gold. He had seen the hiding-place. He removed the plank, and there, beneath him, visible in the moonlight, lay the much-coveted bags of golden treasure. He rose from the floor, and, with the bags in his hand, jumped out of the still opened window. But he was too late. Two strong men seized him, each by an arm, and said, sternly: "You are our prisoner." [Illustration: Tony set to work with rapid hands to tie the prostrate tramp hand and foot.--(See page 73.)] CHAPTER XII. TONY STARTS OUT ONCE MORE. It was not until after Rudolph's seizure that Ben, who had followed the extemporized police, discovered the bags of gold in the hands of the tramp. "Give me my money!" he shrieked, in excitement and anguish. "Don't let him carry it off." "It's safe, Ben," said one of the captors. "But who would have supposed you had so much money?" "It isn't much," faltered the old man. "The bags are pretty heavy," was the significant rejoinder. "Will you take two hundred dollars apiece for them?" "No," said the old man, embarrassed. "Then it seems there is considerable after all. But never mind. Take them, and take better care of them hereafter." Ben advanced with as much alacrity as he could summon in his weakness, and stooped to pick up the bags. He had got hold of them when the tramp, whose feet were unconfined, aimed a kick at him which completely upset him. Even though he fell, however, he did not lose his grip of the bags, but clung to them while crying with pain. "Take that, you old fool!" muttered the tramp. "It's the first instalment of the debt I owe you." "Take him away, take him away! He will murder me!" exclaimed old Ben, in terror. "Come along. You've done mischief enough," said his captors, sternly, forcing the tramp along. "I'll do more yet," muttered Rudolph. He turned to Tony, who stood at a little distance watching the fate of his quondam companion. "I've got a score to settle with you, young traitor. The day will come for that yet." "I'm sorry for you, Rudolph," said Tony; "but you brought it on yourself." "Bah! you hypocrite!" retorted the tramp. "I don't want any of your sorrow. It won't save you when the day of reckoning comes." He was not allowed to say more, but was hurried away to the village lockup for detention until he could be conveyed to more permanent quarters. Doctor Compton was among the party who had been summoned by Tony. He lingered behind, and took Ben apart. "Mr. Hayden," he said, "I want to give you a piece of advice." "What is it?" asked the old man. "Don't keep this gold in your house. It isn't safe." "Who do you think will take it?" asked Ben, with a scared look. "None of those here this morning, unless this tramp should escape from custody." "Do you think he will?" asked the old man, in terror. "I think not; but he may." "If he don't, what danger is there?" "It will get about that you have money secreted here, and I venture to say it will be stolen before three months are over." "It will kill me," said Ben, piteously. "Then put it out of reach of danger." "Where?" "I am going over to the county town, where there is a bank. Deposit it there, and whenever you want any, go and get it." "But banks break sometimes," said Ben, in alarm. "This is an old, established institution. You need not be afraid of it. Even if there is some danger, there is far less than here." "But I can't see the money--I can't count it," objected Ben. "You can see the deposit record in a book. Even if that doesn't suit you as well, you can sleep comfortably, knowing that you are not liable to be attacked and murdered by burglars." The old man vacillated, but finally yielded to the force of the doctor's reasoning. A day or two later he rode over to the neighboring town, and saw his precious gold deposited in the vaults of the bank. He heaved a sigh as it was locked up, but on the whole was tolerably reconciled to the step he had taken. We are anticipating, however. When the confusion incident to the arrest was over, Tony came forward. "Mr. Hayden," he said, "you are so much better that I think you can spare me now." "But," said the old man, startled at the boy's question, "suppose Rudolph comes back." "I don't think he can. He will be put in prison." "I suppose he will. What a bold, bad man." "Yes, he is a bad man, but I am sorry for him. I don't like to think of one I have been with so long in the walls of a prison. I suppose it can't be helped, though." "How did you come to be with him?" asked the old man, in a tone of interest. "I don't know. I have been with him as long as I can remember. You used to know him, didn't you?" "A little," said the old man, hastily. "Where was it?" "In England--long ago." "In England. Was he born in England?" asked Tony, in surprise. "Yes." "And you, too?" "Yes, I am an Englishman." "Do you think I am English, too?" asked the boy, eagerly. "I think so; yes, I think so," answered Ben, cautiously. "Have you any idea who I am--who were my parents?" "No, I don't know," said Ben, slowly. "Can you guess?" "Don't trouble me now," said Ben, peevishly. "I am not well. My head is confused. Some day I will think it over and tell you what I know." "But if I am not here?" "I will write it down and give it to the doctor." "That will do," said Tony. "I know he will keep it for me. Now, good-by." "Are you going?" "Yes, I have my own way to make in the world. I can't live on you any longer." "To be sure not," said Ben, hastily. "I am too poor to feed two persons, and you have a very large appetite." "Yes," said Tony, laughing, "I believe I have a healthy appetite. I'm growing, you know." "It must be that," said old Ben, with the air of one to whom a mystery had just been made clear. "What is your name?" "Tony," answered our hero, in surprise at the question. "No. I mean your full name." "That is more than I know. I have always been called Tony, or Tony the Tramp. Rudolph's last name is Rugg, and he pretends that I am his son. If I were, I should be Tony Rugg." "You are not his son. He never had any son." "I am glad to hear that. I shan't have to say now that my father is in jail for robbery. Good-by, Mr. Hayden." "Good-by," said Ben, following the boy thoughtfully with his eyes till he had disappeared round a turn in the road. "Well," thought Tony, "I've set up for myself now in earnest. Rudolph can't pursue me, and there is no one else to interfere with me. I must see what fortune waits me in the great world." With a light heart, and a pocket still lighter, Tony walked on for several miles. Then he stopped at a country grocery store, and bought five cents worth of crackers. These he ate with a good appetite, slaking his thirst at a wayside spring. He was lying carelessly on the green sward, when a tin peddler's cart drove slowly along the road. "Hallo, there!" said the peddler. "Hallo!" said Tony. "Are you travelin'?" "Yes." "Do you want a lift?" "Yes," said Tony, with alacrity. "Then get up here. There's room enough for both of us. You can hold the reins when I stop anywhere." "It's a bargain," said Tony. "Are you travelin' for pleasure?" asked the peddler, who was gifted with his share of curiosity. "On business," said Tony. "What is your business? You're too young for an agent." "I want to find work," said Tony. "You're a good, stout youngster. You'd ought to get something to do." "So I think," said Tony. "Ever worked any?" "No." "Got any folks?" "If you mean wife and children, I haven't," answered our hero, with a smile. "Ho, ho!" laughed the peddler. "I guess not. I mean father or mother, uncles or aunts, and such like." "No, I am alone in the world." "Sho! you don't say so. Well, that's a pity. Why, I've got forty-'leven cousins and a mother-in-law to boot. I'll sell her cheap." "Never mind!" said Tony. "I won't deprive you of her." "I'll tell you what," said the peddler, "I feel interested in you. I'll take you round with me for a day or two, and maybe I can get you a place. What do you say?" "Yes, and thank you," said Tony. "Then it's settled. Gee up, Dobbin!" CHAPTER XIII. TONY GETS A PLACE. Toward the close of the next day the tin-peddler halted in front of a country tavern, situated in a village of moderate size. "I'm going to stay here over night," he said. "Maybe they'll let me sleep in the barn," said Tony. "In the barn! Why not in the house?" "I haven't got any money, you know, Mr. Bickford." "What's the odds? They won't charge anything extra for you to sleep with me." "You're very kind, Mr. Bickford, but they won't keep me for nothing, and I don't want you to pay for me." At this moment the landlord came out on the piazza, and asked the hostler: "Where's Sam?" "Gone home--says he's sick," answered James. "Drat that boy! It's my opinion he was born lazy. That's what's the matter with him." "I guess you're right, Mr. Porter," said James. "The boy don't earn his salt." "I wouldn't take him back if I had anybody to take his place." "Do you hear that, Tony?" said the peddler, nudging our hero. Tony was quick to take the hint. He walked to the landlord, and said: "I'll take his place." "Who are you?" asked the landlord, in surprise. "I never saw you before." "I have just come," said Tony. "I am looking for a place." "What can you do?" "Anything you want me to do." "Have you any references?" "I can refer to him," said Tony, pointing to the tin peddler. "Oh, Mr. Bickford," said the landlord, with a glance of recognition. "Well, that's enough. I'll take you. James, take this boy to the kitchen, and give him some supper. Then tell him what's to be done. What's your name, boy?" "Tony Rugg." "Very well, Tony, I'll give you three dollars a week and your board as long as we suit each other." "I've got into business sooner than I expected," thought Tony. The hostler set him to work in the barn, and though he was new to the work, he quickly understood what was wanted, and did it. "You work twice as fast as Sam," said the hostler, approvingly. "Won't Sam be mad when he finds I have taken his place?" asked Tony. "Probably he will, but it's his own fault." "Not if he's sick." "He's no more sick than I am. He only wants to get a day or two off." "Well, I'm glad he left a vacancy for me," said Tony. "Where did you work last?" asked the hostler. "Nowhere." "Never worked? Then how did you live?" "I traveled with my guardian." "Were you rich?" asked James, rather impressed by Tony's answer. "No; I just went round and lived as I could. I didn't like it, but I couldn't help it. I had to go where Rudolph chose to lead me." "Where is he now?" "I don't know. I got tired of being a tramp, and ran away from him." "You did right," said James, who was a steady man, and looked forward to a snug home of his own ere long. "All the same, Mr. Porter wouldn't have taken you if he had known you were a tramp." "I hope you won't tell him, then. I don't want to be a tramp any longer." "No; I won't tell him. I want you to stay here. I'd rather have you than Sam." "Thank you. I'll try to suit." Tony was assigned to a room in the attic. There were two beds in this chamber, one being occupied by James. He slept soundly, and was up betimes in the morning. After breakfast, Mr. Bickford, the tin peddler, made ready to start. "Good-by, Tony," he said, in a friendly manner. "I'm glad you've got a place." "I wouldn't have got it if I hadn't you to refer to," said Tony. "The landlord didn't ask how long I'd known you," said Bickford, smiling. "However, I guess I know enough of you to give you a recommend. Good luck to you." As the peddler drove away, Tony noticed a big, overgrown boy, who was just entering the hotel yard. "That's Sam," said the hostler. "He don't know he's lost his place." CHAPTER XIV. TONY'S RIVAL. Sam was about two inches taller than Tony, red haired and freckled, with a big frame, loosely put together. He was a born bully; and many were the tricks he had played on smaller boys in the village. He liked his place at the hotel because he was no longer obliged to go to school; but he was too lazy to fulfill the duties satisfactorily. His father was a blacksmith, of surly disposition, very much like Sam's, who was generally believed to ill-treat his wife, a meek, uncomplaining woman, who filled the position of a household drudge. Sam strutted into the yard with the air of a proprietor. He took no particular notice of Tony, but accosted James. The latter made a signal to Tony to be silent. "Well, have you just got along?" asked the hostler. "Ye-es," drawled Sam. "What made you go home yesterday afternoon, and not come back?" "I didn't feel well," said Sam, nonchalantly. "What was the matter with you?" "I had a sort of headache." "Do you think Mr. Porter can afford to pay you wages and let you go home three times a week in the middle of the afternoon?" "I couldn't work when I was sick of course," said Sam. "You're mighty delicate, getting sick two or three times a week." "Couldn't help it," said Sam, unconcerned. "I suppose you have come to work this morning?" "Ye-es, but I can't work very hard--I ain't quite got over my headache." "Then you'll be glad to hear that you won't have to work at all." "Ain't there anything to do?" asked Sam, with an air of relief. "Yes, there's plenty to do, but your services ain't required. You're discharged!" "What!" exclaimed Sam, his eyes lighting up with anger. "Mr. Porter's got tired of your delicate health; it interferes too much with business. He's got a tougher boy to take your place." "Where is he?" demanded Sam, with an ominous frown. "There," answered the hostler, pointing out our hero, who stood quietly listening to the conversation. Sam regarded Tony with a contemptuous scowl. So this was the boy who had superseded him. He hated him already for his presumption in venturing to take his place. "Who are you?" he demanded, roughly. "Your successor," answered Tony, coolly. He knew that his answer would make Sam very angry, but he was not afraid of him, and felt under no particular obligations to be polite. "You won't be my successor long," retorted Sam. "Why not?" "What business had you to take my place?" "The landlord hired me." "I don't care if he did. He hired me first." "Then you'd better go to him and complain about it. It's none of my business----" "It's _my_ business," said Sam, with emphasis. "Just as you like." "Will you give up the place?" "No," said Tony. "You must think I'm a fool. What should I give it up for?" "Because it belongs to me." "I don't see that; I suppose Mr. Porter has a right to hire anybody he likes." "He had no right to give you my place." "That's his business. What shall I do next, James?" "Go to the barn and shake down some hay for the horses." "All right." Sam walked off, deeply incensed, muttering threats of vengeance against Tony. Three days later a boy entered the stable, and calling for Tony, presented the following missive: "If you ain't a coward, meet me to-morrow night at seven o'clock, back of the school house, and we'll settle, by fighting, which shall have the place, you or I. If you get whipped, you must clear out, and leave it to me. "SAM PAYSON." Tony showed the note to the hostler. "Well, Tony, what are you going to do about it?" asked James, curiously. "I'll be on hand," said Tony, promptly. "He won't find it so easy to whip me as he thinks." CHAPTER XV. THE BOYS' DUEL. Sam Payson felt perfectly safe in challenging Tony to single combat. He had measured him with his eye, and seen that he was two inches shorter, and probably twenty pounds lighter. But appearances were deceitful, and he had no idea that Tony had received special training, which he lacked. This was the way it had happened: In the course of his extensive wanderings, Tony had attracted the attention of a certain pugilist who was a friend of Rudolph. "I'll tell you what, Rudolph," said the pugilist, "you can make something of that boy." "How?" asked the tramp. "I'll teach him to box, and you can get an engagement for him in a circus." "Do it if you like," said the tramp. "It won't do him any harm." So Tony received a gratuitous course of lessons in boxing, which were at last interrupted by a little difficulty between his teacher and the officers of the law, resulting in the temporary confinement of the former. The lessons were never resumed, but they had gone so far that Tony was quite a skillful boxer for a boy. He, too, had measured Sam, and felt quite sure of being able to conquer him, and that with ease. He did not, however, mention the grounds of his confidence to James, when the latter expressed some apprehension that he would find Sam too much for him. "Don't be alarmed, James," said Tony, quietly. "I'm enough for him." "He's bigger than you," said James. "I know that, but he's clumsy." "He's slow, but he's pretty strong." "So am I." "You've got pluck, and you deserve to beat, Tony," said his friend. "I mean to," answered Tony. "Come along and see that it's all fair." "I will if I can get away. Will you give up your place if you are licked?" "Yes," replied Tony, "I'll give up my place and leave the village." "I don't believe Mr. Porter will take Sam back." "I see you are expecting I will be whipped," said Tony, laughing; "but you're mistaken. Sam isn't able to do it." James feared that Tony overestimated his prowess, but earnestly hoped that the boy, in whom he already felt a strong interest, would achieve the victory. Meanwhile, Sam had made known the duel which was about to take place. He confidently anticipated victory, and wanted the village boys to be witnesses of the manner in which he was going to polish off that interloper. "I'll learn him to cut me out of my place," he said, boastfully; "I'll learn him to mind his own business." "Will you get your place again if you lick him?" asked one of his companions. "Of course I will." "Suppose he won't give it up?" "Then I'll lick him every day till he's glad to clear out. All you boys know I don't stand no nonsense." The result of Sam's boastful talk was that about a hundred boys collected about the school house to witness the boys' duel. Many of them who had suffered from Sam's bullying disposition would have been glad to see him worsted, but none anticipated it. Nothing was known of Tony except that he was considerably smaller and lighter, and probably weaker. It was generally thought that he would not be able to hold out long, and that Sam would achieve an easy victory. Tony tried to be on hand at the time appointed, but he had more than usual to do, and it was five minutes past seven when he entered the field, accompanied by James. There had been various speculations as to the cause of his delay. "He won't come," said Sam, with a sneer; "he's afraid." "What'll you do if he don't come?" asked John Nolan. "What will I do? I'll pitch into him wherever I see him." "Didn't he accept your challenge?" "Yes, he accepted, but he's thought better of it, likely." "There he comes!" shouted a small boy. All eyes were turned upon Tony, as he entered the field, with James at his side. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting, boys," said our hero, politely. "We concluded you'd backed out," said Sam, with a sneer. "That isn't my style," returned Tony, with a quiet smile. "I had more to do than usual to-night." "You've still more to do," said Sam, jeeringly. "I pity you." "Do you? You're very kind," said Tony, unmoved. "Oh, don't thank me too soon." "Then I won't. When are the exercises to commence?" "He takes it cool," said Nolan. "Oh, it's only show off," said Sam. "You'll see how he'll wilt down when I get hold of him." The two boys stripped off coat and vest, and faced each other. Tony was wary and watchful, and quietly looked into the eyes of his adversary, showing no disposition to begin. Sam began business by thrusting his right fist violently in his face, or rather trying to do so. With scarcely an effort Tony parried the blow, and returned it quick as lightning, striking Sam full in the nose. Sam was not only maddened, but disagreeably surprised, especially when he discovered that blood was trickling from the injured organ. He was still more incensed by the murmur of applause which followed from the crowd of boys. Had the applause been elicited by his success, he would have enjoyed it, but now it was quite a different matter. He breathed an audible curse, and, losing all prudence, began to let drive at Tony with each fist in rapid succession, with the intention of overpowering him. But, unfortunately for him, this exposed him to attack, and a couple of forcible blows in his face warned him that this was too dangerous. Tony stood upright, as cool and collected as at first. He had warded off every blow of his adversary, and thus far was untouched. There was a murmur of surprise among the boys. They had come to see Tony used up, and all the using up had proved to be from the other side. James was as much delighted as surprised. He could not repress clapping his hands, a movement which was quickly imitated by the boys. "Tony knows how to take care of himself," he thought. "That's why he took matters so coolly. I didn't half believe him when he told me there was no danger." Sam felt humiliated and maddened. He regretted now that he had undertaken a task which seemed every moment more formidable. What! was it possible that he, Sam Payson, the crack fighter of the village, was being ignominiously whipped, and that by a smaller boy. He felt that if he permitted this his prestige would be forever gone, and with it the influence which he so much prized. He must make one desperate effort. "If I can only get hold of him," he thought, "I can shake the life out of him." He tried to grasp Tony round the body, intending to throw him violently down upon the ground; but our hero was too quick for him, and showered the blows upon him with such rapidity that, blinded and overwhelmed, Sam himself fell on his back. Instead of following up the victory, Tony drew off and let his adversary rise. Sam renewed the attack so wildly that in two minutes he was again lying flat. "That's enough, Sam! You're whipped," shouted the boys. But Sam was not convinced. He renewed the attack once more, but there was no hope for him now. He got up sullenly, and, in a voice nearly choked with rage, said: "I'll be even with you yet, see if I don't." "Hurrah for the stranger!" shouted the boys enthusiastically, as they crowded around our hero. "Boys," said Tony, modestly, "I'm much obliged to you for your congratulations. Was it a fair fight?" "Yes, yes." "Then it's all right. Don't say anything to him about it. He feels bad, as I should do in his place. I haven't any ill will toward him, and I hope he hasn't toward me." This speech made Tony a still greater favorite and the boys, making a rush, took him on their shoulders, and bore him in triumph to the inn. Poor Sam slunk home, suffering keener mortification than he had ever before experienced in his life. CHAPTER XVI. RUDOLPH ESCAPES AND SEES AN ADVERTISEMENT. Leaving Tony for a short time, we must return to Rudolph, whom we left in charge of a self-constituted body of police on his way to the station-house. Of course there was no regular prison in the village. There was not properly even a station-house. But under the engine house was a basement room, which was used as a lock-up. It was not often used, for few rogues of a serious character disturbed the tranquility of the village. Occasionally a man was put in who had disturbed the peace while under the influence of liquor, but even such cases were rare. When first arrested Rudolph was disposed to be violent and abusive. His disappointment was keen, for he was just congratulating himself on the possession of the miser's gold. Five minutes later, and he would probably have been able to make good his escape. Mingled with his disappointment was a feeling of intense hostility against Tony for his part in defeating his plans. "I'll be revenged upon him yet," he muttered between his teeth. "What did you say?" asked one of his captors. "Nothing," answered Rudolph. "I thought I heard you say something." "I said I was tired." "Then you will have a chance to rest in the lock-up." Rudolph frowned, but said nothing. They reached the lockup. The door was opened, and he was led in. A small oil lamp was lighted, and set on the floor. "Where are the handcuffs?" asked one of the captors. "I don't know. They haven't been needed for so long that they have been mislaid." "They won't be needed now. The man can't get out." Rudolph's face betrayed satisfaction, but he thought it prudent to say nothing. "There's your bed," says Moses Hunt, who had Rudolph by the arm, pointing to a rude cot in the corner. Rudolph threw himself upon it. "I'm dead tired," he said, and closed his eyes. "He'll be quiet enough. We can leave him alone," said Hunt. "All right." The door was locked, and Rudolph was left alone. When five minutes had elapsed--time enough for his captors to get away--he rose in bed, and looked about him. Beside the bed in which he was lying there was no other furniture in the room than a wooden chair. He got up and walked about. "I must get away from this if I can," thought the tramp, "and before morning. I am glad they didn't put on handcuffs. Let me see, how shall I manage it." He looked about him thoughtfully. It was a basement room, lighted only by windows three feet wide and a foot high in the upper part of the room. "I should like to set fire to the building, and burn it up," thought the tramp. "That would cost them something. But it wouldn't be safe. Like as not I would be burnt up myself, or, at any rate, be taken again in getting away. No, no; that won't do." "I wonder if I can get through one of those windows?" was the next thought that came into his mind. He stood on the chair, and as the room was low-slatted he found he could easily reach the windows in question. He shook them, and found to his joy that it would be a comparatively easy thing to remove one of them. "What fools they are," he muttered contemptuously. "Did they really expect to keep me here. They must think I am a green hand." He removed the window, and by great effort succeeded in raising himself so that he might have a chance of drawing himself through the aperture. It did not prove so easy as he expected. He did, however, succeed at length, and drew a long breath of satisfaction as he found himself once more in the possession of his liberty. "I'm a free man once more," he said. "What next?" He would have been glad to return to the miser's house, and possessed himself of some of his gold, but the faint gray of dawn was already perceptible, and there was too much risk attending it. He felt that this must be deferred to a more fitting occasion. A few days later the tramp found himself in the streets of New York. For the time he had given up the pursuit of Tony. Indeed, he had wholly lost the clew. Moreover, prudence dictated his putting as great a distance as possible between himself and the village where he had been arrested. The hundred miles intervening between New York and that place he had got over in his usual way, begging a meal at one house, and a night's lodging at another. He was never at a loss for a plausible story. At one place where he was evidently looked upon with suspicion, he said: "I ain't used to beggin'. I'm a poor, hard-workin' man, but I've heard that my poor daughter is sick in New York, and she's in the hospital. Poor girl! I'm afraid she'll suffer." "What took her to New York?" asked the farmer whom he addressed. "She went to take a place in a store," said Rudolph readily, "but she's been taken sick, and she's in the hospital. Poor girl! I'm afraid she'll suffer." "I'm sorry for you," said the farmer's wife, sympathizingly. "Ephraim, can't we help along this poor man?" "If we can believe him. There's many impostors about." "I hope you don't take me for one," said Rudolph, meekly. "Poor Jane; what would she think if she knew how poor father was so misunderstood." "Poor man! I believe you," said the farmer's wife. "You shall sleep in Jonathan's bed. He's away now." So Rudolph was provided with two abundant meals and a comfortable bed. The farmer's wife never doubted his story, though she could not help feeling that his looks were not prepossessing. But, was her charitable thought, the poor man can't help his looks. Of course Rudolph had been in New York often, and his familiar haunts. As a general thing, however, he shunned the city, for he was already known to the police, and he felt that watchful eyes would be upon him as soon as it was known that he was back again. On the second day he strolled into a low drinking place in the lower part of the city. A man in shirt sleeves, and with unhealthy complexion, was mixing drinks behind the bar. "Hallo, Rudolph! Back again?" was his salutation. "Yes," said the tramp, throwing himself down in a seat. "What's the news with you? Been prospering?" "No." "Where have you been?" "Tramping round the country." "Where's the boy you used to have with you?" "Run away; curse him!" returned the tramp with a fierce scowl. "Got tired of your company, eh?" "He wants to be honest and respectable," answered Rudolph, with a sneer. "And he thought he could learn better under another teacher, did he?" said the bartender, with a laugh. "Yes, I suppose so. I'd like to wring his neck," muttered the tramp. "You're no friend to the honest and respectable, then?" "No, I'm not." "Then, there's no love lost, for they don't seem to fancy you. What'll you have to drink?" "I've got no money." "I'll trust. You'll have some some time?" "Give me some whisky, then," said the tramp. The whisky was placed in his hands. He gulped it down, and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. Then resuming his seat, he took up a morning paper. At first he read it listlessly, but soon his face assumed a look of eager interest. This was the paragraph that arrested his attention: "Should this meet the eye of Rudolph Rugg, who left England in the fall of 1857, he is requested to communicate with Jacob Morris, attorney-at-law, Room 11, No. --, Nassau street." Rudolph rose hurriedly. "Going?" asked the bartender. "Yes; I'll be back again soon." CHAPTER XVII. THE LADY AT THE ST. NICHOLAS. When Rudolph reached the sidewalk he stopped a moment to reflect on the probable meaning of the advertisement. "Perhaps it is a trap," he thought. "Perhaps, after so many years, they want to punish me. Shall I go?" His hesitation was only temporary. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he concluded. "Very likely I shall hear something to my advantage. I will go." Ten minutes' walk brought him to Nassau street. He ascended two flights of stairs, opened the door of No. --, and found himself in a lawyer's office. A tall man of forty was seated at a desk, with some papers and books lying before him. "Well," he said inquiringly, "what can I do for you, sir?" The address was not very cordial, for Rudolph did not have the look of one likely to be a profitable client. "Are you Mr. Jacob Morris, attorney-at-law?" asked the tramp. "That is my name." "I am Rudolph Rugg." "Rudolph Rugg!" exclaimed the lawyer, briskly, jumping from his chair, "you don't say so. I am very glad to see you. Take a chair, please." Reassured by this reception, Rudolph took the seat indicated. "So you saw my advertisement?" said the lawyer, brushing away the papers with which he had been occupied. "Yes, sir. I only saw it this morning." "It has been inserted for the last two weeks, daily. How happens it that you did not see it sooner?" "I have been away from the city. I have been traveling. It was only an accident that I happened to see it to-day." "A lucky accident, Mr. Rugg." "I hope it is, sir, for I have been out of luck myself, and I've been hoping something would turn up for me. What is the business, sir?" "My business has been to find you. I can't say anything more." "To find me?" "Yes." "What for?" "For a client of mine--an English lady." "A lady?" ejaculated the tramp, with unconcealed surprise. "Yes." "Who is it?" "I suppose I am at liberty to tell. The lady is Mrs. Harvey Middleton, of Middleton Hall, England." A peculiar expression swept over Rudolph's face, but he only said: "I have heard the name of Harvey Middleton. Is--is the lady in New York?" "Yes; she is staying at the St. Nicholas Hotel." "And she wants to find me?" "Yes, she authorized me to seek you out?" "Well," said Rudolph, after a brief pause, "I'm found. What next?" "I shall at once send a messenger to Mrs. Middleton, and await her orders. You will stay here." He went to the door and called "John," in a loud voice. "Look here," said Rudolph, suspiciously, "just tell me one thing. There ain't any trap is there?" "Trap, my good friend? What can you possibly mean?" "You ain't sending for the police?" "To be sure not. Besides, why should a gentleman like you fear the police?" "Oh, that's all gammon. I do fear the police uncommon. But if you tell me it's all on the square, I'll believe you." "On my honor, then, it's all on the square, as you call it. No harm whatever is designed you. Indeed, I have reason to think that you will make considerable money out of it. Now, hark ye, my friend, a word in confidence. We can do each other good." "Can we?" asked the tramp, surveying the lawyer, in surprise. "Yes, and I'll tell you how. This lady, Mrs. Middleton, appears to be rich." "She is rich." "So much the better for us. I mean to give her the idea that I have been at great trouble and expense in finding you." "I see," said Rudolph, smiling. "You mean to charge it in the bill." "Of course, I shall represent that I sent out messengers in search of you, and you were found by one of them." "Very good." "So you need not say anything about the advertisement." "All right, sir." "Grant me a moment while I pencil a note to the lady." * * * * * * * In a private parlor at the St. Nicholas sat a lady of middle age. She had a haughty face, and stern, compressed lips. She was one to repel rather than to attract. She had a note before her, which she threw down with an exclamation of impatience. "So he has heard nothing yet. For three weeks I have been wasting my time at this hotel, depending on this lawyer, and he has done absolutely nothing. And the issue is so important. I may have to employ another person, and that will be a fresh bill of expense." At this moment a light knock was heard at the door. "Enter," said the lady. "A note for Mrs. Middleton," announced a servant. She took the missive and hastily opened it. It read thus: "MY DEAR MADAM--At last, after unwearied exertions, I have succeeded. The man, Rudolph Rugg, has been found by one of my messengers, and is at this moment in my office, ready to obey your summons. Shall I send him to you? "Yours, respectfully, "JACOB MORRIS." "P. S.--I assured you at the outset that if he were living I would find him. I am sure you will appreciate my exertions in your behalf." "That means a larger bill," thought the lady. "However, I am willing to pay handsomely. The man is found, and he can, doubtless, produce the boy." "Wait!" she said, in an imperious tone, to the servant, who was about to withdraw. "There is an answer." She hastily penciled the following note: "I am very glad you have found Rudolph Rugg. I wish to speak to him at once. Send him here directly." "Short and not sweet!" commented the lawyer, when it was placed in his hands. "She says nothing about the compensation." "Is it about me?" asked the tramp, watching the lawyer's face eagerly. "Yes; it is from Mrs. Middleton. She wants you to come to the hotel at once. But, my friend, if you will excuse the suggestion, I would advise you, since you are about to call upon a lady, to put on a better suit of clothes." The tramp scowled at the hint. "How am I to do it," he demanded roughly, "when these are all the clothes I have?" The lawyer whistled. "A pretty looking figure to call upon a lady at a fashionable hotel!" he thought. "You must go as you are," he said. "Wait a minute." He took a blank card and wrote upon it the name: RUDOLPH RUGG. "When you reach the hotel," he said, "inquire for Mrs. Middleton, and send that card up to her." "Very well, sir." The tramp started for the hotel, his mind busily occupied. "What does she want with me? She wasn't Mrs. Middleton when I knew her; she was Miss Vincent, the governess. I suppose she's a great lady now. So she got Mr. Harvey to marry her. That ain't surprisin'. She looked like a schemer even then, and I was a fool not to see what she was at. Likely she was up to the other thing. Well, I shall soon know." CHAPTER XVIII. TWO CONSPIRATORS. "You want to see Mrs. Middleton?" demanded the hotel clerk, surveying Mr. Rugg's exterior with a glance which betokened suspicion. "Yes," said the tramp. "I don't think she'll see one of your sort." "That's where you're mistaken, young feller," said Rudolph, loftily. "She wants to see me uncommon." "You're a strange visitor for a lady." "What if I am? There's my card. Just you send it up, and see if she won't see me." The clerk took the card, and looked at it doubtfully. Then summoning an attendant, he said: "Take this up to 57." Presently the servant returned. "The gentleman is to go up," he said. Rudolph looked at the clerk triumphantly. "What did I tell you?" he said. "Show the _gentleman_ up," said the clerk, purposely emphasizing the word. As Rudolph entered the handsome parlor occupied by Mrs. Middleton, she said: "Take a seat, sir." Then to the attendant: "You may go. You are Rudolph Rugg?" she commenced when they were alone. "Yes, ma'am," he answered; "and you are Miss Vincent, the governess. I haven't forgotten you." "I am Mrs. Harvey Middleton," she said haughtily. "Excuse me, ma'am. I hadn't heard as you had changed your condition. You was the governess when I knowed you." "You never knew me," she said, in the same haughty tone. "Well, I knowed Mr. Harvey, at any rate." "That is not to the purpose. Do you know why I have sought you out?" "I couldn't guess, ma'am," said Rudolph, cunningly. He could guess, but he wanted to force her to speak out. "Where is the boy? Is he living?" she demanded, eagerly. "What boy?" asked Rudolph, vacantly. "You know very well. Robert Middleton, my husband's cousin, whom you stole away when he was scarcely more than an infant." "Can you prove what you say, Miss Vincent--I mean Mrs. Middleton?" "Yes. It is idle to beat about the bush. My husband has told me all." "Then he has told you that he hired me to carry the boy off, in order that he might inherit the estate?" The tramp looked searchingly in the lady's face as he said this. "Yes, he told me that," she answered, composedly. "Well, I didn't think he'd own up to that," said the tramp, in surprise. "My husband and I had no secrets," said the lady, coldly. "What does he want of the boy now?" asked Rudolph. "It is I that want to find the boy." "Without his knowledge?" "If you refer to my husband, he is dead." "Dead! You don't say so?" "He died six months ago." "Well, I didn't expect that. Who has got the estate?" "I have." The tramp whistled, and surveyed the lady with genuine admiration. Here was a poor governess, who had succeeded in life with a vengeance. When he knew her she was not worth fifty pounds in the world. Now she was a mistress of a fine English estate, with a rental of two thousand pounds. "Wasn't there no heirs?" he asked. "Only this boy." "And if this boy was alive would the estate be his?" The lady paused, meanwhile fixing her eyes steadily upon the man before her. Then, as if rapidly making up her mind, she approached him, and placed her jeweled hand on his arm. "Rudolph Rugg," she said, "do you want to be comfortable for life?" "Yes, ma'am, that's exactly what I do want. I've been wanting it ever since I was old enough to know the power of money, but it has never come to me." "It will come to you now if you say the word," she said. "I'll say it quick enough. Tell me what you want." "You talk like a sensible man. But first tell me, is the boy living?" "He is alive and well." She frowned slightly, as if the intelligence didn't please her. "Do you know where he is?" "Yes," answered Rudolph. It was false, of course, but he thought it was for his interest to answer in the affirmative. "When did you see him last?" "Last week." "Very well, you know where he is. That is important. Now, in order that you may understand what service I want of you, I must tell you a little of my circumstances. I told you that my husband left me the estate." "Yes, ma'am." "But only in trust." "For the boy?" asked the tramp, in excitement. "Precisely." "Well, I'll be blowed." "What excites you, Mr. Rugg?" "To think that Tony, the tramp, should be the owner of a splendid estate in old Hingland, and not know anything about it." "I am the owner," said the lady, frowning. "But you're only takin' care of it for him." "I don't mean that he shall ever know it." Rudolph whistled. "I wish you would forbear whistling in the presence of a lady. It is unmannerly," said Mrs. Middleton, annoyed. "I ain't much used to associating with ladies," said the tramp. "Bear it in mind, then," she said, sharply. "Now to business." "Yes, ma'am, to business." "My husband secured the inheritance, as you are aware, through the disappearance of his young cousin. And mighty well he managed it. "But after he fell into ill health, and was given over by the doctors, he became a prey to superstitious fears, the result of his weakness, and at times experienced great regret for the hand he had in the abduction of the boy." "You surprise me, ma'am. He wasn't that sort when I knew him." "No; he was then in perfect health, and was bold and resolute. Ill health and the approach of death made him superstitious." "You ain't that way, ma'am, I take it," said Rudolph, with a leer. "No; I have a stronger will and greater resolution, I hope." Her face did not belie her words. There was a cold look in her light-gray eyes, and a firmness in her closely-pressed lips, which made it clear that she was not likely to be affected by ordinary weakness. She was intensely selfish, and thoroughly unscrupulous as to the means which she employed to carry out her selfish ends. "So you're afraid the boy'll turn up, ma'am?" asked Rudolph. "Precisely." "Then why do you look for him?" "I want to guard against his ever turning up. I hoped you would be able to tell me he was dead." "He don't know about the property." "But he might have learned, or you might. My husband, with the idea of reparation, left the property to me, in trust, but if it should ever be fully ascertained that the boy had died, then it was to be mine absolutely. There must be clear proof." "I begin to see what you're driving at, ma'am." "You say the boy is alive?" "Yes, ma'am." "And well?" "Stout and hearty, ma'am. He's been under my care ever since he was a young 'un, ma'am, and I've treated him like he was my own." "Indeed!" "Yes, ma'am. I'm poor, but I've always shared my crust with him, givin' him the biggest half." "Very kind, I'm sure," said the lady, sarcastically. "I suppose you're very fond of him." "Of course I am," said Rudolph, "but," he added, after a slight pause, "there's one thing I like better." "What is that?" "Money." "Good!" said the lady, her face lighting up with satisfaction. "I see we understand one another." "That's so, ma'am. You needn't be afraid to say anything to me. Business is business." "Draw your chair near mine, Mr. Rugg," said Mrs. Middleton, affably. The tramp did so. He foresaw what was coming, but did not flinch. CHAPTER XIX. THE WICKED COMPACT. "It appears to me, Mr. Rugg, that you have prospered," said the lady. "That's where you're right, ma'am, and you couldn't be righter." "I'm as poor as I can be." "So am I," said the tramp, adding, with a cunning look, "but times will be better now." "Why will they be better?" asked Mrs. Middleton, suspiciously. "Tony won't see me want when he comes into ten thousand a year." "Who said he was coming into it?" demanded the lady, coldly. "You said he was the heir." "He hasn't got the estate, and I don't mean he shall have it." "How will you prevent that ma'am?" Mrs. Middleton again put her hand on the man's tattered coat sleeve, and in a voice scarcely above a whisper, said: "Mr. Rugg, you must prevent it." "How can I prevent it?" asked the tramp, with an assumption of innocence. "I take it, you are not a religious man?" "Not much," answered the tramp, with a short laugh. "You are not afraid--to do wrong?" "Yes, I am, ma'am; but if I was paid for it I might not mind." "You shall be paid, and paid well." "What do you want me to do?" Mrs. Middleton said, with slow significance: "This boy is in my way. Don't you think he might manage to get sick and die?" "Perhaps he might," said Rudolph, who did not appear to be shocked at the suggestion. "Couldn't you manage it?" she asked, her eyes fixed upon the tramp. "I might," he answered, shrewdly, "if it was going to do me any good." "Then the only question is as to pay," she continued. "That's about it ma'am. It's a big risk, you know. I might get caught, and then money wouldn't do me much good." "Nothing venture, nothing have. You don't want to be a pauper all your life?" "No, I don't," answered the tramp with energy. "I'm tired of tramping round the country, sleeping in barns and under hay-stacks, and picking up meals where I can. I've had enough of it." "Do as I wish, and you need never suffer such privations again," said the tempter. "How much will you give me?" asked Rudolph, in a business-like manner. "Five hundred dollars down and five hundred dollars income as long as you live." This was good fortune of which Rudolph had never dreamed, but he understood how to make the best of the situation. "It is not enough," he said, shaking his head. "Not enough!" exclaimed Mrs. Middleton, with a look of displeasure. "Why, it seems to me very liberal. You can live comfortably all your life just for doing one thing." "A thing which may bring me to the gallows. It's all very well to talk, but I can't risk my neck for that." The lady was not surprised. She had expected that she would be compelled to drive a bargain, and and she had named a sum less than she was willing to pay. "You see," continued Rudolph, "it's going to be a great thing for you. You'll be sure of a big estate and an income of two thousand pounds--that's ten thousand dollars--a year, and it'll be me that gives it to you." "You overestimate your services, Mr. Rugg," she said, coldly. "If I decline to proceed further the estate will be mine." "Not if I bring on the boy, and say he's the real heir." "I shall deny it," said the lady, composedly, "and challenge you to the proof." "You will?" queried the tramp, disconcerted. "Of course I shall." "Then I'll prove it," he continued, in tone of triumph. "Who will believe you?" asked Mrs. Middleton, quietly. "Why shouldn't they?" "You are a tramp, and a discreditable person. Your appearance would be against you. I suspect the boy is one of the same sort." "No, he isn't. I don't like him overmuch, but he's a handsome chap, looks the gentleman every inch, even if he is dressed a little shabby." "I should charge you with conspiracy, Mr. Rugg. You'd find it uphill work fighting me without influence and without money. To begin with, how would you get over to England?" As presented by Mrs. Middleton, certainly the chances did not look flattering. But an idea occurred to Rudolph, and he instantly expressed it: "Then, if there ain't no danger from me or the boy, why do you offer me anything to put him out of the way?" Mrs. Middleton hesitated. "I may as well tell you," she said, after a moment's pause. "I take it for granted you will keep the matter secret." "Of course I will." "Then it is this: I married Mr. Harvey Middleton to secure a home and a position. I didn't love him." "Quite right, ma'am." "I was a poor governess. It was a great thing for me to marry Mr. Middleton." "I should think so." "I made him a good wife. He had no reason to complain of me, and when he died he left me in charge of the estate." "For the boy?" "Yes, for the boy, and this has given me trouble." "He hasn't never troubled you." "Not yet, and but for one thing I would not have come to America in search of him." "What is that?" "That is the secret I am going to tell you. I want to marry again." The tramp whistled. Mrs. Middleton frowned, but went on: "This time I love the man I want to marry. He is from an excellent family, but he is a younger son, and has little or nothing himself. If the estate were mine absolutely, there would be no opposition on the part of his family to his marrying me to-morrow, but with the knowledge that the boy may turn up at any time, nothing will be done." "I see," said the tramp, nodding. "But for this, I never would have stirred in the matter at all. I did not think it probable that the boy would ever hear of his inheritance." "He don't even know who he is," said Rudolph. "You never told him, then?" said the lady in a tone of satisfaction. "No. What was the good?" "There was no good, and you did wisely. Now I have told you how matters stand, and I renew the offer which I made you a few minutes since." "It is too little," said the tramp, shaking his head. "Tell me what you expect. Mind, I don't say that I will meet your views if they are extravagant. Still I might agree to pay you a little more." "I want just double what you offered me, ma'am." "Why, that's extortion." "That's as you choose to consider it, ma'am. It'll leave you money enough. It's one-tenth." "Suppose I refuse." "Then I'll go and see a lawyer, and he'll tell me what I had better do." "Even if you succeeded, and got the boy in possession, do you think he would give you any more than I offered?" This was a consideration which had not occurred to the tramp. He had only thought of punishing the lady for not acceding to his terms. He asked himself, moreover, did he really wish Tony to come into such a piece of good fortune, and that after the boy had been instrumental in having him arrested. No, anything but that! He decided to work for Mrs. Middleton, and make the best terms he could. "I'll tell you what I'll do ma'am," he said. "I'll say eight hundred dollars down, and the same every year." To this sum Mrs. Middleton finally agreed. "You say you know where the boy is?" she asked. "Yes, ma'am." "Then there need be no delay." "Only a little. But I shall want some money. I haven't a penny." Mrs. Middleton took out her purse. "Here are a hundred dollars," she said. "The rest shall be paid you when you have earned it." Rudolph rose to go, and as he went down stairs thoughtfully, he said to himself: "That woman's a case if ever there was one. How coolly she hires me to kill the boy. I don't half like the job. It's too risky. But there's money in it, and I can't refuse. The first thing is to find him!" CHAPTER XX. THE FIGHTING QUAKER. The tramp decided that the best way to find Tony would be to return to that part of the country where he had lost him, and make inquiries for a boy of his description. He could do it more comfortably now, being provided with funds, thanks to Mrs. Middleton. He was now able to command fair accommodations, and this was satisfactory. But there was another difficulty which, at times, gave him uneasiness. He had escaped from the custody of the law, and was liable to be arrested. This would have disconcerted him, and interfered seriously with the purpose he had in view. "I must disguise myself," thought Rudolph. "It won't do to run any risk. When I was a tramp I didn't care, but now I've got something to live for." It was not the first time in his varied experience that he had felt the need of a disguise, and he knew just where to go to find one. In the lower part of the city there was a shop well provided with such articles as he required. He lost no time in seeking it out. "What can I do for you, Mr. Rugg?" asked the old man who kept the establishment. "I want a disguise." "Then you've come to the right shop. What will you be--a sailor, a Quaker, a--" "Hold, there," said Rudolph. "You've named the very thing." "What?" "A Quaker. Can you make me a good broad-brim?" "Yea, verily," answered the old man, laughing, "I can suit thee to a T." "Do so, then." From out a pile of costumes of various styles and fashions the old man drew a suit of drab and a broad-brimmed hat. "How will that do?" he asked. "Capital!" answered Rudolph, with satisfaction, "that is, if it will fit." "I'll answer for that. It's made for a man of your size. Will you try it on?" "First tell me the price." "Thirty dollars." "Thirty dollars!" exclaimed the tramp, aghast. "Do you think I am made of money?" "Look at the quality, my good friend. Look at the cloth." "Why, I may not want the things for more than a week." "Then, I'll tell you what I'll do. If you only use them a week, you shall bring them back, and I will pay you back twenty-five dollars; that is," added the old man cautiously, "if you don't hurt 'em too much." "That's better," said Rudolph. "I'll try them on." He went into an inner room, provided for the purpose, and soon came out entirely transformed. In addition to the drab suit, a gray wig had been supplied, which gave him the appearance of a highly respectable old Quaker. The old man laughed heartily, for he had a merry vein. "How dost thee like it?" he asked. "Capital," said Rudolph; "would you know me?" "I wouldn't dream it was you. But, Mr. Rugg, there's one thing you mustn't forget." "What's that?" "To use the Quaker lingo. Just now you said, 'Would you know me?' That isn't right." "What should I say?" "Would thee know me?" "All right. I'll get it after a while. There's your money." "There you are again. You must say thy money." "I see you know all about it. You've been a Quaker yourself, haven't you?" "Not I; but I was brought up in Philadelphia, and I have seen plenty of the old fellows. That's right. Now, don't forget how to talk. Where are you going?" "Into the country on a little expedition," said Rudolph. "When will you be back?" "In a week, if all goes well." "Well, good luck to you." "I wish thee good luck, too," said the tramp. "Ha, ha! You've got it; you'll do." The tramp emerged into the street, a very fair representative of a sedate Quaker. At first he forgot his gray hair, and walked with a briskness that was hardly in character with his years. He soon attracted the attention of some street boys, who, not suspecting his genuineness, thought him fair game. "How are you, old Broadbrim?" said one. Rudolph didn't resent this. He felt rather pleased at this compliment to his get up. "You'd make a good scarecrow, old buffer," said another. Still the tramp kept his temper. A third boy picked up a half-eaten apple and fired it at him. This was too much for the newly-converted disciple of William Penn. "Just let me catch you, you little rascal," he exclaimed, "and I'll give you the worst licking you ever had." The boys stared open mouthed at such language from the sedate old gentlemen. "He's a fighting Quaker," said the first one, "keep out of his way." "If thee don't, thee'll catch it," said Rudolph, fortunately remembering how he must talk. He had thought of pursuing the disturbers of his peace, but motives of prudence prevented him. CHAPTER XXI. RUDOLPH HEARS OF TONY. Four days afterward Rudolph arrived in the town where Tony was employed. He had not been drawn thither by any clew, but by pure accident. He put up for the night at the hotel where our hero had found work. He enrolled himself on the register as "Obadiah Latham, Philadelphia." This, he thought, would answer very well for a Quaker name, much better, certainly, than Rudolph Rugg, which on other accounts also was objectionable. "Can thee give me a room, friend?" he inquired at the desk. "Certainly, sir," was the polite reply. "Here, Henry, show this old gentleman up to No. 6. No. 6 is one of our best rooms, Mr. Latham." "I thank thee," said the tramp, who, by this time, was quite accustomed to the peculiar phraseology of the Friends. "The Quakers are always polite," said the bookkeeper. "They are good pay, too, and never give any trouble. I wish we had more of them stop here." "If all your customers were of that description, your bar wouldn't pay very well." "That is true." But later in the evening the speaker was obliged to change his opinion. The Quaker came up to the bar, and asked: "Will thee give me a glass of brandy?" "Sir?" said the barkeeper, astounded, and hardly believing his ears. "A glass of brandy!" repeated Rudolph, irritably. "Where is thy ears?" "I beg pardon, sir, but I was surprised. I did not know that gentlemen of your faith ever drank liquor." "Thee is right," said the tramp, recollecting himself. "It is only for my health. Thee may make it strong, so that I may feel better soon." Rudolph drained the glass, and then after a little hesitation, he said: "I feel better. Will thee mix me another glass, and a little stronger?" A stronger glass was given him, and he poured it down rapidly. The barkeeper looked at him shrewdly. "Quaker as he is, he is evidently used to brandy," he said to himself. "If he wasn't those two glasses would have upset him." But Rudolph did not appear to be upset, or, indeed, to be in the least affected. He put his broad-brimmed hat more firmly on his head, and went outside. He determined to take a walk about the village. This was his usual custom on arriving in a new place. On such occasions he kept his eyes open, and looked about, in the hope that he might somewhere see the object of his search. He little suspected that Tony was at that very moment in the stable-yard in the rear of the hotel. He walked on for perhaps a quarter of a mile, and then leaned against a fence to rest. As he stood here, two boys passed him slowly, conversing as they walked. "I was surprised, Sam, at Tony Rugg's whipping you," said the first. "He couldn't do it again," said Sam, sullenly. Rudolph's attention was at once drawn. Tony Rugg! Why, there could be but one Tony Rugg. He advanced toward the boys. "Boys," he asked, "did thee mention the name of Tony Rugg?" "Yes, sir." "Does thee know such a boy?" "Yes, sir. He is working at the hotel. He got my place away from me," said Sam. "Do you know him?" "I once knew such a boy. But no! his name was Charles." "Perhaps he's a relation." "Perhaps thee are right." This the tramp said cunningly, not wishing Tony to hear that he had been inquiring after him. CHAPTER XXII. RUDOLPH FINDS TONY. Rudolph was very much elated at what he had heard. His object then was already attained, and the boy was found. "Well, good luck has come to me at last," he said to himself. "The young scoundrel is found, and now I must consider how to get him into my hands once more." The Quaker, to designate him according to his present appearance, at once made his way back to the hotel. He wanted to see Tony and verify the information he had obtained from the boys, though he saw no reason to doubt it. "There can't be two Tony Ruggs in the world," he said to himself. "I am sure this is the boy." On reaching the hotel he sauntered out into the stable-yard in the rear of the house. His eyes lighted with pleasure, for he at once caught sight of Tony, standing beside James, the hostler. "There comes old Broadbrim," said James in a low voice. "The barkeeper told me he took two stiff horns of brandy. He's a queer sort of Quaker in my opinion." Tony gave a curious glance at the disguised tramp, but entertained no suspicion of his not being what he represented. The white hair and costume made it difficult to doubt. "I never saw a Quaker before," he said. "Didn't you?" Meantime Rudolph came nearer. His disguise had been so successful that he felt perfectly safe from discovery. "Does thee keep many horses?" he asked. "Yes, sir; we have twelve." "That is a large number. Yea, verily, it is," said the tramp. "Well, it is, but we need them all. There's a good deal of carting to do for the hotel, besides Mr. Porter keeps a livery stable. Was you ever this way before?" asked James, thinking he might as well ask a few questions also. "Nay, verily." "Where might you be from?" "From Philadelphia." "I've heard there's a good many Quakers out that way." "Yea, verily, my friend, thee is right." "Are you going away to-morrow morning?" "Nay, friend, I think I shall tarry a day or two. Is that lad thy son?" "Tony, he asks if you are my son," said James, laughing. "No, his name is Tony Rugg, while mine is James Woodley." "Anthony, was thee born in this town?" asked the tramp, boldly defying detection. "No, sir," answered Tony. "I only came here a few weeks ago." "Yea, verily," was the only comment Rudolph made. "I'd like to choke the boy. I can hardly keep my hands off him," he said to himself. "But I'd better be going. He is looking at me closely. He might suspect something." "Good-night," he said, and the two responded civilly to the salutation. "Well, Tony, what do you think of Broadbrim?" asked James. "I don't know, there's something in his voice that sounds familiar to me." "Perhaps you may have met him somewhere before," suggested the hostler. "No, I am sure I have not. I never met any Quaker before." "Well, there's strange likenesses sometimes. Did I ever tell you my adventure out in Maine?" "No, what was it?" "I went down East to see a sister of mine that is married down near Augusta. When, as I was goin' through Portland, a woman came up and made a great ado about my deserting her. She took me for her husband, and came near having me arrested for desertion. You see I and her husband was as like as two peas, that's what some of her neighbors said." "How did you get off?" "Luckily I had documents in my pocket showing who I was. Besides, my brother-in-law happened to be in the city, and he identified me." Rudolph sat in the public room of the hotel for a time, and then he went up to his room, partly to be out of the way of possible recognition, partly to think how he could manage to get Tony into his clutches once more, without betraying himself, or exciting any interference. He had a back room, the window of which looked out upon the stable-yard. He seated himself at this window, and in this position could easily see and hear all that passed there. Tony and the hostler were lounging about, the latter smoking a clay pipe, their work being done for the day. "Tony," said the hostler, "I almost forgot to tell you, you're to go to Thornton to-morrow." "What for?" "There's a top-buggy Mr. Porter has sold to a man there. You're to take it over, and lead the horse back." "How far is it?" "About five miles." "All right. I'd just as leave go as stay here. Can I find the road easily?" "There's no trouble about that. It's straight all the way. Part of it runs through the woods--about a mile, I should say." "Did Mr. Porter say when he wanted me to start?" "About nine o'clock; by that time you'll be through your chores." "Well, I'm willing." Rudolph heard this conversation with no little pleasure. "It's the very chance I was waiting for," he said to himself. "I'll lie in wait for him as he comes back. I can easily hide in the woods." CHAPTER XXIII. THE NEGLECTED WELL. Rudolph took care to breakfast in good season the next morning. He felt that this day was to make his fortune. The deed which would entitle him to a life support was to be perpetrated on that day. He shuddered a little when he reflected that in order to compass this a life must be sacrificed, and that the life of the boy who had been for years under his guardianship, who had slept at his side, and borne with him the perils and privations of his adventurous career. He was a reckless man, but he had never before shed blood, or at any rate taken the life of a human being. He would have been less than human if the near approach of such a crime had not made him nervous and uncomfortable. But against this feeling he fought strenuously. "What's the odds?" he said to himself. "The boy's got to die some time or other, and his dying now will make me comfortable for life. No more hungry tramps for me. I'll settle down and be respectable. Eight hundred dollars a year will relieve me from all care, and I shall only need to enjoy myself after this." Rudolph must have had strange notions of respectability to think it could be obtained by crime; but in fact his idea was that a man who could live on his own means was from that very power respectable, and there are plenty of persons of a higher social grade who share in this delusion. At a few minutes after nine Tony set out on his journey. It never occurred to him that the old Quaker in suit of sober drab, who sat on the piazza and saw him depart, was a man who cherished sinister designs upon him. In fact, he had forgotten all about him, and was intent upon his journey alone. Most boys like to drive, and our friend Tony was no exception to this general rule. He thought it much better than working about the stable-yard. "Take care of yourself, Tony," said James, the hostler, in a friendly tone. "Oh, yes, I'll do that," said Tony, little dreaming how necessary the admonition was likely to prove. "I may as well be starting too," thought Rudolph, and some ten minutes afterward he started at a walk along the road which led to Thornton. "I'll keep on as far as the woods," he thought, "and then I'll form my plans. The boy must not escape me, for I may never have as good a chance to dispose of him again." About two miles on began the woods to which reference has already been made. The tramp selected this as probably the best part of the road to accomplish his criminal design. They extended for nearly a mile on either side of the road, and this was likely to facilitate his purpose. "I'll explore a little," thought Rudolph. "I shall have plenty of time before the boy comes back." Some forty rods from the road on the right hand side, the tramp discovered a ruined hut, which had once belonged to a recluse who had for years lived apart from his kind. This had now fallen into decay, for the former occupant had been for some time dead, and no one had been tempted to succeed him. The general appearance of the building satisfied Rudolph that it was deserted. Impelled partly by curiosity, he explored the neighborhood of the house. A rod to the east there was a well, open to the view, the curb having decayed, and being in a ruined condition, Rudolph looked down into it, and judged that it might be about twenty feet deep. A diabolical suggestion came to him. If he could only lure Tony to this well and dispose of him forever. "I'll do it," he muttered to himself, and started to return to the road, where he hoped to intercept our hero. Poor Tony! he little dreamed of the danger that menaced him. CHAPTER XXIV. THE DEED IS DONE. Tony drove rapidly to Thornton and sought the purchaser of the buggy. There was a delay of half an hour in finding him, but at last his business was done, and he set out for home. It was not quite so amusing leading the horse as sitting in a buggy and driving him. But all our pleasures have to be paid for, and Tony was ready to pay the price of this one. After all, he reflected, it was quite as amusing as working about the stable yard, especially after it occurred to him to mount the animal and thus spare himself fatigue. Everything went smoothly till he entered the woody part of the road. "Now I shall be home soon," he said to himself. "But, hallo! who's that?" as a figure stepped out from the side of the road. "Oh, it's the Quaker. I wonder what brought him here?" "Friend, is thee in a hurry?" asked the impostor. "I suppose I ought to get back as soon as I can," said Tony. "Why, what's up?" "Thee is the boy from the hotel, is thee not?" asked Rudolph. "Yes. You're the Quaker gentleman that is stopping there?" "Yes." "Well, what do you want of me?" "There's a man in the woods that has fallen down a well, and I fear he is badly hurt." "A man fallen down a well!" exclaimed Tony. "Yes." "Where is the well?" "Back in the woods." "How did you find him?" "I was walking for amusement when I heard groans, and looking down I could see the poor man." Tony never thought of doubting this statement, and said, in a tone of genuine sympathy: "Poor fellow!" "Will thee go with me and help get him out?" asked the Quaker. "Yes," said Tony, readily, "I'll do it. Never mind if I am a little late. Where shall I put the horse?" "Lead him into the woods and tie him to a tree." "All right. I guess that'll be the best way." The horse was disposed of as had been suggested, and the two set forth on what Tony supposed to be their charitable errand. "I don't see what made you go into the woods?" said our hero, a little puzzled. "I was brought up in the woods, my young friend. It reminds me of the time when I was a boy like thee." "Oh, that's it. Well, it was lucky for the man, that is if we can get him out. Did you speak to him?" "Yes, verily." "And did he answer?" "He groaned. I think he was insensible. I saw that I should need help, and I came to the road again. Luckily thee came by." "Had you been waiting long?" "Only five minutes," answered Rudolph. In reality he had been compelled to wait near an hour, much to his disgust. In fact, he had been led to fear that there might be some other road by which one could return from Thornton, and that Tony had taken it. Should this be the case, his elaborate trap would be useless. They had come quite near the ruined dwelling, and already the curb of the well was visible. "Is that the well?" asked Tony. "Yes," answered the Quaker. "Let us hurry, then," said Tony. But the time had come when Tony was to have revealed to him the real character of his companion. A branch, which hung unusually low, knocked off the hat and wig of the pseudo Quaker, and Tony was petrified with dismay when he saw revealed the black, cropped head and sinister face of Rudolph, the tramp. "Rudolph!" he exclaimed, stopping short in his amazement. "Yes," said the tramp, avowing himself, now that he saw disguise was useless; "it's Rudolph. At last I have you, you young scamp!" and he seized the boy's arm as in the grip of a vise. Tony tried to shake off the grip, but what could a boy do against an athletic man. "It's no use," said the tramp, between his teeth, "I've got you, and I don't mean to let you go." "What do you mean to do, Rudolph?" asked Tony, uneasily. "What do I mean to do? I mean to make you repent of what you've done to me, you young whelp." "What have I done?" "What haven't you done? You've betrayed me, and sold me to my enemies. That's what you've done." "I've only done what I was obliged to do. I don't want to do you any more harm. Let me go, and I won't meddle with you any more, nor say a word about you at the hotel." "Really," said Rudolph, with a disagreeable sneer, "I feel very much obliged to you. You are very kind, upon my soul. So you won't tell them at the hotel that the Quaker gentleman is only a tramp after all." "No, I will say nothing about you." "I don't think you are to be trusted, boy." "Did you ever know me to tell a lie, Rudolph?" asked Tony, proudly. "I don't pretend to be a model boy, but there's one thing I won't do, and that is lie." "I think I had better make sure that you don't say anything about me," said the tramp, significantly. "How?" asked Tony. "I don't mean to let you go back to the hotel at all." "But I must go back. I must drive the horse back." "That's of no importance." "Yes, it is," persisted Tony, anxiously. "They will think I have stolen it." "Let them think so." "But I don't want them to think me a thief." "I can't help it." "What are you going to do with me? Where are we going?" "Before I tell you that I will tell you something more. You have often asked me who you were." "You always told me I was your son." "It was not true," said Rudolph, calmly. "You are not related to me." "I felt sure of it." "Oh, you did!" sneered the tramp. "You are glad that you are not my son!" "Who am I?" "I will tell you this much, that you are the heir to a fortune." "I the heir to a fortune!" exclaimed Tony, in natural excitement. "Yes; and I could help you to secure it if I pleased." Tony knew not what to say or to think. Was it possible that he--Tony, the tramp--was a gentleman's son, and heir to a fortune? It was almost incredible. Moreover, what was the object of Rudolph in imparting this secret, and at this time, when he sought revenge upon him. "Is this true?" he asked. "Perfectly true." "And you know my real name and family?" "Yes, I do." "Oh, Rudolph, tell me who I am," Tony said, imploringly. "Help me to the fortune which you say I am entitled to, and I will take care that you are rewarded." Rudolph surveyed the boy, whom he still held in his firm grasp, and watched his excitement with malicious satisfaction. "There is one objection to my doing that, boy," he said. "What is that?" "I'll tell you," he hissed, as his grasp grew tighter, and his dark face grew darker yet with passion, "_I hate you!_" This he uttered with such intensity that Tony, brave as he was, was startled and dismayed. "Then why did you tell me?" he asked. "That you might know what you are going to lose--that you might repent betraying me," answered Rudolph, rapidly. "You ask me what I am going to do with you? I am going to throw you down that well, and leave you there--to die!" Then commenced a struggle between the man and boy. Tony knew what he had to expect, and he fought for dear life. Rudolph found that he had undertaken no light task, but he, too, was desperate. He succeeded at last in dragging Tony to the well-curb, and, raising him in his sinewy arms, he let him fall. Then, without waiting to look down, he hurried out of the wood with all speed. He reached the hotel, settled his bill, and paid to have himself carried over to the nearest railroad station. Not until he was fairly seated in the cars, and was rushing through the country at the rate of thirty miles an hour, did he pause to congratulate himself. "Now for an easy life!" he ejaculated. "My fortune is made! I shall never have to work any more." CHAPTER XXV. "I HOLD YOU TO THE BOND." On reaching New York, Rudolph made his way at once to the shop from which he had obtained his Quaker dress. "Has thee come back?" asked the old man, in a jocular tone. "Yea, verily," answered Rudolph. "How do you like being a Quaker?" "I've had enough of it. I want you to take them back. You promised to return me twenty-five dollars." "Let me look at them," said the old man, cautiously. "They've seen hard usage," he said. "Look at that rip, and that spot." "Humbug!" answered Rudolph. "There's nothing but what you can set straight in half an hour, and five dollars is handsome pay for that." But the old man stood out for seven, and finally the tramp, though grumbling much, was obliged to come to his terms. "Where have you been?" asked the old man, whose curiosity was aroused as to what prompted Rudolph to obtain the disguise. "That's my business," said Rudolph, who had his reasons for secrecy, as we know. "I meant no offense--I only wondered if you left the city." "Yes, I've been into New Jersey," answered the tramp, who thought it politic to put the customer on the wrong scent. "You see I've got an old uncle--a Quaker--living there. The old man's got plenty of money, and I thought if I could only make him think me a good Quaker, I should stand a good chance of being remembered in his will." "I see--a capital idea. Did it work?" "I can't tell yet. He gave me four dollars and his blessing for the present," said Rudolph, carelessly. "That's a lie every word of it," said the old man to himself, after the tramp went out. "You must try to fix up a more probable story next time, Mr. Rudolph. He's been up to some mischief, probably. However, it's none of my business, I've made seven dollars out of him, and that pays me well--yes, it pays me well." When Rudolph left the costumer's, it occurred to him that the tramp's dress which he had resumed had better be changed, partly because he thought it probable that a journey lay before him. He sought out a large ready-made clothing establishment on Fulton street, and with the money which had been returned to him obtained a respectable-looking suit, which quite improved his appearance. He regarded his reflection in a long mirror with considerable satisfaction. He felt that he would now be taken for a respectable citizen, and that in discarding his old dress he had removed all vestiges of the tramp. In this, however, he was not wholly right. His face and general expression he could not change. A careful observer could read in them something of the life he had lead. Still he was changed for the better, and it pleased him. "Now," he reflected, "I had better go and see Mrs. Harvey Middleton. I have done the work, and I shall claim the reward." He hurried to the St. Nicholas, and, experienced now in the ways of obtaining access to a guest, he wrote his name on a card and sent it up. "The lady will see you," was the answer brought back by the servant. "Of course she will," thought Rudolph. "She'll want to know whether it's all settled, and she has no further cause for fear." Mrs. Middleton looked up as he entered. "Sit down, Mr. Rugg," she said, politely. Her manner was cool and composed; but when the servant had left the room, she rose from her chair, and in a tone which showed the anxiety which she had till then repressed, she asked, abruptly: "Well, Mr. Rugg, have you any news for me?" "Yes, ma'am, I have," he answered, deliberately. "What is it? Don't keep me in suspense," she said, impatiently. "The job's done," said Rudolph briefly. "You mean that the boy--" "Accidentally fell down a well, and was killed," said the visitor, finishing the sentence. "Horrible!" murmured the lady. "Wasn't it?" said Rudolph, with a grin. "He must have been very careless." Mrs. Middleton did not immediately speak. Though she was responsible for this crime, having instigated it, she was really shocked when it was brought home to her. "You are sure he is dead?" she said, after a pause. "When a chap pitches head-first down a well thirty feet deep, there isn't much hope for him, is there?" "No, I suppose not. Where did this accident happen?" asked the lady. "That ain't important," answered Rudolph. "It's happened--that's all you need to know. Tony won't never come after that estate of his." "It would have done him little good. He was not fitted by education to assume it." "No; but he might have been educated. But that's all over now. It's yours. Nobody can take it from you." "True!" said Mrs. Middleton, and a look of pleasure succeeded the momentary horror. "You will be ready to testify that the boy is dead?" "There won't be any danger, will there? They won't ask too many questions?" "As to that, I think we had better decide what we will say. It won't be necessary to say how the boy died." "Won't it?" "No. Indeed, it will be better to give a different account." "Will that do just as well?" "Yes. You can say, for instance, that he died of small-pox while under your care in St. Louis, or any other place." "And that I tended him to the last with the affection of a father," added Rudolph, grinning. "To be sure. You must settle upon all the details of the story, so as not to be caught in any discrepancies." "What's that?" asked the tramp, rather mystified. "Your story must hang together. It mustn't contradict itself." "To be sure. How long are you going to stay in New York?" "There is no further occasion for my staying here. I shall sail to England in a week." "Will it be all right about the money?" asked Rudolph, anxiously. "Certainly." "How am I to be sure of that?" "The word of a lady, sir," said Mrs. Middleton, haughtily, "ought to be sufficient for you." "That's all very well, but suppose you should get tired of paying me the money?" "Then you could make it very disagreeable for me by telling all you know about the boy. However, there will be no occasion for that. I shall keep my promise. Will you be willing to sail for England next week." "Do you mean that I am to go with you?" "I mean that you are to go. Your testimony must be given on the other side, in order to make clear my title to the estate." "I see, ma'am. If I'd known that I wouldn't have had no fears about the money." "You need have none, Mr. Rugg," said Mrs. Middleton, coldly. "The fact is, we are necessary to each other. Each can promote the interests of the other." "That's so, ma'am. Let's shake hands on that," said Rudolph, advancing with outstretched hand. "No, thank you," said Mrs. Middleton, coldly. "You forget yourself, sir. Do not forget that I am a lady, and that you are--" "We are equal, ma'am in this matter," said Rudolph, offended. "You needn't shrink from shaking hands with me." "That is not in the agreement," said Mrs. Middleton, haughtily. "I shall do what I have agreed, but except so far as it is necessary in the way of business, I wish you to keep yourself away from me. We belong to different grades in society." "Why didn't you say that the other day, ma'am?" said Rudolph, frowning. "Because I didn't suppose it to be necessary. You did not offer to shake hands with me then. Besides, at that time you had not--" "Pushed the boy down the well, if that's what you mean," said Rudolph, bluntly. "Hush! don't refer to that. I advise you this for your own sake." "And for the sake of somebody else." "Mr. Rugg, all this discussion is idle. It can do no good. For whatever service you have rendered, you shall be well paid. That you understand. But it is best that we should know as little of each other henceforth as possible. It might excite suspicion, as you can understand." "Perhaps you are right, ma'am," said Rudolph, slowly. "Call here day after to-morrow, and I will let you know by what steamer I take passage for England, that you may obtain a ticket. Good afternoon." Rudolph left the lady's presence not wholly pleased. "Why wouldn't she shake my hand?" he muttered to himself. "She's as deep in it as I am." CHAPTER XXVI. TONY'S ESCAPE. We must now return to our young hero, who was certainly in a critical position. Though strong of his age, the reader will hardly be surprised that he should have been overpowered by a man like Rudolph. When the false Quaker's hat and wig were taken off, though he was at first surprised, he for the first time understood why the man's face and voice had seemed familiar to him from the time they first met. He struggled in vain against the fate in store for him. He felt that with him it was to be a matter of life and death, and taken by surprise though he was, he was on the alert to save his life if he could. The well curb was partially destroyed, as we have said, but the rope still hung from it. At the instant of his fall, Tony managed while in transit to grasp the rope by one hand. He swung violently from one side to the other, and slipped a few feet downward. This Rudolph did not see, for as soon as he had hurled the boy into the well he hurried away. Tony waited for the rope to become steady before attempting to ascend hand over hand. Unfortunately for his purpose the rope was rotten, and broke just above where he grasped it, precipitating him to the bottom of the well. But he was already so far from the opening that his fall was not over ten feet. Luckily also the water was not over two feet in depth. Therefore, though he was jarred and startled by the sudden descent, he was not injured. "Well," thought Tony, "I'm as low as I can get--that's one comfort. Now is there any chance of my getting out?" He looked up, and it gave him a peculiar sensation to look up at the blue sky from the place where he stood. He feared that Rudolph was still at hand and would resist any efforts he might make to get out of the well. "If he don't interfere I'm bound to get out," he said to himself, pluckily. His feet were wet, of course, and this was far from comfortable. He made a brief examination of the situation, and then decided upon his plan. The well, like most in the country, was provided by a wall of stones, piled one upon another. In parts it looked rather loose, and Tony shuddered as he thought of the possibility of the walls falling, and his being buried in the ruins. "It would be all up with me, then," he thought, "I must get out of this as soon as I can. If I can only climb up as far as the rope I can escape." This, in fact, seemed to be his only chance. Using the wall as a ladder, he began cautiously to ascend. More than once he came near falling a second time, but by greatest exertion he finally reached the rope. He did not dare to trust to it entirely, but contrived to ascend as before, clinging to the rope with his hands. He was in constant fear that it would break a second time, but the strain upon it was not so great, and finally, much to his delight, he reached the top. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when he found himself once more on _terra firma_. He looked about him cautiously, under the apprehension that Rudolph might be near by, and ready to attack him again. But, as we know, his fears were groundless. "He made sure that I was disposed of," thought Tony. "What could have induced him to attempt my life? Can it be true, as he said, that I am heir to a fortune? Why couldn't he tell me? I would have paid him well for the information when I got my money. Then he said he knew who I was--I care more for that than the money." But Tony could not dwell upon these thoughts. The claims of duty were paramount. He must seek the horse, and go back to the hotel. He had been detained already for nearly three-quarters of an hour, and they would be wondering what had become of him. He made his way as quickly as possible to where he had tied the horse. But he looked for him in vain. He had been untied and led away--perhaps stolen. Tony felt assured that the horse of himself could not leave the spot. "It must be Rudolph," he said to himself. "He has made off with the horse. Now I am in trouble. What will Mr. Porter say to me?" Tony was in error, as we know, in concluding that Rudolph had carried away the horse. The tramp had no use for him. Besides, he knew that such a proceeding would have exposed him to suspicion, which it was very important for him to avoid. Who, then, had taken the horse? That is a question which we are able to answer, though Tony could not. Fifteen minutes before Sam Payson, whose place Tom had taken, with a companion, Ben Hardy, while wandering through the woods had espied a horse. "Hallo!" said Ben, "here's a horse." "So it is," said Sam. "It's rather odd that he should be tied here." "I wonder whose it is?" Sam had been examining him carefully, and had recognized him. "It's Mr. Porter's Bill. Don't you see that white spot? That's the way I know him. I have harnessed that horse fifty times." "But how did he come here? That's the question?" "I'll tell you," said Sam. "I was at the hotel this morning, and heard that that boy Tony was to go over to Thornton with him." "That don't explain why he is tied here, does it?" "Tony must have tied him while he was taking a tramp in the woods. Wouldn't Porter be mad if he knew it?" "I shouldn't wonder if Tony would get bounced." "Nor I. I tell you what, Ben, I've a great mind to untie the horse, and take him back myself." "What's the good? It would be an awful job. We came out here to have some fun," grumbled Ben. "This would be fun to me. I'll get Tony into trouble, and very likely get back the place he cheated me out of. I guess it'll pay." "All right, Sam. I didn't think of that. I'd like to see how Tony looks when he comes back, and finds the horse gone." "It'll serve him right," said Sam. "What business had he to interfere with me, I'd like to know." "If you're going to do it you'd better hurry up. He may go back any time." "That's so. Here goes, then." In a trice Bill was untied, and Sam taking the halter led him away. When Tony came up he was not in sight. Though Tony felt convinced that Rudolph had carried away the horse, he felt it to be his duty to look about for it. There was a bare chance that he might find it somewhere in the wood. In this way he lost considerable time. Had he started for the hotel immediately he would very likely have overtaken the two boys. Sam kept on his way, and finally arrived at the hotel. As he led the horse into the stable-yard James, the hostler, exclaimed in surprise: "How came you by that horse, Sam Payson?" "Is that the way you thank me for bringing him back?" asked Sam. "He left the stable under the charge of Tony Rugg this morning." "Pretty care he takes of him, then." "What do you mean? Where did you find him?" "Down in the woods?" "What woods?" "Between here and Thornton." "Wasn't Tony with him?" "No." "Are you sure of that? Are you sure you two boys didn't attack Tony and take the horse away?" demanded James, suspiciously. "No, we didn't. If you don't believe me, you may ask Ben." "How was it, Ben?" he asked. "Just as Sam has said. We found the horse alone in the woods. We thought he might be stolen, and we brought him home. It was a good deal of trouble, for it's full two miles." James looked from one to the other in perplexity. "I don't understand it at all," he said. "It don't look like Tony to neglect his duty that way." "You've got too high an opinion of that boy entirely," said Sam, sneeringly. [Illustration: Tony sprung forward and seized the would-be murderer by the arm. (See page 182.)] CHAPTER XXVII. TONY IS DISCHARGED. Presently Tony came into the yard. He was looking very sober. He had lost the horse, and he didn't know how to excuse himself. He didn't feel that he had been to blame, but he suspected that he should be blamed nevertheless. "What did you do with the horse, Tony?" asked James. "He was stolen from me," answered Tony. "How could that be?" "I expect it was the Quaker." "The Quaker!" repeated James, in amazement. "Are you sure you're not crazy--or drunk?" "Neither one," said Tony. "It's a long story and----" "You must tell it to Mr. Porter then. He wants to see you right off. But I'll tell you for your information that the horse is here." "Is here? Who brought it?" "Sam Payson brought it a short time since." "Sam Payson! Where did he say he found it?" "In the woods." "Then he might have left it there," said Tony, indignantly. "What business had he to untie it, and give me all this trouble?" "You can speak to Mr. Porter about that." "Where is he?" "In the office." Tony entered the office. Mr. Porter regarded him with a frown. "How is this, Tony?" he began. "You leave my horse in the woods to be brought home by another boy. He might have been stolen, do you know that?" "I've been deceived, and led into a trap," said Tony. "What on earth do you mean? Who has deceived and trapped you?" "The Quaker who was stopping here. Has he come back?" "He has settled his bill and left the hotel. What cock-and-bull story is this you have hatched up?" "It is a true story, Mr. Porter. This man was not a Quaker at all. He was a tramp." "Take care what you say, Tony. Do you take me for a fool?" "He is a man I used to know. When I was coming home he was waiting for me in the woods, only I didn't know who he really was. He told me there was a man who had fallen into a well in the woods, and he wanted my help to get him out. So I tied the horse and went with him. I wouldn't have left him but for the story of the man in the well." "Go on," said the landlord. "I warn you I don't believe a word of this wonderful story of yours." "I can't help it," said Tony, desperately. "It's true." "Go on, and I'll give you my opinion of it afterward." "Just before we got to the well a branch took off his hat and wig, and I saw that he was no Quaker, but my enemy, Rudolph Rugg." "Rudolph Rugg! A very good name for a romance." Tony proceeded: "Then I tried to get away, but it was too late. The man seized me and threw me down the well. But first he told me that he knew who I was, and that I was heir to a large fortune." "Indeed! How happens it that you are not at the bottom of the well still?" "I got out." "So I see; but how?" "I climbed up by the stones till I reached the rope, and then I found it easy. I hurried to where I had left the horse, but it was gone. I supposed that the Quaker had taken it, but James tells me Sam Payson found it and brought it back." "Look here, boy," said the landlord, sternly, "do you expect me to believe this romance of yours?" "I don't know whether you will or not, sir. All I can say is that it is the exact truth." "I cannot keep you in my employ any longer. I have been deceived by you, and should no longer trust you. You certainly have mistaken your vocation. You are not fit to be a stable boy." "I should like to know what I am fit for," said Tony, despondently. "I will tell you, then. Judging from the story you have told me, I should think you might succeed very well in writing a romance. I don't know whether it pays, but you can try it." "Some time you will find out that I have told the truth," said Tony. "Perhaps so, but I doubt it." "When do you want me to go?" "You can stay till to-morrow morning. Wait a minute. Here is a five-dollar bill. That is a fair price for the time you have been with me." As Tony was going out he came near having a collision with Sam Payson. Sam looked at him inquiringly. "Have you been discharged?" he asked. "Yes," said Tony. "It was your fault. What made you take that horse?" "I was afraid Mr. Porter might lose it. Is he in?" "Yes. You can apply for my place, if you want to." "I mean to." Sam went in, and addressed the landlord. "I brought your horse back," he said. "Thank you. Here's two dollars for your trouble." Sam tucked it away with an air of satisfaction. "Tony tells me he is going away." "Yes. He don't suit me." "Wouldn't I suit you?" asked Sam, in an ingratiating tone. "No; I've tried you, and you won't suit," was the unexpected reply. "But I brought back the horse," pleaded Sam, crest-fallen. "I've paid you for that," said the landlord. "Didn't I pay you enough?" "Yes, sir; but I thought you'd take me back again." "I know you too well, Sam Payson, to try any such experiment. The Widow Clark told me yesterday that she wanted to get her boy into a place, and I am going to offer it to him." "He don't know anything about horses," said Sam. "He will soon learn. He is a good boy, and industrious. I am sure he will suit me better than you." "I wish I hadn't brought back his old horse," muttered Sam, as he left the office and went back into the yard. He hoped to triumph over Tony by telling him that he had taken his place, but the opportunity was not allowed him. "Well, Sam, are you going to take my place?" asked Tony. "No, I'm not," said Sam. "Didn't you ask for it?" "The old man had promised it to another boy," said Sam, sourly. "He's been pretty quick about it, then," said James. "A boy that don't know the first thing about horses," grumbled Sam. "Who is it?" "Joe Clark." "He's a good boy; I'm glad he's coming, though I'm sorry to lose Tony." "Thank you, James," said Tony. "I'd like to stay, but I can't blame Mr. Porter for not believing my story. It was a strange one, but it's true for all that." James shrugged his shoulders. "Then you believe you're heir to a fortune, as he told you?" "Yes; he had no reason to tell me a lie." "What's that?" asked Sam. "The Quaker gentleman who was here told Tony that he was heir to a large fortune." "Ho, ho!" laughed Sam, boisterously. "That's a likely story, that is." "Why isn't it?" asked Tony, frowning. "You heir to a fortune--a clodhopper like you! Oh! I shall split!" said Sam, giving way to another burst of merriment. "I am no more a clodhopper than you are," said Tony, "and I advise you not to laugh too much, or I may make you laugh on the other side of your mouth." "It'll take more than you to do it," said Sam, defiantly. "I have done it already, Sam Payson, and I'm ready to try it again before I leave town." "I wouldn't dirty my hands with you," said Sam, scornfully. "You'd better not." When Sam had gone, Tony turned to James. "I wonder whether I shall ever see you again, James?" he said, thoughtfully. "I hope so, Tony. I'm sorry you're going; but you couldn't expect Mr. Porter to believe such a story as that." "Then you don't believe it, James? I'll come back some day just to prove to you that it is true." "Come back at any rate; I shall be glad to see you. When do you go?" "To-morrow morning." "Where shall you go first?" "To New York; but I'll help you till I go." So Tony did his work as usual for the remainder of the day. He felt rather sober. Just as he had found a home his evil genius, in the character of Rudolph, appeared and deprived him of it. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE WORLD BEFORE HIM. Though Tony was out of a place he was considerably better off than he had generally been. He had five dollars in his pocket for the first time in his life. A few weeks ago he would have considered himself rich with this amount, and would have been in high spirits. But now he took a different view of life. He had known what it was to have a settled home, and to earn an honest living, and he had learned to like it. But fortune was against him, and he must go. "Good-by, James," he said, soberly, to the hostler the next morning. "Good-by, Tony, and good luck," said the kind-hearted hostler. "I hope I shall have good luck, but I don't expect it," said Tony. "Pooh, nonsense! You're young, and the world is before you." "That's so, James, but so far the world has been against me." "Come here a minute, Tony," said James, lowering his voice. As Tony approached, he thrust a bank-note hastily into his hand. "Take it," he said, quickly. "I don't need it, and you may." Tony looked at the bill, and found it was a ten-dollar note. "You're very kind, James," he said, touched by a kindness to which he was unaccustomed, "but I can't take it." "Why not? I shan't need it." "Nor I, James. I've got some money. It isn't much, but I'm used to roughing it. I've done it all my life. I always come down on my feet like a cat." "But you may get hard up." "If I do, I'll let you know." "Will you promise that?" "Honor bright." So James took back the money reluctantly, and Tony bade him good-by. It was a rainy day when Tony arrived in New York. The stores were deserted, and the clerks lounged idly behind the counter. Only those who were actually obliged to be out appeared in the streets. If Tony's hopes had been high they would have been lowered by the dreary weather. He wandered aimlessly about the streets, having no care about his luggage for he had brought none, looking about him listlessly. He found himself after a while in the lower part of Broadway, not far from the Battery. It is here, as my city readers know, the most of the European steamer lines have their offices. At once Tony saw a figure that attracted his eager attention. It was Rudolph Rugg, his old comrade, and now bitter enemy. "Where is he going?" thought Tony. This question was soon solved. Rudolph entered the office of the Anchor Line of steamers. "What can he want there?" thought Tony. "I'll watch him." He took a position near by, yet far enough off to avoid discovery, and waited patiently for Rudolph to reappear. He waited about fifteen minutes. Then he saw the tramp come out with a paper in his hand, which he appeared to regard with satisfaction. He turned and went up Broadway. As soon as he thought it safe Tony crossed the street and entered the office. He made his way up to the counter and inquired the price of passage. The rates were given him. "Can you tell me," he asked, carelessly, "if a Mr. Rugg is going across on one of your steamers?" "Mr. Rugg? Why, it is the man who just left the office." "Did he buy a passage ticket?" "Yes." "When does he sail?" "On Saturday." "And where does he go?" "To Liverpool, of course. Can I sell you a ticket?" "I haven't decided," said Tony. "If you go, you will find it to your advantage to go by our line." "I'll go by your line, if I go at all," said Tony. "I wonder whether he'd be so polite if he knew I had but three dollars and a quarter in my pocket?" said our hero to himself. Then he began to wonder how it happened that Rudolph was going. First, it was a mystery where he could have obtained the money necessary for the purchase of a ticket. Next, what could be his reason for leaving America. "Probably he has picked somebody's pocket," thought Tony. That disposed of the difficulty, but, as we know, Tony was mistaken. It was money that he had received for a worse deed, but Tony never thought of connecting the state of Rudolph's purse with the attempt that had been made upon his own life. When Tony came to think of it he felt glad that Rudolph was going abroad. He felt that his own life would be safer with an ocean flowing between him and the man who latterly had exhibited such an intense hatred for him. As to his motive, why perhaps he thought that he would be safer in London than in New York. Tony bethought himself of securing a temporary home. He was not a stranger in New York, and knew exactly where to go. There was a house not far from Greenwich street, where he had lodged more than once before, and where he was known. It was far from a fashionable place, but the charge was small, and that was a necessary consideration with Tony. He rang the bell, and the proprietor, a hard-favored woman of fifty, came to open it. "How do you do, Mrs. Blodgett?" said Tony. "Why, it's Tony," said the woman, not unkindly. "Where have you been this long time?" "In the country," answered our hero. "And where is your father?" "Do you mean the man I used to be with?" "Yes. He was your father, wasn't he?" "No. He was no relation of mine," said Tony, hastily. "We used to go together, that is all." "Where is he?" "I don't know exactly. We had a falling out, and we've parted." "Well, Tony, what can I do for you?" "Have you got any cheap room to let, Mrs. Blodgett?" "I've got a room in the attic. It's small, but if it'll suit you, you can have it for a dollar a week." "It's just the thing," said Tony, in a tone of satisfaction. "Can I go right up?" "Yes, if you want to. I generally want a week's pay in advance, but you've been here before----" "No matter for that. Here's the money," said Tony. "I'll show you the way up." "All right. I guess I'll lie down awhile. I've been about the streets all day, and am pretty tired." The room was quite small, and the furniture was shabby and well-worn; but Tony was not particular. He threw himself on the bed, and soon fell asleep. How long he slept he did not know, but when he woke up the room was quite dark. He stretched, and did not immediately remember where he was; but it flashed upon him directly. "I wonder what time it is?" he asked himself. "I must have slept a long time. I feel as fresh as a lark. I'll get up a take and tramp." When he went down stairs he found that it was already ten o'clock. "I feel as fresh as if it were morning," thought Tony. "I'll go out on Broadway and watch some of the theatres when the people come out." Ten o'clock seems late in the country; it is the usual hour for retiring for many families; but in the city it is quite different. There are still many to be seen in the streets, and for many it is the commencement of a season of festivity. Tony walked for half an hour. He was so thoroughly rested that he felt no fatigue. Presently he stepped into a crowded billiard-room, and seating himself, began to watch a game between a young man of twenty-five and a man probably fifteen years his senior. The first was evidently a gentleman by birth and education; his dress and manners evinced this. The other looked like an adventurer, though he was well-dressed. "Come, let us play for drinks," said the elder. "I've drank enough," said the young man. "Nonsense. You can stand a little more." "Just as you say." The game terminated in favor of the elder, and the drinks were brought. This went on for some time. The young man was evidently affected. Finally he threw down his cue, and said; "I won't play again." "Why not?" "My hand is unsteady. I have drank too much." "I've drank as much as you, but I am all right." "You can stand more than I. I'll settle for the drinks and games and go home." "Shan't I see you home?" asked the elder. "I don't want to trouble you." "No trouble at all." The young man paid at the bar, displaying a well-filled pocketbook. There was something in his companion's expression which made Tony suspicious. He formed a sudden resolve. "I'll follow them," he said, and when they left the room he was close behind them. CHAPTER XXIX. A STRANGE ADVENTURE. The young man leaned on the arm of his companion. He was affected by the potations in which he had indulged, and was sensible of his condition. "I ought not to have drank so much," he said, in unsteady accents. "Pooh! it's nothing," said the other, lightly. "Where are you stopping?" "St. Nicholas." "We'd better walk; it will do you good to walk." "Just as you say." "Of course, I would only advise you for your good." "I know it; but old fellow, why did you make me drink so much?" "I thought you could stand it better. I'm as cool as a cucumber." He pressed the young man's arm, and led him into a side street. "What's that for? This ain't the way to St. Nicholas." "I know it." "Why don't you go up Broadway?" "You are not fit to go in yet. You need a longer walk, so that your condition will not be noticed when you go in." "Go along old fellow; you're right." Still Tony kept behind. All seemed right enough, but somehow he could not help feeling suspicious of the older man. "I'll watch him," he thought, "and if he attempts any mischief I'll interfere." The two men walked in a westerly direction, crossing several streets. "Look here," said the young man, "we'd better turn back." Now was the time. The other looked swiftly around, but did not notice Tony, who was tracking him in the darkness. "Give me your watch and money at once, or I'll blow your brains out." "Look here, you're only trying to play a joke on me." "You're mistaken. I'm a desperate man. I will do as I say." "Then you're a villain," said the young man, with spirit. "You've made me drunk in order to rob me." "Precisely. Your money or your life. That's about what I mean." "I'll call the police." "If you do it will be your last word. Now make up your mind." The young man, instead of complying, endeavored to break away, but in his intoxication he had lost half his strength, and was no match for the other. "You fool! your blood be on your own hands!" said his companion, and he drew a pistol from his side pocket. An instant and he would have fired, but Tony was on the alert. He sprang forward, seized the would-be murderer by the arm, and the pistol went off, but the bullet struck a brick wall on the opposite side of the street. "Police!" shouted Tony, at the top of his lungs. "Confusion!" exclaimed the villain. "I must be getting out of this." He turned to fly, but Tony seized him by the coat, and he struggled fiercely, but in vain. "Let go, you young scoundrel!" he shouted, "or I'll shoot you." "With an unloaded pistol?" asked Tony. "That don't scare much." A quick step was heard, and a policeman turned the corner. "What's the matter?" he asked. "I charge this man with an attempt at murder," said Tony. "The boy is right," said the young man. "They are both lying," said the adventurer, furiously. "It's a plot against me." "I know you, Bill Jones," said the policeman, after a careful scrutiny of the man's features. "You're a hard ticket. Come along with me. You two must go with me to prefer your charge." "Let me have your arm, my boy," said the young man; "I'm ashamed to own that I need your help. It is the last time I will allow liquor to get the better of me." "I guess you're about right there," said Tony. "You've had a narrow escape." "I owe my life to you," said the young man, warmly. "How did you happen to come up just in the nick of time?" "I suspected the man meant you no good. I followed you from the billiard saloon, where I saw you playing." "You were sharper than I. I never suspected harm. You have done me the greatest possible service." "Curse the young brat!" muttered the man in custody. "I'd like a good chance to wring your neck." "I've no doubt of it," said Tony. "I'll keep out of your way." The station house was not far off. The party entered. The charge was formally made, and Tony and the young man went out. "Won't your father and mother feel anxious about your being out so late?" asked George Spencer, for this was the young man's name. "I don't think they will," answered Tony. "I haven't got any for that matter." "Who do you live with then?" "I take care of myself." "Have you no one belonging to you?" "Not one." "Are you poor?" asked Spencer, for the first time taking notice of Tony's rather shabby apparel. "Oh, no," said our hero. "I've got a little over two dollars in my pocket." "Is that all?" "Yes, and it's a good deal more than I generally have." "You don't say so. How do you make your living?" "Any way I can. Any way that's honest." "And don't you ever get discouraged--down in the mouth?" "Not often," answered Tony. "I've always got along, and I guess something will turn up for me. But there's one thing I'm sorry for." "What's that?" "I would like to get some sort of an education; I don't know much." "Can you read?" "A little, and write a little. I mostly picked it up myself." The young man whistled. "Have you any place to sleep to-night?" "I've hired an attic room for a week." "What do you pay?" "A dollar a week." "Of course, it's a poor room?" "Yes; but it's all I can expect, and better than I often have. Why, I've slept in barns and under haystacks plenty of times." "What is your name?" "Tony Rugg." "Well, Tony, you must come and stop with me to-night." "With you?" "Yes; at the St. Nicholas Hotel. You can help me get there, and share my room." Tony hesitated. "Do you mean it?" he asked. "Why shouldn't I?" "Because you're a gentleman, and I--do you know what they call me?" "What?" "Tony, the Tramp." "It is your misfortune and not your fault. I repeat my invitation--will you come?" "I will," answered Tony. He saw that the young man was in earnest, and he no longer persisted in his refusal. "To-morrow morning I will talk with you further about your affairs. I want to do something for you." "You are very kind." "I ought to be. Haven't you saved my life? But there is the hotel." Tony and his new friend entered the great hotel. It was brilliantly lighted, though it was now nearly midnight. Mr. Spencer went up to the desk. "My key," he said; "No. 169." "Here it is, sir." "This young man will share my room; I will enter his name." The clerk looked at Tony in surprise. He looked rather shabby for a guest of the great caravansery. "Has he luggage?" asked the clerk. "None to-night; I will pay his bill." "All right, sir." They got into the elevator, and presently came to a stop. Mr. Spencer opened the door of 169. It was a good-sized and handsomely furnished chamber, containing two beds. "You will sleep in that bed, Tony," said Spencer. "I feel dead tired. Will you help me off with my coat?" Scarcely was the young man in bed than he fell asleep. Tony lay awake some time, thinking of his strange adventure. "It's the first time in my life," he said to himself, "when I've had two beds--one here and the other at my lodgings. What would Rudolph say if he knew I was stopping at a fashionable hotel, instead of being at the bottom of the well, where he threw me?" CHAPTER XXX. BREAKFAST AT THE ST. NICHOLAS. When Tony woke up in the morning he looked about him with momentary bewilderment, wondering where he was. George Spencer was already awake. "How did you sleep, Tony?" he asked. "First rate." "It must be late. Please look at my watch and tell me what time it is." "Half-past eight," said Tony, complying with his request. "Why, it's late." "Not very. I didn't get up until ten yesterday. Well, what do you say to getting up and having some breakfast?" "Am I to breakfast with you, Mr. Spencer?" "To be sure you are, unless you have another engagement," added Spencer, jocosely. "If I have it can wait," said Tony. "How much do they charge here for board, Mr. Spencer?" "Four or five dollars a day. I really don't know exactly how much." "Four or five dollars a day!" exclaimed Tony, opening his eyes in amazement. "How much I shall cost you!" "I expect you will cost me a good deal, Tony," said the young man. "Do you know, I have a great mind to adopt you!" "Do you really mean it, Mr. Spencer?" "Yes; why shouldn't I. I like what I have seen of you, and I have plenty of money." "It must be a nice thing to have plenty of money," said Tony, thoughtfully. "There is danger in it, too, Tony. I am ashamed to tell you how much I have spent in gambling and dissipation." "I wouldn't do it, Mr. Spencer," said Tony, soberly. "Capital advice, Tony. I am going to keep you with me for fear I might forget, that is, if you think you will like me well enough to stay." "I am sure to like you, Mr. Spencer, but you may get tired of me." "I'll let you know when I do, Tony. How much income do you think I have?" "A thousand dollars!" guessed Tony, who considered that this would be a very large income. Spencer laughed. "It is over ten thousand," he said. "Ten thousand!" exclaimed Tony. "How can you spend it all?" "I did spend it all, last year, Tony, and got a thousand dollars in debt. I gambled, and most of it went that way. But I'll leave that off. I shall have you to take up my time, now." "Did you know that man you played billiards with last night, Mr. Spencer?" "I made his acquaintance in a gambling house, and I was well punished for keeping company with such a man." Tony was now nearly dressed. "You didn't get your clothing from a fashionable tailor, I should judge," said his new guardian. "No," said Tony, "I haven't been to fashionable tailors much." "After breakfast I must go with you and see you properly clothed. If you are to be my ward, I must have your appearance do me credit." "How very kind you are to me, Mr. Spencer," said Tony, gratefully. "I don't know how to repay you." "You've done something in that way already." "It seems like a dream that a poor boy like me should be adopted by a rich gentleman." "It is a dream you won't wake up from very soon. Now if you are ready we will go down to breakfast." Tony hung back. "Won't you be ashamed to have me seen with you in these clothes?" he asked. "Not a bit. Besides you will soon be in better trim. Come along, Tony." They went down together, and entered the breakfast room. A considerable number of persons were there. Several stared in surprise at Tony as he entered and took his seat. Our hero noticed it, and it made him nervous. "Do you see how they look at me?" he said. "Don't let it affect your appetite, Tony," said his friend. "When you appear among them again you will have no reason to feel ashamed." A speech which Tony heard from a neighboring table did not serve to reassure him. An over-dressed lady of fifty said to a tall, angular young lady, her daughter: "Elvira, do you see that very common-looking boy at the next table?" "Yes, ma." "He looks low. He is not as well dressed as our servants. It is very strange they should let him eat at an aristocratic hotel like this." "Isn't he with that gentleman, ma?" "It looks like it. He maybe the gentleman's servant. I really think it an imposition to bring him here." Mr. Spencer smiled. "Don't mind it, Tony," he said. "I know those people by sight. They are parvenus. I suppose you don't understand the word. They are vulgar people who have become rich by a lucky speculation. They will change their tune presently. What will you have for breakfast?" "There's such a lot of things," said Tony, "I don't know what to choose." "You'll get used to that. I'll order breakfast for both." The waiter appeared, and Mr. Spencer gave the order. The waiter looked uncomfortable. "Mr. Spencer," he said, "it's against the rules for you to bring your servant to the table with you." "I have not done so," said Mr. Spencer, promptly. "This young gentleman is my ward." "Oh, excuse me," said the waiter, confused. "Has any one prompted you to speak to me about him?" "Those ladies at the next table." "Then those ladies owe an apology to my ward," said the young man, loud enough for the ladies to hear. The shot told. The ladies looked confused and embarrassed, and Tony and his guardian quietly finished their breakfast. There was another lady who noticed Tony, and this was Mrs. Harvey Middleton. She was to sail for England in the afternoon. As Tony and Mr. Spencer were going out of the breakfast-room, they met her entering. She started at the sight of Tony, and scanned his face eagerly. "Who are you, boy?" she asked, quickly, laying her hand on his arm. Tony was too surprised to answer, and Mr. Spencer answered for him. "It is my ward, madame," he answered. "He has been roughing it in the country, which accounts for the state of his wardrobe." "O, I beg pardon, sir," said Mrs. Middleton. "I thought his face looked familiar." "You see, Tony, that your appearance attracts attention," said Mr. Spencer, laughing. "Now we'll go out, and I'll get you a fit-out." They went to a well-known clothier's, and Mr. Spencer purchased two handsome suits for our hero, one of which he put on at once. At another place a plentiful supply of under-clothing was purchased. Next a hat and shoes were procured. Tony's hair was cut, he took a bath, and in a couple of hours he was transformed into a young gentleman of distinguished appearance. "Really, Tony, I shouldn't have known you," said his friend. "I shouldn't have known myself," said Tony. "I almost think it must be some other boy. Who'd think I was Tony, the Tramp, now?" "You are not to be a tramp any longer. I have not yet formed my plans for you, but I shall soon. I suppose, Tony, your education has been neglected." "I should think it had," answered Tony. "I'm as ignorant as a horse." "Then you ought to learn something." "I wish I could." "You shall, but, as I said, I must arrange details later." * * * * * * * About this time Rudolph and Mrs. Middleton were conversing, preparatory to starting for the steamer. "You are sure the boy is dead?" she said. "Sure? I ought to be. Didn't I see him dead with my own eyes?" "I saw a boy this morning who looked as I suppose the boy would have looked--of the same age, too." "Where did you see him?" "He was with a gentleman, coming out of the breakfast-room as I was entering it." "It couldn't have been he," said Rudolph, positively. "Even if he were alive, he wouldn't be here. But he's dead, I tell you. There's no doubt of it." "There are strange resemblances," said the lady. "But, of course, it couldn't have been the boy. Indeed, the gentleman with him told me that it was his ward." Rudolph laughed. "Tony wasn't likely to have a gentleman for a guardian," he said. But Rudolph would have felt less easy in his mind if he had known that the boy whom he supposed dead at the bottom of a well was really in the hotel at that very moment. CHAPTER XXXI. TONY AND HIS GUARDIAN SET UP HOUSEKEEPING. "Now, Tony," said George Spencer, after dinner, "I want to tell you what plans I have formed for you and myself. I have got tired of hotel life, and want a home. I shall seek a couple of handsomely-furnished rooms up town, make it social and pleasant with books and pictures, and we will settle down and enjoy ourselves." "I am afraid you will get tired of me, Mr. Spencer," said Tony, modestly. "I am too ignorant to be much company for you." "Ignorance, like poverty, can be remedied," said the young man. "I shall obtain a private tutor for you, and expect you to spend some hours daily in learning." Tony's face brightened up. "That is just what I would like," he said. "You would like it better than going to school?" "Yes, for at school I should be obliged to go into a class with much younger boys." "While with a tutor you can go on as fast as you please." "Yes, sir." "To-night we both need a little recreation. Suppose we go to some place of amusement. Have you ever been to Barnum's?" "Yes, sir, but I didn't take a reserved seat." "I suppose not." "I sat in the upper gallery." "To-night you shall be fashionable. Have you a pair of kid gloves?" "The last pair I had is worn out," said Tony, laughing. "Then you must have another pair. We will get a pair on our way there." It was already time to start. At eight o'clock Tony found himself occupying an orchestra chair near the stage, his hands encased in a pair of gloves of faultless fit, and looking enough like a young patrician to pass muster among his fashionable neighbors. "How does it seem, Tony?" asked Spencer, smiling. "Tip-top," answered Tony: "but how queer kid gloves feel. I never had a pair on in my life before." "There are the two ladies who found fault with your appearance at the breakfast table this morning." "They are looking at me through an opera-glass." "Wondering if you can be the same boy. I have no doubt they are puzzled to account for your transformation." Mr. Spencer was right. The two ladies were at the same moment exchanging remarks about our hero. "Goodness, Elvira! there is that boy that was at breakfast this morning at the hotel." "The boy that was so shabbily dressed, mamma? Where?" "Just to the left. He isn't shabby now. See how he is decked out. Who would have thought it?" "It's queer, isn't it?" "I think we must have been mistaken about him. He looks like a young gentleman now. But why should he have worn such clothes before?" "I can't tell, I am sure." "That's a nice-looking young man, Elvira. I wish he would take a fancy to you." "La! mamma, how you talk," said Elvira, bridling and smiling. "Depend upon it, Tony, those ladies will be polite to you if they get a chance," said Spencer, laughing. "It makes a great deal of difference how a boy is dressed," said Tony. "You are right, Tony. Remember you are fashionable now." "There's a gentleman in front that I know," said Tony, suddenly. "Where." "The man with a partly bald head." "How do you know him?" "He was staying two or three days at the country hotel where I was stable boy." "Do you think he would know you now?" "May I see?" "Yes, but don't let him find you out. It won't do in society to let it be known that you were ever a stable-boy." "All right." Tony leaned over, and addressing the gentleman, said: "Would you be kind enough to lend me your programme a minute, sir?" "Certainly," was the reply. Then, looking at Tony: "Your face looks very familiar. Where have I seen you before?" "Perhaps at the St. Nicholas, sir," said Tony; "I am stopping there." "No; I never go to the St. Nicholas. Bless me! You're the very image of a boy I have seen somewhere." "Am I?" said Tony. "I hope he was good-looking?" "He was; but he was not dressed like you. In fact--I remember now--he was employed as stable-boy in a country hotel." "A stable boy!" exclaimed Tony, with comic horror. "I hope you don't think I am the boy." "Of course not. But really the resemblance is striking." "Mr. Spencer," said Tony, "this gentleman has met a stable boy who looks like me." "I really beg your pardon," said the gentleman; "I meant no offense." "My ward would not think of taking offense," said Mr. Spencer, courteously. Tony smiled to himself; he had a strong sense of humor, and was much amused. It is needless to say that he enjoyed the performance--all the more so from his luxurious seat and nearness to the stage. "It's a good deal better than sitting in the gallery," he said, in a whisper to his companion. "I should think so. I never sat up there, Tony." "And I never sat anywhere else." As they were leaving the house, they found themselves close to the ladies whom they had noticed at breakfast. Elvira chanced to drop her handkerchief, probably intentionally. Tony stooped and picked it up. Though he had led the life of a tramp, he had the instincts of a gentleman. "Thank you, young gentleman," said Elvira. "You are very polite." "Oh, don't mention it," said Tony. "Really, Mamma, he is a born gentleman," said Elvira, later, to her mother. "How could we make such a mistake." "His clothes were certainly very shabby, my dear." "Very likely he had been out hunting or something. We must not judge so hastily next time." The ladies were foiled in their intentions of cultivating the acquaintance of Tony and his guardian, as two days later they left the hotel, and installed themselves in an elegant boarding-house on Madison avenue. "Now," said Mr. Spencer, "we must go to work." "I must," said Tony. "And I too," said Spencer. "What can you have to do?" "I have received a proposal to invest a part of my money--only one-fourth--in a business down town, and shall accept. I don't need to increase my income, but I think I shall be less likely to yield to temptation if I have some fixed employment. I shall be so situated that I can do as much or as little as I please. As to yourself I have put an advertisement in a morning paper for a teacher, and expect some applicants this morning. I want you to choose for yourself." "I am afraid I shan't be a very good judge of teachers. Shall I examine them to see if they know enough?" "I think, from what you say of your ignorance, that any of them will know enough to teach you for the present. The main thing is to select one who knows how to teach, and whom you will like." "I wish you were a teacher, Mr. Spencer." "Why?" "Because then I should have a teacher whom I liked." "Thank you, Tony," said the young man, evidently gratified. "The liking is mutual. I think myself fortunate in having you for my companion." "The luck is on my side, Mr. Spencer. What would I be but for you. I wouldn't be a tramp any more, for I am tired enough of that, but I should have to earn my living as a newsboy or a bootblack, and have no chance of getting an education." So the relations between Tony and his new friend became daily more close, until Mr. Spencer came to regard him as a young brother, in whose progress he was warmly interested. A tutor was selected, and Tony began to study. His ambition was roused. He realized for the first time how ignorant he was, and it is not too much to say that he learned in one month as much as most boys learn in three. He got rid of the uncouth words he had acquired in early life, and adapted his manners to the new position which he found himself occupying in society. Mr. Spencer, too, was benefited by his new friend. He gave up drink and dissipation, and contented himself with pleasures in which he could invite Tony to participate. Meanwhile Mrs. Harvey Middleton and Rudolph had arrived in England, and we must leave our hero, for a time and join them. CHAPTER XXXII. HOME AGAIN. When Mrs. Harvey Middleton reached England, she delayed but a day in London to attend to necessary business. This business was solely connected with her mission to America. Rudolph Rugg accompanied her to the chambers of a well-known lawyer, and testified to having had the charge of Tony, closing with the description of his death. Of course nothing was said of the well, or about his having thrown him in, for Rudolph was not a fool. The details of a probable story had been got up by Mrs. Middleton and Rugg in concert. According to them and the written testimony, Tony had been run over by a train on the Erie railway, and a newspaper paragraph describing such an accident to an unknown boy was produced in corroboration. It was an ingenious fabrication, and Mrs. Middleton plumed herself upon it. "Poor boy!" she said, with a hypocritical sigh, "his was a sad fate." "It was, indeed," said the lawyer; "but," he added, dryly, "you have no cause to regret it, since it secures the estate." "Don't mention it, Mr. Brief. It is sad to profit by such a tragedy." "You don't take a business view of it, madame. Such things happen, and if we can't prevent them, we may as well profit by them." "Of course I will not refuse what has fallen in my way," said Mrs. Middleton; "but I had formed the plan, if I found the boy alive, of bringing him home and educating him for his position. He would not have let me want." "Don't she do it well, though?" thought Rudolph, who heard all this with a cynical admiration for the ex-governess. "If I was a gentleman, I'd make up to her, and make her Mrs. Rugg if she'd say the word." "You think this man's evidence will substantiate my claim to the estate?" she asked, after a pause. "I should say there was no doubt on that point, unless, of course, his evidence is impeached or contradicted." "That is hardly likely, Mr. Brief. The poor man suffered much at the death of the boy, to whom he was ardently attached." "So you loved the boy, Mr. Rugg?" said the lawyer. "Oh, uncommon," said Rudolph. "He was my pet, and the apple of my eye. We was always together, Tony and I." "And I suppose he loved you." "He couldn't bear me out of his sight; he looked upon me as a father, sir." "If he'd come into the estate, he would probably have provided for you," suggested the lawyer, watching him keenly. "It's likely, sir. I wish he had." "So it's a personal loss to you--the death of the boy." "Yes, sir." "Mrs. Middleton probably will not forget your services to the boy." "No, sir. I shall, of course, do something for Mr. Rugg, though not as much, perhaps, as my poor cousin would have done. Mr. Rugg, will you see me to my carriage?" "Certainly, ma'am." Mrs. Middleton was anxious to go away. The conversation had taken a turn which she did not like. It almost seemed as if the lawyer was trying to find out something, and she thought it best to get Rudolph away from the influence, lest Mr. Brief should catechise him, and draw out something to her disadvantage. "Mr. Rugg," she said, as they were going down stairs, "I advise you not to go near Mr. Brief again." "Why not, ma'am?" "These lawyers are crafty. Before you knew what he was after, he would extract the secret from you, and there would be trouble for both of us." "Do you think so, ma'am? I didn't see nothing of it?" "I think he suspects something. That matters nothing if it does not go beyond suspicion. Unless he can impeach your testimony and draw you into contradictions, we are safe, and you are sure of an income for life." "You needn't be afraid for me, ma'am. We are in the same boat." She frowned a little at the familiar tone in which he spoke. It was as if he put himself on an equality with her. But it was true, nevertheless, and it was unpleasant for her to think of. Was there nothing else that was unpleasant? Did she not think of the poor boy who, as she thought, was killed, and at her instigation? Yes, she thought often of him, but as much as she could she kept the subject away from her thoughts. "He's better off," she said to herself. "He didn't know anything of the property, and he wasn't fit to possess it. All the troubles of life are over for him." "What are your plans, Mr. Rugg?" she asked. "I have a mind to go down to Middleton Hall with you, ma'am. I used to live there years ago, and I might find some of my old cronies." "For that very reason you must not go," she said, hastily. "They would be asking you all sorts of questions, and you'd be letting out something." "They wouldn't get nothing out of me." "If you made no answer it would be as bad. They would suspect you." "And you, too." "Precisely." "It's rather hard, Mrs. Middleton, I can't see my old friends." "You can make new ones. A man with money can always find friends." "That's true, ma'am," said Rudolph, brightening up. "Then you'd recommend me to stay in London?" "In London, or anywhere else that you like better. Only don't come within twenty miles of Middleton Hall." "Well, ma'am, you're wiser than I am, and you know better what it's best to do." "Of course I do. You are safe in being guided by me." "But about the money, ma'am. How am I to get that if I don't see you?" "Once a quarter I will pay in forty pounds to your account at any bank you choose. You can let me know." "All right, ma'am. It's strange to me to think of having a bank account." "It need not be strange henceforth. And now, Mr. Rugg, we must part. I must hasten down to Middleton Hall to look after the estate. I have been absent from it now for nearly three months." "I suppose you are in a hurry to see your young man," said Rudolph, with a grin. "Mr. Rugg," said the lady, haughtily, "I beg you will make no reference to my private affairs. You speak as if I were a nursery maid." "I beg your pardon, ma'am. No offense was meant." "Then none is taken. But remember my caution." She stepped into the hansom which was waiting for her, and Rudolph remained standing on the sidewalk. "She's puttin' on airs," said the tramp, frowning. "She forgets all about her bein' a governess once, without five pounds in the world. She acts as if she were a lady born. I don't like it. She may try her airs on others, but not on Rudolph Rugg. He knows a little too much about Mrs. Harvey Middleton. Rich as you are, you're in his power, and if he was so inclined he could bring you down from your high place, so he could." But Rudolph's anger was only transient. He was too astute not to understand clearly that he could not harm Mrs. Middleton without harming himself quite as much. As things stood, he was securely provided for. No more tramping about the country for him in all weathers. He had enough to lodge and feed him, and provide all the beer and tobacco he could use. This was certainly a comfortable reflection. So he sought out a comfortable lodging and installed himself before night, determined to get what enjoyment he could out of London and the income he had so foully won. And Mrs. Middleton, she, too, congratulated herself. She leaned back in the cab and gave herself up to joyful anticipations of future happiness and security. "Thank Heaven, I have got rid of that low fellow," she ejaculated, inwardly. "I never want to see the brute again. He was necessary to my purpose, and I employed him, but I should be glad if he would get drowned, or be run over, or end his miserable life in some way, so that I might never see or hear of him again." But the thought of Rudolph did not long trouble her. She thought rather of the handsome Captain Lovell, whom she loved, and to marry whom she had committed this crime, and the hard woman's face softened, and a smile crept over it. "I shall soon see him, my Gregory," she murmured. "He will soon be mine, and I shall be repaid for my long, wearisome journey." CHAPTER XXXIII. CAPTAIN GREGORY LOVELL. A carriage drove rapidly up the avenue leading to Middleton Hall. The hall was not large, but was handsome and well proportioned, and looked singularly attractive, its gray walls forming a harmonious contrast with the bright green ivy that partially covered them, and the broad, smooth lawn that stretched out in front. Mrs. Middleton regarded her home with unmingled satisfaction. It was to be her home now as long as she lived. Now that the boy was dead no one could wrest it from her. She would live there, but not in solitary grandeur. The news of her success would bring Captain Gregory Lovell to her side, and their marriage would follow as soon as decency would permit. If afterward he should desire to have the name of the residence changed to Lovell Hall, Mrs. Middleton decided that she would not object. Why should she? She had no superstitious love for her present name, while Lovell had for her the charm which love always gives to the name of the loved one. The housekeeper, stout and matronly, received her mistress at the door. "Welcome home, Mrs. Middleton," she said; "how long it seems since you went away." "How do you do, Sarah," said her mistress, graciously. "I can assure you I am glad to be back." "You will find everything in order, mum, I hope and believe," said Sarah. "We expected to see you sooner." "I hoped to be back sooner, but the business detained me longer than I desired." "And did you succeed, mum, if I may be so bold," inquired the housekeeper, curiously. "As I expected, Sarah. I found that the poor boy was dead." "Indeed, mum." "I hoped to bring him back with me, according to my poor husband's desire, but it was ordered otherwise by an inscrutable Providence." Sarah coughed. "It is very sad," she said, but she looked curiously at her mistress. She knew very well that this sad news rejoiced the heart of Mrs. Middleton, and the latter knew that she could not for a moment impose upon her clear-sighted housekeeper. But the farce must be kept up for the sake of appearances. "Come up to my chamber with me, Sarah. I want to ask you what has been going on since I went away? Have you heard from Lady Lovell's family? Are they all well?" Lady Lovell was the mother of Captain Gregory Lovell, and the question was earnestly put. "They are all well except the captain," answered Sarah. "Is he sick?" demanded her mistress, turning upon her swiftly. "No, mum; I only meant to say that the captain was gone away." "Gone away! When? Where?" "He's ordered to India, I believe, mum. He went away a month ago." Mrs. Middleton sank into her chair, quite overcome. Her joy was clouded, for the reward of her long and toilsome journey was snatched from her. "Did he not leave any message?" she asked. "Did he not call before he went away?" "Yes, mum. He left a note." "Give it to me quick. Why did you not mention it to me before?" "It's the first chance I got, mum. The letter is in my own chamber. I took the best care of it. I will get it directly." "Do go, Sarah." Mrs. Middleton awaited the return of Sarah with nervous impatience. Perhaps the captain had thrown her over, after all, and, loving him as she did, this would have torn the heart of the intriguing woman, who, cold and selfish as she was so far as others were concerned, really loved the handsome captain. Sarah speedily reappeared with the letter. "Here it is, mum," she said. "I have taken the best care of it." Mrs. Middleton tore it open with nervous haste This is the way it ran: "MY DEAR JANE--I am about to set out for India--not willingly, but my regiment is ordered there, and I must obey or quit the service. This, as you well know, I cannot do; for apart from my official pay, I have but a paltry two hundred pounds a year, and that is barely enough to pay my tailor's bill. I am sorry to go away in your absence. If I were only sure you would bring home good news, I could afford to sell my commission and wait. But it is so uncertain that I cannot take the risk. "I need not say, my dear Jane, how anxious I am to have all the impediments to our union removed. I am compelled to be mercenary. It is, alas! necessary for me, as a younger son, to marry a woman with money. I shall be happy, indeed, if interest and love go hand in hand, as they will if your absolute claim to your late husband's estate is proved beyond a doubt. I append my India address, and shall anxiously expect a communication from you on your return. If you have been successful, I will arrange to return at once, and our union can be solemnized without delay. Once more, farewell. "Your devoted "GREGORY LOVELL." Mrs. Middleton, after reading this letter, breathed a sigh of relief. He was still hers, and she had only to call him back. There would be a vexatious delay, but that must be submitted to. She had feared to lose him, and this apprehension, at least, might be laid aside. To some the letter would have seemed too mercenary. Even Mrs. Middleton could not help suspecting that, between love and interest, the latter was far the most powerful in the mind of Captain Lovell. But she purposely closed her eyes to this unpleasant suspicion. She was in love with the handsome captain, and it was the great object of her life to become his wife. She decided to answer the letter immediately. Her desk was at hand, and she opened it at once, and wrote a brief letter to her absent lover: "DEAR GREGORY--I have just returned. I am deeply disappointed to find you absent, for, my darling, I have succeeded. I have legal proof--proof that cannot be disputed--that the boy, my husband's cousin, is dead. The poor boy was accidentally killed. I have the sworn affidavit of the man who took him to America, and who was his constant companion there. "It is a sad fate for the poor boy. I sincerely deplore his tragical end--he was run over by a train of cars--yet (is it wicked?), my grief is mitigated by the thought that it removes all obstacle to our union. I do not for an instant charge you with interested motives. I am sure of your love, but I also comprehend the necessities of your position. You have been brought up as a gentleman, and you have the tastes of a gentleman. You cannot surrender your social position. It is necessary that, if you marry, you should have an adequate income to live upon. My darling Gregory, I am proud and happy in the thought that I can make you such. You know my estate. The rental is two thousand pounds, and that is enough to maintain our social rank. Come home, then, as soon, as you receive this letter. I am awaiting you impatiently, and can hardly reconcile myself to the delay that must be. Make it as short as possible, and let me hear from you at once. "Your own, "JANE MIDDLETON." There was unexpected delay in the reception of this letter. It was three months before it came into the hands of Captain Lovell. When at length it was received, he read it with a mixture of emotions. "Decidedly," he said, removing the cigar from his mouth, "the old girl is fond of me. I wish I were fond of her, for I suppose I must marry her. It will be rather a bad pill to swallow, but it is well gilded. Two thousand pounds a year are not to be thrown away by a fellow in my straits. The prospect might be brighter, but I suppose I have no right to complain. It will make me comfortable for life. I must take care to have the estate settled upon me, and then the sooner the old girl dies the better." So Captain Lovell wrote at once, saying that he would return home as soon as he could make arrangements for doing so--that every day would seem a month till he could once more embrace his dear Jane. The letter was signed, "Your devoted Gregory." Mrs. Middleton read it with unfeigned delight. Her plans had succeeded, and the reward would soon be hers. But there was fresh delay. Arrangements to return could not be made so easily as Captain Lovell anticipated. It was seven months from the day Mrs. Middleton reached England when Captain Lovell was driven to his hotel in London. Meanwhile events had occurred which were to have an effect upon Mrs. Middleton's plans. CHAPTER XXXIV. TONY ASTONISHES HIS OLD FRIENDS. "Tony," said George Spencer one evening, "you have been making wonderful progress in your studies. In six months you have accomplished as much as I did at boarding school in two years when at your age." "Do you really mean it, Mr. Spencer?" said Tony, gratified. "I am quite in earnest." "I am very glad of it," said Tony. "When I began I was almost discouraged. I was so much behind boys of my age." "And now your attainments raise you above the average. Your tutor told me so yesterday when I made inquiries." "I am rejoiced to hear it, Mr. Spencer, I was very much ashamed of myself at first, and I did not like to speak before your friends for fear they would find out what sort of a life I led. That is what made me work so hard." "Well, Tony, you may congratulate yourself on having succeeded. I think you can venture now to take a little vacation." "A vacation! I don't need one." "Suppose it were spent in Europe?" "What!" exclaimed Tony, eagerly, "you don't think of our going abroad?" "Yes. The house with which I am connected wants me to go abroad on business. If I go you may go with me if you would like it." "Like it!" exclaimed Tony, impetuously. "There is nothing I would like better." "So I supposed," said George Spencer, smiling. "I may as well tell you that our passage is taken for next Saturday, by the Russia." "And this is Monday evening. How soon it seems!" "There won't be much preparation to make--merely packing your trunk." "Mr. Spencer," said Tony, "I want to ask a favor." "What is it?" "I have told you about being employed at a country hotel, just before I came to the city and found you." "Yes." "I would like to go back there for a day, just to see how all my old friends are." "You don't mean to apply again for your old place?" "Not unless you turn me off, and I have to find work somewhere." "Turn you off, Tony! Why, I shouldn't know how to get along without you. You are like a younger brother to me," said the young man, earnestly. "Thank you, Mr. Spencer. You seem like an older brother to me. Sometimes I can hardly believe that I was once a tramp." "It was your misfortune, Tony, not your fault. So you want to go back and view your former home?" "Yes, Mr. Spencer." "Then you had better start to-morrow morning, so as to be back in good time to prepare for the journey." "Do you know, Mr. Spencer," said Tony, "I've got an idea. I'll go back wearing the same clothes I had on when I left there." "Have you got them still?" "Yes, I laid them away, just to remind me of my old life. I'll take my other clothes in a bundle, and after a while I can put them on." "What is your idea in doing this, Tony?" asked the young man. "I want to give them a surprise." "Very well, do as you please. Only don't stay away too long." * * * * * * Tony proceeded to carry out the plan he had proposed. He traveled by rail to a village near by, and then with his bundle suspended to a stick, took up his march to the tavern. He entered the familiar stable yard. All looked as it did the day he left. There was only one person in the yard, and that one Tony recognized at once as his old enemy, Sam Payson, who appeared to be filling his old position, as stable boy. "Hallo, Sam!" said Tony, whose entrance had not been observed. Sam looked up and whistled. "What, have you come back?" he said, not appearing overjoyed at the sight of Tony. "Yes, Sam," said Tony. "Where have you been all the time?" "In New York part of the time." "What have you been doing for a living?" "Well, I lived with a gentleman there." "What did you do--black his boots?" "Not exactly." "Did he turn you off?" "No; but he's going to Europe next Saturday." "So you're out of a place?" "I have no employment." "What made you come back here?" demanded Sam, suspiciously. "I thought I'd like to see you all again." "That don't go down," said Sam roughly. "I know well enough what you're after." "What am I after?" "You're after my place. You're hoping Mr. Porter will take you on again. But it's no use. There ain't any chance for you." "How long have you been back again, Sam?" "Three months, and I am going to stay, too. You got me turned off once, but you can't do it again." "I don't want to." "Oh, no, I presume not," sneered Sam. "Of course, you don't. You've got on the same clothes you wore away, haven't you?" "Yes, it's the same suit, but I've got some more things in my bundle." "I guess you haven't made your fortune, by the looks." "The fact is, Sam, I haven't earned much since I went away." "I knew you wouldn't. You ain't so smart as people think." "I didn't know anybody thought me smart." "James, the hostler, is always talking you up to me, but I guess I can rub along as well as you." "You talk as if I was your enemy, Sam, instead of your friend." "I don't want such a friend. You're after my place, in spite of all you say." Just then James, the hostler, came out of the stable. "What, is it you, Tony?" he asked, cordially. "Yes, James; I hope you're well." "Tip-top; and how are you?" asked the hostler, examining Tony, critically. "I'm well." "Have you been doing well?" "I haven't wanted for anything. I've been with a gentleman in New York." Here Mr. Porter appeared on the scene. He too, recognized Tony. "What! back again, Tony?" he said. "I thought I'd just look in, sir." "Do you want a place!" "What sort of a place?" "Your old place." Sam heard this, and looked the picture of dismay. He took it for granted that Tony would accept at once, and privately determined that if he did he would give him a flogging, if it were a possible thing. He was both relieved and surprised when Tony answered: "I am much obliged to you, Mr. Porter, but I wouldn't like to cut out Sam. Besides, I have a place engaged in New York." "I would rather have you than Sam, any day." "Thank you, sir, but I've made an arrangement, and can't break it." "How long are you going to stay here?" "If you've a spare room, I'll stay over till to-morrow." "All right. Go into the office, and they'll give you one." "I say, Tony," said Sam, after the landlord had gone, "you're a better fellow than I thought you were. I thought you'd take my place when it was offered you." "You see you were mistaken, Sam. I'll see you again." Tony went into the hotel--went up to a small chamber that had been assigned him, changed his clothes for a handsome suit in his bundle, took a handsome gold watch and chain from his pocket and displayed them on his vest, and then came down again. As he entered the yard again, Sam stared in amazement. "It can't be you, Tony!" he said. "Where'd you get them clothes, and that watch?" "I came by them honestly, Sam." "But I can't understand it," said Sam, scratching his head. "Ain't you poor, and out of work?" "I'm out of work, but not poor. I've been adopted by a rich gentleman, and am going to sail for Europe on Saturday." "Cracky! who ever heard the like? Wouldn't he adopt me, too?" "I believe there is no vacancy," said Tony, smiling. "Was that the reason you wouldn't take my place?" "One reason." "James!" called Sam, "just look at Tony now." James stared, and when an explanation was made, heartily congratulated our hero. "Sam," said Tony, producing a couple of showy neck-ties, "to prove to you that I am not your enemy, I have brought you these." "They're stunning!" exclaimed the enraptured Sam. "I always thought you was a good fellow, Tony. Are they really for me?" "To be sure they are, but I'm afraid, Sam, you didn't always think quite so well of me." "Well, I do now. You're a trump." "And, James, I've brought you a present too." Here Tony produced a handsome silver watch with a silver chain appended. "It's to remember me by." "I'd remember you without it, Tony, but I'm very much obliged too. It's a real beauty." When the landlord was told of Tony's good fortune, he was as much surprised as the rest. Our hero was at once changed to the handsomest room in the hotel, and was made quite a lion during the remainder of his stay. There is something in success after all. "Good-by, Tony," said Sam heartily, when our hero left the next day. "You're a gentleman, and I always said so." "Thank you, Sam. Good luck to you!" responded Tony, smiling. "I'm a much finer fellow than when I was a tramp," he said to himself. "Sam says so, and he ought to know. I suppose it's the way of the world. And now for Europe!" CHAPTER XXXV. TONY'S BAD LUCK. Two weeks later Tony and his friend were guests at a popular London hotel, not far from Charing Cross. "We will postpone business till we have seen a little of London," said George Spencer. "Luckily my business is not of a pressing character, and it can wait." "You have been in London before, Mr. Spencer," said Tony. "I am afraid you will find it a bore going round with me." "Not at all. I spent a week here when a boy of twelve, and saw nothing thoroughly, so I am at your disposal. Where shall we go first?" "I should like to see Buckingham Palace, where the queen lives." "She doesn't live there much. However, we'll go to see it, but we'll take the Parliament House and Westminster Abbey on the way." In accordance with this programme they walked--for the distance was but short--to Westminster Abbey. It would be out of place for me to describe here that wonderful church where so much of the rank and talent of past ages lies buried. It is enough to say that Tony enjoyed it highly. He afterward visited the Parliament House. This occupied another hour. When they came out Mr. Spencer said: "Tony, I have got to go to my banker's. Do you care to come?" "No, thank you, Mr. Spencer, I would rather walk round by myself." "Very well, Tony, just as you please. Only don't get lost." "I'll take care of that; I'm used to cities." "You are not used to London. It is one of the blindest cities in the world; it is a complete labyrinth." "I don't mean to get lost. You'll find me at the hotel at four o'clock." "Very well. That will be early enough." So George Spencer went his way, and Tony set out upon his rambles. He found plenty to amuse him in the various buildings and sights of the great metropolis. But after awhile he began to wonder where he was. He had strayed into a narrow street, scarcely more than a lane, with a row of tumble-down dwellings on either side. "There's nothing worth seeing here," said our hero. "I'll inquire my way to Charing Cross." He went into a small beer house, and preferred his request. "Charing Cross!" repeated the publican. "It's a good ways from 'ere." "How far?" asked Tony. "A mile easy, and there's no end of turns." "Just start me, then," said Tony, "and I'll reach there. Which way is it?" "Turn to the left when you go out of this shop." "All right, and thank you." Tony noticed that there were three or four men seated at tables in the back part of the shop, but he had not the curiosity to look at them. If he had, he would have been startled, for among these men was Rudolph Rugg, more disreputable than ever in appearance, for he had been drinking deeply for the last six months. He stared at Tony as one dazed, for he supposed him dead long ago at the bottom of a well three thousand miles away. "What's the matter, Rugg?" asked his companion. "You look as if you'd seen a ghost." "So I have," muttered Rugg, starting for the door. "Where are you going?" "I've got a headache," said Rudolph. "You've left your drink." "I don't want it." "What's come over him?" said his late companion, in surprise. "No matter. He'll be back soon." Rudolph swiftly followed Tony. He wanted to find out whether it was really the boy whom he had sought to murder or not. Then what did his appearance in London mean? Was he possibly in search of him--Rugg? It was wonderful, certainly. How had he obtained the means of coming to England?--as a gentleman, too, for Rudolph had not failed to notice his rich clothes. Had he obtained rich and powerful friends, and was he in search of the inheritance that had been wrongfully kept from him? Rudolph asked himself all these questions, but he could not answer one. "If I could only ask him," he thought, "but that wouldn't be safe." By this time he had come in sight of Tony, who was walking along slowly, not feeling in any particular hurry. An idea struck Rudolph. A boy who had been employed in begging was standing on the sidewalk. "Gi'me a penny, sir," he said. Rudolph paused. "Walk along with me, and I'll show you how you can earn half a crown," he said. "Will you?" said the boy, his face brightening. "Yes, I will, and you won't find it hard work, either." "Go ahead, gov'nor." "Do you see that boy ahead?" "That young gentleman?" "Yes," said Rudolph. "I see him." "I want you to manage to get him up to my room; it's No. 7 ---- street, top floor, just at the head of the stairs." "Shall I tell him you want to see him?" "No, he wouldn't come. Tell him your poor grandfather is sick in bed--anything you like, only get him to come." "S'posin' he won't come?" "Then follow him, and find out where he is staying. Do you understand?" "Yes, gov'nor. I'll bring him." "Go ahead, and I'll hurry round to the room. I'll be in bed." "All right." The boy was a sharp specimen of the juvenile London beggar. He was up to the usual tricks of his class, and quite competent to the task which Rudolph had engaged him to perform. He came up to Tony, and then began to whimper. "What's the matter, Johnny?" said Tony, addressing him by the usual New York name for an unknown boy. "Oh, my poor grandfather is so sick," said the boy. "What's the matter with him?" "I don't know. I guess he's goin' to die." "Why don't you send for a doctor?" "He wouldn't come--we're so poor." "Do you live near here?" "Oh, yes, sir; only a little way." "I want to go to Charing Cross--is it much out of the way?" "No, sir; it's right on the way there." "Then, if you'll show me the way to Charing Cross afterward, I will go round with you and look at your grandfather. Perhaps I can do something for him." "Oh, sir, how kind you are! I know'd you was a gentleman when I fust saw you." "When was your grandfather taken sick?" "Two days ago," said the boy. "Is he in bed?" "Yes, sir. Leastways, he was when I came out. We didn't have no breakfast." "I am sorry for that. Don't you want to buy something to take to him?" "If you'll give me a shillin', sir, I'll ask him what he can eat. Sick folks can't eat the same things as the rest of us." "To be sure. You are right. Well, here's a shilling." "The boy little thinks that I have known many a time what it is to be without breakfast or money to buy any," thought Tony. "I'll do something for the poor man, if only to show how grateful I am for my own good fortune." He followed the boy for about ten minutes, until they reached rather a shabby building. This was No. 7. "Come right up after me," said the boy. The two went up till they reached the room indicated by Rudolph. The boy pushed the door open. A sound of groaning proceeded from the bed. "Grandfather, I've brought a kind young gentleman," said the boy. "Come here," muttered the person in bed. Tony came up to the bed. In an instant Rudolph had thrown off the clothes and had him seized by the arm. "There's your money, boy. Go!" he said to the other, flinging a half-crown. "I've got you at last!" he shouted. "Now, you young villain, I'll get even with you!" His face was almost fiendish with rage, as he uttered these words. CHAPTER XXXVI. "I HATE YOU!" To say that Tony was not startled would not be true. Without a moment's warning he found himself in the power of his old enemy--completely in his power, knowing, too, the desperate character of the man, which would let him stick at nothing. Rudolph enjoyed his evident surprise. "I've been waiting for this," he said. "It's a great joy to me to have you here in my power." By this time Tony had collected himself, and had become composed. "Rudolph," he said, "what makes you hate me so?" "Haven't you tried to injure me--didn't you get me arrested? Do you forget that night in the old miser's hut?" "No, I don't forget it, but you forced me to act as I did. But even if I did injure you, you took your revenge." "When, and how?" "When you threw me into the well. How could you do such a dark deed? What had I done that you should seek to murder me?" "How did you get out?" asked Rudolph, giving way to curiosity. "I climbed out." "How?" "By means of the wall that lined the well. Finally I got hold of the rope." "So that was the way, was it? I ought to have made surer of your fate." "How could you do that?" "By throwing some rocks down on you," answered the tramp, with a malignant frown. "I am glad I have not such a wicked disposition as you, Rudolph," said Tony, looking at him fixedly. "Take care how you insult me, boy!" said Rudolph, angrily. "I have no wish to insult you. Now tell me why you have lured me here? I suppose you hired the boy." "I did, and he did the work well," said the tramp, triumphantly. "Well, now I am here, what do you want of me?" "First, tell me how you happen to be in London? Did you know I was here?" "I knew you crossed the Atlantic." "How?" "I saw you buy your ticket." "What?" exclaimed the tramp, in surprise. "Did you reach New York so soon?" "Yes. I lost my situation at the inn, for they did not believe my story about having been thrown down the well by a Quaker." Rudolph laughed. "It was a good disguise," he said. "So they discharged you? That was good." "I did not think so at the time, but it proved to be the luckiest thing that could happen to me." "How was that?" "It led me to go to New York. There I found a rich and generous friend. I have been with him ever since." "As a servant?" "No; as his adopted brother. He supplied me with teachers, and in little more than six months I have acquired as much as most boys do in two or three years." "So you have gone in for education, have you?" said Rudolph, sneering. "Yes. Could I go in for anything better?" "And you consider yourself a young gentleman, now, do you?" "That is the rank I hold in society," said Tony, calmly. "And you forget that you were once Tony, the Tramp?" "No, Rudolph, I have not forgotten that. It was not my fault, and I am not ashamed of it. But I should be ashamed if I had not left that kind of life as soon as I was able." "By Heaven, you shall go back to it!" said Rudolph, malignantly. "I never will," answered Tony, gently, but firmly. "I will force you to it." "Neither you nor any one else can force me to it. I will black boots in the street first." "That will suit me just as well," said the tramp, laughing maliciously. "You have grown too proud. I want to lower your pride, young popinjay." "I am not afraid of anything you can do to me, Rudolph," said Tony, bravely. "Suppose I choose to kill you?" "You won't dare do it. We are not in the woods now." Tony had hit the truth. Rudolph did not dare to kill him, though he would have been glad to. But he knew that he would himself be arrested, and he had more to live for now than formerly. He had an income, and comfortably provided for, and he did not choose to give up this comfortable and independent life. "No," he said, "I won't kill you; but I will be revenged for all that. First, I will keep you from that generous friend of yours." "What will he think has become of me?" thought Tony, uneasily. A thought came to him. He would appeal to the man's love of money. "Rudolph," he said, "I am afraid my friend will be uneasy about me. If you will let me go I will give you ten pounds that I have in my pocket." "I don't believe you have so much money," said Rudolph, cunningly. Tony fell into the snare unsuspectingly. He drew out his pocket-book and displayed two five-pound notes on the Bank of England. Rudolph quickly snatched them from him. "They are mine already," he said, with a mocking laugh. "So I see," said Tony, coolly; "but I was about to offer you fifty pounds besides." "Have you the money in your pocketbook?" "No, I haven't, but I could get it from Mr. Spencer." "It don't go down, Tony," said Rudolph, shaking his head. "I am not so much in need of money as to pay so dearly for it. Listen to me. If you have been lucky, so have I. I have an income, safe and sure, of one hundred and fifty pounds." "You have!" exclaimed Tony, surprised. "Yes." "Do you hold any position?" "No; I merely promise to keep my mouth shut." "Is it about me?" "Yes. The long and short of it is that there is an English estate, bringing in two thousand pounds rental, that of right belongs to you." "To me--an estate of two thousand pounds a year?" exclaimed Tony, in astonishment. "Yes; the party who owns it pays me an income as hush money. I have only to say the word, and the estate will be yours, Tony." "Say the word, Rudolph, and you shall have the same income," entreated Tony. "It isn't the money I so much care for, but I want to know who I am. I want to be restored to my rightful place in society. Is my mother living?" "No." "Nor my father?" "No." Tony looked sober. "Then I should not care so much for the money. Still it ought to be mine." "Of course it ought," said Rudolph, gloating over the boy's emotion. "You shall lose nothing by telling me--by becoming my friend. I will never refer to the past--never speak of what happened in America." "No doubt," sneered Rudolph, "but it can't be." "Why can't it be?" "_Because I hate you!_" hissed the tramp, with a baleful look. "Not another word. It's no use, I shall lock you up here for the present, while I am out. When I come back I will let you know what I am going to do to you." He left the room, locking the door behind him. Tony sat down to reflect upon the strange position in which he was placed. CHAPTER XXXVII. MRS. MIDDLETON AND HER LOVER. When Rudolph left Tony imprisoned, he began to think over the situation with regard to his own interest. He was already dissatisfied with the income he received from Mrs. Middleton; though at the time it seemed to him large, he found that he could easily spend more. He did not have expensive lodgings--in fact, they were plain, and quite within his means, but he drank and gambled, and both these amusements were expensive. He had already made up his mind to ask for a larger income, and Tony's offer stimulated him to ask at once. "If Mrs. Middleton won't, the boy will," he said to himself. Mrs. Middleton was in London. In fact, at that moment she was conversing with Captain Lovell, to whom she had been formally betrothed. He had satisfied himself that the prospects were all right, and then had renewed his offer. The marriage was to take place in a month, and Mrs. Middleton was in town to make suitable preparations for it. She was perfectly happy, for she was about to marry a man she loved. As for Captain Lovell, he was well enough contented. He did not care much for the lady as regards love, but he was decidedly in love with her property. "It will make me comfortable for life," he said, with a shrug of the shoulders, "and after marriage I can pay as little attention to Mrs. Lovell as I choose. She must be content with marrying my name." The widow had taken handsome apartments at a West End boarding house. There she received callers. Captain Lovell was lounging in an easy chair, looking rather bored. His _fiancee_ was inspecting an array of dry goods which had been sent in from a fancy London shop. "Don't you think this silk elegant, Gregory!" she asked, displaying a pattern. "Oh, ah, yes, I suppose so," he answered with a yawn. "I would like to have your taste, Gregory." "I have no taste, my dear Mrs. Middleton, about such matters." "Don't you think it will become me?" "Why, to be sure; everything becomes you, you know." She laughed. "Would a yellow turban become me?" she asked. "Well, perhaps not," he said, "but of course you know best." "How little you men know about a lady's dress!" "I should think so. The fact is, my dear Mrs. Middleton, that part of my education was neglected." "When I am your wife, Gregory, I shall always appeal to your taste." "Will you?" he said, rather frightened. "'Pon my honor, I hope you won't now." "And I shall expect you to consult me about your wardrobe." "What, about my trousers and coats? Really, that's very amusing; 'pon my honor it is." "Don't you think I feel an interest in how my dear Gregory is dressed?" "I don't know, I'm sure." "But I do, and shall I tell you why?" "If you want to." "Because I love you," she said softly, and she rose from her chair, and crossing, laid her hand affectionately on his shoulder. He shrank, just the least in the world, and felt annoyed, but didn't like to say so. She might be angry, and though he did not love her, he did want to marry her, and so escape from his money troubles. "Of course, I'm ever so much obliged to you," he said, "and all that sort of thing." "And you love me, Gregory, don't you?" she asked, tenderly. "Did you ever! I wish she'd stop," he said to himself. "She makes me awful uncomfortable." "Don't you love me, Gregory?" "If I didn't love you, do you think I would have asked you to become Mrs. Lovell?" he said, evading the question. "To be sure, Gregory," she replied, trying to look satisfied. "And now I must go; I must, 'pon my honor," he said, rising. "You have been here so short a time," she pleaded. "But I promised to be at the club. I'm to meet a fellow officer, and it's the hour now." "Then I must let you go. But you'll come again soon?" "Yes, 'pon honor," and the captain kissed his hand to his _fiancee_. "I wonder if he really loves me!" she said to herself, wistfully. At this moment the servant entered. "Please, ma'am, there's a rough-looking man below, who says he wants to see you. His name is Rugg." "Admit him," said Mrs. Middleton, looking annoyed. CHAPTER XXXVIII. A STORMY INTERVIEW. "Why are you here Mr. Rugg?" demanded Mrs. Middleton, coolly. "On business," said the tramp, throwing himself, uninvited upon the same chair from which Captain Lovell had just risen. Mrs. Middleton flushed with anger, but she did not dare to treat his insolence as it deserved. "What business can you have with me?" she asked, coldly. "It's about the allowance." "It was paid punctually, was it not?" "Yes." "Then you can have no business with me. Have I not told you that you are not to call upon me at any time? My agent attends to that." "I want the allowance raised," said Rudolph, abruptly. "Raised?" "Yes, you must double it." Mrs. Middleton was now really angry. "I never heard such insolence," she said. "You have taken your trouble for nothing. I shall not give you a pound more." "You'd better, Mrs. Middleton," said Rudolph, "or I may tell all I know." "You would only ruin yourself, and lose your entire income." "I should ruin you, too." "Not at all. No one would believe you against me. Besides, are you ready to be tried for murder?" "Who has committed murder?" "You have." "Prove it." "Didn't you kill the boy?" "No." "You swore to me he was dead." "Suppose he didn't die." "You are wasting your time, Mr. Rugg," said Mrs. Middleton, coldly. "Of course I understand your motives. You have been extravagant, and wasted your money, hoping to get more out of me. But it is useless." "You'll be sorry for this, ma'am," said Rugg, angrily. "I don't think I shall. Before doing anything that _you_ will be sorry for, consider that to a man in your position the income I give you is very liberal." "Liberal! It isn't one-tenth of what you get." "Very true, but the case is different." "You may believe me or not, but the boy is alive, and I know where he is." Mrs. Middleton did not believe one word of what he said. She was convinced that Tony had been killed by the man before her, and was indignant at the trick which she thought he was trying to play upon her. She felt that if she yielded to his importunity, it would only be the beginning of a series of demands. She had courage and firmness, and she decided to discourage him once for all in his exactions. "I don't believe you," she said, "and I am not afraid." "Then you won't increase my income," he said. "No, I will not. Neither now nor at any other time will I do it. What I have agreed to do I will do, but I will not give you a penny more. Do you understand me, Mr. Rugg?" "I believe I do," said Rudolph, rising, "and I tell you you'll be sorry for what you are saying." "I will take the risk," she said, contemptuously. Rudolph's face was distorted with passion as he left the room. "I hate her more than the boy," he muttered. "He shall have the estate." CHAPTER XXXIX. TONY'S ESCAPE. When Tony found himself left a prisoner in his enemy's room, he did not immediately make an effort to escape, in fact, he did not feel particularly alarmed. "I am in a large city, and there are other lodgers in this building. There can be no danger. I will wait awhile and think over what Rudolph has told me. Can it be true that I am heir to a large estate in England, and that he can restore me to it if he will? He can have no motive for deceiving me. It must be true." Tony felt that he would give a great deal to know more. Where was this estate, and who now held it? It occurred to him that some where about the room he might find some clew to the mystery. He immediately began to explore it. Rudolph was not a literary man. He had neither books nor papers whose tell-tale testimony might convict him. In fact, the best of his personal possessions was very small. A few clothes were lying about the room. Tony decided to examine the pockets of these, in the hope of discovering something in his interest. Finally, he found in the pocket of a shooting coat a small memorandum book, in which a few entries, chiefly of bets, had been made. In these Tony felt no interest, and he was about to throw down the book, when his eye caught this entry: "Dead broke. Must write to Mrs. Middleton for more money." Tony's heart beat rapidly. This must be the person from whom Rudolph received his income, and, by consequence the person who was in fraudulent possession of the estate that was rightfully his. "Mrs. Middleton!" "I wish I knew where she lives," thought our hero. "No doubt there are hundreds of the name in England." This might be, but probably there was but one Mrs. Middleton in the possession of an estate worth two thousand pounds rental. "I am on the track," thought Tony. "Now let me get away, and consult George Spencer." It was easier said than done. The door was locked, and it was too strong to break down. "There must be somebody in the room below," thought Tony. "I'll pound till they hear me." He jumped up and down with such force that it did attract attention in the room below. Presently he heard a querulous voice at the key-hole: "What's the matter? Are you mad?" "No, but I'm locked in," said Tony. "Can't you let me out?" "I have no key to the door, but the landlady has." "Won't you please to ask her to let me out? I'll be ever so much obliged." "Stop pounding then." "I will." Scarcely two minutes had elapsed when a key was heard in the lock and the door was opened. "How came you here, sir?" asked the landlady, a short, stout woman--suspiciously. "The gentleman locked me in--in a joke," said Tony. "Maybe you're a burglar," said the landlady, eyeing him doubtfully. Tony laughed. "Do I look like it?" he asked. "Well, no," the landlady admitted, "but appearances are deceitful." "Not with me, I assure you. I am really sorry to put you to so much trouble to let me out. Won't you accept of this?" and Tony produced a half sovereign. "Really, sir, I see that you are quite the gentleman," said the landlady, pocketing the piece with avidity. "Can't I do anything for you?" "Only, if you'll be kind enough to give this to the gentleman when he returns." Tony hastily wrote a line on a card, and gave it to the now complacent dame. Fifteen minutes after Tony's departure Rudolph returned. He sprang up stairs only to find the room empty and the bird flown. "What's come of the boy!" he exclaimed in dismay; "how did he get out?" He summoned the landlady quickly. "Do you know anything of the boy that was in my room, Mrs. Jones?" "Yes, Mr. Rugg, I let him out. He said you locked him in in fun." "Humph! what else did he say?" "He left this card for you." Rugg seized it hastily, and read with startled eyes: "I am at Morley's. Come and see me soon, or I will go to Mrs. Middleton. "TONY." "Confusion? where did the boy find out?" thought the tramp. "I must do something, or I am ruined." It was a mystery to him how Tony had learned so much, and he naturally concluded that he knew a good deal more. He felt that no time was to be lost, and started at once for Morley's. Inquiring for Tony, he was at once admitted to the presence of Tony and George Spencer. "So you got my card!" said Tony. "Yes. What do you know about Mrs. Middleton?" demanded Rudolph. "That she possesses the estate that ought to be mine. That's about it, isn't it?" "Yes," said Rudolph, "but you can't get it without me." "Why not?" "I was the man that was hired to abduct you when you was a boy." "Can you prove that?" asked Spencer. "I can." "Will your story be believed?" "Yes. The tenantry will remember me. I was one of them at the time." "Are you ready to help my young friend here to recover his rights?" asked Spencer. "This morning I said no. Now I say yes, if he'll do the fair thing by me." A conference was entered into and a bargain was finally made. Rudolph was to receive two hundred pounds a year as a reward for his services, if successful. When this arrangement had been completed, an appointment was made for the next morning; at which hour a lawyer of repute was also present. After listening attentively to Rudolph's statement, he said, decisively: "Your young friend has a strong case, but I advise you to see Mrs. Middleton privately. It may not be necessary to bring the matter into court; and this would be preferable, as it would avoid scandal." "I put myself in your hands," said Tony, promptly. "Mrs. Harvey Middleton is in London," said the lawyer. "I will call this afternoon." CHAPTER XL. ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL. Mrs. Harvey Middleton sat in her boudoir, trying to read a novel. But it failed to interest her. She felt uneasy, she scarcely knew why. The evening previous she had been at the Haymarket Theatre, and had been struck by a boy's face. Ten feet from her sat Tony, with his friend, George Spencer. He looked wonderfully like his father, as she remembered him, and she was startled. She did not know Tony, but Rugg's angry warning struck her. "Was he right? Can this be the boy I have so much reason to dread?" she asked herself. She was thinking of this when the servant entered the room with a card. "C. Barry," she repeated, "wishes to see Mrs. Middleton on business of the greatest importance." "Ask him to come up," she said, uneasily. It was the lawyer, as the reader may have suspected. "Mrs. Middleton," he said, with a bow, "I must apologize for my intrusion." "You say your business is important," said the lady. "It is--of the first importance." "Explain yourself, I beg." "I appear before you, madame, in behalf of your late husband's cousin, Anthony Middleton, who is the heir of the estate which you hold in trust." It was out now, and Mrs. Middleton was at bay. "There is no such person," she said. "The boy you refer to is dead." "What proof have you of his decease?" "I have the sworn statement of the man who saw him die." "And this man's name?" "Is Rudolph Rugg." "I thought so. Mr. Rugg swore falsely. He is ready to contradict his former statement." "He has been tampered with!" exclaimed Mrs. Middleton, pale with passion. "That may be," said the lawyer; but he added, significantly, "Not by us." "The boy is an impostor," said Mrs. Middleton, hotly. "I will not surrender the estate." "I feel for your disappointment, madame; but I think you are hasty." "Who will believe the statement of a common tramp?" "_You_ relied upon it before, madame. But we have other evidence," continued the lawyer. "What other evidence?" "The striking resemblance of my young friend to the family." "Was--was he at the Haymarket Theatre last evening?" "He was. Did you see him?" "I saw the boy I suppose you mean. He had a slight look like Mr. Middleton." "He is his image." "Suppose--suppose this story to be true, what do you offer me?" asked Mrs. Middleton, sullenly. "An income of three hundred pounds from the estate," said the lawyer. "If the matter comes to court, this Rugg, I am bound to tell you, has an ugly story to tell, in which you are implicated." Mrs. Middleton knew well enough what it meant. If the conspiracy should be disclosed, she would be ostracised socially. She rapidly made up her mind. "Mr. Barry," she said, "I will accept your terms, on a single condition." "Name it, madame." "That you will give me six weeks' undisturbed possession of the estate, keeping this matter secret meanwhile." "If I knew your motive, I might consent." "I will tell you in confidence. Within that time I am to be married. The abrupt disclosure of this matter might break off the marriage." "May I ask the name of the bridegroom?" "Captain Gregory Lovell." The lawyer smiled. He knew of Captain Lovell, and owed him a grudge. He suspected that the captain was mercenary in his wooing, and he thought that it would be a fitting revenge to let matters go on. "I consent, upon my own responsibility," he said. "Thank you," said Mrs. Middleton, with real gratitude. She would not lose the man she loved, after all. * * * * * * * A month later the marriage of Captain Gregory Lovell, of Her Majesty's service, and Mrs. Harvey Middleton, of Middleton Hall, was celebrated. There was a long paragraph in the Morning "Post," and Mrs. Lovell was happy. When, a week later, at Paris, the gallant captain was informed of the trick that had been played upon him, there was a terrible scene. He cursed his wife, and threatened to leave her. "But, Gregory, I have three hundred pounds income," she pleaded. "We can live abroad." "And I have sold myself for that paltry sum!" he said, bitterly. But he concluded to make the best of a bad bargain. Between them they had an income of five hundred pounds, and on this they made shift abroad, where living is cheap. But the marriage was not happy. He was brutal at times, and his wife realized sadly that he had never loved her. But she has all the happiness she deserves, and so has he. Rudolph drank himself to death in six months. So the income which he was to receive made but a slight draft upon the Middleton estate. And Tony!--no longer Tony the Tramp, but the Hon. Anthony Middleton, of Middleton Hall--he has just completed a course at Oxford, and is now the possessor of an education which will help fit him for the responsibilities he is to assume. His frank, off-hand manner makes him an immense favorite with the circle to which he now belongs. He says little of his early history, and it is seldom thought of now. He has made a promise to his good friend, George Spencer, to visit the United States, and will doubtless do so. He means at that time to visit once more the scenes with which he became familiar when he was A POOR BOY. WHITMARSH'S REVENGE. Roger Blake and Belcher Whitmarsh were both called quite good boys, but for different reasons. As their friends used sometimes to put it, Belcher was liked _because_ of his temper, and Roger was liked _in spite of_ his temper. Roger was quick to fly into a passion, and as quick to get over it, while Belcher was almost always good natured, but when once really offended remembered the offense like an Indian. The broad play-green in front of the country schoolhouse, where the boys spent their term times together, was surrounded by trees and rocky pasture lots. A pretty brook ran through it. On the sides of the brook and in the rain-gulleys there were plenty of pebbles and small stones. One noon, when the boys had begun a trial of skill in firing stones at a mark, an unlucky turn was given to this small "artillery practice" by the thoughtless challenge of one of the youngsters to a playmate: "I stump you to hit _me_." The stones soon began to fly promiscuously, and the play grew more lively than safe. The boys became excited and ran in all directions, exclaiming "Hit _me_, hit _me_!" The missiles were dodged with exultant laughter, and the shots returned with interest. As must be supposed, some of the players were really hit, and sore heads, and backs, and limbs made the sham skirmish before long a good deal like a real battle. Belcher Whitmarsh was about the only really cool fellow on the ground. "Come, fellows," he remonstrated, "this is getting dangerous. What's the good of throwing stones when you're mad? It's poor play, any way." "Ho, you're afraid," shouted Roger Blake, and in this he was joined by several others. Roger had received one rather hard thump, and feeling quite fiery about it determined to be "even with somebody." He kept on hurling right and left reckless of consequences. Belcher paid no attention to the derision with which his words were treated. He was preparing, with one or two companions, to leave the playground when he saw Roger near him with a heavy stone in his hand drawing back for a furious throw. Partly in sport and partly out of regard for the lad aimed at, he stepped behind the excited boy and caught his arm. Roger whirled about instantly in a great heat. As Belcher stepped quickly backward, laughing, he let fly the stone at him with all his force, crying: "Take it yourself, then!" The stone struck Belcher full in the face, breaking two of his front teeth and knocking him down. Seeing what he had done, Blake sobered in an instant and ran to the aid of his fallen schoolfellow. "I didn't mean to, Belcher," said Roger, bending over him remorsefully, and evidently afraid he had killed him. The boys began to express their indignation quite loudly, but Blake made no attempt to defend himself, only hanging over the injured lad, and declaring how sorry he was. "Come," pleaded he, "try to get up, and let me help you down to the schoolhouse--I'll pay the doctor anything in the world to make you well again." But Whitmarsh, as soon as he recovered a little, showed that he resented his sympathy as bitterly as he did his blow. Pushing away his hand spitefully, he staggered to his feet with the help of another boy, and holding his handkerchief to his bloody face moved off the green, sobbing with pain and revengeful rage. By the time school commenced he had been assisted to wash and bind up his bleeding mouth, when he started for home, giving Roger a look which was very seldom seen on his face, but which meant plainly enough: "I'll have the worth of this out of your skin some day, see if I don't!" That afternoon the boys received a sound lecture from the teacher on the evil of throwing stones, and a penalty was imposed upon the leaders in the reckless sport, Roger among them, who, however, in consideration of his penitence, was only charged with a message to his parents, making full confession and submitting his case entirely to their judgment. Days passed, and everything went on much as before at the school, save that Belcher Whitmarsh was missed, being at home healing his wound. Every day that his absence was noticed was to Roger's quick feelings like a new condemnation. No one was more pleased, then, than Roger Blake to see Belcher, after a little more than a week had passed, back at his place in school. He soon found, however, that bygones were not to be bygones between them. Belcher not only refused to respond to his hearty congratulations, but showed by his manner and words (hissed through his broken teeth) that so far from forgiving Roger's offense he meant to lay it up against him. Several times when thrown in close company with him Blake tried to disarm his dislike. "Come," he would say, "now, Belch, shake hands and say quits." But Whitmarsh would only answer with a surly half threat, or grin significantly, to expose the notch in his gums where the teeth were gone. The boys saw this unreasonable dislike, and gradually transferred their sympathy to Roger. At last the school closed, and though Belcher was not cordial the whole affair between the two lads seemed likely to be soon forgotten. One day during vacation, as Roger was picking whortleberries with two other boys in a lonely pasture, he was unexpectedly joined by Belcher, who had come thither on the same errand. It was not noticed that they greeted each other very differently from the usual manner of boys, and during the whole time they were together Belcher behaved himself in a way that made neither Blake nor his companions feel any the less at ease for his company. Least of all had they any reason to suspect that he still harbored his old revenge. A ruined house, many years deserted, stood in sight of the spot where the boys were picking, and growing tired of their work they agreed to go and examine the old building, and perhaps take a game of "hi spy" there. As they went over the house they found a trap-door opening into a small vault, which had evidently once been used for the family cellar--for the ancient dwelling was rather cramped in size and accommodations--and, boy-like, they all went down into the moldy hole. As the last boy was descending the rotten ladder tumbled to pieces under his weight, and the adventurous youngsters found themselves caught like the fox and goat in the well. Philip Granger, however, being a lad of quick resources, soon hit upon the fox's plan of getting out, which was that each should climb the shoulders of a comrade, and when all but one were safely above ground these should join in pulling out the last. The plan was varied a little in practice, as it was awkward business to decide who of them should be the "goat." Phil got up first, climbing over Frank Staples, and then aided his helper out. Belcher, who had made a ladder of Roger Blake, was performing the pulling of his generous companion toward the opening, when a sudden yell was heard outside, and crying out "There come Dirk Avery and Ben Trench!" Frank and Phil darted away, running as if for their lives. Seized with their panic, Belcher instantly dropped Roger, and regardless of his terrified calls rushed from the hut in a twinkling. The jar of the hurried departure of the boys over the rickety floor brought down the trap-door with a bang, and Roger was left a prisoner indeed. Dirk Avery and Ben Trench were two bad characters who lived a sort of half-vagabond life, rarely doing any honest work, and whose savage looks and cruel natures made them the terror of all the children of the neighborhood. Their appearance in any place was the signal for a general stampede of the young people who happened to be about. There was not one in our little whortleberry party who was not as much afraid of them as if they had actually worn horns and hoofs. On this occasion they were out on a fishing tramp, and the contents of a bottle of cheap rum that each of them carried had made them more wicked than usual. Accordingly, they were in just the mood to take all possible advantage of the fright they had caused, and when the boys fled so precipitately from the ruined house they pursued them with horrible threats and shouts of hoarse laughter. Frank and Phil ran toward the lot where they had hidden their baskets, the loud voice of Dirk crying, "Skin the rascals! Wring their necks!" Dirk, however, soon overdid himself, for the two boys were fleet of foot, and saved their breath. They finally got away, with their berries. Belcher struck a bee-line for home, forgetting his basket, and though Ben gave him a hot chase he succeeded in distancing him. Poor Roger! For some minutes after he found himself shut fast in the vault his mortal fear of being found by the two roughs left him no courage to cry out, and gave him no time to think whether he ought to blame Belcher or not. Judging his act by his own feelings then, he could not say but he should have done the same. But the immediate fright soon passed, and he began to feel the real misery of his situation. Nobody but Whitmarsh knew where he was. What if he _should_ leave him there, for the old grudge? And then it came to him how singular it was that the one on whom he depended to help him out should be just _he_--the boy who had threatened him. Wearily enough passed the time to Roger down there in the dismal hole. Neither shout nor scream would help him. No one lived within half a mile of the house; or if his cries should chance to be heard it might be Avery and Trench, and they would certainly bring him more hurt than good. Suddenly he heard footsteps. A hand seized the trap-door and lifted it. Belcher Whitmarsh's face looked into the vault. "Hollo," said Roger joyfully, "I thought you'd be back before long. Now let's get out of this--I've had enough of it, I'm sure." But Belcher only grinned, showing the vacancy in his front teeth, and replied coolly: "Want me to help you out?" "Of course. Don't be fooling now," pleaded Roger. "Well," said Belcher, "I've thought it over, and seeing you're in there so nicely _I've concluded I won't_. I've an old score against you. Perhaps you'd like to pay it now." With that he dropped the trap-door, and made off. He had come after his basket of berries. Would he be heartless enough to go home now and leave his schoolmate in that damp hole, pestilent with mildew and haunted, perhaps, by sliding adders and loathsome creatures? Meantime the parents of Roger, when the hour passed at which he was expected home, began to make inquiries for him. Frank Staples and Philip Granger, who both supposed he had climbed out of the vault and ran away with Belcher from the hut, were much surprised when asked where he was, and told that he had not returned. Their story of the encounter with Dirk Avery and Ben Trench made the parents still more anxious. Possibly their boy had come to some harm at the hands of those drunken ruffians. Would Philip mind going over to the pasture again and showing just where it all happened? Philip gladly consented, and getting leave from home accompanied Mr. Blake to the lot where they had gathered their berries. Roger's basket was found untouched, precisely where he had been seen to hide it. Mr. Blake looked pale and Phil began to feel frightened. "Let's go down to Mr. Whitmarsh's," said Mr. Blake, "and see Belcher." It was now about sundown, but as the old house lay not far out of the way it was decided to visit it. No sooner had they reached it and looked in than Phil exclaimed, "The trap-door is shut. I'm sure 'twas open when we left it." In a moment more they had uncovered the vault and found poor Roger. Overjoyed, they helped him out, a good deal the worse for the hunger and fear he had undergone. The story of Belcher's mean revenge was soon noised abroad. He excused himself by saying he meant to leave Roger only a little while for a joke, but his father made him go to Mr. Blake's and apologize for his wanton trick. We must do Belcher the justice to say that he performed the duty promptly and with apparent frankness and sincerity. There is no doubt, however, that he meant harm--not such serious harm as might have occurred--but sufficient injury to his playfellow to satisfy his malignant feelings and glut his revenge. The spirit he exhibited was the same in kind, although not in degree, as that which makes a man a murderer. A true man never allows anger to get the permanent control of his feelings. He knows its mean and dangerous tendencies, and remembers the words of Him who spake as never man spake: "If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." THE BOY IN THE BUSH. "The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see him at it," exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse, crumpled grocer's paper these words were written in pencil: "Master Sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr, soe You Send her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch Her. "WARRIGAL." "Sam says," Sydney went on to say, "that the fellow was coward enough to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He wouldn't have dared to talk about sticking us up if he hadn't known father was away. Send him my mare Venus! I seem to see myself doing it!" Sidney Lawson, who made this indignant speech, was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He and his mother had been left in charge of the station while his father took some cattle to Port Philip. Sydney was very proud of his charge; he thought himself a man now, and was very angry that Warrigal, a well-known desperado, should think he could be frightened "like a baby." Warrigal was a bushranger who with one or two companions wandered about in that part of New South Wales, doing pretty much as he liked. They stopped the mail, and robbed draymen and horsemen on the road by the two and three dozen together. The police couldn't get hold of them. The note that Sydney had received caused a great deal of excitement in the little station. Miss Smith, who helped Mrs. Lawson in the house, and taught Sydney's sisters and his brother Harry, was in a great fright. "Oh! pray send him the horse, Master Sydney," she cried, "or we shall all be murdered. You've got so many horses one can't make any difference." Mrs. Lawson was as little disposed as Sydney to let Mr. Warrigal do as he liked. She knew that her husband would have run the risk of being "nabbed," if he had been at home, rather than have obeyed the bushranger's orders; and that he would be very pleased if they could manage to defy the rascal. Still it was a serious matter to provoke Messrs. Warrigal & Co. to pay the house a visit. She felt sure that Sydney would fight and she meant to fire at the robbers herself if they came; but would she and Sydney be able to stand against three armed men? Not a shepherd, or stockman, or horse-breaker about the place was to be depended on; and Ki Li, the Chinaman cook, though a very good kind of fellow, would certainly go to bed in his hut if the robbers came by day, and stay in bed if the robbers came by night. John Jones, the plowman, whose wife was Mrs. Lawson's servant, slept in the house, and he was too honest to band with the bushrangers in any way; "but then, he's such a _sheep_, you know, mamma," said Sydney. There was time to send word to the police in Jerry's Town; but who was to go? Ki Li would be afraid to go out in the dark, and John Jones would be afraid to ride anything but one of the plow horses, and that only at an amble. It wouldn't do for Sydney to leave the place, since he was the only male on it who was to be depended upon, so what was to be done? Little Harry had heard his mother and brother talking; and as soon as he made out their difficulty he looked up and said: "Why, mamma, _I_ can go. Syd, lend me your stock-whip and let me have Guardsman." Neither mother nor brother had any fear about Harry's horsemanship, but they scarcely liked to turn the little fellow out for a long ride by night. However, he knew the way well enough, and if he did not fall in with any of the Warrigal gang nobody would harm him. So Sydney put the saddle and bridle on Guardsman and brought him round to the garden-gate, where Harry stood flicking about Sydney's stock-whip very impatiently, while his mamma kissed him and tied a comforter round his neck. Harry shouted "Good-night," gave Guardsman his head, and was off like a wild boy. Sydney stabled Venus, his favorite mare, and--an unusual precaution--turned the key in the rusty padlock; and when he had given a look about the outbuildings it was time for him to go in to supper and family prayers. He read the chapter and Mrs. Lawson read the prayers. She was a brave woman, but with her little girls about her and her little boy away she couldn't keep her voice from trembling a little when she said, "Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night." Sydney went into his mother's bedroom and looked at the blunderbuss that stood by the bedhead (Mrs. Lawson had selected the blunderbuss as her weapon, because she thought she "must be sure to hit with that big thing") and he showed her once more how to pull the trigger. Then he bade her "good-night," and went along the veranda to his own little room at one end, where he locked himself in, and drew the charge of his rifle and loaded it again, and looked at the chambers of his revolver, and put the caps on, and laid it down on a chair, ready to his hand. When his preparations were completed he said his prayers and tumbled into bed with his clothes on. Harry wasn't expected home until the next day. He had been told to sleep at the tavern in Jerry's Town, when he had left his message at the barracks, and come home at his leisure in the morning. About four miles from Wonga-Wonga, the dreariest part of the road to Jerry's Town, begins a two-mile stretch of dismal scrub. Harry put his heels into Guardsman's sides to make him go even faster than he was going when they got into the scrub, and was pleased to hear a horse's hoofs coming toward him from the other end. He thought it was a neighbor riding home to the next station; but it was Warrigal. As soon as Harry pulled up Guardsman to chat a minute, Warrigal laid hold of the bridle and pulled Harry on to the saddle before him. "Let's see, you're one of the Wonga-Wonga" (that was the name of his father's station) "kids, ain't you?" said the robber. "And where are you off to this time of night? Oh, oh, to fetch the traps, I guess; but I'll put a stop to that little game." Just then Harry gave a _coo-ey_. He couldn't give a very loud one, for he was lying on a sack on the robber's horse; but it made Warrigal very savage. He put the cold muzzle of a pistol against Harry's face and said, "You screech again, youngster, and you won't do it no more." And then Warrigal took Harry and the horses into the scrub, and gagged Harry with a bit of iron he took out of his pocket, and tied him up to a crooked old honeysuckle-tree with a long piece of rope he carried in his saddle-bags. "Don't frighten yourself, I'll tell yer mar where you are, and you'll be back by breakfast," said Warrigal, as he got on Guardsman and rode off, driving his own tired horse before him. Next morning, just as the day was breaking, Warrigal and his two mates, with crape masks on, rode up to Wonga-Wonga. They made as little noise as they could; but the dogs began to bark and woke Sydney. When he woke, however, Warrigal had got his little window open, and was covering him with a pistol. Sydney put out his hand for his revolver, and though Warrigal shouted, "Throw up your hands, boy, or I'll shoot you through the head," he jumped out of bed and fired. He missed Warrigal, and Warrigal missed him; but Warrigal's bullet knocked Sydney's revolver out of his hand, and one of Warrigal's mates made a butt against the bedroom door and smashed it; and he and Warrigal rushed into the room, and threw Sydney down on the bed, and pinioned his arms with a sheet. The other bushranger was watching the horses. By this time the whole station was aroused. The men peeped out of their huts, half frightened, half amused; not one of them came near the house. John Jones and his wife piled their boxes against their room door, and then crept under the bed. Miss Smith went into hysterics; and Gertrude and her sisters couldn't help looking as white as their night-dresses. Mrs. Lawson had fired off her blunderbuss, but it had only broken two panes of the parlor window, and riddled the veranda posts; so Wonga-Wonga was at the bushrangers' mercy. They ransacked the house, and took possession of any little plate, and jewelry, and other portable property they could find. When the robbers had packed up what they called the "swag," and put it on one of their horses, they pulled Ki Li out of bed, and made him light a fire, and cook some chops and boil some tea. Then they marched Mrs. Lawson, and Miss Smith, and Sydney, and his sisters, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Ki Li, into the keeping-room, and sat down to breakfast, with pistols in their belts, and pistols laid, like knives and forks, on the table. The bushrangers tried to be funny, and pressed Mrs. Lawson and the other ladies to make themselves at home, and take a good meal. One of the robbers was going to kiss Miss Smith; but Sydney, pinioned as he was, ran at him, and butted him like a ram. He was going to strike Sydney; but Gertrude ran between them, calling out, "Oh, you great coward!" and Warrigal felt ashamed, and told the man to sit down. "We call him Politeful Bill," Warrigal remarked, in apology; "but he ain't much used to ladies' serciety." When breakfast was over, Warrigal asked Sydney where the mare was. "Find her yourself," said Sydney. "Well, there won't be much trouble about that," answered Warrigal. "She's in the stable, I know; and you've locked her in, for I tried the door. I suppose you are too game to give up the key, my young fighting-cock? But since you're so sarcy, Master Sydney, you shall see me take your mare. You might as well ha' sent her instead of sending for the police, and then I shouldn't ha' got the bay horse too;" and he pointed to Guardsman, hung up on the veranda. There was no time to ask what had become of Harry. Warrigal hurried Sydney by the collar to the stable, while the other men mounted their horses, and unhooked Guardsman, to be ready for their captain. Warrigal blew off the padlock with his pistol; but Venus was fractious, and wouldn't let him put on her halter. While he was dodging about the stable with her, Sydney heard hoofs in the distance. Nearer and nearer came the _tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta_. Four bluecoats galloped up to the slip-panels, three troopers and a sergeant; the sergeant with Harry on his saddlebow. In a second Harry was down, and in three seconds the slip-panels were down too. The waiting bushrangers saw the morning sun gleaming on their carbines, as the police dashed between the aloes and the prickly pears, and letting Guardsman go, were off like a shot. Sydney banged to the stable door; and, setting his back against it, shouted for help. His mother, Gertrude, and even John Jones, as the police were close at hand, ran to his aid; and up galloped the troopers. Warrigal fired a bullet or two through the door, and talked very big about not being taken alive; but he thought better of it, and in an hour's time he was jogging off to Jerry's Town with handcuffs on, and his legs tied under his horse's belly. If Warrigal had not taken up little Harry, most likely he would not have been caught; for when Harry had got to Jerry's Town, he would have found all the troopers away except one. In the scrub, however, Harry heard the sergeant and his men returning from a wild-goose chase they had been sent on by the bush telegraphs; and managing at last to spit the gag out of his mouth, he had given a great _co-oo-oo-oo-oo-ey_. After that night Miss Smith always called Sydney _Mr._ Sydney; and Sydney let Harry ride Venus as often as he liked. THE MIDNIGHT RIDE. It was half-a-dozen years before the war that Godfrey Brooks made a visit to his Cousin Sydney in Virginia. It was his first glimpse of plantation life, and he was not sparing of his questions or comments. Boys in a strange place find it hard to carry about with them the politeness or reticence which are such easy fitting garments at home. The two boys were standing on the piazza one sunny morning looking down to the distant swamp. "You mean to tell me," said Godfrey hotly, "that gentlemen hunted their runaway slaves out of the swamp with bloodhounds? Bloodhounds?" "No, I don't. Gentlemen, of course, do no such dirty work. In the first place, our people (we don't call them slaves) never run away. Why, bless you, old Uncle Peter there, was a boy with my grandfather, and I'm sure I like him a deal better. Of all the hundreds of men and women my father owns, there's not one that don't respect and love him. But there's a class of whites who are not so respected, and when their people escape they bring them back--that's all." "It's brutal," muttered Godfrey. "A man has a right to reclaim his property," said Syd coolly. Now neither of the boys knew much of the intrinsic merits of the question. They only echoed the words and arguments their elders threw back and forth unceasingly. When Syd began to give the details of the late hunt after a runaway horse-thief in the swamp, therefore, Godfrey's moral indignation cooled in the borrowed ardor of the chase. "You see," Syd said in conclusion, "Boosey was really a criminal of the worst sort, as well as a slave, and he belonged to old Johnson. Johnson's the man that owns the hounds. That's his place beyond the hill. He's a whiskey distiller, and raises slaves for the market. Oh, of course he's tabooed. Even a decent laborer looks down on a man that raises slaves for the market." The boys went out fishing presently, and Godfrey looked with a thrill of horror into the dark thicket of laurel and poisonous ivy as they passed where Boosey was still hidden. Down in his secret soul there was an idea of the fierce and terrible zest of hunting anything--even a man--with a bloodhound, through that tragic dusk and quagmire. It would be akin to the gladiatorial combats between man and beast of old Rome, or the bull-fights of the plaza, which his gentle Cousin Anne had learned to relish in Madrid. "What do you say to riding over to Col. Page's to-night?" said Syd at supper. "The girls want to practice some new music before the next party. It's only six now. We can ride over in an hour." "All right," said Godfrey. "Remember, boys," said Dr. Brooks, "you are to be at home and in bed by ten." For Syd's father, while he bestowed horses, guns, every accessory to pleasure upon his son with an unstinting hand, yet held a tight rein on him and never allowed him to fancy that he was a man and not in reality a child. "We'll be home by ten, sir," the boys said promptly. Now Godfrey was but a schoolboy, and at home only snubbed and kept in place by a half-dozen grown brothers and sisters. This riding out at night, therefore, on a pony, which for the time was his own; this calling on young ladies to whom he was known as Mr. Brooks, of New York, was an ecstatic taste of adult freedom which almost intoxicated the boy. When nine o'clock came, and Syd beckoned him from the sofa, where he was reading "Locksley Hall" to Miss Amelia Page, he rose so unwillingly as to cause Joe Page to look from his game of backgammon. "It's too bad in the doctor to put your cousin into strict prison regulations, Syd," he said. "I'll go, however, and see about your horses." He came back with a queer twinkle in his eye. "Sam declares he hitched them securely; but they're gone now. Sit down, boys, sit down. You may as well make the best of it. The fellows are after them. They'll be here by and by." Syd looked annoyed. "I believe Joe unhitched them, himself. I promised father I'd be back early." However he sat down quietly and waited. Godfrey had no annoyance to hide. It wanted but ten minutes to eleven o'clock that night when the ponies were brought to the door, and the boys, after many hand-shakings and cordial invitations, were allowed to depart for home. Then the glow of gallantry and manhood began to cool in Godfrey's bosom, and the unpleasant tremor to take its place which was wont to overcome him when he was late at school. "I say, Syd, I wish we were at home," he said, mounting. "I wish we were," gloomily. "Will your father be very angry?" "It isn't that. But I never broke my word to him before, never. I know what he thinks of a man that breaks his word. The road is heavy. It's a good ride for an hour and a half," shutting his watch with a snap. "Is there no short cut?" "Yes, there's one," looking at him dubiously; "but it's through Johnson's place." "The dogs--they're not loose, eh?" "That I don't know. He keeps them chained in daytime, of course, but whether the scoundrel looses them at night or not I never heard. It would be just like him." The boys rode on in silence. Suddenly Syd drew up with a jerk. "Here's the gate into Johnson's, and I tell you what it is I must go this way, dogs or no dogs. I'm in honor bound to try to keep my promise as nearly as I can, no matter what lies in the way. You can ride down the hill; I'll wait for you at the house." "No, sir; I'm with you," feeling himself every inch a man at the chance of an adventure. "Open the gate, Syd. Now come on!" and giving their horses the rein they struck into a gallop down the road leading close by Johnson's house and stables. It was so heavily covered with tan-bark that the sound of the hoofs was deadened, and the boys spoke in whispers, afraid to stir the midnight silence. Syd nodded toward a low kennel, back of the stables. "There!" he motioned with his lips. "There's where they were when they took them to hunt Boosey." But kennel and stables were silent and motionless in the cold moonlight. The tan-bark was replaced by pebbles near the house. The boys took their ponies up on the short velvet turf, on which their swift feet fell with a crisp, soft thud, a noise hardly sufficient to rouse the most watchful dog, but which drove the blood from Godfrey's cheeks. His short-lived courage had oozed out. "A man one could fight," he thought. "But to be throttled like a beast by a dog." The gladiatorial fights of Rome did not thrill him so much now as the thought of them had sometimes done. Thud--thud. Every beat of the hoofs upon the grass sounded through the boys' brains. They were up to the kennels--past them--safe. Two minutes passed and not a sound. Godfrey drew a long breath, when--hark! A long, deep bay, like thunder, sounded through the night. "God save us! They're loose and are after us," gasped Syd. Glancing back they saw two enormous black shapes darting from behind the shadow of the porch, and coming down the slope behind them. "Now, Pitch and Tar!" sang out Syd, "it all rests on you." He shouted as cheerily, Godfrey thought, as though he were chasing a hare. Chasing and being chased were different matters, both the boys thought; though there was a reckless, gay defiance about the Southern boy which his cousin lacked, courageous as he was. The ponies seemed to catch the meaning of Syd's call. They looked back. Their feet scarcely touched the sward, their nostrils were red, their eyes distended. After the first fierce howl the dogs followed in silence. They had no time to give tongue; they had work to do. A long stretch of pebbly road lay before the boys, then there was a thick patch of bushes, and beyond, the gate. There was no doubt of the horses keeping up their pace. Terror served them for muscle and blood. But the hounds were swifter of foot at any time. They gained with every minute. The distance was about fifty yards. "Can we do it?" Godfrey asked. His tongue was hot and parched. "Of course we'll do it, unless the gate is locked." After this new dread came they were silent. Godfrey thought of home, his mother, and poor little Nell; wished he had not snubbed her as he used to do. Syd felt desperately in his pockets, where he found only a penknife. Why would not his father let him carry firearms as the other boys? Suddenly turning to Godfrey he made a gesture, and turned his horse full on the hedge of privet. It leaped boldly--Godfrey's followed. But the hounds followed, relentless as fate, and dashed through the lower branches. They were closer than before. "The gate! the gate!" cried Syd. He had reached it and fumbled for the bolt. Godfrey, a dozen paces behind, fancied he felt the tramp of the powerful beasts shake the ground. He turned, saw them coming with open jaws, closer, closer. Would the gate never open? There was a creak and crash, and it rolled back on its rusty hinges. The horses darted through so violently as to throw Godfrey on the ground. When he looked up Syd was standing beside him, and from the other side of the iron bars came the baffled roar of the angry beasts. The boys rode home without a word. "What about reclaiming property by means of bloodhounds, Syd?" asked Godfrey. "It's brutal," cried Syd vehemently, and then he laughed. "I tell you, Godfrey, one must actually take another man's place before he can be quite just to him, eh?" A THOUSAND A YEAR. "I am afraid Daniel must give up his studies," Mrs. Brooks said, sadly. "I've been thinking how we are to meet the expenses of another year, and it seems quite impossible to get money enough to do so." "Oh, it would be such a pity, and brother so nearly through," Susan said, looking up in a distressed way. "He mustn't leave college now, when he is so near graduating! There _must_ be a way of helping him through." Mrs. Brooks stooped to kiss the pale, tender face upturned to hers. "You have a wise little head, Susan, but I am afraid there is a problem here you cannot solve," said the widow, mournfully. "How much will be needed?" "At least a hundred dollars besides what he will earn himself. You know there are always extra expenses for the graduating class." Susan's countenance fell. It was a great sum in her estimation, and it was already difficult for them to meet their weekly expenses. "Everything depends upon brother's success," Susan said, presently. "We must give up everything for him." "I cannot forget I have _two_ children," the mother said, kissing the girl again more tenderly than before. "Two children; but only one that will be a blessing to you," Susan said, brushing away a tear. "Don't say that, Susie. I am proud of Daniel, I do not deny that--but I love you, too, all the same." "But you never can be proud of me, weak and deformed as I am! Oh, mother, why are some flowers made so beautiful and fragrant, and some so dark and noisome? Why was my brother so fair, so talented, and I so repulsive?" "No, no, no, not repulsive; don't say that," the widow cried, putting her arms around the girl in a sheltering way. "Do you think Daniel will let me go to see him take his diploma, mother?" "You would not be able, dear." The girl laughed bitterly. "No; brother would say I was not able, too. But I should be glad, so very glad to see him graduate. I think I would be willing to die then." "Hush, my darling," the mother cried, with a sharp pain in her voice. "When you are gone I shall soon follow. Daniel will be satisfied with his laurels, but women--ah, my child--women must love something, and you are all that is left me to love." Susan nestled her head in her mother's bosom without speaking, and lay there so long that her mother thought she was sleeping. Suddenly she opened her eyes and said: "I have thought it all out, mother. Daniel can graduate, and we will go see him take his diploma. Mr. Green needs girls to braid straw hats. You know I am nimble with my fingers, and I could braid a thousand a year, and that would be how much?" "But it would be wicked for me to allow you to overtask yourself in that way, darling. I am not sure but it might ruin your health, feeble as you are. No, no, it is not to be thought of." "How many might I undertake, mother?" "Not half that amount; not a third, even." "Would Daniel be willing for me to braid, do you think?" "I don't know. We will ask him." "Mother," Susan said, looking into her eyes, "I believe this is my mission, to educate Daniel. You know we have given him everything--my portion of the property and yours. I think I could hold out to do this last, and you will consent when you come to reflect upon what it will be to brother, and to you, when I am gone. But he must not know it. It would wound his pride, and he would get some false notion in his head that he could not use money I had earned in that way. Now, promise me, that let what will come, you will never tell him that I braided straw hats that he might complete his education." "I cannot promise _never_ to tell him, darling, because I cannot foresee the future, but I should not like him to be humbled and wounded, more than yourself. I am too old to learn readily, but perhaps I, too, could earn something by braiding." The determination was now fully settled in the mind of each, that the young man must graduate, and that the bills must be met by them. The patronage of Mr. Green was solicited, and it was agreed the work should be taken home, and that a thousand hats should be braided for ten cents each, which he assured them was more than he would think of paying to any one else, and only to Susan in consideration of her infirmity. We ought, perhaps, to explain that Susan had been early afflicted with a curvature of the spine, which had sadly deformed her. She would never have been a beautiful girl, Daniel having inherited not only all the family talent, but its beauty as well. But her eyes were wondrously attractive, with their loving, yearning persuasiveness, and few could remember her deformity who had felt the warmth of her generous nature. In due time, the anticipated letter of inquiry came from Daniel, asking what the prospects were for the coming year. It was full of dismal forebodings and egotistical complaints of the hard fortune that made him dependent upon his mother, but there was no regret that she suffered too; no longing to be a man that he might take this lonely couple in his strong arms and bear them tenderly over the rough places of life; only vague, ambitious dreamings of what he was to be to the world, and the world to him. The widow laid down the letter with a sigh. Susan read the pages over and over again. So grounded was she in her love for this earthly idol that the selfishness was less apparent to her than to her mother. Its sadness seemed like tenderness, and he could not speak too often or too much of the genius which she believed he possessed, and which would some time break upon the world like the meteor to which he rather tritely compared himself. "Ah, we shall be so proud of him!" Susan said, folding the letter and laying it away near her heart, where it rested many and many a day, while she wove the strands of straw in and out, thinking how ten times ten made one dollar, and how the dollars would some time count up to a hundred, and that sum, which her fingers had wrought out, would save her brother from discouragement, if not from despair. The first twenty-five dollars was earned, and the money was sent the brother. "He was very glad of it," he said. "He had begun to fear lest they would fail him." There was no inquiry how it had been obtained; no solicitude lest those who loved him had deprived themselves of luxuries, perhaps necessities, to meet his demands. The next twenty-five dollars was earned, with greater difficulty. The widow was awkward at braiding, and her work unsatisfactory, and so some of it was returned to Susan. She sat up later nights, that her mother should not see how hard the work pressed upon her; but the twenty-five dollars came at last, and was sent to the student. Then there was another letter of thanks. "If you would but rest, darling," the mother would say, when some look more wan than another startled her into keener anxiety. "When it is done we will rest together," was all the reply the solicitude brought. It was too late to retract now, the mother thought; and Daniel so nearly through! So they pinched a little from their daily meals, a little from the store of candles, a little from the evening fire, and prayed that every penny might be multiplied like the widow's meal. One night Mrs. Brooks had gone to bed exhausted and hysterical with overlabor. Susan pressed the blankets tenderly around her mother's shoulders, and having given her the good-night kiss, and quieted her with many promises of soon following her, she went back to the kitchen fire and resumed the weary braiding. She had not completed her usual task that week, and the idea occurred to her that her mother having fallen asleep, she could braid another hat before retiring. So she set up new strands and the thin fingers wove them patiently in and out, until sharp pain clutched her with merciless teeth, and she leaned forward, her head falling upon the table, in a dead faint. It was long past midnight when Susan found herself in this position. Shivering with cold, she crept to her mother's side and lay the remainder of the night, racked by alternate fevers and chills. How could the poor child tell her mother of what she knew was creeping so steadily toward her? Would she make a final effort to save her own life and let Daniel struggle with his fortunes as he best could? Poor, brave little heart, with the chill of the grave stealing over it, but warmed back into life and renewed suffering by the wonderful strength of its undying love! Another twenty five dollars was forwarded to Daniel, and a few lines came flying back by the return post, for Daniel was a man of business habits, and punctual in all things. Susan looked it all over carefully for some loving message to her; some sign answering to what she felt in her own heart toward him, but there was nothing there but "_With love to Susan, I remain, etc., Daniel._" A dry sob escaped the poor child as she laid it by, and took up the weary, rustling braids. The sound rasped upon her nerves now. The very odor of the strands nauseated her. Every kink in the braids fretted her; and when one hat was finished and laid aside, it seemed such a mountainous task to commence another. Sometimes hours would pass by without a round being accomplished, then again the nimble fingers would be inspired, and the work would grow as of old. "If I could only go and see Daniel take his diploma," she would say, "I think it would make me strong again. I would wear my white muslin frock, with the blue sash, and he would not be ashamed of me." But it was not to be. The one thousand hats were braided, and Susan's task was done. Nothing remained for her but to lie down in her modest casket and sleep with folded hands until the blessed Saviour shall bid her approach to receive His welcome--"Well done, thou good and faithful servant." Daniel returned with his collegiate honors only to listen to the sad story of her labors and death. His mother told it as they stood by the coffin. There were the worn letters she had cherished, blistered all over with tears. He was conscience stricken when he looked them over, and saw how cold and egotistical they were, and how thoughtless he had always been of the treasure that death had taken. He took the thin hands in his--the hands that had braided and plaited while he slept, and wrought out the treasure-trove that molded the key to his success, and he made solemn resolutions for the future. Let us hope that, in her broken life, he learned how beautiful in the sight of God and angels is the self-sacrifice of the lowly in heart: and how much better it is to die in the struggle to bless others than it is to live to a selfish, unloving, unsanctified old age. THE END. A. L. BURT'S PUBLICATIONS For Young People BY POPULAR WRITERS. 97-99-101 Reade Street, New York. +Bonnie Prince Charlie+: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden. By G. A. HENTY. With 12 full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The adventures of the son of a Scotch officer in French service. The boy, brought up by a Glasgow bailie, is arrested for aiding a Jacobite agent, escapes, is wrecked on the French coast, reaches Paris, and serves with the French army at Dettingen. He kills his father's foe in a duel, and escaping to the coast, shares the adventures of Prince Charlie, but finally settles happily in Scotland. "Ronald, the hero, is very like the hero of 'Quentin Durward.' The lad's journey across France, and his hairbreadth escapes, make up as good a narrative of the kind as we have ever read. For freshness of treatment and variety of incident Mr. Henty has surpassed himself."--_Spectator._ +With Clive in India+; or, the Beginnings of an Empire. By G. A. HENTY. With 12 full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The period between the landing of Clive as a young writer in India and the close of his career was critical and eventful in the extreme. At its commencement the English were traders existing on sufferance of the native princes. At its close they were masters of Bengal and of the greater part of Southern India. The author has given a full and accurate account of the events of that stirring time, and battles and sieges follow each other in rapid succession, while he combines with his narrative a tale of daring and adventure, which gives a lifelike interest to the volume. "He has taken a period of Indian history of the most vital importance, and he has embroidered on the historical facts a story which of itself is deeply interesting. Young people assuredly will be delighted with the volume."--_Scotsman._ +The Lion of the North+: A Tale of Gustavus Adolphus and the Wars of Religion. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by JOHN SCH�NBERG. 12 mo, cloth, price $1.00. In this story Mr. Henty gives the history of the first part of the Thirty Years' War. The issue had its importance, which has extended to the present day, as it established religious freedom in Germany. The army of the chivalrous king of Sweden was largely composed of Scotchmen, and among these was the hero of the story. "The tale is a clever and instructive piece of history, and as boys may be trusted to read it conscientiously, they can hardly fail to be profited."--_Times._ +The Dragon and the Raven+; or, The Days of King Alfred. By G. A. Henty. With full-page Illustrations by _C. J. Staniland, R.I._ 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. In this story the author gives an a count of the fierce struggle between Saxon and Dane for supremacy in England, and presents a vivid picture of the misery and ruin to which the country was reduced by the ravages of the sea-wolves. The hero, a young Saxon thane, takes part in all the battles fought by King Alfred. He is driven from his home, takes to the sea and resists the Danes on their own element, and being pursued by them up the Seine, is present at the long and desperate siege of Paris. "Treated in a manner most attractive to the boyish reader."--_Athenæum._ +The Young Carthaginian+: A Story of the Times of Hannibal. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by C. J. STANILAND, R.I. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Boys reading the history of the Punic Wars have seldom a keen appreciation of the merits of the contest. That it was at first a struggle for empire, and afterward for existence on the part of Carthage, that Hannibal was a great and skillful general, that he defeated the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimenus, and Cannæ, and all but took Rome, represents pretty nearly the sum total of their knowledge. To let them know more about this momentous struggle for the empire of the world Mr. Henty has written this story, which not only gives in graphic style a brilliant description of a most interesting period of history, but is a tale of exciting adventure sure to secure the interest of the reader. "Well constructed and vividly told. From first to last nothing stays the interest of the narrative. It bears us along as on a stream whose current varies in direction, but never loses its force."--_Saturday Review._ +In Freedom's Cause+: A Story of Wallace and Bruce. By G. A. HENTY. With full page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. In this story the author relates the stirring tale of the Scottish War of Independence. The extraordinary valor and personal prowess of Wallace and Bruce rival the deeds of the mythical heroes of chivalry, and indeed at one time Wallace was ranked with these legendary personages. The researches of modern historians have shown, however, that he was a living, breathing man--and a valiant champion. The hero of the tale fought under both Wallace and Bruce, and while the strictest historical accuracy has been maintained with respect to public events, the work is full of "hairbreadth 'scapes" and wild adventure. "It is written in the author's best style. Full of the wildest and most remarkable achievements, it is a tale of great interest, which a boy, once he has begun it, will not willingly put on one side."--_The Schoolmaster._ +With Lee in Virginia+: A Story of the American Civil War. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The story of a young Virginian planter, who, after bravely proving his sympathy with the slaves of brutal masters, serves with no less courage and enthusiasm under Lee and Jackson through the most exciting events of the struggle. He has many hairbreadth escapes, is several times wounded and twice taken prisoner; but his courage and readiness and, in two cases, the devotion of a black servant and of a runaway slave whom he had assisted, bring him safely through all difficulties. "One of the best stories for lads which Mr. Henty has yet written. The picture is full of life and color, and the stirring and romantic incidents are skillfully blended with the personal interest and charm of the story."--_Standard._ +By England's Aid+; or, The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604). By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE, and Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The story of two English lads who go to Holland as pages in the service of one of "the fighting Veres." After many adventures by sea and land, one of the lads finds himself on board a Spanish ship at the time of the defeat of the Armada, and escapes only to fall into the hands of the Corsairs. He is successful in getting back to Spain under the protection of a wealthy merchant, and regains his native country after the capture of Cadiz. "It is an admirable book for youngsters. It overflows with stirring incident and exciting adventure, and the color of the era and of the scene are finely reproduced. The illustrations add to its attractiveness."--_Boston Gazette._ +By Right of Conquest+; or, With Cortez in Mexico. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by W. S. STACEY, and Two Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.50. The conquest of Mexico by a small band of resolute men under the magnificent leadership of Cortez is always rightly ranked among the most romantic and daring exploits in history. With, this as the ground work of his story Mr. Henty has interwoven the adventures of an English youth, Roger Hawkshaw, the sole survivor of the good ship Swan, which had sailed from a Devon port to challenge the mercantile supremacy of the Spaniards in the New World. He is beset by many perils among the natives, but is saved by his own judgment and strength, and by the devotion of an Aztec princess. At last by a ruse he obtains the protection of the Spaniards, and after the fall of Mexico he succeeds in regaining his native shore, with a fortune and a charming Aztec bride. "'By Right of Conquest' is the nearest approach to a perfectly successful historical tale that Mr. Henty has yet published."--_Academy._ +In the Reign of Terror+: The Adventures of a Westminster Boy. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by J. SCH�NBERG. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Harry Sandwith, a Westminster boy, becomes a resident at the chateau of a French marquis, and after various adventures accompanies the family to Paris at the crisis of the Revolution. Imprisonment and death reduce their number, and the hero finds himself beset by perils with the three young daughters of the house in his charge. After hairbreadth escapes they reach Nantes. There the girls are condemned to death in the coffin-ships, but are saved by the unfailing courage of their boy protector. "Harry Sandwith, the Westminster boy, may fairly be said to beat Mr. Henry's record. His adventures will delight boys by the audacity and peril they depict.... The story is one of Mr. Henty's best."--_Saturday Review._ +With Wolfe in Canada+; or, The Winning of a Continent. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. In the present volume Mr. Henty gives an account of the struggle between Britain and France for supremacy in the North American continent. On the issue of this war depended not only the destinies of North America, but to a large extent those of the mother countries themselves. The fall of Quebec decided that the Anglo-Saxon race should predominate in the New World; that Britain, and not France, should take the lead among the nations of Europe; and that English and American commerce, the English language, and English literature, should spread right round the globe. "It is not only a lesson in history as instructively as it is graphically told, but also a deeply interesting and often thrilling tale of adventure and peril by flood and field."--_Illustrated London News._ +True to the Old Flag+: A Tale of the American War of Independence. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. In this story the author has gone to the accounts of officers who took part in the conflict, and lads will find that in no war in which American and British soldiers have been engaged did they behave with greater courage and good conduct. The historical portion of the book being accompanied with numerous thrilling adventures with the redskins on the shores of Lake Huron, a story of exciting interest is interwoven with the general narrative and carried through the book. "Does justice to the pluck and determination of the British soldiers during the unfortunate struggle against American emancipation. The son of an American loyalist, who remains true to our flag, falls among the hostile redskins in that very Huron country which has been endeared to us by the exploits of Hawkeye and Chingachgook."--_The Times._ +The Lion of St. Mark+: A Tale of Venice in the Fourteenth Century. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A story of Venice at a period when her strength and splendor were put to the severest tests. The hero displays a fine sense and manliness which carry him safely through an atmosphere of intrigue, crime, and bloodshed. He contributes largely to the victories of the Venetians at Porto d'Anzo and Chioggia, and finally wins the hand of the daughter of one of the chief men of Venice. "Every boy should read 'The Lion of St. Mark.' Mr. Henty has never produced a story more delightful, more wholesome, or more vivacious."--_Saturday Review._ +A Final Reckoning+: A Tale of Bush Life in Australia, By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by W. B. WOLLEN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00, The hero, a young English lad, after rather a stormy boyhood, emigrates to Australia, and gets employment as an officer in the mounted police. A few years of active work on the frontier, where he has many a brush with both natives and bushrangers, gain him promotion to a captaincy, and he eventually settles down to the peaceful life of a squatter. "Mr. Henty has never published a more readable, a more carefully constructed, or a better written story than this."--_Spectator._ +Under Drake's Flag+: A Tale of the Spanish Main. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A story of the days when England and Spain struggled for the supremacy of the sea. The heroes sail as lads with Drake in the Pacific expedition, and in his great voyage of circumnavigation. The historical portion of the story is absolutely to be relied upon, but this will perhaps be less attractive than the great variety of exciting adventure through which the young heroes pass in the course of their voyages. "A book of adventure, where the hero meets with experience enough, one would think, to turn his hair gray."--_Harper's Monthly Magazine._ +By Sheer Pluck+: A Tale of the Ashanti War. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The author has woven, in a tale of thrilling interest, all the details of the Ashanti campaign, of which he was himself a witness. His hero, after many exciting adventures in the interior, is detained a prisoner by the king just before the outbreak of the war but escapes, and accompanies the English expedition on their march to Coomassie. "Mr. Henty keeps up his reputation as a writer of boys' stories. 'By Sheer Pluck' will be eagerly read."--_Athenæum._ +By Pike and Dyke+: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by MAYNARD BROWN, and 4 Maps. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. In this story Mr. Henty traces the adventures and brave deeds of an English boy in the household of the ablest man of his age--William the Silent. Edward Martin, the son of an English sea-captain, enters the service of the Prince as a volunteer, and is employed by him in many dangerous and responsible missions, in the discharge of which he passes through the great sieges of the time. He ultimately settles down as Sir Edward Martin. "Boys with a turn for historical research will be enchanted with the book, while the rest who only care for adventure will be students in spite of themselves."--_St. James' Gazette._ +St. George for England+: A Tale of Cressy and Poitiers. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. No portion of English history is more crowded with great events than that of the reign of Edward III. Cressy and Poitiers; the destruction of the Spanish fleet; the plague of the Black Death; the Jacquerie rising; these are treated by the author in "St. George for England." The hero of the story, although of good family, begins life as a London apprentice, but after countless adventures and perils becomes by valor and good conduct the squire, and at last the trusted friend of the Black Prince. "Mr. Henty has developed for himself a type of historical novel for boys which bids fair to supplement, on their behalf, the historical labors of Sir Walter Scott in the land of fiction."--_The Standard._ +Captain's Kidd's Gold+: The True Story of an Adventurous Sailor Boy. By JAMES FRANKLIN FITTS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. There is something fascinating to the average youth in the very idea of buried treasure. A vision arises before his eyes of swarthy Portuguese and Spanish rascals, with black beards and gleaming eyes--sinister-looking fellows who once on a time haunted the Spanish Main, sneaking out from some hidden creek in their long, low schooner, of picaroonish rake and sheer, to attack an unsuspecting trading craft. There were many famous sea rovers in their day, but none more celebrated than Capt. Kidd. Perhaps the most fascinating tale of all is Mr. Fitts' true story of an adventurous American boy, who receives from his dying father an ancient bit of vellum, which the latter obtained in a curious way. The document bears obscure directions purporting to locate a certain island in the Bahama group, and a considerable treasure buried there by two of Kidd's crew. The hero of this book, Paul Jones Garry, is an ambitious, persevering lad, of salt-water New England ancestry, and his efforts to reach the island and secure the money form one of the most absorbing tales for our youth that has come from the press. +Captain Bayley's Heir+: A Tale of the Gold Fields of California By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by H. M. PAGET. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A frank, manly lad and his cousin are rivals in the heirship of a considerable property. The former falls into a trap laid by the latter, and while under a false accusation of theft foolishly leaves England for America. He works his passage before the mast, joins a small band of hunters, crosses a tract of country infested with Indians to the Californian gold diggings, and is successful both as digger and trader. "Mr. Henty is careful to mingle instruction with entertainment; and the humorous touches, especially in the sketch of John Holl, the Westminster dustman, Dickens himself could hardly have excelled."--_Christian Leader._ +For Name and Fame+; or, Through Afghan Passes. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. An interesting story of the last war in Afghanistan. The hero, after being wrecked and going through many stirring adventures among the Malays, finds his way to Calcutta and enlists in a regiment proceeding to join the army at the Afghan passes. He accompanies the force under General Roberts to the Peiwar Kotal, is wounded, taken prisoner, carried to Cabul, whence he is transferred to Candahar, and takes part in the final defeat of the army of Ayoub Khan. "The best feature of the book--apart from the interest of its scenes of adventure--is its honest effort to do justice to the patriotism of the Afghan people."--_Daily News._ +Captured by Apes+: The Wonderful Adventures of a Young Animal Trainer. By HARRY PRENTICE. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. The scene of this tale is laid on an island in the Malay Archipelago. Philip Garland, a young animal collector and trainer, of New York, sets sail for Eastern seas in quest of a new stock of living curiosities. The vessel is wrecked off the coast of Borneo and young Garland, the sole survivor of the disaster, is cast ashore on a small island and captured by the apes that overrun the place. The lad discovers that the ruling spirit of the monkey tribe is a gigantic and vicious baboon, whom he identifies as Goliah, an animal at one time in his possession and with whose instruction he had been especially diligent. The brute recognizes him, and with a kind of malignant satisfaction puts his former master through the same course of training he had himself experienced with a faithfulness of detail which shows how astonishing is monkey recollection. Very novel indeed is the way by which the young man escapes death. Mr. Prentice has certainly worked a new vein on juvenile fiction, and the ability with which he handles a difficult subject stamps him as a writer of undoubted skill. +The Bravest of the Brave+; or, With Peterborough in Spain. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by H. M. PAGET. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. There are few great leaders whose lives and actions have so completely fallen into oblivion as those of the Earl of Peterborough. This is largely due to the fact that they were overshadowed by the glory and successes of Marlborough. His career as general extended over little more than a year, and yet, in that time, he showed a genius for warfare which has never been surpassed. "Mr. Henty never loses sight of the moral purpose of his work--to enforce the doctrine of courage and truth. Lads will read 'The Bravest of the Brave' with pleasure and profit; of that we are quite sure."--_Daily Telegraph._ +The Cat of Bubastes+: A Story of Ancient Egypt. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A story which will give young readers an unsurpassed insight into the customs of the Egyptian people. Amuba, a prince of the Rebu nation, is carried with his charioteer Jethro into slavery. They become inmates of the house of Ameres, the Egyptian high-priest, and are happy in his service until the priest's son accidentally kills the sacred cat of Bubastes. In an outburst of popular fury Ameres is killed, and it rests with Jethro and Amuba to secure the escape of the high-priest's son and daughter. "The story, from the critical moment of the killing of the sacred cat to the perilous exodus into Asia with which it closes, is very skillfully constructed and full of exciting adventures. It is admirably illustrated."--_Saturday Review._ +With Washington at Monmouth+: A Story of Three Philadelphia Boys. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Three Philadelphia boys, Seth Graydon "whose mother conducted a boarding-house which was patronized by the British officers;" Enoch Ball, "son of that Mrs. Ball whose dancing school was situated on Letitia Street," and little Jacob, son of "Chris, the Baker," serve as the principal characters. The story is laid during the winter when Lord Howe held possession of the city, and the lads aid the cause by assisting the American spies who make regular and frequent visits from Valley Forge. One reads here of home-life in the captive city when bread was scarce among the people of the lower classes, and a reckless prodigality shown by the British officers, who passed the winter in feasting and merry-making while the members of the patriot army but a few miles away were suffering from both cold and hunger. The story abounds with pictures of Colonial life skillfully drawn, and the glimpses of Washington's soldiers which are given show that the work has not been hastily done, or without considerable study. +For the Temple+: A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem. By G. A. HENTY, With full-page Illustrations by S. J. SOLOMON. 12mo, cloth, price $1,00. Mr. Henty here weaves into the record of Josephus an admirable and attractive story. The troubles in the district of Tiberias, the march of the legions, the sieges of Jotapata, of Gamala, and of Jerusalem, form the impressive and carefully studied historic setting to the figure of the lad who passes from the vineyard to the service of Josephus, becomes the leader of a guerrilla band of patriots, fights bravely for the Temple, and after a brief term of slavery at Alexandria, returns to his Galilean home with the favor of Titus. "Mr. Henty's graphic prose pictures of the hopeless Jewish resistance to Roman sway add another leaf to his record of the famous wars of the world."--_Graphic._ +Facing Death+; or, The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "Facing Death" is a story with a purpose. It is intended to show that a lad who makes up his mind firmly and resolutely that he will rise in life, and who is prepared to face toil and ridicule and hardship to carry out his determination, is sure to succeed. The hero of the story is a typical British boy, dogged, earnest, generous, and though "shamefaced" to a degree, is ready to face death in the discharge of duty. "The tale is well written and well illustrated, and there is much eanty in the characters. If any father, clergyman, or schoolmaster is on the lookout for a good book to give as a present to a boy who is worth his salt, this is the book we would recommend."--_Standard._ +Tom Temple's Career.+ By HORATIO ALGER. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Tom Temple, a bright, self-reliant lad, by the death of his father becomes a boarder at the home of Nathan Middleton, a penurious insurance agent. Though well paid for keeping the boy, Nathan and his wife endeavor to bring Master Tom in line with their parsimonious habits. The lad ingeniously evades their efforts and revolutionizes the household. As Tom is heir to $40,000, he is regarded as a person of some importance until by an unfortunate combination of circumstances his fortune shrinks to a few hundreds. He leaves Plympton village to seek work in New York, whence he undertakes an important mission to California, around which center the most exciting incidents of his young career. Some of his adventures in the far west are so startling that the reader will scarcely close the book until the last page shall have been reached. The tale is written in Mr. Alger's most fascinating style, and is bound to please the very large class of boys who regard this popular author as a prime favorite. +Maori and Settler+: A Story of the New Zealand War. By G. A. HENTY. With full-page Illustrations by ALFRED PEARSE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The Renshaws emigrate to New Zealand during the period of the war with the natives. Wilfrid, a strong, self-reliant, courageous lad, is the mainstay of the household. He has for his friend Mr. Atherton, a botanist and naturalist of herculean strength and unfailing nerve and humor. In the adventures among the Maoris, there are many breathless moments in which the odds seem hopelessly against the party, but they succeed in establishing themselves happily in one of the pleasant New Zealand valleys. "Brimful of adventure, of humorous and interesting conversation, and vivid pictures of colonial life."--_Schoolmaster._ +Julian Mortimer+: A Brave Boy's Struggle for Home and Fortune. By HARRY CASTLEMON. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Here is a story that will warm every boy's heart. There is mystery enough to keep any lad's imagination wound up to the highest pitch. The scene of the story lies west of the Mississippi river, in the days when emigrants made their perilous way across the great plains to the land of gold. One of the startling features of the book is the attack upon the wagon train by a large party of Indians. Our hero is a lad of uncommon nerve and pluck, a brave young American in every sense of the word. He enlists and holds the reader's sympathy from the outset. Surrounded by an unknown and constant peril, and assisted by the unswerving fidelity of a stalwart trapper, a real rough diamond, our hero achieves the most happy results. Harry Castlemon has written many entertaining stories for boys, and it would seem almost superfluous to say anything in his praise, for the youth of America regard him as a favorite author. +"Carrots:"+ Just a Little Boy. By MRS. MOLESWORTH. With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "One of the cleverest and most pleasing stories it has been our good fortune to meet with for some time. Carrots and his sister are delightful little beings, whom to read about is at once to become very fond of."--_Examiner._ "A genuine children's book; we've seen 'em seize it, and read it greedily. Children are first-rate critics, and thoroughly appreciate Walter Crane's illustrations."--_Punch._ +Mopsa the Fairy.+ By JEAN INGELOW. With Eight page Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "Miss Ingelow is, to our mind, the most charming of all living writers for children, and 'Mopsa' alone ought to give her a kind of pre-emptive right to the love and gratitude of our young folks. It requires genius to conceive a purely imaginary work which must of necessity deal with the supernatural, without running into a mere riot of fantastic absurdity; but genius Miss Ingelow has and the story of 'Jack' is as careless and joyous, but as delicate, as a picture of childhood."--_Eclectic._ +A Jaunt Through Java+: The Story of a Journey to the Sacred Mountain. By EDWARD S. ELLIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The central interest of this story is found in the thrilling adventures of two cousins, Hermon and Eustace Hadley, on their trip across the island of Java, from Samarang to the Sacred Mountain. In a land where the Royal Bengal tiger runs at large; where the rhinoceros and other fierce beasts are to be met with at unexpected moments; it is but natural that the heroes of this book should have a lively experience. Hermon not only distinguishes himself by killing a full grown tiger at short range, but meets with the most startling adventure of the journey. There is much in this narrative to instruct as well as entertain the reader, and so deftly has Mr. Ellis used his material that there is not a dull page in the book. The two heroes are brave, manly young fellows, bubbling over with boyish independence. They cope with the many difficulties that arise during the trip in a fearless way that is bound to win the admiration of every lad who is so fortunate as to read their adventures. +Wrecked on Spider Island+; or, How Ned Rogers Found the Treasure. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A "down-east" plucky lad who ships as cabin boy, not from love of adventure, but because it is the only course remaining by which he can gain a livelihood. While in his bunk, seasick, Ned Rogers hears the captain and mate discussing their plans for the willful wreck of the brig in order to gain the insurance. Once it is known he is in possession of the secret the captain maroons him on Spider Island, explaining to the crew that the boy is afflicted with leprosy. While thus involuntarily playing the part of a Crusoe, Ned discovers a wreck submerged in the sand, and overhauling the timbers for the purpose of gathering material with which to build a hut finds a considerable amount of treasure. Raising the wreck; a voyage to Havana under sail; shipping there a crew and running for Savannah; the attempt of the crew to seize the little craft after learning of the treasure on board, and, as a matter of course, the successful ending of the journey, all serve to make as entertaining a story of sea-life as the most captious boy could desire. +Geoff and Jim+: A Story of School Life. By ISMAY THORN. Illustrated by A. G. WALKER. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "This is a prettily told story of the life spent by two motherless bairns at a small preparatory school. Both Geoff and Jim are very lovable characters, only Jim is the more so; and the scrapes he gets into and the trials he endures will, no doubt, interest a large circle of young readers."--_Church Times._ "This is a capital children's story, the characters well portrayed, and the book tastefully bound and well illustrated."--_Schoolmaster._ "The story can be heartily recommended as a present for boys."--_Standard._ +The Castaways+; or, On the Florida Reefs. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This tale smacks of the salt sea. It is just the kind of story that the majority of boys yearn for. From the moment that the Sea Queen dispenses with the services of the tug in lower New York bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward, and feel her rise to the snow-capped waves which her sharp bow cuts into twin streaks of foam. Off Marquesas Keys she floats in a dead calm. Ben Clark, the hero of the story, and Jake, the cook, spy a turtle asleep upon the glassy surface of the water. They determine to capture him, and take a boat for that purpose, and just as they succeed in catching him a thick fog cuts them off from the vessel, and then their troubles begin. They take refuge on board a drifting hulk, a storm arises and they are cast ashore upon a low sandy key. Their adventures from this point cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. Otis is a prime favorite. His style is captivating, and never for a moment does he allow the interest to flag. In "The Castaways" he is at his best. +Tom Thatcher's Fortune.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Like all of Mr. Alger's heroes, Tom Thatcher is a brave, ambitious, unselfish boy. He supports his mother and sister on meager wages earned as a shoe-pegger in John Simpson's factory. The story begins with Tom's discharge from the factory, because Mr. Simpson felt annoyed with the lad for interrogating him too closely about his missing father. A few days afterward Tom learns that which induces him to start overland for California with the view of probing the family mystery. He meets with many adventures. Ultimately he returns to his native village, bringing consternation to the soul of John Simpson, who only escapes the consequences of his villainy by making full restitution to the man whose friendship he had betrayed. The story is told in that entertaining way which has made Mr. Alger's name a household word in so many homes. +Birdie+: A Tale of Child Life. By H. L. CHILDE-PEMBERTON. Illustrated by H. W. RAINEY. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "The story is quaint and simple, but there is a freshness about it that makes one hear again the ringing laugh and the cheery shout of children at play which charmed his earlier years."--_New York Express._ +Popular Fairy Tales.+ By the BROTHERS GRIMM. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "From first to last, almost without exception, these stories are delightful."--_Athenæum._ +With Lafayette at Yorktown+: A Story of How Two Boys Joined the Continental Army. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The two boys are from Portsmouth, N. H., and are introduced in August, 1781, when on the point of leaving home to enlist in Col. Scammell's regiment, then stationed near New York City. Their method of traveling is on horseback, and the author has given an interesting account of what was expected from boys in the Colonial days. The lads, after no slight amount of adventure, are sent as messengers--not soldiers--into the south to find the troops under Lafayette. Once with that youthful general they are given employment as spies, and enter the British camp, bringing away valuable information. The pictures of camp-life are carefully drawn, and the portrayal of Lafayette's character is thoroughly well done. The story is wholesome in tone, as are all of Mr. Otis' works. There is no lack of exciting incident which the youthful reader craves, but it is healthful excitement brimming with facts which every boy should be familiar with, and while the reader is following the adventures of Ben Jaffreys and Ned Allen he is acquiring a fund of historical lore which will remain in his memory long after that which he has memorized from text-books has been forgotten. +Lost in the Canon+: Sam Willett's Adventures on the Great Colorado. By ALFRED R. CALHOUN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This story hinges on a fortune left to Sam Willett, the hero, and the fact that it will pass to a disreputable relative if the lad dies before he shall have reached his majority. The Vigilance Committee of Hurley's Gulch arrest Sam's father and an associate for the crime of murder. Their lives depend on the production of the receipt given for money paid. This is in Sam's possession at the camp on the other side of the cañon. A messenger is dispatched to get it. He reaches the lad in the midst of a fearful storm which floods the cañon. His father's peril urges Sam to action. A raft is built on which the boy and his friends essay to cross the torrent. They fail to do so, and a desperate trip down the stream ensues. How the party finally escape from the horrors of their situation and Sam reaches Hurley's Gulch in the very nick of time, is described in a graphic style that stamps Mr. Calhoun as a master of his art. +Jack+: A Topsy Turvy Story. By C. M. CRAWLEY-BOEVEY. With upward of Thirty Illustrations by H. J. A. MILES. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "The illustrations deserve particular mention, as they add largely to the interest of this amusing volume for children. Jack falls asleep with his mind full of the subject of the fishpond, and is very much surprised presently to find himself an inhabitant of Waterworld, where he goes though wonderful and edifying adventures. A handsome and pleasant book."--_Literary World._ +Search for the Silver City+: A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Two American lads, Teddy Wright and Neal Emery, embark on the steam yacht Day Dream for a short summer cruise to the tropics. Homeward bound the yacht is destroyed by fire. All hands take to the boats, but during the night the boat is cast upon the coast of Yucatan. They come across a young American named Cummings, who entertains them with the story of the wonderful Silver City, of the Chan Santa Cruz Indians. Cummings proposes with the aid of a faithful Indian ally to brave the perils of the swamp and carry off a number of the golden images from the temples. Pursued with relentless vigor for days their situation is desperate. At last their escape is effected in an astonishing manner. Mr. Otis has built his story on an historical foundation. It is so full of exciting incidents that the reader is quite carried away with the novelty and realism of the narrative. +Frank Fowler, the Cash Boy.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Thrown upon his own resources Frank Fowler, a poor boy, bravely determines to make a living for himself and his foster-sister Grace. Going to New York he obtains a situation as cash boy in a dry goods store. He renders a service to a wealthy old gentleman named Wharton, who takes a fancy to the lad. Frank, after losing his place as cash boy, is enticed by an enemy to a lonesome part of New Jersey and held a prisoner. This move recoils upon the plotter, for it leads to a clue that enables the lad to establish his real identity. Mr. Alger's stories are not only unusually interesting, but they convey a useful lesson of pluck and manly independence. +Budd Boyd's Triumph+; or, the Boy Firm of Fox Island. By WILLIAM P. CHIPMAN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The scene of this story is laid on the upper part of Narragansett Bay, and the leading incidents have a strong salt water flavor. Owing to the conviction of his father for forgery and theft, Budd Boyd is compelled to leave his home and strike out for himself. Chance brings Budd in contact with Judd Floyd. The two boys, being ambitious and clear sighted, form a partnership to catch and sell fish. The scheme is successfully launched, but the unexpected appearance on the scene of Thomas Bagsley, the man whom Budd believes guilty of the crimes attributed to his father, leads to several disagreeable complications that nearly caused the lad's ruin. His pluck and good sense, however, carry him through his troubles. In following the career of the boys firm of Boyd & Floyd, the youthful reader will find a useful lesson--that industry and perseverance are bound to lead to ultimate success. +The Errand Boy+; or, How Phil Brent Won Success. By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12 mo, cloth, price $1.00. The career of "The Errand Boy" embraces the city adventures of a smart country lad who at an early age was abandoned by his father. Philip was brought up by a kind-hearted innkeeper named Brent. The death of Mrs. Brent paved the way for the hero's subsequent troubles. Accident introduces him to the notice of a retired merchant in New York, who not only secures him the situation of errand boy but thereafter stands as his friend. An unexpected turn of fortune's wheel, however, brings Philip and his father together. In "The Errand Boy" Philip Brent is possessed of the same sterling qualities so conspicuous in all of the previous creations of this delightful writer for our youth. +The Slate Picker+: The Story of a Boy's Life in the Coal Mines. By HARRY PRENTICE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This is a story of a boy's life in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. There are many thrilling situations, notably that of Ben Burton's leap into the "lion's mouth"--the yawning shute in the breakers--to escape a beating at the hands of the savage Spilkins, the overseer. Gracie Gordon is a little angel in rags, Terence O'Dowd is a manly, sympathetic lad, and Enoch Evans, the miner-poet, is a big-hearted, honest fellow, a true friend to all whose burdens seem too heavy for them to bear. Ben Burton, the hero, had a hard road to travel, but by grit and energy he advanced step by step until he found himself called upon to fill the position of chief engineer of the Kohinoor Coal Company. +A Runaway Brig+; or, An Accidental Cruise. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "A Runaway Brig" is a sea tale, pure and simple, and that's where it strikes a boy's fancy. The reader can look out upon the wide shimmering sea as it flashes back the sunlight, and imagine himself afloat with Harry Vandyne, Walter Morse, Jim Libby and that old shell-back, Bob Brace, on the brig Bonita, which lands on one of the Bahama keys. Finally three strangers steal the craft, leaving the rightful owners to shift for themselves aboard a broken-down tug. The boys discover a mysterious document which enables them to find a buried treasure, then a storm comes on and the tug is stranded. At last a yacht comes in sight and the party with the treasure is taken off the lonely key. The most exacting youth is sure to be fascinated with this entertaining story. +Fairy Tales and Stories.+ By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "If I were asked to select a child's library I should name these three volumes 'English,' 'Celtic,' and 'Indian Fairy Tales,' with Grimm and Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales."--_Independent._ +The Island Treasure+; or, Harry Darrel's Fortune. By FRANK H. CONVERSE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Harry Darrel, an orphan, having received a nautical training on a school-ship, is bent on going to sea with a boyish acquaintance named Dan Plunket. A runaway horse changes his prospects. Harry saves Dr. Gregg from drowning and the doctor presents his preserver with a bit of property known as Gregg's Island, and makes the lad sailing-master of his sloop yacht. A piratical hoard is supposed to be hidden somewhere on the island. After much search and many thwarted plans, at last Dan discovers the treasure and is the means of finding Harry's father. Mr. Converse's stories possess a charm of their own which is appreciated by lads who delight in good healthy tales that smack of salt water. +The Boy Explorers+: The Adventures of Two Boys in Alaska. By HARRY PRENTICE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Two boys, Raymond and Spencer Manning, travel from San Francisco to Alaska to join their father in search of their uncle, who, it is believed, was captured and detained by the inhabitants of a place called the "Heart of Alaska." On their arrival at Sitka the boys with an Indian guide set off across the mountains. The trip is fraught with perils that test the lads' courage to the utmost. Reaching the Yukon River they build a raft and float down the stream, entering the Mysterious River, from which they barely escape with their lives, only to be captured by natives of the Heart of Alaska. All through their exciting adventures the lads demonstrate what can be accomplished by pluck and resolution, and their experience makes one of the most interesting tales ever written. +The Treasure Finders+: A Boy's Adventures in Nicaragua. By JAMES OTIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Roy and Dean Coloney, with their guide Tongla, leave their father's indigo plantation to visit the wonderful ruins of an ancient city. The boys eagerly explore the dismantled temples of an extinct race and discover three golden images cunningly hidden away. They escape with the greatest difficulty; by taking advantage of a festive gathering they seize a canoe and fly down the river. Eventually they reach safety with their golden prizes. Mr. Otis is the prince of story tellers, for he handles his material with consummate skill. We doubt if he has ever written a more entertaining story than "The Treasure Finders." +Household Fairy Tales.+ By the BROTHERS GRIMM. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "As a collection of fairy tales to delight children of all ages this work ranks second to none."--_Daily Graphic._ +Dan the Newsboy.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The reader is introduced to Dan Mordaunt and his mother living in a poor tenement, and the lad is pluckily trying to make ends meet by selling papers in the streets of New York. A little heiress of six years is confided to the care of the Mordaunts. At the same time the lad obtains a position in a wholesale house. He soon demonstrates how valuable he is to the firm by detecting the bookkeeper in a bold attempt to rob his employers. The child is kidnaped and Dan tracks the child to the house where she is hidden, and rescues her. The wealthy aunt of the little heiress is so delighted with Dan's courage and many good qualities that she adopts him as her heir, and the conclusion of the book leaves the hero on the high road to every earthly desire. +Tony the Hero+: A Brave Boy's Adventure with a Tramp. By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Tony, a sturdy bright-eyed boy of fourteen, is under the control of Rudolph Rugg, a thorough rascal, shiftless and lazy, spending his time tramping about the country. After much abuse Tony runs away and gets a job as stable boy in a country hotel. Tony is heir to a large estate in England, and certain persons find it necessary to produce proof of the lad's death. Rudolph for a consideration hunts up Tony and throws him down a deep well. Of course Tony escapes from the fate provided for him, and by a brave act makes a rich friend, with whom he goes to England, where he secures his rights and is prosperous. The fact that Mr. Alger is the author of this entertaining book will at once recommend it to all juvenile readers. +A Young Hero+; or, Fighting to Win. By EDWARD S. ELLIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This story tells how a valuable solid silver service was stolen from the Misses Perkinpine, two very old and simple minded ladies. Fred Sheldon, the hero of this story and a friend of the old ladies, undertakes to discover the thieves and have them arrested. After much time spent in detective work, he succeeds in discovering the silver plate and winning the reward for its restoration. During the narrative a circus comes to town and a thrilling account of the escape of the lion from its cage, with its recapture, is told in Mr. Ellis' most fascinating style. Every boy will be glad to read this delightful book. +The Days of Bruce+: A Story from Scottish History. By GRACE AGUILAR. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "There is a delightful freshness, sincerity and vivacity about all of Grace Aguilar's stories which cannot fail to win the interest and admiration of every lover of good reading."--_Boston Beacon._ +Tom the Bootblack+; or, The Road to Success. By HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A bright, enterprising lad was Tom the bootblack. He was not at all ashamed of his humble calling, though always on the lookout to better himself. His guardian, old Jacob Morton, died, leaving him a small sum of money and a written confession that Tom, instead of being of humble origin, was the son and heir of a deceased Western merchant, and had been defrauded out of his just rights by an unscrupulous uncle. The lad started for Cincinnati to look up his heritage. But three years passed away before he obtained his first clue. Mr. Grey, the uncle, did not hesitate to employ a ruffian to kill the lad. The plan failed, and Gilbert Grey, once Tom the bootblack, came into a comfortable fortune. This is one of Mr. Alger's best stories. +Captured by Zulus+: A story of Trapping in Africa. By HARRY PRENTICE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This story details the adventures of two lads, Dick Elsworth and Bob Harvey, in the wilds of South Africa, for the purpose of obtaining a supply of zoological curiosities. By stratagem the Zulus capture Dick and Bob and take them to their principal kraal or village. The lads escape death by digging their way out of the prison hut by night. They are pursued, and after a rough experience the boys eventually rejoin the expedition and take part in several wild animal hunts. The Zulus finally give up pursuit and the expedition arrives at the coast without further trouble. Mr. Prentice has a delightful method of blending fact with fiction. He tells exactly how wild-beast collectors secure specimens on their native stamping grounds, and these descriptions make very entertaining reading. +Tom the Ready+; or, Up from the Lowest. By RANDOLPH HILL. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. This is a dramatic narrative of the unaided rise of a fearless, ambitious boy from the lowest round of fortune's ladder--the gate of the poorhouse--to wealth and the governorship of his native State. Thomas Seacomb begins life with a purpose. While yet a schoolboy he conceives and presents to the world the germ of the Overland Express Co. At the very outset of his career jealousy and craft seek to blast his promising future. Later he sets out to obtain a charter for a railroad line in connection with the express business. Now he realizes what it is to match himself against capital. Yet he wins and the railroad is built. Only an uncommon nature like Tom's could successfully oppose such a combine. How he manages to win the battle is told by Mr. Hill in a masterful way that thrills the reader and holds his attention and sympathy to the end. +Roy Gilbert's Search+: A Tale of the Great Lakes. By WM. P. CHIPMAN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A deep mystery hangs over the parentage of Roy Gilbert. He arranges with two schoolmates to make a tour of the Great Lakes on a steam launch. The three boys leave Erie on the launch and visit many points of interest on the lakes. Soon afterward the lad is conspicuous in the rescue of an elderly gentleman and a lady from a sinking yacht. Later on the cruise of the launch is brought to a disastrous termination and the boys narrowly escape with their lives. The hero is a manly, self-reliant boy, whose adventures will be followed with interest. +The Young Scout+; The Story of a West Point Lieutenant. By EDWARD S. ELLIS. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The crafty Apache chief Geronimo but a few years ago was the most terrible scourge of the southwest border. The author has woven, in a tale of thrilling interest, all the incidents of Geronimo's last raid. The hero is Lieutenant James Decker, a recent graduate of West Point. Ambitious to distinguish himself so as to win well-deserved promotion, the young man takes many a desperate chance against the enemy and on more than one occasion narrowly escapes with his life. The story naturally abounds in thrilling situations, and being historically correct, it is reasonable to believe it will find great favor with the boys. In our opinion Mr. Ellis is the best writer of Indian stories now before the public. +Adrift in the Wilds+: The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys. BY EDWARD S. ELLIS. 12mo, cloth, price, $1.00. Elwood Brandon and Howard Lawrence, cousins and schoolmates, accompanied by a lively Irishman called O'Rooney, are enroute for San Francisco. Off the coast of California the steamer takes fire. The two boys and their companion reach the shore with several of the passengers. While O'Rooney and the lads are absent inspecting the neighborhood O'Rooney has an exciting experience and young Brandon becomes separated from his party. He is captured by hostile Indians, but is rescued by an Indian whom the lads had assisted. This is a very entertaining narrative of Southern California in the days immediately preceding the construction of the Pacific railroads. Mr. Ellis seems to be particularly happy in this line of fiction, and the present story is fully as entertaining as anything he has ever written. +The Red Fairy Book.+ Edited by ANDREW LANG. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "A gift-book that will charm any child, and all older folk who have been fortunate enough to retain their taste for the old nursery stories."--_Literary World._ +The Boy Cruisers+; or, Paddling in Florida. BY ST. GEORGE RATHBORNE. 12mo, cloth, price, $1.00. Boys who like an admixture of sport and adventure will find this book just to their taste. We promise them that they will not go to sleep over the rattling experiences of Andrew George and Roland Carter, who start on a canoe trip along the Gulf coast, from Key West to Tampa, Florida. Their first adventure is with a pair of rascals who steal their boats. Next they run into a gale in the Gulf and have a lively experience while it lasts. After that they have a lively time with alligators and divers varieties of the finny tribe. Andrew gets into trouble with a band of Seminole Indians and gets away without having his scalp raised. After this there is no lack of fun till they reach their destination. That Mr. Rathborne knows just how to interest the boys is apparent at a glance, and lads who are in search of a rare treat will do well to read this entertaining story. +Guy Harris+: The Runaway. BY HARRY CASTLEMON. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Guy Harris lived in a small city on the shore of one of the Great Lakes. His head became filled with quixotic notions of going West to hunt grizzlies, in fact, Indians. He is persuaded to go to sea, and gets a glimpse of the rough side of life in a sailor's boarding house. He ships on a vessel and for five months leads a hard life. He deserts his ship at San Francisco and starts out to become a backwoodsman, but rough experiences soon cure him of all desire to be a hunter. At St. Louis he becomes a clerk and for a time he yields to the temptations of a great city. The book will not only interest boys generally on account of its graphic style, but will put many facts before their eyes in a new light. This is one of Castlemon's most attractive stories. +The Train Boy.+ BY HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Paul Palmer was a wide-awake boy of sixteen who supported his mother and sister by selling books and papers on one of the trains running between Chicago and Milwaukee. He detects a young man named Luke Denton in the act of picking the pockets of a young lady, and also incurs the enmity of his brother Stephen, a worthless follow. Luke and Stephen plot to ruin Paul, but their plans are frustrated. In a railway accident many passengers are killed, but Paul is fortunate enough to assist a Chicago merchant, who out of gratitude takes him into his employ. Paul is sent to manage a mine in Custer City and executes his commission with tact and judgment and is well started on the road to business prominence. This is one of Mr. Alger's most attractive stories and is sure to please all readers. +Joe's Luck+: A Boy's Adventures in California. BY HORATIO ALGER, JR. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Without a doubt Joe Mason was a lucky boy, but he deserved the golden chances that fell to his lot, for he had the pluck and ambition to push himself to the front. Joe had but one dollar in the world when he stood despondently on the California Mail Steamship Co.'s dock in New York watching the preparations incident to the departure of the steamer. The same dollar was still Joe's entire capital when he landed in the bustling town of tents and one-story cabins--the San Francisco of '51, and inside of the week the boy was proprietor of a small restaurant earning a comfortable profit. The story is chock full of stirring incidents, while the amusing situations are furnished by Joshua Bickford, from Pumpkin Hollow, and the fellow who modestly styles himself the "Rip-tail Roarer, from Pike Co., Missouri." Mr. Alger never writes a poor book, and "Joe's Luck" is certainly one of his best. +Three Bright Girls+: A Story of Chance and Mischance. By ANNIE E. ARMSTRONG. With full page Illustrations by W. PARKINSON. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. By a sudden turn of fortune's wheel the three heroines of this story are brought down from a household of lavish comfort to meet the incessant cares and worries of those who have to eke out a very limited income. And the charm of the story lies in the cheery helpfulness of spirit developed in the girls by their changed circumstances; while the author finds a pleasant ending to all their happy makeshifts. "The story is charmingly told, and the book can be warmly recommended as a present for girls."--_Standard._ +Giannetta+: A Girl's Story of Herself. By ROSA MULHOLLAND. With full-page Illustrations by LOCKHART BOGLE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The daughter of a gentleman, who had married a poor Swiss girl, was stolen as an infant by some of her mother's relatives. The child having died, they afterward for the sake of gain substitute another child for it, and the changeling, after becoming a clever modeler of clay images, is suddenly transferred to the position of a rich heiress. She develops into a good and accomplished woman, and though the imposture of her early friends is finally discovered, she has gained too much love and devotion to be really a sufferer by the surrender of her estates. "Extremely well told and full of interest. Giannetta is a true heroine--warm-hearted, self-sacrificing, and, as all good women nowadays are, largely touched with enthusiasm of humanity. The illustrations are unusually good. One of the most attractive gift books of the season."--_The Academy._ +Margery Merton's Girlhood.+ By ALICE CORKRAN. With full-page Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. The experiences of an orphan girl who in infancy is left by her father--an officer in India--to the care of an elderly aunt residing near Paris. The accounts of the various persons who have an after influence on the story, the school companions of Margery, the sisters of the Conventual College of Art, the professor, and the peasantry of Fontainebleau, are singularly vivid. There is a subtle attraction about the book which will make it a great favorite with thoughtful girls. "Another book for girls we can warmly commend. There is a delightful piquancy in the experiences and trials of a young English girl who studies painting in Paris."--_Saturday Review._ +Under False Colors+: A Story from Two Girls' Lives. By SARAH DOUDNEY. With full-page Illustrations by G. G. KILBURNE. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. A story which has in it so strong a dramatic element that it will attract readers of all ages and of either sex. The incidents of the plot, arising from the thoughtless indulgence of a deceptive freak, are exceedingly natural, and the keen interest of the narrative is sustained from beginning to end. "Sarah Doudney has no superior as a writer of high-toned stories--pure in style, original in conception, and with skillfully wrought out plots; but we have seen nothing equal in dramatic energy to this book."--_Christian Leader._ +Down the Snow Stairs+; or, From Good-night to Good-morning. By ALICE CORKRAN. With Illustrations by GORDON BROWNE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. This is a remarkable story: full of vivid fancy and quaint originality. In its most fantastic imaginings it carries with it a sense of reality, and derives a singular attraction from that combination of simplicity, originality, and subtle humor, which is so much appreciated by lively and thoughtful children. Children of a larger growth will also be deeply interested in Kitty's strange journey, and her wonderful experiences. "Among all the Christmas volumes which the year has brought to our table this one stands out _facile princeps_--a gem of the first water, bearing upon every one of its pages the signet mark of genius.... All is told with such simplicity and perfect naturalness that the dream appears to be a solid reality. It is indeed a Little Pilgrims Progress."--_Christian Leader._ +The Tapestry Room+: A Child's Romance. By MRS. MOLESWORTH. Illustrated by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "Mrs. Molesworth is a charming painter of the nature and ways of children; and she has done good service in giving us this charming juvenile which will delight the young people."--_Athenæum_, London. +Little Miss Peggy+: Only a Nursery Story. By MRS. MOLESWORTH. With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. Mrs. Molesworth's children are finished studies. She is never sentimental, but writes common sense in a straightforward manner. A joyous earnest spirit pervades her work, and her sympathy is unbounded. She loves them with her whole heart, while she lays bare their little minds, and expresses their foibles, their faults, their virtues, their inward struggles, their conception of duty, and their instinctive knowledge of the right and wrong of things. She knows their characters, she understands their wants, and she desires to help them. +Polly+: A New Fashioned Girl. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. Few authors have achieved a popularity equal to Mrs. Meade as a writer of stories for young girls. Her characters are living beings of flesh and blood, not lay figures of conventional type. Into the trials and crosses, and everyday experiences, the reader enters at once with zest and hearty sympathy. While Mrs. Meade always writes with a high moral purpose, her lessons of life, purity and nobility of character are rather inculcated by example than intruded as sermons. +Rosy.+ By MRS. MOLESWORTH. Illustrated by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. Mrs. Molesworth, considering the quality and quantity of her labors, is the best story-teller for children England has yet known. This is a bold statement and requires substantiation, Mrs. Molesworth, during the last six years, has never failed to occupy a prominent place among the juvenile writers of the season. "A very pretty story.... The writer knows children and their ways well.... The illustrations are exceedingly well drawn."--_Spectator._ +Little Sunshine's Holiday+: A Picture from Life. By MISS MULOCK. Illustrated by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "This is a pretty narrative of baby life, describing the simple doings and sayings of a very charming and rather precocious child nearly three years old."--_Pall Mall Gazette._ "Will be delightful to those who have nurseries peopled by 'Little Sunshines' of their own."--_Athenæum._ +Esther+: A Book for Girls. By ROSA N. CAREY. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "She inspires her readers simply by bringing them in contact with the characters, who are in themselves inspiring. Her simple stories are woven in order to give her an opportunity to describe her characters by their own conduct in seasons of trial."--_Chicago Times._ +Sweet Content.+ By MRS. MOLESWORTH. Illustrated by W. RAINEY. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "It seems to me not at all easier to draw a lifelike child than to draw a lifelike man or woman: Shakespeare and Webster were the only two men of their age who could do it with perfect delicacy and success. Our own age is more fortunate, on this single score at least, having a larger and far nobler proportion of female writers; among whom, since the death of George Eliot, there is none left whose touch is so exquisite and masterly, whose love is so thoroughly according to knowledge, whose bright and sweet invention is so fruitful, so truthful, or so delightful as Mrs. Molesworth."--A. C. SWINBURNE. +One of a Covey.+ By the Author of "Honor Bright," "Miss Toosey's Mission." With Numerous Illustrations by H. J. A. MILES. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "Full of spirit and life, so well sustained throughout that grown-up readers may enjoy it as much as children. This 'Covey' consists of the twelve children of a hard-pressed Dr. Partridge, out of which is chosen a little girl to be adopted by a spoilt, fine lady.... It is one of the best books of the season."--_Guardian._ "We have rarely read a story for boys and girls with greater pleasure. One of the chief characters would not have disgraced Dickens' pen."--_Literary World._ +The Little Princess of Tower Hill.+ By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "This is one of the prettiest books for children published, as pretty as a pond-lily, and quite as fragrant. Nothing could be imagined more attractive to young people than such a combination of fresh pages and fair pictures; and while children will rejoice over it--which is much better than crying for it--it is a book that can be read with pleasure even by older boys and girls."--_Boston Advertiser._ +Honor Bright+; or, The Four-Leaved Shamrock. By the Author of "One of a Covey," "Miss Toosey's Mission," etc., etc. With full-page Illustrations, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "It requires a special talent to describe the sayings and doings of children, and the author of 'Honor Bright,' 'One of a Covey,' possesses that talent in no small degree."--_Literary Churchman._ "A cheery, sensible, and healthy tale."--_The Times._ +The Cuckoo Clock.+ By MRS. MOLESWORTH. With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "A beautiful little story. It will be read with delight by every child into whose hands it is placed.... The author deserves all the praise that has been, is, and will be bestowed on 'The Cuckoo Clock.' Children's stories are plentiful, but one like this is not to be met with every day."--_Pall Mall Gazette._ +Girl Neighbors+; or, The Old Fashion and the New. By SARAH TYTLER. With full-page Illustrations by C. T. GARLAND. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "One of the most effective and quietly humorous of Miss Tytler's stories. 'Girl Neighbors' is a pleasant comedy, not so much of errors as of prejudices got rid of, very healthy, very agreeable, and very well written."--_Spectator._ +The Little Lame Prince.+ By MISS MULOCK. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. "No sweeter--that is the proper word--Christmas story for the little folks could easily be found, and it is as delightful for older readers as well. There is a moral to it which the reader can find out for himself, if he chooses to think."--_Herald_, Cleveland. +The Adventures of a Brownie.+ As Told to my Child. By MISS MULOCK. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "The author of this delightful little book leaves it in doubt all through whether there actually is such a creature in existence as a Brownie, but she makes us hope that there might be."--_Standard, Chicago._ +Only a Girl+: A Story of a Quiet Life. A Tale of Brittany. Adapted from the French by C. A. JONES. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "We can thoroughly recommend this brightly written and homely narrative."--_Saturday Review._ +Little Rosebud+; or, Things Will Take a Turn. By BEATRICE HARRADEN. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "A most delightful little book.... Miss Harraden is so bright, so healthy, and so natural withal that the book ought, as a matter of duty, to be added to every girl's library in the land."--_Boston Transcript._ +Little Miss Joy.+ By EMMA MARSHALL. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "A very pleasant and instructive story, told by a very charming writer in such an attractive way as to win favor among its young readers. The illustrations add to the beauty of the book."--_Utica Herald._ +Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe.+ By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "This story is unique among tales intended for children, alike for pleasant instruction, quaintness of humor, gentle pathos, and the subtlety with which lessons moral and otherwise are conveyed to children, and perhaps to their seniors as well."--_The Spectator._ +Joan's Adventures at the North Pole and Elsewhere.+ By ALICE CORKRAN. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "Wonderful as the adventures of Joan are, it must be admitted that they are very naturally worked out and very plausibly presented. Altogether this is an excellent story for girls."--_Saturday Review._ +Count Up the Sunny Days+: A Story for Boys and Girls. By C. A. JONES. With full-page Illustrations, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "An unusually good children's story."--_Glasgow Herald._ +Sue and I.+ By MRS. O'REILLY. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "A thoroughly delightful book, full of sound wisdom as well as fun."--_Athenæum._ +Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.+ By LEWIS CARROLL. With 42 Illustrations by JOHN TENNIEL. 12mo, cloth, price 75 cents. "From first to last, almost without exception, this story is delightfully droll, humorous and illustrated in harmony with the story."--_New York Express._ +Celtic Fairy Tales.+ Edited by JOSEPH JACOBS. Illustrated by J. D. BATTEN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "A stock of delightful little narratives gathered chiefly from the Celtic-speaking peasants of Ireland."--_Daily Telegraph._ "A perfectly lovely book. And oh! the wonderful pictures inside. Get this book if you can; it is capital, all through."--_Pall Mall Budget._ +English Fairy Tales.+ Edited by JOSEPH JACOBS. Illustrated by J. D. BATTEN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "The tales are simply delightful. No amount of description can do them justice. The only way is to read the book through from cover to cover."--_Magazine and Book Review._ "The book is intended to correspond to 'Grimm's Fairy Tales,' and it must be allowed that its pages fairly rival in interest those of the well-known repository of folk-lore."--_Sydney Morning Herald._ +Indian Fairy Tales.+ Edited by JOSEPH JACOBS. Illustrated by J. D. BATTEN. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "Mr. Jacobs brings home to us in a clear and intelligible manner the enormous influence which 'Indian Fairy Tales' have had upon European literature of the kind."--_Gloucester Journal._ "The present combination will be welcomed not alone by the little ones for whom it is specially combined, but also by children of larger growth and added years."--_Daily Telegraph._ +The Blue Fairy Book.+ Edited by ANDREW LANG. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "The tales are simply delightful. No amount of description can do them justice. The only way is to read the book through from cover to cover."--_Magazine and Book Review._ +The Green Fairy Book.+ Edited by ANDREW LANG. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "The most delightful book of fairy tales, taking form and contents together, ever presented to children."--E. S. HARTLAND, in _Folk-Lore_. +The Yellow Fairy Book.+ Edited by ANDREW LANG. Profusely Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "As a collection of fairy tales to delight children of all ages ranks second to none."--_Daily Graphic_ (with illustrations). +Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There.+ By LEWIS CARROLL. With 50 Illustrations by JOHN TENNIEL. "A delight alike to the young people and their elders, extremely funny both in text and illustrations."--_Boston Express._ +The Heir of Redclyffe.+ By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "A narrative full of interest from first, to last. It is told clearly and in a straightforward manner and arrests the attention of the reader at once, so that one feels afresh the unspeakable pathos of the story to the end."--_London Graphic._ +The Dove in the Eagle's Nest.+ By CHARLOTTE M. YONGE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "Among all the modern writers we believe Miss Yonge first, not in genius but in this, that she employs her great abilities for a high and noble purpose. We know of few modern writers whose works may be so safely commended as hers."--_Cleveland Times._ +A Sweet Girl Graduate.+ By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "One of this popular author's best. The characters are well imagined and drawn. The story moves with plenty of spirit and the interest does not flag until the end too quickly comes."--_Providence Journal._ +The Palace Beautiful+: A Story for Girls. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated, cloth, 12mo, price $1.00. "A bright and interesting story. The many admirers of Mrs. L. T. Meade in this country will be delighted with the 'Palace Beautiful' for more reasons than one."--_New York Recorder._ +A World of Girls+: The Story of a School. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "One of those wholesome stories which it does one good to read. It will afford pure delight to her numerous readers."--_Boston Home Journal._ +The Lady of the Forest+: A Story for Girls. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "This story is written in the author's well-known, fresh and easy style. All girls fond of reading will be charmed by this well written story. It is told with the author's customary grace and spirit."--_Boston Times._ +At the Back of the North Wind.+ By GEORGE MACDONALD. Illustrated by GEORGE GROVES. 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "A very pretty story, with much of the freshness and vigor of Mr. Macdonald's earlier work.... It is a sweet, earnest, and wholesome fairy story, and the quaint native humor is delightful. A most delightful volume for young readers."--_Philadelphia Times._ +The Water Babies+: A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby. By CHARLES KINGSLEY. Illustrated, 12mo, cloth, price $1.00. "The strength of his work, as well as its peculiar charms, consist in his description of the experiences of a youth with life under water in the luxuriant wealth of which he revels with all the ardor of a poetical nature."--_New York Tribune._ The "Little Men" Series. Uniform Cloth Binding. Profusely Illustrated. PRICE 75 CENTS PER COPY. This series of books has been selected from the writings of a large number of popular authors of juvenile stories, and are particularly adapted to interest and supply attractive reading for young boys. The books are profusely illustrated, and any one seeking to find a book to give a young boy cannot make a mistake by selecting from the following list of titles. [Illustration] +_Black Beauty._+ The Autobiography of a Horse. By ANNA SEWELL. Illustrated cloth, price 75 cents. +_Carrots_+: Just a Little Boy. By MRS. MOLESWORTH. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Chunk, Fusky and Snout._+ A Story of Wild Pigs for Little People. By GERALD YOUNG. Illus., cloth, price 75 cents. +_Daddy's Boy._+ By L. T. MEADE. Illus., cloth, price 75 cents. +_Geoff and Jim._+ A Story of School Life. By ISMAY THORN. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Jackanapes._+ By JULIANA HORATIA EWING. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Jack_+: A Topsy Turvy Story. By C. M. CRAWLEY-BOEVEY. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Larry's Luck._+ By the author of "Miss Toosey's Mission," "Tom's Opinion," "One of a Covey," etc. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Mopsa the Fairy._+ By JEAN INGELOW. Illustrated cloth, price 75 cents. +_Peter the Pilgrim._+ The Story of a Boy and His Pet Rabbit. By L. T. MEADE. Illustrated by GORDON BROWNE, cloth, price 75 cents. +_Tom's Opinion._+ By the author of "Miss Toosey's Mission," "One of a Covey," etc. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. +_We and the World._+ A Story for Boys. By JULIANA HORATIA EWING. Illustrated, cloth, price 75 cents. For sale by all booksellers, or sent postpaid on receipt of price by the publisher, +A. L. BURT, 97 Reade Street, New York+. THE "LITTLE WOMEN" SERIES. Uniform Cloth Binding. Profusely Illustrated. A series of most delightful stories for young girls. Selected from the best-known writers for children. These stories are narrated in a simple and lively fashion and cannot but prove irresistible with the little ones, while throughout the volumes there is a comprehension of and sympathy with child thought and feeling that is almost as rare out of books as in. These stories are sunny, interesting, and thoroughly winsome and wholesome. [Illustration] +Adventures of a Brownie+, As Told to My Child. By MISS MULOCK. 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BURT, 97 Reade Street, New York.+_ THE ALGER SERIES for BOYS Uniform with This Volume. This series affords wholesome reading for boys and girls, and all volumes are extremely interesting.--_Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette._ +JOE'S LUCK; or, A Brave Boy's Adventurer, in California.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +JULIAN MORTIMER; or, A Brave Boy's Struggles for Home and Fortune.+ By HARRY CASTLEMON. +ADRIFT IN THE WILDS; or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys.+ By EDWARD S. ELLIS. +FRANK FOWLER, THE CASH BOY.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +GUY HARRIS, THE RUNAWAY.+ By HARRY CASTLEMON. +THE SLATE-PICKER; A Story of a Boy's Life in the Coal Mines.+ By HARRY PRENTICE. +TOM TEMPLE'S CAREER.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +TOM, THE READY; or, Up from the Lowest.+ By RANDOLPH HILL. +THE CASTAWAYS; or, On the Florida Reefs.+ By JAMES OTIS. +CAPTAIN KIDD'S GOLD. The True Story of an Adventurous Sailor Boy.+ By JAMES FRANKLIN FITTS. +TOM THATCHER'S FORTUNE.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +LOST IN THE CANON. 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A Story of Trapping in Africa.+ By HARRY PRENTICE. +THE TRAIN BOY.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +DAN THE NEWSBOY.+ By HORATIO ALGER, JR. +SEARCH FOR THE SILVER CITY. A Story of Adventure in Yucatan.+ By JAMES OTIS. +THE BOY CRUISERS; or, Paddling in Florida.+ By ST. GEORGE RATHBORNE. _+The above stories are printed on extra paper, and bound in Handsome Cloth Binding, in all respects uniform with this volume, at $1.00 per copy.+_ _For sale by all Booksellers, or will be sent post-paid on receipt of price, by the publisher, A. L. BURT, 66 Reade St., New York._ +-------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's note: | | | |Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | |A Table of Contents has been added. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+ 
21363	----	Quicksilver; or, The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel, by George Manville Fenn. ________________________________________________________________________ I don't know where they get titles for books from. The subtitle is "The Boy with no Skid to his Wheel", and that is the only mention of the word "skid" in the entire book. The only "wheel" mentioned is when the boy hero does cartwheels round the drawing-room. And the said boy is referred to as "a globule of quicksilver". So I suppose it is something the author had in his mind before he began the book. Unlike most of Fenn's books, which involve dire situations with pirates in the China Seas, and other such places, the entire action of this book takes place in a small English village. The local doctor, having retired childless, decides he would like to adopt a boy. Being a Governor of the local Institute for the Poor he goes there and selects a boy who at the age of two had been a foundling, and who is now eleven or twelve. Everyone is keen to make this work, but there is a big difference in social manners between a boy brought up in an Institute, and the boy the doctor would like to have. So a certain amount of retraining has to take place. Of course this is successful in the end, but there are a lot of blips long the way. Our hero makes friends with a local boy who is definitely "non-U". They run away together in a boat they have nicked for the purpose. For a few days they have various adventures, some enjoyable, but most of them not. On being brought back our hero is sent to a small private school run by a clergyman, who beats the boy mercilessly, so that he runs away from the school, back to the doctor's, but remains hidden in an out-house. He is found, but becomes very ill, so the whole household is taken to a rented house in the Isle of Wight, where he eventually recovers. At which point it is discovered who his real parents are, and he is "U" after all, so everyone feels good about it. ________________________________________________________________________ QUICKSILVER; OR, THE BOY WITH NO SKID TO HIS WHEEL, BY GEORGE MANVILLE FENN. CHAPTER ONE. A VERY STRANGE PAIR. He was very grubby, and all about his dark grey eyes there were the marks made by his dirty fingers where he had rubbed away the tickling tears. The brownish red dust of the Devon lanes had darkened his delicate white skin, and matted his shiny yellow curls. As to his hands, with their fat little fingers, with every joint showing a pretty dimple, they looked white and clean, but that was due to the fact that he was sitting in a bed of moss by the roadside, where the water came trickling down from the red rocks above, and dabbling and splashing the tiny pool, till the pearly drops hung among his dusty curls, and dotted, as if with jewels, the ragged old blue jersey shirt which seemed to form his only garment. This did not fit him, in spite of its elasticity, for it was what a dealer would have called "man's size," and the wearer was about two and a half, or at the most three; but the sleeves had been cut so that they only reached his elbows, and the hem torn off the bottom and turned into a belt or sash, which was tied tightly round the little fellow's waist, to keep the jersey from slipping off. Consequently the plump neck was bare, as were his dirty little legs, with their dimpled, chubby knees. While he splashed and dabbled the water, the sun flashed upon the drops, some of which jewelled the spreading ferns which drooped over the natural fount, and even reached as high as the delicate leafage of stunted overhanging birch, some of whose twigs kept waving in the soft summer breeze, and sweeping against the boy's curly hair. When the little fellow splashed the water, and felt it fly into his face, he laughed--burst after burst of silvery, merry laughter; and in the height of his enjoyment he threw back his head, his ruddy lips parted, and two rows of pearly teeth flashed in the bright sunshine. As dirty a little grub as ever made mud-pies in a gutter; but the water, the ferns, moss, and flowers around were to his little soul the most delightful of toys, and he seemed supremely happy. After a time he grew tired of splashing the water, and, drawing one little foot into his lap, he pursed up his lips, an intent frown wrinkled his shining forehead, and he began, in the most serio-comic manner, to pick the row of tiny toes, passing a chubby finger between them to get rid of the dust and grit. All this while the breeze blew, the birch-tree waved, and the flowers nodded, while from out of a clump of ling and rushes there came, at regular intervals, a low roar like the growl of a wild beast. After a few minutes there was the _pad, pad_--_pad, pad_ of a horse's hoofs on the dusty road; the rattle of wheels; and a green gig, drawn by a sleepy-looking grey horse, and containing a fat man and a broad woman, came into sight, approached slowly, and would have passed had not the broad woman suddenly laid her hand upon the reins, and checked the grey horse, when the two red-faced farming people opened their mouths, and stared at the child. "Sakes alive, Izick, look at that!" said the woman in a whisper, while the little fellow went on picking his toes, and the grey horse turned his tail into a live chowry to keep away the flies. "Well, I am!" said the fat man, wrinkling his face all over as he indulged in a silent laugh. "Why, moother, he's a perfeck picter." "The pretty, pretty little fellow," said the woman in a genuine motherly tone. "O Izick, how I should like to give him a good wash!" "Wash! He's happy enough, bless him!" said the man. "Wonder whose he be. Here, what are you going to do?" "I'm going to give un a kiss, that's what I'm a-going to do," said the woman getting very slowly out of the gig. "He must be a lost child." "Well," grumbled the man, "we didn't come to market to find lost children." Then he sat forward, with his arms resting upon his knees, watching his wife as she slowly approached the unconscious child, till she was in the act of stooping over him to lay her fat red hand upon his golden curls, when there was a loud roar as if from some savage beast, and the woman jumped back scared; the horse leaped sidewise; the farmer raised his whip; and the pair of simple-hearted country folks stared at a fierce-looking face which rose out of the bed of ling, its owner having been sleeping face downward, and now glowering at them above his folded arms. It was not a pleasant countenance, for it was foul without with dirt and more foul within from disease, being covered with ruddy fiery blotch and pimple, and the eyes were of that unnatural hue worn by one who has for years been debased by drink. "Yah!" roared the man, half-closing his bleared eyes. "Leave the bairn alone." "O Izick!" gasped the woman. "Here, none o' that!" cried the farmer fiercely. "Don't you frighten my wife." "Let the bairn alone," growled the man again. "How came you by him!" said the woman recovering herself. "I'm sure he can't be your'n." "Not mine!" growled the man in a hoarse, harsh voice. "You let the bairn be. I'll soon show you about that. Hi! chick!" The little fellow scrambled to him, and putting his tiny chubby arms about the man's coarse neck, nestled his head upon his shoulder, and turned to gaze at the farmer and his wife. "Not my bairn!" growled the man; "what d'yer say to that?" "Lor, Izick, only look," said the woman in a whisper. "My!" "Well, what are yer starin' at?" growled the man defiantly; "didn't think he were your bairn, did you!" "Come away, missus," said the farmer; and the woman reluctantly climbed back into the gig. "It don't seem right, Izick, for him to have such a bairn as that," said the woman, who could not keep her eyes off the child. "Ah, well! it ar'n't no business of our'n. Go along!" This was to the horse, who went off directly in a shambling trot, and the gig rattled along the road; but as long as they remained in sight, the farmer's wife stared back at the little fellow, and the rough-looking tramp glared at her from among the heather and ling. "Must be getting on--must be getting on," he growled to himself; and he kept on muttering in a low tone as he tried to stagger to his feet, but for a time his joints seemed to be so stiff that he could only get to his knees, and he had to set the child down. Then after quite a struggle, during which he kept on muttering in a strange incoherent manner, he contrived to get upon his feet, and stood holding on by a branch of the birch-tree, while the child stared in his repellent face. The next minute he staggered into the road and began to walk away, reeling strangely like a drunken man, talking wildly the while; but he seemed to recall the fact that he had left the child behind, and he staggered back to where a block of stone lay by the water-side, and sat down. "Here, chick!" he growled. His aspect and the tone of his voice were sufficient to frighten the little fellow away, but he did not seem in the least alarmed, and placed his tiny hands in the great gnarled fists extended to him. Then with a swing the man threw the child over his shoulder and on to his back, staggering and nearly overbalancing himself in the act. But he kept his feet, and growled savagely as his little burden uttered a whimpering cry. "Hold on," he said; and the next minute the pretty bare arms were clinging tightly round his neck, the hands hidden in the man's grizzly tangled beard; and, pig-a-back fashion, he bore him on along the road. The sun beat down upon the fair curly head; the dust rose, shuffled up by the tramp's uncertain step, while the chats and linnets twittered among the furze, and the larks sang high overhead. This and the heat, combined with the motion, sufficed to lull the tiny fellow to rest, and before long his head drooped sidewise, and he was fast asleep. But he did not fall. It was as if the natural instinct which enables the young life to maintain its hold upon the old orang-outang was in force here, so that the child clung tightly to the staggering man, who seemed thenceforth oblivious of his existence. The day passed on: the sun was setting fast, and the tramp continued to stagger on like a drunken man, talking wildly all the time, now babbling of green leaves, now muttering angrily, as if abusing some one near. Then came the soft evening-time, as he tottered down a long slope towards the houses lying in a hollow, indicating the existence of a goodly town. And now groups of people were passed, some of whom turned to gaze after the coarse-looking object with disgust, others with wonder; while the more thoughtless indulged in a grin, and made remarks indicating their impressions of where the tramp had been last. He did not seem to see them, however, but kept on the same incoherent talking in a low growl, and his eyes glared strangely at objects unseen by those he passed. All at once, though, he paused as he reached the broad marketplace of the town, and said to one of a group of idlers the one word-- "Workus?" "Eh?" "Workus!" said the tramp fiercely. "Oh! Straight avore you. Zee a big wall zoon as yer get over the bridge." The man staggered on, and crossed the swift river running through the town, and in due course reached the big wall, in which was a doorway with a bell-pull at the side. A few minutes later the door had been opened, and a stalwart porter seemed disposed to refuse admission, but his experienced eyes read the applicant's state, and the door closed upon the strangely assorted pair. CHAPTER TWO. THE TRAMP'S LEGACY. The doctor shook his head as he stood beside a plain bed in a whitewashed ward where the tramp lay muttering fiercely, and the brisk-looking master of the workhouse and a couple of elderly women stood in a group. "No, Hippetts," said the doctor; "the machinery is all to pieces and beyond repair. No." Just then there was a loud cry, consequent upon one of the women taking the child from where it had been seated upon the foot of the bed, and carrying it toward the door. In a moment the sick man sprang up in bed, glaring wildly and stretching out his hands. "Quick! take the boy away," said the master; but the doctor held up his finger, watching the sick man the while. Then he whispered a few words to the master, who seemed to give an unwilling consent, and the boy was placed within the tramp's reach. The man had been trying to say something, but the words would not come. As he touched the child's hand, though, he gave vent to a sigh of satisfaction, and sank back upon the coarse pillow, while the child nestled to his side, sobbing convulsively, but rapidly calming down. "Against all rule and precedent, doctor," said the master, in an ill-used tone. "Yes, my dear Mr Hippetts," said the doctor, smiling; "but I order it as a sedative medicine. It will do more good than anything I can give. It will not be for long." The master nodded. "Mrs Curdley," continued the doctor, "you will sit up with him." "Yes, sir," said one of the old women with a curtsey. "Keep an eye to the child, in case he turns violent; but I don't think he will--I don't think he will." "And send for you, sir, if he do!" "Yes." The little party left the workhouse infirmary, all but Mrs Curdley, who saw to lighting a fire for providing herself with a cup of tea, to comfort her from time to time during her long night-watch, and then all was very still in the whitewashed place. The child took the bread and butter the old woman gave him, and sat on the bed smiling at her as he ate it hungrily, quite contented now; and the only sounds that broke the silence after a time were the mutterings of the sick man. But these did not disturb the child, who finished his bread and butter, and drank some sweet tea which the old woman gave him, after which his little head sank sidewise, his eyes closed, and he fell fast asleep on the foot of the bed. The night was warm, and he needed no coverlet, while from time to time the hard-faced old woman went to look at her patient, giving him a cursory glance, and then stopping at the bedside to gently stroke the child's round cheek with her rough finger, and as the little fellow once broke into a crowing laugh in his sleep, it had a strange effect upon the old nurse, who slowly wiped the corners of her eyes with her apron, and bent down and kissed him. Hour after hour was chimed and struck by the great clock in the centre of the town; and as midnight passed, the watchful old nurse did her watching in a pleasant dream, in which she thought that she was once more young, and that boy of hers who enlisted, went to India, and was shot in an encounter with one of the hill tribes, was young again, and that she was cutting bread and butter from a new loaf. It was a very pleasant dream, and lasted a long time, for the six o'clock bell was ringing before she awoke with a start and exclaimed-- "Bless me! must have just closed my eyes. Why, a pretty bairn!" she said softly, as her hard face grew soft. "Sleeping like a top, and-- oh!" She caught the sleeping child from the bed, and hurried out of the place to lay him upon her own bed, where about an hour after he awoke, and cried to go to the tramp. But there was no tramp there for him to join. The rough man had gone on a long journey, where he could not take the child, who cried bitterly, as if he had lost the only one to whom he could cling, till the old woman returned from a task she had had to fulfil, and with one of her pockets in rather a bulgy state. Her words and some bread and butter quieted the child, who seemed to like her countenance, or read therein that something which attracts the very young as beauty does those of older growth, and the addition of a little brown sugar, into which he could dip a wet finger from time to time, made them such friends that he made no objection to being washed. "Yes, sir; went off quite quiet in his sleep," said the old nurse in answer to the doctor's question. "And the child?" "Oh, I gave him a good wash, sir, which he needed badly," said the woman volubly. "Poor little wretch!" muttered the doctor as he went away. "A tramp's child--a waif cast up by the way. Ah, Hippetts, I was right, you see: it was not for long." CHAPTER THREE. DOCTOR GRAYSON'S THEORY. "I want some more." "Now, my dear Eddy, I think you have had quite as much as is good for you," said Lady Danby, shaking her fair curls at her son. "No, I haven't, ma. Pa, may I have some pine-apple!" "Yes, yes, yes, and make yourself ill. Maria, my dear, I wish you wouldn't have that boy into dessert; one can hardly hear one's-self speak." "Sweet boy!" muttered Dr Grayson of the Manor House, Coleby, as he glanced at Sir James Danby's hopeful fat-faced son, his mother's idol, before which she worshipped every day. The doctor glanced across the table at his quiet lady-like daughter, and there was such a curious twinkle in his eye that she turned aside so as to keep her countenance, and began talking to Lady Danby about parish work, the poor, and an entertainment to be given at the workhouse. Dr Grayson and his daughter were dining at Cedars House that evening, greatly to the doctor's annoyance, for he preferred home. "But it would be uncivil not to go," said Miss Grayson, who had kept her father's house almost from a child. So they went. "Well, doctor," said Sir James, who was a comfortable specimen of the easy-going country baronet and magistrate, "you keep to your opinion, and I'll keep to mine." "I will," said the doctor; "and in two years' time I shall publish my book with the result of my long studies of the question. I say, sir, that a boy's a boy." "Oh yes, we all agree to that, doctor," said Lady Danby sweetly. "Edgar, my dear, I'm sure you've had enough." "Pa, mayn't I have half a glass of Madeira!" "Now, my dear boy, you have had some." "But that was such a teeny weeny drop, ma. That glass is so thick." "For goodness' sake, Maria, give him some wine, and keep him quiet," cried Sir James. "Don't you hear that Dr Grayson and I are discussing a point in philosophy!" "Then you mustn't ask for any more, Eddy dear," said mamma, and she removed the decanter stopper, and began to pour out a very thin thread of wine, when the young monkey gave the bottom of the decanter a tilt, and the glass was nearly filled. "Eddy, for shame!" said mamma. "What will Miss Grayson think?" "I don't care," said the boy, seizing the glass, drinking some of the rich wine, and then turning to the thick slice of pine-apple his mother had cut. The doctor gave his daughter another droll look, but she preserved her calm. "To continue," said the doctor: "I say a boy's a boy, and I don't care whose he is, or where he came from; he is so much plastic clay, and you can make of him what you please." "You can't make him a gentleman," said Sir James. "I beg your pardon." "And I beg yours. If the boy has not got breed in him--gentle blood-- you can never make him a gentleman." "I beg your pardon," said the doctor again. "I maintain, sir, that it is all a matter of education or training, and that you could make a gentleman's son a labourer, or a labourer's son a gentleman." "And are you going to put that in your book, doctor?" "Yes, sir, I am: for it is a fact. I'm sure I'm right." Sir James laughed. "And I'm sure you are wrong. Look at my boy, now. You can see in an instant that he has breed in him; but if you look at my coachman's son, you will see that he has no breeding at all." _Crork, crork, crork, crork_. "Oh!" from her ladyship, in quite a scream. "Good gracious!" cried Sir James; and the doctor and Helen Grayson both started to their feet, while Master Edgar Danby kept on making the most unearthly noises, kicking, gasping, turning black in the face, and rolling his eyes, which threatened to start from their sockets. "What is it?" cried Sir James. Crash went a glass. A dessert-plate was knocked off the table, and Master Edgar kept on uttering his hoarse guttural sound of _crork, crork, crork_! He was choking, and the result might have been serious as he sat struggling there, with papa on one side, and mamma on the other, holding his hands, had not Dr Grayson come behind him, and given him a tremendous slap on the back which had a beneficial effect, for he ceased making the peculiar noise, and began to wipe his eyes. "What was it, dear? what was it, my darling?" sobbed Lady Danby. "A great piece of pine-apple stuck in his throat," said the doctor. "I say, youngster, you should use your teeth." "Edgar, drink some water," said Sir James sternly. Master Edgar caught up his wine-glass, and drained it. "Now, sir, leave the room!" said Sir James. "Oh, don't, don't be harsh with him, James," said her ladyship pathetically. "The poor boy has suffered enough." "I say he shall leave the room," cried Sir James in a towering fury; and Master Edgar uttered a howl. "Really, James, I--" Here her ladyship had an hysterical fit, and had to be attended to, what time Master Edgar howled loudly till the butler had been summoned and he was led off like a prisoner, while her ladyship grew worse, but under the ministrations of Helen Grayson, suddenly becoming better, drank a glass of water, and wiped her eyes. "I am so weak," she said unnecessarily, as she rose from the dessert-table and left the room with Helen Grayson, who had hard work once more to keep her countenance, as she encountered her father's eye. "Spoils him, Grayson," said Sir James, as they settled down to their port. "Noble boy, though, wonderful intellect. I shall make him a statesman." "Hah!" ejaculated the firm-looking grey-haired doctor, who had taken high honours at his college, practised medicine for some years, and since the death of his wife lived the calm life of a student in the old Manor House of Coleby. "Now, you couldn't make a statesman of some boys whom you took out of the gutter." "Oh yes, I could," said the doctor. "Oh yes, sir." "Ah, well; we will not argue," said Sir James good-humouredly. "No," said the doctor, "we will not argue." But they did argue all the same, till they had had their coffee, when they argued again, and then joined the ladies in the drawing-room, where Master Edgar was eating cake, and dropping currants and crumbs between the leaves of a valuable illustrated book, which he turned over with fingers in a terrible state of stick,--the consequence being that he added illustrations--prints of his fingers in brown. "Have you settled your debate, Dr Grayson!" said Lady Danby, smiling. "No, madam; I shall have to prove my theory to your husband, and it will take time." "My dear James, what is the matter!" said her ladyship as a howl arose. "Pa says I'm to go to bed, ma, and it's only ten; and you promised me I might sit up as long as I liked." "How can you make such foolish promises, Maria?" said Sir James petulantly. "There, hold your tongue, sir, and you may stay another half-hour." "But ma said I might stop up as long as I liked," howled Master Edgar. "Then for goodness' sake stop up all night, sir," said Sir James impatiently; and Master Edgar stayed till the visitors had gone. "Enjoyed your evening, my dear?" said the doctor. "Ye-es, papa," said his daughter; "I--" "Might have enjoyed it more. Really, Helen, it is absurd. That man opposed my theory tooth and nail, and all the time he kept on proving it by indulging that boy. I say you can make what you like of a boy. Now what's he making of that boy?" "Sir James said he should make him a statesman," said Helen, smiling. "But he is making him a nuisance instead. Good-night." "Good-night, papa." "Oh, by the way, my dear, I shall have to prove my theory." "Indeed, papa!" "Yes. Good-night." CHAPTER FOUR. THE CHOICE OF A BOY. Next morning Dr Grayson took his gold-headed cane, and walked down to the workhouse. Upon dragging at the bell the porter opened the gate obsequiously, and sent a messenger to tell the master Dr Grayson had called. "Good morning, Hippetts," said the doctor, who being a Poor-Law Guardian, and a wealthy inhabitant of the place, was received with smiles by the important master. "Good morning, sir. Called to look round." "No, Hippetts, no," said the doctor, in the tone and manner of one making an inquiry about some ordinary article of merchandise; "got any boys?" "Boys, sir; the house swarms with them." "Ah, well, show me some." "Show you some, sir?" "Yes. I want a boy." "Certainly, sir. This way, sir. About what age, sir!" "Eleven or twelve--not particular," said the doctor. Then to himself: "About the age of young Danby." "I see, sir," said the master. "Stout, strong, useful boy for a buttons." "Nonsense!" said the doctor testily, "I want a boy to adopt." "Oh!" said the master staring, and wondering whether rich philosophical Dr Grayson was in his right mind. He led the way along some whitewashed passages, and across a gravel yard, to a long, low building, from which came the well-known humming hum of many voices, among which a kind of chorus could be distinguished, and from time to time the sharp striking of a cane upon a desk, followed by a penetrating "Hush! hush!" As the master opened the door, a hot puff of stuffy, unpleasantly close air came out, and the noise ceased as if by magic, though there were about three hundred boys in the long, open-roofed room. The doctor cast his eye round and saw a crowd of heads, the schoolmaster, and besides these--whitewash. The walls, the ceiling, the beams were all whitewashed. The floor was hearth-stoned, but it seemed to be whitewashed, and even the boys' faces appeared to have been touched over with a thin solution laid on with the whitewash brush. Every eye was turned upon the visitor, and the doctor frowned as he looked round at the pallid, wan-looking, inanimate countenances which offered themselves to his view. The boys were not badly fed; they were clean; they were warmly clad; but they looked as if the food they ate did them no good, and was not enjoyed; as if they were too clean; and as if their clothes were not comfortable. Every face seemed to have been squeezed into the same mould, to grow it into one particular make, which was inexpressive, inanimate, and dull, while they all wore the look of being on the high-road to old-manism without having been allowed to stop and play on the way, and be boys. "Hush! hush!" came from the schoolmaster, and a pin might have been heard to fall. The boys devoured the doctor with their eyes. He was a stranger. It was something to see, and it was a break in the horrible monotony of their existence. Had they known the object of the visit, a tremendous yell would have arisen, and it would have been formed of two words--"Take me." It was considered a model workhouse school, too, one of which the guardians were proud. There was no tyranny, no brutality, but there was endless drill and discipline, and not a scrap of that for which every boy's heart naturally yearns;--"Home, sweet home." No amount of management can make that and deck it with a mother's love; and it must have been the absence of these elements which made the Coleby boys look like three hundred white-faced small old men. "Now, let me see, sir," said the master; "of course the matter will have to be laid before the Board in the usual form, but you will make your selection now. Good light, sir, to choose." Mr Hippetts did not mean it unkindly; but he too spoke as if he were busy over some goods he had to sell. "Let me see. Ah! Coggley, stand out." Coggley, a very thin boy of thirteen, a little more whitewashy than the rest, stood out, and made a bow as if he were wiping his nose with his right hand, and then curving it out at the doctor. He was a nice, sad-looking boy, with railways across his forehead, and a pinched-in nose; but he was very thin, and showed his shirt between the top of his trousers and the bottom of his waistcoat, instead of upon his chest, while it was from growth, not vanity, that he showed so much ankle and wrist. "Very good boy, sir. Had more marks than any one of his age last year." "Won't do," said the doctor shortly. "Too thin," said Mr Hippetts to himself. "Bunce!" he shouted. Bunce stood out, or rather waddled forth, a stoutly-made boy with short legs,--a boy who, if ever he had a chance, would grow fat and round, with eyes like two currants, and a face like a bun. Bunce made a bow like a scoop upside down. "Another excellent boy, sir," said Mr Hippetts. "I haven't a fault to find with him. He is now twelve years old, and he--" "Won't do," said the doctor crossly. "Go back, Bunce," cried the master. "Pillett, stand out. Now here, sir, is a lad whom I am sure you will like. Writes a hand like copperplate. Age thirteen, and very intelligent." Pillett came forward eagerly, after darting a triumphant look at Coggley and Bunce. He was a wooden-faced boy, who seemed to have hard brains and a soft head, for his forehead looked nubbly, and there were rounded off corners at the sides. "Let Dr Grayson hear you say--" "No, no, Hippetts; this is not an examination," cried the doctor testily. "That is not the sort of boy I want. He must be a bright, intelligent lad, whom I can adopt and take into my house. I shall treat him exactly as if he were my own son, and if he is a good lad, it will be the making of him." "Oh! I see, sir," said Mr Hippetts importantly. "Go back, Pillett. I have the very boy. Gloog!" Pillett went back, and furtively held up his fist at triumphant Gloog, who came out panting as if he had just been running fast, and as soon as he had made the regulation bow, he, from old force of habit, wiped his nose on his cuff. "No, no, no, no," cried the doctor, without giving the lad a second glance, the first at his low, narrow forehead and cunning cast of features being quite enough. "But this is an admirably behaved boy, sir," protested Mr Hippetts. "Mr Sibery here can speak very highly of his qualifications." "Oh yes, sir," put in the schoolmaster with a severe smile and a distant bow, for he felt annoyed at not being consulted. "Yes, yes," said the doctor; "but not my style of boy." "Might I suggest one, sir!" said Mr Sibery deferentially, as he glanced at the king who reigned over the whole building. "To be sure," said the doctor. "You try." Mr Hippetts frowned, and Mr Sibery wished he had not spoken; but the dark look on the master's brow gave place to an air of triumph as the schoolmaster introduced seven boys, one after the other, to all of whom the visitor gave a decided negative. "Seems a strange thing," he said, "that out of three hundred boys you cannot show one I like." "But all these are excellent lads, sir," said the master deprecatingly. "Humph!" "Best of characters." "Humph!" "Our own training, sir. Mr Sibery has spared no pains, and I have watched over the boys' morals." "Yes, I dare say. Of course. Here, what boy's that?" He pointed with his cane to a pair of round blue eyes, quite at the back. "That, sir--that lame boy!" "No, no; that young quicksilver customer with the curly poll." "Oh! that, sir! He wouldn't do," cried the two masters almost in a breath. "How do you know!" said the doctor tartly. "Very bad boy indeed, sir, I'm sorry to say," said the schoolmaster. "Yes, sir; regular young imp; so full of mischief that he corrupts the other boys. Can't say a word in his favour; and, besides, he's too young." "How old?" "About eleven, sir." "Humph! Trot him out." "Obed Coleby," said the master in a severe voice. "Coleby, eh?" "Yes, sir. Son of a miserable tramp who died some years ago in the House. No name with him, so we called him after the town." "Humph!" said the doctor, as the little fellow came, full of eagerness and excitement, after kicking at Pillett, who put out a leg to hinder his advance. The doctor frowned, and gazed sternly at the boy, taking in carefully his handsome, animated face, large blue eyes, curly yellow hair, and open forehead: not that his hair had much opportunity for curling--the workhouse barber stopped that. The boy's face was as white as those of his companions, but it did not seem depressed and inanimate, for, though it was thin and white, his mouth was rosy and well-curved, and the slightly parted lips showed his pearly white teeth. "Humph!" said the doctor, as the bright eyes gazed boldly into his. "Where's your bow, sir?" said the master sternly. "Oh! I forgot," said the boy quickly; and he made up for his lapse by bowing first with one and then the other hand. "A sad young pickle," said the master. "Most hopeless case, sir. Constantly being punished." "Humph! You young rascal!" said the doctor sternly. "How dare you be a naughty boy!" The little fellow wrinkled his white forehead, and glanced at the schoolmaster, and then at Mr Hippetts, before looking back at the doctor. "I d'know," he said, in a puzzled way. "You don't know, sir!" "No. I'm allus cotching it." "Say _sir_, boy," cried the master. "Allus cotching of it, sir, and it don't do me no good." "Really, Dr Grayson--" "Wait a bit, Mr Hippetts," said the doctor more graciously. "Let me question the boy." "Certainly, sir. But he has a very bad record." "Humph! Tells the truth, though," said the doctor. "Here, sir, what's your name?" "Obed Coleby." "_Sir_!" cried the master. "Obed Coleby, _sir_," said the boy quickly, correcting himself. "What a name!" ejaculated the doctor. "Yes, ain't it? I hates it, sir." "Oh! you do?" "Yes; the boys all make fun of it, and call me Bed, and Go-to-bed, and Old Bedstead, and when they don't do that, they always call me Old Coal bag or Coaly." "That will do, sir. Don't chatter so," said Mr Sibery reprovingly. "Please, sir, he asked me," said the boy in protest; and there was a frank, bluff manner in his speech which took with the doctor. "Humph!" he said. "Would you like to leave this place, and come and live with me!" The boy puckered up his face, took a step forward, and the master made a movement as if to send him back; but the doctor laid his hand upon his arm, while the boy gazed into his eyes for some moments with wonderfully searching intentness. "Well?" said the doctor. "Will you?" The boy's face smoothed; a bright light danced in his eyes; and, as if full of confidence in his own judgment, he said eagerly-- "Yes; come along;" and he held out his hand. "And leave all your schoolfellows!" said the doctor. The boy's bright face clouded directly, and he turned to gaze back at the crowd of closely cropped heads. "He'll be glad enough to go," said the schoolmaster. "Yes," said Mr Hippetts; "a most ungrateful boy." The little fellow--stunted of his age--swung sharply round; and they saw that his eyes were brimming over as he looked reproachfully from one to the other. "I didn't want to be a bad un, sir," he said. "I did try, and--and-- and--I'll stop here, please, and--" He could say no more, for his face was working, and, at last, in shame and agony of spirit, he covered his face with his hands, and let himself drop in a heap on the stone floor, sobbing hysterically. "Coleby! Stand up, sir!" cried the master sternly. "Let him be, Mr Hippetts, if you please," said the doctor, with dignity; and he drew in a long breath, and remained for some moments silent, while the whole school stared with wondering eyes, and the two masters exchanged glances. "Strange boy," said Mr Hippetts. Then the doctor bent down slowly, and laid his hand upon the lad's shoulder. The little fellow started up, flinching as if from a blow, but as soon as he saw who had touched him, he rose to his knees, and caught quickly at the doctor's extended hand, while the look in the visitor's eyes had so strange an influence upon him that he continued to gaze wonderingly in the stern but benevolent face. "I think you'll come with me?" said the doctor. "Yes, I'd come. But may I?" "Yes; I think he may, Mr Hippetts?" said the doctor. "Yes, sir; of course, sir, if you wish it," said the master, with rather an injured air; "but I feel bound to tell you the boy's character." "Yes; of course." "And to warn you, sir, that you will bring him back in less than a week." "No, Mr Hippetts," said the doctor quietly; "I shall not bring him back." "Well, sir; if you are satisfied I have nothing to say." "I am satisfied, Mr Hippetts." "But he is not so old as you said, sir." "No." "And you wanted a boy of good character." "Yes; but I recall all I said. That is the boy I want. Can I take him at once?" "At once, sir!" said the master, as the little fellow, with his face a study, listened eagerly, and looked from one to the other. "I shall have to bring your proposal before the Board." "That is to say, before me and my colleagues," said the doctor, smiling. "Well, as one of the Guardians, I think I may venture to take the boy now, and the formal business can be settled afterwards." "Oh yes, sir; of course. And I venture to think, sir, that it will not be necessary to go on with it." "Why, Mr Hippetts?" "Because," said the master, with a peculiar smile which was reflected in the schoolmaster's face; "you are sure to bring him back." "I think I said before I shall not bring him back," replied the doctor coldly. The master bowed, and Mr Sibery cleared his throat and frowned at the boys. "Then I think that's all," said the doctor, laying his hand upon the boy's head. "Do I understand you, sir, to mean that you want to take him now?" "Directly." "But his clothes, sir; and he must be--" "I want to take him directly, Mr Hippetts, with your permission, and he will need nothing more from the Union." "Very good, sir; and I hope that he will take your kindness to heart. Do you hear, Coleby? And be a very good boy to his benefactor, and--" "Yes, yes, yes, Mr Hippetts," said the doctor, cutting him short. "I'm sure he will. Now, my man, are you ready?" "Yes, sir," cried the boy eagerly; "but--" "Well?" said the doctor kindly. "I should like to say good-bye to some of the chaps, and I've got something to give 'em." "Indeed! what?" "Well, sir; I want to give Dick Dean my mouse, and Tommy Robson my nicker, and share all my buttons among the chaps in my dormitory; and then I've six pieces of string and a pair of bones, and a sucker." "Go and share them, and say good-bye to them all," said the doctor, drawing a breath full of satisfaction; and the boy darted away full of excitement. "May I say a word to the boys, Mr Sibery?" said the doctor, smiling. "Certainly, sir." "Will you call for silence?" The master called, and the doctor asked the lads to give their old schoolfellow a cheer as he was going away. They responded with a shout that made the windows rattle. "And now," said the doctor, "I'm going to ask Mr Hippetts to give you all a holiday, and I am leaving threepence a piece to be distributed among you, so that you may have a bit of fun." Mr Hippetts smiled as he took the money, and the boys cheered again, in the midst of which shouts the doctor moved off with his charge, but only for his _protege_ to break away from him, and run to offer his hand to Mr Sibery, who coughed slightly, and shook hands limply, as if he were conferring a great favour. The boy then held out his hand to the master, and he also shook hands in a dignified way. "Shall I send the boy on, sir?" said Mr Hippetts. "Thanks, no, Hippetts; I'll take him with me." "Would you like a fly, sir?" "No, Hippetts; I'm not ashamed for people to see what I do. Come along, my lad." "Please, sir; mayn't I say good-bye to Mother Curdley?" "Mother Curdley? Who is she!" "Nurse, sir." "The woman who had charge of him when he was a tiny fellow." "Ah! to be sure. Yes, certainly," said the doctor. "He may, of course?" "Oh! certainly, sir. Run on, boy, and we'll follow." "No larks," said the boy sharply, as he looked at the doctor. "No; I shall not run away, my man." The boy darted down a long whitewashed passage, and the doctor said:-- "I understand you to say that he has no friends whatever!" "None, sir, as far as we know. Quite a foundling." "That will do," said the doctor; and while the boy was bidding good-bye to the old woman who had tended the sick tramp, the master led the way to the nursery, where about a dozen children were crawling about and hanging close to a large fire-guard. Others were being nursed on the check aprons of some women, while one particularly sour creature was rocking a monstrous cradle, made like a port-wine basket, with six compartments, in every one of which was an unfortunate babe. "Which he's a very good affectionate boy, sir," said a woman, coming up with the doctor's choice clinging to her apron; "and good-bye, and good luck, and there, God bless you, my dear!" she said, as she kissed the boy in a true motherly way, he clinging to her as the only being he had felt that he could love. That burst of genuine affection won Mother Curdley five shillings, which she pocketed with one hand, as she wiped her eyes with the other, and then had a furtive pinch of snuff, which made several babies sneeze as if they had bad colds. "Very eccentric man," said Mr Hippetts. "Very," assented Mr Sibery. "But he'll bring the young ruffian back." The doctor did not hear, for he was walking defiantly down the main street, waving his gold-headed cane, while the boy clung to his hand, and walked with bent head, crying silently, but fighting hard to keep it back. The doctor saw it, and pressed the boy's hand kindly. "Yes," he said to himself; "I'll show old Danby now. The very boy I wanted. Ah," he added aloud; "here we are." CHAPTER FIVE. A "REG'LAR" BAD ONE. Maria, the doctor's maid, opened the door, and as she admitted her master and his charge, her countenance was suggestive of round O's. Her face was round, and her eyes opened into two round spots, while her mouth became a perfectly circular orifice, as the doctor himself took off the boy's cap, and marched him into the drawing-room, where Helen Grayson was seated. On his way to the house, and with his young heart swelling at having to part from the only being who had been at all kind to him--for the recollection of the rough tramp had become extremely faint--the boy had had hard work to keep back his tears, but no sooner had he passed the doctor's door than the novelty of all he saw changed the current of his thoughts, and he was full of eagerness and excitement. The first inkling of this was shown as his eyes lit upon Maria's round face, and it tickled him so that he began to smile. "Such impidence!" exclaimed Maria. "And a workus boy. My! what's master going to do with him?" She hurried to the housekeeper's room, where Mrs Millett, who had kept the doctor's house, and attended to the cooking as well, ever since Mrs Grayson's death, was now seated making herself a new cap. "A workhouse boy, Maria?" she said, letting her work fall upon her knees, and looking over the top of her spectacles. "Yes; and master's took him into the drawing-room." "Oh! very well," said Mrs Millett tartly. "Master's master, and he has a right to do what he likes; but if there's anything I can't abear in a house it's a boy in buttons. They're limbs, that's what they are; regular young imps." "Going to keep a page!" said Maria, whose eyes looked a little less round. "Why, of course, girl; and it's all stuff." "Well, I don't know," said Maria thoughtfully. "There's the coal-scuttles to fill, and the door-bell to answer, a deal more than I like." "Yes," said Mrs Millett, snipping off a piece of ribbon viciously; "I know. That boy to find every time you want 'em done, and a deal less trouble to do 'em yourself. I can't abear boys." While this conversation was going on in the housekeeper's room, something of a very different kind was in progress in the drawing-room, where the daughter looked up from the letter she was writing, and gazed wonderingly at the boy. For her father pushed the little fellow in before him, and said: "There!" in a satisfied tone, and looked from one to the other. "Why, papa!" said Helen, after looking pleasantly at the boy. "Yes, my dear, that's him. There he is. From this hour my experiment begins." "With this boy?" said Helen. "Yes, my dear, shake hands with him, and make him at home." The doctor's sweet lady-like daughter held out her hand to the boy, who was staring about him at everything with wondering delight, till he caught sight of an admirably drawn water-colour portrait of the doctor, the work of Helen herself, duly framed and hung upon the wall. The boy burst into a hearty laugh, and turned to Helen, running to her now, and putting his hand in hers. "Look there," he cried, pointing with his left hand; "that's the old chap's picture. Ain't it like him!" The doctor frowned, and Helen looked troubled, even though it was a compliment to her skill; and for a few moments there was a painful silence in the room. This was however broken by the boy, who lifted Helen's hand up and down, and said in a parrot-like way-- "How do you do?" Helen's face rippled over with smiles, and the boy's brightened, and he too smiled in a way that made him look frank, handsome, and singularly attractive. "Oh, I say, you are pretty," he said. "Ten times as pretty as Miss Hippetts on Sundays." "Hah! yes. Never mind about Miss Hippetts. And look here, my man, Mr Hippetts said that you were anything but a good boy, and your schoolmaster said the same." "Yes; everybody knows that I am a reg'lar bad boy. The worst boy in the whole school." Helen Grayson's face contracted. "Oh, you are, are you!" said the doctor drily. "Yes, Mr Sibery told everybody so." "Well, then, now, sir, you will have to be a very good boy." "All right, sir." "And behave yourself very nicely." "But, I say: am I going to stop here, sir?" "Yes; always." "What, in this room?" "Yes." "And ain't I to go back to the House to have my crumbs!" "To have your what?" "Breakfasses and dinners, sir?" "No, you will have your meals here." "But I shall have to go back to sleep along with the other boys?" "No, you will sleep here; you will live here altogether now." "What! along of you and her?" cried the boy excitedly. "Yes, always, unless you go to a good school." "But live here along o' you, in this beautiful house with this nice lady, and that gal with a round face." "Yes, of course." "Ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ra-ri-i-kee!" cried the boy in a shrill, piercing voice; and, to the astonishment of the doctor and his daughter, he made a bound, and then, with wonderful skill and rapidity, began turning the wheel, as it is called, going over and over on hands and feet, completely round the room. "Here, stop, sir, stop!" cried the doctor, half-angry and half-amused. "I can do it t'other way too," cried the boy; and, as he had turned before commencing upon his left hand, he began with his right, and completed the circuit of the room in the opposite direction. "There!" he cried, as he stopped before the doctor and his daughter, flushed and proud. "There isn't a chap in the House can do it as quick as I can. Mr Sibery caught me one day, and didn't I get the cane!" There was such an air of innocent pride displayed by the boy, that after for the moment feeling annoyed, Helen Grayson sat back in her chair and laughed as much at the boy as at her father's puzzled look, of surprise. "That's nothing!" cried the boy, as he saw Helen's smiles. "Look here." He ducked down and placed his head on the hearthrug, his hands on either side in front, and threw his heels in the air, to the great endangerment of the chimney ornaments. "Get down, sir! get down!" cried the doctor. "I mean, get up." "It don't hurt," cried the boy, "stand on my head longer than you will for a penny." "Will you get up, sir!" The boy let his feet go down into their normal position upon the carpet, and rose up with his handsome young face flushed, and a look of proud delight in his eyes. "I can walk on my hands ever so far," he shouted boisterously. "No, no; stop!" "You look, miss, and see me run like a tomcat." Before he could be stopped, he was down on all-fours running, with wonderful agility, in and out among the chairs, and over the hearthrug. "That's what I do to make the boys laugh, when we go to bed. I can go all along the dormitory, and jump from one bed to the other. Where's the dormitory? I'll show you." "No, no; stop!" cried the doctor, and he caught hold of the boy by the collar. "Confound you, sir: are you full of quicksilver!" "No. It's skilly," said the boy, "and I ain't full now I'm ever so hungry." The doctor held him tightly, for he was just off again. Helen Grayson tried to look serious, but was compelled to hold her handkerchief before her mouth, and hide her face; but her eyes twinkled with mirth, as her father turned towards her, and sat rubbing his stiff grey hair. The doctor's plan of bringing up a boy chosen from the workhouse had certainly failed, she thought, so far as this lad was concerned; and as the little prisoner stood tightly held, but making all the use he could of his eyes, he said, pointing to a glass shade over a group of wax fruit-- "Is them good to eat!" "No," said Helen, smiling. "I say, do you have skilly for breakfast!" "I do not know what skilly is," replied Helen. "Then, I'll tell you. It's horrid. They beats up pailfuls of oatmeal in a copper, and ladles it out. But it's better than nothing." "Ahem!" coughed the doctor, who was thinking deeply. The boy glanced at him sharply, and then turned again to Helen-- "You mustn't ask for anything to eat at the House if you're ever so hungry." "Are you hungry?" said Helen. "Just!" "Would you like a piece of cake!" "Piece o' cake? Please. Here, let go." He shook himself free from the doctor and ran to Helen. "Sit down on that cushion, and I'll ring for some." "What, have you got a big bell here? Let me pull it, will you?" "It is not a big bell, but you may pull it," said Helen, crossing to the fireplace. "There, that will do." She led the way back to the chair where she had been seated, and in spite of herself felt amused and pleased at the way in which the boy's bright curious eyes examined her, for, outside of his school discipline, the little fellow acted like a small savage, and was as full of eager curiosity. "I say," he said, "how do you do your hair like that? It is nice." Just then Maria entered the room. "Bring up the cake, Maria, and a knife and plate--and--stop--bring a glass of milk." "Yes, miss," said Maria, staring hard at the boy with anything but favourable eyes. "I say, do you drink milk?" said the boy. "Sometimes. This is for you." "For me? Oh, I say! But you'll put some water to it, won't you!" "No; you can drink it as it is. No, no! Stop!" Helen Grayson was too late; in the exuberance of his delight the boy relieved his excited feelings by turning the wheel again round the room, stopping, though, himself, as he reached the place where the doctor's daughter was seated. "Well, why do you look at me like that?" "I d'know. Feels nice," said the boy. "I say, is that round-face gal your sister?" "Oh no; she's the servant." "I'm glad of that," said the boy thoughtfully; "she won't eat that cake, will she!" Helen compressed her lips to control her mirth, and glanced at her father again, where he sat with his brow knit and lips pursed up thinking out his plans. Maria entered now with the cake and milk, placing a tray on a little table, and going out to return to the housekeeper, saying-- "Pretty pass things is coming to when servants is expected to wait on workus boys." In the drawing-room the object of her annoyance was watching, with sparkling eyes, the movements of the knife with which Helen Grayson cut off a goodly wedge of the cake. "There," she said; "eat that, and sit quite still." The boy snatched the piece wolfishly, and was lifting it to his mouth, but he stopped suddenly and stretched out his hand-- "Here; you have first bite," he said. Helen shook her head, but felt pleased. "No," she said. "It is for you." "Do," said the boy, fighting hard with the longing to begin. "No; eat it yourself." "Would he have a bit if I asked him!" said the boy, torturing himself in his generous impulse. "No, no. You eat it, my boy." Once more the cake was within an inch of the bright sparkling teeth, but the bite was not taken. Instead of eating, the boy held out the cake to his hostess. "Cut it in half, please," he said; "fair halves." "What for?" "I'm going to eat one bit; t'other's for Billy Jingle. He's had measles, and been very bad, and he's such a good chap." "You shall have a piece to send to your schoolfellow," said Helen, with her eyes a little moist now, for the boy's generous spirit was gaining upon her, and she looked at him with more interest than she had displayed a few minutes before. The boy took a tremendous bite, and began to munch as he sat upon a velvet-covered hassock; but he jumped up directly, and held out the bitten cake again, to say, with his mouth full-- "Oh, do have a bit. It's lovely." Helen smiled, and laid her hand upon the boy's shoulder, as she shook her head, when to her surprise he caught the soft white hand in his left, gazed hard at it, and then pressed it against his cheek, making a soft purring noise, no bad imitation of a cat. Then he sat eating and holding the hand which was not taken away, till, as the little stranger munched on in the full enjoyment of the wondrous novelty, the doctor said sharply, "Helen, come here." The boy stared, but went on eating, and the doctor's daughter crossed the room to where her father sat. CHAPTER SIX. A QUICKSILVER GLOBULE. "Well, papa?" she said, looking into his face in a half-amused way. "Well, Helen," said the doctor, taking her hand and drawing her to him; "about this boy?" "Yes, dear. You have made up your mind to adopt and bring one up," she said, in a low tone which the lad could not hear. "Yes," said the doctor, taking his tone from her, "to turn the raw material into the polished cultured article." "But of course you will take this one back, and select another!" "And pray why!" said the doctor sharply. "I thought--I thought--" faltered Helen. "Oh, nonsense! Better for proving my theory." "Yes, papa, but--" "A little wild and rough, that's all; boy-like; high-spirited; right stuff in him." "No doubt, papa; but he is so very rough." "Then we'll use plenty of sand-paper and make him smooth. Moral sand-paper. Capital boy, my dear. Had a deal of trouble in getting him--by George! the young wolf! He has finished that cake." "Then you really mean to keep him, papa?" said Helen, glancing at the boy, where he sat diligently picking up a few crumbs and a currant which he had dropped. "Mean to keep him? Now, my dear Helen, when did you ever know me undertake anything, and not carry it out!" "Never, papa." "Then I am not going to begin now. There is the boy." "Yes, papa," said Helen rather sadly; "there is the boy." "I mean to make him a gentleman, and I must ask you to help me with the poor orphan--" "He is an orphan, then!" said Helen quickly. "Yes. Son of some miserable tramp who died in the casual ward." "How dreadful!" said Helen, glancing once more at the boy, who caught her eye, and smiled in a way which made his face light up, and illumined the sallow cheeks and dull white pinched look. "Dreadful? Couldn't be better for my theory, my dear." "Very well, papa," said Helen quietly; "I will help you all I can." "I knew you would, my dear," said the doctor warmly; "and I prophesy that you will be proud of your work, and so shall I. Now, then, to begin," he added loudly. "All in--all in--all in!" shouted the boy, jumping up like a grasshopper, and preparing to go through some fresh gymnastic feat. "Ah! ah! Sit down, sir. How dare you!" shouted the doctor; and the boy dropped into his seat again, and sat like a mouse. "There!" said the doctor softly; "there's obedience. Result of drilling. Now, then, what's the first thing? He must have some clothes." "Oh yes; at once," said Helen. "And, look here, my dear," said the doctor testily; "I never use anything of the kind myself, but you girls rub some stuff--pomade or cream--on your hair to make it grow, do you not?" "Well, yes, papa." "Then, for goodness' sake, let a double quantity be rubbed at once upon that poor boy's head. Really it is cut so short that he is hardly fit to be seen without a cap on." "I'm afraid you will have to wait some time," said Helen, with a smile. "Humph! yes, I suppose so," said the doctor gruffly. "That barber ought to be flogged. Couldn't put the boy in a wig, of course." "O papa! no." "Well, I said no," cried the doctor testily. "Must wait, I suppose; but we can make him look decent." "Are you--are you going--" faltered Helen. "Going? Going where!" "Going to have him with us, papa, or to let him be with the servants?" said Helen rather nervously; but she regretted speaking the next moment. "Now, my dear child, don't be absurd," cried the doctor. "How am I to prove my theory by taking the boy from the lowest station of society and making him, as I shall do, a gentleman, if I let him run wild with the servants!" "I--I beg your pardon, papa." "Humph! Granted. Now, what's to be done first? The boy is clean?" "Oh yes." "Can't improve him then, that way; but I want as soon as possible to get rid of that nasty, pasty, low-class pallor. One does not see it in poor people's children, as a rule, while these Union little ones always look sickly to me. You must feed him up, Helen." "I have begun, papa," she said, smiling. "Humph! Yes. Clothes. Yes; we must have some clothes, and--oh, by the way, I had forgotten. Here, my boy." The lad jumped up with alacrity, and came to the doctor's side boldly-- looking keenly from one to the other. "What did you say your name was!" "Bed--Obed Coleby." "Hah!" cried the doctor; "then we'll do away with that at once. Now, what shall we call you!" "I d'know," said the boy, laughing. "Jack?" "No, no," said the doctor thoughtfully, while Helen looked on rather amused at her father's intent manner, and the quick bird-like movements of their visitor. For the boy, after watching the doctor for a few moments, grew tired, and finding himself unnoticed, dropped down on the carpet, took four pebbles from his pocket, laid them on the back of his right hand, and throwing them in the air, caught them separately by as many rapid snatches in the air. "Do that again," cried the doctor, suddenly becoming interested. The boy showed his white teeth, threw the stones in the air, and caught them again with the greatest ease. "That's it, Helen, my dear," cried the doctor triumphantly. "Cleverness of the right hand--dexterity. Capital name." "Capital name, papa?" "Yes; Dexter! Good Latin sound. Fresh and uncommon. Dexter--Dex. Look here, sir. No more Obed. You shall be called Dexter." "All right," said the boy. "And if you behave yourself well, perhaps we shall shorten it into Dex." "Dick's better," said the boy sharply. "No, it is not, sir; Dex." "Well, Dix, then," said the boy, throwing one stone up high enough to touch the ceiling, and in catching at it over-handed, failing to achieve his object, and striking it instead, so that it flew against the wall with a loud rap. "Put those stones in your pocket, sir," cried the doctor to the boy, who ran and picked up the one which had fallen, looking rather abashed. "Another inch, and it would have gone through that glass." "Yes. Wasn't it nigh!" cried the boy. "Here, stop! Throw them out of that window." The boy's brow clouded over. "Let me give them to some one at the school; they're such nice round ones." "I said, throw them out of the window, sir." "All right," said the boy quickly; and he threw the pebbles into the garden. "Now, then; look here, sir--or no," said the doctor less sternly. "Look here, my boy." The doctor's manner influenced the little fellow directly, and he went up and laid his hand upon his patron's knee, looking brightly from face to face. "Now, mind this: in future you are to be Dexter." "All right: Dexter Coleby," said the boy. "No, no, no, no!" cried the doctor testily. "Dexter Grayson; and don't keep on saying `All right.'" "All--" The boy stopped short, and rubbed his nose with his cuff. "Hah! First thing, my dear. Twelve pocket-handkerchiefs, and mark them `Dexter Grayson.'" "What? twelve handkerchies for me--all for me?" "Yes, sir, all for you; and you are to use them. Never let me see you rub your nose with your cuff again." The boy's mouth opened to say, "All right," but he checked himself. "That's right!" cried the doctor. "I see you are teachable. You were going to say `all right.'" "You told me not to." "I did; and I'm very pleased to find you did not do it." "I say, shall I have to clean the knives?" "No, no, no." "Nor yet the boots and shoes?" "No, boy; no." "I shall have to fetch the water then, shan't I?" "My good boy, nothing of the kind. You are going to live with us, and you are my adopted son," said the doctor rather pompously, while Helen sighed. "Which?" queried the boy. "Which what?" said the doctor. "Which what you said?" "I did not say anything, sir." "Oh my! what a story!" cried the boy, appealing to Helen. "Didn't you hear him say I was to be his something son?" "Adopted son," said the doctor severely; "and, look here, you must not speak to me in that way." "All--" Dexter checked himself again, and he only stared. "Now, you understand," said the doctor, after a few minutes' hesitation; "you are to be here like my son, and you may call me--yes, father, or papa." "How rum!" said the boy, showing his white teeth with a remarkable want of reverence. "I say," he added, turning to Helen; "what am I to call you!" Helen turned to her father for instructions, her brow wrinkling from amusement and vexation. "Helen," said the doctor, in a decided tone. "We must have no half measures, my dear; I mean to carry out my plan in its entirety." "Very well, papa," said Helen quietly; and then to herself, "It is only for a few days." "Now, then," said the doctor, "clothes. Ring that bell, Dexter." The boy ran so eagerly to the bell that he knocked over a light chair, and left it on the floor till he had rung. "Oh, I say," he exclaimed; "they go over a deal easier than our forms." "Never mind the forms now, Dexter. I want you to forget all about the old school." "Forget it?" said the boy, with his white forehead puckering up. "Yes, and all belonging to it. You are now going to be my son." "But I shall want to go and see the boys sometimes." "No, sir; you will not." "But I must go and see Mother Curdley." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor. "Well, we shall see. Perhaps she will be allowed to come and see you." "Hooray!" cried the boy excitedly; and turning to Helen he obtained possession of her hand. "I say, save her a bit of that cake." "She shall have some cake, Dexter," said Helen kindly, for she could not help, in spite of her annoyance, again feeling pleased with the boy's remembrance of others. "And I say," he cried, "when she does come, we'll have a ha'porth o' snuff screwed up in a bit o' paper, and--has he got any gin?" "Hush, hush!" whispered Helen. "But she's so fond of a drop," said the boy earnestly. "And now," said the doctor; "the next thing is clothes. Ah, Maria, send Cribb to ask Mr Bleddan to come here directly." "Yes, sir," said Maria; and after a glance at the boy she closed the door. In less than a quarter of an hour Mr Bleddan, the tailor of Coleby, was there; and Dexter stood up feeling tickled and amused at being measured for some new clothes which the tailor said should be ready in a week. "A week!" said the doctor; "but what am I to do now? The boy can't go like that." "Ready-made, sir? I've plenty of new and fashionable suits exactly his size." "Bring some," said the doctor laconically; "and shirts and stockings and boots. Everything he wants. Do you understand!" Mr Bleddan perfectly understood, and Dexter stood with his eyes sparkling as he heard the list of upper and under garments, boots, caps, everything which the tailor and clothier considered necessary. The moment the man had gone, Dexter made a dash to recommence his Ixion-like triumphal dance, but this time Helen caught his hand and stopped him. "No, no, not here," she said quietly; and not in the least abashed, but in the most obedient way, the boy submitted. "It was because I was so jolly glad: that's all." "Hah!" said the doctor, smiling. "Now, I like that, Helen. Work with me, and all that roughness will soon pass away." "I say, will that chap be long?" cried Dexter, running to the window and looking out. "Am I to have all those things for my own self, and may I wear 'em directly?" "Look here, my lad; you shall have everything that's right and proper for you, if you are a good boy." "Oh, I'll be a good boy--least I'll try to be. Shall you give me the cane if I ain't?" "I--er--I don't quite know," said the doctor. "I hope you will not require it." "Mr Sibery said I did, and he never knew a boy who wanted it worse, but it didn't do me no good at all." "Well, never mind that now," said the doctor. "You will have to be very good, and never want the cane. You must learn to be a young gentleman." "Young gentleman?" said Dexter, holding his head on one side like a bird. "One of them who wears black jackets, and turn-down collars, and tall hats, and plays at cricket all day? I shall like that." "Humph! Something else but play cricket, I hope," said the doctor quietly. "Helen, my dear, I shall begin to make notes at once for my book, so you can take Dexter in hand, and try how he can read." The doctor brought out a pocket-book and pencil, and Helen, after a moment's thought, went to a glass case, and took down an old gift-book presented to her when she was a little girl. "Come here, Dexter," she said, "and let me hear you read." The boy flushed with pleasure. "Yes," he said. "I should like to read to you. May I kneel down and have the book on your knees!" "Yes, if you like," said Helen, who felt that the boy was gaining upon her more and more: for, in spite of his coarseness, there was a frank, merry, innocent undercurrent that, she felt, might be brought to the surface, strengthened and utilised to drive the roughness away. "Read here!" said the boy, opening the book at random. "Oh, here's a picture. What are these girls doing?" "Leave the pictures till afterwards. Go on reading now." "Here?" "Yes; at the beginning of that chapter." "I shall have to read it all, as there's no other boy here. We always stand up in a class at the House, and one boy reads one bit, and another boy goes on next, and then you're always losing your place, because it's such a long time before it comes round to your turn, and then old Sibery gives you the cane." "Yes, yes; but go on," said Helen, with a feeling of despair concerning her father's _protege_. Dexter began to read in a forced, unnatural voice, with a high-pitched unpleasant twang, and regardless of sense or stops--merely uttering the words one after the other, and making them all of the same value. At the end of the second line Helen's face was a study. At the end of the fourth the doctor roared out-- "Stop! I cannot stand any more. Saw-sharpening or bag-pipes would be pleasant symphonies in comparison." At that moment Maria entered. "Lunch is on the table, if you please, sir." "Ah, yes, lunch," said the doctor. "Did you put a knife and fork for Master Dexter?" "For who, sir!" said Maria, staring. "For Master Dexter here," said the doctor sharply. "Go and put them directly." Maria ran down to her little pantry, and then attacked Mrs Millett. "Master's going mad, I think," she said. "Why, he's actually going to have that boy at the table to lunch." "Never!" "It's a fact," cried Maria; "and I've come down for more knives and forks." "And you'd better make haste and get 'em, then," said the housekeeper; "master's master, and he always will have his way." Maria did make haste, and to her wonder and disgust Dexter was seated at the doctor's table in his workhouse clothes, gazing wonderingly round at everything: the plate, cruets, and sparkling glass taking up so much of his attention that for the moment he forgot the viands. The sight of a hot leg of lamb, however, when the cover was removed, made him seize his knife and fork, and begin tapping with the handles on either side of his plate. "Errum!" coughed the doctor. "Put that knife and fork down, Dexter, and wait." The boy's hands went behind him directly, and there was silence till Maria had left the room, when the doctor began to carve, and turned to Helen-- "May I give you some lamb, my dear?" "There, I knowed it was lamb," cried Dexter excitedly, "'cause it was so little. We never had no lamb at the House." "Hush!" said the doctor quietly. "You must not talk like that." "All right." "Nor yet like that, Dexter. Now, then, may I send you some lamb!" "May I say anything?" said the boy so earnestly that Helen could not contain her mirth, and the boy smiled pleasantly again. "Of course you may, my boy," said the doctor. "Answer when you are spoken to, and try and be polite." "Yes, sir, I will; I'll try so hard." "Then may I send you some lamb!" "Yes; twice as much as you give her. It does smell nice." The doctor frowned a little, and then helped the boy pretty liberally. "Oh, I say! Just look at the gravy," he cried. "Have you got plenty, Miss!" "Oh yes, Dexter," said Helen. "May I--" "Don't give it all to me, Mister," cried the boy. "Keep some for yourself. I hate a pig." "Errum!" coughed the doctor, frowning. "Miss Grayson was going to ask if you would take some vegetables!" "What? taters? No thankye, we got plenty o' them at the House," cried the boy; and he began cutting and devouring the lamb at a furious rate. "Gently, gently!" cried the doctor. "You have neither bread nor salt." "Get's plenty o' them at the House," cried the boy, with his mouth full; "and you'd better look sharp, too. The bell'll ring directly, and we shall have to--no it won't ring here, will it!" he said, looking from one to another. "No, sir," said the doctor sternly; "and you must not eat like that. Watch how Miss Grayson eats her lunch, and try and imitate her." The boy gave the doctor a sharp glance, and then, in a very praiseworthy manner, tried to partake of the savoury joint in a decent way. But it was hard work for him. The well-cooked succulent meat was so toothsome that he longed to get to the end of it; and whenever he was not watching the doctor and his daughter he kept glancing at the dish, wondering whether he would be asked to have any more. "What's that rum-looking stuff?" he said, as the doctor helped himself from a small tureen. "Mint sauce, sir. Will you have some?" "I don't know. Let's taste it." The little sauce tureen was passed to him, and he raised the silver ladle, but instead of emptying it upon his plate he raised it to his lips, and drank with a loud, unpleasant noise, suggestive of the word _soup_. The doctor was going to utter a reproof, but the sight of Helen's mirth checked him, and he laughed heartily as he saw the boy's face full of disgust. "I don't like that," he said, pushing the tureen away. "It ain't good." "But you should--" "Don't correct him now, papa; you will spoil the poor boy's dinner," remonstrated Helen. "He said it was lunch," said Dexter. "Your dinner, sir, and our lunch," said the doctor. "There, try and behave as we do at the table, and keep your elbows off the cloth." Dexter obeyed so quickly that he knocked a glass from the table, and on leaving his seat to pick it up he found that the foot was broken off. The doctor started, and uttered a sharp ejaculation. In an instant the boy shrank away into a corner, sobbing wildly. "I couldn't help it. I couldn't help it, sir. Don't beat me, please. Don't beat me this time. I'll never do so any more." "Bless my soul!" cried the doctor, jumping up hastily; and the boy uttered a wild cry, full of fear, and would have dashed out of the open window into the garden had not Helen caught him, the tears in her eyes, and her heart moved to pity as she read the boy's agony of spirit. In fact that one cry for mercy had done more for Dexter's future at the doctor's than a month's attempts at orderly conduct. "Hush, hush!" said Helen gently, as she took his hands; and, with a look of horror in his eyes, the boy clung to her. "I don't mind the cane sometimes," he whispered, "but don't let him beat me very much." "Nonsense! nonsense!" said the doctor rather huskily. "I was not going to beat you." "Please, sir, you looked as if you was," sobbed the boy. "I only looked a little cross, because you were clumsy and broke that glass. But it was an accident." "Yes, it was; it was," cried the boy, in a voice full of pleading, for the breakage had brought up the memory of an ugly day in his young career. "I wouldn't ha' done it, was it ever so; it's true as goodness I wouldn't." "No, no, Maria, not yet," cried Helen hastily, as the door was opened. "We will ring." Maria walked out again, and the boy clung to Helen as he sobbed. "There, there," she said. "Papa is not cross. You broke the glass, and you have apologised. Come: sit down again." If some one had told Helen Grayson two hours before that she would have done such a thing, she would have smiled incredulously, but somehow she felt moved to pity just then, and leading the boy back to his chair, she bent down and kissed his forehead. In a moment Dexter's arms were about her neck, and he was clinging to her with passionate energy, sobbing now wildly, while the doctor got up and walked to the window for a few moments. "There, there," said Helen gently, as she pressed the boy down into his seat, and kissed him once again, after seeing that her father's back was turned. "That's all over now. Come, papa." The doctor came back, and as he was passing the back of the boy's chair, he raised his hand quickly, intending to pat him on the head. The boy flinched like a frightened animal anticipating a blow. "Why, bless my soul, Dexter! this will not do," he said huskily. "Here, give me your hand. There, there, my dear boy, you and I are to be the best of friends. Why, my dear Helen," he added in French, "they must have been terribly severe, for the little fellow to shrink like this." The boy still sobbed as he laid his hand in the doctor's, and then the meal was resumed; but Dexter's appetite was gone. He could not finish the lamb, and it was only with difficulty that he managed a little rhubarb tart and custard. "Why, what are you thinking about, Dexter!" said Helen after the lunch; and somehow her tone of voice seemed to indicate that she had forgotten all about the workhouse clothes. "Will he send me back to the House?" the boy whispered hoarsely, but the doctor heard. "No, no," he said quickly; and the boy seemed relieved. That night about eleven, as she went up to bed, Helen Grayson went softly into a little white bedroom, where the boy's pale face lay in the full moonlight, and something sparkled. "Poor child!" she said, in a voice full of pity; "he has been crying." She was quite right, and as she bent over him, her presence must have influenced his dreams, for he uttered a low, soft sigh, and then smiled, while, forgetting everything now but the fact that this poor little waif of humanity had been stranded, as it were, at their home, she bent over him and kissed him. Then she started, for she became aware of the fact that her father was at the door. The next moment she was in his arms. "Bless you, my darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom we shall not be ashamed." Poor Dexter had cried himself to sleep, feeling in his ignorant fashion that he had disgraced himself, and that the two harsh rulers were quite right,--that he was as bad as ever he could be; but circumstances were running in a way he little thought. CHAPTER SEVEN. TAMING THE WILD. "Ah!" said the doctor, laying down his pen and rubbing his hands. "That's better;" and he took off his spectacles, made his grey hair stand up all over his head like tongues of silver fire, and looked Dexter over from top to toe. Thanks to Helen's supervision, the boy looked very creditable. His hair was of course "cut almost to the bone," and his face had still the Union look--pale and saddened, but he was dressed in a neat suit which fitted him, and his turn-down collar and black tie seemed to give his well-cut features quite a different air. "What did I say, Helen!" said the doctor, with a chuckle. "You see what we have done already. Well, sir, how do you feel now!" "Not very jolly," said the boy, with a writhe. "Hem!" coughed the doctor; "not very comfortable you mean!" "Yes, that's it," said Dexter. "Boots hurts my feet, and when the trousers ain't rubbin' the skin o' my legs, this here collar feels as if it would saw my head off." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor stiffly. "You had better put on the old things again." "Eh? No, thankye," cried Dexter eagerly. "I like these here ever so much. Please may I keep 'em!" "Of course," said the doctor; "and take care of them, like a good boy." "Yes. I'm going to be a very good boy now, sir. She says I am to." He nodded his head in the direction of Helen, and stood upon one leg to ease the foot which the shoe pinched. "That's right, but don't say _she_. You must look upon Miss Grayson now as if she were your sister." "Yes, that I will," said the boy warmly. Helen flushed a little at her father's words, and a serious look came into her sweet face; but at that moment she felt Dexter steal his hand into hers, and then it was lifted and held against the boy's cheek, as, in feline fashion, he rubbed his face against it, and a smile came into her eyes again, as she laid the hand at liberty upon the closely cropped head. "I say, ain't she pretty, and don't she look nice?" said Dexter suddenly; and his free and easy way made the doctor frown: but he looked at the boy's appearance, and in the belief that he would soon change the manners to match, he nodded, and said, "Yes." Helen looked at her father, as if asking him what next, but the doctor joined his finger-tips and frowned, as if thinking deeply. "Dexter and I have been filling his drawers with his new clothes and linen," she said. "Yes; such a lot of things," cried the boy; "and is that always to be my bedroom?" "Yes; that's to be your room," said the doctor. "And I've got three pairs of boots. I mean two pairs of boots, and one pair of shoes," cried Dexter. "One pair on, and two in the bedroom; and I shall get up at six o'clock every morning, and clean 'em, and I'll clean yours too." "Hem!" coughed the doctor. "No, my boy, your boots will be cleaned for you, and you will not have to dirty your hands now." The boy stared wonderingly, as the doctor enunciated a matter which was beyond his grasp. But all the time his eyes were as busy as those of a monkey, and wandering all over the study, and taking in everything he saw. "May I leave Dexter with you now!" said Helen, "as I have a few little matters to see to." "Yes, yes; of course, my dear. We are beginning capitally. Dexter, my boy; you can sit down on that chair, and amuse yourself with a book, while I go on writing." The boy looked at the chair, then at the doctor, and then at Helen. "I say, mayn't I go with you?" he said. "Not now, Dexter, I am going to be very busy. By and by I will take you for a walk." Helen nodded, and left the room. "You'll find some books on that shelf," said the doctor kindly; and he turned once more to his writing, while Dexter went to the bookcase, and, after taking down one or two works, found a large quarto containing pictures. He returned to the chair the doctor had pointed out, opened the book upon his knees, turned over a few leaves, and then raised his eyes to have a good long wondering stare at the doctor, as he sat frowning there very severely, and in the midst of a great deal of deep thought put down a sentence now and again. Dexter's eyes wandered from the doctor to a dark-looking bust upon the top of a book-shelf. From thence to a brown bust on the opposite shelf, at which he laughed, for though it was meant for Cicero, it put him greatly in mind of Mr Sibery, and he then fell a-wondering what the boys were doing at the workhouse school. Just then the black marble timepiece on the shelf chimed four quarters, and struck eleven. "No matter what may be the descent," wrote the doctor, "the human frame is composed of the same element." "I say," cried Dexter loudly. "Eh? Yes?" said the doctor, looking up. "What time are you going to have dinner!" "Dinner? One o'clock, sir. Why, it's not long since you had breakfast." "Seems a long time." "Go on looking at your book." Dexter obeyed, and the doctor went on writing, and became very interested in his work. So did not the boy, who yawned, fidgeted in his seat, rubbed his neck impatiently, and then bent down and tried to ease his boot, which evidently caused him pain. There was a pause during which Dexter closed the book and fidgeted about; now one leg went out, now the other. Then his arms moved about as if so full of life and energy that they must keep on the jerk. There was another yawn, but the doctor did not hear it, he was too much intent upon the chapter he was writing. Then a happy thought occurred to Dexter, and he raised the heavy quarto book he had upon his knees, placed it upon his head, and balanced it horizontally. That was too easy, there was no fun or excitement in the feat, so he placed it edgewise. That was better, but very easy--both topwise and bottomwise. Harder when tried with the front edges upon his crown, for the big book demonstrated a desire to open. But he dodged that, and felt happier. He glanced at the doctor, and smiled at his profile, for in his intentness the writer's thick bottom lip protruded far beyond the upper, and seemed to Dexter as if trying to reach the tip of his nose. What should he do next? Could he balance that book on its back? Dexter held it between his hands and cogitated. The back was round, therefore the feat would be more difficult, and all the more enjoyable, but would the book keep shut? He determined to try. Up went the book, his hands on either side keeping it close. Then there was a little scheming to get it exactly in equilibrium; this was attained, and as the boy sat there stiff-necked and rigid of spine, with his eyes turned upwards, there was nothing left to do now but to remove his hands. This he proceeded to do by slow degrees, a finger at a time, till the heavy work was supported only by the left and right forefingers, the rounded back exactly on the highest point of his cranium. "All right," said Dexter to himself, supremely happy in his success, and with a quick movement he let his hands drop to his lap. For one solitary moment the great quarto volume remained balanced exactly; then, as a matter of course, it opened all at once. _Flip! flop! bang_! The book had given him two boxes on the sides of the head, and then, consequent upon his sudden effort to save it, made a leap, and came heavily upon the floor. Dexter's face was scarlet as he dropped upon his knees to pick it up, and found the doctor gazing at him, or, as in his own mind he put it, threatening a similar caning to that which Mr Sibery gave him a year before, when he dropped the big Bible on the schoolroom floor. "Be careful, my boy, be careful," said the doctor dreamily, for he was half lost in thought. "That damages the bindings. Take a smaller book." Dexter felt better, and hastily replaced the work on the shelf, taking one of a smaller size, and returning to his seat to bend down and thrust a finger inside his boot. "How they do hurt!" he thought to himself; and he made a sudden movement. Then he checked himself. No; 'twas a pity. They were so new, and looked so nice. Yes, he would: they hurt so terribly; and, stooping down, he rapidly unlaced the new boots, and pushed them off, smiling with gratification at the relief. Then he had another good look round for something to amuse himself with, yawned, glanced at the doctor, dropped down on hands and knees, went softly to the other side of the centre table, and began to creep about with the agility of a quadruped or one of the monkey tribe. This was delightful, and the satisfied look on the boy's face was a study, till happening to raise his eyes, he saw that the doctor had risen, and was leaning over the writing-table, gazing down at him with a countenance full of wonder and astonishment combined. "What are you doing, sir?" said the doctor sternly. "Have you lost something?" Dexter might have said, "Yes, a button--a marble;" but he did not; he only rose slowly, and his late quadrupedal aspect was emphasised by a sheepish look. "Don't do that on the carpet, sir. You'll wear out the knees of your trousers. Why, where are your boots?" "On that chair, sir," said Dexter confusedly. "Then put them on again, and get another book." Dexter put on his boots slowly, laced them up, and then fetched himself another book. He returned to his seat, yawning, and glanced at the doctor again. _Booz, booz, booz, boom_--_'m_--_'m_. A bluebottle had flown in through the open window, bringing with it the suggestion of warm sunshine, fields, gardens, flowers, and the blue sky and waving trees. "_Booz_!" said the bluebottle, and it dashed away, leaving a profound silence, broken by the scratching of the doctor's pen. "I say," cried Dexter excitedly; "is that your garden?" "Yes, my boy, yes," said the doctor, without looking up from his writing. "May I go out in it?" "Certainly, my boy. Yes," said the doctor, without looking up, though there was the quick sound of footsteps, and, with a bound, Dexter was through the open French window, and out upon the lawn. The doctor did not heed the lapse of time, for he was intent upon his writing, and an hour had passed when the door opened and Helen returned. "Now I am at liberty, papa," she said; "and--where is Dexter?" "Eh? The boy? Bless me, I thought he was here!" _Smash! Tinkle_! The sound of breaking glass, and the doctor leaped to his feet, just as a loud gruff voice sounded-- "Here, you just come down." "Copestake!" cried the doctor. "Why, what is the matter out there!" CHAPTER EIGHT. OLD DAN'L IS WROTH. Mr Grayson's was the best garden for twenty miles round. The Coleby people said so, and they ought to have known. But Dan'l Copestake said it was all nonsense. "Might be made a good garden if master wasn't so close," he used to say to everybody. "Wants more money spent on it, and more hands kept. How'm I to keep a place like that to rights with only two--me and a lab'rer, under me, and Peter to do the sweeping?" Keep it to rights or not, it was to Helen Grayson four acres of delight, and she was to blame for a great deal which offended Dan'l Copestake, the head-gardener. "Papa," it would be, "did you give orders for that beautiful privet hedge to be cut down!" "Eh? no, my dear, Copestake said it kept the light off some of those young trees, and I said he might cut it down." "Oh, do stop him," cried Helen. "It will take years to grow up, and this past year it has been delightful, with its sweet-scented blossom and beautiful black berries." So it was with scores of things. Helen wanted to see them growing luxuriantly, Dan'l Copestake loved to hash and chop them into miserably cramped "specimints," as he called them, and the doctor got all the blame. But what a garden! It was full of old-fashioned flowers in great clumps, many of them growing, to Dan'l's disgust, down among the fruit and vegetables. There were flowering shrubs and beautiful conifers, a great mulberry-tree on the mossy lawn, and a huge red brick wall all round, literally covered with trained trees, which in their seasons were masses of white bloom, or glowing with purple and golden plums, and light red, black, or yellowy pink cherries, and great fat pears, while, facing the south, there were dozens of trees of peaches, nectarines, and downy golden apricots. As to the apples, they grew by the bushel, almost by the ton; and for strawberries and the other lower fruits there was no such garden near. Then there was Helen's conservatory, always full of sweet-scented flowers, and the vinery and pits, where the great purple and amber bunches hung and ripened, and the long green cucumber and melon came in their good time. But Dan'l grumbled, as gardeners will. "Blights is offle," he said. "It's the blightiest garden I ever see, and a man might spend all his life keeping the birds down with a gun." But Dan'l did not spend any part of his life, let alone all, keeping the birds down with a gun. The doctor caught him shooting one day, and nearly shot him out of the place. "How dare you, sir?" he cried. "I will not have a single bird destroyed." "Then you won't get no peace, sir, nor not a bit of fruit." "I shall have the place overrun with slugs and snails, and all kinds of injurious blight, sir, if you use that gun. No, sir, you'll put nets over the fruit when it's beginning to ripen. That will do." The doctor walked away with Helen, and as soon as they were out of sight, behind the great laurustinus clump, Helen threw her arms about his neck, and kissed him for saving her pet birds. Consequently, in addition to abundance of fruit, and although it was so close in the town, there was always a chorus of song in the season; and even the nightingale came from the woodlands across the river and sang within the orchard, through which the river ran. That river alone half made the place, for it was one of those useless rivers, so commercial men called it, where the most you could do was pleasure-boating; barges only being able to ascend to Coleby Bridge, a sort of busy colony from the town, two miles nearer the sea. "Yes, sir," Sir James Danby had been known to say, "if the river could be deepened right through the town it would be the making of the place." "And the spoiling of my grounds," said the doctor, "so I'm glad it runs over the solid rock." This paradise of a garden was the one into which Dexter darted, and in which Dan'l Copestake was grumbling that morning-- "Like a bear with a sore head, that's what I say," said Peter Cribb to the under-gardener. "Nothing never suits him." "Yes, it do," said Dan'l, showing a very red face over a clump of rhododendron. "Master said you was to come into the garden three days a week, and last week I only set eyes on you twice, and here's half the week gone and you've only been once." "Look here," said Peter Cribb, a hard-looking bullet-headed man of five-and-twenty; and he leaned on his broom, and twisted one very tightly trousered leg round the other, "do you think I can sit upon the box o' that there wagginette, drivin' miles away, and be sweeping this here lawn same time!" "Master said as it was your dooty to be in this garden three days a week; and t'other three days you was to do your stable-work--there." "Didn't I go out with the carriage every day this week?" "I don't know when you went out with the carriage, and when you didn't," said Dan'l; "all I know is as my lawn didn't get swept; and how the doctor expects a garden like this here to be kept tidy without help, I should be glad to know." "Well, you'd better go and grumble at him, and not worry me, and--pst! Lookye there." He pointed with his broom, and both men remained paralysed at the sight which met their eyes. It was not so much from its extraordinary nature as from what Dan'l afterwards spoke of as its "imperence." That last, he said, was what staggered him, that any human boy should, in the very middle of the day, dare to do such a thing in his garden. He said _his_ garden, for when speaking of it the doctor seemed to be only some one who was allowed to walk through it for a treat. What the two men gazed at was the figure of a boy, in shirt and trousers, going up the vinery roof, between where the early and the late houses joined and there was a sloping brick coping. From this they saw him reach the big wall against which the vinery was built, and there he sat for a few moments motionless. "Why, who is he?" said Peter, in a whisper. "He went up that vinery just like a monkey." Peter had never seen a monkey go up the roof of a vinery, but Dan'l did not notice that. "Hold your row," said Dan'l, in a low voice; "don't speak, and we'll ketch my nabs. Now we know where my peaches went last year." "But who is he!" whispered Peter. "I don't know, and I don't care, but I mean to have him as sure as he's there. Now if master hadn't been so precious 'tickler about a gun, I could ha' brought him down like a bird." "Lookye there," cried Peter. "See that?" "Oh yes, I see him," said Dan'l, as the figure ran easily along the top of the twelve-foot wall on all-fours. "I see my gentleman. Nice little game he's having. I'll bet a shilling he's about gorged with grapes, and now he's on the look-out for something else. But let him alone; wait a bit and we'll put salt on his tail before he can say what's what. I knowed some grapes was a-going. I could about feel it, like." "Well, I never!" whispered Peter, peering through the laurustinus, and watching the boy. "See that?" "Oh yes, I see him. Nice un he is." This last was consequent upon the boy running a few yards, and then holding tightly with his hands, and kicking both legs in the air two or three times before trotting on along the wall again as easily as a tomcat. "See that?" said Peter. "Oh yes, I can see," said Dan'l. "He's so full o' grapes it makes him lively," and he stared at the boy, who had suddenly stopped, and planting his hands firmly, stood up on them, balancing himself, with his legs spread wide in the air. "He'll break his neck, that's what he'll do," said Peter. "Good job too, I says," grumbled Dan'l. "Boys like that ought to be done away with. He's one on 'em out o' the town. Now look here, Peter, we've got to get him, that's what we've got to do." "Ah, that's better," said Peter, who had been nervous ever since a horse ran away with him. "I don't like to see a boy doing dangerous things that how." "Don't call a thing like that a boy, do yer!" said Dan'l. "I calls it monkey rubbidge. Now you step round the house, and through the stable, and get down that side o' the wall, and I'll go this. Don't you seem to see him till you hear me whistle. Then grab." "But how am I to grab when he's up there!" said Peter. "Ah! 'tis high up," said Dan'l. "Wish I'd got one o' them grappling-irons as hangs down by the bridge; I'd fetch him off pretty quick." "Shall I get a fruit-ladder?" suggested Peter. "Nay, we don't want no fruit-ladders," grumbled Dan'l. "We'll soon fetch his lordship down. Now then, you be off." "Stop a moment," said Peter, as he watched the boy intently. "Look at him! Well, I never did!" It was a very true remark. Peter certainly never did, and very few boys would have cunning enough to perform such a feat with so much ease. For, after running about fifty yards along the top of the wall, the little fellow turned quickly and ran back again, made offers as if he were going to leap down, and then suddenly squatted down in exact imitation of a cat, and began licking his arms, and passing them over his head. "Well, he caps me!" cried Peter. "I never see a boy do anything like that since I was at a show at Exeter, and then it was a bigger chap than him." "Look here," said Dan'l; "I've got it. You get a big strong clothes-prop, and I'll get another, and we'll poke him off. If he comes down your side, mind this: he'll be like a rat, and off as quick as quick; but don't you let him go. Drop your prop, and throw yourself on him; we'll ketch him, and take him in to the gov'nor, and he'll know now where the fruit goes. You couldn't net chaps like this." In happy ignorance of the doctor's plans, Peter and Dan'l each provided himself with a clothes-prop, and in due time made for the appointed sides of the wall; but no sooner did the boy catch sight of his pursuers than he started off on another all-fours run; but this took him away from the house, and before he had gone far he turned and ran back. Dan'l whistled, and Peter made a poke at the runner from one side of the wall, while Dan'l made a savage poke from the other. The boy, who seemed as active as a squirrel, dodged them both, ran along toward the vinery, and as fast as the various trees would allow the two men followed. Peter was soon out of the race, for a lean-to shed on his side of the wall put a stop to further pursuit, and Dan'l, who looked as malicious as a savage after a wild beast, had the hunt all to himself. "Ah!" he shouted, as he stopped panting, "now I've got you, my fine fellow." This was untrue, for he was as far off his quarry as ever, he being at the front of the vinery, and the boy on the top of the wall right at the back of the glass slope. "Now, then, none o' yer nonsense, and down yer come." Down the boy did not come, for he squatted there at the top, in a sitting position, with his arms round his knees, gazing coolly but watchfully at the gardener. "D'yer hear? come down!" The Yankee 'coon in the tree, when he saw the celebrated Colonel Crockett taking aim at him, and in full possession of the hunter's reputation as a dead shot, is reported to have said, "Don't shoot; I'll come down;" and the boy might have said something of the kind to Dan'l Copestake. But he had no faith in the gardener, and it is expecting too much of a boy who is seated in a safe place, to conclude that he will surrender at the first summons, especially to a fierce-looking man, who is armed with a very big stick. This boy had not the least intention of giving himself up as a prisoner, and he sat and stared at Dan'l, and Dan'l stared at him. "Do you hear me?" cried Dan'l; but the boy did not move a muscle, he only stared. "Are you over there, Peter?" shouted Dan'l. "Ay! All right!" "You stop there, then, and nip him if he comes your way. I'll get a ladder, and will soon have him down." "All right!" came from Peter again; and the boy's eyes watched keenly the old gardener's movements. "Do you hear what I say!" continued Dan'l. "Am I to fetch that ladder, or will you come down without!" The boy did not move. "Let's see: I can reach you with this here, though," Dan'l went on. "Not going to have any more of your nonsense, my fine fellow, so now then." The boy's eyes flashed as he saw the gardener come close up to the foot of the glass slope, and reach toward him with the long ash clothes-prop; but he measured mentally the length of that prop, and sat still, for, as he had quickly concluded, the gardener could not, even with his arm fully extended, reach to within some feet of where he sat. Dan'l pushed and poked about, and nearly broke a pane of glass, but the boy did not stir. "Oh, very well: only you'd better get down; you'll have it all the worse if I do fetch that ladder." Still the boy made no sign. He merely glanced to right and left, and could have dashed along the wall at once, but that would have taken him down the garden, toward the river, and that was the direction in which he did not want to go. To his left there was a portion of the house, the wall rising a good height, so that there was no escape in that direction. His way was either by the garden wall, or else down the slope of the vinery, as he had gone up. But, like a lion in his path, there at the foot of this slope stood Dan'l, with the great clothes-prop, and the boy, concluding that he was best where he was, sat and stared at the gardener, and waited. "Oh, very well then, my fine fellow: ladder it is," cried Dan'l; and, sticking the prop into the ground with a savage dig, he turned and ran off. It was only a feint, and he turned sharply at the end of a dozen steps, to find, as he expected, that the boy had moved, and begun to descend. Dan'l ran back, and the boy slipped into his former place, and sat like a monument of stone. "Oh, that's your game, is it!" said Dan'l. "But it won't do, my fine fellow. Now, are you coming down?" No reply. Dan'l reflected. If he went off to fetch the ladder from the stable-yard, the boy would slide down the top of the vinery and escape. That would not do. If he called to Peter to fetch the ladder, the boy would wait till the groom was gone, and slip over the wall, drop, and escape that way. That would not do either. Hah! There was the labourer. He could call him. It was past twelve, and he had gone to his dinner, Dan'l, like Peter, taking his at the more aristocratic hour of one. Dan'l was in a fix. He meant to have that boy, and make an example of him, but a great difficulty stared him in the face. There was no one to call, unless he waited till the doctor came. If the doctor came, he would perhaps take a lenient view of the matter, and let the boy go, and, unless Dan'l could first give the prisoner a sound thrashing with a hazel stick, one of a bundle which he had in his tool-shed, all his trouble would have been in vain. So he would not call the doctor. He made two or three more feints of going, and each time the boy began to descend, but only to dart back as the gardener turned. "Oh, that's your game, is it!" said Dan'l. "Very well; come down, but you can't get out of the garden if you do." The next time, after a few minutes' thought, Dan'l turned and ran as hard as he could, with every appearance now of going right off for the ladder. But he had made his plans with no little calculation of probabilities; and his idea was now to go right on till he had given the boy time to descend, and make for one of the entrances, when he meant to return, run him down, and seize him, before the young scamp, as he called him, had time to clamber up any other place. Dan'l ran on, and the boy watched him; and as soon as the gardener showed by his movements that he was evidently going away, began to descend. Hardly, however, had he reached the ground than Dan'l turned, saw him, and made a fresh dash to capture him. If the gardener had waited a couple more minutes he would have had a better chance. As it was, the boy had time to reach the dividing wall of the vinery wall again, but just as he was scrambling up, Dan'l was upon him, and was in the act of grasping one arm, when it was snatched away. In the effort the boy lost his composure, and the steady easy-going confidence which had enabled him to trot along with such facility; and the consequence was that as he made a final bound to reach the back wall his right foot slipped, went through a pane of glass, and as this startled him more, he made another ill-judged attempt, and, slipping, went through the top of the vinery, only saving himself from dropping down inside by spreading his arms across the rafters, and hanging, caught as if in a trap. "Here, just you come down!" Directly after the doctor appeared in the study window, and, closely followed by Helen, hurried toward the front of the vinery, where the gardener stood. CHAPTER NINE. A RELEASE. "Glad you've come, sir," said the old gardener, telling a tremendous fib. "Got one on 'em at last." "Got one of them?" cried the doctor. "Why--" "O papa dear! look!" cried Helen. "One of them nippers as is always stealing our fruit," continued Dan'l. "Why, Dexter," cried the doctor; "you there!" He stared wildly at the boy, who, with his legs kicking to and fro in the vinery in search of support, looked down from the roof of the building like a sculptured cherub, with arms instead of wings. "Yes, it's all right," said the boy coolly. "Ain't much on it broken," while Dan'l stared and scratched his head, as he felt that he had made some mistake. "You wicked boy!" cried Helen, with a good deal of excitement. "How did you get in such a position!" "I couldn't help it," said Dexter. "He chivied me all along the top o' the wall with that great stick, and there's another chap t'other side. He was at me too." "Is this true, Copestake!" cried the doctor angrily. "Well, yes, sir; I s'pose it is," said the gardener. "Me and Peter see him a-cuttin' his capers atop o' that wall, and when we told him to come down, he wouldn't, and fell through our vinery." "Who was going to come down when you was hitting at him with that big stick?" said Dexter indignantly. "You had no business atop of our wall," said the gardener stoutly. "And now look at the mischief you've done." "Tut--tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated the doctor. "Please, sir, I didn't know as he was any one you knew." "No, no, of course not," said the doctor pettishly. "Tut--tut--tut! Dear me! dear me!" "I say, ain't some one coming to help me down?" said Dexter, in an ill-used tone. "Yes, yes, of course," said the doctor. "Keep still, sir, or you'll cut yourself." "I have cut myself, and it's a-bleeding," said the boy. "Look here, if one of you goes inside this place, and holds up that big long prop, I can put my foot in the fork at the end, and climb up again." "Get a ladder quickly, Copestake, and call the groom." "Yes, sir," said Dan'l; and he went off grumbling, while the doctor seized the prop, and went into the vinery. "Are you much hurt, Dexter?" said Helen sympathisingly. "I d'know," he replied. "It hurts a bit. I slipped, and went through." "Now, sir, keep your legs still," cried the doctor from inside, as he raised the prop. "All right," said the boy, and the next moment one of his feet rested in the fork of the ash prop; but, though the prisoner struggled, and the doctor pushed, there was no result. "I wants some one to lend a hand up here," said Dexter. "If I try I shall break some more glass. Is that old chap coming back-- him as poked me!" "Yes, yes," cried Helen. "Keep still; there's a good boy." "No, I ain't," he said, smiling down at her in the most ludicrous way. "I ain't a good boy. I wish I was. Will he give it me very much?" He tapped with his hand on the glass, as he pointed down at the doctor, who was still supporting the boy's foot with the prop. Helen did not reply, for the simple reason that she did not know what to say; and the boy, feeling bound, was making a fresh struggle to free himself, when Dan'l came in sight, round the end of the house, with a light ladder, and just behind him came Peter, with a board used when glass was being repaired. "Here they come," said Dexter, watching the approach eagerly. "I am glad. It's beginning to hurt ever so." Dan'l laid the ladder against the vinery at some distance from the front, so that it should lie upon the roof at the same angle, and then, holding it steady, Peter, who was grinning largely, mounted with the board, which he placed across the rafters, so that he could kneel down, and, taking hold of Dexter, who clasped his hands about his neck, he bodily drew him out, and would have carried him down had the boy not preferred to get down by himself. As he reached the foot of the ladder the doctor was standing ready for him, armed with the clothes-prop, which he held in his hand, as if it were a weapon intended for punishment. The boy looked up in the stern face before him, and the doctor put on a tremendous frown. "Please, sir, I'm very sorry, sir," said Dexter. "You young rascal!" began the doctor, seizing his arm. "Oh, I say, please, sir, don't hit a fellow with a thing like that." "Bah!" ejaculated the doctor, throwing down the prop, which fell on the grass with a loud thud. "Copestake!--Peter!--take those things away, and send for the glazier to put in those squares. Here, Dexter; this way." The doctor strode away half a dozen steps, and then stopped and gazed down. "Where is your jacket, sir? and where are your boots?" "I tucked 'em under that tree there that lies on the grass," said the boy, pointing to a small cedar. "Fetch them out, sir." Dexter went toward the tree, and his first instinct was to make a dash and escape, anywhere, so as to avoid punishment, but as he stooped down and drew his articles of attire from beneath the broad frond-like branches, he caught sight of Helen's eyes fixed upon him, so full of trouble and amusement that he walked back, put his hand in the doctor's, and walked with him into the house. Helen followed, and as she passed through the window Dan'l turned to Peter with-- "I say, who is he?" "I dunno. Looks like a young invalid." "Ay, that's it," said the gardener. "Hair cut short, and looks very white. He's a young luneattic come for the governor to cure. Well, if that's going to be it, I shall resign my place." "Oh, I wouldn't do that," said Peter, who was moved to say it from the same feeling which induced the old woman to pray for long life to the tyrant--for fear they might get a worse to rule over them. "Doctor'll make him better. Rum-looking little chap." As they spoke, they were carrying the ladder and board round to the back of the house, and, in doing so, they had to pass the kitchen door, where Maria was standing. "See that game!" said Peter. "Oh yes. I saw him out of one of the bedroom windows." "Young patient, ain't he?" said Peter. "Patient! Why, he's a young workhouse boy as master's took a fancy to. I never see such games, for my part." Peter whistled, and the head-gardener repeated his determination to resign. "And he'll never get another gardener like me," he said. "That's a true word, Mr Copestake, sir," said Peter seriously. And then to himself: "No, there never was another made like you, you old tyrant. I wish you would go, and then we should have a little peace." CHAPTER TEN. DEXTER IS VERY SORRY. Dexter walked into the doctor's study, and Helen came as rearguard behind. "Now, sir," said the doctor sternly, "I suppose you know that I'm very much displeased with you." "Yes, sir, of course you are," said the boy seriously. "I don't wonder at it." Dr Grayson bit his lip. "Are you going to cane me?" "Wait and see, sir. Now, first thing, you go up to your room and wash your hands, and dress yourself properly. Then come down to me." Dexter glanced at Helen, but she kept her eyes averted, and the boy went slowly out, keeping his gaze fixed upon her all the time. "A young scamp!" said the doctor, as soon as they were alone. "I'm afraid I shall have to send him back." Helen looked at him. "I expected him to be a little wild," continued the doctor; "but he is beyond bearing. What do you say, my dear? Too bad, is he not?" Helen was silent for a few moments. "It is too soon to say that, papa," she replied at last. "There is a great deal in the boy that is most distasteful, but, on the other hand, I cannot help liking the little fellow." "Yes; that's just it," cried the doctor. "I feel as if I should like to give him a sound thrashing, but, at the same time, I feel that I could not raise a hand against him. What's to be done? Shall I send him back, and choose another?" "No, no, papa. If you intend to adopt a boy, let us keep this one, and see what he turns out." Just then the bell rang for lunch, and a minute after Dexter came running down into the room, with a smile, as if nothing was the matter, shining out of his eyes. "I say, wasn't that the dinner-bell?" he cried. "I am so precious hungry." "And have you no apologies to make, sir? Aren't you sorry you were so mischievous, and broke the top of my vinery?" "Yes; I'm very sorry, sir; but it was that old chap's fault. He made me run and slip. I say, what would he have done if he had caught me?" "Punished you, or brought you in to me, sir. Now, then, I've been talking about sending you back to the workhouse. You are too mischievous for me." "Send me back!" "Yes, of course. I want a boy who will be good." "Well, I will." "So you said before, but you are not good. You are about as mischievous a young rascal as I ever saw in my life." "Yes, sir; that's what Mr Sibery used to say," replied the boy quietly. "I don't want to be." "Then why are you, sir?" The boy shook his head, and looked up at the doctor thoughtfully. "I suppose it's in me," he said. Helen bit her lip, and turned away, while her father gave his head a fierce rub, as if he was extremely vexed. "Shall you send me back, sir!" said Dexter at last; and his look was full of wistful appeal. "Well, I shall think about it," said the doctor. "I don't want to go," said the boy thoughtfully. "You don't want me to go, do you?" he continued, turning to Helen. "Here, the lunch is getting cold," said the doctor. "Come along." As he spoke he half-pushed Dexter before him, and pointed to a chair. The boy hesitated, but a sharp command from the doctor made him scuffle into his place, after which the grace was said, and the dinner commenced for Dexter--the lunch for his patron and friend. Roast fowl most delicately cooked, with a delicious sauce; in addition to that made with bread; and there was an ornamentation round the dish of tempting sausages. The odour from the steaming dishes was enough to have attracted any coarsely-fed workhouse boy, just as a flower, brings a bee from afar. Helen was helped to a couple of choice slices from the breast, and then the doctor, looking stern all the while, carved off the liver wing, with a fine long piece of juicy breast adhering, and laid it on a plate, with the biggest sausage, gravy, and sauce, Maria carrying the plate afterwards to Helen to be well supplied with vegetables. Then, according to custom, Maria departed with her nose in the air, and her bosom overcharged with indignant remonstrances, which she was going to let off at Mrs Millett. The meal was commenced in silence, Dexter taking up his knife and fork, and watching by turns the doctor and Helen, to see how they handled theirs. Then he cut the sausage in half, just as the doctor had cut his, and looked hard at him, but the doctor was gazing down at his plate and frowning. Dexter looked at Helen, but she was gazing at her father, and everything was very still in the dining-room, while from without, faintly heard, there came the rippling song of a lark, far away over the meadow across the river. That fowl smelt delicious, and looked good in the extreme, but Dexter laid down his knife and fork, and sat perfectly still. Helen saw everything, but she did not speak, and the annoyance she had felt began to diminish, for the boy was evidently suffering keenly. "Hallo!" said the doctor. "Don't you like chicken!" The boy started, and looked up at him with a troubled face. "I say, don't you like chicken, sir!" Dexter tried to answer, but the words would not come; and he sat there with the tears gathering in his eyes, though he tried hard to choke his emotion down. The doctor was very angry, and sadly disappointed; but he said no more, only went on with his lunch. "Eat your dinner," said Helen, after a time; and she leant over toward the boy, and whispered the words kindly. He gave her a quick, grateful look, but he could not speak. "Come, sir, eat your dinner," said the doctor at last. "Please, sir, I can't," the boy faltered. "Why not?" Dexter had to make another fight to keep down his tears before he could say-- "Please, sir, I never could eat my breakfast when I knew I was going to have the cane." The doctor grunted, frowned, and went on eating, while the boy directed a pitiful appealing look at Helen. "Yes," she said at last, "what do you want?" "May I go up to that place where I slept last night?" Helen glanced at her father, who nodded shortly, and went on with his dinner, while the required permission being given by Helen, the boy rose hastily, and hurried out of the room. Doctor Grayson was silent for a few minutes, and then he took a glass of sherry. "A young scoundrel!" he said. "It's not pleasant to have to say so, but I've made a mistake." "And are you going to give up your project, papa?" said Helen. "_No_," he thundered. "Certainly not. It's very awkward, for that bullet-headed drill-sergeant Hippetts will laugh at me, and say `I told you so,' but I shall have to take the boy back." Helen was silent. "He told me I should," he continued; "but I would not believe him. The young dog's face attracted me. He looked so frank and ingenuous. But I'll soon pick out another. My theory is right, and if I have ten thousand obstacles, I'll carry it out, and prove to the world that I knew what I was at." Helen went on slowly with her lunch, thinking deeply the while. "Well?" said the doctor angrily, "why don't you speak? Are you triumphing over my first downfall!" Helen looked up at her father, and smiled reproachfully. "I was thinking about Dexter," she said softly. "A confounded ungrateful young dog! Taken him from that wretched place, clothed him, offered him a home of which he might be proud, and he turns upon me like that!" "It was the act of a high-spirited, mischievous boy," said Helen quietly. "Mischievous! I should think it was. Confound him! But I'll have no more of his tricks. Back he goes to the Union, and I'll have one without so much spirit." Helen continued her lunch, and the doctor went on with his, but only to turn pettishly upon his child. "I wish to goodness you'd say something, Helen," he cried. "It's so exasperating to have every one keeping silence like that." Helen looked up and smiled. "Yes, and that's just as aggravating," said the doctor. "Now you are laughing at me." "No, no; I was thinking very seriously about your project." "One which I mean to carry out, madam." "Of course, papa," said Helen quietly; "but I would not be damped at the outset." "What do you mean, Helen?" "I mean that I should not take that poor boy back to the life from which you have rescued him, just because he has displayed a few pranks, all due to the exuberance of his nature. Coming from such a place, and making such a change, he is sure to feel it strongly. He is, so to speak, bubbling over with excitement and--" "Here, stop a moment," said the doctor, in astonishment. "I give up. You had better write that book." "Not I, papa dear," said Helen, smiling. "And if you are really bent upon this experiment--" "And I am," said the doctor. "Nothing shall change me." "Then I think you have selected the very boy." "You do!" said the doctor excitedly. "Yes. He is just the wild little savage for you to reclaim." "But--but a little too bad, Helen?" "No, papa, I think not; and I think you are not justified in saying bad. I believe he is a very good boy." "You do?" "Yes; full of mischief as a boy can be, but very, very affectionate." "Yes. I think he is," assented the doctor. "I think he will be very teachable." "Humph!" "And it was plain to see that he was touched to the heart with grief at our anger." "Or is it all his artfulness!" "Oh no, papa! Certainly not that. The boy is frank and affectionate as can be." "Then you think it is possible to make a gentleman of him?" "If it is possible of any boy whom you could get from the Union, papa." "And you really think he is frank and tender-hearted?" Helen pointed to the boy's untouched plate. "And you would not exchange him for something a little more tractable?" "I don't think you could. I really begin to like the mischievous little fellow, and I believe that in a very short time we should see a great change." "You do?" "Yes; but of course we must be prepared for a great many more outbreaks of this kind." "Unless I stop them." "No, no, you must not stop them," said Helen quietly. "These little ebullitions must not be suppressed in that way--I mean with undue severity." "Then you really would not take--I mean send him back?" "No," said Helen. "I think, perhaps, I could help you in all this." "My dear Helen," cried the doctor eagerly. "My dear child, you don't know how pleased you make me. I felt that for your sake I must take him back." "For my sake?" exclaimed Helen. "Yes; that it was too bad to expose you to the petty annoyances and troubles likely to come from keeping him. But if you feel that you could put up with it till we have tamed him down--" Helen rose from her chair, and went behind her father's, to lay her hands upon his shoulders, when he took them in his, and crossed them upon his breast, so as to draw her face down over his shoulder. "My dear father," she said, as she laid her cheek against his, "I don't know--I cannot explain, but this boy seems to have won his way with me very strangely, and I should be deeply grieved if you sent him away." "My dear Helen, you've taken a load off my mind. There, go and fetch the poor fellow down. He wanted his dinner two hours ago, and he must be starved." Helen kissed her father's forehead, and went quietly up to Dexter's room, listened for a few moments, heard a low sob, and then, softly turning the handle of the door, she entered, to stand there, quite taken aback. The boy was crouched in a heap on the floor, sobbing silently, and with his breast heaving with the agony of spirit he suffered. For that she was prepared, but the tears rose in her eyes as she grasped another fact. There, neatly folded and arranged, just as the Union teaching had prompted him, were the clothes the boy had worn that day, even to the boots placed under the chair, upon which they lay, while the boy had taken out and dressed himself again in his old workhouse livery, his cap lying on the floor by his side. Helen crossed to him softly, bent over him, and laid her little white hand upon his head. The boy sprang to his feet as if he had felt a blow, and stood before her with one arm laid across his eyes, as, in shame for his tears, he bent his head. "Dexter," she said again, "what are you going to do?" "Going back again," he said hoarsely. "I'm such a bad un. They always said I was." "And is that the way to make yourself better?" "I can't help it," he said, half defiantly. "It's no use to try, and I'm going back." "To grieve me, and make me sorry that I have been mistaken?" "Yes," he said huskily, and with his arm still across his eyes. "I'm going back, and old Sibery may cut me to pieces," he added passionately. "I don't care." "Look up at me, Dexter," said Helen gently, as she laid her hand upon the boy's arm. "Tell me," she continued, "which will you do?--go back, or try to be a good boy, and do what you know I wish you to do, and stay!" He let her arm fall, gazed wildly in her eyes, and then caught her hand and dropped upon his knees, sobbing passionately. "I will try; I will try," he cried, as soon as he could speak. "Take me down to him, and let him cane me, and I won't cry out a bit. I'll take it all like Bill Jones does, and never make a sound, but don't, don't send me away." Helen Grayson softly sank upon her knees beside the boy, and took him in her arms to kiss him once upon the forehead. "There, Dexter," she said gently, as she rose. "Now bathe your eyes, dress yourself again, and come downstairs to me in the dining-room, as quickly as you can." Helen went to her own room for a few moments to bathe her own eyes, and wonder how it was that she should be so much moved, and in so short a time. The doctor was anxiously awaiting her return. "Well!" he said; "where is the young scamp!" "In his room," replied Helen, "and--" "Well--well!" said the doctor impatiently. "Oh no, father dear," said Helen quietly, but with more emotion in her voice than even she knew. "We must not send him back." Then she told what had passed, and the doctor nodded his head. "No," he said; "we must not send him back." Just then there was a knock at the door, and Maria entered to clear away. "Not yet, Maria," said Helen quietly. "Take that chicken back, and ask Mrs Millett to make it hot again." "And the vegetables, ma'am!" "Yes. I will ring when we want them." Maria took the various dishes away with a very ill grace, and dabbed them down on the kitchen table, almost hard enough to produce cracks, as she delivered her message to Mrs Millett, who looked annoyed. "You can do as you please, Mrs Millett," said Maria, giving herself a jerk as if a string inside her had been pulled; "but I'm a-going to look out for a new place." CHAPTER ELEVEN. MASTER GRAYSON GOES FOR A WALK. "Couldn't have believed it," said the doctor one evening, when a week had passed away. "It's wonderful." Helen smiled. "A whole week, and the young dog's behaviour has been even better than I could wish. Well, it's very hopeful, and I am extremely glad, Helen, extremely glad." Helen said nothing, but she thought a good deal, and, among other things, she wondered how Dexter would have behaved if he had been left to himself. Consequently, she felt less sanguine than the doctor. The fact was that she had given up everything to devote the whole of her time to the boy, thus taking care that he was hardly ever left to himself. She read to him, and made him read to her, and battled hard to get him out of his schoolboy twang. Taken by his bright, handsome face, and being clever with her brush, she had made him sit while she painted his likeness; that is, she tried to make him sit, but it was like dealing with so much quicksilver, and she was fain to give up the task as an impossibility after scolding, coaxing, and bribing, coming to the conclusion that the boy could not keep still. She played games with him; and at last risked public opinion very bravely by taking the boy out with her for a walk, when one of the first persons she met was Lady Danby. "I say, what did she mean!" said Dexter, as they walked away. "That lady--Lady Danby!" "Yes. Why did she look sorry for me, and call me a _protege_?" "Oh," said Helen, smiling; "it is only a French word for any one who is adopted or protected, as papa is protecting you." "But is it a funny word!" "Funny? Oh dear no!" "Then why did she laugh, curious like?" Helen could not answer that question. "She looked at me," said Dexter, "as if she didn't like me. I've seen ladies look like that when they've come to see the schools, and us boy's used to feel as if we'd like to throw slates at them." "You have no occasion to trouble yourself about other people's opinions, Dexter," said Helen quietly; "and of course now you couldn't throw stones or anything else at a lady." "No; but I could at a boy. I could hit that chap ever so far off. Him as was with that Lady Danby." "Oh, nonsense! come along; we'll go down by the river." "Yes; come along," cried Dexter excitedly; "but I don't see why he should sneer at me for nothing." "What? Master Danby!" "Yes, him. All the time you two were talking, he kept walking round me, and making faces as if I was physic." "You fancied it, Dexter." "Oh no, I didn't. I know when anybody likes me, and when anybody doesn't. Lady Danby didn't like me, and she give a sneery laugh when she called me a _protege_, and when you weren't looking that chap made an offer at me with the black cane he carried, that one with a silver top and black tassels." "Did he?" "Didn't he just! I only wish he had. I'd ha' given him such a oner. Why, I could fight two like him with one hand tied behind me." Helen's face grew cloudy with trouble, but she said nothing then, only hurried the boy along toward the river. In spite of her determination she avoided the town main street, and struck off by the narrow turning which led through the old churchyard, with its grand lime-tree avenue and venerable church, whose crocketed spire was a landmark for all the southern part of the county. "Look, look!" cried Dexter. "See those jackdaws fly out? There's one sitting on that old stone face. See me fetch him down." "No, no," cried Helen, catching his arm. "You might break a window." "No, I wouldn't. You see." "But why throw at the poor bird? It has done you no harm." "No, but it's a jackdaw, and you always want to throw stones at jackdaws." "And at blackbirds and thrushes and starlings too, Dexter?" said Helen. The boy looked guilty. "You didn't see me throw at them?" "Yes, I did, and I thought it very cruel." "Don't you like me to throw stones at the birds?" "Certainly I do not." "Then I won't," said Dexter; and he took aim with the round stone he carried at the stone urn on the top of a tomb, hitting it with a sounding crack. "There, wasn't that a good aim!" he said, with a smile of triumph. "It couldn't hurt that. That wasn't cruel." Helen turned crimson with annoyance, for she had suddenly become aware of the fact that a gentleman, whom she recognised as the Vicar, was coming along the path quickly, having evidently seen the stone-throwing. She was quite right in her surmise. It was the Vicar; and not recognising her with her veil down, he strode toward them, making up an angry speech. "Ah, Miss Grayson," he said, raising his hat, and ceasing to make his stick quiver in his hand, "I did not recognise you." Then followed the customary hand-shakings and inquiries, during which Dexter hung back, and gazed up at the crocketed spire, and at the jackdaws flying in and out of the slits which lit the stone staircase within. "And who is this?" said the Vicar, raising his glasses to his eyes, but knowing perfectly well all the time, he having been one of the first to learn of the doctor's eccentricity. "Ah, to be sure; Doctor Grayson's _protege_. Yes, I remember him perfectly well, and I suppose you remember me!" "Yes, I remember you," said Dexter. "You called me a stupid boy because I couldn't say all of _I desire_." "Did I? Ah, to be sure, I remember. Well, but you are not stupid now. I dare say, if I asked you, you would remember every word." "Don't think I could," said the boy; "it's the hardest bit in the Cat." "But I'm not going to ask you," said the Vicar. "Miss Grayson here will examine you, I'm sure. There, good day. Good day, Miss Grayson;" and, to Helen's great relief, he shook hands with both. "And I'm to ask you not to throw stones in the churchyard," he added, shaking his stick playfully. "My windows easily break." He nodded and smiled again, as Helen and her young companion went on, watching them till they had passed through the further gate and disappeared. "A mischievous young rascal!" he said to himself. "I believe I should have given him the stick if it had been anybody else." As he said this, he walked down a side path which led past the tomb that had formed Dexter's target. "I dare say he has chipped the urn," he continued, feeling exceedingly vexed, as a Vicar always does when he finds any wanton defacement of the building and surroundings in his charge. "No," he said aloud, and in a satisfied tone, "unhurt. But tut--tut-- tut--tut! what tiresome young monkeys boys are!" He turned back, and went thoughtfully toward the town. "Singular freak on the part of Grayson. Most eccentric man," he continued. "Danby tells me--now really what a coincidence! Sir James, by all that is singular! Ah, my dear Sir James, I was thinking about you. Ah, Edgar, my boy, how are you?" He shook hands warmly with the magistrate and his son. "Thinking about me, eh!" said Sir James, rather pompously. "Then I'll be bound to say that I can tell you what you are thinking." "No, I believe I may say for certain you cannot," said the Vicar, smiling. "Of calling on me for a subscription." "Wrong this time," said the Vicar good-humouredly. "No; I have just met Miss Grayson with that boy." "Indeed!" "Yes; very eccentric of Grayson, is it not!" "Whim for a week or two. Soon get tired of it," said Sir James, laughing. "Think so?" "Sure of it, sir; sure of it." "Well, I hope not," said the Vicar thoughtfully. "Fine thing for the poor boy. Make a man of him." "Ah, but he is not content with that. He means to make a gentleman of him, and that's an impossibility." "Ah, well," said the Vicar good-humouredly; "we shall see." "Yes, sir," said Sir James; "we shall see--we shall see; but it's a most unpleasant episode in our midst. Of course, being such near neighbours, I have been on the most intimate terms with the Graysons, and Lady Danby is warmly attached to Helen Grayson; but now they have this boy there, they want us to know him too." "Indeed!" said the Vicar, looking half-amused, half puzzled. "Yes, sir," said Sir James; "and they want--at least Grayson does--Edgar here to become his playmate." "Ah!" ejaculated the Vicar. "Sent word yesterday that they should be glad if Edgar would go and spend the afternoon. Awkward, sir; extremely awkward." "Did he go?" "Go? no, sir; decidedly not. Edgar refused to go, point-blank." Master Edgar was walking a little way in front, looking like a small edition of his father in a short jacket, for he imitated Sir James's stride, put on his tall hat at the same angle, and carried his black cane with its two silken tassels in front of him, as a verger in church carries a wand. "I wasn't going," said Master Edgar importantly. "I don't want to know a boy like that." "What would you do under the circumstances?" said Sir James. "Do?" said the Vicar; "why I should--I beg your pardon--will you excuse me? I am wanted." He pointed to a lady who was signalling to him with a parasol, and hurried off. "How lucky!" he said to himself. "I don't want to offend Sir James; but 'pon my word, knowing what I do of his young cub, I would rather have Grayson's _protege_ on spec." "Where are we going for a walk, pa!" said Master Edgar importantly. "Through the quarry there, and by the windmill, and back home." "_No_; I meant to go down by the river, pa, to see if there are any fish." "Another day will do for that, Eddy." "No, it won't. I want to go now." "Oh, very well," said Sir James; and they took the way to the meadows. Meanwhile Helen and Dexter had gone on some distance ahead. "There, you see, Dexter; how easy it is to do wrong," said Helen, as, feeling greatly relieved, she hurried on toward the meadows. "I didn't know it was doing wrong to have a cockshy," said Dexter. "Seems to me that nearly everything nice that you want to do is wrong." "Oh no," said Helen, smiling at the boy's puzzled face. "Seems like it," said Dexter. "I say, he was going to scold me, only he found I was with you, and that made him stop. Wish I hadn't thrown the stone." "So do I," said Helen quickly. "Come, you have broken yourself off several bad habits this last week, and I shall hope soon to find that you have stopped throwing stones." "But mayn't I throw anything else?" "Oh yes; your ball." "But I haven't got a ball." "Then you shall have one," said Helen. "We'll buy one as we go back. There, it was a mistake, Dexter, so remember not to do it again." They were now on the banks of the glancing river, the hay having been lately cut, and the way open right to the water's edge. "Yes, I'll remember," said Dexter. "Look--look at the fish. Oh, don't I wish I had a rod and line! Here, wait a moment." He was down on his chest, reaching with his hand in the shallow water. "Why, Dexter," said Helen, laughing, "you surely did not think that you could catch fishes with your hand!" "No," said the boy, going cautiously forward and striking an attitude; "but you see me hit one." As he spoke he threw a large round pebble which he had picked out of the river-bed with great force, making the water splash up, while, instead of sinking, the stone skipped from the surface, dipped again, and then disappeared. As the stone made its last splash, the reality of what he had done seemed to come to him, and he turned scarlet as he met Helen's eyes. "Dexter!" she said reproachfully. The boy took off his cap, looked in it, rubbed his closely cropped head in a puzzled way, and put his cap slowly on again, to stand once more gazing at his companion. "I can't tell how it is," he said dolefully. "I think there must be something wrong in my head. It don't go right. I never mean to do what you don't like, but somehow I always do." "Look there, Dexter," said Helen quickly; "those bullocks seem vicious; we had better go back." She pointed to a drove of bullocks which had been put in the newly-cut meadows by one of the butchers in the town, and the actions of the animals were enough to startle any woman, for, being teased by the flies, they were careering round the field with heads down and tails up, in a lumbering gallop, and approaching the spot where the couple stood. They were down by the water, both the stile they had crossed and that by which they would leave the meadow about equidistant, while, as the bullocks were making straight for the river to wade in, and try to rid themselves of their torment, it seemed as if they were charging down with serious intent. "Come: quick! let us run," cried Helen in alarm, and she caught at Dexter's hand. "What! run away from them!" cried the boy stoutly. "Don't you be afraid of them. You come along." "No, no," cried Helen; "it is not safe." But, to her horror, Dexter shook himself free, snatched off his cap, and rushed straight at the leading bullock, a great heavy beast with long horns, and now only fifty yards away, while the drove were close at its heels. The effect was magical. No sooner did the great animal see the boy running forward than it stopped short, and began to paw up the ground and shake its head, the drove following the example of their leader, while, to Helen, as she stood motionless with horror, it seemed as if the boy's fate was sealed. For a few moments the bullock stood fast, but by the time Dexter was within half a dozen yards, he flung his cap right in the animal's face, and, with a loud snort, it turned as on a pivot, and dashed off toward the upper part of the field, now driving the whole of the rest before it. "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Dexter, picking up his cap, and coming back panting. "That's the way to serve them. Come along." Helen was very white, but the colour began to come in her cheeks again as she saw the boy's bright, frank, animated face; and, as they crossed the second stile, and rambled on through the pleasant meads, it began to dawn upon her that perhaps it would not prove to be so unpleasant a task after all to tame the young savage placed in her hands. CHAPTER TWELVE. A PLEASANT LESSON. One minute Helen Grayson was delighted at the freshness of nature, and the genuine delight and enthusiasm displayed by her companion, the next there came quite a cloud over everything, for it seemed to her that here was a bright young spirit corroded and spoiled by the surroundings to which it had been accustomed. "What's that? What flower's this? Oh, look at that butterfly! Here, Miss Grayson, see here--a long thin fly with his body all blue; and such lovely wings. There's another with purple edges to it. Oh, how lovely!" Helen's eyes brightened, and she began to enjoy her walk, and forget the stone-throwing, when Dexter damped her enjoyment. "Oh, here's a lark!" he cried, plunging down into a ditch, and reappearing after a hunt in the long wet grass with a large greenish frog. "What have you found, Dexter!" "A jolly old frog. Look here; I'll show you how the boys do up there at the House." "I think you had better not," said Helen, wincing. "But it's such a game. You get a flat piece of wood, about so long, and you lay it across a stone. Then you set the frog on one end, and perhaps he hops off. If he does, you catch him again, and put him on the end of the wood over and over again till he sits still, and he does when he is tired. Then you have a stick ready, as if you were going to play at cat, and you hit the end of the stick--" "Oh!" ejaculated Helen. "I don't mean the end where the frog is," cried Dexter quickly, as he saw Helen's look of disgust; "I mean the other end; and then the frog flies up in the air ever so high, and kicks out his legs as if he was swimming, and--" Dexter began his description in a bright, animated way, full of gesticulation; but as he went on the expression in his companion's face seemed to chill him. He did not understand what it meant, only he felt that he was doing or saying something which was distasteful; and he gradually trailed off, and stood staring with his narrative unfinished, and the frog in his hand. "Could you do that now, Dexter!" said Helen suddenly. "Do it?" he faltered. "Yes; with the frog." "I haven't got a bit of flat wood, and I have no stick, and if I had-- I--you--I--" He stopped short, with his head on one side, and his brows puckered up, gazing into Helen's eyes. Then he looked down, at the frog, and back at Helen. "You don't mean it?" he said sharply. "You don't want me to? I know: you mean it would hurt the frog." "Would it hurt you, Dexter, if somebody put you on one end of a plank, and then struck the other end!" The boy took off his cap and scratched his head with his little finger, the others being closed round the frog, which was turned upside down. "The boys always used to do it up at the House," he said apologetically. "Why!" said Helen gravely. "Because it was such fun; but they always made them hop well first. They'd begin by taking great long jumps, and then, as the boys hunted them, the jumps would get shorter and shorter, and they'd be so tired that it was easy to make them sit still on the piece of wood." "And when they had struck the wood, and driven it into the air, what did they do to the poor thing then?" "Sent it up again." "And then?" "Oh, they caught it--some of the boys did--caught it like a ball." "Have you ever done so?" Dexter shuffled about from foot to foot, and looked at the prospect, then at the frog, and then slowly up at the clear, searching eyes watching him. "Yes," he said, with a sigh; "lots of times." "And was it to save the poor thing from being hurt by the fall on the hard ground!" Dexter tried hard to tell a lie, but somehow he could not. "No," he said slowly. "It was to put it back on the stick, so as the other boys could not catch it first." "What was done then!" Dexter was silent, and he seemed to be taking a wonderful deal of interest in the frog, which was panting hard in his hot hand, with only its comical face peeping out between his finger and thumb, the bright golden irised eyes seeming to stare into his, and the loose skin of its throat quivering. "Well, Dexter, why don't you tell me!" "Am I to?" said the boy slowly. "Of course." There were a few more moments of hesitation, and then the boy said with an effort-- "They used--" He paused again. "We used to get lots of stones and shy at 'em till they was dead." There was a long silence here, during which Helen Grayson watched the play in the boy's countenance, and told herself that there was a struggle going on between the good and evil in the young nature, and once more she asked herself how she could hesitate in the task before her. Meanwhile it was very uncomfortable for the frog. The day was hot; Dexter's hand was hotter still; and though there was the deliciously cool gurgling river close at hand, with plenty of sedge, and the roots of water grasses, where it might hide and enjoy its brief span of life, it was a prisoner; and if frogs can think and know anything about the chronicles of their race, it was thinking of its approaching fate, and wondering how many of its young tadpoles would survive to be as big as its parent, and whether it was worth while after all. "Dexter," said Helen suddenly, and her voice sounded so clear and thrilling that the boy started, and looked at her in a shame-faced manner. "Suppose you saw a boy--say like--like--" "That chap we saw with the hat and stick? him who sneered at me?" Helen winced in turn. She had young Edgar Danby in her mind, but was about to propose some other young lad for her illustration; but the boy had divined her thought, and she did not shrink now from the feeling that above all things she must be frank if she wished her companion to be. "Yes; young Danby. Suppose you saw him torturing a frog, a lowly reptile, but one of God's creatures, in that cruel way, what would you say, now?" "I should say he was a beast." Helen winced again, for the declaration was more emphatic and to the point than she had anticipated. "And what would you do?" he continued. "I'd punch his head, and take the frog away from him. Please, Miss Grayson," he continued earnestly; "I didn't ever think it was like that. We always used to do it--we boys always did, and--and--" "You did not know then what you know now. Surely, Dexter, you will never be so cruel again." "If you don't want me to, I won't," he said quickly. "Ah, but I want you to be frank and manly for a higher motive than that, Dexter," she said, laying her hand upon his shoulder. "There, I will not say any more now. What are you going to do!" "Put him in the river, and let him swim away." The boy darted to the side of the rippling stream, stooped down, and lowered the hand containing the frog into the water, opened it, and for a moment or two the half-dead reptile sat there motionless. Then there was a vigorous kick, and it shot off into the clear water, diving right down among the water weeds, and disappearing from their view. "There!" said Dexter, jumping up and looking relieved. "You are not cross with me now!" "I have not been cross with you," she said; "only a little grieved." "Couldn't he swim!" cried the boy, who was anxious to turn the conversation. "I can swim like that, and dive too. We learned in our great bath, and--Oh, I say, hark at the bullocks." Helen listened, and could hear a low, muttering bellow in the next meadow, accompanied by the dull sounds of galloping hoofs, which were near enough to make the earth of the low, marshy bottom through which the river ran quiver slightly where they stood. Just then there was a piercing shriek, as of a woman in peril, and directly after a man's voice heard shouting for help. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. RAMPANT BEEF. "Here's something the matter!" cried Dexter; and, forgetting everything in the excitement of the moment, he ran back as hard as he could tear to the footpath leading to the stile they had crossed, the high untrimmed hedge between the fields concealing what was taking place. Helen followed quickly, feeling certain the while that the drove of bullocks in the next meadow were the cause of the trouble and alarm. Dexter reached the stile far in advance; and when at last Helen attained to the same post of observation, it was to see Sir James Danby at the far side standing upon the next stile toward the town, shouting, and frantically waving his hat and stick, while between her and the stout baronet there was the drove of bullocks, and Dexter approaching them fast. For a few moments Helen could not understand what was the matter, but directly after, to her horror, she saw that young Edgar Danby was on the ground, with one of the bullocks standing over him, smelling at the prostrate boy, and apparently trying to turn him over with one of its horns. "Here! Hi!" shouted Dexter; "bring me your stick." But Sir James, who had been chased by the leading bullock, was breathless, exhausted, and too nervous to attempt his son's rescue. All he seemed capable of doing was to shout hoarsely, and this he did more feebly every moment. Dexter made a rush at the bullocks, and the greater part of the drove turned tail; but, evidently encouraged by its success, the leader of the little herd stood firm, tossed its head on high, shook its horns, and uttered a defiant bellow. "Here, I can't do anything without a stick," said Dexter, in an ill-used tone, and he turned and ran toward Sir James, while, still more encouraged by what must have seemed to its dense brain like a fresh triumph, the bullock placed one of its horns under Edgar Danby and cleverly turned him right over. "Here, give me your stick!" shouted Dexter, as he ran up to Sir James. "You shouldn't be afraid o' them." "The boy will be killed," cried Sir James, in agony; and he shouted again, "Help! help!" "No, he won't," cried Dexter, snatching the magistrate's heavy ebony stick from his hand. "I'll make 'em run." Raising the stick in the air, Dexter ran toward where the whole drove were trotting back, and gathering round their leader, who now began to sing its war-song, throwing up its muzzle so as to straighten its throat, and emitting a bellow that was, in spite of its size, but a poor, feeble imitation of the roar of a lion. As Dexter ran up, the drove stood firm for a few moments; then the nearest to him arched its back, curved its tail, executed a clumsy gambol, turned, and fled, the rest taking their cues from this, the most timid in the herd, and going off in a lumbering gallop, their heads now down, and their tails rigid, excepting a few inches, and the hairy tuft at the end. But the leader stood fast, and shaking its head, bellowed, looked threatening, and lowering one of its long horns, thrust it into the earth, and began to plough up the soft, moist soil. "Oh, you would, would you?" cried Dexter, who did not feel in the slightest degree alarmed, from ignorance probably more than bravery; and, dashing in, he struck out with the ebony stick so heavy a blow upon the end of the horn raised in the air that the ebony snapped in two, and the bullock, uttering a roar of astonishment and pain, swung round, and galloped after its companions, which were now facing round at the top of the field. "Broke his old stick," said Dexter, as he bent over Edgar. "Here, I say; get up. They're gone now. You ain't hurt." Hurt or no, Edgar did not hear him, but lay there with his clothes soiled, and his tall hat trampled on by the drove, and crushed out of shape. "I say," said Dexter, shaking him; "why don't you get up?" Poor Edgar made no reply, for he was perfectly insensible and cadaverous of hue. "Here! Hi! Come here!" cried Dexter, rising and waving his hands, first to Helen, and then to Sir James. "They won't hurt you. Come on." The effect of the boy's shout was to make the spot where he now knelt down by Edgar Danby the centre upon which the spectators sought to gather. Helen set off first; Sir James, feeling very nervous, followed her example; and the drove of bullocks, with quivering tails and moistening nostrils, also began to trot back, while Dexter got one arm beneath the insensible boy, and tried hard to lift him, and carry him to the stile nearest the town. But the Union diet had not supplied him with sufficient muscle, and after getting the boy well on his shoulder, and staggering along a few paces, he stopped. "Oh, I say," he muttered; "ain't he jolly heavy?" A bellow from the leader of the bullocks made Dexter look round, and take in the position, which was that the drove were again approaching, and that this combined movement had had the effect of making Helen and Sir James both stop some forty yards away. "Here, come on!" cried Dexter. "I'll see as they don't hurt you." And Helen obeyed; but Sir James hesitated, till, having somewhat recovered his nerve, and moved by shame at seeing a young girl and a boy perform what was naturally his duty, he came on slowly, and with no little trepidation, toward where Dexter was waiting with his son. "That's right!" cried Dexter. "Come along. You come and carry him. I ain't strong enough. I'll soon send them off." The situation was ludicrous enough, and Sir James was angry with himself; but all the same there was the nervous trepidation to overcome, and it was a very hard fight. "Let me try and help you carry him," said Helen quickly. "No, no; you can't," cried the boy. "Let him. Oh, don't I wish I'd got a stick. Here, ketch hold." This last was to Sir James, whose face looked mottled as he came up. He obeyed the boy's command, though: took his son in his arms, and began to retreat with Helen toward the stile. Meanwhile the bullocks were coming on in their customary stupid way. "That's right; you go, sir," cried Dexter. "I'll talk to them," and, to Helen's horror, he went down on his hands and knees and ran at the drove, imitating the barking of a dog, not very naturally, but sufficiently true to life to make the drove turn tail again and gallop off, their flight being hastened by the flight of Edgar's damaged hat, which Dexter picked up and sent flying after them, and spinning through the air like a black firework till it dropped. "'Tain't no good now," said the boy, laughing to himself; "and never was much good. Only done for a cockshy. I'll take them back, though." This last was in allusion to the broken stick, which he picked up, and directly after found Master Edgar's tasselled cane, armed with which he beat a retreat toward the group making for the stile, with Helen beckoning to him to come. The bullocks made one more clumsy charge down, but the imitation dog got up by Dexter was enough to check them, and the stile was crossed in safety just as a butcher's man in blue, followed by a big rough dog, came in sight. Sir James was at first too indignant and too much upset to speak to the man. "It's of no use, Miss Grayson," he said, "but his master shall certainly be summoned for this. How dare he place those ferocious bulls in a field through which there is a right of way? O my poor boy! my poor boy! He's dead!--he's dead!" "He ain't," said Dexter sharply. "Shall I carry him, sir?" said the butcher's man, forgetful of the fact that he would come off terribly greasy on the helpless boy's black clothes. "No, man," cried Sir James. "Go and watch over those ferocious beasts, and see that they do not injure any one else." "Did they hurt him, sir!" said the man eagerly. "Hurt him! Look," cried Sir James indignantly. "He ain't hurt," said Dexter sturdily. "Only frightened. There was a chap at our school used to go like that. He's fainting, that's what he is doing. You lay him down, and wait till I come back." Dexter ran to the river, and, without a moment's hesitation, plunged in his new cap, and brought it back, streaming and dripping, with as much water as he could scoop up. Too nervous even to oppose the boy's order, Sir James had lowered his son to the ground, and, as he lay on the grass, Helen bathed and splashed his face with the water, till it was gone. "I'll soon fetch some more," cried Dexter. But it was not needed, for just then Edgar opened his eyes, looked wildly round, as if not comprehending where he was, and then exclaimed with a sob-- "Where's the bull?" "Hush! hush! my boy; you are safe now; thanks to the bravery of this gallant lad." Dexter puckered up his forehead and stared. "Where's my hat!" cried Edgar piteously. "Scrunched," said Dexter shortly. "Bullocks trod on it." "And my silver-topped cane!" "There it lies on the grass," said Dexter, stooping down and picking it up. "Oh, look at my jacket and my trousers," cried Edgar. "What a mess I'm in!" "Never mind, my boy; we will soon set that right," said Sir James. "There, try and stand up. If you can walk home it will be all the better now." "The brutes!" cried Edgar, with a passionate burst of tears. "Do you feel hurt anywhere?" said Helen kindly. "I don't know," said the boy faintly, as he rose and took his father's arm. "Can I help you, Sir James?" said Helen. "No, no, my dear Miss Grayson, we are so near home, and we will go in by the back way, so as not to call attention. I can never thank you sufficiently for your kindness, nor this brave boy for his gallantry. Good-bye. Edgar is better now. Good-bye." He shook hands warmly with both. "Shake hands with Miss Grayson, Eddy," said Sir James, while the butcher's man sat on the stile and lit his pipe. Edgar obeyed. "Now with your gallant preserver," said Sir James. Edgar, who looked extremely damp and limp, put out a hand unwillingly, and Dexter just touched it, and let his own fall. "You shall hear from me again, my man," said Sir James, now once more himself; and he spoke with great dignity. "Good day, Miss Grayson, and thanks." He went on quickly with his son, while Helen and Dexter took another footpath, leading to a stile which opened upon the road. As they reached this, Dexter laid his arm upon the top rail, and his forehead upon his wrist. "What is the matter, Dexter?" cried Helen, in alarm. "Nothing: I was only laughing," said the boy, whose shoulders were shaking with suppressed mirth. "Laughing?" "Yes. What a game! They were both afraid of the bullocks, and you've only got to go right at 'em, and they're sure to run." "I think you behaved very bravely, Dexter," said Helen warmly; "and as I've scolded you sometimes, it is only fair that when I can I ought to praise. You were very brave indeed." "Tchah! that isn't being brave," said the boy, whose face was scarlet. "Why, anybody could scare a few bullocks." "Yes, but anybody would not," said Helen, smiling. "There, let's make haste home. I was very much frightened too." "Were you!" said Dexter, with wide open eyes. "Yes; weren't you?" "No," said Dexter; "there wasn't anything to be frightened about then. But I'm frightened now." "Indeed! What, now the danger is past?" "No, not about that." "What then, Dexter?" "Look at my new cap." He held up his drenched head-covering, all wet, muddy at the bottom, and out of shape. "'Tain't so bad as his chimney-pot hat, but it's awful, ain't it? What will he say?" "Papa? Only that you behaved exceedingly well, Dexter. He will be very pleased." "Think he will?" "Yes; and you shall have a new cap at once." "Let's make haste back, then," cried the boy eagerly, "for I'm as hungry as never was. But you're sure he won't be cross?" "Certain, Dexter. I will answer for that." "All right. Come along. I was afraid I was in for it again." CHAPTER FOURTEEN. MR. DENGATE IS INDIGNANT, AND DEXTER WANTS SOME "WUMS." Mr Grayson was delighted when he heard the narrative from Helen. "There! what did I tell you!" he cried. "Proofs of my theory." "Do you think so, papa?" "Think, my dear? I'm sure. Why, there it all was; what could have been better? Young Danby has breed in him, and what did he do? Lay down like a girl, and fainted. No, my dear, you cannot get over it. Pick your subject if you will, but you may make what you like of a boy." "I hope so, papa." "That's right, my dear. Brave little fellow! Afraid I should scold him about his cap? Thoughtless young dog, but it was all chivalrous. Couldn't have been better. He shall have a hundred caps if he likes. Hah! I'm on the right track, I'm sure." The doctor rubbed his hands and chuckled, and Helen went to bed that night better pleased with her task. Sir James Danby, who was the magnate of Coleby, sent a very furious letter to Dengate the butcher, threatening proceedings against him for allowing a herd of dangerous bullocks to be at large in one of his fields, and ordering him to remove them at once. Dengate the butcher read the letter, grew red in the face, and, after buttoning up that letter in his breast-pocket, he put on his greasy cap, and went to Topley the barber to get shaved. Dengate's cap was greasy because, though he was a wealthy man, he worked hard at his trade, calling for orders, delivering meat, and always twice a week, to use his own words, "killing hisself." Topley lathered Dengate's red round face, and scraped it perfectly clean, feeling it all over with his soapy fingers, as well as carefully inspecting it with his eye, to make sure that none of the very bristly stubble was left. While Topley shaved, Dengate made plans, and as soon as the operation was over he went back home, and what he called "cleaned hisself." That is to say, he put on his best clothes, stuck a large showy flower in his button-hole, cocked his rather broad-brimmed hat on one side of his head, and went straight to Dr Grayson's. Maria opened the door, stared at the butcher, who generally came to the back entrance, admitted him, received his message, and went into the study, where the doctor was writing, and Dexter busily copying a letter in a fairly neat round hand, but could only on an average get one word and a half in a line, a fact which looked awkward, especially as Dexter cut his words anywhere without studying the syllables. Dexter had just left off at the end of a line, and finished the first letters of the word toothache, leaving "toot" as his division, and taking a fresh dip of ink ready for writing "hache." "Don't put your tongue out, Dexter, my boy." "All right," said Dexter. "And I would not suck the pen. Ink is not wholesome." "All right, I won't," said Dexter; and he put the nibs between his lips. "Mr Dengate, sir," said Maria. "Dengate? What does he want, Maria? Let him see Mrs Millett or Miss Helen." Maria looked scornfully at Dexter, as if he had injured her in some way. "Which is what I said to him, sir. `Master's busy writing,' I says; but he says his dooty, sir, and if you would see him five minutes he would be greatly obligated." The doctor said, "Send him in." Maria left the room, and there was a tremendous sound of wiping shoes all over the mat, although it was a dry day without, and the butcher's boots were speckless. Then there was another burst of wiping on the mat by the study door as a finish off, a loud muttering of instructions to Maria, and the door was opened to admit the butcher, looking hot and red, with his hat in one hand, a glaring orange handkerchief in the other, with which he dabbed himself from time to time. "Good morning, Dengate," said the doctor; "what can I do for you?" "Good morning, sir; hope you're quite well, sir. If you wouldn't mind, sir, reading this letter, sir. Received this morning, sir. Sir James, sir." "Read it? ah, yes," said the doctor. He ran through the missive and frowned. "Well, Dengate," he said, "Sir James is a near neighbour and friend of mine, and I don't like to interfere in these matters." "No, sir, of course you wouldn't, sir, but as a gentleman, sir, as I holds in the highest respect--a gentleman as runs a heavy bill with me." "Hasn't your account been paid, Dengate!" said the doctor, frowning, while Dexter looked hard at the butcher, and wondered why his face was so red, and why little drops like beads formed all over his forehead. "No, sir, it hasn't, sir," said the butcher, with a chuckle, "and I'm glad of it. I never ask for your account, sir, till it gets lumpy. I always leave it till I want it, for it's good as the bank to me, and I know I've only to give you a hint like, and there it is." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor. "What I have come about is them bullocks, sir, hearing as your young lady, sir, and young shaver here--" "Mr Dengate," said the doctor, frowning, "this young gentleman is my adopted son." "Beg pardon, sir, I'm sure," said the butcher obsequiously. "I had heared as you'd had taken a boy from the--" "Never mind that, Dengate," said the doctor shortly, as the butcher dabbed himself hurriedly,--"business." "Exactly, sir. Well, sir, it's like this here: I'm the last man in the world to put dangerous beasts in any one's way, and if I knowed that any one o' them was the least bit risky to a human being, he'd be bullock to-day and beef to-morrow. D'yer see?" "Yes, of course," said the doctor, "and very proper." "But what I holds is, sir, and my man too says is, that there ain't a bit o' danger in any on 'em, though if there was nobody ought to complain." "Well, there I don't agree with you, Dengate," said the doctor haughtily, as Dexter came and stood by him, having grown deeply interested. "Don't you, sir? Well, then, look here," said the butcher, rolling his yellow handkerchief into a cannon ball and ramming it into his hat, as if it were a cannon that he now held beneath his left arm. "There's a path certainly from stile to stile, but it only leads to my farrest medder, and though I never says nothing to nobody who thinks it's a nice walk down there by the river to fish or pick flowers or what not, though they often tramples my medder grass in a way as is sorrowful to see, they're my medders, and the writing's in my strong-box, and not a shilling on 'em. All freehold, seven-and-twenty acres, and everybody as goes on is a trespasser, so what do you say to that?" The butcher unloaded the imaginary cannon as he said this triumphantly, and dabbed his face with the ball. "Say?" said the doctor, smiling; "why, that I'm a trespasser sometimes, for I like to go down there for a walk. It's the prettiest bit out of the town." "Proud to hear you say so, sir," said the butcher eagerly. "It is, isn't it? and I'm proud to have you go for a walk there, sir. Honoured, I'm sure, and if the--er--the young gentleman likes to pick a spot out to keep ground baited for a bit o' fishing, why, he's hearty welcome, and my man shall save him as many maddicks for bait as ever he likes." "I'll come," cried Dexter eagerly. "May I go?" he added. "Yes, yes; we'll see," said the doctor; "and it's very kind of Mr Dengate to give you leave." "Oh, that's nothing, sir. He's welcome as the flowers in May; but what I wanted to say, sir, was that as they're my fields, and people who comes is only trespassers, I've a right to put anything I like there. I don't put danger for the public: they comes to the danger." "Yes; that's true," said the doctor. "Of course, now you mention it, there's no right of way." "Not a bit, sir, and I might turn out old Billy, if I liked." "I say, who is old Billy?" said Dexter. "Hush, my boy! Don't interpose when people are speaking." "Oh, let him talk, sir," said the butcher, good-naturedly. "I like to hear a boy want to know. It's what my boy won't do. He's asleep half his time, and I feed him well too." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor. "Billy's my old bull, as I always keeps shut up close in my yard, because he is dangerous." "And very properly," said the doctor. "Quite right, sir, quite right; and I want to know then what right Sir James has to come ordering me about. He's no customer of mine. Took it all away and give it to Mossetts, because he said the mutton was woolly, when I give you my word, sir, that it was as good a bit o' mutton as I ever killed." "Yes, yes, Dengate, but what has all this to do with me?" said the doctor testily. "Well, sir, begging your pardon, only this: your young lady and young gentleman was there, and I want to know the rights of it all. My man says the beasts are quiet enough, only playful, and I say the same; but I may be making a mistake. I went in the medder this morning, with my boy Ezry, and he could drive 'em anywheres, and he's only ten. Did they trouble your young folks, sir?" "Well, Dexter: you can answer that," said the doctor. "Trouble us?--no!" said Dexter, laughing. "Miss Grayson was a bit afraid of 'em, but I ran the big one, and he galloped off across the fields." "There," said the butcher; "what did I say? Bit playful, that's all." "And when we heard a noise, and found one of 'em standing over that young Danby, he was only turning him over, that's all." "Yes; he was running away, and fell down, and the beasts came to look at him," said Dengate, laughing. "And Sir James was over on the stile calling for help. Why, as soon as I ran at the bullocks they all galloped off, all but the big one, and I give him a crack on the horn, and soon made him go." "Of course. Why, a child would make 'em run. That's all, sir, I only wanted to know whether they really was dangerous, because if they had been, as I said afore, bullock it is now, but beef it should be. Good morning, sir." "What are you going to do!" said the doctor. "Do, sir? I'm a-going to let Sir James do his worst. My beasts ain't dangerous, and they ain't on a public road, so there they stay till I want 'em for the shop. Morning, young--er--gentleman. You're not afraid of a bullock?" "No," said Dexter quietly, "I don't think I am." "I'm sure you ain't, my lad, if you'll 'scuse me calling you so. Morning, sir, morning." The butcher backed out, smiling triumphantly, but only to put his head in again-- "Beg pardon, sir, only to say that if he'd asked me polite like, I'd ha' done it directly; but he didn't, and I'll stand upon my medder like a man." "Humph!" said the doctor, as soon as they were alone; "and so you were not afraid of the bullocks, Dexter?" "There wasn't anything to be afraid of," said the boy. "I'm ever so much more afraid of you." "Afraid?" "Yes, when you look cross, sir, only then." "Well, you must not make me look cross, Dexter; and now get on with your copying. When you've done that you may go in the garden if you'll keep out of mischief." "And when may I go fishing?" "When you like." "Down the meadows!" "Why not fish down the garden; there's a capital place." "All right," said Dexter. "I'll go there. But I want a rod and line." "There is an old rod in the hall, and you can buy a line. No, Helen is going out, and she will buy you one." Dexter's eyes glistened at the idea of going fishing, and he set to work most industriously at the copying, which in due time he handed over to the Doctor, who expressed himself as highly satisfied: though if he really was, he was easily pleased. Helen had received her instructions, and she soon afterwards returned with the fishing-line, and a fair supply of extra hooks, and odds and ends, which the doctor, as an old angler, had suggested. "These--all for me!" cried the boy joyfully. The doctor nodded. "Recollect: no mischief, and don't tumble in." "All right, sir," cried the boy, who was gloating over the new silk line, with its cork float glistening in blue and white paint brought well up with varnish. "Do you know how to fish!" "Yes, I know all about it, sir." "How's that? You never went fishing at the workhouse." "No, sir; but old Dimsted in the House used to tell us boys all about it, and how he used to catch jack and eels, and roach and perch, in the river." "Very well, then," said the doctor. "Now you can go." Dexter went off in high glee, recalling divers instructions given by the venerable old pauper who had been a fishing idler all his life, the river always having more attractions for him than work. His son followed in his steps, and he again had a son with the imitative faculty, and spending every hour he could find at the river-side. It was a well-known fact in Coleby that the Dimsteds always knew where fish was to be found, and the baskets they made took the place of meat that other fathers and sons of families would have earned. Rod, line, and hooks are prime necessaries for fishing; but a fish rarely bites at a bare hook, so one of Dexter's first proceedings was to obtain some bait. Mr Dengate had said that his man should save plenty of gentles for him; but Dexter resolved not to wait for them that day, but to try what he could do with worms and paste. So his first proceeding was to appeal to Mrs Millett for a slice or two of bread. Mrs Millett was not in the kitchen, but Maria was, and on being appealed to, she said sharply that she was not the cook. Dexter looked puzzled, and he flushed a little as he wondered why it was that the maid looked so cross, and always answered him so snappishly. Just then Mrs Millett, who was a plump elderly female with a pleasant countenance and expression, appeared in the doorway, and to her Dexter appealed in turn. Mrs Millett had been disposed to look at Dexter from the point of view suggested by Maria, who had been making unpleasant allusions to the boy's birth and parentage, and above all to "Master's strange goings on," ever since Dexter's coming. Hence, then, the old lady, who looked upon herself as queen of the kitchen, had a sharp reproof on her tongue, and was about to ask the boy why he hadn't stopped in his own place, and rung for what he wanted. The frank happy expression on his face disarmed her, and she smiled and cut the required bread. "Well, I never!" said Maria. "Ah, my dear," said Mrs Millett; "I was young once, and I didn't like to be scolded. He isn't such a bad-looking boy after all, only he will keep apples in his bedroom, and make it smell." "What's looks!" said Maria tartly, as she gave a candlestick she was cleaning a fierce rub. "A deal, my dear, sometimes," said the old housekeeper. "Specially if they're sweet ones, and that's what yours are not now." Dexter was not yet armed with all he wanted, for he was off down the kitchen-garden in search of worms. His first idea was to get a spade and dig for himself; but the stern countenance of Dan'l Copestake rose up before him, and set him wondering what would be the consequences if he were to be found turning over some bed. On second thoughts he determined to find the gardener and ask for permission, the dread of not succeeding in his mission making him for the moment more thoughtful. Dan'l did not need much looking for. He had caught sight of Dexter as soon as he entered the garden, and gave vent to a grunt. "Now, what mischief's he up to now?" he grumbled; and he set to and watched the boy while making believe to be busy cutting the dead leaves and flowers off certain plants. He soon became aware of the fact that Dexter was searching for him, and this altered the case, for he changed his tactics, and kept on moving here and there, so as to avoid the boy. "Here! Hi! Mr Copestake!" cried Dexter; but the old man had been suddenly smitten with that worst form of deafness peculiar to those who will not hear; and it was not until Dexter had pursued him round three or four beds, during which he seemed to be blind as well as deaf, that the old man was able to see him. "Eh!" he said. "Master want me?" "No. I'm going fishing; and, please, I want some worms." "Wums? Did you say wums!" said Dan'l, affecting deafness, and holding his hand to his ear. "Yes." "Ay, you're right; they are," grumbled Dan'l. "Deal o' trouble, wums. Gets inter the flower-pots, and makes wum castesses all over the lawn, and they all has to be swept up." "Yes; but I want some for fishing." "'Ficient? Quite right, not sufficient help to get 'em swep' away." "Will you dig a few worms for me, please?" shouted Dexter in the old man's ear. "Dig wums? What for? Oh, I see, thou'rt going fishing. No; I can't stop." "May I dig some!" cried Dexter; but Dan'l affected not to hear him, and went hurriedly away. "He knew what I wanted all the time," said the boy to himself. "He don't like me no more than Maria does." Just then he caught sight of Peter Cribb, who, whenever he was not busy in the stable, seemed to be chained to a birch broom. "Will you dig a few worms for me, please?" said Dexter; "red ones." "No; I'm sweeping," said the groom gruffly; and then, in the most inconsistent way, he changed his tone, for he had a weakness for the rod and line himself. "Going fishing!" "Yes, if I can get some worms." "Where's old Copestake!" "Gone into the yard over there," said Dexter. "All right. I'll dig you some. Go behind the wall there, by the cucumber frames. Got a pot!" Dexter shook his head. "All right. I'll bring one." Dexter went to the appointed place, and in a few minutes Peter appeared, free from the broom now, and bearing a five-pronged fork and a small flower-pot; for the fact that the boy was a brother angler superseded the feeling of animosity against one who had so suddenly been raised from a lowly position and placed over his head. Peter winked one eye as he scraped away some of the dry straw, and then turned over a quantity of the moist, rotten soil, displaying plenty of the glistening red worms suitable for the capture of roach and perch. "There you are," he said, after putting an ample supply in the flower-pot, whose hole he had stopped with a piece of clay; "there's as many as you'll want; and now, you go and fish down in the deep hole, where the wall ends in the water, and I wish you luck." CHAPTER FIFTEEN. DEXTER MAKES A FRIEND. "I like him," said Dexter to himself, as he hurried down the garden, found the place, and for the next ten minutes he was busy fitting up his tackle, watching a boy on the other side of the river the while, as he sat in the meadow beneath a willow-tree fishing away, and every now and then capturing a small gudgeon or roach. The river was about thirty yards broad at this spot, and as Dexter prepared his tackle and watched the boy opposite, the boy opposite fished and furtively watched Dexter. He was a dark, snub-nosed boy, shabbily-dressed, and instead of being furnished with a bamboo rod and a new line with glistening float, he had a rough home-made hazel affair in three pieces, spliced together, but fairly elastic; his float was a common quill, and his line of so many hairs pulled out of a horse's tail, and joined together with a peculiarly fast knot. Before Dexter was ready the shabby-looking boy on the other side had caught two more silvery roach, and Dexter's heart beat fast as he at last baited his hook and threw in the line as far as he could. He was pretty successful in that effort, but his cork float and the shot made a loud splash, while the boy opposite uttered a chuckle. "He's laughing at me," said Dexter to himself; and he tried the experiment of watching his float with one eye and the boy with the other, but the plan did not succeed, and he found himself gazing from one to the other, always hurriedly glancing back from the boy to the float, under the impression that it bobbed. He knew it all by heart, having many a time drunk in old Dimsted's words, and he remembered that he could tell what fish was biting by the way the float moved. If it was a bream, it would throw the float up so that it lay flat on the water. If it was a roach, it would give a short quick bob. If it was a perch, it would give a bob, and then a series of sharp quick bobs, the last of which would be right under, while if it was a tench, it would glide slowly away. But the float did nothing but float, and nothing in the way of bobbing, while the shabby boy on the other side kept on striking, and every now and then hooking a fish. "Isn't he lucky!" thought Dexter, and he pulled out his line to find that the bait had gone. He began busily renewing it in a very _nonchalant_ manner, as he was conscious of the fact that the boy was watching him keenly with critical eyes. Dexter threw in again; but there was no bite, and as the time went on, it seemed as if all the fish had been attracted to the other side of the river, where the shabby-looking boy, who fished skilfully and well, kept on capturing something at the rate of about one every five minutes. They were not large, but still they were fish, and it was most tantalising to one to be patiently waiting, while the other was busy landing and rebaiting and throwing in again. At last a happy thought struck Dexter, and after shifting his float about from place to place, he waited till he saw the boy looking at him, and he said-- "I say?" "Hullo!" came back, the voices easily passing across the water. "What are you baiting with?" "Gentles." "Oh!" Then there was a pause, and more fishing on one side, waiting on the other. At last the shabby boy said-- "You're baiting with worms, ain't you?" "Yes." "Ah, they won't bite at worms much this time o' day." "Won't they?" said Dexter, putting out his line. "No. And you ain't fishing deep enough." "Ain't I!" "No. Not by three foot." "I wish I'd got some gentles," said Dexter at last. "Do you!" "Yes." "Shall I shy some over in the box?" "Can you throw so far?" "Yers!" cried the shabby boy. "You'll give me the box again, won't you?" "Yes; I'll throw it back." The boy on the other side divided his bait by putting some in a piece of paper. Then putting a stone in his little round tin box, he walked back a few yards so as to give himself room, stepped forward, and threw the box right across, Dexter catching it easily. "Now, you try one o' them," said the donor of the fresh bait. Dexter eagerly did as was suggested, and five minutes after there was a sharp tug, which half drew his float below the surface. "Why, you didn't strike," said the boy sharply. "Well, you can't strike 'em till you've got hold of them," retorted Dexter; and the shabby-looking boy laughed. "Yah!" he said; "you don't know how to fish." "Don't I! Why, I was taught to fish by some one who knows all about it." "So it seems," said the boy jeeringly. "Don't even know how to strike a fish. There, you've got another bite. Look at him; he's running away with it." It was no credit to Dexter that he got hold of that fish, for the unfortunate roach had hooked itself. As the float glided away beneath the surface, Dexter gave a tremendous snatch with the rod, and jerked the fish out of the water among the branches of an overhanging tree, where the line caught, and the captive hung suspended about a foot below a cluster of twigs, flapping about and trying to get itself free. Dexter's fellow-fisherman burst into a roar of laughter, laid down his rod, and stamped about on the opposite bank slapping his knees, while the unlucky fisherman stood with his rod in his hand, jigging the line. "You'll break it if you don't mind," cried the shabby boy. "But I want to get it out." "You shouldn't have struck so hard. Climb up the tree, get out on that branch, and reach down." Dexter looked at the tree, which hung over the water to such an extent that it seemed as if his weight would tear it from its hold in the bank, while the water looked terribly deep and black beneath. "I say," cried the shabby boy jeeringly; "who taught you how to fish!" "Why, old Dimsted did, and he knew." "Who did!" cried the boy excitedly. "Old Dimsted." "Yah! That he didn't. Why, he's been in the House these ten years-- ever since I was quite a little un." "Well, I know that," shouted back Dexter. "He taught me all the same." "Why, how came you to know grandfather!" cried the shabby boy. Dexter ceased pulling at the line, and looked across at his shabbily-dressed questioner. For the first time he glanced down at his well-made clothes, and compared his personal appearance with that of the boy opposite, and in a curiously subtle way he began to awake to the fact that he was growing ashamed of the workhouse, and the people in it. "Yah! you didn't know grandfather," cried the boy mockingly; "and you don't know how to fish. Grandfather wouldn't have taught you to chuck a fish up in the tree. You should strike gently, like that." He gave the top of his rod a slight, quick twitch, and hooked a good-sized roach. Dexter grinning to see him play it till it was feeble enough to be drawn to the side and lifted out. "That's the way grandfather taught me how to fish," continued the boy, as he took the hook from the captive's mouth, "I say, what's your name!" "Dexter Grayson," was the answer, for the boy felt keenly already that the names Obed Coleby were ones of which he could not be proud. "Ever been in the workus!" "Yes." "Ever see grandfather there!" "Yes, I've seen him," said Dexter, who felt no inclination to enlighten the boy further. "Ah, he could fish," said the boy, baiting and throwing in again. "My name's Dimsted--Bob Dimsted. So's father's. He can fish as well as grandfather. So can I," he added modestly; "there ain't a good place nowheres in the river as we don't know. I could take you where you could ketch fish every swim." "Could you?" said Dexter, who seemed awed in the presence of so much knowledge. "Course I could, any day." "And will you?" said Dexter eagerly. "Ah dunno," said the boy, striking and missing another fish. "You wouldn't care to go along o' me?" "Yes, I should--fishing," cried Dexter. "But my line's fast." "Why don't you climb up and get it then? Ain't afraid, are you!" "What, to climb that tree?" cried Dexter. "Not I;" and laying the rod down with the butt resting on the bank, he began to climb at once. "Mind yer don't tumble in," cried Bob Dimsted; "some o' them boughs gets very rotten--like touchwood." "All right," said Dexter; and he climbed steadily on in happy ignorance of the fact that the greeny lichen and growth was not good for dark cloth trousers and vests. But the bole of the tree was short, for it had been pollarded, and in a minute or two he was in a nest of branches, several of which protruded over the water, the one in particular which had entangled the fishing-line being not even horizontal, but dipping toward the surface. "That's the way," shouted Bob Dimsted. "Look sharp, they're biting like fun." "Think it'll bear?" said Dexter. "Bear? Yes; half a dozen on yer. Sit on it striddling, and work yourself along till you can reach the line. Got a knife?" "Yes." "Then go right out, and when you git far enough cut off the little bough, and let it all drop into the water." "Why, then, I should lose the fish." "Not you. Ain't he hooked? You do as I say, and then git back, and you can pull all out together." Dexter bestrode the branch, and worked himself along further and further till an ominous crack made him pause. "Go on," shouted the boy from the other side. "He'll think I'm a coward if I don't," said Dexter to himself, and he worked himself along for another three feet, with the silvery fish just before him, seeming to tempt him on. "There, you can reach him now, can't you?" cried the boy. "Yes; I think I can reach him now," said Dexter. "Wait till I get out my knife." It was not so easy to get out that knife, and to open it, as it would have been on land. The position was awkward; the branch dipped at a great slope now toward the water, and Dexter's trousers were not only drawn half-way up his legs, but drawn so tightly by his attitude that he could hardly get his hand into his pocket. It was done though at last, the thin bough in which the line was tangled seized by the left hand, while the right cut vigorously with the knife. It would have been far easier to have disentangled the line, but Bob Dimsted was a learned fisher, and he had laid down the law. So Dexter cut and cut into the soft green wood till he got through the little bough all but one thin piece of succulent bark, dancing up and down the while over the deep water some fifteen feet from the bank. _Soss_! That last vigorous cut did it, and the bough, with its summer burden of leaves, dropped with a splash into the water. "There! What did I tell you!" cried Dexter's mentor. "Now you can get back and pull all out together. Fish won't bite for a bit after this, but they'll be all right soon." Dexter shut up his knife, thrust it as well as he could into his pocket, and prepared to return. This was not so easy, for he had to go backwards. What was more, he had to progress up hill. But, nothing daunted, he took tight hold with his hands, bore down upon them, and was in the act of thrusting himself along a few inches, when--_Crack_! One loud, sharp, splintering crack, and the branch, which was rotten three parts through, broke short off close to the trunk, and like an echo to the crack came a tremendous--_Plash_! That water, as already intimated, was deep, and, as a consequence, there was a tremendous splash, and branch and its rider went down right out of sight, twig after twig disappearing leisurely in the eddying swirl. CHAPTER SIXTEEN. "THEM AS IS BORN TO BE HANGED." It might have been presumed that Bob Dimsted would either have tried to render some assistance or else have raised an alarm. Bob Dimsted did nothing of the kind. For certain reasons of his own, and as one who had too frequently been in the hot water of trouble, Master Bob thought only of himself, and catching his line in his hand as he quickly drew it from the water, he hastily gathered up his fishing paraphernalia, and ran off as hard as he could go. He had time, however, to see Dexter's wet head rise to the surface and then go down again, for the unwilling bather had one leg hooked in the bough, which took him down once more, as it yielded to the current, and the consequence was that when Dexter rose, breathless and half-strangled, he was fifty yards down the stream. But he was now free, and giving his head a shake, he trod the water for a few moments, and then struck out for the shore, swimming as easily as a frog. A few sturdy strokes took him out of the sharp current and into an eddy near the bank, by whose help he soon reached the deep still water, swimming so vigorously that before long he was abreast of the doctor's garden, where a group beneath the trees startled him more than his involuntary plunge. For there, in a state of the greatest excitement, were the doctor and Helen, with Peter Cribb, with a clothes-prop to be used for a different purpose now. Further behind was Dan'l Copestake, who came panting up with the longest handled rake just as Dexter was nearing the bank. "Will he be drowned?" whispered Helen, as she held tightly by her father's arm. "No; he swims like a water-rat," said the doctor. "No, no," shouted Dexter, beginning to splash the water, and sheering off as he saw Dan'l about to make a dab at him with the rake. There was more zeal than discretion in the gardener's use of this implement, for it splashed down into the water heavily, the teeth nearly catching the boy's head. "Here, catch hold of this," cried Peter Cribb. "No, no; let me be," cried Dexter, declining the offer of the clothes-prop, as he had avoided it before when he was on the top of the wall. "I can swim ashore if you'll let me be." This was so self-evident that the doctor checked Dan'l as he was about to make another skull-fracturing dash with the rake; and the next minute Dexter's hand clutched the grass on the bank, and he crawled out, with the water streaming down out of his clothes, and his short hair gummed, as it were, to his head. "Here!" he cried; "where's my fish?" "Fish, sir!" cried the doctor; "you ought to be very thankful that you've saved your life." "O Dexter!" cried Helen. "I say, don't touch me," cried the boy, as she caught at his hand. "I'm so jolly wet." He was like a sponge just lifted out of a pail, and already about him there was a pool. "Here, quick, sir; run up to the house and change your clothes," cried the doctor. "But I must get my fish, sir." "Fish!" cried the doctor angrily; "that's not the way to fish." "Yes, it was, sir; and I caught one." "You caught one!" "Yes, sir; a beauty." "Look here, Dexter," cried the doctor, catching him by his wet arm; "do you mean to tell me that you dived into the river like that and caught a fish!" "No, sir; I fell in when I was getting my line out of the tree." "Oh, I see." "Beg pardon, sir," said Dan'l sourly; "but he've broke a great branch off this here tree." "Well, I couldn't help it," said Dexter, in an ill-used tone. "I caught my line in the tree, and was obliged to get up and fetch it, and--stop a minute. I can see it. All right." He ran off along the river-bank till they saw him stoop just where the wall dipped down into the river. There he found the rod floating close to the edge, and, securing it, he soon after drew in the loose branch he had cut off the tree, and disentangled his line, with the little roach still on the hook. "There!" he cried in triumph, as he ran back with rod, line, and fish; "look at that, Miss Grayson, isn't it a beauty, and--What are you laughing at!" This was at Peter Cribb, who was grinning hugely, but who turned away, followed by Dan'l. "Them as is born to be hanged'll never be drowned," grumbled the old gardener sourly, as the two men went away. "No fear of him being drowned," said Peter. "Swims like a cork." "It's disgusting; that's what I say it is," growled Dan'l; "disgusting." "What's disgusting?" said Peter. "Why, they cuddles and makes a fuss over a boy as is a reg'lar noosance about the place, just as any other varmint would be. Wish he had drowned himself. What call was there for me to come and bring a rake!" "Ah, he's a rum un, that he is," said Peter. "And master's a rum un; and how they can take to that boy, Miss Helen specially, and have him here's more'n I can understand. It caps me, that it do." "Wait a bit, my lad, and you'll see," cried the old gardener. "He's begun his games just as such a boy would, and afore long this here garden will be turned into such a wreck as'll make the doctor tear his hair, and wish as he'd never seen the young rascal. He's a bad un; you can see it in his eye. He's got bad blood in him, and bad blood allus comes out sooner or later. Peter Cribb, my lad--" "Yes." "We're getting old fellow-servants, though you're only young. Peter, my lad, I'm beginning to tremble for my fruit." "Eh?" "Yes; that I am, my lad," said Dan'l in a whisper. "Just as I expected--I was watching of him--that rip's took up with bad company, Poacher Dimsted's boy; and that means evil. They was talking together, and then young Dimsted see me, and run away." "Did he?" "Did he? Yes, he just did; and you mark my words, Peter Cribb, it will not be long before the gov'ner gets rid of him." "Oh yes; it's a very beautiful fish," said the doctor testily; "but make haste in. There, run and get all your wet things off as quickly as you can." Dexter was so deeply interested in the silvery scales and graceful shape of his fish that he hardly heard the doctor's words, which had to be repeated before the boy started, nodded shortly, and ran off toward the house, while his patron walked to a garden chair, sat down, and gazed up at Helen in a perplexed way. Helen did not speak, but gazed back at her father with a suppressed laugh twinkling about the corners of her lips. "You're laughing at me, my dear," said the doctor at last; "but you mark my words--what I say is true. All this is merely the froth of the boy's nature, of which he is getting rid. But tut, tut, tut! All this must be stopped. First a new cap destroyed by being turned into a bucket, and now a suit of clothes gone." "They will do for a garden suit, papa," said Helen, speaking as if she had had charge of boys for years. "Well, yes: I suppose so," said the doctor. "But there: I am not going to worry myself about trifles. The cost of a few suits of clothes are as nothing compared to the success of my scheme. Now let's go in and see if the young dog has gone to work to change his things." The doctor rose and walked up the garden, making comments to his daughter about the course of instruction he intended to pursue with Dexter, and on reaching the house and finding that the object of his thoughts was in his bedroom, he went on to the study just as Maria came from the front door with a letter. "Letter, eh? Oh, I see. From Lady Danby!" The doctor opened the letter. "Any one waiting!" he said. "Yes, sir. Groom waiting for an answer." "I'll ring, Maria," said the doctor, and then he smiled and looked pleased. "There, my deaf," he cried, tossing the note to his daughter. "Now I call that very kind and neighbourly. You see, Sir James and Lady Danby feel and appreciate the fine manly conduct of Dexter over that cattle, and they very wisely think that he not only deserves great commendation, but that the present is a favourable opportunity for beginning an intimacy and companionship." "Yes, papa," said Helen, with rather a troubled look. "Danby sees that he was wrong, and is holding out the right hand of good fellowship. Depend upon it that we shall have a strong tie between those two boys. They will go to a public school together, help one another with their studies, and become friends for life. Hah! Yes. Sit down, my dear," continued the doctor, rubbing his hands. "My kind regards to Sir James and Lady Danby, that I greatly appreciate their kindness, and that Dexter shall come and spend the day with Edgar on Friday." Helen wrote the note, which was despatched, and the doctor smiled, and looked highly satisfied. "You remember how obstinate Sir James was about boys?" "Yes, papa. I heard a part of the conversation, and you told me the rest." "To be sure. You see my selection was right. Dexter behaved like a little hero over that adventure." "Yes," said Helen; "he was as brave as could be." "Exactly. All justification of my choice. I don't want to prophesy, Helen, but there will be a strong friendship between those boys from that day. Edgar, the weak, well-born boy, will always recognise the manly confidence of Dexter, the er--er, well, low-born boy, who in turn will have his sympathies aroused by his companion's want of--er--well, say, ballast." "Possibly, papa." "My dear Helen, don't speak like that," said the doctor pettishly. "You are so fond of playing wet blanket to all my plans." "Oh no, papa; I am sure I will help you, and am helping you, in all this, but it is not in my nature to be so sanguine." "Ah, well, never mind that. But you do like Dexter!" "Yes; I am beginning to like him more and more." "That's right. I'm very, very glad, and I feel quite grateful to the Danbys. You must give Dexter a few hints about behaving himself, and, so to speak, keeping down his exuberance when he is there." "May I say a word, papa!" "Certainly, my dear; of course." "Well, then, I have an idea of my own with respect to Dexter." "Ah, that's right," said the doctor, smiling and rubbing his hands. "What is it!" "I have been thinking over it all a great deal, dear," said Helen, going to her father's side and resting her hand upon his shoulder; "and it seems to me that the way to alter and improve Dexter will be by example." "Ah yes, I see; example better than precept, eh!" "Yes. So far his life has been one of repression and the severest discipline." "Yes, of course. Cut down; tied down, and his natural growth stopped. Consequently wild young shoots have thrust themselves out of his nature." "That is what I mean." "Quite right, my dear; then we will give him as much freedom as we can. You will give him a hint or two, though." "I will do everything I can, papa, to make him presentable." "Thank you, my dear. Yes, these boys will become great companions, I can see. Brave little fellow! I am very, very much pleased." The doctor forgot all about the broken branch, and Dexter's spoiled suit of clothes, and Helen went to see whether the boy had obeyed the last command. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. DAN'L IS TOO ATTENTIVE. Things were not quite so smooth as Dr Grayson thought, for there had been stormy weather at Sir James's. "Well, my dear, you are my husband, and it is my duty to obey," said Lady Danby; "but I do protest against my darling son being forced to associate with a boy of an exceedingly low type." "Allow me, my dear," said Sir James importantly. "By Dr Grayson's act, in taking that boy into his house, he has wiped away any stigma which may cling to him; and I must say that the lad displayed a great deal of animal courage--that kind of brute courage which comes from an ignorance of danger." "Is it animal courage not to be afraid of animals, ma?" said Master Edgar. "Yes, my dear, of course," said Lady Danby. "I wish Edgar would display courage of any kind," said Sir James. "Why, you ran away from the bulls too, papa," said Master Edgar. "I am a great sufferer from nervousness, Edgar," said Sir James reprovingly; "but we were not discussing that question. Dr Grayson has accepted the invitation for his adopted son. It is his whim for the moment, and it is only becoming on my part to show that we are grateful for the way in which the boy behaved. By the time a month has gone by, I have no doubt that the boy will be back at the--the place from which he came; but while he is at Dr Grayson's I desire that he be treated as if he were Dr Grayson's son." "Very well, James," said Lady Danby, in an ill-used tone of voice. "You are master here, and we must obey." The day of the invitation arrived. Dexter was to be at Sir James's in time for lunch, and directly after breakfast he watched his opportunity and followed Helen into the drawing-room. "I say," he said; "I can't go there, can I?" "Why not?" said Helen. "Lookye here." "Why, Dexter!" cried Helen, laughing merrily; "what have you been doing!" "Don't I look a guy!" There was a change already in the boy's aspect; his face, short as the time had been, was beginning to show what fresh air and good feeding could achieve. His hair had altered very slightly, but still there was an alteration for the better, and his eyes looked brighter, but his general appearance was comical all the same. Directly after breakfast he had rushed up to his room and put on the clothes in which he had taken his involuntary bath. These garments, as will be remembered, had been obtained in haste, and were of the kind known in the trade as "ready-mades," and in this case composed of a well-glazed and pressed material, containing just enough wool to hold together a great deal of shoddy. The dip in the river had been too severe a test for the suit, especially as Maria had been put a little more out of temper than usual by having the garments handed to her to dry. Maria's mother was a washerwoman who lived outside Coleby on the common, and gained her income by acting as laundress generally for all who would intrust her with their family linen; but she called herself in yellow letters on a brilliant scarlet ground a "clear starcher." During Maria's early life at home she had had much experience in the ways of washing. She knew the smell of boiled soap. She had often watched the steam rising from the copper, and played among the clouds, and she well knew that the quickest way to dry anything that has been soaked is to give it a good wringing. She had therefore given Dexter's new suit a good wringing, and wrung out of it a vast quantity of sticky dye which stained her hands. Then she had--grumbling bitterly all the time--given the jacket, vest, and trousers a good shake, and hung them over a clothes-horse as near to the fire as she could get them without singeing. Mrs Millett told her to be sure and get them nice and dry, and Maria did get them "nice and dry." And now Dexter had put them on and presented himself before Helen, suggesting that he looked a guy. Certainly his appearance was suggestive of the stuffed effigy borne about on the fifth of November, for the garments were shrunken so that his arms and legs showed to a terrible extent, and Maria's wringing had given them curves and hollows never intended by the cutter, the worst one being in the form of a hump between the wearer's shoulders. "The things are completely spoiled. You foolish boy to put them on." "Then I can't go to that other house." "Nonsense! You have the new clothes that came from the tailor's--those for which you were measured." "Yes," said Dexter reluctantly; "but it's a pity to put on them. I may get 'em spoiled." "Then you do not want to go, Dexter," said Helen, smiling. "No," he cried eagerly. "Ask him to let me stop here." "No, no," said Helen kindly. "Papa wishes you to go there; it is very kind of the Danbys to ask you, and I hope you will go, and behave very nicely, and make great friends with Edgar Danby." "How?" said Dexter laconically. "Well, as boys generally do. You must talk to him." "What about?" "Anything. Then you must play with him." "What at?" "Oh, he'll be sure to suggest something to play at." "I don't think he will," said Dexter thoughtfully. "He don't look the sort of chap to." "Don't say chap, Dexter; say boy." "Sort of boy to play any games. He's what we used to call a soft Tommy sort of a chap--boy." "Oh no, no, no! I don't suppose he will be rough, and care for boisterous sports; but he may prove to be a very pleasant companion for you." Dexter shook his head. "I don't think he'll like me." "Nonsense! How can you tell that? Then they have a beautiful garden." "Can't be such a nice one as this," said Dexter. "Oh yes, it is; and it runs down to the river as this one does, and Sir James has a very nice boat." "Boat!" cried Dexter, pricking up his ears. "And may you go in it!" "Not by yourselves, I suppose. There, I'm sure you will enjoy your visit." Dexter shook his head again. "I say, you'll come too, won't you?" he cried eagerly. "No, Dexter; not this time." The boy's forehead grew wrinkled all over. "Come, you are pretending that you do not want to go." "I don't," said the boy, hanging his head. "I want to stay here along with you." "Perhaps I should like you to stay, Dexter," said Helen; "but I wish you to go and behave nicely, and you can tell me all about it when you come back." "And how soon may I come back?" "I don't suppose till the evening, but we shall see. Now, go and change those things directly. What would papa say if he saw you?" Dexter went slowly up to his room, and came down soon after to look for Helen. He found her busy writing letters, so he went off on tiptoe to the study, where the doctor was deep in his book, writing with a very severe frown on his brow. "Ah, Dexter," he said, looking up and running his eye critically over the boy, the result being very satisfactory. "Let's see, you are to be at Sir James's by half-past twelve. Now only ten. Go and amuse yourself in the garden, and don't get into mischief." Dexter went back into the hall, obtained his cap, and went out through the glass door into the verandah, where the great wisteria hung a valance of lavender blossoms all along the edge. "He always says don't get into mischief," thought the boy. "I don't want to get into mischief, I'm sure." Half-way across the lawn he was startled by the sudden appearance of Dan'l, who started out upon him from behind a great evergreen shrub. "What are you a-doing of now?" snarled Dan'l. "I wasn't doing anything," said Dexter, staring. "Then you were going to do something," cried the old man sharply. "Look here, young man; if you get meddling with anything in my garden there's going to be trouble, so mind that. I know what boys is, so none of your nonsense here." He went off grumbling to another part of the garden, and Dexter felt disposed to go back indoors. "He's watching me all the time," he thought to himself; "just as if I was going to steal something. He don't like me." Dexter strolled on, and heard directly a regular rustling noise, which he recognised at once as the sound made by a broom sweeping grass, and sure enough, just inside the great laurel hedge, where a little green lawn was cut off from the rest of the garden, there was Peter Cribb, at his usual pursuit, sweeping all the sweet-scented cuttings of the grass. Peter was a sweeper who was always on the look-out for an excuse. He was, so to speak, chained to that broom so many hours a day, and if he had been a galley slave, and the broom an oar, it is morally certain that he would have been beaten with many stripes, for he would have left off rowing whenever he could. "Well, squire," he said, laying his hands one over the other on the top of the broom-handle. "Well, Peter. How's the horse?" "Grinding his corn, and enjoying himself," said Peter. "He's like you: a lucky one--plenty to eat and nothing to do." "Don't you take him out for exercise?" said Dexter. "Course I do. So do you go out for exercise." "Think I could ride?" said Dexter. "Dersay you could, if you could hold on." "I should like to try." "Go along with you!" "But I should. Will you let me try!" Peter shook his head, and began to examine his half-worn broom. "I could hold on. Let me go with you next time!" "Oh, but I go at ha'-past six, hours before you're awake. Young gents don't get up till eight." "Why, I always wake at a quarter to six," said Dexter. "It seems the proper time to get up. I say, let me go with you." "Here, I say, you, Peter," shouted Dan'l; "are you a-going to sweep that bit o' lawn, or am I to come and do it myself. Gawsiping about!" "Hear that?" said Peter, beginning to make his broom swing round again. "There, you'd better be off, or you'll get me in a row." Dexter sighed, for he seemed to be always the cause of trouble. "I say," said Peter, as the boy was moving off; "going fishing again?" "No; not now." "You knows the way to fish, don't you? Goes in after them." Dexter laughed, and went on down to the river, examined the place where the branch had broken off, and then gazed down into the clear water at the gliding fish, which seemed to move here and there with no more effort than a wave of the tail. His next look was across the river in search of Bob Dimsted; but the shabby-looking boy was not fishing, and nowhere in sight either up or down the stream. Dexter turned away with another sigh. The garden was very beautiful, but it seemed dull just then. He wanted some one to talk to, and if he went again to Peter, old Dan'l would shout and find fault. "It don't matter which way I go," said Dexter, after a few minutes, during which time he had changed his place in the garden again and again; "that old man is always watching me to see what I am going to do." He looked round at the flowers, at the coming fruit, at everything in turn, but the place seemed desolate, and in spite of himself he began thinking of his old companions at the great school, and wondering what they were doing. Then he recalled that he was to go to Sir James Danby's soon, and he began to think of Edgar. "I shan't like that chap," he said to himself. "I wonder whether he'll like me." He was standing thinking deeply and gazing straight before him at the high red brick wall when he suddenly started, for there was a heavy step on the gravel. Dan'l had come along the grass edge till he was close to the boy, and then stepped off heavily on to the path. "They aren't ripe yet," he said with an unpleasant leer; "and you'd best let them alone." Dexter walked quickly away, with his face scarlet, and a bitter feeling of annoyance which he could not master. For the next quarter of an hour he was continually changing his position in the garden, but always to wake up to the fact that the old gardener was carrying out a purpose which he had confided to Peter. This the boy soon learned, for after a time he suddenly encountered the groom, still busy with the broom. "Why, hullo, youngster!" he said; "what's the matter!" "Nothing," said Dexter, with his face growing a deeper scarlet. "Oh yes, there is; I can see," cried Peter. "Well, he's always watching me, and pretending that I'm getting into mischief, or trying to pick the fruit." "Hah!" said Peter, with a laugh; "he told me he meant to keep his eye on you." Just then there was a call for Dan'l from the direction of the house, and Mrs Millett was seen beyond a laurel hedge. Directly after the old man went up to the house, and it seemed to Dexter as if a cloud had passed from across the sun. The garden appeared to have grown suddenly brighter, and the boy began to whistle as he went about in an aimless way, looking here and there for something to take his attention. He was not long in finding it, for just at the back of the dense yew hedge there were half a dozen old-fashioned round-topped hives, whose occupants were busy going to and fro, save that at the hive nearest the cross-path a heavy cluster, betokening a late swarm, was hanging outside, looking like a double handful of bees. Dexter knew a rhyme beginning-- "How doth the little busy bee--" and he knew that bees made honey; but that was all he did know about their habits, save that they lived in hives; and he stood and stared at the cluster hanging outside. "Why, they can't get in," he said to himself. "Hole's stopped up." He stood still for a few minutes, and then, as he looked round, he caught sight of some bean-sticks--tall thin pieces of oak sapling, and drawing one of these out of the ground he rubbed the mould off the pointed end, and, as soon as it was clean, took hold of it, and returned to the hive, where he watched the clustering bees for a few minutes, and then, reaching over, he inserted the thin end of the long stick just by the opening to the hive, thrust it forward, and gave it a good rake to right and left. There was a tremendous buzz and a rush, and the next moment Dexter, stick in hand, was running down the path toward the river, pursued by quite a cloud of angry bees. Dexter ran fast, of course, and as it happened, right down one of the most shady paths, beneath the densely growing apple-trees, where the bees could not fly, so that by the time he reached the river-side he was clear of his pursuers, but tingling from a sting on the wrist, and from two more on the neck, one being among the hair at the back, and the other right down in his collar. "Well, that's nice," he said, as he rubbed himself, and began mentally to try and do a sum in the Rule of Three--if three stings make so much pain, how much pain would be caused by the stings of a whole hiveful of bees? "Bother the nasty vicious little things!" he cried, as he had another rub, and he threw the bean-stick angrily away. "Don't hurt so much now," he said, after a few minutes' stamping about. Then his face broke up into a merry smile. "How they did make me run!" Just then there was a shout--a yell, and a loud call for help. Dexter forgot his own pain, and, alarmed by the cries, ran as hard as he could back again towards the spot from whence the sounds came, and to his horror found that Old Dan'l was running here and there, waving his arms, while Peter had come to his help, and was whisking his broom about in all directions. For a few moments Dexter could not comprehend what was wrong, then, like a flash, he understood that the bees had attacked the old gardener, and that it was due to his having irritated them with the stick. Dexter knew how a wasp's nest had been taken in the fields by the boys one day, and without a moment's hesitation he ran to the nearest shrub, tore off a good-sized bough, and joined in the task of beating down the bees. It is pretty sport to fight either bees or wasps in this way, but it requires a great deal of courage, especially as the insects are sure to get the best of it, as they did in this case, putting their enemies to flight, their place of refuge being the tool-house, into whose dark recesses the bees did not attempt to come. "Much stung, Dan'l!" said Peter. "Much stung, indeed! I should think I am. Offle!" "You got it much, youngster?" said Peter. "I've got three stings," replied Dexter, who had escaped without further harm. "And I've got five, I think," said Peter. "What was you doing to 'em, Dan'l!" "Doin' to 'em!" growled Dan'l, who was stamping about and rubbing himself, and looking exceedingly like the bear in the old fable. "I wasn't doin' nothin' to 'em. One o' the hives have been threatenin' to swarm again, and I was just goin' by, when they come at me like a swarm o' savidges, just as if some one had been teasing them." Dexter was rubbing the back of his neck, and feeling horribly guilty, as he asked himself whether he had not better own to having disturbed the hive; but there was something so unpleasantly repellent about the old gardener, and he was looking so suspiciously from one to the other, that the boy felt as if he could not speak to him. If it had been Peter, who, with all his roughness, seemed to be tolerant of his presence, he would have spoken out at once; but he could not to Dan'l, and he remained silent. "They stings pretty sharp," said Peter, laughing. "Blue-bag's best thing. I shall go up and get Maria to touch mine up. Coming?" "Nay, I'm not coming," growled Dan'l. "I can bear a sting or two of a bee without getting myself painted up with blue-bags. Dock leaves is good enough for me." "And there aren't a dock left in the garden," said Peter. "You found fault with me for not pulling the last up." So Peter went up to the house to be blue-bagged, Dan'l remained like a bear in his den, growling to himself, and Dexter, whose stings still throbbed, went off across the lawn to walk off the pain, till it was time to go to Sir James's. "Who'd have thought that the little things could hurt so much!" Then the pain began to diminish till it was only a tingle, and the spots where the stings went in were round and hard, and now it was that Dexter's conscience began to prick him as sharply as the bees' stings, and he walked about the garden trying to make up his mind as to whether he should go and confess to Dan'l that he stirred the bees up with a long stick. But as soon as he felt that he would do this, something struck him that Dan'l would be sure to think he had done it all out of mischief, and he knew that he could not tell him. "Nobody will know," he said to himself; "and I won't tell. I didn't mean to do any harm." "Dexter! Dexter!" He looked in the direction from whence the sounds came, and could see Helen waving her handkerchief, as a signal for him to come in. "Time to go," he said to himself as he set off to her. "Nobody will know, so I shan't tell him." And then he turned cold. Only a few moments before he had left Dan'l growling in his den, and now here he was down the garden, stooping and picking up something. For a few moments Dexter could not see what the something was, for the trees between them hindered the view, but directly after he made out that Dan'l had picked up a long stick, which had been thrown among the little apple-trees, and was carefully examining it. The colour came into Dexter's cheeks as he wondered whether Dan'l would know where that stick came from. The colour would have been deeper still had he known that Dan'l had a splendid memory, and knew exactly where every stick or plant should be. In fact, Dan'l recognised that stick as having been taken from the end of the scarlet-runner row. "A young sperrit o' mischief! that's what he is," muttered the old man, giving a writhe as he felt the stinging of the bees. "Now what's he been up to with that there stick? making a fishing-rod of it, I s'pose, and tearing my rows o' beans to pieces. I tell him what it is--" Dan'l stopped short, and stared at the end of the stick--the thin end, where there was something peculiar, betraying what had been done with it. It was a sight which made him tighten his lips up into a thin red line, and screw up his eyes till they could be hardly seen, for upon the end of that stick were the mortal remains of two crushed bees. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. DEXTER SPENDS A PLEASANT AFTERNOON. Dexter went up to where Helen was waiting for him, and found her dressed. "Going out!" he said. "Yes; I thought I would walk up to Sir James's with you," she said; and she cast a critical eye over him, and smiled upon seeing that he only needed a touch with a brush to make him presentable. This was given, and they set off together, the doctor only giving Dexter a friendly nod in accordance with a promise made not to upset the boy with a number of hints as to how he was to behave. "It must come by degrees, papa," Helen said; "and any advice given now would only make him more conscious." Dexter's hair still looked horribly short, but his face did not quite resemble now that of a boy who had just risen from a sick-bed. He looked brighter and more animated, and in nowise peculiar; but all the same, in their short walk, Helen was conscious of the fact that they were being observed by every one they passed, and that plenty of remarks were made. All at once she noticed that Dexter as she was speaking to him gave quite a start, and following the direction of his eyes, she saw that he was looking at a rough-looking boy, who was approaching them with a fishing-rod over his shoulder, and a basket in his hand. The boy's mouth widened into a grin as he passed, and Helen asked Dexter if he knew him, the friendly look he had given speaking volumes of a new difficulty likely to be in their way. "I don't know whether I know him--or not," said Dexter. "I've spoken to him." "Where? At the schools!" "No; he was fishing on the other side of the river that day I tumbled in." "Oh!" said Helen coldly. "Here we are." She turned through a great iron gate, walked up a broad flight of steps, and knocked. "There, Dexter," she said, as the door was opened. "I hope you will enjoy yourself." "Ain't you going in with me!" he whispered excitedly, as a footman in a blue and yellow livery opened the door. "No; good-bye." She nodded pleasantly, and went down the steps, leaving Dexter face to face with the footman, who had become possessed of the news of the young guest's quality from no less a personage than Master Edgar himself. "Will you come in, please," he said, drawing back, and holding the door open with an air that should have made him gain for wages--kicks. Dexter said, "Yes, sir," as respectfully as if he were the workhouse porter, and took off his cap and went in. "This way, hif you please," said the supercilious gentleman. "You may leave your cap here." Dexter put down his cap, and followed the man to a door at the further end of the hall. "What name!" said the footman. Dexter stared at him. "What name shall I announce?" said the man again with chilling dignity. "Please, I don't know what you mean," said the boy, feeling very much confused. The man smiled pityingly, and looked down with a most exasperating kind of condescension at the visitor,--in a way, in fact, that stamped him mentally as a brother in spirit, if not in flesh, of Maria, the doctor's maid. "I 'ave to announce your name to her ladyship," said the footman. "Oh, my name," cried Dexter, "Obed Cole--I mean Dexter Grayson." He turned more red than ever in his confusion, and before he could say another word to add to his correction the door was thrown open. "Master Obed Cole Dextry Grayson," said the footman, in a loud voice; and the boy found himself standing in a large handsomely furnished room in the presence of Lady Danby, who rose with a forced smile, and looked very limp. "How do you do, Master Grayson!" she said sadly, and she held out her hand. Dexter in his confusion made a dash at it, and caught it tightly, to find that it felt very limp and cold, but the sensation did not last long, for the thin white fingers were snatched away. "Eddy, dear," said Lady Danby. There was no answer, and Dexter stood there, feeling very uncomfortable, and staring hard at the tall lady, who spoke in such an ill-used tone of voice. "Eddy, my darling," she said a little more loudly, as she turned and looked toward a glass door opening into a handsome conservatory; "come and shake hands with Master Grayson." There was no reply, but a faint rustling sound fell upon Dexter's quick ears, telling plainly enough that some one was in the conservatory. Lady Danby sighed, and there was a very awkward pause. "Perhaps you had better sit down, Master Grayson," she said. "My son will be here soon." Just at that moment there was a loud important sounding cough in the hall, the handle of the door rattled loudly, and Sir James entered, walking very upright, and smiling with his eyes half-closed. "Aha!" he exclaimed. "Here you are, then. How do you do--how do you do--how do you do!" He shook hands boisterously, nodding and smiling the while, and Dexter wondered whether he ought to say, "Quite well, thank you, sir," three times over, but he only said it once. "That's right," said Sir James. "Quite safe here, eh? No bullocks to run after us now." "No, sir," said Dexter uneasily. "But where's Eddy!" cried Sir James. "He was here a little while ago, my dear," said Lady Danby uneasily. "I think he has gone down the garden." "No; I think not," said Sir James. "Here, Eddy! Eddy!" "Yes, pa," came out of the conservatory. "Why, where are you, sir? Come and shake hands with our young friend." Master Edgar came slowly into sight, entered the drawing-room, and stood still. "Well; why don't you welcome your visitor? Come here." Master Edgar came a little more forward. "Now, then, shake hands with your friend." Master Edgar slowly held out a white thin hand in the direction of Dexter, who caught it eagerly, and felt as if he were shaking hands with Lady Danby again. "That's better," said Sir James. "Now the ice is broken I hope you two will be very great friends. There, we shall have an early dinner for you at three o'clock. Better leave them to themselves, my dear." "Very well, my love," responded Lady Danby sadly. "Take Dexter Grayson and show him your games, and your pony, and then you can take him round the garden, but don't touch the boat." "No, pa," said Edgar slowly. "He's a little shy, Dexter," said Sir James. "No, I ain't, ma," said Edgar, in a whisper. "We are very glad to see you, Dexter," continued Sir James. "There, now, go and enjoy yourself out in the garden, you'll find plenty to see. Come, Eddy." Master Edgar looked slowly and sulkily up at his father, and seemed to hesitate, not even glancing at his visitor. "Well!" said Sir James sharply. "Why are you hesitating? Come: run along. That way, Dexter, my lad. You two will soon be good friends." Dexter tried to smile, but it was a very poor apology for a look of pleasure, while Sir James, who seemed rather annoyed at his son's shrinking, uncouth conduct, laid his hand upon the boy's shoulder and led him into the conservatory. "Come, Eddy," he said bluffly. "Must I go, ma!" whispered Eddy. "Yes, my dear, certainly. Papa wishes it, and you must behave like a young gentleman to your guest." "Come, Eddy," shouted Sir James from the conservatory. Master Edgar went out sidewise in a very crabby way, and found Sir James waiting. "There, no more shyness," said Sir James bluffly. "Go out and enjoy yourselves till dinner-time." He nodded and smiled at them, gave his son a push toward Dexter, and returned to where Lady Danby was seated, with her brow all in wrinkles. "They will soon make friends," said Sir James. "It's Grayson's whim, of course, and really, my dear, this seems to be a decent sort of boy. Very rough, of course, but Eddy will give him polish. This class of boy is very quick at picking up things; and if, after a few weeks, Grayson is disappointed and finds out his mistake, why, then, we have behaved in a neighbourly way to him and Helen, and there's an end of it." "But it seems so shocking for poor Eddy, my dear," remonstrated Lady Danby. "Fish! pooh! tchah! rubbish! not at all!" "Eddy may pick up bad language from him, and become rude." "He had better not!" said Sir James. "He knows differently. The other young dog will learn from him. Make him discontented, I'm afraid; but there--it is not our doing." Lady Danby sighed. "They'll come back in a hour or two quite companions," continued Sir James. "Boys like that are a little awkward at their first meeting. Soon wear off. I am going to write letters till three. After their dinner perhaps I shall take them in the boat down the river." Lady Danby sighed again, and Sir James went to see to his letters for the post. By this time Master Edgar had walked softly out on to the lawn, with his right hand in his pocket, and his left thumb playing about his mouth, looking the while in all directions but that occupied by Dexter, who followed him slowly, waiting for his young host to speak. But Eddy did not seem to have the slightest intention of speaking. He only sidled away slowly across the lawn, and then down one of the winding paths among the shrubs and ornamental trees. This went on for about ten minutes, during which they got to be further and further from the house, not a word being spoken; and though Dexter looked genial and eager as he followed his young host, the silence chilled him as much as did the studied way in which his companion avoided his eyes. "What a beautiful garden you've got!" said Dexter at last. There was no reply. Eddy picked up a stone, and threw it at a thrush. "It's bigger than Dr Grayson's," said Dexter, after a pause. Eddy picked a flower, gave a chew at the stalk; then picked it to pieces, and threw it away. Then he began to sidle along again in and out among the trees, and on and on, never once looking at his companion till they were at the bottom of the garden. A pleasant piece of lawn, dotted with ornamental trees, sloped down to the river where, in a Gothic-looking boat-house, open at either end, a handsome-looking gig floated in the clear water. "That your boat?" said Dexter eagerly, as his eyes ran over the cushioned seats, and the sculls of varnished wood lying all ready along the thwarts. Edgar made no reply, only moved nearer to the water, and threw himself on a garden seat near the edge. "Isn't this a good place for fishing?" said Dexter, trying another tack. No answer, and it was getting very monotonous. But Dexter took it all good-humouredly, attributing the boy's manner more to shyness than actual discourtesy. "I say, don't you fish sometimes!" No reply. "Have you got any rods and lines!" Eddy gave a contemptuous sniff, which might have meant anything. "There's lots at Dr Grayson's," said Dexter eagerly, for the sight of the roach gliding about in the clear water in the shade of the boat-house excited the desire to begin angling. "Shall I go and fetch the rods and lines?" Eddy leaned back in the garden seat, and rested his head upon his hand. In despair Dexter sighed, and then recalled Sir James's words about their enjoying themselves. It was a lovely day; the garden was very beautiful; the river ran by, sparkling and bright; but there was very little enjoyment so far, and Dexter sat down upon the grass at a little distance from his young host. But it was not in Dexter's nature to sit still long, and after staring hard at the bright water for a few minutes, he looked up brightly at Edgar. "I say," he cried; "that bullock didn't hurt you the other day, did it?" Edgar shifted himself a little in his seat, so that he could stare in the other direction, and he tried to screw up his mouth into what was meant to be a supercilious look, though it was a failure, being extremely pitiful, and very small. Dexter waited for a few minutes, and then continued the one-sided conversation-- "I never felt afraid of bullocks," he said thoughtfully. "If you had run after them with your stick--I say, you got your stick, didn't you?" No reply. "Oh, well," said Dexter; "if you don't want to talk, I don't." "I don't want to talk to a boy like you," said Edgar, without looking. Dexter started, and stared hard. "I'm not accustomed to associate with workhouse boys." Dexter flinched. Not long back the idea of being a workhouse boy did not trouble him in the least. He knew that there were plenty of boys who were not workhouse boys, and seeing what freedom they enjoyed, and how much happier they seemed, something of the nature of envy had at times crept into his breast, but, on the whole, he had been very well contented till he commenced his residence at the doctor's; and now all seemed changed. "I'm not a workhouse boy," he said hotly. "Yes, you are," retorted Edgar, looking at him hard, full in the face, for the first time. "I know where you came from, and why you were fetched." Dexter's face was burning, and there was an angry look in his eyes, as he jumped up and took a couple of steps toward where Edgar sat back on the garden seat. But his pleasant look came back, and he held out his hand. "I'm not ashamed of it," he said. "I used to be at the workhouse. Won't you shake hands!" Edgar sniffed contemptuously, and turned his head away. "Very well," said Dexter sadly. "I don't want to, if you don't." Edgar suddenly leaped up, and went along by the side of the river, while Dexter, after a few moments' hesitation, began to follow him in a lonely, dejected way, wishing all the time that he could go back home. Following out his previous tactics, Edgar sidled along path after path, and in and out among the evergreen clumps, all the while taking care not to come within sight of the house, so that his actions might be seen; while, feeling perfectly helpless and bound to follow the caprices of his young host, Dexter continued his perambulation of the garden in the same unsatisfactory manner. "Look here," cried Edgar at last; "don't keep following me about." "Very well," said Dexter, as he stood still in the middle of one of the paths, wondering whether he could slip away, and return to the doctor's. That seemed a difficult thing to do, for Sir James might see him going, and call him back, and then what was he to say? Besides which, when he reached the doctor's there would be a fresh examination, and he felt that the excuse he gave would not be satisfactory. Dexter sighed, and glanced in the direction taken by Edgar. The boy was not within sight, but Dexter fancied that he had hidden, and was watching him, and he turned in the other direction, looking hopelessly about the garden, which seemed to be more beautiful and extensive than the doctor's; but, in spite of the wealth of greenery and flowers, everything looked cheerless and cold. Dexter sighed. Then a very natural boyish thought came into his head. "I wonder what's for dinner," he said to himself; but at the same time he knew that it must be a long while yet to dinner-time, and, sighing once more, he walked slowly down the path, found himself near the river again, and went and sat on a stump close to the boat-house, where he could look into the clear water, and see the fish. It was very interesting to him to watch the little things gliding here and there, and he wished that he had a rod and line to try for some of them, when all at once he started, for a well-aimed stone struck him upon the side of the head, and as it reached its goal, and Dexter started up angrily, there was a laugh and a rustle among the shrubs. As the pain went off, so did Dexter's anger, and he reseated himself upon the stump, thinking, with his young wits sharpened by his early life. "I don't call this coming out to enjoy myself," he said drily. "Wonder whether all young gentleman behave like this?" Then he began thinking about Sam Stubbs, a boy at the workhouse school, who was a terrible bully and tyrant, knocking all his companions about. But the sight of the clean-looking well-varnished boat, floating so easily in the shade of the roof of its house, took his attention, and he began thinking of how he should like a boat like that to push off into the stream, and go floating along in the sunshine, looking down at the fish, and fastening up every now and then to the overhanging trees. It would be glorious, he thought. "I wish Dr Grayson had a boat," he thought. "I could learn to row it, and--" _Whack_! Dexter jumped up again, tingling with pain; and then with his face scarlet he sat down once more writhing involuntarily, and drawing his breath hard, as there was a mocking laugh. The explanation was simple. Master Edgar was dissatisfied. It was very pleasant to his spoiled, morbid mind to keep on slighting and annoying his guest by making him dance attendance upon him, and dragging him about the garden wherever he pleased to go; but it was annoying and disappointing to find that he was being treated with a calm display of contempt. Under these circumstances Master Edgar selected a good-sized stone--one which he thought would hurt--and took excellent aim at Dexter, where he sat contemplating the river. The result was most satisfactory: Dexter had winced, evidently suffered sharp pain, but only submitted to it, and sat down again twisting himself about. Edgar laughed heartily, in fact the tears stood in his eyes, and he retreated, but only to where he could watch Dexter attentively. "He's a coward," said Edgar to himself. "All that sort of boys are." And with the determination of making his visitor a kind of captive to his bow and spear, or, in plainer English, a slave to his caprices, he went to one of the beds where some sticks had lately been put to some young plants, and selecting one that was new, thin, and straight, he went back on tiptoe, watched his opportunity, and then brought the stick down sharply across Dexter's back. He drew back for a few moments, his victim's aspect being menacing; but Dexter's young spirit had been kept crushed down for a good many years, and his custom had been under many a blow to sit and suffer patiently, not even crying aloud, Mr Sibery objecting to any noise in the school. Dexter had subsided again. The flashes that darted from his eyes had died out, and those eyes looked subdued and moist. For the boy was mentally, as well as bodily hurt, and he wondered what Helen would say, and whether Sir James would correct his son if he saw him behaving in that manner to his visitor. "Hey: get up!" said Edgar, growing more bold, as he found that he could ill-use his guest with impunity; and as he spoke he gave him a rough poke or two with the sharp end of the stick, which had been pointed with the gardener's pruning-knife. His treatment of Dexter resembled that which he had been accustomed to bestow upon an unfortunate dog he had once owned--one which became so fond of him that at last it ran away. "Do you hear!" cried Edgar again. "Get up." "Don't: you hurt." "Yes: meant to hurt," said Edgar, grinning. "Get up." He gave Dexter so sharp a dig with the stick that the latter jumped up angrily, and Edgar drew back; but on seeing that the visitor only went on a few yards to where there was a garden seat, and sat down again, the young tyrant became emboldened, and went behind the seat with a malicious look of satisfaction in his eyes. "Don't do that," said Dexter quietly. "Let's have a game at something. Do you think we might go in that boat?" "I should think not indeed," cried Edgar, who now seemed to have found his tongue. "Boats are for young gentlemen, not for boys from the Union." Dexter winced a little, and Edgar looked pleased. "Get up!" he shouted; and he made another lunge with the stick. "I'm always getting into trouble," thought Dexter, as the result of the last few days' teachings, "and I don't want to do anything now." "Do you hear, blackguard? Get up!" There was another sharp poke, a painful poke, against which, as he moved to the other end of the seat, Dexter uttered a mild protest. "Did you hear me say, `Get up'?" shouted Edgar. Dexter obeyed, and moved a little nearer to the water's edge. "I wish it was time to go," he said to himself. "I am so miserable here." "Now, go along there," said Edgar sharply. "Go on!" The boy seemed to have a donkey in his mind's eye just then, for he thrust and struck at Dexter savagely, and then hastily threw down the stick, as an angry glow was gathering in his visitor's countenance. For just then there was a step heard upon the gravel. "Ah, Eddy, my darling," said a voice; and Lady Danby walked languidly by, holding up a parasol. "At play, my dear?" She did not glance at Dexter, who felt very solitary and sad as the lady passed on, Master Eddy throwing himself on the grass, and picking it off in patches to toss toward the water till his mother was out of sight, when he sprang up once more, and picked the stick from where he had thrown it upon a bed. As he did this he glanced sidewise, and then stood watching for a few minutes, when he made a playful kind of charge at his visitor, and drove the point of the stick so vigorously against his back that the cloth gave way, making a triangular hole, and causing the owner no little pain. "Don't," cried Dexter appealingly; "you hurt ever so. Let's play at some game." "I'm going to," cried Edgar, with a vicious laugh. "I'm going to play at French and English, and you're the beggarly Frenchman at Waterloo. That's the way to charge bayonets. How do you like that, and that, and that!" "Not at all," said Dexter, trying hard to be good-humoured. "Then you'll have to like it, and ever so much more, too. Get up, blackguard. Do you hear?" Dexter rose and retreated; but, with no little agility, Edgar got before him, and drove him toward the water, stabbing and lunging at him so savagely, that if he had not parried some of the thrusts with his hands his face must have been torn. Edgar grew more and more excited over his work, and Dexter received a nasty dig on one hand, another in the cheek, while another grazed his ear. This last was beyond bearing. The hurt was not so bad as several which he had before received; but, perhaps from its nearness to his brain, it seemed to rouse Dexter more than any former blow, and, with an angry cry, he snatched at and caught the stick just as it came near his face. "Let go of that stick! Do you hear?" cried Edgar. For response Dexter, who was now roused, held on tightly, and tried to pull the stick away. "Let go," cried Edgar, tugging and snatching with all his might. Dexter's rage was as evanescent as it was quick. It passed away, and as his enemy made another furious tug at the stick Dexter suddenly let go, and the consequence was the boy staggered back a few yards, and then came down heavily in a sitting position upon the grass. Edgar sat and stared for a few moments, the sudden shock being anything but pleasant; but, as he saw Dexter's mirthful face, a fit of rage seized him, and, leaping up, he resumed his attack with the stick. This time his strokes and thrusts were so malicious, and given with so decided a desire to hurt his victim as much as was possible, that, short of running away, Dexter had to do everything possible to avoid the blows. For the most part he was successful; but at last he received so numbing a blow across the arm that he quivered with pain and anger as he sprang forward, and, in place of retreating, seized the stick, and tried to wrest it away. There was a brief struggle, but pretty full of vigour. Rage made Edgar strong, and he fought well for his weapon, but at the end of a minute's swaying here and there, and twistings and heavings innumerable, Edgar's arms felt as if they were being torn from his body, the stick was wrenched away, and as he stood scarlet with passion, he saw it whirled into the air, to fall with a loud splash into the river. Edgar ground his teeth for a moment or two, and then, as white with anger as his adversary was red, he flew at him, swaying his arms round, and then there was a furious encounter. Edgar had his own ideas about fighting manoeuvres, which he had tried again and again upon his nurse in bygone times, and upon any of the servants with whom he had come in contact. His arms flew round like flails, or as if he had been transformed into a kind of human firework, and for the next five minutes he kicked, scratched, bit, and tore at his adversary; the next five minutes he was seated upon the grass, howling, his nose bleeding terribly, and the crimson stains carried by his hands all over his face. For Dexter was not perfect: he had borne till it was impossible to bear more, and then, with his anger surging up, he had fought as a down-trodden English boy will sometimes fight; and in this case with the pluck and steadiness learned in many a school encounter, unknown to Mr Sibery or Mr Hippetts, the keen-eyed and stern. Result: what might be expected. Dexter felt no pain, only an intense desire to thrash the virulent little tyrant who had scratched his face, kicked his shins, torn at his hair--it was too short still for a good hold--and, finally, made his sharp, white teeth meet in his visitor's neck. "Served you right!" muttered Dexter, as he knelt down by the river, and bathed his hands and face before dabbing them dry with his pocket-handkerchief. "No business to treat me like that." Then, as he stood rubbing his face--very little the worse for the encounter--his anger all passed away, and the consequences of his act dawned upon him. "Look here," he said; "it was all your fault. Come to the water; that will soon stop bleeding." He held out his hand, as he bent over the fallen tyrant, meaning to help him to rise, when, quick as lightning, Edgar caught the hand proffered to him and carried it to his teeth. Dexter uttered a cry of pain, and shook him off, sending him backwards now upon the grass, just as a shadow fell across the contending boys, and Sir James stood frowning there. CHAPTER NINETEEN. MASTER EDDY "HOLLERS WAHOO!" "What is the meaning of this!" cried Sir James furiously. Dexter was speechless, and he shrank back staring. Edgar was ready with an answer. "He's knocking me about, pa. He has done nothing but knock me about ever since he came." "Oh!" cried Dexter in a voice full of indignant astonishment. "I didn't. He begun it, and I didn't, indeed." "Silence, sir!" cried Sir James, in his severest magisterial tones. "How dare you tell me such a falsehood? I saw you ill-using my son as you held him down." "Why, he had got hold of my hand!" cried Dexter indignantly. "Got hold of your hand, sir? How dare you? How dare you, sir, I say? I've a great mind to--" Sir James did not finish his speech, but made a gesture with the walking-cane he carried; and just then there was a loud hysterical shriek. For Lady Danby had realised the fact that something was wrong from the part of the garden where she was promenading, parasol in hand, and she came now panting up, in the full belief that some accident had happened to her darling, and that he was drowned. "Eddy, Eddy!" she cried, as she came up; and then as soon as she caught sight of his anything but pleasant-looking countenance, she shrieked again wildly, and flung herself upon her knees beside him. "What is it? What is it, my darling?" she sobbed, as she caught him to her heart. "That horrid boy! Knocking me about," he cried, stopping his howling so as to deliver the words emphatically; and then looking at his stained hands, and bursting into a howl of far greater power than before. "The wretch! The wretch!" cried Lady Danby. "I always knew it. He has killed my darling." At this dire announcement Edgar shook himself free from his mother's embrace, looked at his hands again, and then in the extremity of horror, threw himself flat upon his back, and shrieked and kicked. "O my darling, my darling!" cried Lady Danby. "He isn't hurt much," cried Dexter indignantly. "How dare you, sir!" roared Sir James. "He's killed; he's killed!" cried Lady Danby, clasping her hands, and rocking herself to and fro as she gazed at the shrieking boy, who only wanted a cold sponge and a towel to set him right. "Ow!" yelled Edgar, as he appreciated the sympathy of his mother, but believed the very worst of his unfortunate condition. The lady now bent over him, said that he was killed, and of course she must have known. Edgar had never read _Uncle Remus_. All this was before the period when that book appeared; but his conduct might very well be taken as a type of that of the celebrated Brer Fox when Brer Rabbit was in doubt as to whether he was really dead or only practising a ruse, and proceeded to test his truth by saying, as he saw him stretched out-- "Brer Fox look like he dead, but he don't do like he dead. Dead fokes hists up de behime leg, en hollers _wahoo_!" Edgar, according to Brer Rabbit's ideas, was very dead indeed, for he kept on "histing up de behime leg, en hollering _wahoo_!" with the full power of his lungs. By this time the alarm had spread, and there was the sound of steps upon a gravel walk, which resulted in the appearance of the supercilious footman. "Carry Master Edgar up to the house," said Sir James, in his severest magisterial tones. "Carefully--very carefully," wailed her ladyship piteously; and she looked and spoke as if she feared that as soon as the boy was touched he would tumble all to pieces. Dexter looked on, with his eyes turning here and there, like those of some captured wild animal which fears danger; and as he looked he caught sight of the footman gazing at him with a peculiar grin upon his countenance, which seemed to be quite friendly, and indicated that the man rather enjoyed the plight in which his young master was plunged. Master Edgar howled again as he was raised, and directly after began to indulge in what the plantation negroes used to call "playing 'possum"-- that is to say, he suddenly became limp and inert, closing his eyes, and letting his head roll about, as if there were no more bone left in his body, while his mother wrung her hands, and tried then to hold the head steady, as the footman prepared to move toward the house. "Now, sir," said Sir James sternly, "come here. We will have a few words about this in my library." Accustomed for years past to obey, Dexter took a step forward to accompany the stern-looking man before him to the house; but such a panorama of troublous scenes rose before his mind's eye directly, that he stopped short, gave one hasty glance round, and then, as Sir James stretched forth his hand, he made one bound which landed him in a clump of hollyhocks and dahlias; another which took him on to the grass; and then, with a rush, he dashed into a clump of rhododendrons, went through them, and ran as hard as he could go toward the house. For a few moments Sir James was too much astounded to speak. This was something new. He was accustomed to order, and to be obeyed. He had ordered Dexter to come to him, and for answer the boy had dashed away. As soon as Sir James could recover his breath, taken away in his astonishment, he began to shout-- "Stop, sir! Do you hear? How dare you?" If a hundred Sir Jameses had been shouting it would not have stayed Dexter, for he had only one idea in his head just then, and that was to get away. "Put down Master Edgar, and go and fetch that boy back." "Carefully! Oh, pray, put him down carefully," cried Lady Danby passionately. Just then Master Edgar uttered a fresh cry, and his mother wailed loudly. "No, never mind," cried Sir James, "carry him up to the house; I will fetch that young rascal." He strode off angrily, evidently believing in his own mind that he really was going to fetch Dexter back; but by that time the boy had reached the house, ran round by the side, dashed down the main street, and was soon after approaching the bridge over the river, beyond which lay the Union and the schools. CHAPTER TWENTY. AN EXPLANATION. For a few moments Dexter's idea was to go to the great gates, ring the porter's bell, and take sanctuary there, for he felt that he had disgraced himself utterly beyond retrieving his character. Certainly, he never dared go back to the doctor's. He felt for a moment that he had some excuse, for Edgar Danby had brought his punishment upon himself; but no one would believe that, and there was no hope for the offender but to give up everything, and go back to his former life. But, as the boy reached the gloomy-looking workhouse entrance, and saw the painted bell-pull, through whose coating the rust was eating its way, he shivered. For there rose up before him the stern faces of Mr Hippetts and Mr Sibery, with the jeering crowd of schoolfellows, who could laugh at and gibe him for his downfall, and be sure to call him Gentleman Coleby, as long as they were together, the name, under the circumstances, being sure to stick. No, he could not face them there, and beside, though it had never seemed so before, the aspect of the great building was so forbidding that he shrank away, and walked onward toward the outskirts of the town, and on, and on, till he found himself by the river. Such a sensation of misery and despair came over him, that he began walking along by the bank, seeing nothing of the glancing fish and bright insects which danced above the water. He had room for nothing but the despondent thoughts of what he should do now. "What would the doctor think of him? What would Helen say?" He had been asked out to spend the day at a gentleman's house, and he had disgraced himself, and-- "Hullo!" Dexter looked up sharply, and found that he had almost run against his old fishing friend of the opposite side of the river. "Hullo!" stammered Dexter in reply. "Got dry again?" said the boy, who was standing just back from the water's edge, fishing, with his basket at his side, and a box of baits on the grass. "Got dry?" said Dexter wonderingly. "Yes! My!" cried the boy, grinning, "you did have a ducking. I ran away. Best thing I could do." "Yes," said Dexter quietly; "you ran away." "Why, what yer been a-doing of? Your face is scratched, and your hands too. I know: you've been climbing trees. You'll ketch it, spoiling your clothes. That's got him." He struck and landed a small fish, which he took from the hook and dropped into his basket, where there were two more. "They don't bite to-day. Caught any down your garden!" "No," said Dexter, to whom the company of the boy was very cheering just then. "I haven't tried since." "You are a fellow! Why, if I had a chance like you have, I should be always at it." "I say, what did you say your name was?" "Bob Dimsted--Bob," said the fisher, throwing in again. "I know what yours is. You come out of the workus." "Yes," said Dexter sadly, as he wondered whether he did not wish he was there now. "I came out of the workus--workhouse," he added, as he remembered one of Helen's teachings. "Why don't you get your rod some day, and a basket of something to eat, and come right up the river with me, fishing? There's whackers up there." "I should like to," said Dexter thoughtfully, for the idea of the fishing seemed to drive away the troubles from which he suffered. "Well, come then. I'd go any day, only you must let me have all you caught." "All?" said Dexter, as he began to think of trophies. "Yes. As I showed you the place where they're caught, I should want to take them home." "All right," said Dexter. "You could have them." "Ah, it's all very well," said the boy, "but there wouldn't be many that you caught, mate. Ah! No, he's off again. Keep a little furder back." Dexter obeyed, and sat down on the grass, feeling in a half-despairing mood, but as if the company of this rough boy was very pleasant after what he had gone through, and that boys like this were more agreeable to talk to than young tyrants of the class of Edgar Danby. "Fish don't half bite to-day," said Bob Dimsted. "I wish you'd got a rod here, I could lend you a line--single hair." "But I haven't got a rod." "Well, run home and fetch it," said Bob. "Run home and fetch it?" How could he run home and fetch it? How could he ever go back to the doctor's again? "No," he said at last, as he shook his head. "I can't go and fetch it." "Then you can't fish," said the boy, "and 'tain't much use. It's no fun unless they bite, and some days it don't matter how you try, they won't." "Won't they?" said Dexter, and then he started to his feet, for a familiar voice had spoken close to his ear-- "Why, Dexter!" The voice was as full of astonishment as the pleasant face which looked in his. "I thought you were at Sir James Danby's! Is Edgar out here, in the meadows!" "No--no," faltered Dexter; and Bob Dimsted began to gather up his tackle, so as to make a strategic movement, there being evidently trouble in the rear. "But what does this mean?" said Helen firmly. "Who is that boy?" "Bob--Bob Dimsted." "And do you know him?" "He--he was fishing opposite our--your--garden the day I fell into the river," faltered Dexter; and he looked longingly at Bob, who was quickly moving away, and wished that those eyes did not hold him so firmly, and keep him from doing the same. "Was he at your school?" "No," faltered Dexter. "Then I am sure papa would not like you to be making acquaintance with boy's like that. But come, Dexter. What is the meaning of all this? I left you at Sir James Danby's." "Yes," said Dexter, shuffling from foot to foot. "Then why are you not there now--playing with Edgar?" Dexter did not answer, but seemed to be admiring the prospect. "Why, Dexter, your face is all scratched!" Dexter looked up at her, with the scratched face scarlet. "How is that!" continued Helen sternly. "Fighting," said Dexter grimly. "Fighting? Oh, shame! And with that rough boy!" "No!" cried Dexter quickly. "He didn't knock me about." "Then who did!" "That young Danby." Dexter's lips were well opened now, and he went on talking rapidly. "I never did anything to him, but he went on for an hour walking all round the garden, and wouldn't speak; and when I was tired and sat down, he got a stick and knocked me about, and poked me with the point. I stood it as long as I could, and then, when he got worse and worse, I pitched into him, and I'm sure you would have done the same." Helen did not look as if she would have done the same, but stood gazing at the young monkey before her, wondering whether he was deserving of her sympathy, or had really misbehaved himself, and was trying to palliate his conduct. "There, Dexter," she said at last. "I really do not know what to do with you. You had better come on and see papa at once." She took a step toward the town, and then waited, but Dexter stood firm, and cast a glance toward the country. "Dexter, did you hear what I said!" The boy looked at her uneasily, and then nodded sullenly. "Come home with me, then, at once," said Helen quickly. "It's no use for me to come home along of you," said Dexter surlily. "He'll hit me, and I don't want to go." Helen hesitated for a few moments, and then laid her hand upon the boy's shoulder. "I wish you to come, Dexter." He shook his head. "Come," she cried, "if you have been in fault confess it frankly." "But I haven't," cried the boy angrily. "I couldn't help fighting when he knocked me about as he did. He bit me too. Look there!" He hastily drew up his sleeve, and displayed a ruddy circle on his white skin, which bore pretty strong witness to the truth of his words. "Then, if you were not to blame, why should you shrink from coming to papa?" "'Cause he mightn't believe me. Mr Sibery never would, neither," muttered Dexter. "Tell the truth and papa will be sure to believe you," cried Helen indignantly. "Think he would!" said Dexter. "I am sure of it, sir." "All right then," cried the boy quickly. "I'll come. Oh, I say!" "What is the matter?" "Look! Here he comes!" He pointed quickly in the direction of the town, and, wresting himself from Helen's grasp, set off at a sharp run. But he had not gone a dozen yards before he turned and saw Helen gazing after him. He stopped directly, and came slowly and reluctantly back. "Did you call me!" he said sheepishly. "No, Dexter; I think it must have been your conscience spoke and upbraided you for being such a coward." "Yes, it was cowardly, wasn't it?" cried the boy. "I didn't mean to run away, but somehow I did. I say, will he hit me!" "No, Dexter." "Will he be very cross with me?" "I am afraid he will, Dexter; but you must submit bravely, and speak the simple truth." "Yes, I'm going to," said Dexter, with a sigh; and he glanced behind him at the pleasant stretch of meadows, and far away down among the alders and willows, with Bob Dimsted fishing, and evidently quite free from the care which troubled him. The doctor strode up, looking very angry. "So you are there, are you, sir?" he cried austerely. "Do you know of this disgraceful business!" "Dexter has been telling me," said Helen gravely. "Humph!" grunted the doctor. "I knew you had come down here, so I thought I would come and tell you of the terrible state of affairs." "Terrible, papa!" "Ah! then you don't know. It was not likely he would tell you. Sir James came straight to me, and told me everything. It seems that the two boys were sent down the garden together to play, and that as soon as they were alone, Dexter here began to annoy and tease Edgar." "Here, just say that again, will you?" cried Dexter sharply. "I repeat that Dexter here began to annoy and tease Edgar." "Oh!" ejaculated Dexter. "And at last, after the poor boy had tried everything to keep his companion from the line of conduct he had pursued, he resolved to go down and sit by the river, leaving Dexter to amuse himself. But unfortunately the spirit of mischief was so strong in him that this boy took out a dahlia-stick with a sharp point--Sir James showed it to me-- and then, after stabbing at him for some time, began to use his fists, and beat Edgar in the most cruel way." "Oh, my!" ejaculated Dexter; and then, giving his right foot a stamp, "Well, of all the--Oh, my! what a whopper!" The low slangy expression was brought out with such an air of indignant protest that Helen was unable to keep her countenance, and she looked away, while the doctor, who was quite as much impressed, frowned more severely to hide the mirth aroused by the boy's ejaculations, and turned to him sharply-- "What do you mean by that, sir!" he cried. "Mean?" cried Dexter indignantly, and without a shade of fear in his frank bold eyes; "why there isn't a bit of it true. He didn't like me because I came from over yonder, and he wouldn't speak to me. Then he kept on hitting me, and I wouldn't hit him back, because I thought it would make her cross; but, last of all, he hurt me so that I forgot all about everything, and then we did fight, and I whipped--and that's all." "Oh, that's all, is it, sir!" said the doctor, who was angry and yet amused. "Yes, that's all," said Dexter; "only I've got a bite on my arm, and one on my neck, and one on my shoulder. They didn't bleed, though, only pinched and hurt. I only hit him one good un, and that was on the nose, and it made it bleed." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor. "Now, look here, Dexter, is every word of that true!" "Yes, sir, every bit," cried the boy eagerly. "You will see if it ain't." The doctor's face wrinkled a little more, as to conceal a smile he turned to his daughter-- "Now," he said, "do you think this is true?" "I feel sure it is," said Helen. "I am convinced that Dexter would not tell either of us a falsehood." "There!" cried the boy, smiling triumphantly, as he crept to Helen's side and laid his hand in hers. "Hear that? Of course I wouldn't. I wanted to be all right, but--I say, does my head bleed there?" He took off his cap, and held down his head, while Helen looked at the spot he pointed out, and shuddered slightly. "That's where he stuck his nails into my head, just like a cat. It did hurt ever so, but I soon forgot it." "Let's go home," said the doctor gravely. "It is unfortunate, but of course Dexter could not submit to be trampled upon by any boy." "I say, you do believe me, don't you!" said Dexter quickly. "Yes, my boy. I believe you on your honour." "On my honour," said Dexter quickly. "That will do," said the doctor. "It is unfortunate, but unavoidable. Let us go home to lunch." "And you will not send me back to the--you know!" "Certainly not," said the doctor. "And may I come out here to fish by and by!" "Certainly," said the doctor. "If you are a good boy." "No, I think not," said Helen, making a shadow cross the boy's countenance. "Dexter cannot come out fishing alone; I will come with him." Dexter gave her a meaning look, as he understood why she had said that; and then walked quietly home with the doctor and his daughter to a far more agreeable meal than he would have enjoyed at the baronet's house. CHAPTER TWENTY ONE. A RECORD OF CARES. "Hang his impudence!" said the doctor. "What do you think he told me?" "Sir James?" "Yes, my dear. Told me I was a regular modern Frankenstein, and that I had made a young monster to worry me to death. Such insolence! Dexter's growing a very nice lad, and I feel as if I could make a nobleman of him if I liked, but I think I'll send him to a good school for a bit. You see, he's full of promise, Helen." "Yes, papa," said Helen, suppressing her mirth. "Ah! now you are laughing at me. I mean full of the promise that will some day mean performance. But--yes, I will send him to a good school." A good school was selected, and Dexter duly sent down to it, leaving Helen very unwillingly, but holding up manfully, and the doctor said he would come back at the holiday-time vastly improved. In six weeks Dr Grayson received a letter asking him to fetch Dexter away to save him from being expelled. The Doctor looked very angry as he went down to Cardley Willows, and the inquiries took a stern, rather bitter turn. "Has the boy been a young blackguard?" he said. "No," said the principal. "Dishonest?" "Oh dear no!" "Well, what is it then--disobedient!" "Oh dear no! He'll promise anything." "Humph! yes," said the doctor to himself. "I'm very sorry, Dr Grayson," continued the principal; "but the boy is incorrigible, and you must take him away." The doctor took the boy away, and he had a very stern talking-to at home. Two months passed away. "There, Helen," said the doctor one morning; "what do you say to him now? Wonderfully improved, has he not? Good natural boy's colour in his cheeks--better blood, you see, and nice curly hair. Really he is not like the same." "No, papa; he is greatly changed," said Helen, as she followed the direction of her father's eyes to where Dexter was out on the lawn watching old Dan'l, while old Dan'l, in a furtive manner, was diligently watching him in return. "Greatly changed," said the doctor thoughtfully, as he scratched the side of his nose with his penholder, "in personal appearance. Sir James seems very sore still about that little affair. Says I ought to have thrashed Dexter, for he behaved brutally to young Edgar." "And what did you say, papa?" "Well, not exactly all I thought. Dreadful young limb that Edgar. Spoiled boy, but I could not tell Danby so with such a catalogue of offences as Master Dexter has to show on my black list. You see, Helen, we do not get any further with him." Helen shook her head sadly. "There's something wrong in his brain; or something wanting. He'll promise amendment one hour, and go and commit the same fault the very next." "It is very sad," replied Helen thoughtfully; "but I'm sure he means well." "Yes, my dear; of course," said the doctor, looking perplexed; "but it's a great drawback to one's success. But there: we must persevere. It seems to me that the first thing to do is to wean him from that terrible love of low companions." "Say companion," said Helen, smiling. "Well, a companion, then. I wish we could get that young fishing scoundrel sent away; but of course one cannot do that. Oh, by the way, what about Maria? Is she going away?" "No," said Helen. "I had a long talk to her about her unreasoning dislike to Dexter, and she has consented to stay." "Well, it's very kind of her," said the doctor testily. "I suppose Mrs Millett will be giving warning next." "Oh no," said Helen; "she finds a good deal of fault, but I think, on the whole, she feels kindly toward the poor boy." "Don't!" cried the doctor, giving the writing-table so angry a slap with his open hand that a jet of ink shot out of the stand and made half a dozen great splashes. "Now, look there, what you've made me do," he continued, as he began hastily to soak up the black marks with blotting-paper. "I will not have Dexter called `the poor boy.' He is not a poor boy. He is a human waif thrown up on life's shore. No, no: and you are not to call him a human waif. I shall well educate him, and place him on the high-road toward making his way properly in life as a gentleman should, and I'll show the whole world that I'm right." "You shall, papa," said Helen merrily; "and I will help you all I can." "I know you will, my dear, and you are helping me," cried the doctor warmly; "and it's very good of you. But I do wish we could make him think before he does anything. His mischievous propensities are simply horrible. And now, my dear, about his education. We must do something more, if it is only for the sake of keeping him out of trouble. You are doing nobly, but that is not enough. I did mean to read classics with him myself, but I have no time. My book takes too much thought. Now, I will not send the poor boy--" "`Poor boy,' papa!" said Helen merrily. "Eh? Did I say `poor boy'!" cried the doctor, scratching his nose again. "Yes." "Ah, well; I did not mean it. I was going to say I will not send him to another school. He would be under too many disadvantages, so I think we will decide upon a private tutor." "Yes, papa; a very excellent arrangement." "Yes, I think it is; and--well, Maria, what is it!" "Dan'l, sir," said that young lady, who spoke very severely, as if she could hardly contain her feelings; "and he'd be glad to know if you could see him a minute." "Send him in, Maria," said the doctor; and then, as the housemaid left the room, "Well, it can't be anything about Dexter now, because he is out there on the--" The doctor's words were delivered more and more slowly as he rose and walked toward the open window, while Helen felt uneasy, and full of misgivings. "Why, the young dog was here just now," cried the doctor angrily. "Now, really, Helen, if he has been at any tricks this time, I certainly will set up a cane." "O papa!" "Yes, my dear, I certainly will, much as I object to corporal punishment. Well, Daniel, what is it!" Old Dan'l had a straw hat in his hand--a hat that was rather ragged at the edge, and with which, as if it was to allay some irritation, he kept sawing one finger. "Beg pardon, sir--pardon, Miss," said Dan'l apologetically; "but if I might speak and say a few words--" "Certainly, Daniel; you may do both," said the doctor. "Thanky, sir--thanky kindly, Miss," said the gardener, half-putting his hat on twice so as to have it in the proper position for making a bow; "which I'm the last man in the world, sir, to make complaints." "Humph!" ejaculated the doctor. "Serving you as I have now for over twenty year, and remembering puffickly well, Miss, when you was only a pink bit of a baby, as like one o' my tender carnations as could be, only more like a Count dee Parish rose." "Well, what's the matter, Daniel?" said the doctor hastily, for he wanted to bring the old man's prosings to an end. "Well, sir, heverythink, as you may say, is the matter. Look at me, sir; I've suffered more in that garden than mortal man would believe!" "Oh, have you!" said the doctor, taking off his glasses. "You don't look so very bad, Daniel, for a man of sixty-five." "Sixty-four and three-quarters, begging your pardon, sir; but I have suffered. I've laid awake nights and nights thinking of what was best for planting them borders with s'rubs, as is now a delight to the human eye; and I've walked that garden hundreds o' nights with a lanthorn in search o' slugs, as comes out o' they damp meadows in in counted millions; and I've had my cares in thrips and red spider and green fly, without saying a word about scale and them other blights as never had no name. But never in my life--never in all my born days--never since I was first made a gardener, have I suffered anythink like as I've suffered along o' that there boy." "Nonsense, Daniel! nonsense!" cried the doctor pettishly. "Well, sir, I've served you faithful, and took such a pride in that there garden as never was, and you may call it nonsense, sir, but when I see things such as I see, I say it's time to speak." "Why, you are always coming to me with some petty complaint, sir, about that boy." "Petty complaint, sir!" cried Dan'l indignantly. "Is Ribstons a petty complaint--my chycest Ribstons, as I want for dessert at Christmas? And is my Sturmer pippins a petty complaint--them as ought to succeed the Ribstons in Febbery and March?" "Why, what about them?" cried the doctor. "Oh, nothing, sir; only as half the town's t'other side o' the river, and my pippins is being shovelled over wholesale." The doctor walked out into the hall and put on his hat, with Dan'l following him; and, after a moment's hesitation, Helen took up a sunshade, and went down the garden after her father. She overtook him as he was standing by a handsome espalier, dotted with the tawny red-streaked Ribstons, while Dan'l was pointing to a couple of newly-made footmarks. "Humph! Not all gone, then?" said the doctor, frowning. "Not yet!" growled Dan'l. "And see there, Miss; there was four stunners on that there little branch this mornin', and they're all gone!" "Where is Master Dexter?" said the doctor. Dan'l made a jerking motion with his thumb over his right shoulder, and the doctor walked on over the grass toward the bottom of the grounds. The little party advanced so noiselessly that they were unheard, and in another minute they were near enough to hear Dexter exclaim-- "Now, then; this time--catch!" The doctor stopped short in time to see, according to Dan'l's version, the Ribstons and Sturmers thrown across the river to half the town. "Half the town," according to Dan'l, consisted of Bob Dimsted, who had laid down his rough fishing-rod, and was holding half an apple in one hand, munching away the while, as he caught another deftly; and he was in the act of stuffing it into his pocket as he caught sight of the doctor, and stood for a few moments perfectly motionless. Then, stooping quickly, he gathered up his tackle and ran. "What's the matter!" cried Dexter. Bob made no reply, but ran off; and as he did so, Dexter laughingly took another apple from his pocket--a hard green Sturmer pippin, which he threw with such force and accuracy that it struck Bob right in the middle of the back, when the boy uttered a cry of alarm, ran more swiftly, and Dexter stood for a moment roaring with laughter, and then turned to find himself face to face with the trio who had come down the garden. "And them pippins worth twopence apiece at Christmas, sir!" cried Dan'l. "What are you doing, Dexter!" cried the doctor sternly. "I was only giving him an apple or two," said the boy, after a few moments' hesitation. "Come in, sir," cried the doctor. "A month's notice, if you please, sir, from to-day," said Dan'l, frowning angrily; but no one paid any heed to him, for the doctor had laid his hand upon Dexter's shoulder, and marched him off. "And I've never said nothing yet about our bees," grumbled Dan'l. "A young tyke! Raddled 'em up with a long stick on purpose to get me stung to death, he did, as is a massy I warn't. Well, a month to-day. Either he goes or I do. Such whims, to have a boy like that about the place. Well, I'm glad I've brought it to a head, for the doctor won't part with me." "Now, sir," said the doctor, as he seated himself in his chair, and Helen took up her work, carefully keeping her eyes off Dexter, who looked at her appealingly again and again. "Now, sir, what have you to say for yourself?" Dexter looked at the doctor, and his countenance was so unpleasantly angry that the ceiling, the floor, and the various objects around seemed preferable, and were carefully observed in turn. "Do you hear, sir? What have you to say for yourself!" "What about?" faltered Dexter at last. "What about, sir? Just as if you did not know! Weren't you forbidden to touch those apples!" "Only by Daniel, sir; and he said I was never to touch any fruit at all; but you said I might." "Yes--I did. I said you might have some fruit." "Apples is fruit," said Dexter. "_Are_ fruit--_are_ fruit, sir," cried the doctor, in an exasperated tone. "Apples _are_ fruit," said Dexter. "But I did not tell you to pick my choice pippins and throw them across the river to every blackguard boy you see." "But he hasn't got a beautiful garden like we have," protested Dexter. "What has that got to do with it, sir?" cried the doctor angrily. "I don't grow fruit and keep gardeners on purpose to supply the wants of all the little rascals in the place." "He asked me to get him some apples, sir." "Asked you to get him some, indeed! Look here, sir; I've tried very hard to make you a decent boy by kindness, but it does no good. You were told not to associate with that boy any more." "Please, sir, I didn't," cried Dexter. "I didn't, indeed, sir." "What? Why, I saw you talking to him, and giving him fruit." "Please, sir, I couldn't help it. I didn't 'sociate with him; he would come and 'sociate with me." "Bah!" ejaculated the doctor. "And he said if I didn't give him some apples and pears he'd come and stand in front of the windows here and shout `workus' as loud as he could." "I shall have to send the police after him," said the doctor fiercely; "and as for you, sir, I've quite made up my mind what to do. Kind words are thrown away. I shall now purchase a cane--and use it." "Oh, I say, don't," cried Dexter, giving himself a writhe, as he recalled sundry unpleasant interviews with Mr Sibery. "It does hurt so, you don't know; and makes black marks on you afterwards, just as if it had been dipped in ink." Helen bent down over the work she had taken up. "Don't?" said the doctor sharply. "Then what am I to do, sir? Words are of no use. I did hope that you were going to be a better and more tractable boy." "Well, but ain't I?" said Dexter, looking puzzled, and rubbing his curly head. "Better? No, sir; much worse." Dexter rubbed his head again thoughtfully. "I haven't torn my clothes this week, and I haven't been down on my knees; and I haven't been on the top of the wall, and I did want to ever so badly." "No, Dexter; but you climbed right to the top of the big pear-tree," said Helen quickly; "and it was a terribly dangerous thing to do." "Now you've begun at me!" said the boy in a lachrymose tone. "I'm afraid I'm a regular bad one, and you'd better send me back again." The doctor looked at Helen, and she returned the glance with a very serious aspect, but there was a merry light in her eyes, as she saw her father's discomfiture. He read her looks aright, and got up from his seat with an impatient ejaculation. "I'm going out, my dear," he said shortly. "Are you going to get a cane!" cried Dexter excitedly. "I say, don't, and I will try so hard to do what you want." "I was not going to buy a cane, sir," said the doctor, who was half-angry, half-amused by the boy's earnestness. "One of my walking-sticks would do very well when I give you a good sound thrashing. Here, Helen, my dear, you can speak to Dexter a bit. I will have another talk to him to-night." The doctor left the room, and Dexter stood listening as his step was heard in the hall. Then the door closed, and Helen bent thoughtfully over her work, while the boy stood first on one foot, then on the other, watching her. The window was open, the sun shone, and the garden with its lawn and bright flowers looked wonderfully tempting, but duty and the disgrace he was in acted as two chains to hold the boy there. "I say," he said at last. "Yes, Dexter," said Helen, looking up at him sadly. "Oh, I say, don't look at me like that," he cried. "You force me to, Dexter," she said gravely. "But ain't you going to talk to me!" "If I talk to you, it will only be to scold you very severely." Dexter sighed. "Well," he said, after a pause, during which he had been gazing intently in the earnest eyes before him; "you've got to do it, so let's have it over. I was always glad when I had been punished at school." "Glad, Dexter?" "Yes, glad it was over. It was the worst part of it waiting to have your whack!" "Do you want to oblige me, Dexter?" said Helen, wincing at the boy's words. "Yes, of course I do. Want me to fetch something?" "No. Once more I want you to promise to leave off some of those objectionable words." "But it's of no use to promise," cried the boy, with a look of angry perplexity. "I always break my word." "Then why do you!" "I dunno," said Dexter. "There's something in me I think that makes me. You tell me to be a good boy, and I say I will, and I always mean to be; but somehow I can't. I think it's because nobody likes me, because--because--because I came from there." "Do I behave to you as if I did not like you?" said Helen reproachfully. The boy was on his knees beside her in a moment, holding her hand against his cheek as he looked up at her with his lip working, and a dumb look of pitiful pleading in his eyes. "I do not think I do, Dexter." He shook his head, and tried to speak. Then, springing up suddenly, he ran out of the study, dashed upstairs, half-blind with the tears which he was fighting back, and then with his head down through the open door into his bedroom, when there was a violent collision, a shriek followed by a score more to succeed a terrific crash, and when in alarm Helen and Mrs Millet ran panting up, it was to find Dexter rubbing his head, and Maria seated in the middle of the boy's bedroom with the sherds of a broken toilet pail upon the floor, and an ewer lying upon its side, and the water soaking into the carpet. "What is the matter?" cried Helen. "I won't--I won't--I declare I won't put up with it no longer!" cried the maid in the intervals of sundry sobs and hysterical cries. "But how did it happen!" said Mrs Millet. "It's--sit's--sit's--sit's--sit's--sit's--his tricks again," sobbed Maria. "Dexter!" cried Helen. "Yes--es--Miss--es--ma'am," sobbed Maria. "I'd dide--I'd dide--I'd-- just half--half--half filled the war--war--war--ter--jug, and he ran-- ran--ran at me with his head--dead in the chest--and then--then--then-- then knocked me dud--dud--dud--down, and I'll go at once, I will-- there." "Dexter," said Helen sternly; "was this some trick?" "I don't know," said the boy sadly. "I s'pose so." "But did you run at Maria and try to knock her down?" "No," said Dexter. "I was going into my room in a hurry, and she was coming out." "He did it o' purpose, Miss," cried Maria viciously. "That will do, Maria," said Helen with dignity. "Mrs Millet, see that these broken pieces are removed. Dexter, come down to the drawing-room with me." Dexter sighed and followed, feeling the while that after all the Union School was a happy place, and that he certainly was not happy here. "It is very unfortunate that you should meet with such accidents, Dexter," said Helen, as soon as they were alone. "Yes," he said piteously, "ain't it? I say--" "Well, Dexter!" "It's no good. I know what he wants to do. He said he wanted to make a gentleman of me, but you can't do it, and I'd better be 'prenticed to a shoemaker, same as lots of boys have been." Helen said nothing, but looked at the boy with a troubled gaze, as she wondered whether her father's plan was possible. "You had better go out in the garden again, Dexter," she said after a time. The trouble had been passing off, and Dexter leaped up with alacrity; but as he reached the window he saw Dan'l crossing the lawn, and he stopped short, turned, and came back to sit down with a sigh. "Well, Dexter," said Helen, "why don't you go?" He gave her a pitiful look which went right to her heart, as he said slowly-- "No. I shan't go. I should only get into trouble again." CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLE. "I say," said Dexter, a few days later, as he followed Helen into the drawing-room. "What have I been doing now!" "I hope nothing fresh, Dexter. Have you been in mischief!" "I don't know," he said; "only I've been in the study, and there's a tall gent." "Say gentleman, Dexter." "Tall gentleman with a white handkerchief round his neck, and he has been asking me questions, and every time I answered him he sighed, and said, `Dear me!'" "Indeed!" said Helen, smiling. "What did he ask you?" "If I knew Euclid; and when I said I didn't know him, he said, `Oh dear me!' Then he asked me if I knew Algebra, and I said I didn't, and he shook his head at me and said, `Dear me! dear me!' and that he would have to pull me up. I say, what have I done to be pulled up!" "Don't you know that Euclid wrote a work on Geometry, and that Algebra is a study by which calculations are made!" "No," said Dexter eagerly. "I thought they were two people. Then why did he say he would have to pull me up?" "He meant that you were very much behind with, your studies, and that he would have to teach you and bring you forward." "Oh, I see! And is he going to teach me?" "Yes, Mr Limpney is your private tutor now; and he is coming every day, so I hope you will be very industrious, and try hard to learn." "Oh yes, I'll try. Mr Limpney; I don't think he much liked me, though." "Nonsense, Dexter; you should not think such things." "All right. I won't then. It will be like going to school again, won't it?" "Much pleasanter, I hope." Time glided rapidly on after its usual fashion, and Dexter grew fast. There was a long range of old stabling at the doctor's house, with extensive lofts. The first part was partitioned off for a coachman's room, but this had not been in use for half a century, and the whole place was ruinous and decayed. Once upon a time some one with a love of horses must have lived there, for there were stalls for eight, and a coach-house as well, but the doctor only kept two horses, and they occupied a new stable built in front of the old. The back part was one of Dexter's favourite hunting-grounds. Here he could be quite alone, and do pretty well as he liked. Peter the groom never noticed his goings-out and comings-in, and there was no one to find fault with him for being untidy. Here then he had quite a little menagerie of his own. His pocket-money, as supplied by the doctor, afforded him means for buying any little thing he fancied, and hence he had in one of the lofts a couple of very ancient pigeons, which the man of whom he bought them declared to be extremely young; a thrush in a cage; two hedge-sparrows, which were supposed to be linnets, in another; two mice in an old cigar-box lined with tin; and a very attenuated rat, which had been caught by Peter in a trap, and which was allowed to live _minus_ one foreleg that had been cut short off close to the shoulder, but over which the skin had grown. No one interfered with Dexter's pets, and in fact the old range of stabling was rarely visited, even by the gardeners, so that the place became not only the boy's favourite resort in his loneliness, but, so to speak, his little kingdom where he reigned over his pets. There was plenty of room, especially in the lofts with their cross-beams and ties; and here, with his pets, as the only spectators, Dexter used to go daily to get rid of the vitality which often battled for exit in the confinement of the house. Half an hour here of the performance of so many natural gymnastic tricks seemed to tame him down--these tricks being much of a kind popular amongst caged monkeys, who often, for no apparent object, spring about and hang by hands or feet, often by their tail. But he had one piece of enjoyment that would have driven a monkey mad with envy. He had discovered among the lumber a very large old-fashioned bottle-jack, and after hanging this from a hook and winding it up, one of his greatest pleasures was to hang from that jack, and roast till he grew giddy, when he varied the enjoyment by buckling on a strap, attaching himself with a hook from the waist, and then going through either a flying or swimming movement as he spun slowly round. Then he had a rope-trick or two contrived by means of a long piece of knotted together clothes-line, doubled, and hung from the rafters to form a swing or trapeze. Dexter had paid his customary morning visit to his pets, and carefully fed them according to his wont; his plan, a very regular one among boys, being to give them twice as much as was good for them one day, and a starving the next--a mode said to be good with pigs, and productive of streaky bacon, but bad for domestic pets. Then he had returned to the house to go through his lessons, and sent long-suffering Mr Limpney, BA, almost into despair by the little progress he had made, after which he had gone down the garden with the expectation of meeting Dan'l at some corner, but instead had come upon Peter, busy as usual with his broom. "Yer needn't look," said the latter worthy; "he's gone out." "What! Dan'l has?" "Yes; gone to see a friend who's a gardener over at Champney Ryle, to buy some seeds." It was like the announcement of a holiday, and leaving the groom making the usual long stretches with his broom, Dexter went on aimlessly to the river-side, where, for the first time for many months, he found Bob Dimsted fishing. "Hullo, old un!" was the latter's greeting, "how are you!" Dexter gave the required information, and hesitated for a few moments, something in the way of a collection of Helen's warnings coming vaguely to his hand; but the volunteered information of the boy on the other side of the river, that he had got some "glorious red wums," and that the fish were well on the feed, drove everything else away, and in a few minutes Dexter was sitting upon the crown of a willow pollard, ten feet out over the river, that much nearer to the fisher, and in earnest conversation with him as he watched his float. Once more the memory of words that had been spoken to him came to Dexter, but the bobbing of the float, and the excitement of capturing a fish, drove the thoughts away--the fascination of the fishing, and the pleasant excitement of meeting a companion of near his own age, cut off, as he was, from the society of boys, being too much for him; and he was soon eagerly listening, and replying to all that was said. "Ever go fishing in a boat?" said Bob, after a time. "No." "Ah! you should go in a boat," said Bob. "You sit down comfortable, with your feet all dry, and you can float over all the deep holes and best places in the river, and catch all the big fish. It's lovely!" "Did you ever fish out of a boat?" asked Dexter. "Did I ever fish out of a boat? Ha! ha! ha! Lots of times. I'm going to get a boat some day, and have a saucepan and kettle and plate and spoon, and take my fishing-tackle, and then I shall get a gun or a pistol, and go off down the river." "What for!" "What for? Why, to live like that, catching fish, and shooting wild ducks and geese, and cooking 'em, and eating 'em. Then you have a 'paulin and spread it over the boat of a night, and sleep under it--and there you are!" Dexter looked at the adventurous being before him in wonder, while he fished on and talked. "I should make myself a sail, too, and then I shouldn't have to row so much; and then I could go right on down to the end of the river, and sail away to foreign countries, and shoot all kinds of wonderful things. And then you could land sometimes and kill snakes, and make yourself a hut to live in, and do just as you liked. Ah, that is a fine life!" "Yes," said Dexter, whose eager young mind rapidly painted an illustration to everything his companion described. "A man I know has been to sea, and he says sometimes you come to places where there's nothing but mackerel, and you can almost ladle 'em out with your hands. I should boil 'em over a fire. They are good then." Dexter's eyes grew more round. "Then out at sea you have long lines, and you catch big cod-fish, and soles almost as big as the boat." "And are you going to have a boat?" "To be sure I am. I get tired of always coming out to catch little roach and dace and eels. I mean to go soon." Dexter sighed. "That man says when you go far enough away, you come to islands where the cocoa-nuts grow; and then, all you've got to do is go ashore and pull your boat up on the sands, and when you are hungry you climb a tree and get a cocoa-nut; and every one has got enough meat and drink in it for a meal." "Do you?" "Yerrrs! That you do. That's the sort of place to go and live at. I'm tired o' Coleby." "Why don't you go and live there, then!" said Dexter. "I'm going to, some day. It's no use to be in too much of a hurry; I want to save a little money first, and get some more tackle. You see, you want big hooks for big fish, and some long lines. Then you must have a boat." The idea of the unknown countries made Dexter thrill, and he listened eagerly as the boy went on prosing away while he fished, taking out his line from time to time, and dropping the bait in likely places. "Haven't made up my mind what boat I shall have yet, only it must be a good one." "Yes," said Dexter; "you'd want a good big boat." "Not such a very big un," said Bob. "I should want a nice un with cushions, because you'd have to sit in it so long." "And sleep in it too?" "Oh yes; you'd have to sleep in it." "Should you light the fire, and cook in it!" said Dexter innocently. "Yah! No, o' course not. You'd go ashore every time you wanted to cook, and light a fire there with a burnin'-glass." "But suppose the sun didn't shine!" "Sun always shines out there," said Bob. "That sailor chap told me, and the birds are all sorts of colours, and the fish too, like you see in glass globes. I mean to go." "When shall you go?" "Oh, some day when I'm ready. I know of a jolly boat as would just do." "Do you?" "Yes; I dessay you've seen it. Belongs to Danby's, down the river. Lives in a boat-house." "Yes, I've seen it," said Dexter eagerly. "It is a beauty!" "Well, that's the sort of boat I mean to have. P'r'aps I shall have that." "You couldn't have that," cried Dexter. "Why not? They never use it, not more'n twice a year. Dessay they'd lend it." "That they wouldn't," cried Dexter. "Well, then, I should borrow it, and bring it back when I'd done with it. What games you could have with a boat like that!" "Yes," sighed Dexter; "wish we had one!" "Wouldn't be such a good one as that if you had. That's just the boat I've made up my mind to have." "And shall you sail right away to a foreign country!" said Dexter, from his nest up in the willow. "Why, how can you sail away to another place without a mast and sail, stoopid!" cried Bob. "If you call me stupid," said Dexter sharply, "I'll come and punch your head." "Yah! Yer can't get at me." "Can't I? I could swim across in a minute, and I would, if it wasn't for wetting my clothes." "Yah!" cried Bob scoffingly. "Why, I could fight yer one hand." "No, you couldn't." "Yes, I could." "Well, you'd see, if I came across." "But yer can't get across," laughed Bob. "I know of a capital mast." Dexter looked sulky. "It's part of an old boat-hook my father found floating in the river. I shall smooth it down with my knife if I can't borrow a spokeshave." "And what'll you do for a sail?" said Dexter, his interest in the expedition chasing away his anger. "Oh, I shall get a table-cloth or a sheet. Sheets make beautiful sails. You just hoists 'em up, and puts an oar over the stern to steer with, and then away you go, just where you like. Sailing along in a boat's lovely!" "Ever been in a boat sailing?" asked Dexter. "No; but I know it is. That sailor told me. He says when you've got all sail set, you just cruises along." "Do you?" "Yes. I know; and I mean to go some day; but it's no use to be in a jolly hurry, and you ought to have a mate." "Ought you?" "Yes, so as he could steer while a chap went to sleep; because sometimes you'd be a long way from the shore." Dexter sat very thoughtful and still, dreaming of the wonders of far-off places, such as could be reached by Bob Dimsted and his companion, the impracticability of such a journey never once occurring to him. Bob had been about all his life free to go and come, while he, Dexter, seemed to have been always shut up, as it were, in a cage, which had narrowed his mind. "Some chaps would be glad of such a chance," said Bob. "It'll be a fine time. My, what fishing I shall have!" "Shall you be gone long!" said Dexter, after a time. "Long? Why, of course I shall; years and years. I shan't come back till I've made a fortune, and am a rich man, with heaps of money to spend. Some chaps would be glad to go." "Yes, of course," said Dexter dreamily. "I want to get a mate who isn't afraid of anything. Dessay we should meet lions sometimes, and big snakes." "What! in England!" "England! Yah! Who's going to stop in England? I'm going to sail away to wonderful places all over the world." "But would the boat be big enough to cross the great sea?" "Who's going to cross the great sea?" cried Bob. "Of course I shouldn't. I should only go out about six miles from shore, and keep close in, so as to land every night to get grub, or anything else. P'r'aps to go shooting. My father's got an old gun--a fine un. Think I don't know what I'm about? Shoots hares with it, and fezzans. "There's another!" he exclaimed, as he hooked and landed an unfortunate little perch, which he threw into his basket with a look of disgust. "I'm sick of ketching such miserable little things as these. I want to get hold of big sea-fish of all kinds, so as to fill the boat. Some chaps would be glad to go," he said again, as he threw his line in once more. "Yes," said Dexter thoughtfully; "I should like to go." "You!" said Bob, with a mocking laugh. "You! Why, you'd be afraid. I don't believe you dare go in a boat!" "Oh yes, I dare," said Dexter stoutly. "Not you. You're afraid of what the doctor would say. You daren't even come fishing with me up the river." "They said I was not to go with you," said Dexter quietly; "so I couldn't." "Then what's the use of your saying you'd like to go. You couldn't." "But I should like to go," said Dexter excitedly. "Not you. I want a mate as has got some pluck in him. You'd be afraid to be out all night on the water." "No, I shouldn't. I should like it." "Well, I don't know," said Bob dubiously. "I might take you, and I mightn't. You ain't quite the sort of a chap I should want; and, besides, you've got to stay where you are and learn lessons. Ho! ho! ho! what a game, to be obliged to stop indoors every day and learn lessons! I wonder you ain't ashamed of it." Dexter's cheeks flushed, and he looked angrily across the river with his fists clenched, but he said nothing. "You wouldn't do. You ain't strong enough," said Bob at last. "I'm as strong as you are." "But you daren't come." "I should like to come, but I don't think they'd let me." "Why, of course they wouldn't, stoopid. You'd have to come away some night quietly, and get in the boat, and then we'd let her float down the river, and row right away till morning, and then we could set the sail, and go just wherever we liked, because we should be our own masters." "Here's some one coming after you," said Bob, in a low voice; and he shrank away, leaving Dexter perched up in the crown of the tree, where he stopped without speaking, as he saw Helen come down the garden, and she walked close by him without raising her eyes, and passed on. CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. THE TROUBLE GROWS. Dexter got down out of the willow-tree with a seed in his brain. Bob Dimsted had dropped that seed into his young mind, and there it had struck root directly, and continued to grow. A hard fight now commenced. So long as he was with Helen or the doctor, he could think of nothing but the fact that they were so kind to him, and took so much interest in his welfare, that it would be horribly ungrateful to go away without leave, and he vowed that he would not go. But so sure as he was alone, a series of dissolving views began to float before his vivid imagination, and he saw Sir James Danby's boat managed by Bob Dimsted and himself, gliding rapidly along through river and along by sunlit shores, where, after catching wonderfully tinted fish, he and the boy landed to light a fire, cook their food, and partake of it in a delightful gipsy fashion. Then they put to sea again, and glided on past wondrous isles where cocoa-nut palms waved in the soft breeze. Try how he would, Dexter could not keep these ideas out of his head, and the more he thought, the brighter and more attractive they became; and day after day found him, whenever he had an opportunity, waiting about by the river-side in the expectation of seeing Bob Dimsted. Bob did not come, but as Dexter climbed up into his nest in the willow pollard his vivid imagination supplied the words he had said, and he seemed to see himself sailing away, with the boy for his companion, down the river, and out into the open sea; a portion of this globe which he formed out of his own fancy, the result being wonderfully unlike the truth. Bob did not come, but Helen noticed how quiet and thoughtful the boy seemed, and also how he affected that portion of the garden. "Why don't you fish, Dexter?" she said to him one day, as she saw him gazing disconsolately at the river. He had not thought of this as an excuse for staying down by the river, but he snatched at the idea now, and for the next week, whenever he could get away from his lessons or their preparation, he was down on the bank, dividing his time between watching his float and the opposite shore. But still Bob Dimsted did not come; and at last Dexter began to settle down seriously to his fishing, as the impressions made grew more faint. Then all at once back they came; for as he sat watching his float one day, a voice said sharply-- "Now then! why don't you strike!" But Dexter did not strike, and the fish went off with the bait as the holder of the rod exclaimed-- "Why haven't you been fishing all this time!" "What was the good?" said Bob, "I was getting ready to go, and talking to my mate, who's going with me." "Your mate!" exclaimed Dexter, whose heart sank at those words. "Yes, I know'd you wouldn't go, so. I began to look out for a chap who would." "But I didn't say that I really would not go," said Dexter, as he laid his tackle under the bushes. "Oh yes, you did; I could see what you meant. Do they bite to-day!" "I don't know," said Dexter dolefully. "But, I say, you couldn't have that boat if you wanted to." "Oh yes, I could if I liked." "But it isn't yours." "Tchah! couldn't you borrow it!" Dexter did not see how, and he climbed into the willow, while Bob went on fishing. "I hate a chap who is always trying to find out things to stop a fellow from doing anything. Why don't you say you won't go and ha' done with it?" Dexter sighed as he thought of the wonderful fish to be caught, and the great nuts on the trees, each of which nuts would make a meal. Then of the delight of sailing away in that beautiful boat down the river, and then out to sea, where they could land upon the sands and light their fire; and it seemed to him that such a life would be one long time of delight. He sat in his nest picking the buds off the willow twigs, and bending and lacing them together, furtively glancing at grubby-looking Bob Dimsted, whose appearance was not attractive; but what were appearances to a boy who possessed such gifts of knowledge in fishing and managing a boat, and had learned so much about foreign lands? Dexter sighed again, and Bob gave him a furtive look, as with evident enjoyment he took a red worm out of some moss and stuck his sharp hook into it, drew the writhing creature over the shank, and then passed the point through again and again. So to speak, he had impaled Dexter on a moral hook as well, the barb had gone right in so that it could not be drawn out without tearing; and Dexter writhed and twined, and felt as if he would have given anything to get away. Bob went on fishing, throwing the twisting worm just down among the roots of a willow-tree, and the float told directly after that the cast was not without avail, for there was a quick bobbing movement, then a sharp snatch, Bob struck, and, after a good deal of rushing about and splashing, a good-sized perch was landed, with its sharp back fin erect, and its gilded sides, with their black markings, glistening in the sunshine. "What a beauty!" cried Dexter enthusiastically, as for the moment the wonders of the boating expedition were forgotten. But they were brought back directly. "Pooh!" exclaimed Bob contemptuously. "That's nothing; only a little perch. Why, if we went off fishing in that boat, you'd chuck a fish like that in again." But Bob did not "chuck" that perch in again; he placed it in his basket, and directly after caught up his various articles of fishing-gear and ran off. Dexter was about to speak, but just then he heard a harsh cough, and, glancing through the screen of willow twigs which surrounded him, he saw old Dan'l coming hastily down over the grass path towards the tree. "Yes, I can see yer," he shouted, as he reached the water's edge; and, to Dexter's surprise, he found that it was not he the old gardener was addressing. "You come over there fishing again, I'll send the police arter yer." Bob, safe at a distance, made a derisive gesture. "None of your sarse, you poaching young vagabond. I know what you came there for. Be off with you." "Shan't," cried Bob, as he settled down to fish a hundred yards away. "Always coming here after that boy," grumbled Dan'l. "If I could have my way I'd bundle 'em both out of the town together. Young robbers,-- that's what they are, the pair of 'em." Dexter's face flushed, and he was about to respond, but the old gardener began to move away. "Doctor ought to be ashamed of himself," he grumbled, as he stood for a moment or two looking round in search of Dexter, but never looking above the brim of his broad straw hat, and the next moment Dexter was left alone seated in the crown of the old willow, very low-spirited and thoughtful, as he came down from his perch, brushed the bits of green from his clothes, and then walked slowly up toward the house, taking the other side of the garden; but of course coming right upon Dan'l, who followed him about till he took refuge in the doctor's study, with a book whose contents seemed to be a history of foreign lands, and the pictures records of the doings of one Dexter Grayson and his companion Bob. For the old effervescence consequent upon his having been kept down so long was passing off, and a complete change seemed to be coming over the boy. Quicksilver--by George Manville Fenn CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR. THE PLEASANT WAYS OF LEARNING. "Now, Master Grayson," said Mr Limpney, "what am I to say to the doctor!" The private tutor threw himself back in his seat in the study, vacated by the doctor, while Dexter had his lessons, placed his hands behind his head, and, after wrinkling his forehead in lines from his brow to right on the top, where the hair began, he stared hard at his pupil. "I say again, sir, what am I to tell the doctor!" "I don't know," said Dexter dolefully. Then, plucking up a little spirit: "I wrote out all my history questions, and did the parsing with a little help from Miss Grayson, and I did the sum you set me all by myself." "Yes; but the Algebra, the Classics, and the Euclid! Where are they?" "There they are," said Dexter, pointing dismally to some books on the table. "Yes, sir, there they are--on that table, when they ought to be in your head." "But they won't go in my head, sir," cried Dexter desperately. "Nonsense, sir! you will not let them, and I warn you plainly, that if we do not make better progress, I shall tell the doctor that I will not continue to take his payment for nothing." "No; I say; don't do that," said Dexter piteously. "He wouldn't like it." "I cannot help that, sir. I have my duty to perform. Anybody can do those childish history and grammatical questions; it is the classical and mathematical lessons in which I wish you to excel. Now, once more. No, no, you must not refer to the book. `In any right-angled triangle, the square of the side--' Now, go on." Dexter took up a slate and pencil, wrinkled up his forehead as nearly like the tutor's as he could, and slowly drew a triangle. "Very good," said Mr Limpney. "Now, go on." Dexter stared at his sketch, then helplessly at his instructor. "I ought to write _ABC_ here, oughtn't I, sir?" "Yes, of course. Go on." Dexter hesitated, and then put a letter at each corner. "Well, have it that way if you like," said Mr Limpney. "I don't like it that way, sir," said Dexter. "I'll put it your way." "No, no. Go on your way." "But I haven't got any way, sir," said Dexter desperately. "Nonsense, nonsense! Go on." "Please, sir, I can't. I've tried and tried over and over again, but the angles all get mixed up with the sides, and it is all such a muddle. I shall never learn Euclid. Is it any use?" "Is it any use!" cried the tutor scornfully. "Look at me, sir. Has it been any use to me!" Dexter looked at the face before him, and then right up the forehead, and wondered whether learning Euclid had made all the hair come off the top of his head. "Well, go on." "I can't, sir, please," sighed the boy. "I know it's something about squares, and _ABC_, and _BAC_, and _CAB_, and--but you produce the lines." "But you do not produce them, sir," cried Mr Limpney angrily; "nor anything else! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, sir!" "I am," said Dexter innocently. "I'm a dreadfully stupid boy, sir, and I don't think I've got any brains." "Are you going through that forty-seventh problem this morning, sir?" Dexter made a desperate attempt, floundered on a quarter of a minute, and broke down in half. "Tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated Mr Limpney. "I'm sure you have not looked at it since I was here." "That I have, sir," cried Dexter, in a voice full of eager protest. "Hours and hours, sir, I walked up and down the garden with it, and then I took the book up with me into my loft, and made a chalk triangle on the floor, and kept on saying it over and over, but as fast as I said it the words slipped out of my head again. I can't help it, sir, I am so stupid." "Algebra!" said Mr Limpney, in a tone of angry disgust. "Am I not to try and say the Euclid, sir?" "Algebra!" cried Mr Limpney again, and he slapped the table with a thin book. "Now then, where are these simple equations?" Dexter drew a half-sheet of foolscap paper from a folio, and rather shrinkingly placed it before his tutor, who took a pair of spectacles from his pocket, and placed them over his mild-looking eyes. "Let me see," he said, referring to a note-book. "The questions I gave you were: `A spent 2 shillings and 6 pence in oranges, and says that three of them cost as much under a shilling as nine of them cost over a shilling. How many did he buy?'" Mr Limpney coughed, blew his nose loudly, as if it were a post-horn, and then went on-- "Secondly: `Two coaches start at the same time for York and London, a distance of 200 miles, travelling one at nine and a half miles an hour, the other at nine and a quarter miles; where will they meet, and in what time from starting?'" He gave his nose a finishing touch with his handkerchief, closed his note-book, and turned to Dexter. "Now then," he said. "Let us see." He took the sheet of paper, looked at one side, turned it over and looked at the other, and then raised his eyes to Dexter's, which avoided his gaze directly. "What is this?" he cried. "The equations, sir," said Dexter humbly. "Tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated Mr Limpney. "Was there ever such a boy? _plus_ where it ought to be _minus_, and--why, what's this!" "This, sir?" said Dexter. "Half-crowns." "But it was to be oranges. How many did he buy? and here you say he bought ninety-seven half-crowns. I don't know how you arrived at it, or what you mean. A man does not go to a shop to buy half-crowns. He spent half a crown in oranges." "Yes, sir." "I believe it's sheer obstinacy. You do not want to do these equations--simple equations too, mind you! Now then, about the stage-coaches. When did they meet, and in what time from starting? Now then--there are your figures, where did they meet? Look and tell me." Dexter took the half-sheet of paper, stared at it very doubtfully, and then looked up. "Well!" said Mr Limpney. "Where did they meet?" "Peterborough, sir." "Where!" cried Mr Limpney in astonishment. "Peterborough, sir." "Now, will you have the goodness to tell me how you found out that?" "On the map, sir." "Bless my soul!" exclaimed the tutor. "Well, go on. At what time from starting!" "About ten o'clock, sir." "Better and better," said the tutor sarcastically. "Now, will you kindly explain--no, no, don't look at your figures--Will you kindly explain how you arrived at this sapient conclusion?" Dexter hesitated, and shifted one foot over the other. "Well, sir, I am waiting," cried Mr Limpney, in a tone of voice which made Dexter think very much resembled that of Mr Sibery when he was angry. "I--I--" "Don't hesitate, sir. Have I not told you again and again that a gentleman never hesitates, but speaks out at once? Now then, I ask you how you arrived at this wonderful conclusion?" "I tried over and over again, sir, with the _a's_ and _b's_, and then I thought I must guess it." "And did you guess it?" "No, sir, I suddenly recollected what you said." "And pray, what did I say!" "Why, sir, you always said let _x_ represent the unknown quantity, and-- and _x_ stands for ten--ten o'clock." Mr Limpney snatched the paper from the boy's hand, and was about to tear it up, when the door opened and Dr Grayson entered. "Well," he said pleasantly, "and how are we getting on?" "Getting on, sir?" said Mr Limpney tartly. "Will you have the goodness to ask my pupil!" "To be sure--to be sure," said the doctor. "Well, Dexter, how are you getting on? Eh? what's this? Oh, Algebra!" he continued, as he took the half-sheet of paper covered with the boy's calligraphy. "Oh, Algebra! Hah! I never was much of a fist at that." "Only simple equations, sir," said the tutor. "Ah, yes. Simple equations. Well, Dexter, how are you getting on?" "Very badly, sir." "Badly? Nonsense!" "But I am, sir. These things puzzle me dreadfully. I'm so stupid." "Stupid? Nonsense! Nothing of the kind. Scarcely anybody is stupid. Men who can't understand some things understand others. Now, let's see. What is the question? H'm! ah! yes, oranges. H'm! ah! yes; not difficult, I suppose, when you know how. And--what's this? London and York--stage-coaches. Nine and a half miles, nine and a quarter miles, and--er--h'm, yes, of course, where would they meet?" "Peterborough, sir," said Mr Limpney sarcastically, and with a peculiar look at Dexter. "H'm! would they now?" said the doctor. "Well, I shouldn't have thought it! And how is he getting on with his Latin, Mr Limpney!" "Horribly, sir!" exclaimed the tutor sharply. "I am very glad you have come, for I really feel it to be my duty to complain to you of the great want of diligence displayed by my pupil." "Dear me! I am very sorry," exclaimed the doctor. "Why, Dexter, my boy, how's this? You promised me that you would be attentive." "Yes, sir, I did." "Then why are you not attentive?" "I do try to be, sir." "But if you were, Mr Limpney would not have cause to complain. It's too bad, Dexter, too bad. Do you know why Mr Limpney comes here?" "Yes, sir," said the boy dismally; "to teach me." "And you do not take advantage of his teaching. This is very serious. Very sad indeed." "I am sure, Dr Grayson, that no tutor could have taken more pains than I have to impart to him the various branches of a liberal education; but after all these months of teaching it really seems to me that we are further behind. He is not a dull boy." "Certainly not. By no means," said the doctor. "And I do not give him tasks beyond his powers." "I hope not, I am sure," said the doctor. "And yet not the slightest progress is made. There is only one explanation, sir, and that is want of diligence." "Dear me! dear me! dear me!" exclaimed the doctor. "Now, Dexter, what have you to say?" "Nothing, sir!" said the boy sadly; "only I think sometimes that my brains must be too wet." "Good gracious! boy: what do you mean!" "I mean too wet and slippery, sir, so that they will not hold what I put into them." The doctor looked at the tutor, and the tutor looked at the doctor, as if he considered that this was impertinence. "I am very sorry--very sorry indeed, Dexter," said the doctor. "There, sir, you can go now. I will have a talk to Mr Limpney. We must see if we cannot bring you to a better frame of mind." CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE. DEXTER'S DUMB FRIENDS. Dexter went out into the hall feeling exceedingly miserable, for he had left the occupants of the study talking about him, and, as the saying goes, it made his ears burn. "I couldn't help it," he said dolefully: "I did try. I'll go and tell Miss Grayson all about it, and ask her to take my part." He went into the drawing-room, but Helen was not there, so he ran upstairs, and was in the act of tapping at her bedroom door, when Maria came out of another room. It was a curious fact, but there it was: Dexter always had the effect upon Maria that a dog has upon a cat. The dog may be of the most amiable disposition, and without the slightest desire to fight or worry, but as soon as he is seen, up goes the cat's back in an arch, the tail becomes plumose and the fur horrent, while, with dilated eyes and displayed teeth glistening, puss indulges in the bad language peculiar to cats. Maria being of a different physique did not display these signs of aggression exactly, but she invariably became vicious and metaphysically showed her teeth. "It's of no use your knocking there, Master Dexter. Miss Helen isn't at home, and I'm quite sure if she was that she wouldn't approve of your trapesing up out of the garden in your muddy and dirty shoes. I've got enough to do here without cleaning up after you." "But I haven't been in the garden, Maria," said Dexter, apologetically. "I have just come out of the study." "Don't I tell you she ain't at home," said Maria spitefully. "Do you know when she will be back!" "No, I don't," said Maria, and then sarcastically: "I beg your pardon, _sir_--no I don't, _sir_." Maria went along the passage like a roaring wind, she made so much noise with her skirts, and then hurried downstairs, as if in great haste to get hold of a door that she could bang; and as soon as she did reach one, she made so much use of her opportunity that a picture in the hall was blown sidewise, and began swinging to and fro like a great square pendulum. Dexter sighed, and felt very miserable as he stole downstairs again, and past the study door, where the murmur of voices talking, as he knew, about him made him shiver. He was obliged to pass that door to get his cap, and then he had to pass it again to get to the garden door. Mr Limpney was talking, and Mr Limpney, being accustomed to lecture and teach, spoke very loudly, so that Dexter heard him say-- "I must have more authority, sir, and--" Dexter heard no more, for he fled into the garden, but he knew that having authority meant the same as it meant with Mr Sibery, and it sounded like going backwards. He felt more miserable as he went out into the garden. "Nobody hardly seems to like me, or care for me here," he said dolefully; and, led by his inclination, he began to make his way down the long green path toward the river, half fancying that Bob Dimsted might be fishing. But before he had gone far he saw Dan'l, who was busy doing up a bed, and his appearance seemed to be the signal for the old man to put down his tools and take out his great pruning-knife, as if he meant mischief, but only to stoop from time to time to cut off a dead flower as an excuse, so it seemed, for following Dexter wherever he went. It was impossible to go about the garden under these circumstances, so Dexter went down a little way, passed round a large _Wellingtonia_, and walked slowly back toward the house, but, instead of entering, went by the open window of the study, where the voice of Mr Limpney could still be heard talking loudly, and, as it seemed to the listening boy, breathing out threatenings against his peace of mind. The voice sounded so loud as he went by that he half-expected to hear himself called in, and in great dread he hurried on by the conservatory, and round the house to the old stable-yard. As he reached this he could hear a peculiar hissing noise--that which Peter always made when he was washing the carriage, or the horses' legs--to blow away the dust, so he said. For a moment Dexter felt disposed to go into the new stable and talk to Peter, but the opportunity was not tempting, and, hurrying on, the boy reached the old buildings, looked round for a moment, and, thus satisfied that he was not observed, he made a spring up to a little old window, caught the sill, scrambled up directly, and, passing through, disappeared inside. He uttered a sigh as of relief, and crossing the damp stones of the gloomy old place he reached a crazy flight of steps, which led up to a loft, on either side of which were openings, through which, when the stable had been in use, it had been customary to thrust down the stored-up hay. Dexter stopped here in the darkness for a few minutes listening, but no one was following him, and he walked along to a second ladder which led to a trap-door through which he passed, closed the trap, and then, in the long roof a place greatly resembling in shape the triangle over whose problem of squares he had that day stumbled, he seemed once more himself. His first act was to run quietly along some boards laid over the loft ceiling, and, making a jump that would not have disgraced an acrobat, he caught at a rope, pendent from the highest portion of the rafters, twisted his legs about it, and swung easily to and fro. The motion seemed to give him the greatest satisfaction, and as the impetus given died out, he dropped one foot, and with a few vigorous thrusts set himself going again till he was tired. But that was not very soon, and he did not leave off till there were sundry scratchings and squeakings, which drew his attention to his pets, all of which were eager for food. They were a heterogeneous collection, but, for the most part, exceedingly tame, and ready to allow themselves to be handled, constant familiarity with the gentle hand so often thrust into their boxes or cages having robbed it of its terrors. Dexter's happiest moments were passed here, saving those which Helen continued to make pleasant to the boy; and as soon as his pets had drawn his attention, he took off his jacket and vest, rolled up his sleeves, and began to attend to their wants. His rabbits--two which he had bought through Bob Dimsted, who made a profit of a hundred per cent, by the transaction--were lifted out of the packing-case they occupied, and in which they were kept by the lid being closed within half an inch, by their pink ears, and immediately stood up on their hind-legs, with drooping fore-paws, their pink noses twitching as they smelt their owner's legs, till he gave them a couple of red carrots, a portion of Dan'l's last year's store. The next to be taken out was a hedgehog, a prize of his own discovering, and captured one day asleep and tightly rolled up beneath one of the Portugal laurels. The minute before its box was open, the hedgehog was actively perambulating its dark prison, but the moment it was touched it became a ball, in which form it was rolled out on to the rough floor close to a flower-pot saucer of bread and milk, smuggled up directly after breakfast each morning. Next came the large grey rat, captured originally in the steel trap, and whose first act might have been anticipated. It did not resent its owner's handling; but the moment it was set down it darted under the loose boards, and remained there until tempted forth by the smell of the bread and milk, and a tempting piece of candle-end, the former of which it helped the hedgehog to eat. The mice, which lived in the old cigar-box--not white mice, nor those furry little sleepers given to hiding away in nooks and corners for elongated naps, but the regular grey cheese-nibblers--next, after a good deal of scratching, took Dexter's attention. As soon as the lid was open, and the boy's hand thrust in, they ran up his fingers, and then along his arm to his shoulder, wonderfully active and enterprising with their sharp little noses, one even venturing right up the boy's head after a pause by one ear, as if it looked like the cavernous entrance to some extremely snug hiding-place. "Quiet! Don't tickle," cried Dexter, as he gently put up one hand for the mouse to run upon; and every movement was made so gently that the little creatures were not alarmed, but rested gently upon the boy's hand, as he lifted them down to where he had placed some scraps of cheese and a biscuit, all articles of provender being derived from the stores situated in his trousers-pockets, and that of his jacket. The list was not yet complete, for an old wire trap had been turned into a cage, and here dwelt Dexter's greatest favourite--about the shabbiest-looking squirrel that ever exhibited bare patches upon its skin, and a tail from which the plume-like hair had departed. It cost five shillings, all the same, at a little broker's shop down in the most poverty-stricken part of Coleby. It had been bought by the broker at a sale in company with a parrot, a cockatoo, and a canary, all being the property of a lady lately deceased. The canary died before he reached home, and the parrot and cockatoo, on the strength of being able to screech and say a few words, soon found owners, but the squirrel, being shabby-looking, hung on hand, or rather outside the little shop, in a canary's cage, to which it had been promoted after its own revolving wire home had been sold, the purchaser declining to buy the squirrel because he was so shabby. The poor little brute did not improve afterwards, for he rubbed the hair off his face by constantly trying to get through either the seed or water hole, and every time he--for the sake of exercise--whisked round the cage, it was to the disadvantage of his tail, which daily grew more and more like that of Dexter's rat. This little unfortunate might have been bought for a shilling by such a boy as Bob Dimsted, but the superfine broadcloth of Dexter's jacket and trousers sent it up to five, and pocket-money had to be saved for weeks before it finally came into the boy's possession, to be watched with the greatest attention to see if its hair would grow. The squirrel's nose was thrust between the bars of the old wire rat-trap, and when this was not the case, the active little animal performed a kind of evolution suggestive of its trying to make the letters SS in its prison, as skaters contrive them upon the ice, till the wire door was open, and with one bound it was upon its owner's shoulder, then up in the rafters, along one beam and down another, till the first wild excitement of freedom was over, when it dropped upon the floor, and began to forage for food. Dexter was so truly happy among his little subjects that he sat down upon the edge of an old box, forgetful of other claimants while he attended to the wants of these, calling them by endearing names, giving the rabbits oats from his pockets, a handful of which grain came now and then from Peter. The boy had intuitively discovered the way to tame his various pets. Fear will accomplish a great deal with dumb animals, but the real secret of winning their confidence is quietness, the art of never alarming them, but by perfectly passive behaviour, and the most gentle of movements, accustom the timid creatures to our presence. The rest was merely habituating them to the fact that their owner was the sole source from which food was to be obtained. No one told Dexter all this; he learned it in his solitary communings with the animal world. For somehow it seems to be the law of nature that every moving thing goes about in dread of losing its life from something else which either preys upon or persecutes it. The house-sparrow, the most domestic of wild birds, gives a look-out for squalls between every peck, but it will soon learn to distinguish the person who does not molest and who feeds it, even to coming at his call, while fish, those most cold-blooded of creatures, which in an ordinary way go off like a silver flash at the sight of a shadow, will grow so familiar that they will rise to the surface and touch the white finger-tips placed level with the water. So Dexter sat smiling and almost without movement among his subjects, with the rabbits begging, the mice coming and going, now feeding and now taking a friendly walk up his legs and about his chest, and the squirrel bounding to him from time to time after nuts, which were carried up to the beam overhead, and there rasped through with its keen teeth, the rat the while watching it from the floor till furnished with another nut, as it had pounced upon one the squirrel dropped. There was yet another pet--one which had been very sluggish all through the winter, but now in fine sunshiny days fairly active, and ready upon this occasion to come forth and be fed. Dexter rose very slowly, talking gently the while to the mice, which he coaxed to his hand with a piece of cheese, and then placed them upon the floor, while he went to a corner where, turned upside down upon a slate, stood one of Dan'l's large flower-pots, the hole being covered with a piece of perforated zinc. The pot was lifted, slate and all, turned over, and the slate lifted off, to display quite a nest of damp moss, which, as the boy watched, seemed for a few minutes uninhabited, but all at once it began to heave in one part; there was an increasing movement, as if something was gliding through it, and then from among the soft moss a smooth glistening head with two bright eyes appeared, and a curious little tongue darted out through an opening between the tightly-closed jaws. There was no doubt of the nature of the creature, which glided forth more and more till it developed itself into a snake of a bright olive green, about thirty inches long, its singular markings and mottlings looking as bright as if it had been varnished. Dexter watched the curious horizontal undulating movement of the little serpent for some time before he touched it, and then taking it up very gently, its tail hung swinging to and fro, while the front portion curved and undulated, and searched about for a place to rest till it found one upon the boy's arm, up which it began to glide as if the warmth were pleasant, ending by nestling its head in the hollow of the elbow-joint. Meanwhile there was another rustling and movement of the moss, but nothing showed for a time. Dexter smoothed and stroked the snake, which seemed to be perfectly content when it was moved, but soon after began to insinuate its blunt rounded head here and there, as if in search of something, till its owner bore it to a large pickle-jar standing upon a beam nearly level with the floor, and upon his placing the reptile's head on a level with the mouth, it glided in at once, inch by inch, over the side, and through Dexter's hands, till it disappeared, the finely-graduated tail passing over the edge, and it was gone, the jar being its larder, in which were stored, ready for consumption, half a dozen of Dan'l's greatest enemies--the slugs. As Dexter turned to the heap of moss once more, at which one of the rabbits was sniffing, there was another heaving movement, followed by a sharp rap on the boards, the alarm signal of the rabbit which bounded away, while a blunt, broad head and two glistening eyes slowly appeared; then what looked like a short sturdy arm with outstretched fingers pressed down the moss, then another arm began to work, and by slow degrees a huge toad, which seemed to be as broad as it was long, extricated itself from the soft vegetable fibre, and crept away on to the boards, all in the most deliberate manner, as if it was too fat to move fast. "Hallo, Sam!" said Dexter, laughing. "Why, you've been asleep for a month." The toad seemed to be looking up at him in an unblinking fashion, but did not move, and Dexter stooped down to touch it, but the moment his hand approached, the reptile rose on its legs, arched its back, lowered its head, swelled itself up, and uttered a low, hissing sound. Dexter waited for a moment, and then softly began to scratch its side, the result evidently being so satisfactory to the toad that it began by leaning over toward the rubbing fingers, and then more and more, as if the sensation were agreeable in the extreme. A little coaxing then induced it to crawl slowly into its master's hand, which it more than filled, sitting there perfectly contented till it was placed in another pickle-jar to feed, this one being furnished with wood-lice, pill millipedes, and other luxuries dear to a toad. The striking of a clock roused Dexter from his communings with his pets, and hastily restoring them to their various habitations, he resumed his jacket, and after a quick glance round descended the steps. "I couldn't take them with me," he said sadly, as he stood for a few minutes in the old dark stable; "and if I left them without setting them at liberty they would all die." CHAPTER TWENTY SIX. THE GROWING CLOUD. "Dexter, I want to talk to you," said Helen, a few weeks later. The boy sighed. "Ah! you are afraid I am going to scold you," she said. "I don't mind you scolding me," he replied; "but I don't think I have done anything this time, except--" "Except what?" said Helen, for the boy paused. "Except talk to Bob Dimsted." "Have you been out to meet him?" "No, that I haven't," cried Dexter. "He came to the bottom of the river to fish, and he spoke to me; and if I had not answered, it would have seemed so proud." Helen was silent for a few moments, not knowing what to say. "It was not about that," she said, at last, "but about your lessons. Mr Limpney has again been complaining very bitterly to papa about your want of progress." "Yes," said Dexter, "and he is always scolding me." "Then why don't you try harder?" "I do, but I am so stupid." "You are not, Dexter. You always learn easily enough with me." "Yes, with you," said the boy quickly, "but you don't want me to say angle _ABC_ is equal to the angle _CBA_, and all such stuff as that." "Don't call it stuff," said Helen, smiling in spite of herself; "it is Geometry." "But it is rum stuff all the same. What's the use of my learning about straight lines and squares and angles?" "But you are behind with your Algebra too." "Yes," sighed Dexter, "I'm just as stupid over that." "Now, Dexter!" "But I am, quite. Why can't I go on finding out things by Arithmetic, as we used at the schools? It was bother enough to learn that. Oh, what a lot of caning I had over nine times!" "Over nine times!" said Helen. "Over a hundred, I should say," cried Dexter. "I mean with strokes on the hand, and taps on the head, and over the shoulders--counting 'em altogether; and wasn't I glad when I knew it all, and twelve times too, and somebody else used to get it instead of me." "Dexter, papa wishes you to learn these things." "Do you?" said the boy. "Yes, very much. I should like to see you master them all." "Then I will. See if I don't," he cried. "That's right. Try and please Mr Limpney by being energetic." "Yes, I'll try," said Dexter; "but I don't think he'll be pleased." "I shall be. Now, get out your last lessons over which you failed so dismally, and I'll try and help you." "Will you?" cried the boy, in delighted tones, and he hurriedly obtained his folio, pens, and ink, feeling in such high spirits that if Bob Dimsted had been at hand to continue his temptations they would have been of no avail. The orange question was first debated, and tried in two or three different ways without success. Then it was laid aside for the time being, while the stage-coaches were rolled out and started, one from London to York, the other from York to London. "Look here," said Dexter, "I'll try the one that starts from London, while you try the one from York." That was only another simple equation, but in its novelty to Helen Grayson, as difficult as if it had been quadratic, and for a time no sound was heard but the busy scratching of two pens. "It's of no good," said Dexter suddenly, and with a look of despair upon his face. "I'm so terribly stupid." "I'm afraid, Dexter," said Helen merrily, "if you are stupid, I am too." "What! can't you do it!" "No." "Are you sure?" "Yes, Dexter. Algebra is beyond me." "Hooray!" cried the boy, leaping from his seat, and dancing round the room, ending by relieving his excitement by turning head over heels on the hearthrug. "Is that to show your delight at my ignorance, Dexter?" said Helen, smiling. "No," he cried, colouring up, as he stood before her out of breath. "It was because I was glad, because I was not so stupid as I thought." "You are not stupid, Dexter," said Helen, smiling. "We must go back to the beginning, and try and find out how to do these things. Does not Mr Limpney explain them to you?" "Yes," said Dexter dismally, "but when he has done, I don't seem to see what he means, and it does make me so miserable." "Poor boy!" said Helen gently. "There, you must not make your studies a trouble. They ought to be a great pleasure." "They would be if you taught me," said Dexter eagerly. "I say, do ask Dr Grayson to send Mr Limpney away, and you help me. I will try so hard." "A pretty tutor I should make," cried Helen, laughing. "Why, Dexter, I am as ignorant, you see, as you!" Dexter's face was a study. He seemed hurt and pleased at the same time, and his face was full of reproach as he said-- "Ignorant as me! Oh!" "There, I'll speak to papa about your lessons, and he will, I have no doubt, say a few words to Mr Limpney about trying to make your tasks easier, and explaining them a little more." "Will you!" cried the boy excitedly, and he caught her hands in his. "Certainly I will, Dexter." "Then I will try so hard, and I'll write down on pieces of paper all the things you don't want me to do, and carry 'em in my pockets, and take them out and look at them sometimes." "What!" cried Helen, laughing. "Well, that's what Mr Limpney told me to do, so that I should not forget the things he taught me. Look here!" He thrust his hand into his trousers-pocket, and brought out eagerly a crumpled-up piece of paper, but as he did so a number of oats flew out all over the room. "O Dexter! what a pocket! Now what could you do with oats?" "They were only for my rabbits," he said. "There, those are all nouns that end in _us_, feminine nouns. Look, _tribus, acus, porticus_. Isn't it stupid?" "It is the construction of the language, Dexter." "Yes; that's what Mr Limpney said. There, I shall put down everything you don't like me to do on a piece of paper that way; and take it out and read it, so as to remember it." "Try another way, Dexter." "How?" he said wonderingly. "By fixing these things in your heart, and not on paper," Helen said, and she left the room. "Well, that's the way to learn them by heart," said the boy to himself thoughtfully, as with brow knit he seated himself by a table, took a sheet of paper, and began diligently to write in a fairly neat hand, making entry after entry; and the principal of these was-- "Bob Dimsted: not to talk to him." The next day the doctor had a chat with Mr Limpney respecting Dexter and his progress. "You see," said the doctor, "the boy has not had the advantages lads have at good schools; and he feels these lessons to be extremely difficult. Give him time." "Oh, certainly, Doctor Grayson," said Mr Limpney. "I have only one wish, and that is to bring the boy on. He is behind to a terrible extent." "Yes, yes, of course," said the doctor; "but make it as easy for him as you can--for the present, you know. After a time he will be stronger in the brain." Mr Limpney, BA, looked very stern. He was naturally a good-hearted, gentlemanly, and scholarly man. He thoroughly understood the subjects he professed to teach. In fact, the ordinary routine of classic and mathematical study had, by long practice, grown so simple to him, that he was accustomed to look with astonishment upon a boy who stumbled over some of the learned blocks. In addition, year upon year of imparting knowledge to reckless and ill-tempered as well as stupid boys had soured him, and, in consequence, the well-intentioned words of the doctor did not fall on ground ready to receive them quite as it should. "Complaining about my way of teaching, I suppose," he said to himself. "Well, we shall see." The result was that Mr Limpney allowed the littleness of his nature to come uppermost, and he laboriously explained the most insignificant portions of the lessons in a sarcastic manner which made Dexter writhe, for he was not slow to find that the tutor was treating him with contempt. To make matters worse, about that time Dan'l watched him more and more; Peter was unwell and very snappish; there was a little difficulty with Mrs Millett over some very strong camomile-tea which Dexter did not take; and on account of a broken soap-dish which Maria took it into her head Dexter meant to lay to her charge,--that young lady refused even to answer the boy when he spoke; lastly, the doctor seemed to be remarkably thoughtful and stern. Consequently Dexter began to mope in his den over the old stable, and at times wished he was back at the Union Schools. The wish was momentary, but it left its impression, and the thought that, with the exception of Helen, no one liked him at the doctor's house grew and grew and grew like the cloud that came out of the fisherman's pot when Solomon's seal was removed, and that cloud threatened to become the evil genii that was to overshadow the boy's life. CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN. DEXTER WRITES A LETTER. Dexter watched his chance one afternoon when the study was empty, and stole in, looking very guilty. Maria saw him going in, and went into the kitchen and told Mrs Millett. "I don't care," she said, "you may say what you like, but it's in him." "What's in him!" said the old housekeeper, raising her tortoise-shell spectacles so as to get a good look at Maria, who seemed quite excited. "Master may have tutors as is clergymen to teach him, and Miss Helen may talk and try, but he's got it in him, and you can't get it out." "Who are you talking about, Maria," said the old lady testily. "That boy," said Maria, shaking her head. "It's of no good, he's got it in him, and nothing won't get it out." "Bless my heart!" cried Mrs Millett, thinking first of mustard and water, and then of castor-oil, "has the poor fellow swallowed something?" "No-o-o-o!" ejaculated Maria, drawing the word out to nearly a foot in length. "But you said he'd got something in him, Maria. Good gracious me, girl! what do you mean!" "Sin and wickedness, Mrs Millett. He comes of a bad lot, and Dan'l says he's always keeping bad company." "Dan'l's a chattering old woman, and had better mind his slugs and snails." "But the boy's always in mischief; see how he spoiled your silk dress." "Only spotted it, Maria, and it was clean water. I certainly thought it rained as I went under his window." "Yes, and you fetched your umbrella." "I did, Maria. But he's better now. Give him his physic regular, and it does him good." "Did you find out what was the matter with those salts and senny!" "No, Maria, I did not. I had to break the glass to get it out; set hard as a stone. It was a good job he did not take it." Mrs Millett never did find out that Dexter had poured in cement till the glass would hold no more, and his medicine became a solid lump. "Ah, you'll be tired of him soon," said Maria. "No, I don't think I shall, Maria. You see he's a boy, and he does behave better. Since I told him not, he hasn't taken my basting-spoon to melt lead for what he calls nickers; and then he hasn't repeated that wicked cruel trick of sitting on the wall." "Why, I see him striddling the ridge of the old stable, with his back to the weathercock, only yesterday." "Yes, Maria, but he wasn't fishing over the wall with worms to try and catch Mrs Biggins's ducks, a very cruel trick which he promised me he wouldn't do any more; and he hasn't pretended to be a cat on the roof, nor yet been to me to extract needles which he had stuck through his cheeks out of mischief; and I haven't seen him let himself down from the stable roof with a rope; and, as I told him, that clothes-line wasn't rope." "Ah, you always sided with the boy, Mrs Millett," said Maria; "but mark my words, some of these mornings we shall get up and find that he has let burglars into the house, and Master and Miss Helen will be robbed and murdered in their beds." "Maria, you're a goose," said the old housekeeper. "Don't talk such rubbish." "Ah, you may call it rubbish, Mrs Millett, but if you'd seen that boy just now stealing--" "Stealing, Maria?" "Yes 'm, stealing into Master's study like a thief in the night--and after no good, I'll be bound,--you wouldn't be so ready to take his part." "Gone in to write his lessons," said Mrs Millett. "There, you go and get about your work." Maria snorted, stuck out her chin, and left the kitchen. "Yes, she may talk, but I say he's after no good," muttered the housemaid; "and I'm going to see what he's about, or my name ain't what it is." Meanwhile Dexter was very busy in the study, but in a furtive way writing the following letter in a bold, clear hand, which was, however, rather shaky in the loops of the letters, while the capitals had an inclination to be independent, and to hang away from the small letters of the various words:-- Sir, Me and a friend have borrowed your boat, for we are going a long journey; but as we may keep it all together, I send to you fourteen shillings and a fourpny piece, which I have saved up, and if that isn't quite quite enough I shall send you some more. I hope you won't mind our taking your boat, but Bob Dimsted says we must have it, or we can't get on. Yours af--very truly, Obed Coleby, or To Sir Jhames Danby, Dexter Grayson. Dexter's spelling was a little shaky here and there, but the letter was pretty intelligible; and, as soon as it was done, he took out his money and made a packet of it, and doubled it up, a task he had nearly finished, when he became aware that the door was partly opened, and as he guiltily thrust the packet into his pocket the door opened widely, and Maria entered, with a sharp, short cough. "Did I leave my duster here, Master Dexter!" she said, looking round sharply. Before Dexter could reply, she continued-- "No, I must have left it upstairs." She whisked out and closed the door with a bang, the very opposite of the way in which she had opened it, and said to herself triumphantly-- "There, I knew he was doing of something wrong, and if I don't find him out, my name ain't Maria." Dexter hurriedly finished his packet, laying the money in it again after further consideration--in and out amongst the paper, so that the money should not chink, and then placing it in the enclosure with the letter, he tied it up with a piece of the red tape the doctor kept in a little drawer, sealed it, and directed it in his plainest hand to Sir James Danby. Dexter felt better after this was done, and the jacket-pocket a little bulgy in which his missive was stuffed. He had previously felt a little uneasy about the boat; but though not quite at rest now, he felt better satisfied, and as if this was a duty done. That same evening, just before it grew dusk, Dexter watched his opportunity, and stole off down the garden, after making sure that he was not watched. There was no one visible on the other side, and it seemed as if Bob Dimsted was not coming, so after waiting a few minutes Dexter was about to go back to the house, with the intention of visiting his pets, when there was a loud chirping whistle from across the river. Dexter looked sharply through the gathering gloom; but still no one was visible, and then the chirp came again. "Are you there, Bob?" "Why, course I am," said that young gentleman, rising up from where he had lain flat behind a patch of coarse herbage. "I'm not the sort of chap to stay away when I says I'll come. Nearly ready!" "Ye-es," said Dexter. "No gammon, you know," said Bob. "I mean it, so no shirking out." "I mean to come too," said Dexter with a sigh. "Well, you do sound jolly cheerful; you don't know what a game it's going to be." "No, not quite--yet," said Dexter. "But how are we going to manage!" "Well, if ever!" exclaimed Bob. "You are a rum chap, and no mistake. Of course we shall take the boat, and I've got that table-cloth ready for a sail, and a bit of rope to hoist it up." Dexter winced about that table-cloth, one which he had borrowed at Bob's wish from the housekeeper's room. "But must we take that boat?" "Why, of course, but we shall send it back some day as good as new, hanging behind a ship, and then have it sent up the river. I know lots of fellows who'll put it back for me if I ask 'em." Dexter felt a little better satisfied, and then listened to his companion's plans, which were very simple, but effective all the same, though common honesty did not come in. The conversation was carried on across the river, and to ensure its not being heard, Dexter lay down on the grass and put his lips close to the water, Bob Dimsted doing the same, when, it being quite a still evening, conversation became easy. "What are your people doing now?" said Bob, after they had been talking some time. "Dr Grayson is writing, and Miss Grayson reading." "Why, we might go now--easy." "No," said Dexter. "If we did, it would be found out directly, and we should be fetched back, and then, I dare say, they'd send me again to the school." "And yer don't want to go there again, do you!" "No," said Dexter, with a shudder. "Don't forget the ball of string I told you about?" "No, I've got that," replied Bob sharply. "And p'r'aps that won't be long enough. It's very deep in the sea. Now mind, you're here." "Yes, I'll mind." "If yer don't come, I won't never forgive you for making a fool of me." "I won't do that," said Dexter; and then after a little more hesitation as to something he particularly wanted to do, and which he saw no other way of doing, he whispered-- "Bob!" "Hullo!" "Will you do something for me before you come!" "Yes, if I can. But I say, don't you forget to bring a big bundle of your clothes and things, and if you don't want 'em all, I can wear some of 'em." Dexter was silent. "And as much money as you can; and, I say, the old un never give you a watch, did he?" "No." "You wouldn't like to borrow his, would you!" "No, of course not," said Dexter indignantly. "Oh, I don't want you to, unless you like. Only watches is useful at sea. Sailors find out where they are by their watches. I don't quite know how, but we could soon find out. Whatcher want me to do!" "I want you to take a little parcel to Sir James Danby's." "I ain't going to carry no parcels," said Bob importantly. "It's only a very little one, as big as your hand. You know the letter-box in Sir James's big door!" "I should just think I do," said Bob, with a hoarse laugh. "Me and two more boys put a lighted cracker in last fift' o' November." "I want you to go there last thing," said Dexter, as he could not help wondering whether the cracker made a great deal of noise in the letter-box; "and to drop the packet in just as if it was a letter. I mean just before you come." "But what for?" "Because it must be taken there. I want it taken." "O very well. Where is it?" "Here," said Dexter, taking out his carefully tied and sealed packet. "Chuck it across." "Get up, then, and be ready to catch it." "All right! Now then, shy away." Dexter drew back from the river, and aiming carefully at where he could see Bob's dim figure, he measured the distance with his eye, and threw. _Slap_! "Got it!" cried Bob. And then, "Oh!" There was a splash. "Just kitched on the top o' my finger, and bounced off," whispered the boy excitedly. "O Bob, what have you done!" "Well, I couldn't help it. I ain't a howl.--How could I see in the dark!" "Can't you see where it fell in!" "Why, ain't I a-trying. Don't be in such a fuss." Dexter felt as if their expedition was at an end, and he stood listening with a breast full of despair as Bob lay down at the edge of the river, and rolling up his sleeve began feeling about in the shallow water. "It's no good," he said. "It's gone." "O Bob!" "Well, what's the good of `O Bobbing' a fellow? I couldn't help it. It's gone, and--Here: I got it!" Bob rose up and gave his arm a whirl to drive off some of the moisture. "It's all right," he said. "I'll wrap it in my hankychy, and it'll soon dry in my pocket, I say, what's inside?" "Something for Sir James." "Oh! S'pose you don't know!" "Is the paper undone?" said Dexter anxiously. "No, it's all right, I tell yer, and it'll soon get dry." "And you'll be sure and take it to Sir James's." "Now?" "No, no, last thing to-night, just before you come, and don't ring, only drop the thing in the letter-box." "All right. Didn't I get my arm wet! There, I'm going home to get it dry, and put the rest of my things ready. Mind you bring yours all right." Dexter did not answer, but his companion's words made him feel very low-spirited, for he had a good deal in his mind, and he stood listening to Bob, as that young worthy went off, whistling softly, to make his final preparations for the journey down the river to sea, and then to foreign lands, and the attempt seemed now to begin growing very rapidly, till it was like a dense dark cloud rising higher and higher, and something seemed to keep asking the boy whether he was doing right. He felt that he was not, but, at the same time, the idea that he was thoroughly misunderstood, and that he would never be happy at the doctor's, came back as strongly as ever. "They all look upon me as a workhouse boy," he muttered, "and Bob's right. I'd better go away." CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT. PREPARATIONS FOR FLIGHT. Dexter listened till Bob Dimsted's whistle died away, and then stole from the place of appointment to go back to the house, where he struck off to the left, and made his way into the loft, where he took a small piece of candle from his pocket, lit it, and set it in an old ginger-beer bottle. The light roused the various occupants of the boxes and cages. That and the step were suggestive of food, and sundry squeakings and scratchings arose, with, from time to time, a loud rap on the floor given by one of the rabbits. There was a lonely desolate feeling in Dexter's breast as he set the rat at liberty, for the furtive-looking creature to hurry beneath the boards which formed the rough floor. Then the mice were taken out of their box, and the first movement of the little creatures was to run all over their master, but he hurriedly took them off him, feeling more miserable than ever, and ready to repent of the step he was about to take. The rabbits were carried downstairs, and turned out into the yard, Dexter having a belief that as they had once grown tame perhaps, many generations back, they might now as easily grow wild, and if in the process they made very free with old Dan'l's vegetables, until they escaped elsewhere, it would not be very serious. As it was, they crept here and there over the stones for a few moments, and then went off investigating, and evidently puzzled by their freedom. The hedgehog and squirrel were brought down together, and carried right into the garden, where the former was placed upon one of the flower-beds, and disappeared at once; the latter held up to a branch of the ornamental spruce, into which it ran, and then there was a scuffling noise, and Dexter ran away back to the stable, afraid to stop, lest the little ragged jacketed animal should leap back upon him, and make him more weak than he was. He climbed again to the loft, hearing a series of tiny squeaks as he mounted--squeaks emanating from his mice, and directly after he nearly crushed the rat, by stepping upon it as the little animal ran up to be fed. He had come for the toad and snake, and hurriedly plunging his hand into the big pot he found Sam the toad, seated right at the top, evidently eager to start on a nocturnal ramble, but the snake was coiled up asleep. It was a curious pet, that toad, but somehow, as it sat nestled up all of a squat in the boy's warm hand, he felt as if he should like to take it with him. It was not big, and would take up little room, and cost nothing to feed. Why not? He hesitated as he descended and crossed the yard to the garden, and decided that he would not. Bob Dimsted might not like it. He reached the garden, and crossed the lawn to the sunny verbena bed. That seemed a suitable place for the snake, and he tenderly placed it, writhing feebly, among the thin pegged-down strands. Then came the other reptile's turn. They had been friends and even companions together in the big flower-pot, Dexter argued, so they should have the chance of being friends again in the flower-bed. The toad was in his left hand, and going down on one knee he separated the verbenas a little, and then placed his hand, knuckles downward, on the soft moist earth, opening his fingers slowly the while. "Good-bye, Sam," he said, in a low voice. "You and I have had some good fun together, old chap, and I hope you will be very happy when I'm gone." He slowly spread his hand flat, so that his fingers and thumb ceased to form so many posts and rails about the reptile, or a fleshly cage. In imagination he saw the dusky grey creature crawl off his hand gladly into the dewy bed, and it made him more sad to find how ready everything was to be free, and he never for a moment thought about how he was going to play as ungrateful a part, and march off too. "Good-bye, Sam," he said, as he recalled how he had played with and tickled that toad, and how it had enjoyed it all, and turned over to be rubbed. Then he seemed to see it walk in its heavy, cumbrous way slowly off, with its bright golden eyes glistening, till it sat down in a hollow, and watched him go. But it was all fancy. The toad did not crawl out of his hand among the verbenas, nor go right away, but sat perfectly motionless where it was, evidently, from its acting, perfectly warm, comfortable, and contented. "Well, Sam, why don't you go!" said Dexter softly. "Do you hear?" He gave his hand a jar by striking the back on the earth, but the toad did not move, and when he touched it with his right hand, it was to find the fat squat reptile squeezed up together like a bun. He stroked it, and rubbed it, as he had rubbed it scores of times before, and the creature once more pressed up against his fingers, while Dexter forgot everything else in the gratification of finding his ugly pet appreciate his attentions. "Now then! off you go!" he cried quickly; but the creature did not stir. "Are you going?" said Dexter. "Come: march." Again it did not stir. "He don't want to go," cried the boy, changing it from, one hand to the other; and the next moment he was holding it, nose downward, over his jacket-pocket, when the toad, pretty actively for one of its kind, began to work its legs and dived slowly down beneath the pocket-handkerchief crumpled-up there, and settled itself at the bottom. "It seems to know," cried Dexter. "And it shall go with me after all." Curious boy! some one may say, but Dexter had had few opportunities for turning his affections in ordinary directions, and hence it was that they were lavished upon a toad. Indoors, when he stole back after setting all his pets at liberty to shift for themselves, Dexter felt very guilty. He encountered Mrs Millett in the hall, and a thrill ran through him as she exclaimed-- "Ah, there you are, Master Dexter, I just want a few words with you." "Found out!" thought the guilty conscience, which needs no accuser. "Now just you look here, sir," said the old housekeeper, in a loud voice, as she literally button-holed the boy, by hooking one thin finger in his jacket, so that he could not get away, "I know all." "You--you know everything," faltered the boy. "Yes, sir. Ah, you may well look 'mure. You little thought I knew." "How--how did you find out?" he stammered. "Ah! how did I find out, indeed! Now, look here, am I to go straight to the doctor and tell him!" "No, no, pray don't," whispered Dexter, catching her arm. "Well, then, I must tell Miss Helen." "No, no, not this time," cried Dexter imploringly; and his tone softened the old lady, who shook the borders of her cap at him. "Well, I don't know what to say," said Mrs Millett softly. "They certainly ought to know." Dexter gazed at her wildly. He knew that everything must come out, but it was to have been in a few hours' time, when he was far away, and deaf to the angry words and reproaches. To hear them now seemed more than he could bear. It could not be. Bob Dimsted must think and say what he liked, and be as angry and unforgiving as was possible. It could not be now. He must plead to the old housekeeper for pardon, and give up all idea of going away. "Ah!" she said. "I see you are sorry for it, then." "Yes, yes," he whispered. "So sorry, and--and--" "You'll take it this time, like a good boy!" "Take it?" "Yes, sir. Ah! you can't deceive me. Last time I saw the empty glass I knew as well as could be that you hadn't taken it, for the outside of the glass wasn't sticky, and there were no marks of your mouth at the edge. I always put plenty of sugar in it for you, and that showed." "The camomile-tea!" thought Dexter, a dose of which the old lady expected him to take about once a week, and which never did him any harm, if it never did him any good. "And you'll take it to-night, sir, like a good boy!" "Yes, yes, I will indeed," said Dexter, with the full intention of keeping his word out of gratitude for his escape. "Now, that's like being a good boy," said the old lady, smiling, and extricating her fingers from his button-hole, so as to stroke his hair. "It will do you no end of good; and how you have improved since you have been here, my dear, your hair's grown so nicely, and you've got such a good pink colour in your cheeks. It's the camomile-tea done that." Mrs Millett leaned forward with her hands on the boy's shoulder, and kissed him in so motherly a way that Dexter felt a catching of the breath, and kissed her again. "That's right," said the old lady. "You ain't half so bad as Maria pretends you are. `It's only a bit of mischief now and then,' I says to her, `and he's only a boy,' and that's what you are, ain't it, my dear?" Dexter did not answer. "I shall put your dose on your washstand, and you mind and take it the moment you get out of bed to-morrow morning." "Yes," said Dexter dismally. "No! you'll forget it. You've got to take that camomile-tea to-night, and if you don't promise me you will, I shall come and see you take it." "I promise you," said Dexter, and the old lady nodded and went upstairs, while the boy hung about in the hall. How was it that just now, when he was going away, people were beginning to seem more kind to him, and something began to drag at his heart to keep him from going? He could not tell. An hour before he had felt a wild kind of elation. He was going to be free from lessons, the doctor's admonitions, and the tame regular life at the house, to be off in search of adventure, and with Bob for his companion, going all over the world in that boat, while now, in spite of all he could do, he did not feel so satisfied and sure. There was something else he knew that he ought to do. He could not bid Helen good-bye with his lips, but he felt that he must bid her farewell another way, for she had always been kind to him from the day he came. He crept into the study again, this time without being seen. There was a faint light in the pleasant room, for the doctor's lamp had been turned down, but not quite out. A touch sent the flame brightly round the ring, and the shade cast a warm glow on the boy's busy fingers as he took out paper and envelope; and then, with trembling hand, sore heart, and a pen that spluttered, he indited another letter, this time to Helen. My dear Miss Grayson, I am afraid you will think me a very ungrateful boy, but I am obliged to go away to seek my fortune all over the world. You have been so kind to me, and so has Doctor Grayson sometimes, but everybody else has hated me, and made game of me because I was a workhouse boy, and I could not bear it any longer, and Bob Dimsted said he wouldn't if he was me, and we are going away together not to come back again any more.--I am, Your Affec Friend. Dexter Grayson. _PS_--I mean Obed Coleby, for I ought not to call myself Dexter any more, and I would have scratched it out, only you always said it was better not to scratch out mistakes because they made the paper look so untidy. I like you very much, and Mrs Millett too, but I can't take her fiz-- physick to-night. Is physick spelt with a k? There was a tear--a weak tear in each of Dexter's eyes as he wrote this letter, for it brought up many a pleasant recollection of kindnesses on Helen's part. He had just finished, folded and directed this, when he fancied he heard a door open across the hall. Thrusting the note into his pocket so hastily that one corner went into the toad, he caught up a piece of the doctor's foolscap, and began rapidly to make a triangle upon it, at whose sides and points he placed letters, and then, feeling like the miserable impostor he was, he rapidly let his pen trace a confused line of _A's_ and _B's_ and _C's_, and these backwards and forwards. This went on for some minutes, so that there was a fair show upon the paper, when the door softly opened, Helen peered in, and then coming behind him bent down, and, in a very gentle and sisterly way, placed her hands over his eyes. "Why, my poor hard-working boy," she said gently. "So this is where you are; and, oh dear, oh dear! Euclid again. That Mr Limpney will wear your brains all away. There, come along, I am going to play to papa, and then you and I will have a game at draughts." Dexter rose with his heart beating, and that strange sensation of something tugging at his conscience. Why were they all so kind to him to-night, just when he was going away? "Why, you look quite worn out and dazed, Dexter," said Helen merrily. "There, come along." "Eh? Where was he? In mischief?" said the doctor sharply, as they entered the drawing-room. "Mischief? No, papa: for shame!" cried Helen, with her arm resting on the boy's shoulders. "In your study, working away at those terrible sides and angles invented by that dreadful old Greek Euclid." "Work, eh? Ha! that's good!" cried the doctor jovially. "Bravo, Dexter! I am glad." If ever a boy felt utterly ashamed of himself, Dexter did then. He could not meet the doctor's eye, but was on his way to get a book to turn over, so as to have something to look at, but this was not to be. "No, no, you have had enough of books for one day, Dexter. Come and turn over the music for me. Why! what's that?" "That?" said Dexter slowly, for he did not comprehend. "Yes, I felt it move. You have something alive in your pocket." He felt prompted to lie, but he could not tell a falsehood then, and he stood with his teeth set. "Whatever have you got alive in your pocket?" said the doctor. "I know. A young rabbit, for a guinea." "Is it?" cried Helen. "Let me look: they are such pretty little things." "Yes, out with it, boy, and don't pet those things too much. Kill them with kindness, you know. Here, let me take it out." "No, no!" cried Dexter hastily. "Well, take it out yourself." A spasm of dread had run through the boy, as in imagination he saw the doctor's hand taking out the letter in his pocket. "It isn't a young rabbit," he faltered. "Well, what is it, then? Come, out with it." Dexter hesitated for a few moments, and now met the doctor's eye. He could not help himself, but slowly took out his pocket-handkerchief, as he held the note firmly with his left hand outside the jacket. Then, diving in again, he got well hold of Sam, who was snug at the bottom, and, with burning cheeks, and in full expectation of a scolding, drew the toad slowly forth. "Ugh!" ejaculated Helen. The doctor, who was in a most amiable temper, burst into a roar of laughter. "Well, you are a strange boy, Dexter," he said, as he wiped his eyes. "You ought to be a naturalist by and by. There, open the window, and put the poor thing outside. You can find plenty another time." Dexter obeyed, glad to be out of his quandary, and this time, as he put Sam down, the reptile crawled slowly away into the soft dark night. He closed the window, and went back to find the doctor and Helen all smiles, and ready to joke instead of scold. Then he went to the piano, and turned over the music, the airs and songs making him feel more and more sad, and again and again he found himself saying-- "Why are they so kind to me now, just as I am going away?" "Shall I stop!" he said to himself, after a time. "No: I promised Bob I would come, and so I will." CHAPTER TWENTY NINE. AN ACT OF FOLLY. Bedtime at last, and as Dexter bade the doctor and his daughter "good-night," it seemed to him that they had never spoken so kindly to him, and the place had never appeared to be so pleasant and homelike before. His heart sank as he went up to his room, and he felt as if he could not go away. The lessons Mr Limpney had given him to write out were not done; but he had better stop and face him, and every other trouble, including the window he had broken, and never owned to yet. It was impossible to go away and leave everybody who was so kind. A harsh word would have kept him to the point; but now he wavered as he sat down on the edge of his bed, with his mind in a whirl. Then, as he sat there, he pictured in his own mind the figure of Bob Dimsted, waiting for him, laden with articles of outfit necessary for their voyage, and behind Bob loomed up bright sunny scenes by sea and land; and with his imagination once more excited by all that the boy had suggested, Dexter blinded himself to everything but the object he had in view. He had planned in his own mind what he would take with him, but now it had come to the point he felt a strange compunction. Everything he possessed seemed to him as if it belonged to the doctor, and, finally, he resolved to take nothing with him but the clothes in which he stood. He began walking about the room in a listless way, looking about at the various familiar objects that he was to see no more, and one of the first things to strike him was a teacup on the washstand, containing Mrs Millett's infusion, bitter, nauseous, and sweetened to sickliness; and it struck Dexter that the mixture had been placed in a cup instead of a glass, so as to make it less objectionable in appearance. He could not help smiling as he took up the cup and smelt it, seeing at the same time the old dame's pleasant earnest face--a face that suddenly seemed to have become very loving, now he was to see it no more. He set down the cup, and shook his head, and then, as if nerving himself for the task, he went to the drawers, took out a key from his pocket, and then, from the place where it lay, hidden beneath his clean linen, brought forth the old clothes-line twisted and knotted together--the line which had done duty in the loft as a swing. He listened as he crossed to the door, but all was still downstairs, and it was not likely that any one would come near his room that night; but still he moved about cautiously, and taking the line with his hands, about two feet apart, snapped it again and again with all his might, to try if it was likely to give way now beneath his weight. It seemed firm as ever, but he could not help a shiver as he laid it by the window, and thought of a boy being found in the shrubbery beneath, with a broken leg, or, worse still, neck. Then as he waited for the time to glide by, so that all might be in bed before he made his escape, a sudden chill ran through him. He had remembered everything, as he thought; and yet there was one thing, perhaps the simplest of all, forgotten. He was going to take no bundle, no money, nothing which the doctor had in his kindness provided for him; but he could not go without a cap, and that was hanging in the hall, close to the drawing-room door. The question arose whether he should venture down to get it now, or after the doctor had gone to bed. It took him some time to make up his mind; but when he had come to a decision he opened his door softly, listened, and stole out on to the landing. All was very still as he looked over the balustrade to where the lamp shed its yellow rays all round, and to his mind more strangely upon the object he wanted to obtain than elsewhere. It was a very simple thing to do, and yet it required a great deal of nerve, for if the drawing-room door were opened just as he reached the hat-stand, and the doctor came out, what should he say? Then there was the risk of being heard, for there were, he knew, two of the old oaken stairs which always gave a loud crack when any one passed down, and if they cracked now, some one would be sure to come out to see what it meant. Taking a long catching breath he went quickly to the top of the stairs, and was about to descend in a desperate determination to go through with his task, when an idea struck him, and bending over the balustrade he spread his hands, balanced himself carefully, and then slid down the mahogany rail, round curve after curve as silently as could be, and reaching the curl at the bottom dropped upon the mat. Only five or six yards now to the hat-stand, and going on tiptoe past the entrance to the drawing-room, he was in the act of taking down the cap, when the handle rattled, the door was thrown open, and the hall grew more light. In his desperation Dexter snatched down the cap, and stood there trying to think of what he should say in answer to the question that would be asked in a moment-- "What are you doing there!" It was Helen, chamber-candlestick in hand, and she was in the act of stepping out, when her step was arrested by words which seemed to pierce into the listener's brain:-- "Oh, about Dexter!" "Yes, papa," said Helen, turning. "What do you think about--" Dexter heard no more. Taking advantage of Helen's back being turned as she bent over towards the speaker, the boy stepped quickly to the staircase, ran up, and had reached the first landing before Helen came out into the hall, while before she had closed the door he was up another flight, and gliding softly toward his own room, where he stood panting as he closed the door, just as if he had been running a distance which had taken away his breath. It was a narrow escape, and he was safe; but his ears tingled still, and he longed to know what the doctor had said about him. As he stood listening, cap in hand, he heard Helen pass his door singing softly one of the ballads he had heard that evening; and once more a curious dull sensation of misery came over him, as he seemed to feel that he would never hear her sing again, never feel the touch of her soft caressing hand; and somehow there was a vague confused sense of longing to go to one who had treated him with an affectionate interest he had never known before, even now hardly understood, but it seemed to him such gentleness and love as might have come from a mother. For a moment or two he felt that he must open the door, call to her, throw himself upon his knees before her, and confess everything, but at that moment the laughing, mocking face of Bob Dimsted seemed to rise between them, and his words buzzed in his ear--words that he had often said when listening to some account of Dexter's troubles-- "Bother the old lessons, and all on 'em! I wouldn't stand it if I was you. They've no right to order you about, and scold you as they do." The weak moments passed, and just then there was the doctor's cough heard, and the closing of his door, while directly after came the chiming of the church clock--a quarter past eleven. Half an hour to wait and think, and then good-bye to all his troubles, and the beginning of a new life of freedom! All the freedom and the future seemed to be behind a black cloud; but in the fond belief that all would soon grow clear Dexter waited. Half-past eleven, and he wondered that he did not feel sleepy. It was time to begin though now, and he took the line and laid it out in a serpentine fashion upon the carpet, so that there should be no kinks in the way; and then the next thing was to fasten one end tightly so that he could safely slide down. He had well thought out his plans, and, taking one end of the line, he knotted it securely to the most substantial place he could find in the room, passing it behind two of the bars of the grate. Then cautiously opening his window, a little bit at a time, he thrust it higher and higher, every faint creak sending a chill through him, while, when he looked out upon the dark starlight night, it seemed as if he would have to descend into a black gulf, where something blacker was waiting to seize him. But he knew that the black things below were only great shrubs, and lowering the rope softly down he at last had the satisfaction of hearing it rustle among the leaves. Then he waited, and after a glance round to see that everything was straight, and the letter laid ready upon the table, he put out the candle. "For the last time!" he said to himself, and a great sigh came unbidden from his breast. A quarter to twelve. Dexter waited till the last stroke on the bell was thrilling in the air before setting his cap on tightly, and passing one leg over the sill. He sat astride for a few moments, hesitating for the last time, and then passed the other leg, and lowered himself down till he hung by his hands, then twisted his legs about the rope, seized it with first one hand then the other, and hung by it with his whole weight, in the precarious position of one trusting to an old doubled clothes-line, suspended from a second-floor window. It was hard work that descent, for he could not slide on account of the knots; and, to make his position more awkward, the rope began to untwist--one line from the other,--and, in consequence, as the boy descended slowly, he bore no small resemblance to a leg of mutton turning before a fire. That was the only mishap which occurred to him then, for after resting for a few moments upon the first-floor sill he continued his journey, and reached the bottom in the midst of a great laurel, which rustled loudly as he tried to get out, and then tripped over a horizontal branch, and fell flat. He was up again in an instant, and, trembling and panting, made a couple of bounds which took him over the gravel walk and on to the lawn, where he stood panting and listening. There was a light in the doctor's room, and one in Helen's; and just then the doctor's shadow, looking horribly threatening, was thrown upon the blind. He must be coming, Dexter thought, and, turning quickly, he sped down the lawn, avoiding the flower-beds by instinct, and the next minute had reached the kitchen-garden, down whose winding green walk he rapidly made his way. CHAPTER THIRTY. DARK DEEDS. It was very dark among the trees as Dexter reached the grass plot which sloped to the willows by the river-side, but he knew his way so well that he crept along in silence till he had one hand resting upon the trunk he had so often climbed, and stood there gazing across the starlit water, trying to make out the figure of his companion in the boat. All was silent, save that, now and then, the water as it ran among the tree-roots made a peculiar whispering sound, and once or twice there was a faint plash in the distance, as if from the feeding of a fish. "Hist! Bob! Are you there!" "Hullo!" came from the other side. "I was just a-going." "Going?" "Yes. I thought you wasn't a-coming, and I wasn't going to stop here all night." "But you said twelve." "Well, it struck twelve an hour ago." "No; that was eleven. There--hark!" As proof of Dexter's assertion the church clock just then began to chime, and the heavy boom of the tenor bell proclaiming midnight seemed to make the soft night air throb. "Thought it was twelve long enough ago. Ready!" "Yes," said Dexter, in an excited whisper. "Got the boat?" "No: course I haven't. It'll take two to get that boat." "But you said you would have it ready." "Yes, I know; but we must both of us do that. I waited till you come." This was a shock; and Dexter said, in a disappointed tone-- "But how am I to get to you!" "Come across," said Bob coolly. "Come across--in the dark!" "Why, of course. You ain't afraid, are you? Well, you are a chap!" "But it's too deep to wade." "Well, who said it wasn't!" growled the boy. "You can swim, can't you?" "But I shall get so wet." "Yah!" ejaculated Bob in tones of disgust. "You are a fellow. Take your clothes off, make 'em in a bundle, and swim over." Dexter was half-disposed to say, "You swim across to me," but nothing would have been gained if he had, so, after a few minutes' hesitation, and in genuine dread, he obeyed the wishes of his companion, but only to pause when he was half-undressed. "I say, though," he whispered, "can't you get the boat? It's so cold and dark." "Well, you are a fellow!" cried Bob. "Beginning to grumble afore we start. It's no use to have a mate who's afraid of a drop of water, and don't like to get wet." "But--" "There, never mind," grumbled Bob; "we won't go." "But I didn't say I wouldn't come, Bob," whispered Dexter desperately. "I'll come." There was no answer. "Bob." Still silence. "I say, don't go, Bob. I'm very sorry. I'm undressing as fast as I can. You haven't gone, have you?" Still silence, and Dexter ceased undressing, and stood there in the cold night air, feeling as desolate, despairing, and forlorn as boy could be. "What shall I do?" he said to himself; and then, in a despondent whisper, "Bob!" "Hullo!" "Why, you haven't gone!" joyfully. "No; but I'm going directly. It's no use for me to have a mate who hasn't got any pluck. Now then, are you coming, or are you not!" "I'm coming," said Dexter. "But stop a moment. I'll be back directly." "Whatcher going to do!" "Wait a moment and I'll show you." Dexter had had a happy thought, and turning and running in his trousers to the tool-shed, he dragged out a small deal box in which seeds had come down from London that spring. It was a well-made tight box, and quite light, and with this he ran back. "Why, what are you doing?" grumbled Bob, as soon as he heard his companion's voice. "Been getting something to put my clothes in," whispered Dexter. "I don't want to get them wet." "Oh," said Bob, in a most unconcerned way; and he began to whistle softly, as Dexter finished undressing, tucked all his clothes tightly in the box, and bore it down to the water's edge, where it floated like a little boat. "There!" cried Dexter excitedly. "Now they'll be all dry when I've got across. Ugh! how cold the water is," he continued, as he dipped one foot. "I wish I'd brought a towel." "Yah! what does a fellow want with a towel? You soon gets dry if you run about. Going to walk across!" "I can't," said Dexter; "it's too deep." "Well, then, swim. I could swim that with one hand tied behind." "I couldn't," said Dexter, hesitating, for it was no pleasant task to plunge into the little gliding river at midnight, and with all dark around. "Now then! Look alive! Don't make a splash." "Oh!" "What's the matter?" "It is cold." "Yah! Then, get back to bed with you, and let me go alone." "I'm coming as fast as I can," said Dexter, as he lowered himself into the stream, and then rapidly climbed out again, as the cold water caused a sudden catching of the breath; and a nervous shrinking from trusting himself in the dark river made him draw right away from the edge. "Why, you ain't swimming," said Bob. "Here, look sharp! Why, you ain't in!" "N-no, not yet," said Dexter, shivering. "There's a coward!" sneered Bob. "I'm not a coward, but it seems so dark and horrible to-night, and as if something might lay hold of you." "Yes, you are a regular coward," sneered Bob. "There, jump in, or I'll shy stones at yer till you do." Dexter did not speak, but tumbled all of a heap on the short turf, shrinking more and more from his task. "I shall have to go without you," said Bob. "I can't help it," said Dexter, in a low, tremulous whisper. "It's too horrid to get in there and swim across in the dark." "No, it ain't. I'd do it in a minute. There, jump in." "No," said Dexter sadly. "I must give it up." "What, yer won't do it!" "I can't," said Dexter sadly. "We must try some other way. I'm going to dress again. Oh!" "What's the matter now!" "My clothes!" _Splash_! _Rush_! Dexter had rapidly lowered himself into the black deep stream and was swimming hard and fast, for as he rose and sought for his garments he suddenly recalled the fact that he had turned the box into a tiny barge, laden it with his clothes, and placed them in the river, while now, as he went to take them out, he found that the stream had borne the box away, and it was going down toward the sea. "Try if you can see them, Bob," said Dexter, as he panted and struggled on through the water. "See what?" "My clothes. They're floating down the river." Bob uttered a low chuckling laugh, and trotted along by the edge of the river; but it was too dark for him to see anything, and Dexter, forgetting cold and dread, swam bravely on, looking well to right and left, without avail, till all at once, just in one of the deepest eddies, some fifty yards down below the doctor's house, and where an unusually large willow spread its arms over the stream, he caught sight of something which blotted out the starlight for a moment, and then the stars' reflection beamed out again. Something was evidently floating there, and he made for it, to find to his great joy that it was the floating box, which he pushed before him as he swam, and a couple of minutes later he was near enough to the edge on the meadow-side to ask Bob's help. "Ain't got 'em, have you?" the latter whispered. "Yes; all right. I'll come out there. Give me a hand." Dexter swam to the muddy overhanging bank, and seized the hand which Bob extended toward him. "Now then, shall I duck yer!" said Bob, who had lain down on the wet grass to extend his hand to the swimmer. "No, no, Bob, don't. That would be cowardly," cried Dexter. "Help me to get out my clothes without letting in the wet. It is so cold." "But you swam over," said Bob sneeringly. "Yes; but you don't know how chilly it makes you feel. Mind the clothes." Bob did mind, and the next minute Dexter and the barge of dry clothes were upon the grass together. "Oh, isn't it cold?" said Dexter, with his teeth chattering. "Cold? no. Not a bit," said Bob. "Here, whatcher going to do!" "Do? Dress myself. Here, give me my shirt. Oh, don't I wish I had a towel!" "You leave them things alone, stoopid. You can't dress yet." "Not dress!" "No," cried Bob loudly. "What do you mean!" "You come along and I'll show yer. Why, we haven't got the boat." "No, but--" "Well, you're all ready, and you've got to swim across and get it." "I've got to get it!" cried Dexter in dismay. "Why, you said you would get the boat." "Yes, but I didn't know then that you were going to swim across." "But you said it would take two to get it," protested Dexter. "Yes, I thought so then, but you're all ready and can swim across, and get it directly. Here, come along!" "But--but," stammered Dexter, who was shivering in the chill night air. "What, you're cold? Well, come along. I'll carry the box. Let's run. It'll warm yer." Dexter was ready with another protest, but he did not utter it. His companion seemed to carry him along with the force of his will, but all the same there was a troublous feeling forcing itself upon him that he had made a mistake, and he could not help a longing for his room at the doctor's with its warm bed, comfort, safety, and repose. But he knew it was too late, and he was too much hurried and confused to do more than try to keep up with Bob Dimsted as he ran by his side carrying the box till they had reached the meadow facing Sir James Danby's garden; and there, just dimly seen across the river, was the low gable-end of the boat-house beneath the trees. "Hush! don't make a row," whispered Bob. "Now then, slip in and fetch it. Why, you could almost jump it." "But, Bob--I--I don't like to go. I'm so cold." "I'll precious soon warm yer if you don't look sharp," cried Bob fiercely. "Don't you try to make a fool of me. Now then, in with you!" He had put the box down and gripped Dexter fiercely by the arm, causing him so much pain that instead of alarming it roused the boy's flagging spirit, and he turned fiercely upon his assailant, and wrested his arm free. "That's right," said Bob. "In with you. And be sharp, and then you can dress yerself as we float down." Dexter's instinct was to resist and give up, but he felt that he had gone too far, and feeling that his companion might consider him a coward if he refused to go, he lowered himself down into the water. "That's yer sort," said Bob, in a loud whisper. "You'll soon do it." "But suppose the chains are locked!" "They won't be locked," said Bob. "You go acrost and see." In the eager desire to get an unpleasant task done, Dexter let himself glide down into the swift stream about a dozen yards above the boat-house, and giving himself a good thrust off with his feet, he swam steadily and easily across, the river there being about thirty yards wide, and in a very short time he managed to touch the post at the outer corner of the long low boat-house. Then, hardly knowing how he managed it, he found bottom as his hand grasped the gunwale of the boat, and walking along beside it he soon reached the chain which moored it to the end. Here in his excitement and dread it seemed as if his mission was to fail. It was dark enough outside, but in the boat-house everything seemed to be of pitchy blackness, and try how he would he could find no way of unfastening the chain. He tried toward the boat, then downwards, then upwards, and in the boat again, and again. His teeth were chattering, his chest and shoulders felt as if they were freezing, and his hands, as they fumbled with the wet chain, began to grow numbed, while, to add to his excitement and confusion, Bob kept on from time to time sending across the river a quick hissing-- "I say; look sharp." Then he heard a sound, and he splashed through the water in retreat toward the river, for it seemed that they were discovered, and some one coming down the garden. But the sound was repeated, and he realised the fact that it was only the side of the boat striking against a post. "I say, are you a-coming?" whispered Bob. "I can't undo the chain," Dexter whispered back. "Yer don't half try." Just then the clock chimed half-past twelve, and Dexter stopped involuntarily; but a fresh summons from his companion roused him to further action, and he passed once more along to the prow of the boat, and seizing the chain felt along it till this time he felt a hook, and, wondering how it was that he had missed it before, he began with trembling fingers to try and get it out from the link through which it was thrust. It was in very tightly, though, for the point being wedge-shaped the swaying about and jerking to and fro of the boat had driven it further and further in, so that it was not until he had been ready over and over again to give up in despair that the boy got the iron free. Then panting with dread and excitement he found the rest easy; the chain was passed through a ring-bolt in one of the posts at the head of the boat-house, and through this he drew it back slowly and cautiously on account of the rattling it made. It seemed of interminable length as he drew and drew, piling up the chain in the bows of the boat till he thought he must have obtained all, when there was a sudden check, and it would come no further. Simple enough in broad daylight, and to a person in the boat, but Dexter was standing waist deep in the water, and once more he felt that the case was hopeless. Another call from Bob roused him, and he followed the chain with his hand till he had waded to the post, and found that the hook had merely caught in the ring, and only needed lifting out, and the boat was at liberty. But just at this moment there was a furious barking, and a dog seemed to be tearing down the garden toward the boat-house. In an agony of horror Dexter climbed into the boat, and feeling the side of the long shed he thrust and thrust with so much effect that he sent the light gig well out into the stream and half-across the river. Then seizing an oar, as the dog was now down on the bank, snapping and barking more furiously than ever, he got it over into the water, and after a great deal of paddling, and confused counter-action of his efforts, forced the boat onward and along, till it touched the shore where Bob was waiting with the box. "No, no, don't come out," he whispered. "Here, help me get these in." Dexter crept to the stern of the boat, and in his effort to embark the box nearly fell overboard, but the treasure was safe. Then Bob handed in a basket, and a bundle of sticks, evidently his rod, and leaping in directly after, gave the boat sufficient impetus to send it well out into the stream, down which it began to glide. "Ah, bark away, old un," said Bob contemptuously, as the sound of the dog's alarm notes grew more distant, and then more distant still, for they were going round a curve, and the garden side of the river was thick with trees. "Is that Danby's dog!" whispered Bob. "I don't know," said Dexter, with his teeth chattering from cold and excitement. "Why! you're a-cold," said Bob coolly. "Here, I'll send her along. You look sharp and dress. I say, where's your bundle of things?" "Do you mean my clothes?" "No! Your bundle." "I didn't bring anything," said Dexter, hurriedly slipping on his shirt. "Well, you are a chap!" said Bob sourly, but Dexter hardly heard him, for he was trying to get his wet body covered from the chill night air; and he could think of nothing but the fact that he had taken a very desperate step, and the boat was bearing them rapidly away from what seemed now to have been a very happy home--further out, further away from the doctor and from Helen, downward toward the sea, and over that there was a great black cloud, beyond which, according to Bob Dimsted, there were bright and glorious lands. At that moment, chill with the cold and damp, Dexter would have given anything to have been back in his old room, but it was too late, the boat was gliding on, and Bob had now got out the sculls. The town lights were receding, and they were going onward toward that dark cloud which Dexter seemed to see more dimly now, for there was a dumb depressing sensation of despair upon him, and he turned his eyes toward the river-bank, asking himself if he could leap ashore. CHAPTER THIRTY ONE. TIMES OF DELIGHT! "Here we are!" said Bob Dimsted, as he sat handling the sculls very fairly, and, as the stream was with them, sending the boat easily along. "I think we managed that first-rate." Dexter made no reply, for he had his teeth fast set, and his lips pressed together to keep the former from chattering, but he thought a great deal, and found himself wondering what Bob had done toward getting the boat. With the covering up of his goose-skinned body, and the return of some of his surface heat, the terrible fit of despondency began to pass away, and Dexter felt less ready to sit down in helpless misery at the bottom of the boat. "Getting nice and warm, ain'tcher?" "Not very, yet." "Ah, you soon will be, and if you ain't you shall take one of these here oars. That'll soon put you right. But what a while you was!" "I--I couldn't help it," shivered Dexter, drawing in his breath with a quick hissing sound; "the chain was so hard to undo." "Ah, well, never mind now," said Bob, "only, if we'd got to do it again I should go myself." Dexter made no protest, but he thought it sounded rather ungrateful. He was too busy, though, with buttons, and getting his fingers to work in their regular way, to pay much heed, and he went on dressing. "I say, what a jolly long while you are!" continued Bob. "Oh, and look here! I'd forgot again: why didn't you bring your bundle with all your clothes and things, eh!" "Because they weren't mine." "Well, you are a chap! Not yourn? Why, they were made for you, and you wore 'em. They can't be anybody else's. I never see such a fellow as you are! I brought all mine." It was an easy task, judging from the size of the bundle dimly seen in the bottom of the boat, but Dexter said nothing. "How much money have you got?" said Bob, after a pause. "None at all." "What?" There was utter astonishment in Bob Dimsted's tones as he sat motionless, with the sculls balanced on the rowlocks, staring wildly through the gloom, as Dexter now sat down and fought hard with an obstinate stocking, which refused to go on over a wet foot--a way stockings have at such times. "Did you say you hadn't got any money?" cried Bob. "Yes. I sent it all in a letter to pay for the boat in case we kept it." "What, for this boat?" cried Bob. "Yes." "And you call yourself a mate?" cried Bob, letting the scull blades drop in the water with a splash, and pulling hard for a few strokes. "Well!" "I felt obliged to," said Dexter, whose perseverance was rewarded by a complete victory over the first stocking, when the second yielded it with a better grace, and he soon had on his shoes, and then began to dry his ears by thrusting his handkerchief-covered finger in the various windings of each gristly maze. "Felt obliged to?" "Yes, of course. We couldn't steal the boat." "Yah, steal it! Who ever said a word about stealing? We've only borrowed it, and if we don't send it back, old Danby's got lots of money, and he can buy another. But, got no money! Well!" "But we don't want money, do we!" said Dexter, whom the excitement as well as his clothes now began to make comparatively warm. "I thought we were going where we could soon make our fortunes." "Yes, of course we are, stoopid; but you can't make fortunes without money. You can't ketch fish if yer ain't got no bait." This was a philosophical view of matters which took Dexter aback, and he faltered rather as he spoke next, this time with his ears dry, his hair not so very wet, and his jacket buttoned up to his chin. "I'm very sorry, Bob," he said gently. "Sorry! Being sorry won't butter no parsneps," growled Bob. "No," said Dexter mildly, "but we haven't got any parsneps to butter." "No, nor ain't likely to have," growled Bob, and then returning to a favourite form of expression: "And you call yourself a mate! Here, come and kitch holt of this scull." Dexter sat down on the thwart, and took the scull after Bob had contrived to give him a spiteful blow on the back with it before he extricated it from its rowlock. Dexter winced slightly, but he bore the pain without a word, and began rowing as well as a boy does row who handles a scull for the first time in his life. And there he sat, gazing to right and left at the dark banks of the river, and the stars above and reflected below, as they went slowly on along the bends and reaches of the little river, everything looking strangely distorted and threatening to the boy's unaccustomed eyes. The exercise soon began to bring a general feeling of warmth to his chilled frame, and as the inward helplessness passed away it began to give place to an acute sense of fear, and his eyes wandered here and there in search of Sir James Danby, the doctor, and others more terrible, who would charge them with stealing the boat in spite of his protests and the money he had left behind. And all the time to make his trip more pleasant he had to suffer from jarring blows upon the spine, given by the top of Bob's oar. In nearly every case this was intentional, and Bob chuckled to himself, as with the customary outburst of his class he began to abuse his companion. "Why don't yer mind and keep time!" he cried. "Who's to row if you go on like that? I never see such a stoopid." "All right, Bob, I'll mind," said Dexter, with all the humility of an ignorance which kept him from knowing that as he was rowing stroke Bob should have taken his time from him. The blows on the back had two good effects, however: they gratified Bob, who had the pleasure of tyrannising over and inflicting pain upon his comrade, while Dexter gained by the rapid increase of warmth, and was most likely saved from a chill and its accompanying fever. Still that night trip was not pleasant, for when Bob was not grumbling about the regularity of Dexter's stroke, he had fault to find as to his pulling too hard or not hard enough, and so sending the head of the boat toward the right or left bank of the stream. In addition, the young bully kept up a running fire of comment on his companion's shortcomings. "I never see such a mate," he said. "No money and no clothes. I say," he added at the end of one grumbling fit, "what made you want to run away!" "I don't know," said Dexter sadly. "I suppose it was because you persuaded me." "Oh, come, that's a good un," said Bob. "Why, it was you persuaded me! You were always wanting to go away, and you said we could take Danby's boat, and go right down to the sea." "No!" protested Dexter; "it was you said that." "Me!" cried Bob. "Oh, come, I like that, 'pon my word I do. It was you always begging of me to go, and to take you with me. Why, I shouldn't never have thought of such a thing if you hadn't begun it." Dexter was silent, and now getting thoroughly warm he toiled on with his oar, wondering whether Bob would be more amiable when the day came, and trying to think of something to say to divert his thoughts and make him cease his quarrelsome tone. "I never see such a mate," growled Bob again. "No money, no clothes! why, I shall have to keep yer, I s'pose." "How long will it take us to get down to the sea, Bob?" said Dexter at last. "I d'know. Week p'r'aps." "But we shall begin fishing before then, shan't we!" "Fishing! How are you going to fish without any rod and line? Expects me to find 'em for yer, I s'pose!" "No, but I thought you would catch the fish, and I could light a fire and cook them." "Oh, that's what yer thought, was it? Well, p'r'aps we shall, and p'r'aps we shan't." "Do you think they will come after us!" ventured Dexter, after a time. "Sure to, I should say; and if they do, and they kitches us, I shall say as it was you who stole the boat." "No, you won't," said Dexter, plucking up a little spirit now he was getting more himself. "You wouldn't be such a sneak." "If you call me a sneak, I'll chuck you out of the boat," cried Bob angrily. "I didn't call you a sneak, I only said you wouldn't be such a sneak," protested Dexter. "I know what you said: yer needn't tell me, and I won't have it, so now then. If you want to quarrel, you'd better get out and go back." "But I don't want to quarrel, Bob; I want to be the best of friends." "Then don't yer call me a sneak, because if you do it'll be the worse for you." "Oh, I say, Bob," protested Dexter, as he tugged away at his oar, "don't be so disagreeable." "And now he says I'm disagreeable!" cried Bob. "Well of all the chaps as ever I see you're about the nastiest. Look here, do you want to fight? because if you do, we'll just go ashore here and have it out." "I don't want to fight indeed, Bob." "Yes, you do; you keep egging of me on, and saying disagreeable things as would have made some chaps give you one for yourself ever so long ago. Lookye here, only one on us can be captain in this here boat, and it is going to be either me or you. I don't want to be, but I ain't going to be quite jumped upon, so we'll get ashore here, and soon see who it's going to be." As Bob Dimsted spoke in a low snarling way, he gave his scull so hard a pull that he sent the boat's head in toward the bank. "First you want one thing, and then you want another, and then you try to make out that it was me who stole the boat." "I only said it wasn't me." "There," cried Bob, "hark at that! Why, who was it then?" Didn't you take yer clothes off and swim over while I stood t'other side? Dexter did not answer, but went on rowing with a hot feeling of anger rising in his breast. "Oh, so now you're sulky, are you? Very well, my lad, we'll soon see to that. If you don't know who's best man, I'm going to show you. It's dark, but it's light enough for that, so come ashore and--" _Whish! rush! crash_! "Row! pull! pull!" whispered Bob excitedly, as there was a loud breaking of the low growth on the bank close by them, followed by the loud clap given by a swing-gate violently dashed to. Dexter pulled, but against the bank, for they were too close in for them to get a dip of the oar in the water; but what he did was not without some effect, and, as Bob backed, the boat's head gradually glided round, shot into the stream, and they went swiftly on again, pulling as hard as they could. "Did you see him!" whispered Bob at last. "No, did you?" "No, but I nearly did. He has been creeping along the bank for ever so long, and he nearly got hold of the boat." "Who was it?" whispered Dexter. "Pleeceman, but pull hard, and we shall get away from him yet." They both pulled a slow stroke for quite an hour, and by that time the horse that had been feeding upon the succulent weedy growth close to the water's edge had got over its fright, and was grazing peaceably once more. Bob was quiet after that. The sudden alarm had cut his string of words in two, and he was too much disturbed to take them up again to join. In fact he was afraid to speak lest he should be heard, and he kept his ill-temper--stirred up by the loss of a night's rest--to himself for the next hour, when suddenly throwing in his oar he said-- "Look here, I'm tired, and I shall lie down in the bottom here and have a nap. You keep a sharp look-out." "But I can't row two oars," said Dexter. "Well, nobody asked you to. You've got to sit there with the boat-hook, and push her off if ever she runs into the bushes. The stream'll take her down like it does a float." "How far are we away from the town!" "I d'know." "Well, how soon will it be morning!" "How should I know? I haven't got a watch, have I? If I'd had one I should have sold it so as to have some money to share with my mate." "Have you got any money, Bob?" "Course I have. Don't think I'm such a stoopid as you, do yer!" Dexter was silent, and in the darkness he laid in his oar after the fashion of his companion, and took up the boat-hook, while Bob lifted one of the cushions from the seat, placed it in the bottom of the boat, and then curled up, something after the fashion of a dog, and went off to sleep. Dexter sat watching him as he could dimly make out his shape, and then found that the stern of the boat had been caught in an eddy and swung round, so that he had some occupation for a few moments trying to alter her position in the water, which he did at last by hooking the trunk of an overhanging willow. This had the required effect, and the head swung round once more; but in obtaining this result Dexter found himself in this position--the willow refused to give up its hold of the boat-hook. He naturally, on his side, also refused, and, to make matters worse, the current here was quite a race, and the boat was going rapidly on. He was within an ace of having to leave the boat-hook behind, for he declined to try another bath--this time in his clothes. Just, however, at the crucial moment the bark of the willow gave way, the hook descended with a splash, and Dexter breathed more freely, and sat there with the boat-hook across his knees looking first to right and then to left in search of danger, but seeing nothing but the low-wooded banks of the stream, which was gradually growing wider as they travelled further from the town. It was a strange experience; and, comparatively happy now in the silence of the night, Dexter kept his lonely watch, thinking how much pleasanter it was for his companion to be asleep, but all the time suffering a peculiar sensation of loneliness, and gazing wonderingly at the strange, dark shapes which he approached. Men, huge beasts, strange monsters, they seemed sometimes right in front, rising from the river, apparently as if to bar his way, but always proving to be tree, bush, or stump, and their position caused by the bending of the stream. Once there was a sudden short and peculiar grating, and the boat stopped short, but only to glide on again as he realised that the river was shallow there, and they had touched the clean-washed gravelly bottom. There was enough excitement now he was left to himself to keep off the depression he had felt, for now the feeling that he was gliding away into a new life was made more impressive by the movement of the boat, which seemed to him to go faster and faster among dimly seen trees, and always over a glistening path that seemed to be paved with stars. Once, and once only, after leaving the town behind was there any sign of inhabited building, and that was about an hour after they started, when a faint gleam seemed to be burning steadily on the bank, and so near that the light shone down upon the water. But that was soon passed, and the river ran wandering on through a wild and open district, where the only inhabitants were the few shepherds who attended the flocks. On still, and on, among the low meadows, through which the river had cut its way in bygone times. Serpentine hardly expressed its course, for it so often turned and doubled back over the ground it had passed before; but still it, on the whole, flowed rapidly, and by slow degrees mile after mile was placed between the boys and the town. Twice over a curious sensation of drowsiness came upon Dexter, and he found himself hard at work trying to hunt out some of his pets, which seemed to him to have gone into the most extraordinary places. For instance, Sam the toad had worked himself down into the very toe of the stocking he had been obliged to take off when he went into the water, and the more he tried to shake it out, the more tightly it clung with its little hands. Then he woke with a start, and found out that he had dozed off. Pulling himself together he determined not to give way again, but to try and guide the boat. To properly effect this he still sat fast with the boat-hook across his knees, and in an instant he was back at the doctor's house in Coleby, looking on while Helen was busy reading the letter which had been brought down from the bedroom. Dexter could see her perfectly plainly. It seemed a thoroughly realistic proceeding, and she was wiping her eyes as she read, while, at the same moment, the doctor entered the room with the willow pollard from the bottom of the garden; and lifting it up he called him an ungrateful boy, and struck him a severe blow on the forehead which sent him back on to the carpet. But it was not on to the carpet, but back into the bottom of the boat, and certainly it was a willow branch which had done the mischief, though not in the doctor's hand. Dexter got up again, feeling rather sore and confused, for the boat had drifted under a projecting bough, just on a level with the boy's head, but his cap had saved him from much harm. Dexter's first thought was that Bob would jump up and begin to bully him for going to sleep. But Bob was sleeping heavily, and the bump, the fall, and the rocking of the boat only acted as a lullaby to his pleasant dreams. And then it seemed that a tree on the bank--a tall poplar--was very much plainer than he had seen any tree before that night. So was another on the other bank, and directly after came a sound with which he was perfectly familiar at the doctor's--a sound that came beneath his window among the laurustinus bushes. _Chink_--_chink_--_chink_--_chink_. A blackbird--answered by another. And then all at once it seemed to be so cold that it was impossible to help shivering; and to ward off the chilling sensation Dexter began to use the boat-hook as a pole, thrusting it down first on one side of the boat and then on the other as silently as he could, so as not to wake Bob. Sometimes he touched bottom, and was able to give the boat a good impetus, but as often as not he could not reach the river-bed. Still the exercise made his blood circulate, and drove away the dull sense of misery that had been coming on. As he toiled on with the pole, the trees grew plainer and plainer, and a soft pearly dawn seemed to be floating over the river. The birds uttered their calls, and then, all at once, in a loud burst of melody, up rose a lark from one of the dewy meadows on his right. Then further off there was another, and right away high up in the east one tiny speck of dull red. Soon this red began to glow as if gradually getting hotter. Then another and another speck appeared--then scores, fifties, hundreds--and Dexter stood bathed in the rich light which played through the curling river mists, as the whole of the eastern heavens became damasked with flecks of gold. In a comparatively short time these faded, and a warm glow spread around the meadows and wild country on either side, where empurpled hills rose higher and higher, grew more and more glorious, and the river sparkled and danced and ran in smooth curves, formed eddies, and further in advance became one wonderful stretch of dancing golden ripples, so beautiful that Dexter stood on the thwart with the pole balanced in his hand wondering whether everything could be as beautiful at Coleby as he saw it now. Then there was a sudden shock, so sharp that he could not save himself, but took a kind of header, not into the water, but right on to Bob Dimsted, landing with his knees in Bob's softest portion, and the pole right across his neck, just as Bob tried to rise, and uttered a tremendous yell. The wonder was that the end of the boat-hook had not gone through the bottom of the boat. CHAPTER THIRTY TWO. MASTER AND SLAVE. "Eee! I say! Whatcher doing of!" roared Bob, beginning to struggle, as Dexter contrived to get his feet once more. "I--I couldn't help it, Bob," he said, in a shame-faced way. "Couldn't help it! Here, don'tcher try to wake me again that way." "I didn't. I--" "Coming jumping on a fellow." "I didn't, Bob. The boat stopped all at once, and I tumbled forward." "Then just you tumble on to some one else next time," growled Bob, sitting up rubbing himself, and then yawning loudly. "Why, hulloa! Whatcher been doing of now?" "I? Nothing Bob." "Yes, you have. You've got the boat aground." "I--I didn't indeed, Bob. It went like that all of itself," stammered Dexter. "Went all of itself! You are a fellow to leave to manage a boat. I just shut my eyes a few minutes and you get up to them games. Here, give us holt!" He snatched at the boat-hook, and began to thrust with all his might: but in vain. "Don't stand staring like that," he cried, becoming all at once in a violent hurry to get on. "Come and help. D'yer want them to come and ketch us!" Dexter went to his help, and by dint of thrusting together the boat was pushed off the shallows, and gliding once more into deep water began to float gently on. There was a few minutes' silence, during which Bob took the sculls and began to pull, looking, with his eyes red and swollen up, anything but a pleasant companion; and in spite of himself Dexter began to think that Bob as a conversational friend across the water was a very different being to Bob as the captain of their little vessel, armed with authority, and ready to tyrannise over his comrade to the fullest extent. Suddenly a thought occurred to Dexter as he ran his eye over the handsome cushions of the well-varnished boat. "Bob!" he said. There was no answer. "Bob, did you take that parcel and drop it in Sir James's letter-box!" "What parcel!" said Bob sourly. "That one I threw over to you last night." "Oh! that one as fell in the water?" "Yes: did you take it?" "Why, didn't you tell me to!" "Yes: but did you?" "Why, of course I did." "That's right. I say, where are we now?" "I d'know. Somewhere down the river." "Hadn't we better begin to fish?" "Fish? What for?" "Because I'm getting so hungry, and want my breakfast." "Yes, you're a nice fellow to wantcher bragfuss. Got no money and no clothes. I s'pose I shall have to keep yer." "No, no, Bob. I'll work, or fish, or do anything." "Yes, so it seems," said Bob sarcastically; "a-sitting there like a gent, and letting me do everything." "Well, let me pull one oar." "No, I can do it, and you shall have some bragfuss presently. I don't want to be took, because you've stole a boat." Dexter turned pale, and then red with indignation, but he did not say anything, only waited till his lord should feel disposed to see about getting a meal. This happened when they were about a couple of miles lower down the stream, which steadily opened out and became more beautiful, till at last it seemed to be fully double the size it was at Coleby. Here they came abreast of a cluster of cottages on the bank, one of which, a long whitewashed stone building, hung out a sign such as showed that it was a place for refreshment. "There," said Bob, "we'll land there--I mean you shall, and go in and buy some bread and cheese." "Bread and cheese," faltered Dexter. "Shan't we get any tea or coffee, and bread and butter?" "No! of course not. If we both get out they'll be asking us questions about the boat." Bob backed the boat close to the shore, stern foremost, and then said-- "Now, look here, don't you make no mistake; but you jump out as soon as I get close in, and go and ask for four pen'orth o' bread and cheese. I'll row out again and wait till you come." Dexter did not like the task, and he could not help thinking of the pleasant breakfast at the doctor's, but recalling the fact that a fortune was not to be made without a struggle, he prepared to land. "But I haven't got any money," he said. "No, you haven't got any money," said Bob sourly, as he tucked one oar under his knee, so as to get his hand free to plunge into his pocket. "There you are," he said, bringing out sixpence. "Look sharp." Dexter took the money, leaped ashore, and walked up to the little public-house, where a red-faced woman waited upon him, and cut the bread and cheese. "Well," she said, looking wonderingly at her customer, "don't you want no beer!" Dexter shook his head, lifted up his change, and hurried out of the place in alarm, lest the woman should ask him any more questions. But she did not attempt to, only came to the door to watch the boy as he went back to the boat, which was backed in so that Dexter could jump aboard; but Bob, whose eyes were looking sharply to right and left in search of danger, just as a sparrow scrutinises everything in dread while it is eating a meal, managed so badly in his eagerness to get away, that, as Dexter leaped in, he gave a tug with the sculls, making the boat jerk so sharply that Dexter's feet began to move faster than his body, and the said body came down in a sitting position that was more sudden than agreeable. "Well, you are a fellow!" cried Bob, grinning. "Any one would think you had never been in a boat before." Dexter gathered together the portions of food which had been scattered in the bottom of the boat, and then sat looking ruefully at his companion. "If any of that there's dirty, you've got to eat it," said Bob sourly. "I shan't." As he spoke he tugged as hard as he could at the sculls, rowing away till they were well round the next bend, and quite out of sight of the woman who stood at the door watching them, and as Bob bent down, and pulled each stroke well home, Dexter sat watching him with a troubled feeling which added to his hunger and discomfort. For once more it began to seem that Bob was not half so pleasant a companion as he had promised to be when he was out fishing, and they sat and chatted on either side of the little river. But he brightened up again as Bob suddenly began to pull harder with his left-hand scull, turning the boat's head in toward the shore where a clump of trees stood upon the bank with their branches overhanging, and almost touching the water. "Look out! Heads!" cried Bob, as the bow of the boat touched the leafage, and they glided on through the pliant twigs; and as the sculls were laid in, Bob rose up in his place, seized a good-sized bough, and holding on by it worked the boat beneath, and in a position which enabled him to throw the chain over, and securely moor the little vessel in what formed quite a leafy arbour with the clear water for floor, and the thwarts of the boat for seats. "There," cried Bob, in a satisfied tone, and with a little of his old manner, "whatcher think o' that? Talk about a place for a bragfuss! Why, it would do to live in." Dexter said it was capital, but somehow just then he began to think about the pleasant room at the doctor's, with the white cloth and china, and the silver coffee-pot, and the odour from the covered dish which contained ham or bacon, or fried soles. "Now then!" cried Bob; "I'm as hungry as you, and we're all safe here, so hand over." Dexter gave him one of the portions of bread and cheese--the better of the two, but Bob turned it over and examined it in a dissatisfied way, scowling at it the while, and casting an occasional glance at that which Dexter had reserved for himself. "What I says is--play fair," he growled. "I don't want no more than half." "But that's the bigger half, Bob." "I dunno so much about that." "And this is the one which seemed to be a little gritty." "Oh, is it?" said Bob surlily; and he began eating in a wolfish fashion, making fierce snaps and bites at his food, as he held the bread in one hand, the cheese in the other, and taking alternate mouthfuls. "Hunger is sweet sauce," and Dexter was not long in following Bob's example, that is as to the eating, but as he sat there munching away at the cakey home-made bread, and the strong cheese, in spite of its being a glorious morning, and the sun showering down in silver pencils through the overhanging boughs--in spite of the novelty of the scene, and the freedom, there did not seem to be so much romance in the affair as had been expected; and try how he would he could not help longing for a good hot cup of coffee. This was not heroic, but the boy felt very miserable. He had been up all night, going through adventures that were, in spite of their tameness, unusually exciting, and he was suffering from a nervous depression which robbed him of appetite as much as did his companion's words. For instead of being merry, confidential, and companionable, Bob scarcely opened his lips now without assuming the overbearing bullying tone he had heard so often from his elders. "Come, get on with your bragfuss," said Bob sharply. "We're going on d'rectly, and you've got to pull." "I can't eat much this morning," said Dexter apologetically; "and I'm thirsty." "Well, why don't yer drink!" said Bob, grinning, and pointing at the river. "Here, I'll show you how." He took off his cap, and placing his chest on the side of the boat, leant over till his lips touched the clear flowing stream. "Hah!" he said at last, rising and passing his hand across his lips; "that's something like water, that is. Better than tea, or drinking water out of a mug." "Doesn't it taste fishy?" Dexter ventured to say. "Fishy! Hark at him!" cried Bob mockingly. "You try." Dexter's mouth felt hot and dry, and laying aside what he had not eaten of his bread and cheese he followed his companion's example, and was drawing in the cool sweet water, when he suddenly felt Bob's hand on the back of his, neck, and before he could struggle up his head was thrust down into the water over and over again. "Don't, don't!" he panted, as he thrust against the side of the boat and got free. "You shouldn't do that." There was a flash of anger in his eyes as he faced Bob, and his fists were clenched, but he did not strike out, he contented himself with rubbing the water from his eyes, and then wiping his face upon his handkerchief. "I shouldn't do that? Why shouldn't I do that?" said Bob threateningly. "Serve yer right, sittin' down to bragfuss without washing yer face. Going to have any more?" Dexter did not answer; but finished drying his face, and then took up his bread and cheese. "Oh, that's it, is it!" said Bob. "Sulky, eh? Don't you come none o' them games with me, young fellow, or it will be the worse for yer." Dexter made no reply, but went on eating, having hard work to swallow each mouthful. Time back all this would not have made so much impression upon him, but the social education he had been receiving in his intercourse with Helen Grayson had considerably altered him, and his breast swelled as he felt the change in his companion, and began to wish more than ever that he had not come. Almost as he thought this he received a curious check. "It won't do for you to be sulky with me," began his tyrant. "You've got to go along o' me now you have come. You couldn't go back after stealing this boat." "Stealing!" cried Dexter, flushing up. "I didn't steal it. We borrowed it together." "Oh, did we?" said Bob mockingly; "I don't know nothing about no _we_. It was you stole it, and persuaded me to come." "I didn't," cried Dexter indignantly. "I only borrowed it, and you helped me do it." "Oh, did I? We shall see about that. But you can't go back never no more, so don't you think that." Bob's guess at his companion's thoughts was pretty shrewd; and as Dexter sat looking at him aghast, with the full extent of his delinquency dawning upon him, Bob began to unloose the chain. "Now then," he said, "finish that there bread and cheese, or else put it in yer pocket. We're going on again, and I want to catch our dinner." The idea of doing something more in accordance with the object of their trip roused Dexter into action, and, after helping to force the boat from among the branches, he willingly took one of the sculls; and in obedience to the frequently given orders, rowed as well as his inexperience would allow, and they glided swiftly down the stream. "What are you going to do first, Bob?" said Dexter, who felt more bright and cheerful now out in the sunshine, with the surface all ripple and glow. "Why, I telled yer just now!" said the boy surlily. "Mind what yer doing, or you'll catch a crab." Dexter did catch one the next moment, thrusting his oar in so deeply that he could hardly withdraw it, and bringing forth quite a little storm of bullying from his companion. "Here, I shall never make nothing o' you," cried Bob. "Give's that there oar." "No, no, let me go on pulling," said Dexter good-humouredly, for his fit of anger had passed off. "I'm not used to it like you are, but I shall soon learn." He tried to emulate Bob's regular rowing, and by degrees managed to help the boat along till toward midday, when, seeing an attractive bend where the river ran deep and dark round by some willows, Bob softly rowed the boat close up to the bank, moored her to the side, and then began to fit together his tackle, a long willow wand being cut and trimmed to do duty for a rod. This done, a very necessary preliminary had to be attended to, namely, the finding of bait. Bob was provided with a little canvas bag, into which he thrust a few green leaves and some scraps of moss, before leaping ashore, and proceeding to kick off patches of the bank in search of worms. Dexter watched him attentively, and then his eyes fell upon a good-sized, greenish-hued caterpillar which had dropped from a willow branch into the boat. This seemed so suitable for a bait that Dexter placed it in one of Bob's tin boxes, and proceeded to search for more; the boughs upon being shaken yielding six or seven. "Whatcher doing of?" grumbled Bob, coming back to the boat, after securing a few worms. "Yah! they're no use for bait." All the same, though, the boy took one of the caterpillars, passed the hook through its rather tough skin, and threw out some distance in front of the boat, and right under the overhanging boughs. There was a quick bob of the float, and then it began to glide along the top of the water, while, as Bob skilfully checked it, there was a quick rushing to and fro, two or three minutes' hard fight, and a half-pound trout was drawn alongside, and hoisted into the boat. "That's the way I doos it," said Bob, whose success suddenly turned him quite amiable. "Fish will take a caterpillar sometimes. Give us another!" The bait was passed along to the fisherman, who threw out, and in five minutes was again successful, drawing in, after a short struggle, a nice little chub. After that, it was as if the disturbance of the water had driven the fish away, and though Bob tried in every direction, using the caterpillar, a worm, a bit of bread paste, and a scrap of cheese, he could not get another bite. Bob tried after that till he was tired, but no fish would bite, so he handed the rod to Dexter, who also fished for some time in vain, when a removal was determined upon; but though they tried place after place there were no more bites, and hunger having asserted itself once more, they landed to prepare their dinner. The place chosen was very solitary, being where the river ran deeply beneath a high limestone cliff, and landing, a few sticks were soon gathered together ready for a fire. "But we have no matches," said Dexter. "You mean you ain't got none," sneered Bob, taking a box out of his pocket. "I'm captain, and captains always thinks of these things. Now then, clean them fish, while I lights this fire. Got a knife, ain't yer!" Dexter had a knife, and he opened it and proceeded to perform the rather disgusting task, while Bob lay down and began blowing at the fire to get it into a blaze. That fish-cleaning was very necessary, but somehow it did not add to the charm of the _alfresco_ preparations; and Dexter could not help thinking once how uncomfortable it would be if it came on to rain and put out the fire. But it did not come on to rain; the wood burned merrily, and after a piece of shaley limestone had been found it was placed in the fire where the embers were most clear, and the fish laid upon it to cook. The success was not great, for when the fish began to feel the heat, and hissed and sputtered, the piece of stone began to send off splinters, with a loud crack, from time to time. Then a pocket-knife, though useful, is not a convenient cooking implement, especially when, for want of lard or butter, the fish began to stick to the stone, and refused to be turned over without leaving their skins behind. "Ain't it fun?" said Bob. Dexter said it was. He did not know why, for at that moment a piece of green wood had sent a jet of hot, steamy smoke in his eyes, which gave him intense pain, and set him rubbing the smarting places in a way which made them worse. "Here, don't make such a fuss over a bit o' smoke," said Bob. "You'll soon get used to that. Mind, that one's tail's burning!" Dexter did mind, but the fish stuck so close to the stone that its tail was burned off before it could be moved, a mishap which drew from Bob the remark-- "Well, you are a chap!" Before the fish were done, more and more wood had to be collected; and as a great deal of this was green, a great smoke arose, and, whenever a puff of wind came, this was far from agreeable. "How small they are getting!" said Dexter, as he watched the browning fish. _Bang_! A great piece of the stone splintered off with a report like that of a gun, but, fortunately, neither of the boys was hurt. "We shall have to buy a frying-pan and a kittle," said Bob, as soon as examination proved that the fish were safe, but stuck all over splinters of stone, which promised ill for the repast. "Can't do everything at once." "I'm getting very hungry again," said Dexter; "and, I say, we haven't got any bread." "Well, what o' that?" "And no salt." "Oh, you'll get salt enough as soon as we go down to the sea. You may think yourself jolly lucky as you've got fish, and some one as knows how to kitch 'em. They're done now. I'll let you have that one. 'Tain't so burnt as this is. There, kitch hold!" A fish hissing hot and burnt on one side is not a pleasant thing to take in a bare hand, so Dexter received his upon his pocket-handkerchief, as it was pushed toward him with a piece of stick; and then, following his companion's example, he began to pick off pieces with the blade of his pocket-knife, and to burn his mouth. "'Lishus, ain't it?" said Bob, making a very unpleasant noise suggestive of pigs. Dexter made no reply, his eyes were watering, and he was in difficulties with a bone. "I said 'lishus, ain't it!" said Bob again, after more pig noise. "Mine isn't very nice," said Dexter. "Not nice? Well, you are a chap to grumble! I give you the best one, because this here one had its tail burnt off, and now you ain't satisfied." "But it tastes bitter, and as if it wants some bread and salt." "Well, we ain't got any, have we? Can't yer wait?" "Yes," said Dexter; "but it's so full of bones." "So are you full of bones. Go on, mate. Why, I'm half done." Dexter did go on, wondering in his own mind whether his companion's fish was as unpleasant and coarse eating as the one he discussed, giving him credit the while for his disinterestedness, he being in happy ignorance of the comparative merits of fresh-water fish when cooked; and therefore he struggled with his miserable, watery, insipid, bony, ill-cooked chub, while Bob picked the fat flakes off the vertebra of his juicy trout. "Wish we'd got some more," said Bob, as he licked his fingers, and then wiped his knife-blade on the leg of his trousers. "I don't," thought Dexter; but he was silent, and busy picking out the thin sharp bones which filled his fish. "Tell you what," said Bob, "we'll--Look out!" He leaped up and dashed to the boat, rapidly unfastening the chain from where it was secured to a stump. Dexter had needed no further telling, for he had caught sight of two men at the same time as Bob; and as it was evident that they were running toward the fire, and as Dexter knew intuitively that he was trespassing, he sprang up, leaving half his chub, and leaped aboard, just as Bob sprang from the bank, seized an oar, and thrust the boat away. It was pretty close, for as the stern of the boat left the shore the foremost man made a dash at it, missed, and nearly fell into the water. CHAPTER THIRTY THREE. THE LIFE OF THE FREE. "Here," cried the man, as he recovered himself, "it's of no use. Come back!" Dexter was so influenced by the man's words that he was ready to go back at once. But Bob was made of different stuff, and he began now to work the boat along by paddling softly, fish-tail fashion. "Do you hear!" roared the man, just as the other came trotting up, quite out of breath. "Yah!" cried Bob derisively, as he began to feel safe. "Come back, you young scoundrel!" roared the man fiercely. "Here, Digges, fetch 'em back." He was a big black-whiskered man in a velveteen jacket, evidently a gamekeeper, and he spoke to his companion as if he were a dog. This man hesitated for a moment or two. "Go on! Fetch 'em back," cried the keeper. "But it's so wet." "Wet? Well, do you want me to go? In with you." The underkeeper jumped off the bank at once into the water, which was about up to his knees; but by this time Bob was working the boat along more quickly, and before the underkeeper had waded out many yards Bob had seated himself, put out the second scull, and, helped by the stream, was able to laugh defiance at his would-be captors. "Here, I ain't going any further," grumbled the underkeeper. "It will be deep water directly," and he stopped with the current rippling just about his thigh. "Are you coming back!" cried the keeper, looking round about him and pretending to pick up a big stone. "No! Come arter us if you want us," cried Bob, while Dexter crouched down watching the man's hand, ready to dodge the missile he expected to see launched at them. "If you don't come back I'll--" The man did not finish his speech, but threw himself back as if about to hurl the stone. "Yah!" cried Bob. "Y'ain't got no stone." "No, but I've got a boat up yonder." "Go and fetch it, then," cried Bob derisively. "You young scoundrels! Landing here and destroying our plantations. I'll send the police after you, and have you before the magistrates, you poaching young vagabonds!" "So are you!" cried Bob. "Hush, don't!" whispered Dexter. "Who cares for them?" cried Bob. "We weren't doing no harm." "Here, come out, Digges, and you run across and send the men with a boat that way. I'll go and get ours. We'll soon have 'em!" The man slowly waded out while the keeper trampled on the fire, stamping all over it, to extinguish the last spark, so that it should not spread, and then they separated, going in different directions. "Row, Bob; row hard," cried Dexter, who was in agony. "Well, I am a-rowing, ain't I? We warn't doing no harm." "Let me have an oar." "Ketch hold, then," cried Bob; and as soon as Dexter was seated they began to row as if for their lives, watching in turn the side of the river and the reach they were leaving behind in expectation of seeing the pursuers and the party who were to cut them off. Dexter's horror increased. He pictured himself seized and taken before a magistrate, charged with damaging, burning, and trespassing. The perspiration began to stand out in beads upon each side of his nose, his hair grew wet, and his cap stuck to his forehead as he toiled away at his oar, trying hard to obey the injunctions of his companion to pull steady--to keep time--not to dip his scull so deep, and the like. As for Bob, as he rowed he was constantly uttering derisive and defiant remarks; but all the same his grubby face was rather ashy, and he too grew tremendously hot as he worked away at his scull for quite an hour, during which time they had not seen anything more formidable than half a dozen red oxen standing knee-deep in the water, and swinging their tails to and fro to drive away the tormenting flies. "They hadn't got no boat," said Bob at last. "I know'd it all the time. Pretended to throw a stone at us when there wasn't one near, only the one we tried to cook with, flee him take hold of it and drop it again!" "No." "I did. Burnt his jolly old fingers, and serve him right. We never said nothing to him. He ain't everybody." "But let's get further away." "Well, we're getting further away, stream's taking us down. You are a coward." "You were frightened too." "No, I wasn't. I laughed at him. I'd ha' give him something if he'd touched me." "Then why did you run away?" "'Cause I didn't want no bother. Here, let's find another good place, and catch some more fish." "It won't be safe to stop yet, Bob." "Here, don't you talk to me, I know what I'm about. We'll row round that next bend, and I'll show you a game then." "Hadn't we better go on till we can buy some bread and butter?" said Dexter; and then as he saw some cattle in a field a happy hunger-engendered thought occurred to him,--"And perhaps we can get some milk." "You're allus thinking of eating and drinking," cried Bob. "All right! We'll get some, then." They rowed steadily on, with Dexter rapidly improving in the management of his oar, till a farm-house was sighted near the bank; but it was on the same side as that upon which they had had their adventure. They were afraid to land there, so rowed on for another quarter of a mile before another building was sighted. This proved to be a farm, and they rowed up to a place where the cattle came down to drink, and a plank ran out on to a couple of posts, evidently for convenience in landing from a boat, or for dipping water. "Here, I'll go this time," said Bob, as the boat glided up against the posts. "No games, you know." "What games!" "No going off and leaving a fellow!" "Don't be afraid," said Dexter. "I ain't," said Bob, with a malicious grin. "Why, if a fellow was to serve me such a trick as that I should half-kill him." Bob landed, and as Dexter sat there in the swift-streamed Devon river gazing at the rippling water, and the glorious green pastures and quickly sloping hills, everything seemed to him very beautiful, and he could not help wishing that he had a pleasanter companion and some dinner. Bob soon returned with a wine bottle full of milk and half a loaf, and a great pat of butter of golden yellow, with a wonderful cow printed upon it, the butter being wrapped in a rhubarb leaf, and the bread swung in Bob's dirty neckerchief. "Here y'are!" he cried, as he stepped into the boat and pushed off quickly, as if he felt safer when they were on the move. "We'll go lower down, and then I'll show you such a game." "Let's have some bread and butter first," said Dexter. "No, we won't; not till we get further away. We'll get some fish first and light a fire and cook 'em, and--pull away--I'll show yer." Dexter obeyed; but his curiosity was excited. "Going to catch some more fish!" "You wait and you'll see," was the reply; and in the expectation of a hearty meal matters looked more bright, especially as the day was glorious, and the scenery beautiful all round. No signs of pursuit being seen, Dexter was ready to laugh with his companion now. "I knew all the time," said Bob, with superior wisdom in every intonation of his voice; "I should only have liked to see them come." Dexter said nothing, and the next minute, as they were in a curve of the river, where it flowed dark and deep, they ran the boat in once more beside a meadow edged with pollard willows. "Now then, I'll show you some fishing," cried Bob, as he secured the boat. "No, not now: let's have something to eat first," protested Dexter. "Just you look here, young un, I'm captain," cried Bob. "Do you know what cray-fish are!" Dexter shook his head. "Well, then, I'm just going to show yer." The water was about two feet deep, and ran slowly along by a perpendicular clayey bank on the side where they were, and, deliberately undressing, Bob let himself down into the river, and then began to grope along by the side, stooping from time to time to thrust his hand into some hole. "Here, undo that chain, and let her drift by me," he cried. "I shall fish all along here." Dexter obeyed--it seemed to be his fate to obey; and taking the boat-hook he held on easily enough by tree after tree, for there was scarcely any stream here, watching intently the while, as Bob kept on thrusting his hand into some hole. "Oh!" cried Bob suddenly, as he leaned down as far as he could reach, and then rose slowly. "Got one?" "No: I missed him. It was an eel; I just felt him, and then he dodged back. Such a big un! They're so jolly hard to hold." This was exciting, and now Dexter began for the first time to be glad that he had come. "I've got him now!" cried Bob excitedly; and, rising from a stooping position, in which his shoulder was right underneath, he threw a dingy-looking little fresh-water lobster into the boat. Dexter examined it wonderingly, and was favoured with a nip from its claws for his attention. "Here's another," said Bob, and he threw one much larger into the boat, its horny shell rattling on the bottom. "Are they good to eat?" said Dexter. "Good to eat? Why, they're lovely. You wait a bit. And, I say, you look how I do it; I shall make you always catch these here, so you've got to learn." Dexter paid attention to the process, and felt that there was not much to learn: only to find out a hole--the burrow of the cray-fish,--and then thrust in his hand, and, if the little crustacean were at home, pull it out. The process was soon learned, but the temptation to begin was not great. Bob evidently found the sport exciting, however, for he searched away with more or less success, and very soon there were a dozen cray-fish of various sizes crawling about the bottom of the boat. "There's thousands of them here," cried Bob, as he searched away all along beneath the steep bank, which was full of holes, some being the homes of rats, some those of the cray-fish, and others of eels which he touched twice over--in one case for the slimy fish to back further in, but in the other, for it to make a rush out into the open water, and swim rapidly away. The pursuit of the cray-fish lasted till the row of willows came to an end, and with them the steep bank, the river spreading out again, and becoming stony and shallow. "How many are there?" said Bob, as he climbed out upon the grass, after washing his clayey arm. "Twenty-one," said Dexter. "Ah, just you wait a bit till I'm dressed." Bob said no more, but indulged in a natural towel. That is to say, he had a roll on the warm grass, and then rose and ran to and fro in the glowing sunshine for about five minutes, after which he rapidly slipped on his things, which were handed to him from the boat. "Now," he cried, as he stepped in once more and seized an oar, "I'll show you something." They rowed on for some distance, till a suitable spot was found at the edge of a low, scrubby oak wood which ran up a high bank. The place was extremely solitary. There was plenty of wood, and as soon as the boat had been moored Dexter was set to work collecting the sticks in a heap, close up to where there was a steep bare piece of stony bank, and in a few minutes the dry leaves and grass first collected caught fire, then the twigs, and soon a good glowing fire was burning. The bread and butter and bottle of milk were stood on one side, and close by them there was a peculiar noise made by the unhappy cray-fish which were tied up in Bob's neckerchief, from which the bread had been released. "Going to cook 'em!" he said; "in course I am. Wait a bit and I'll show yer. I say! this is something like a place, ain't it!" Dexter agreed that it was, for it was a sylvan nook which a lover of picnics would have considered perfect, the stream ran swiftly by, a few yards away the stony bank rose up, dotted with patches of brown furze and heath, nearly perpendicularly above their heads, and on either side they were shut in by trees and great mossy stones. The fire burned brightly, and sent up clouds of smoke, which excited dread in Dexter's breast for a few moments, but the fear was forgotten directly in the anticipation of the coming feast, in preparation for which Bob kept on adding to the central flame the burnt-through pieces of dead wood, while Dexter from time to time fetched more from the ample store beneath the trees, and broke them off ready for his chief. "What are you going to do, Bob!" he said at last. "Going to do? You want to know too much." "Well, I'm so hungry." "Well, I'll tell yer. I'm going to roast them cray-fish, that's what I'm going to do." "How are you going to kill them!" "Going to kill 'em? I ain't going to kill 'em." "But you won't roast them alive." "Won't I? Just you wait till there's plenty of hot ashes and you'll see." Dexter had made pets of so many creatures that he shrank from inflicting pain, and he looked on at last with something like horror as Bob untied his kerchief, shot all the cray-fish out on the heathy ground, and then, scraping back the glowing embers with his foot till he had left a bare patch of white ash, he rapidly thrust in the captives, which began to hiss and steam and whistle directly. The whistling noise might easily have been interpreted to mean a cry of pain, but the heat was so great that doubtless death was instantaneous, and there was something in what the boy said in reply to Dexter's protests. "Get out! It don't hurt 'em much." "But you might have killed them first." "How was I to kill 'em first?" snarled Bob, as he sat tailor fashion and poked the cray-fish into warmer places with a piece of burning stick. "Stuck your knife into them." "Well, wouldn't that have hurt 'em just as much?" "Let them die before you cooked them." "That would hurt 'em ever so much more, and took ever so much longer." "Well I shan't like to eat them," said Dexter. "More for me, then. I say! don't they smell good?" Dexter had a whiff just then, and they certainly did smell tempting to a hungry boy; but he made up his mind to partake only of bread and butter, and kept to his determination for quite five minutes after Bob had declared the cookery complete, and picked the tiny lobsters out of the hot ashes with his burnt stick. "They're too hot to touch yet," he said. "Wait a bit and I'll show you. Cut the bread." Dexter obeyed with alacrity, and was soon feasting away on what might very well be called "Boy's Delight," the honest bread and butter which has helped to build up our stalwart race. Bob helped himself to a piece of bread, spread it thickly with butter, and, withdrawing a little way from the fire, hooked a hot cray-fish to his side, calmly picking out the largest; and as soon as he could handle it he treated it as if it were a gigantic shrimp, dividing the shell in the middle by pulling, and holding up the delicate hot tail, which drew easily from its armour-like case. "Only wants a bit of salt," he cried, smacking his lips over the little _bonne bouche_, and then proceeding to pick out the contents of the claws, and as much of the body as he deemed good to eat. Dexter looked on with a feeling of disgust, while Bob laughed at him, and finished four of the cray-fish, throwing the shells over his shoulder towards the river. Then Dexter picked up one, drew off the shell, smelt it, tasted it, and five minutes later he was as busy as Bob, though when they finished the whole cooking he was seven fish behind. "Ain't they 'lishus?" cried Bob. "Yes," said Dexter, unconsciously repeating his companion's first remark, "only want a bit of salt." CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. AN AWKWARD PURSUER. It was wonderful how different the future looked after that picnic dinner by the river-side. The bread and butter were perfect, and the cray-fish as delicious as the choicest prawns. The water that glided past the bank was like crystal; the evening sun lit up the scene with orange and gold; and as the two boys lolled restfully upon the bank listening to the murmur of the running water, the twitter of birds, and the distant lowing of some ox, they thoroughly appreciated everything, even the rest after their tiring night's work and toilsome day. "Are we going on now!" said Dexter at last. "What for?" asked Bob, as he lay upon his back, with his head in a tuft of heath. "I don't know." "What's the good of going on? What's the good o' being in a hurry?" "I'm not in a hurry, only I should like to get to an island where there's plenty of fruit." "Ah, we shan't get to one to-day!" said Bob, yawning. Then there was silence; and Dexter lay back watching the beautiful river, and the brown boat as it swung easily by its chain. Soon a butterfly flitted by--a beautiful orange brown butterfly covered with dark spots, dancing here and there over the sylvan nook, and the next minute Dexter as he lay on his back felt cool, and began wondering while he looked straight up at the stars, fancying he had been called. He felt as if he had never seen so many stars before glittering in the dark purple sky, and he began wondering how it was that one minute he had been looking at that spotted butterfly, and the next at the stars. And then it dawned upon him that he must have been fast asleep for many hours, and if he had felt any doubt about this being the right solution of his position a low gurgling snore on his left told that Bob Dimsted was sleeping still. It was a novel and curious sensation that of waking up in the silence and darkness, with the leaves whispering, and that impression still upon him that he had been called. "It must have been old Dan'l," he had thought at first. "Perhaps he was in search of them," and he listened intently. Or it might have been the men who had come upon them where they had the first fire, and they had seen this one. "No, they couldn't see this one, for it was out." Dexter was about to conclude that it was all imagination, when, from far away in the wood he heard, in the most startling way:--_Hoi hoi_--_hoo hoo_! He started to his feet, and was about to waken Bob, when a great ghostly-looking bird came sweeping along the river, turned in at the nook quite low down, and then seemed to describe a curve, passing just over his head, and uttered a wild and piercing shriek that was appalling. Dexter's blood ran cold, as the cry seemed to thrill all down his spine, and in his horror he made a rush to run away anywhere from the terrible thing which had startled him. But his ill luck made him once more startle Bob from his slumbers, for, as he ran blindly to reach the shelter of the wood, he fell right over the sleeping boy, and went down headlong. "Here! I--oh, please sir, don't sir--don't sir,--it was that other boy, sir, it wasn't me, sir. It was--was--it was--why, what games are you up to now!" "Hush! Bob. Quick! Let's run." "Run!" said Bob excitedly, as the frightened boy clung to him. "I thought they'd come." "Yes, they're calling to one another in the wood," whispered Dexter excitedly; "and there was a horrid something flew up, and shrieked out." "Why, I heerd it, and dreamed it was you." "Come away--come away!" cried Dexter. "There, hark!" _Hoi hoi_--_hoi hoi_! came from not far away. "Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Bob. "You are a one!" and putting his hands to his mouth, to Dexter's great astonishment he produced a very good imitation of the cry. "Why, you'll have them hear us and come," he whispered. "Yah! you are a coward! Why, it's an old howl." "Owl! calling like that!" "Yes, to be sure. I've heerd 'em lots o' times when I've been late fishing up the river." "But there was a big thing flew over my head, and it shrieked out." "That was a howl too. Some of 'em shouts, and some of 'em screeches. I say, I hope you've kept a heye on the boat!" "Are you sure that other was an owl too!" said Dexter excitedly. "Course I am. Think I've been out in the woods with father after the fezzans, and stopping out all night, without knowing a howl?" Dexter felt quite warm now. "I never heard one before, and it frightened me." "Yes, you're easily frightened," said Bob contemptuously. "You haven't been to sleep, have you!" "Yes, I have." "Then you oughtn't to have been. If you've been to sleep and let that boat go, I'll never forgive you." Bob had hardly uttered the words when Dexter, who had forgotten all about the boat, ran to the water's edge feeling sure that it was gone. But it was quite safe, and he went back to Bob. "What shall we do now!" he said. "Do?" said Bob, yawning. "You sit and keep watch while I go to sleep for a quarter of an hour. Then you may call me, and I'll take my turn." Bob curled himself up after the fashion of a dog, and went off to sleep directly, while, as Dexter, who felt chilly, began to walk up and down between the water's edge and the steep cliff-like bank, he could not help once more wishing that he was in his comfortable bed at the doctor's. He waited for long over a quarter of an hour, keeping his lonely watch, but Bob slept on and snored. At the end of about an hour and a half he thought it would only be fair to call his companion to take his turn, but he called in vain. Then he tried shaking, but only to elicit growls, and when he persevered Bob hit out so savagely that Dexter was fain to desist. "I'll let him sleep half an hour longer," he said to himself; and he walked to and fro to keep himself warm. It must have been after an hour that he called Bob again. "All right," said that worthy. "But it isn't all right," cried Dexter. "It ain't fair. Come: get up." "All right! I'll get up directly. Call me in about ten minutes." Dexter waited a little while, and called his companion. But in vain. And so it went on, with the sleeper sometimes apologetic, sometimes imploring, till it was broad daylight; and then Bob rose and shook himself. "I say, 'tain't fair," said Dexter ill-humouredly. "Well, why didn't you make me get up!" "I did try, lots of times." "But you didn't half try. You should have got me quite awake." "It's too bad, and I'm as sleepy as can be," grumbled Dexter. "Here! whatcher going to do?" cried Bob. "Lie down and sleep till breakfast-time." "Oh, are yer?" cried Bob. "We've got to go and catch our breakfasts." "What, now?" "To be sure. I'm getting hungry. Come along. I'll find a good place, and it's your turn now to get some cray-fish." "But I'm so cold and sleepy." "Well, that'll warm yer. There, don't look sulky." Bob got into the boat and unfastened the chain, so that there was nothing left for Dexter to do but follow; and they rowed away down the river, which was widening fast. The exercise and the rising sun sent warmth and brighter thoughts into Dexter, so that he was better able to undertake the task of searching the holes for cray-fish when the boat was brought up under a suitable bank, and urged on by Bob he had to undress and take an unwilling bath, and a breakfast-hunt at the same time. He was clumsy, and unaccustomed to the task, but driven by Bob's bullying tones, and helped by the fact that the little crustaceans were pretty plentiful, he managed to get a dozen and a half in about an hour. "There, come out, and dress now," said Bob ill-humouredly. "It's more trouble to tell you than to have got 'em myself. I'd ha' found twice as many in the time." Dexter shivered, and then began to enjoy the warmth of his garments after as good a wipe as he could manage with a pocket-handkerchief. But it was the row afterwards that gave the required warmth--a row which was continued till another farm-house was seen beside a great cider orchard. Here Dexter had to land with sixpence and the empty bottle. "I promised to take that there bottle back," said Bob, with a grin, "but I shan't now. Lookye here. You make 'em give you a good lot of bread and butter for the sixpence, and if they asks you any questions, you say we're two gentlemen out for a holiday." Dexter landed, and went up to the farm-house, through whose open door he could see a warm fire, and inhale a most appetising odour of cooking bacon and hot coffee. A pleasant-faced woman came to the door, and her ways and looks were the first cheery incidents of Dexter's trip. "Sixpennyworth of bread and butter, and some milk?" she said. "Yes, of course." She prepared a liberal exchange for Dexter's coin, and then after filling the bottle put the boy's chivalry to the test. "Why, you look as if you wanted your breakfast," she said. "Have a cup of warm coffee?" Dexter's eyes brightened, and he was about to say _yes_. But he said _no_, for it seemed unfair to live better than his comrade, and just then the vision of Bob Dimsted looking very jealous and ill-humoured rose before him. "I'm in a hurry to get back," he said. The woman nodded, and Dexter hastened back to the water-side. "I was just a-going without yer," was his greeting. "What a while you've been!" "I was as quick as I could be," said Dexter apologetically. "No, you weren't, and don't give me none of your sarce," said Bob. "Kitch holt o' that scull and pull. D'yer hear!" Dexter obeyed, and they rowed on for about a mile before a suitable place was found for landing and lighting a fire, when, after a good deal of ogreish grumbling, consequent upon Bob wanting his breakfast, a similar meal to that of the previous day was eaten, and they started once more on their journey down-stream to the sea, and the golden land which would recompense Dexter, as he told himself, for all this discomfort, the rough brutality of his companion, and the prickings of conscience which he felt whenever Coleby occurred to his mind, and the face of Helen looked reproach into the very depth of his inner consciousness. All that morning, when they again started, he found the river widen and change. Instead of being clear, and the stones visible at the bottom, the banks were further away, so were the hills, and the water was muddy. What was more strange to Dexter was that instead of the stream carrying them along it came to meet them. At last Bob decided that they would moor by the bank, and begin once more to fish. They landed and got some worms, and for a time had very fair sport, taking it in turns to catch some small rounded silvery and creamy transparent fish, something like dace, but what they were even Bob did not know. He was never at a loss, however, and he christened them sea-gudgeon. Dexter was just landing one when a sour-looking man in a shabby old paintless boat came by close to the shore, and looked at them searchingly. But he looked harder at the boat as he went by, turned in, as it seemed, and rowed right into the land. "There must be a little river there," Bob said. "We'll look presently. I say, didn't he stare!" Almost as he spoke the man came out again into the tidal river and rowed away, went up some distance, and they had almost forgotten him when they saw him come slowly along, close inshore. "Bob," whispered Dexter, "he's after us." To which Bob responded with a contemptuous-- "Yah!" "Much sport?" said the man, passing abreast of their boat about half a dozen yards away, and keeping that by dipping his oars from time to time. "Pretty fair," said Bob, taking the rod. "'Bout a dozen." "What fish are they!" said Dexter eagerly, and he held up one. "Smelts," said the man, with a peculiar look. "Come fishing?" "Yes," said Bob sharply. "We've come for a day or two's fishing." "That's right," said the man, with a smile that was a little less pleasant than his scowl. "I'm a fisherman too." "Oh, are yer?" said Bob. "Yes, that's what I am." "He ain't after us," whispered Bob. "It's all right." Dexter did not feel as if it was. He had an innate dislike to the man, who looked furtive and underhanded. "Got a tidy boat there," said the man at last. "Yes, she's a good un to go along," said Bob. "Wouldn't sell her, I s'pose!" said the man. "What should we sell her for?" said Bob, hooking and landing a fish coolly enough. "I d'know. Thought you might want to part with her," said the man. "I wouldn't mind giving fifteen shillings for a boat like that." "Yah!" cried Bob mockingly. "Why, she's worth thirty at least." "Bob!" whispered Dexter excitedly. "You mustn't sell her." "You hold your tongue." "I wouldn't give thirty shillings for her," said the man, coming close now and mooring his own crazy craft by holding on to the gunwale of the gig. "She's too old." "That she ain't," cried Bob. "Why, she's nearly new." "Not she. Only been varnished up, that's all. I'll give you a pound for her." "No," said Bob, to Dexter's great relief. "I'll give you a pound for her, and my old 'un chucked in," said the man. "It's more than she's worth, but I know a man who wants such a boat as that." "You mustn't sell her, Bob," whispered Dexter, who was now in agony. "You hold your row. I know what I'm a-doing of." "Look here," said the man, "I'm going a little farder, and I'll fetch the money, and then if you like to take it we'll trade. It's more'n she's worth, though, and you'd get my little boat in, as is as good a boat as ever swum." He pushed off and rowed away, while, as soon as he was out of sight, Dexter attacked his companion with vigour. "We mustn't sell her, Bob," he said. "Why not? She's our'n now." "No, she isn't; and we've promised to take her back." "Look here!" said Bob, "have you got any money?" "No, but we shan't want any as soon as we get to the island." "Yes, we shall, and a pound would be no end of good." "But we would have to give up our voyage." "No, we shouldn't. We'd make his boat do." "But it's such a shabby one. We mustn't sell the boat, Bob." "Look here! I'm captain, and I shall do as I like." "Then I shall tell the man the boat isn't ours." "If you do I'll knock your eye out. See if I don't," cried Bob fiercely. Dexter felt hot, and his fists clenched involuntarily, but he sat very still. "If I like to sell the boat I shall. We want the money, and the other boat will do." "I say it won't," said Dexter sharply. "Why, hullo!" cried Bob, laughing. "Here's cheek." "I don't care, it would be stealing Sir James's boat, and I say it shan't be done." "Oh, yer do--do yer!" said Bob, in a bullying tone. "You won't be happy till I've given you such a licking as'll make yer teeth ache. Now, just you hold your row, and wait till I gets yer ashore, and you shall have it. I'd give it to yer now, only I should knock yer overboard and drown'd yer, and I don't want to do that the first time." Bob went on fishing, and Dexter sat biting his lip, and feeling as he used to feel when he had had a caning for something he had not done. "I shall do just as I please," said Bob, giving his head a waggle, as if to show his authority. "So you've got to sit still and look on. And if you says anything about where the boat came from, I shall tell the man you took it." "And, if you do, I shall tell him it's a lie," cried Dexter, as fiercely as his companion; and just then he saw the man coming back. CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE. BOB ASKS A QUESTION. "Caught any more?" said the man. "Only one," replied Bob. "Ah! I could show you a place where you could pull 'em up like anything. I say, though, the boat ain't worth a pound." "Oh yes, she is," said Bob. "Not a pound and the boat too." "Yes, she is," said Bob, watching Dexter the while out of the corner of one eye. "I wouldn't give a pound for her, only there's a man I know wants just such a boat." Dexter sat up, looking very determined, and ready to speak when he thought that the proper time had come, and Bob kept on watching him. "Look here!" said the man, "as you two's come out fishing, I'll give you fifteen shillings and my boat, and that's more than yours is worth." "No, you won't," said Bob. "Well, sixteen, then. Come, that's a shilling too much." Bob shook his head, hooked, and took a good-sized smelt off his hook. "It's more than I care to give," said the man, who grew warm as Bob seemed cold. "There, I'll go another shilling--seventeen." Bob still shook his head, and Dexter sat ready to burst out into an explosion of anger and threat if his companion sold the boat. "Nineteen, then," said the man. "Nineteen, and my old un as rides the water like a duck. You won't?" "No," said Bob. "Well, then," cried the man, "I'm off." "All right," said Bob coolly. "There, I'll give you the twenty shillings, but you'll have to give me sixpence back. Look here! I've got the money." He showed and rattled the pound's worth of silver he had. "Come on. You get into my boat, and I'll get into yours." "No, yer won't," said Bob. "I won't sell it." "What!" cried the man angrily, and he raised one of his oars from the water. "I won't sell," cried Bob, seizing the oars as he dropped his rod into the boat. "You mean to tell me that you're going to make a fool of me like that!" He began to pull the little tub in which he sat toward the gig, but Bob was too quick for him. The gig glided through the water at double the rate possible to the old craft, and though it was boy against man, the former could easily hold his own. Fortunately they were not moored to the bank or the event might have been different, for the man had raised his oar as if with the intention of striking the boat in which the boys were seated. "Here, you, stop!" he shouted. Bob replied in dumb show with his sculls, dipping them as fast as he could, and looking very pale the while, till they were well out of reach, when he rested for a moment, and yelled back in defiant tones the one word-- "Yah!" "All right, my lads," shouted the fellow. "I know yer. You stole that boat, that's what you've done!" "Row hard, Bob!" whispered Dexter. "It's all very fine to say row hard. You kitch hold and help." Dexter readily seized the second scull, and began to pull with so much energy and effect that they had soon passed the muddy creek up which the man had gone and come, and before long he was out of sight. "It was all your fun, Bob," said Dexter, as they went on. "I thought you meant to sell the boat." "So I did," grumbled Bob; "only you were so disagreeable about it. How are we to get on for money when mine's all done!" "I don't know," said Dexter dolefully. "Can't we work for some?" "Yah! How can we work? I say, though, he knew you'd stolen the boat." "I didn't steal it, and it isn't stolen," said Dexter indignantly. "I wrote and told Sir James that we had only borrowed it, and I sent some money, and I shall send some more if we cannot find a way to get it back." "See if they don't call it stealing," said Bob grimly. "Look there at the her'ns." He nodded toward where a couple of the tall birds were standing heel-deep in the shallow water, intent upon their fishing, and so well accustomed to being preserved that they did not attempt to rise from their places. Dexter was so much interested in the birds that he forgot all about their late adventure. Then they rowed on for about a couple of hours, and their next proceeding was to look out for a suitable spot for their meal. There were no high cliff-like banks now, but here and there, alternating with meadows, patches of woodland came down to the water's edge, and at one of these they stopped, fastened the boat to a tree where it was quite out of sight; and now for the first time they began to see boats passing along. So far the little tub in which the would-be purchaser of their gig was seated was the only one they had seen on the water, but they were approaching a village now, and in low places they had seen high posts a short distance from the water's edge, on which were festooned long nets such as were used for the salmon at the time they run. As soon as they had landed, a fire was lit, the fish cleaned, and the remainder of the bread and butter left from the last meal brought ashore. After which, as an experiment, it was decided to roast the smelts before the blaze, a task they achieved with more or less success. As each fish was deemed sufficiently cooked it was eaten at once--a piece of bread forming the plate--and, with the exception of wanting salt, declared to be delicious. "Ever so much better than chub, Bob," said Dexter, to which for a wonder that young gentleman agreed. Evening soon came on, and as it was considered doubtful whether they could find as satisfactory a place for their night's rest as that where they were, it was decided to stop, and go on at sunrise next morning. "We shall get to the sea to-morrow," said Bob, as he began to yawn. "I'm jolly glad of it, for I'm tired of the river, and I want to catch cod-fish and soles, and something big. Whatcher yawning for?" "I'm tired and sleepy," said Dexter, as he sat upon the roots of an old tree, three or four yards from the water's edge. "Yah! you're always sleepy," said Bob. "But I had to keep watch while you slept." "So you will have to again." "But that isn't fair," said Dexter, in ill-used tones. "It's your turn to watch now." "Well, I'll watch half the night, if you watch the other," said Bob. "That's fair, isn't it?" "Yes." "Then I shall lie down now, and you can call me when it's twelve o'clock." "But I shan't know when it is," protested Dexter. "Well, I ain't particular," said Bob, stretching himself beneath the tree. "Guess what you think's fair half, and I'll get up then." "But will you get up!" said Dexter. "Of course I will, if you call loud enough. There, don't bother, I'm ever so tired with rowing, and I shall go to sleep at once." Bob kept his word as soon as darkness had set in, and Dexter sat listening to the lapping of the water, and wondered whether, if they camped out like this in a foreign land, crocodiles would come out of the rivers and attack them. He sat down, for he soon grew tired of standing and walking about, and listened to Bob's heavy breathing, for the boy had gone off at once. It was very dark under the trees, and he could only see the glint of a star from time to time. It felt cold too, but as he drew himself close together with his chin down upon his knees he soon forgot that, and began thinking about the two owls he had heard the past night. Then he thought about the long-legged herons he had seen fishing in the water; then about their own fishing, and what capital fish the smelts were. From that he began to think about hunting out the cray-fish from the banks, and how one of the little things had nipped his fingers quite sharply. Next he began to wonder what Helen Grayson thought about him, and what the doctor had said, and whether he should ever see them again, and whether he should like Bob any better after a time, when camping out with him, and how long it would be before they reached one of the beautiful hot countries, where you could gather cocoa-nuts off the trees and watch the lovely birds as they flitted round. And then he thought about how long it would be before he might venture to call Bob. And then he began thinking about nothing at all. When he opened his eyes next it was morning, with the sun shining brightly, and the birds singing, and Bob Dimsted had just kicked him in the side. "Here, I say, wake up," he cried. "Why, you've been to sleep." "Have I!" said Dexter sheepishly, as he stared helplessly at his companion. "Have yer? Yes; of course yer have," cried Bob angrily. "Ain't to be trusted for a moment. You're always a-going to sleep. Whatcher been and done with that there boat!" CHAPTER THIRTY SIX. IN DIRE STRAITS. "Done with the boat?" "I haven't done anything with the boat." "Then where is it?" "Fastened up to that old tree." "Oh, is it!" cried Bob derisively. "I should like to see it, then. Come and show me!" Dexter ran to the water's edge, and found the place on the bark where the chain had rubbed the trunk, but there was no sign of the boat. "Now then," cried Bob fiercely, "where is it?" "I don't know," said Dexter dolefully. "Yes, I do," he cried. "The chain must have come undone, and it's floating away." "Oh, is it?" said Bob derisively. "Then you'd better go and find it!" "Go and find it?" "Yes; we can't go to sea in our boots, can we, stoopid?" "But which way shall I go, Bob? Sometimes the tide runs up, and sometimes it runs down." "Yes, and I'll make you run up and down. You're a nice un, you are! I just shet my eyes for a few minutes, and trust you to look after the boat, and when I wake up again you're fass asleep, and the boat gone." "I'm very sorry, Bob, but I was so tired." "Tired! You tired! What on? Here, go and find that boat!" Dexter started off, and ran along the bank in one direction, while Bob went in the other, and at the end of half an hour Dexter came back feeling miserable and despondent as he had never felt before. "Found it, Bob!" he said. For answer his companion threw himself down upon his face, and began beating the ground with his fists, as if it were a drum. "I've looked along there as far as I could go," said Dexter sadly. "What shall we do!" "I wish this here was your stoopid head," snarled Bob, as he hammered away at the bare ground beneath the tree. "I never see such a chap!" "But what shall we do?" said Dexter again. "Do? I dunno, and I don't care. You lost the boat, and you've got to find it." "Let's go on together and walk all along the bank till we find somebody who has seen it." "And when we do find 'em d'yer think they'll be such softs as to give it to us back again!" This was a startling question. "I know 'em," said Bob. "They'll want to know where we got it from, and how we come by it, and all sorts o' nonsense o' that kind. Say we ain't no right to it. I know what they'll say." "But p'r'aps it's floating about?" "P'r'aps you're floating about!" cried Bob, with a snarl. "Boat like that don't go floating about without some one in it, and if it does some one gets hold of it, and says it's his." This was a terrible check to their adventurous voyage, as unexpected as it was sudden, and Dexter looked dolefully up in his companion's face. "I know'd how it would be, and I was a stoopid to bring such a chap as you," continued Bob, who seemed happiest when he was scolding. "You've lost the boat, and we shall have to go back." "Go back!" cried Dexter, with a look of horror, as he saw in imagination the stern countenance of the doctor, his tutor's searching eyes, Helen's look of reproach, and Sir James Danby waiting to ask him what had become of the boat, while Master Edgar seemed full of triumph at his downfall. "Go back?" No he could not go back. He felt as if he would rather jump into the river. "We shall both get a good leathering, and that won't hurt so very much." A good leathering! If it had been only the thrashing, Dexter felt that he would have suffered that; but his stay at the doctor's had brought forth other feelings that had been lying dormant, and now the thrashing seemed to him the slightest part of the punishment that he would have to face. No: he could not go back. "Well, whatcher going to do!" said Bob at last, with provoking coolness. "You lost the boat, and you've got to find it." "I will try, Bob," said Dexter humbly. "But come and help me." "Help yer? Why should I come and help yer? You lost it, I tell yer." Bob jumped up and doubled his fists. "Now then," he said; "get on, d'yer hear? get on--get on!" At every word he struck out at Dexter, giving him heavy blows on the arms--in the chest--anywhere he could reach. Dexter's face became like flame, but he contented himself with trying to avoid the blows. "Look here!" he cried suddenly. "No, it's you've got to look here," cried Bob. "You've got to find that there boat." Dexter had had what he thought was a bright idea, but it was only a spark, and it died out, leaving his spirit dark once more, and he seemed now to be face to face with the greatest trouble of his life. All his cares at the Union, and then at the doctor's, sank into insignificance before this terrible check to their adventure. For without the boat how could they get out of England? They could not borrow another. There was a great blank before him just at this outset of his career, and try how he would to see something beyond he could find nothing: all was blank, hopeless, and full of despair. Had his comrade been true to him, and taken his share of the troubles, it would have been bad enough; but it was gradually dawning upon Dexter that the boy he had half-idolised for his cleverness and general knowledge was a contemptible, ill-humoured bully--a despicable young tyrant, ready to seize every opportunity to oppress. "Are you a-going?" cried Bob, growing more brutal as he found that his victim made no resistance, and giving him a blow on the jaw which sent him staggering against one of the trees. This was too much; and recovering himself Dexter was about to dash at his assailant when he stopped short, for an idea that seemed incontrovertible struck him so sharply that it drove away all thought of the brutal blow he had received. "I know, Bob," he cried. "Know? What d'yer know?" "Where the boat is." "Yer do?" "Yes: that man followed us and took it away." Bob opened his mouth, and half-closed his eyes to stare at his companion, as he balanced this idea in his rather muddy brain. "Don't you see?" cried Dexter excitedly. "Come arter us and stole it!" said Bob slowly. "Yes: he must have watched us, and waited till we were asleep." "Go on with you!" "He did. I feel as sure as sure," cried Dexter. There was a pause during which Bob went on balancing the matter in his mind. "He has taken it up the river, and he thinks we shall be afraid to go after it." "Then he just thinks wrong," said Bob, nodding his head a good deal. "I thought something o' that kind a bit ago, but you made me so wild I forgot it again." "But you see now, Bob." "See? O' course I do. I'll just let him know--a thief. Here, come on, and we'll drop on to him with a policeman, and show him what stealing boats means." "No, no, Bob, we can't go with a policeman. Let's go ourselves, and make him give it up." "But s'pose he won't give it to us!" "We should have to take it," said Dexter excitedly. "Come on, then. He's got my fishing-tackle too, and--why just look at that! Did you put them there?" He darted to where his bundle and rough fishing-rod lay among the trees. "No; he must have thrown them out. Let's make haste. We know where the boat is now!" The boys started at once, and began to tramp back along the side of the river in the hope of finding the place where the boat was moored; but before they had gone far it was to find that floating down with the stream, or even rowing against the tide, was much easier work than forcing their way through patches of alder-bushes, swampy meadows, leaping, and sometimes wading, little inlets and ditches and the like. Their progress was very slow, the sun very hot, and at least a dozen times now they came upon spots which struck both as being the muddy bank off which they had captured the smelts. It was quite afternoon before they were convinced, for their further passage was stopped by the muddy inlet up which they had seen the man row, and not a hundred yards away was the bank under which they had fished. "Sure this is the place?" said Bob, as he crouched among some osiers and looked cautiously round. "Yes," said Dexter; "I'm certain this is the place. I saw him row up here. But--" "But what?" "He'd be quite sure not to take the boat up here." "Why not?" "For fear we should come after it." "Get out! Where would he take it, then?" "He'd hide it somewhere else; perhaps on the other side. Look!" Dexter pointed up the river to where, about a couple of hundred yards further on, a boat could be seen just issuing from a bed of reeds. Bob seized Dexter's arm to force him lower down among the osiers, but it was not necessary, for they were both well concealed; and as they continued there watching it was to see the boat come slowly toward them, and in a few minutes they were satisfied that it was the man they sought, propelling it slowly toward where they stooped. The fellow came along in a furtive manner, looking sharply round from time to time, as if scanning the river to see if he was observed. He came on and on till he reached the creek at whose mouth the boys were hidden, and as he came so close that they felt it impossible that they could remain unseen he suddenly ceased rowing, and stood up to shade his eyes from the sunshine, and gaze sharply down the river for some minutes. Then giving a grunt as of satisfaction he reseated himself, and rowed slowly up the creek, till he disappeared among the osiers and reeds which fringed its muddy banks. As he passed up he disturbed a shoal of large fish which came surging down, making quite a wave in the creek, till they reached the river, where all was still. "The boat's up there, Bob," said Dexter, after a long silence, so as to give the man time to get well out of hearing. "Yes, but how are we to get to it?" "Wade," said Dexter laconically. "'Tain't deep, only muddy." To cross the creek was necessary, and Bob softly let himself down from the bank till his feet were level with the water, then taking hold of a stout osier above his head he bent it down, and then dropped slowly into the water, which came nearly to his waist. "Come on!" he said, and after getting to the end of the osier he used his rod as a guide to try the depth, and with some difficulty, and the water very nearly to his chest, he got over. Dexter did not hesitate, but followed, and began to wade, feeling his feet sink at every step into the sticky mud, and very glad to seize hold of the end of the rod Bob was civil enough to hold to him from the further bank, up which they both crept, dripping like water-rats, and hid among the osiers on the other side. "Come on," whispered Bob, and with the mud and water trickling from them they crept along through quite a thicket of reeds, osiers, and the red-flowered willow-herb, while great purple patches of loosestrife blossomed above their heads. Every step took them further from the enemy, but they kept down in their stooping position, and a few yards from the bank of the river, feeling sure that they could not miss their way; and so it proved, for after what seemed to be an interminable journey they found themselves stopped by just such another creek as that which they had left, save and except that the mouth was completely hidden by a bed of reeds some of which showed where a boat had lately passed through. Whether their boat was there or not they could not tell, but it seemed easy to follow up the creek from the side they were on, and they crept along through the water-growth, which was thicker here than ever, but keeping as close as they could to the side, the scarped bank being about eight feet above the water. The creek was not above twenty feet wide, and, from the undisturbed state of the vegetation which flourished down its banks to where the tide seemed to rise, it seemed as if it was a rare thing for a boat to pass along. They stopped at every few yards to make sure that they were not passing that of which they were in search, looking carefully up and down, while the creek twined so much that they could never see any extent of water at a time. They must have wound in and out for quite three hundred yards, when, all at once, as they stooped there, panting and heated with the exercise, and with the hot sun beating down upon their heads, Dexter, who was in front, stopped short, for on his right the dense growth of reeds suddenly ceased, and on peering out it was to see a broad opening where they had been cut down, while within thirty yards stood a large stack of bundles, and beside it a rough-looking hut, toward which the man they had seen rowing up the other creek was walking. They had come right upon his home, which seemed to be upon a reedy island formed by the two creeks and the river. The boys crouched down, afraid to stir, and watching till they saw the man enter the rough reed-thatched hut, when, moving close to the edge of the bank, they crept on again after a few moments' hesitation, connected with an idea of making a retreat. Their perseverance was rewarded, for not fifty yards further on they looked down upon what seemed to be a quantity of reeds floating at the side of the creek, but one bundle had slipped off, and there, plainly enough, was the gunwale of the boat, the reeds having been laid across it to act as a concealment in case any one should glance carelessly up the creek. "Come on, Bob," whispered Dexter; and he let himself slide down into the muddy water as silently as he could, and began to tumble the bundles of reeds off into the creek. Bob followed his example, and, to their great delight, they found that the sculls and boat-hook were still in their places, while the boat-chain was secured to a stake thrust down into the mud. This was soon unloosed after they had climbed in, dripping, and covering the cushions with mud, but all that was forgotten in the delight of having found the boat. "Now, Bob, you row softly down and I'll use the boat-hook," whispered Dexter, as he stood up in the stern, while Bob sat down, seized the oars, and laid them in the rowlocks, ready to make the first stroke, when high above them on the bank they heard a quick, rushing noise, and directly after, to their horror, there stood, apparently too much dumbfounded to speak, the man they had seen a few minutes before going into the reed hut. CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN. SECOND-HAND STEALING. "Here, you, sir! stop!" he roared. "Pull away, Bob!" whispered Dexter, for Bob had paused, half-paralysed by the nearness of the danger. But he obeyed the second command, and tugged at the oars. "D'yer hear!" roared the man, with a furious string of oaths. "Hold hard or I'll--" He did not say what, but made a gesture as if striking with a great force. "Don't speak, Bob: pull hard," whispered Dexter, bending forward in the boat so as to reach the rower, and encourage him to make fresh efforts, while, for his part, he kept his eyes upon the man. "D'yer hear what I say?" he roared again. "What d'yer mean by coming here to steal my boat?" "'Tain't yours," cried Dexter. "What? Didn't I buy it of yer and pay for it?" "You came and stole it while we were asleep, you thief!" cried Dexter again. "Say I stole yer boat and I'll drown'd yer," cried the man, forcing his way through the reeds and osiers so as to keep up with them. "If you don't take that back it'll be the worse for yer. Stop! D'yer hear? Stop!" Bob stopped again, for the man's aspect was alarming, and every moment he seemed as if he was about to leap from the high bank. Fortunately for all parties he did not do this, as if he had reached the edge of the boat he must have capsized it, and if he had leaped into the bottom, he must have gone right through. Bob did not realise all this; but he felt certain that the man would jump, and, with great drops of fear upon his forehead he kept on stopping as the man threatened, and, but for Dexter's urging, the boat would have been given up. "I can hear yer," the man roared, with a fierce oath. "I hear yer telling him to row. Just wait till I get hold of you, my gentleman!" "Row, Bob, row!" panted Dexter, "as soon as we're out in the river we shall be safe." "But he'll be down upon us d'reckly," whispered Bob. "Go on rowing, I tell you, he daren't jump." "You won't stop, then, won't yer?" cried the man. "If yer don't stop I'll drive a hole through the bottom, and sink yer both." "No, he won't," whispered Dexter. "Row, Bob, row! He can't reach us, and he has nothing to throw." Bob groaned, but he went on rowing; and in his dread took the boat so near the further side that he kept striking one scull against the muddy bank, and then, in his efforts to get room to catch water, he thrust the head of the boat toward the bank where the man was stamping with fury, and raging at them to go back. This went on for a hundred yards, and they were still far from the open river, when the man gave a shout at them and ran on, disappearing among the low growth on the bank. "Now, Bob, he has gone," said Dexter excitedly, "pull steadily, and as hard as you can. Mind and don't run her head into the bank, or we shall be caught." Bob looked up at him with a face full of abject fear and misery, but he was in that frame of weak-mindedness which made him ready to obey any one who spoke, and he rowed on pretty quickly. Twice over he nearly went into the opposite bank, with the risk of getting the prow stuck fast in the clayey mud, but a drag at the left scull saved it, and they were getting rapidly on now, when all at once Dexter caught sight of their enemy at a part of the creek where it narrowed and the bank overhung a little. The man had run on to that spot, and had lain down on his chest, so as to be as far over as he could be to preserve his balance, and he was reaching out with his hands, and a malicious look of satisfaction was in his face, as the boat was close upon him before Dexter caught sight of him, Bob of course having his back in the direction they were going. "Look out, Bob," shouted Dexter. "Pull your right! pull your right!" Bob was so startled that he looked up over his shoulder, saw the enemy, and tugged at the wrong oar so hard that he sent the boat right toward the overhanging bank. "I've got yer now, have I, then?" roared the man fiercely; and as the boat drifted towards him he reached down and made a snatch with his hand at Dexter's collar. As a matter of course the boy ducked down, and the man overbalanced himself. For a moment it seemed as if he would come down into the boat, over which he hung, slanting down and clinging with both hands now, and glaring at them with his mouth open and his eyes starting, looking for all the world like some huge gargoyle on the top of a cathedral tower. "Stop!" he roared; and then he literally turned over and came so nearly into the boat that he touched the stern as it passed, and the water he raised in a tremendous splash flew all over the boys. "Now, Bob, pull, pull, pull!" cried Dexter, stamping his foot as he looked back and saw the man rise out of the water to come splashing after them for a few paces; but wading through mud and water was not the way to overtake a retreating boat, and to Dexter's horror he saw the fellow struggle to the side and begin to scramble up the bank. Once he slipped back; but he began to clamber up again, and his head was above the edge when, in obedience to Bob's tugging at the sculls, the boat glided round one of the various curves of the little creek and shut him from their view. "He'll drown'd us. He said he would," whimpered Bob. "Let's leave the boat and run." "No, no!" cried Dexter; "pull hard, and we shall get out into the river, and he can't follow us." "Yes, he can," cried Bob, blubbering now aloud. "He means it, and he'll half-kill us. Let's get out to this side and run." "Pull! I tell you, pull!" cried Dexter furiously; and Bob pulled obediently, sending the boat along fast round the curves and bends, but not so fast but that they heard a furious rustling of the osiers and reeds, and saw the figure of the man above them on the bank. "There, I told you so," whimpered Bob. "Let's get out t'other side." "Row, I tell you!" roared Dexter; and to his surprise the man did not stop, but hurried on toward the mouth of the creek. "There!" cried Bob. "He's gone for his boat, and he'll stop us, and he'll drown'd us both." "He daren't," said Dexter stoutly, though he felt a peculiar sinking all the time. "But he will, he will. It's no use to row." Dexter felt desperate now, for theirs was an awkward position; and to his horror he saw that Bob was ceasing to row, and looking up at the bank on his left. "You go on rowing," cried Dexter fiercely. "I shan't," whimpered Bob; "it's of no use. I shan't row no more." _Thud_! Bob yelled out, more in fear than in pain, for the sound was caused by Dexter swinging the boat-hook round and striking his companion a sharp rap on the side of the head. "Go on rowing," cried Dexter, "and keep in the middle." Bob howled softly; but, like a horse that has just received an admonition from the whip, he bent to his task, and rowed with all his might, blubbering the while. "That's right," cried Dexter, who felt astonished at his hardihood. "We can't be far now. Pull--pull hard. There, I can see the river. Hurray, Bob, we're nearly there!" Bob sobbed and snuffled, and bent down over his oars, rowing as if for life or death. The boat was speeding swiftly through the muddy water, the opening with its deep fringe of reeds was there, and Dexter was making up his mind to try and direct Bob to pull right or left so as to get to the thinnest place that the boat might glide right out, when he saw something. "No, Bob, only a little way," he had said. "Pull with all your might." Then he stopped short and stared aghast. Fortunately Bob was bending down, sobbing, and straining every nerve, as if he expected another blow, otherwise he would have been chilled by Dexter's look of dread, for there, just as if he had dropped from the bank and begun wading, was their enemy, who, as the boat neared, took up his position right in the middle of the creek, where the water was nearly to his chest, and, with the reeds at his back, waited to seize the boat. Dexter stood holding the boat-hook, half-paralysed for a few moments, and then, moved by despair, he stepped over the thwart toward Bob. "No, no," cried the latter, ducking down his head. "I will pull--I will pull." He did pull too, with all his might, and the boat was going swiftly through the water as Dexter stepped right over the left-hand scull, nearly toppled over, but recovered himself, and stood in the bows of the boat, as they were now within twenty yards of the man, who, wet and muddy, stood up out of the creek like some water monster about to seize the occupants of the boat for a meal. "Pull, Bob, hard!" whispered Dexter, in a low, excited voice; and Bob pulled. The boat sped on, and the man uttered a savage yell, when, with a cry of horror, Bob ceased rowing. But the boat had plenty of impetus, and it shot forward so swiftly that, to avoid its impact, the man drew a little on one side as he caught at the gunwale. _Whop_! Dexter struck at him with the light ash pole he held in his hand--struck at their enemy with all his might, and then turned and sat down in the boat, overcome with horror at what he had done, for he saw the man fall backward, and the water close over his head. Then there was a loud hissing, rustling sound as the boat glided through the reeds, which bent to right and left, and rose again as they passed, hiding everything which followed. The next moment the force given to the boat was expended, and it stopped outside the reeds, but only to commence another movement, for the tide bore the bows round, and the light gig began to glide softly along. "I've killed him," thought Dexter; and he turned cold with horror, wondering the while at his temerity and what would follow. "Was that his head?" said Bob, in rather a piteous voice, as he sat there resting upon his oars. "Yes," said Dexter, in a horror-stricken whisper. "I hit him right on the head." "You've been and gone and done it now, then," whimpered Bob. "You've killed him. That's what you've done. Never did see such a chap as you!" "I couldn't help it," said Dexter huskily. "Yes, that's what you always says," cried Bob, in an ill-used tone. "I wish I hadn't come with yer, that I do. I say, ought we to go and pick him up? It don't matter, do it?" "Yes, Bob; we must go back and pull him out," said Dexter, with a shudder. "Row back through the reeds. Quick, or he may be drowned!" "He won't want any drowning after that whack you give him on the head. I don't think I shall go back. Look! look!" Dexter was already looking at the frantic muddy figure upon the bank, up which it had climbed after emerging from the reeds. The man was half-mad with rage and disappointment, and he ran along shaking his fists, dancing about in his fury, and shouting to the boys what he would do. His appearance worked a miraculous effect upon the two boys. Dexter felt quite light-hearted in his relief, and Bob forgot all his sufferings and dread now that he was safely beyond their enemy's reach. Laying the blades of the sculls flat, as the boat drifted swiftly on with the tide, he kept on splashing the water, and shouting derisively-- "Yah! yah! Who cares for you? Yah! Go home and hang yourself up to dry! Yah! Who stole the boat!" Bob's derision seemed to be like oil poured upon a fire. The man grew half-wild with rage. He yelled, spat at them, shook his fists, and danced about in his impotent fury; and the more he raged, the more delighted Bob seemed to be. "Yah! Who stole the boat!" he kept on crying; and then added mocking taunts. "Here! hi!" he shouted, his voice travelling easily over the water, so that the man heard each word. "Here! hi! Have her now? Fifteen shillings. Come on. Yah!" "Quick, Bob, row!" cried Dexter, after several vain efforts to stop his companion's derisive cries. "Eh?" said Bob, suddenly stopping short. "Row, I tell you! Don't you see what he's going to do!" The man had suddenly turned and disappeared. "No," said Bob. "I've scared him away." "You haven't," said Dexter, with his feeling of dread coming back. "He's running across to the other creek to get the boat." Bob bent to his oars directly, and sent the gig rapidly along, and more and more into the swift current. He rowed so as to incline toward the further shore, and soon after they passed the mouth of the other creek. "Get out with yer," said Bob. "He ain't coming. And just you look here, young un; you hit me offull on the head with that there boat-hook, and as soon as ever I gits you ashore I'll make you go down on your knees and cry _chi_--_ike_; you see if I don't, and--" "There he is, Bob," said Dexter excitedly; and looking toward the other creek, there, sure enough, was the man in his wretched little tub of a boat, which he was forcing rapidly through the water, and looking over his shoulder from time to time at the objects of his pursuit. Bob pulled with all his might, growing pallid and muddy of complexion as the gig glided on. Matters had been bad enough before. Now the map would be ten times worse, while, to make things as bad as they could be, it soon became evident that the tide was on the turn, and that, unless they could stem it in the unequal battle of strength, they would be either swept back into their enemy's arms or else right up the river in a different direction to that which they intended to go, and, with the task before them, should they escape, of passing their enemy's lair once again. CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. THE CROWNING POINT OF THE TRIP. "Come and lay hold o' one scull," said Bob, whose eyes seemed to be fixed as he stared at the back of their enemy. "Oh, do be quick!" Dexter slipped into his place, took the scull, and began to row. "Getting closer, ain't he?" whispered Bob hoarsely. "Yes. I'm afraid so." "Pull, pull!" Dexter needed no telling, and he tugged away at the oar as the boat glided a little more swiftly on. "Ain't leaving him behind, are we!" growled Bob, whose face now grew convulsed with horror. "No; I'm afraid he's coming nearer." "Oh dear, oh dear!" groaned Bob. "He'll half-kill me, and it's all your fault. Let's stop rowing and give him the boat." "That we won't," cried Dexter, setting his teeth. "I'll row till I die first." "But it'll only make him more savage," growled Bob. "I wish I was safe at home." "You're not half-pulling, Bob." "It's of no use, matey. He's sure to ketch us, and the furder we rows, the more wild he'll be." "I don't care," cried Dexter; "he shan't have it if I can help it. Row!" In his most cowardly moments Bob was obedience itself, and breaking out into a low sobbing whimper, as if it were a song to encourage him in his task, he rowed on with all his might, while only too plainly it could be seen that the man was gaining steadily upon them in spite of the clumsiness of his boat; and consequently it was only a question of time before the boys were overtaken, for the muscles of the man were certain to endure longer than those of Dexter, untrained as they were to such work. "He's closer, ain't he?" whined Bob. "Yes, ever so much," replied Dexter, between his set teeth. "Well, jest you recollect it was you hit him that whack on the head. I didn't do nothing." "Yes, you did," said Dexter sharply. "You said, _yah_! at him, and called him names." "No, I didn't. Don't you be a sneak," whined Bob. "You were ever so much worse than me. Is he coming closer?" "Yes." It was a fact, closer and closer, and the tide ran so strongly now that the boys had hard work to make much progress. They did progress, though, all the same, for their boat was narrow and sharp. Still the current was dead against them, and their want of movement added to their despair. Bad as it was for them, however, it was worse for the man in his heavy little broadly-bowed tub; and so it happened that just as Bob began to row more slowly, and burst into a fit of howling, which made Dexter feel as if he would like to turn and hit him over the head with his oar--a contact of scull against skull--the man suddenly ceased rowing, turned in his seat, and sat shaking his fist at them, showing his teeth in his impotent rage. "There!" cried Bob, who was transformed in an instant. "We've bet him. He can't pull no further. Yah! yah!" Bob changed back to his state of cowardly prostration, and began to tug once more at his oar, for his derisive yell galvanised the man once more into action, and the pursuit was continued. "Oh!" howled Bob. "Who'd ha' thought o' that?" "Who's stupid now?" panted Dexter, as he too rowed with all his might. Bob did nothing but groan, and the pursuit and flight were once more continued, each moment with despair getting a stronger hold of the fugitives. The oar felt hot in Dexter's blistered hands, a peculiar sensation of heaving was in his chest, his eyes began to swim, and he was just about to cease rowing, when he could hardly believe his starting eyes--their enemy had once more given up the pursuit, and was sitting wrenched round, and staring after them. "Don't, pray, don't shout at him this time, Bob," panted Dexter. "I won't if you're afraid," said the young scoundrel. "Keep on rowing, or he'll come after us again." Bob's scull was dipped again directly, and the motion of the boat was kept up sufficiently to counteract the drift of the tide, while the man in the little tub was swept rapidly away. "Let's get over the other side to those trees," said Dexter, as he felt that he could row no further, and the boat's head was directed half-across the stream so as to reach the clump of willows indicated, where, after a much heavier pull than they had anticipated, the gig was made fast, and Bob's first act after laying down his scull was to lean over the side and drink heartily of the muddy water. Dexter would gladly have lain down to rest, but there was a watch to keep up. Bob mocked at the idea. "Yah!" he said; "he won't some any more. I say, are you nearly dry?" "Nearly," said Dexter, "all but my boots and socks." These he took off, and put in the sun to dry, as he sat there with his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, watching till Bob was asleep. He was faint and hungry, and the idea was strong in his mind that the man would steal down upon them when he was not expected. This thought completely drove away all drowsiness, though it did not affect his companion in the slightest degree. The next thing ought to have been to get some food, but there was no likely place within view, and though several boats and a barge or two passed, the fear of being questioned kept the watcher from hailing them, and asking where he could get some bread and milk. The hours glided slowly by, but there was no sign of the shabby little boat. The tide ran up swiftly, and the gig swung easily from its chain; and as Dexter sat there, hungry and lonely, he could not keep his thoughts at times from the doctor's comfortable house. Towards evening the socks and boots were so dry that Dexter replaced them, looking down the while rather ruefully at his mud-stained trousers. He rubbed them and scratched the patches with his nails; but the result was not satisfactory, and once more he sat gazing up the river in expectation of seeing their enemy come round the bend. It was getting late, and the tide had turned, as Dexter knew at once by the way in which the boat had swung round with its bows now pointing up-stream. And now seemed the time when the man might appear once more in pursuit. The thought impressed him so that he leaned over and shook Bob, who sat up and stared wonderingly about. "Hallo!" he said. "What time is it!" "I don't know, but the tide has turned, and that man may come after us again." "Nay, he won't come any more," said Bob confidently. "Let's go and get something to eat." It was a welcome proposal, and the boat being unmoored, Dexter took one of the sculls, and as they rowed slowly down with the tide he kept his eyes busy watching for the coming danger, but it did not appear. Bob went ashore at a place that looked like a ferry, where there was a little public-house, and this time returned with a small loaf, a piece of boiled bacon, and a bottle of cider. "I'd ha' brought the bacon raw, and we'd ha' cooked it over a fire," said Bob, "only there don't seem to be no wood down here, and there's such lots of houses." Dexter did not feel troubled about the way in which the bacon was prepared, but sat in the boat, as it drifted with the tide, and ate his portion ravenously, but did not find the sour cider to his taste. By the time they had finished, it was growing dark, and lights were twinkling here and there on either bank, showing that they were now in a well-populated part. "Where are we to sleep to-night, Bob?" said Dexter at last. "Dunno yet. Can't see no places." "We must be near the sea now, mustn't we?" "Yes, pretty handy to it," said Bob, with the confidence of one in utter ignorance. "We shall be there to-morrow, and then we can catch heaps of cod-fish, and soles, and mack'rel, and find oysters. It'll be all right then." This was encouraging, but somehow Dexter did not feel so much confidence in his companion as of old. But Bob's rest, and the disappearance of danger had brought him back to his former state, and he was constantly making references to the departed enemy. "I should just liked to have ketched him touching me!" he said. "I'd ha' give his shins such a kicking as would soon have made him cry `Leave off.'" Dexter sat and stared through the gloom at the young Gascon. "I'd ha' soon let him know what he'd get if he touched me." "Hi, Bob! look out!" Bob uttered a cry of dread, and nearly jumped overboard as something still and dark suddenly loomed up above him. Then there was a bump, which nearly finished what the boy had felt disposed to do; and then they were gliding along by the side of a vessel anchored in midstream. As they swept past the stern the boat bumped again against something black and round, which proved to be a floating tub. With this they seemed to have become entangled, for there was a rasping grating noise, then the boat's chain began to run rapidly over the bows, the boat swung round, and their further progress was checked. A piece of the chain with the hook had been left hanging over, and when they had touched the tub buoy the hook had caught, and they were anchored some little distance astern the large vessel. "Here's a game!" cried Bob, as soon as he had recovered from his astonishment. "Well, we can't go on in the dark. Let's stop here." "But we've got to find a place to sleep, Bob," protested Dexter. "Yah! you're always wanting to go to sleep. There ain't no place to sleep ashore, so let's sleep in the boat. Why, we shall always have to bunk down there when we get out to sea." "But suppose the boat should sink?" "Yah! suppose it did. We'd swim ashore. Only mind you don't get outer bed in the night and walk into the water. I don't want to go to sleep at all." Dexter did not feel drowsy, but again he could not help thinking of his room with the white hangings, and of how pleasant it would be to take off his clothes once more and lie between sheets. "Some chaps is always thinking about going to bed," said Bob jauntily. "Long as I gets a nap now and then, that's all I want." Dexter did not know it, but Bob Dimsted was a thorough-paced second-hand boy. Every expression of this kind was an old one, such as he had heard from his father, or the rough men who consorted with him, from the bullying down to the most playful remark. But, as aforesaid, Dexter did not realise all this. He had only got as far as the fact that Bob was not half so nice as he used to be, and that, in spite of his boasting and bullying, he was not very brave when put to the test. "There, I shan't go to sleep yet. You can have one o' them cushins forward," said Bob at last; and, suffering now from a sudden feeling of weariness, Dexter took one of the cushions forward, placed it so as to be as comfortable as possible, realising as he did this that, in spite of his words, Bob was doing the same with two cushions to his one, and before he had been lying there long, listening to the rippling of the water, and gazing up at the stars, a hoarse, wheezing noise proclaimed the fact that Bob Dimsted was once more fast asleep. Dexter was weary now in the extreme, the exertion and excitement he had gone through had produced, in connection with the irregular feeding, a state of fatigue that under other circumstances might have resulted in his dropping off at once, but now he could only lie and listen, and keep his eyes dilated and wide open, staring for some danger which seemed as if it must be near. He did not know what the danger might be, unless it was that man with the boat, but something seemed to threaten, and he could not sleep. Then, too, he felt obliged to think about Bob and about their journey. Where they were going, what sort of a place it would be, and whether they would be any more happy when they got to some beautiful island; for he was fain to confess that matters were very miserable now, and that the more he saw of Bob Dimsted the less he liked him. He was in the midst of one of his thoughtful moods, with Bob for his theme, and asking himself what he should do if Bob did begin to thrash him first time they were on shore; and he had just come to the conclusion that he would not let Bob thrash him if he could help it, when Bob suddenly leaped forward and hit him a round-handed sort of blow, right in the back of the neck. This so enraged him that he forgot directly all about companionship, and the sort of tacit brotherly compact into which they had entered, and springing at his assailant he struck him a blow in the chest, which sent him staggering back. For a moment or two Bob seemed to be beaten; then he came at him furiously, the turf was trampled and slippery, and they both went down; then they got up again, and fought away, giving and taking blows, every one of which sounded with a loud slap. That fight seemed as if it would never end, and Dexter felt as if he were getting the worst of it, consequent upon an inherent dislike to inflict pain, and his having passed over again and again opportunities for administering effective blows. At last they joined in what became little more than a wrestle, and Dexter felt the ground giving way beneath his feet; the back of his neck hurt him terribly, and he was about to give in, when the boys began to cheer, Mr Sibery ran up with the cane, and the doctor came looking stern and frowning, while he saw Helen Grayson put her hand to her eyes and turn away. "It's all Bob Dimsted's fault," he cried passionately; and he woke up with the words upon his lips, and a crick in the back of his neck, consequent upon the awkward cramped-up position in which he had lain. It was broad daylight, and for a few moments he was too much confused to understand where he was; but as he realised it all, and cast a quick look round in search of danger, he saw that they were hooked on to the slimy buoy, that twenty yards further there was the hull of an old schooner, against which they had been nearly capsized the previous evening, and four or five hundred yards beyond that, slowly paddling along, was their enemy, looking over his shoulder as if he had seen them, and meant to make sure of them now. Dexter hesitated between wakening Bob and setting the boat adrift. He decided on doing the latter, and hauling on the chain, he drew the boat right up to the buoy, followed the chain with his hands till he could touch the hook, and after some difficulty, his efforts reminding him of the night when he unfastened the chain in the boat-house--he dragged the hook from where it clung to a great rusty link, and all the time his eyes were as much fixed upon the man in the boat as upon the task he had in hand. Clear at last, and drifting away again. That was something towards safety, and he now stepped over the thwarts and shook Bob. Bob was too comfortable to open his eyes, and no matter what his companion did he could get no reply till he bent lower, and, inspired by the coming danger, shouted in his ear-- "I've got yer at last." Bob sprang up as if electrified, saw who spoke, and was about to burst into a torrent of angry abuse, when he followed the direction of Dexter's pointing hand, caught the approaching danger, and seized an oar. It was none too soon, for as Dexter seized the other, the man evidently realised that his prey was about to make another effort to escape, and, bending to his work, he sent the little tub-like boat surging through the water. "Pull, Bob!" said Dexter excitedly, an unnecessary order, for Bob had set his teeth, and, with his face working, was tugging so hard that it needed all Dexter's efforts to keep the boat from being pulled into the right-hand shore. The chase had begun in full earnest, and for the next hour, with very little alteration in their positions, it kept on. Then the pace began to tell on the boys. They had for some time been growing slower in their strokes, and they were not pulled so well home. Bob engaged every now and then in a dismal, despairing howl, usually just at the moment when Dexter thrust his oar too deeply in the water, and had hard work to get it out. But their natural exhaustion was not of such grave consequence as might have been imagined, for their pursuer was growing weary too, and his efforts were greatly wanting in the spirit he displayed at first. On the other hand, though the man came on slowly, he rowed with a steady, stubborn determination, which looked likely to last all the morning, and boded ill for those of whom he was in chase. Bob's face was a study, but Dexter's back was toward him, and he could not study it. The enemy was about two hundred yards behind, and whenever he seemed to flag a little Bob's face brightened; but so sure as the man glanced over his shoulder, and began to pull harder, the aspect of misery, dread, and pitiable helplessness Bob displayed was ludicrous; and at such times he glanced to right and left to see which was the nearest way to the shore. As Bob rowed he softly pushed off his boots. Soon after he made three or four hard tugs at his oar, and then, by a quick movement, drew one arm out of his jacket. Then rowing with one hand he shook himself quite clear of the garment, so as to be unencumbered when he began to swim, for that was his intention as soon as the man overtook them, and his peril became great. "He wants most of all to get the boat," he thought to himself; and soon after he opened his heart to Dexter. "Lookye here!" he said, "he wants to get the boat; and if he can get that he won't come after us. Let's row pretty close to the bank, and get ashore and run." "What! and leave the boat?" cried Dexter. "That I'm sure I will not." Dexter pulled all the harder after hearing this proposal, and Bob uttered a moan. All that morning the flight and pursuit were kept up, till on both sides it became merely a light dipping of the oars, so as to keep the boats' heads straight, the tide carrying them along. It was plain enough now that they were getting toward the mouth of the river, which was now quite broad. Houses were growing plentiful, barges lay at wharves or moored with other boats in the stream, and care had to be exercised to avoid coming in collision with the many obstacles in their way. But they kept on; and though at Bob's piteous suggestion they wound in and out among the many crafts in the hope of shaking off their pursuer, it was all in vain, for he kept doggedly on after them, with the matter-of-fact determination of a weasel after a rabbit, sure of its scent, and certain that before long the object of the pursuit would resign itself to its fate. On still in a dreary mechanical way. Dexter could hardly move his arms, and Bob was, in spite of his long experience, almost as helpless. "It's of no use," the latter said at last; and he ceased rowing. "No, no, Bob; don't give in!" cried Dexter excitedly. "We shall soon tire him out now. Row! Row!" "Can't," said Bob drearily. "I haven't another pull in me." "Then give me the other scull, and let me try." "Yah! you couldn't pull both," cried Bob. "There, I'm going to try a hundred more strokes, and then I shall swim ashore. I ain't going to let him catch me." "Pull, then, a hundred more," cried Dexter excitedly. "Oh, do make it two, Bob! He'll be tired out by then." "I'm a-going to pull a hundred," grumbled Bob, "and then give it up. Now then!" The sculls splashed the water almost together, and for a few strokes the boys pulled vigorously and well; but it was like the last bright flashes of an expiring candle, and long before the half-hundred was reached the dippings of the blades grew slower and slower. Then they became irregular, while, to add to the horror of the position, the man in pursuit seemed to have been keeping a reserve of strength ready for such an emergency, and he now came on rapidly. Bob would have proposed putting ashore once more, but, in avoiding the various crafts, they had now contrived to be about midstream, and in his horror and dread of the coming enemy all thought of scheming seemed to have been driven out of his head. He uttered a despairing yell, and began to tug at his oar once more; Dexter followed his example, and the distance again increased. But only for a few minutes, then they seemed to be growing weaker, their arms became like lead; their eyes grew dim, and the end was very near. "Ah, I've got yer at last, have I?" shouted the man, who was not forty yards away now. "Not yet," muttered Dexter. "Pull, Bob, pull!" Bob responded by going through the motion of rowing, but his scull did not dip into the water, and, meeting with no resistance, he went backwards off the seat, with his heels in the air. Dexter jumped up, seized his companion's scull, and, weary as he was, with all the stubborn English pluck which never knows when it is beaten, he reseated himself, shipped his scull, and bent forward to try, inexperienced as he was, to make another effort for escape. As he seated himself, breathless and panting hard, he gave one glance at his enemy, then another over his shoulder at a boat on ahead, which it would be his duty to avoid, for it seemed to be going right across his track. Then he began to row, putting the little strength he had left into his last strokes. "Ah, it's no good," cried the man triumphantly. "I've got yer at last." "How--ow!" yelled Bob, with a cry like a Newfoundland dog shut out on a cold night. "Drop that there rowing, or I'll--" Dexter heard no more. He was pulling frantically, but making hardly any way. Then he heard voices ahead, glanced round with his sculls raised, and found that he was running right toward the craft just ahead. Another moment and there was a bump. The man had driven his little tub right into the stern of the gig, and as he laid hold he snarled out-- "I knew I should ketch yer." "How--ow!" yelled Bob again, from where he lay on his back in the bottom of the boat, his legs still over the seat. _Bump_! There was another shock, and Dexter started up, saw that he had run into the boat ahead, and that one of the two sailors, who had been rowing, had taken hold of the bows. He saw that at a glance, but he also saw something else which seemed to freeze the blood in his breast. For there, seated in the stern of that large boat into which he had run, were the Doctor, Sir James Danby, old Dan'l, and Peter. CHAPTER THIRTY NINE. BROUGHT TO BOOK. Dexter did not pause a moment. It did not occur to him that he was utterly exhausted, and could hardly move his arms. All he realised was the fact that on the one side was the man whom he had half-killed with the boat-hook, just about to stretch out his hand to seize him, on the other, those whom he dreaded far more, and with one quick movement he stepped on to the thwart of the gig, joined his hands, dived in, and disappeared from sight, in the muddy water. For a few moments there was the silence of utter astonishment, and then the man who had pursued the boys down the river began to take advantage of the general excitement by keeping hold of the side of the gig and beginning to draw it away; but Bob set up such a howl of dismay that it drew Peter's attention, and he too seized the boat from the other end, caught out the chain, and hooked it on to a ring-bolt of the big boat in which he sat. "You drop that there, will yer!" cried the man. "It's my boat." "How--ow!" cried Bob, in the most canine of yelps; and at the same moment the gig was literally jerked from the man's hold, for the two sailors had given a tremendous tug at their oars to force the boat in the direction that Dexter was likely to take after his rise, and the next minute a dozen yards were between the tub and the gig. "For heaven's sake, mind! stop!" cried the doctor excitedly. "Don't row, men, or you may strike him down." The men ceased rowing, and every eye began to search the surface of the water, but no sign of Dexter could be seen. "He could not sink like that," cried Sir James. "He must rise somewhere." But must or no, Dexter did not rise, and the men began to paddle softly down-stream, while the doctor stood up in the boat gazing wildly round. "It was all my doing," he said to himself. "Poor boy! poor boy!" A feeling of horror that was unbearable seemed to be creeping over the occupants of the great boat. Even Dan'l, who looked upon Dexter as his mortal enemy, and who had suggested, in the hope of seeing him sent to prison, that the surest way of capturing the boys was to go down to the mouth of the river--even Dan'l felt the chill of horror as he mentally said-- "'Tain't true. Them as is born to be hanged is sometimes drowned." But just then there was a tremendous splash, and the big boat rocked to and fro, the captive gig danced, and Bob uttered another of his canine yelps, for Peter had suddenly stepped on to the gunwale, dived in after something he had seen touch the surface of the water twenty yards lower down, where it had been rolled over and over by the rapid tide, and a minute later, as he swam vigorously, he shouted--"I've got him!" And he was seen holding the boy's head above the water, as he turned to try and stem the current, and swim back to the boat. The task was not long, for the two sailors sent her down with a few vigorous sweeps of their oars, and Dexter and his rescuer were dragged over the side, as the man with the tub slowly backed away. No time was lost in reaching the shore, and the insensible boy was carried up to the principal hotel in the port, where quite an hour elapsed before the surgeon whose services were sought was able to pause from his arduous task, and announce that his patient would live. For it was a very narrow escape, and the surgeon said, as he shook hands with Dr Grayson-- "Some men would have given it up in despair, sir. But there he is, safe and sound, and, I dare say, boy-like, it will not be very long before he gets into some mischief again." Sir James Danby coughed, and Doctor Grayson frowned as he met his friend's peculiar look. But nothing was said then till the surgeon had been up to see his patient once more, after which he returned, reported that Dexter had sunk into a sound slumber, and then took his leave. "I suppose we shall not go back to Coleby to-night?" said Sir James. "I shall not," said the doctor; "but, my dear Danby, pray don't let me keep you." "Oh! you will not keep me," said Sir James quietly. "I've got to make arrangements about my boat being taken up the river." "Why not let my men row it back!" said the doctor. "Because I did not like to impose on your kindness." "Then they may take it?" "I shall only be too grateful," said Sir James. Nothing more was said till they had ordered and sat down to a snug dinner in the hotel, when Sir James opened the ball. "Now, Grayson," he said, "I happen to be a magistrate." "Yes, of course," said the doctor uneasily. "Well, then, I want to have a few words with you about those two boys." The doctor nodded. "Your groom is with your _protege_, and your old gardener has that other young scoundrel in charge." "In charge?" said the doctor. "Yes; you may call it so. I told him not to lose sight of the young rascal, and I also told your groom to exercise the same supervision over the other." "But surely, my dear Danby, you do not mean to--" "Deal with them as I would with any other offender? Why not?" The doctor had no answer ready, so Sir James went on-- "I valued that boat very highly, and certainly I've got it back--with the exception of the stains upon the cushions--very little the worse. But this was a serious theft, almost as bad as horse-stealing, and I shall have to make an example of them." "But one of them has been terribly punished," said the doctor eagerly. "Pooh! not half enough, sir. Come, Grayson, of course this has completely cured you of your mad folly!" "My mad folly!" cried the doctor excitedly. "May I ask you what you mean?" "Now, my dear Grayson, pray don't be angry. I only say, as an old friend and neighbour, surely you must be ready to agree that your wild idea of making a gentleman out of this boy--one of the dregs of our civilisation--is an impossibility?" "Nothing of the sort, sir," cried the doctor angrily. "I never felt more certain of the correctness of my ideas." "Tut--tut--tut--tut!" ejaculated Sir James. "Really, Grayson, this is too much." "Too much, sir? Nothing of the kind. A boyish escapade. Nothing more." "Well!" said Sir James drily, "when such cases as this are brought before us at the bench, we are in the habit of calling them thefts." "Theft: pooh! No, no!" cried the doctor stubbornly. "A boyish prank. He would have sent the boat back." "Would he?" said Sir James drily. "I suppose you think his companion would have done the same?" "I have nothing to do with the other boy," said the doctor shortly. "It was a most unfortunate thing that Dexter should have made his acquaintance." "Birds of a feather flock together, my dear Grayson," said Sir James. "Nothing of the kind, sir. It was my fault," cried the doctor. "I neglected to let the boy have suitable companions of his own age; and the consequence was that he listened to this young scoundrel, and allowed himself to be led away." "Do I understand aright, from your defence of the boy, that you mean to forgive him and take him back!" "Certainly!" said the doctor. "Grayson, you amaze me! But if I prove to you that you are utterly wrong, and that the young dog is an arrant thief, what then?" "Then," said the doctor, "I'm afraid I should have to--No, I wouldn't. I would try and reform him." "Well," said Sir James, "if you choose to be so ultra lenient, Grayson, you must; but I feel that I have a duty to do, and as soon as we have had our wine I propose that we have the prisoners here, and listen to what they have to say." "Prisoners?" "Yes. What else would you call them?" Before the doctor could stand up afresh in Dexter's defence a waiter entered the room. "Beg pardon, sir, but your groom says would you be good enough to step upstairs?" "Bless my heart!" cried the doctor. "Is it a relapse?" He hurried up to the room where Dexter had been sleeping, to find that, instead of being in bed, he was fully dressed, and lying on the floor, with Peter the groom holding him down. "Why, what's the matter!" cried the doctor, as he entered the room hastily, followed by Sir James. "Matter, sir?" said Peter, "matter enough. If I hadn't held him down like this here I believe he'd 'a' been out o' that window." "Why, Dexter!" cried the doctor. The boy struggled feebly, and then, seeing the futility of his efforts, he lay still and closed his eyes. "Went off fast asleep, sir, as any one would ha' thought," said Peter. "And seeing him like that I thought I'd just go down and fetch myself a cup o' tea; but no sooner was I out o' the room than he must have slipped out and dressed hisself--shamming, you know--and if I hadn't come back in the nick o' time he'd have been gone." The doctor frowned, and Sir James looked satisfied, as he gave him a nod. "Going to run away, eh!" "Yes, Sir James," said the groom; "and it was as much as I could do to hold him." "Get up, Peter," said the doctor. The groom rose, and Dexter leapt up like a bit of spring, and darted toward the door. But Sir James was close to it, and catching the boy by the arm he held him. "Take hold, of him, my man," he said; "and don't let him go." Peter obeyed, getting a tight grip of Dexter's wrist. "Now, you give in," he whispered. "It's no good, for I shan't let go." "Bring him down," said Sir James sternly. Peter shook his head warningly at Dexter, and then, as Sir James and the doctor went down to their room, Peter followed with his prisoner, who looked over the balustrade as if measuring the distance and his chance if he made a jump. "Now," said Sir James, as the boy was led into the room; "stand there, sir, and I warn you that if you attempt to run away I shall have in the police, and be more stern. You, my man, go and tell the gardener to bring up the other boy." Peter left the room after giving Dexter a glance, and the doctor began to walk up and down angrily. He wanted to take the business into his own hands, but Sir James was a magistrate, and it seemed as if he had a right to take the lead. There was a painful silence, during which Dexter stood hanging his head, and feeling as if he wished he had been drowned, instead of being brought round to undergo such a painful ordeal as this. Ten minutes must have elapsed before a scuffling was heard upon the stairs, and Bob Dimsted's voice whimpering-- "You let me alone, will yer? I never done nothing to you. Pair o' great cowards, y'are. Don't knock me about, or it'll be the worse for yer. Hit one o' your own size. I never said nothing to you." This was continued and repeated right into the room, Dan'l looking very severe and earnest, and holding on by the boy's collar, half-dragging him, while Peter pushed behind, and then closed the door, and stood before it like a sentry. "You have not been striking the boy, I hope!" said the doctor. "Strike him, sir? no, not I," said Dan'l; "but I should like to. Been a-biting and kicking like a neel to get away." Sir James had never seen an eel kick, but he accepted the simile, and turning to Bob, who was whimpering and howling--"knocking me about"--"never said nothing to him"--"if my father was here," etc. "Silence!" roared Sir James, in his severest tones; and Bob gave quite a start and stared. "Now, sir," said Sir James. "Here, both of you; stand together, and mind this: it will be better for both of you if you are frank and straightforward." "I want to go home," whimpered Bob. "Y'ain't no business to stop me here." "Silence!" roared Sir James; and Bob jumped. Dexter did not move, but stood with his eyes fixed to the floor. "Now!" said Sir James, gazing fiercely at Bob; "you know, I suppose, why you are here." "No! I don't," whimpered Bob. "And y'ain't no business to stop me. I want to go home." "Silence, sir!" roared Sir James again. "You do not know? Well, then, I will tell you. You are before me, sir, charged with stealing a boat." "Oh!" ejaculated Bob, in a tone of wondering innocence. "And I perhaps ought to explain," said Sir James, looking hard at Dr Grayson, and speaking apologetically, "that in an ordinary way, as the boat was my property, I should feel called upon to leave the bench; but as this is only a preliminary examination, I shall carry it on myself. Now, sir," he continued, fixing Bob's shifty eyes, "what have you to say, sir, for stealing my boat?" "Stealing your boat!" cried Bob volubly; "me steal your boat, sir? I wouldn't do such a thing." "Why, you lying young dog!" "No, sir, I ain't, sir," protested Bob, as Dexter slowly raised his head and gazed at him. "It wasn't me, sir. It was him, sir. That boy, sir. I begged him not to, sir; but he would do it." "Oh, it was Dexter Grayson, was it?" said Sir James, glancing at the doctor, who was gnawing his lip and beating the carpet with his toe. "Yes, sir; it was him, sir. I was t'other side o' the river one day, sir," rattled off Bob, "and he shouts to me, sir, `Hi!' he says, just like that, sir, and when I went to him, sir, he says, `Let's steal the old cock's boat and go down the river for a game.'" "Well?" said Sir James. "Well, sir, I wouldn't, sir," continued Bob glibly. "I said it would be like stealing the boat; and I wouldn't do that." "Oh!" said Sir James. "Is this true, Dexter!" said the doctor sternly. "No, sir. He wanted me to take the boat." "Oh, my!" cried Bob. "Hark at that now! Why, I wouldn't ha' done such a thing." "No, you look a nice innocent boy," said Sir James. "Yes, sir; and he was allus at me about that boat, and said he wanted to go to foreign abroad, he did, and the best way, he said, was to steal that there boat and go." "Oh," said Sir James. "And what more have you to say, sir?" "It isn't true, sir," said Dexter, making an effort to speak, and he gazed angrily at his companion. "Bob here wanted me to go with him, and he persuaded me to take the boat." "Oh! only hark at him!" cried Bob, looking from one to the other. "And I thought it would be like stealing the boat to take it like that." "Well, rather like it," said Sir James sarcastically. "And so I sent that letter and that money to pay for it, sir, and I meant to send the rest if it wasn't quite enough." "Ah!" ejaculated the doctor eagerly. "What letter? What money?" said Sir James. "That money I sent by Bob Dimsted, sir, to put in your letter-box." "I never received any money," cried Sir James. "You sent some money!" "Yes, sir; before we took the boat, sir." "Ah!" ejaculated the doctor again. "And you sent it by this boy?" "Yes, sir." "Then where is the money?" cried Sir James, turning upon Bob. "I dunno, sir. I never had no money." "You did, Bob, in a letter I gave you," cried Dexter excitedly. "Oh!" ejaculated Bob, with an astonished look. "Well, if ever!" "This is getting interesting," said Sir James. "Now, sir, where's that money?" "He never give me none, sir," cried Bob indignantly. "I never see no letter." "You did. The one I threw across the river to you!" said Dexter. "Oh, what a cracker!" cried Bob. "I never had no letter, gen'lemen, and I never see no money. Why don't you tell the truth, and the kind gentlemen won't be so hard on you?" "I am telling the truth," cried Dexter, "It was you asked me to take the boat." "Only hark at him!" cried Bob. "Why yer'd better say yer didn't take all yer clothes off and swim acrost and get it." "I did," said Dexter; "but you made me. You said you'd go." "Oh, you can tell 'em!" cried Bob. "And I did give you the money to take." "Oh, well, I've done," said Bob. "I never did hear a chap tell lies like you can!" "I think that will do," said Sir James, with a side glance at the doctor, who sat with his brows knit, listening. "Now, you will both go back to the room where you are to sleep, and I warn you that if you attempt to escape, so surely will you be taken by the police, and then this matter will assume a far more serious aspect. You, my men, will have charge of these two boys till the morning. They are not to speak to each other, and I look to you to take them safely back to Coleby by the early train. That will do." Dexter darted one glance at the doctor, but his face was averted. "Please, sir," he began. "Silence!" cried Sir James. "I think Dr Grayson understands your character now, and I must say I never heard a more cowardly attempt to fasten a fault upon another. No: not a word. Go!" Bob Dimsted was already outside with Dan'l's knuckles in the back of his neck. Peter was more gentle with his prisoner as he led him away. "You've been and done it now, young fellow," he said. "I would ha' told the truth." Dexter turned to him with bursting heart, but he could not speak, and as soon as he was in his bedroom he threw himself before a chair, and buried his face in his hands, so as to try and shut out the reproachful face of Helen, which he seemed to see. "I wish I had not been saved," he cried at last passionately, and then he glanced at the window, and listened, while downstairs Sir James was saying quietly-- "There, Grayson, I think you understand the boy's character now." "No," said the doctor shortly. "I don't think I do." "What!" "And I'd give a hundred pounds," said the doctor, "to know the truth." "Really," said Sir James, laughing. "You are the most obstinate man I ever knew." "Yes," said the doctor. "I suppose I am." CHAPTER FORTY. "HUZZA! WE'RE HOMEWARD BOUND!" The first wet day there had been for a month. It seemed as if Mother Nature had been saving up all her rain in a great cistern, and was then letting it out at once. No glorious sapphire seas and brilliant skies; no golden sunshine pouring down on tawny sands, over which waved the long pinnate leaves of the cocoa-nuts palms; no brilliant-coloured fish that seemed to be waiting to be caught; no glorious life of freedom, with their boat to enable them to glide from isle to isle, where it was always summer; but rain, rain, rain, always rain, pouring down from a lead-black sky. A dreary prospect, but not half so dreary as Dexter's spirits, as he thought of what was to come. If ever boy felt miserable, he did that next morning, for they were all going back to Coleby. The romantic adventure was at an end, and he was like a prisoner. Why had he left the doctor's? What had he gained by it but misery and wretchedness. Bob had turned out one of the most contemptible cowards that ever stepped. He had proved to be a miserable tyrannical bully when they were alone; and in the face of danger a wretched cur; while now that they were caught he was ready to tell any lie to save his own skin. What would Helen say to him, and think of him? What would Mr Hippetts say--and Mr Sibery? He would be sent back to the Union of course; and one moment he found himself wishing that he had never left the schools to be confronted with such misery as he felt now. They were on their way back by rail. The doctor, who had not even looked at him, was in a first-class carriage with Sir James, and the plans being altered, and the boat sent up to Coleby by a trustworthy man, Bob and Dexter were returning in a second-class carriage, with their custodians, Peter and old Dan'l. They were the sole occupants of the carriage, and soon after starting Bob turned to Dexter-- "I say!" he exclaimed. Dexter started, and looked at him indignantly--so angrily, in fact, that Bob grinned. "Yer needn't look like that," he said. "If I forgives yer, and begins to talk to yer, what more d'yer want!" Dexter turned away, and looked out of the window. "There's a sulky one!" said Bob, with a coarse laugh; and as he spoke it was as if he were appealing to old Dan'l and Peter in turn. "He would do it. I tried to hold him back, but he would do it, and he made me come, and now he turns on me like that." "You're a nice un," said Peter, staring hard at the boy. "So are you!" said the young scamp insolently. "You mind yer own business, and look arter him. He's got to look arter me--ain't yer, sir!" "Yes," said old Dan'l sourly; "and I'm going to stuff a hankychy or something else into your mouth if you don't hold your tongue." "Oh, are yer!" said Bob boldly. "I should just like to see yer do it." "Then you shall if you don't keep quiet." Bob was silent for a few minutes, and then amused himself by making a derisive grimace at Dan'l as soon as he was looking another way. "It was all his fault," he said sullenly. "He would take the boat." "Ah, there was about six o' one of you, and half a dozen of the other," said Peter, laughing. "You'll get it, young fellow. Six weeks hard labour, and then four years in a reformatory. That's about your dose." "Is it?" said Bob derisively. "That's what he'll get, and serve him right--a sneak." Dexter's cheeks, which were very pale, began to show spots of red, but he stared out of the window. "I shouldn't have gone, only he was allus at me," continued Bob. "Allus. Some chaps ain't never satisfied." Old Dan'l filled his pipe, and began to smoke. "You'll get enough to satisfy you," said Peter. "I say, Dan'l, you wouldn't mind, would you?" "Mind what?" grunted Dan'l. "Giving me one of the noo brooms. One out o' the last dozen--the long switchy ones. I could just cut the band, and make about three reg'lar teasers out of one broom." "What, birch-rods?" said Dan'l, with a sort of cast-iron knocker smile. "Yes," said Peter. "Mind? no, my lad, you may have two of 'em, and I should like to have the laying of it on." "Yah! would yer!" said Bob defiantly. "Dessay you would. I should like to see yer." "But you wouldn't like to feel it," said Peter. "My eye, you will open that pretty mouth of yours! Pig-ringing'll be nothing to it." "Won't be me," said Bob. "It'll be him, and serve him right." Dexter's cheeks grew redder as he pictured the disgrace of a flogging scene. "Not it," continued Peter. "You'll get all that. Sir James'll give it you as sure as a gun. Won't he, Dan'l!" "Ah!" ejaculated the old gardener. "I heerd him say over and over again that ha wouldn't lose that boat for a hundred pounds. You'll get it, my gentleman!" "No, I shan't, 'cause I didn't do it. He'll give it to him, and sarve him right, leading me on to go with him, and boasting and bouncing about, and then pretending he wanted to buy the boat, and saying he sent me with the money." "So I did," cried Dexter, turning sharply round; "and you stole it, and then told lies." "That I didn't," said Bob. "I never see no money. 'Tain't likely. It's all a tale you made up, and--oh!" Bob burst into a regular bellow of pain, for, as he had been speaking, he had edged along the seat a little from his corner of the carriage, to bring himself nearer Dexter, who occupied the opposite diagonal corner. As Bob spoke he nodded his head, and thrust his face forward at Dexter so temptingly, that, quick as lightning, the latter flung out his right, and gave Bob a back-handed blow in the cheek. "Oh! _how_!" cried Bob; and then menacingly, "Here, just you do that again!" Dexter's blood was up. There was a long course of bullying to avenge, and he did that again, a good deal harder, with the result that the yell Bob emitted rose well above the rattle of the carriage. "Well done, young un," cried Peter delightedly. "That's right. Give it him again. Here, Dan'l, let 'em have it out, and we'll see fair!" "No, no, no!" growled the old gardener, stretching out one hand, and catching Bob by the collar, so as to drag him back into his corner--a job he had not the slightest difficulty in doing. "None o' that. They'd be blacking one another's eyes, and there'd be a row." "Never mind," cried Peter, with all the love of excitement of his class. "No, no," said Dan'l. "No fighting;" and he gave Dexter a grim look of satisfaction, which had more kindness in it than any the boy had yet seen. "Here, you let me get at him!" cried Bob. "No, no, you sit still," said Dan'l, holding him back with one hand. The task was very easy. A baby could have held Bob, in spite of the furious show of struggling that he made, while, on the other hand, Peter sat grinning, and was compelled to pass one arm round Dexter, and clasp his own wrist, so as to thoroughly imprison him, and keep him back. "Better let 'em have it out, Dan'l," he cried. "My one's ready." "Let me go. Let me get at him," shrieked Bob. "Yes, let him go, Dan'l," cried Peter. But Dan'l shook his head, and as Bob kept on struggling and uttering threats, the old man turned upon him fiercely-- "Hold your tongue, will you?" he roared. "You so much as say another word, and I'll make you fight it put." Bob's jaw dropped, and he stared in astonishment at the fierce face before him, reading therein so much determination to carry the threat into effect that he subsided sulkily in his corner, and turned away his face, for every time he glanced at the other end of the carriage it was to see Peter grinning at him. "Ah!" said Peter at last; "it's a good job for us as Dan'l held you back. You made me shiver." Bob scowled. "He's thoroughbred game, he is, Dan'l." Dan'l chuckled. "He'd be a terrible chap when his monkey was up. Oh, I am glad. He'd ha' been sure to win." "Let him alone," growled Dan'l, with a low chuckling noise that sounded something like the slow turning of a weak watchman's rattle; and then muttering something about white-livered he subsided into his corner, and solaced himself with his pipe. Meanwhile Peter sat opposite, talking in a low tone to Dexter, and began to ask him questions about his adventures, listening with the greatest eagerness to the short answers he received, till Dexter looked up at him piteously. "Don't talk to me, please, Peter," he said. "I want to sit and think." "And so you shall, my lad," said the groom; and he too took out a pipe, and smoked till they reached Coleby. Dexter shivered as he stepped out upon the platform. It seemed to him that the stationmaster and porters were staring at him as the boy who ran away, and he was looking round for a way of retreat, so as to escape what was to come, when Sir James and the doctor came up to them. "You can let that boy go," said the doctor to Dan'l. "Let him go, sir?" cried the gardener, looking at both the gentlemen in turn. Sir James nodded. Bob, whose eyes had been rat-like in their eager peering from face to face, whisked himself free, darted to the end of the platform, and uttered a loud yell before he disappeared. "Look here, Dexter," said the doctor coldly; "I have been talking to Sir James on our way here. Now sir, will you give me your word not to try and escape?" Dexter looked at him for a moment or two. "Yes, sir," he said at last, with a sigh. "Then come with me." "Come with you, sir?" Dexter looked at his stained and muddy clothes. "Yes," said the doctor; "come with me." Sir James shrugged his shoulders slightly, and gave the doctor a meaning look. "Good-bye, Grayson," he said, and he shook hands. "As for you, sir," he added sternly, as he turned to Dexter, "you and your companion have had a very narrow escape. If it had not been for your good friend here, matters would have gone ill with you--worse perhaps than you think." Dexter hung his head, and at a sign from the doctor went to his side, and they walked out of the station with Dan'l and Peter behind. The doctor stopped. "You have given me your word, sir, that you will come quietly up to the house," he said coldly. "Yes, sir," said Dexter sadly. The doctor, signed to Dan'l and Peter to come up to them. "You can go on first," he said; and the men passed on. "I don't want you to feel as if you were a prisoner, Dexter," said the doctor gravely. "It is one of the grandest things in a gentleman--his word--which means his word of honour." Dexter had nothing he could say; and with a strange swelling at the throat he walked on beside the doctor, gazing at the pavement a couple of yards in front of him, and suffering as a sensitive boy would suffer as he felt how degraded and dirty he looked, and how many people in the town must know of his running away, and be gazing at him, now that he was brought back by the doctor, who looked upon him as a thief. Every house and shop they passed was familiar. There were several of the tradespeople too standing at their doors ready to salute the doctor, and Dexter's cheeks burned with shame. His punishment seemed more than he could bear. In another ten minutes they would be at the house, where Maria would open the door, and give him a peculiar contemptuous look--the old look largely intensified; and but for the doctor's words, and the promise given, the boy felt that he must have run away down the first side-turning they passed. Then, as Maria faded from his mental vision, pleasant old Mrs Millett appeared, with her hands raised, and quite a storm of reproaches ready to be administered to him, followed, when she had finished and forgiven him, as he knew she would forgive him, by a dose of physic, deemed by her to be absolutely necessary after his escapade. The house at last, and everything just as Dexter had anticipated. Maria opened the door, and then wrinkled up her forehead and screwed up her lips in a supercilious smile. "Your mistress in!" said the doctor. "Yes, sir, in the drawing-room, sir." "Hah!" ejaculated the doctor. "Found him, sir? _And_ brought him back!" cried a familiar voice; and Mrs Millett hurried into the hall. "O you bold, bad boy!" she cried. "How dare you? And you never took your medicine that night. Oh, for shame! for shame!" "Hush, hush, Mrs Millett!" said the doctor sternly. "That will do." He signed to the old lady, and she left the hall, but turned to shake her head at the returned culprit as she went, while Maria gave him a meaning smile as soon as the doctor's back was turned, and then passed through the baize door. The doctor stood there silent and frowning for a few minutes, with his eyes fixed upon the floor, while Dexter awaited his sentence, painfully conscious, and longing for the doctor to speak and put him out of his misery. "Now, sir," he said at last; "you had better go in and speak to Miss Grayson. She is waiting, I suppose, to see you in that room. I sent word we were coming." "No, no," said Dexter quickly. "Don't send me in there, sir. You'd better send me back to the school, sir. I'm no good, and shall only get into trouble again; please send me back. I shouldn't like to see Miss Grayson now." "Why not!" said the doctor sternly. "Because you don't believe me, sir, and she won't, and--and--you had better send me back." "I am waiting to see you here, Dexter," said Helen gravely, and the boy started away with a cry, for the drawing-room door had opened silently, and Helen was standing on the mat. CHAPTER FORTY ONE. HOW THE DOCTOR PUNISHED. Dexter's interview with Helen was long and painful, for at first it seemed as if she had lost all confidence and hope in the boy, till, realising all this, he cried in a wild outburst of grief--"I know how wrong it all was, but nearly everybody here seemed to dislike me, and I did tell the truth about the boat, but no one believes. Do--do ask him to send me away." There was a long silence here, as, for the first time, in spite of a hard fight, Dexter could not keep back his tears. The silence was broken by Helen, who took his hand, and said gently-- "I believe you, Dexter. I am sure you would not tell a lie." In an instant his arms were round her neck, and he was clinging to her unable to speak, but his eyes, his convulsed face, telling the doctor's daughter that she was right. That evening, feeling very strange and terribly depressed, Dexter had gone to his old bedroom, thinking it must be for the last time, and wondering how Mr Sibery would treat him. Helen had sat talking to him for quite a couple of hours, winning from him a complete account of his adventures, and in return relating to him how concerned every one had been on the discovery of his evasion, and how bitterly the doctor had been mortified on learning later on that the boat had been taken. Who were the culprits was known in the course of the day, with the result that, acting on the suggestion already alluded to, the doctor had gone down to the mouth of the river to wait the coming of the borrowers of the boat. Helen had exacted no promises from Dexter. He had made none, but sat there with her, his hand in hers, wondering and puzzled how it was that he could have run away, but the more he thought, the more puzzled he grew. "Well," said the doctor that evening, as he sat with his daughter, "I told Danby that I was more determined than ever; that it was only a boyish escapade which he must look over to oblige me, and he agreed after making a great many bones about it. But I feel very doubtful, Helen, and I may as well confess it to you." "Doubtful?" she said. "Yes, my dear. I could have forgiven everything if the boy had been frank and honest--if he had owned to his fault in a straightforward way; but when he sought to hide his own fault by trying to throw it on another, I couldn't help feeling disgusted." "But, papa--" "Let me finish, my dear. I know what you are about to say. Woman-like, you are going to take his part. It will not do. The lying and deceit are such ugly blemishes in the boy's character that I am out of heart." "Indeed, papa?" said Helen, smiling. "Ah, it's all very well for you to laugh at me because I have failed over my hobby; but I feel I'm right all the same, and I tell you that his ignorance, vulgarity--" "Both of which are wonderfully changed." "Yes, my dear, granted, and he does not talk so much about the workhouse. He was a great deal better, and I could have forgiven this mad, boyish prank--though what could have influenced him, I don't know." "I can tell you," said Helen. "A boy's love of adventure. The idea of going off in a boat to discover some wonderful island where he could live a Robinson Crusoe kind of life." "A young donkey!" cried the doctor. "But there, it's all off. I could have forgiven everything, but the cowardly lying." "Then, poor fellow, he is forgiven." "Indeed, no, my dear. He goes back to the Union to-morrow; but I shall tell Hippetts to apprentice him to some good trade at once, and I will pay a handsome premium. Confound Hippetts! He'll laugh at me." "No, he will not, papa." "Yes, he will, my dear. I know the man." "But you will not be laughed at." "Why not?" "Because you will not send Dexter back." "Indeed, my dear, but I shall. I am beaten, and I give up." "But you said you would forgive everything but the deceit and falsehood." "Yes, everything." "There is no deceit and falsehood to forgive." "What?" "Dexter has told me everything. The simple truth." "But he should have told it before, and said he took the boat." "He told the truth in every respect, papa." "My dear Helen," said the doctor pettishly, "you are as obstinate as I am. The lying young dog--" "Hush, papa, stop!" said Helen gently. "Dexter is quite truthful, I am sure." "That is your weak woman's heart pleading for him," said the doctor. "No, my dear, no; it will not do." "I am quite certain, papa," said Helen firmly, "that he spoke the truth." "How do you know, my dear?" "Because Dexter told me again and again before he went up to bed." "And you believe him?" "Yes, and so will you." "Wish I could," said the doctor earnestly. "I'd give a hundred pounds to feel convinced." "You shall be convinced for less than that, papa," said Helen merrily. "Give me a kiss for my good news." "There's the kiss in advance, my dear. Now, where is the news?" "Here, papa. If Dexter were the hardened boy you try to make him--" "No, no: gently. He makes himself one." "--he would have gone up to bed to-night careless and indifferent after shedding a few fictitious tears--" "Very likely." "--and be sleeping heartily by now." "As he is, I'll be bound," cried the doctor energetically. "Of course, I may be wrong," said Helen, "but Dexter strikes me as being so sensitive a boy--so easily moved, that, I am ready to say, I am sure that he is lying there half-heartbroken, crying bitterly, now he is alone." "I'll soon prove that," said the doctor sharply; and, crossing the room in his slippers, he silently lit a candle and went upstairs to Dexter's door, where he stood listening for a few minutes, to find that all was perfectly still. Then turning the handle quietly, he entered, and it was quite half an hour before he came out. "Well, papa?" said Helen, as the doctor returned to the drawing-room. "You're a witch, my dear," he said. "I was right?" "You always are, my dear." "And you will not send him back to the Union schools!" "Send him back!" said the doctor contemptuously. "Nor have him apprenticed?" said Helen, with a laughing light in her eyes. "Have him ap--Now that's too bad, my dear," cried the doctor. "Danby will laugh at me enough. You need not join in. Poor boy! I'm glad I went up." There was a pause, during which the doctor sat back in his chair. "Do you know, my dear, I don't feel very sorry that the young dog went off." "Not feel sorry, papa!" "No, my dear. It shows that the young rascal has plenty of energy and spirit and determination." "I hope you did not tell him so!" "My dear child, what do you think me?" cried the doctor testily. "By the way, though, he seems to thoroughly see through his companion's character now. I can't help wishing that he had given that confounded young cad a sound thrashing." "Papa!" "Eh? No, no: of course not," said the doctor. "I was only thinking aloud." Helen sat over her work a little longer, feeling happier than she had felt since Dexter left the house; and then the lights were extinguished, and father and daughter went up to bed. The doctor was very quiet and thoughtful, and he stopped on the stairs. "Helen, my dear," he whispered, "see the women-servants first thing in the morning, and tell them I strictly forbid any allusion whatever to be made to Dexter's foolish prank." Helen nodded. "I'll talk to the men myself," he said. "And whatever you do, make Mrs Millett hold her tongue. Tut--tut--tut! Now, look at that!" He pointed to a tumbler on a little papier-mache tray standing at Dexter's door. "Never mind that, dear," said Helen, smiling. "I dare say it is only camomile-tea, and it shows that the poor boy has not lost his place in dear old Millett's heart." Helen kissed her father, and stopped at her own door feeling half-amused and half-tearful as she saw the old man go on tiptoe to Dexter's room, where, with the light of the candle shining on his silver hair and beard, he tapped gently with his knuckles. "Asleep, Dexter?" There was a faint "No, sir!" from within. "Make haste and go to sleep," said the doctor. "Good-night, my boy. God bless you!" Helen saw him smile as he turned away from the door, and it may have been fancy, but she thought she saw a glistening as of moisture in one corner of his eye. "Poor Dexter!" she said softly, as she entered her room, while the boy, as he lay there in the cool, soft sheets, utterly wearied out, but restless and feverish with excitement, felt the doctor's last words send, as it were, a calm, soothing, restful sensation through his brain, and five minutes later he was sleeping soundly, and dreaming that some one bent over him, and said, "Good-night. God bless you!" once again. CHAPTER FORTY TWO. BOB DIMSTED'S MEDICINE. It was some time before Dexter could summon up courage to go down to the breakfast-room. That he was expected, he knew, for Mrs Millett had been to his door twice, and said first that breakfast was ready, and, secondly, that master was waiting. When he did go in, he could hardly believe that he had been away, for there was a kiss from Helen, and a frank "Good morning," and shake of the hand from the doctor, not the slightest allusion being made to the past till breakfast was nearly over, when Maria brought in a note. "Hah! From Limpney," said the doctor. "I sent Peter on to say that Dexter was back, and that I should like the lessons to be resumed this morning." Dexter's eyes lit up. The idea of being busy over lessons once more seemed delightful. "Confound his impudence!" said the doctor angrily, as he ran through the note. "Hark here, Helen: `Mr Limpney's compliments, and he begs to decline to continue the tuition at Dr Grayson's house.'" Helen made a gesture, and glanced at her father meaningly-- "Eh? Oh! Ah! Yes, my dear. Well, Dexter, you'll have to amuse yourself in the garden this morning. Go and have a few hours' fishing." "If you please, sir, I'd rather stay in here if I might, and read." "No, no, no," said the doctor cheerily. "Fine morning. Get Peter to dig you some worms, and I'll come and look at you presently. It's all right, my boy. We said last night we'd draw a veil over the past, eh? You go and have a good morning's fishing." Dexter was at his side in a moment, had thrust his hand in the doctor's, and then fled from the room. "Want to show him we've full confidence in him again. Bah, no! That boy couldn't look you in the face and tell you a lie. My dear Helen, I'm as certain of my theory being correct as of anything in the world. But hang that Limpney for a narrow-minded, classic-stuffed, mathematic-bristling prig! We'll have a better." Dexter felt a strange hesitancy; but the doctor evidently wished him to go and fish, so he took his rod, line, and basket, and was crossing the hall when he encountered Mrs Millett. "It was very nice of you, my dear, and I'm sure it will do you good. You did take it all now, didn't you?" "Yes, every drop," said Dexter, smiling; and the old lady went away evidently highly gratified. Old Dan'l was busy tidying up a flower-bed as he reached the lawn, and, to Dexter's astonishment, he nodded and gave him another of his cast-iron smiles. Further down the garden Peter was at work. "Dig you up a few worms, Master Dexter? Course I will. Come round to the back of the old frames." A curious sensation of choking troubled Dexter for a few moments, but it passed off, and in a short time he was furnished with a bag of red worms, and walking down to the river he sat down and began to fish with his mind going back to the night of his running away, and he seemed to see it all again; the undressing, the hesitation, and the cold plunge after his clothes, and all the rest of the miserable dreary time which had proved so different from what he had pictured in his mind. Peter had said that the fish would "bite like fun at them worms." But they did not, for they had no chance. The worms crawled round and round the canvas bag, and played at making Gordian knots with each other, while several fish came and looked at the unbaited hook which Dexter offered for their inspection, but preferred to leave the barbed steel alone. For quite half an hour Dexter sat there dreamily gazing at his float, but seeing nothing but the past, when he started to his feet, for there was a splash in the water close to his feet, the drops flying over him, and there, across the river, grinning and looking very dirty, was Bob Dimsted. "Yah! Who stole the boat?" he cried. Dexter flushed up, but he made no reply. Only took out his line, and this time he baited it and threw in again. "Yah; who stole the boat!" cried Bob again. "I say, ain't he been licked? Ain't his back sore?" Dexter set his teeth hard and stared at his float, as Bob baited his own line, and threw in just opposite, to begin fishing just as if nothing had happened. It was a painful position. To go on fishing was like taking up with Bob again; to go away seemed like being afraid. But Dexter determined upon this last, drew out his line, and was stooping to pick up his basket, when Bob broke into a derisive war-dance-- "Yah, yah!" he cried. "Yer 'bliged to go. Yah! yer miserable, white-faced sneak! g'ome! g'ome! yah!" Dexter banged down his basket again, and threw in his line with a big splash, as his eyes flashed defiance across the stream. "Ah! it's all very fine," said Bob; "but yer dussen't do that if it weren't for the river. Why, if I'd got yer here I'd bung both yer eyes up for yer. Yah! yer sneak!" "Here, you just be off. D'yer hear!" cried an angry voice; and Peter came up, broom in hand. "She yarn't," cried Bob? "Who are you? This ain't your field. Stop as long as I like. Yah!" "Wish I was over the other side and I'd pitch you in, you sarcy young vagabond." "So are you!" cried Bob. "You dussen't touch me. Fish here as long as I like. Pair o' cowards, that's what you are--pair o' cowards. Fight either of yer one hand." "Wish we was over there," said Peter; "and we'd make you sing another song, my fine fellow." "Would yer? Yah! who cares for you!" "Look here, you've no business to come opposite our place to fish!" cried Peter, "so be off!" "Yah! 'tain't your place. Stop and fish here as long as I like; and if ever I meet him anywheres I'll give him such a licking as'll make him squeal." "You be off!" "Shan't." "Oh, you won't, won't you?" cried a gruff voice; and old Dan'l came from behind a laurustinus clump. "You, Peter--you go and get a basket full o' them brickbats from down by the frames, and we'll soon see whether he'll stop there." "Yah! go on with your old brickbats. Who cares for you!" cried Bob. "Yah! look at him! Who stole the boat, and cried to go home again? Who stole the boat?" "Oh, if I could only get across!" said Dexter, in a hoarse low voice. "Would you give it him if you could!" said old Dan'l, with a grim laugh. "Yes," said Dexter, between his teeth. "Ay, he would, Dan'l," said Peter excitedly. "I wish he was over yonder." "Yah! yah! look at the old caterpillar-killers," cried Bob. "Who stole the boat? Yah!" These last were farewell shots. "They won't bite here," cried Bob, moving off, "but don't you think you frightened me away. Come as often as I like. Yah! take him home!" Dexter's face was scarlet as he watched his departing enemy, thinking the while of his own folly in leaving his friends for such a wretched young cur as that. "Think he would?" said Peter. "Ay, two on him," said Dan'l, after glancing cautiously up toward the house. "Shall us?" "Ay, if you like, my lad," said Dan'l. "Say, youngster, if we help you acrost will you go and start him outer the west medder?" "Yes," cried Dexter excitedly. "All right. Don't make a row." Old Dan'l went off, and Peter followed, to return in five minutes with a great shallow wooden cistern across the long barrow, old Dan'l looking very grim as he walked by his side, and carrying the familiar clothes-prop. "There, that's as good as a punt," he said. "Look here! You'd better kneel down on it; I should take off my jacket and weskit, and roll up my sleeves, if I was you." Dexter's eyes sparkled as he followed this bit of advice, while Dan'l took one end of the cistern, Peter the other, and they gently launched it in the little river. "Ain't scared of him, are yer!" said Dan'l. Dexter gave him a sharp look. "That he ain't," said Peter. "Look here, Master Dexter," he whispered, "don't let him hug you, but give it him right straight out, and he'll be down and howl in two two's." Dexter made no reply, but stepped into the great shallow punt-like contrivance, seized the prop handed to him, and prepared to use it, but the strong steady thrust given by Peter sent him well on his journey, and in less than a minute he was across. "Come on, Dan'l," cried Peter. "Don't I wish we was acrost too!" They crept among the trees at the extreme corner of the garden, where they could hold on by the boughs, and crane their necks over the river, so as to see Dexter tearing along the opposite bank into the next meadow where Bob was fishing, in happy ignorance of the approach of danger; and, to further take off his attention, he had just hooked a good-sized perch, and was playing it, when Dexter, boiling over with the recollection of many injuries culminating in Bob's cowardly lies, came close up and gave a formal announcement of his presence by administering a sounding crack on the ear. Bob dropped his rod into the river, and nearly jumped after it as he uttered a howl. "Look at that!" cried Peter, giving one of his legs a slap. "Oh, I wish I was there!" Bob was as big a coward as ever stepped. So is a rat; but when driven to bay a rat will fight. Bob was at bay, and he, being in pain, began to fight by lowering his head and rushing at his adversary. Dexter avoided the onslaught, and gave Bob another crack on the ear. Then, trusting in his superior size and strength, Bob dashed at Dexter again, and for a full quarter of an hour there was a fierce up and down fight, which was exceedingly blackguardly and reprehensible no doubt, but under the circumstances perfectly natural. Dexter got a good deal knocked about, especially whenever Bob closed with him; but he did not get knocked about for nothing. Very soon there were a number of unpleasant ruddy stains upon his clean white shirt, but the blood was Bob's, and consequent upon a sensation of his nose being knocked all on one side. There was a tooth out--a very white one on the grass, but that tooth was Bob's, and, in addition, that young gentleman's eyes wore the aspect of his having been interviewing a wasps' nest, for they were rapidly closing up, and his whole face assuming the appearance of a very large and puffy unbaked bun. Then there was a cessation of the up and down fighting; Bob was lying on his back howling after his customary canine fashion, and Dexter was standing over him with his doubled fists, his face flushed, his eyes flashing, teeth set, and his curly hair shining in the sun. "It's splendid, Dan'l, old man," cried Peter, slapping his fellow-servant on the back. "I wouldn't ha' missed it for half a crown." "No," said Dan'l. "Hang him! he's got some pluck in him if he ain't got no breed. Brayvo, young un! I never liked yer half--" Dan'l stopped short, and Peter stepped back against the dividing fence. "Beg pardon, sir?" "I said how did that boy get across the river!" said the doctor sternly. There was no reply. "Now no subterfuges," said the doctor sharply. Peter looked at Dan'l in dismay, but Dan'l spoke out-- "Well, sir, beg pardon, sir, that young cub come up to the side abusing Master Dexter, and calling him names, and he let us have it too." "Yes; go on." "Well, sir, Master Dexter was a-chafing like a greyhound again his collar, and Peter and me fetched the old wooden cistern, and let him punt hisself across, and the way he went into him, sir--boy half as big again as hisself, and--" "That will do," said the doctor sternly. "Here, Dexter! Come here, sir!" Dexter turned in dismay, and came faltering back. "The moment he is home again!" said the doctor angrily. "Yah! Coward! G'ome, g'ome!" yelled Bob, jumping up on seeing his enemy in retreat. "Come here again and I'll knock yer silly. Yah!" "Dexter!" roared the doctor; "go back and knock that young blackguard's head off. Quick! Give it him! No mercy!" Dexter flew back, but Bob flew faster to the hedge, where he leaped and stuck; Dexter overtaking him then, and administering one punch which drove his adversary through, and he got up and ran on again. "Hi! Dexter!" shouted the doctor; and the boy returned slowly, as Peter stood screwing up his face to look serious, and Dan'l gave his master one of his cast-iron smiles. "Well, yes, Dan'l, it was excusable under the circumstances," said the doctor. "But I do not approve of fighting, and--er--don't say anything about it indoors." "No, sir, cert'nly not, sir," said the men, in a breath; and just then Dexter stood on the far bank looking anxiously across. "Mind how you come," cried the doctor. "That's right; be careful. Give me your hand. Bless my soul! the skin's off your knuckles. We shall have to tell Miss Grayson after all." Dexter looked up at him wildly. He could not speak. "Better put that cistern back," said the doctor quickly; and then to Dexter-- "There, slip on your things, and go up to your room and bathe your face and hands. No, stop! I'll go on first, and shut the drawing-room door." The doctor hurried away, and as soon as he was out of sight, Dexter, who had slowly put on his waistcoat and jacket, gazed disconsolately at the two men. "What shall I do?" he said dolefully. "Do!" cried Peter; "why, you did it splendid: he won't come no more." "But the doctor!" faltered Dexter, with the spirit and effervescence all gone. "What, master!" cried Dan'l. "He won't say no more. Here, shake hands, my lad. It was fine." "Hi! Dexter! Here, my boy, quick!" came the doctor's voice. "It's all right. She has gone out." "There!" said Dan'l, laughing; and Dexter ran in. CHAPTER FORTY THREE. THE RIGHT PLACE FOR A BACKWARD BOY. "Where's Dexter?" said the doctor. "Down the garden," said Helen. "Humph! Hope he is not getting into fresh mischief." "I hope not, papa," said Helen; "and really I think he is trying very hard." "Yes," said the doctor, going on with his writing. "How are his knuckles now? can he hold a pen?" "I think I would let him wait another day or two. And, papa, have you given him a good talking to about that fight?" "No. Have you?" "Yes, two or three times; and he has promised never to fight again." "My dear Helen, how can you be so absurd?" cried the doctor testily. "That's just the way with a woman. You ask the boy to promise what he cannot perform. He is sure to get fighting again at school or somewhere." "But it seems such a pity, papa." "Pooh! pish! pooh! tchah!" ejaculated the doctor, at intervals. "He gave that young scoundrel a good thrashing, and quite right too. Don't tell him I said so." The doctor had laid down his pen to speak, but he took it up again and began writing, but only to lay it aside once more. "Dear me! dear me!" he muttered. "I don't seem to get on with my book as I should like." He put down his pen again, rose, took a turn or two up and down the room, and then picked up the newspaper. "Very awkward of that stupid fellow Limpney," he said, as he began running down the advertisements. "What did he say, papa, when you spoke to him?" "Say? Lot of stuff about losing _prestige_ with his other pupils. Was sure Lady Danby did not like him to be teaching a boy of Dexter's class and her son. Confound his impudence! Must have a tutor for the boy of some kind." Helen glanced uneasily at her father, and then out into the garden. "Plenty of schools; plenty of private tutors," muttered the doctor scanning the advertisements. "Hah!" "What is it, papa!" The doctor struck the paper in the middle, doubled it up, and then frowned severely as he thrust his gold spectacles up on to his forehead. "I've made a mistake, my dear,--a great mistake." "About Dexter!" "Yes: a very great mistake." "But I'm sure he will improve," said Helen anxiously. "So am I, my dear. But our mistake is this: we took the boy from the Union schools, and we kept him here at once, where every one knew him and his late position. We ought to have sent him away for two or three years, and he would have come back completely changed, and the past history forgotten." "Sent him to a boarding-school!" "Well--er! Hum! No, not exactly," said the doctor, pursing up his lips. "Listen here, my dear. The very thing! just as if fate had come to my help." The doctor rustled the paper a little, and then began to read-- "`Backward and disobedient boys.'" "But Dexter--" "Hush, my dear; hear it all. Dexter is backward, and he is disobedient; not wilfully perhaps, but disobedient decidedly. Now listen-- "`Backward and disobedient boys.--The Reverend Septimus Mastrum, MA Oxon, receives a limited number of pupils of neglected education. Firm and kindly treatment. Extensive grounds. Healthy situation. For terms apply to the Reverend Septimus Mastrum, Firlands, Longspruce Station.'" "There! What do you say to that?" said the doctor. "I don't know what to say, papa," said Helen rather sadly. "Perhaps you are right." "Right!" cried the doctor. "The very thing, my dear. I'll write to Mr Mastrum at once. Three or four years of special education will be the making of the boy." The doctor sat down and wrote. The answer resulted in a meeting in London, where the Reverend Septimus Mastrum greatly impressed the doctor. Terms were agreed upon, and the doctor came back. "Splendid fellow, my dear. Six feet high. Says Mrs Mastrum will act the part of a mother to the boy." "Does he seem very severe, papa?" "Severe, my dear? Man with a perpetual smile on his countenance." "I do not like men with perpetual smiles on their countenances, papa." "My dear Helen, do not be so prejudiced," said the doctor angrily. "I have seen Mr Mastrum: you have not. I have told him everything about Dexter; he applauds my plan, and assures me that in two or three years I shall hardly know the boy, he will be so improved." Helen sighed. "We had a long discussion about my book, and he agrees that I am quite right. So pray do not begin to throw obstacles in the way." Helen rose and kissed her father's forehead. "I am going to do everything I can to aid your plans, papa," she said, smiling. "Of course I do not like parting with Dexter, and I cannot help feeling that there is some truth in what you say about a change being beneficial for a time; but Dexter is a peculiar boy, and I would rather have had him under my own eye." "Yes, of course, my dear. Very good of you," said the doctor; "but this way is the best. Of course he will have holidays, and we shall go to see him, and so on." "When is he to go, papa?" "Directly." "Directly?" "Well, in a day or two." Helen was silent for a moment or two, and then she moved toward the door. "Where are you going!" said the doctor sharply. "To make preparations, and warn Mrs Millett. He must have a good box of clothes and linen." "To be sure, of course," said the doctor. "Get whatever is necessary. It is the right thing, my dear, and the boy shall go at once." The doctor was so energetic and determined that matters progressed very rapidly, and the clothes and other necessaries increased at such a rate in Dexter's room that most boys would have been in a state of intense excitement. Dexter was not, and he avoided the house as much as he could, spending a great deal of time in the garden and stables. "So they're going to send you off to school, eh, Master Dexter?" said Peter, pausing to rest on his broom-handle. "Yes, Peter." "And you don't want to go? No wonder! I never liked school. Never had much on it, neither; but I know all I want." "Hullo!" said a voice behind them; and, turning, Dexter saw Dan'l standing behind him, with the first dawn of a smile, on his face. Dexter nodded, and began to move away. "So you're going off, are yer!" said Dan'l. "Two floggings a day for a year. You're in for it, youngster." "Get out," said Dexter. "They don't flog boys at good schools." "Oh, don't they?" said Dan'l. "You'll see. Well, never mind! And, look here, I'll ask master to let me send you a basket o' apples and pears when they're ripe." "You will, Dan'l!" cried Dexter excitedly. "Ay: Peter and me'll do you up a basket, and take it to the station. Be a good boy, and no more Bob Dimsted's." Dan'l chuckled as if he had said something very funny, and walked away. "Here, don't look dumpy about it, my lad," said Peter kindly. "'Tain't for ever and a day." "No, Peter," said Dexter gloomily, "it isn't for ever." "Sorry you're going, though, my lad." "Are you, Peter!" "Am I? Course I am. A man can't help liking a boy as can fight like you." Matters were growing harder for Dexter indoors now that his departure was so near. Mrs Millett was particularly anxious about him; and so sure as the boy went up to his room in the middle of the day, it was to find the old housekeeper on her knees, and her spectacles carefully balanced, trying all his buttons to see if they were fast. "Now I'm going to put you up two bottles of camomile tea, and pack them in the bottom of your box, with an old coffee-cup without a handle. It just holds the right quantity, and you'll promise me, won't you, Master Dexter, to take a dose regularly twice a week!" "Yes; I'll promise you," said Dexter. "Now, that's a good boy," cried the old lady, getting up and patting his shoulder. "Look here," she continued, leading him to the box by the drawers, "I've put something else in as well." She lifted up a layer of linen, all scented with lavender, and showed him a flat, round, brown-paper parcel. "It's not a very rich cake," she said, "but there are plenty of currants and peel in, and I'm sure it's wholesome." Even Maria became very much interested in Master Dexter's boots and shoes, and the parting from the doctor's house for the second time promised to be very hard. It grew harder as the time approached, for, with the gentleness of an elder sister, Helen exercised plenty of supervision over the preparation. Books, a little well-filled writing-case and a purse, were among the things she added. "The writing-case is for me, Dexter," she said, with a smile. "For you?" he said wonderingly. "Yes, so that I may have, at least, two letters from you every week. You promise that?" "Oh yes," he said, "if you will not mind the writing." "And the purse is for you," she said. "If you want a little more money than papa is going to allow you weekly, you may write and ask me." It grew harder still on the morning of departure, and Dexter would have given anything to stay, but he went off manfully with the doctor in the station fly, passing Sir James Danby and Master Edgar on the road. "Humph!" grunted the doctor. "See that, Dexter!" "I saw Sir James laugh at you when he nodded." "Do you know why!" Dexter was silent for a few minutes. "Because he thinks you are foolish to take so much trouble over me." "That's it, Dexter," said the doctor eagerly. "So, now, I'll tell you what I want you to do." "Yes, sir?" "Show him that I'm right and he's wrong." Dexter looked a promise, for he could not speak just then, nor yet when they had passed through London that afternoon, reached Longspruce station, and been driven to the Reverend Septimus Mastrum's house, five miles away among the fir-trees and sand of that bleak region. Here the doctor bade him "Good-bye," and Dexter, as he was standing in the great cold hall, felt that he was commencing a new phase in his existence. CHAPTER FORTY FOUR. PETER CRIBB SEES A GHOST. Helen rang the bell one evening and Maria answered the summons. "Papa thinks he would like a little supper, Maria, as we dined early to-day. Bring up a tray. There is a cold chicken, I think!" "Yes, 'm," said Maria, and disappeared, but was back in a few minutes. "If you please, 'm, Mrs Millett says there is no cold chicken, 'm." "Indeed?" said Helen wonderingly. "Very well, then, the cold veal pie." "Yes, 'm." Maria disappeared, and came back again. "Please, 'm, Mrs Millett says there is no veal pie." "Then tell her to make an omelette." "Yes, 'm." Maria left the room and came back. "Please, 'm, Mrs Millett says there's no eggs, and it's too late to get any more." "Ask Mrs Millett to come here," said Helen; and the old lady came up, looking very red. "Why, Millett," said Helen, "this is very strange. I don't like to find fault, but surely there ought to have been a chicken left." "I'm very glad you have found fault, Miss," said Mrs Millett, "for it's given me a chance to speak. Yes; there ought to have been a chicken, and the veal pie too; but I'm very sorry to say, Miss, they're gone." "Gone?" "Yes, Miss. I don't know how to account for it, but the things have begun to go in the most dreadful way. Bread, butter, milk, eggs, meat, everything goes, and we've all been trying to find out how, but it's no good." "This is very strange, Millett. Have you no idea how it is they go?" "No, Miss; but Dan'l fancies it must be that rough boy who led Master Dexter away. He says he's sure he caught sight of him in the dark last night. Somebody must take the things, and he seems to be the most likely, knowing the place as he does." "This must be seen to," said Helen; and she told the doctor. Consequently a watch was kept by the gardener and the groom, but they found nothing, and the contents of the larder continued to disappear. "If it were a man," said the doctor, on being told of what was going on, "I'd set the police to work, but I hate anything of that kind with a boy. Wait a bit, and he will get more impudent from obtaining these things with impunity, and then he will be more easily caught." "And then, papa?" said Helen. "Then, my dear? Do you know that thin Malacca cane in the hall? Yes, you do. Well, my dear, the law says it is an assault to thrash a boy, and that he ought to be left to the law to punish, which means prison and degradation. I'm going to take that cane, my dear, and defy the law." But somehow or another Master Bob Dimsted seemed to be as slippery as an eel. He saw Peter one day and grinned at him from the other side of the river. Two days later he was seen by Dan'l, who shook his fist at him, and Bob said-- "Yah!" "Have you heard from Master Dexter, Miss!" said Mrs Millett one morning. "No, Millett, and I am rather surprised. He promised so faithfully to write." "Ah, yes, Miss," said the old lady; "and he meant it, poor boy, when he promised, but boys are such one's to forget." Helen went into the library where she found the doctor biting the end of his pen, and gazing up into a corner of the room. "I don't seem to be getting on as I could wish, my dear. By the way, we haven't heard from that young dog lately. He promised me faithfully to write regularly." Helen thought of Mrs Millett's words, but said nothing, and at that moment Maria entered with the letters. "From Dexter?" said Helen eagerly. "Humph! No! But from Longspruce! I see: from Mr Mastrum." The doctor read the letter and frowned. Helen read it, and the tears stood in her eyes. "The young scoun--" "Stop, papa!" said Helen earnestly. "Do not condemn him unheard." "Then I shall have to go on without condemning him, for we've seen the last of him, I suppose." "O papa!" "Well, it looks like it, my dear; and I'm afraid I've made a great mistake, but I don't like to own it." "Wait, papa, wait!" said Helen. "What does he say? Been gone a fortnight, and would not write till he had had the country round thoroughly searched. Humph! Afraid he has got to Portsmouth, and gone to sea." Helen sighed. "`Sorry to give so bad an account of him,'" muttered the doctor, reading bits of the letter--"`treated him as his own son--seemed to have an undercurrent of evil in his nature, impossible to eradicate--tried everything, but all in vain--was beginning to despair, but still hopeful that patience might overcome the difficulty--patience combined with affectionate treatment, but it was in vain--after trying to persuade his fellow-pupils one by one, and failing, he threatened them savagely if they dared to betray him, and then he escaped from the grounds, and has not been seen since.'" There was a painful silence in the doctor's library for a few minutes. "`Patience combined with affectionate treatment,'" read the doctor again. "Helen, I believe that man has beaten and ill-used poor Dexter till he could bear it no longer, and has run away." "I'm sure of it, papa," cried Helen excitedly. "Do you think he will come back!" "I don't know," said the doctor. "Yes, I do. No; he would be afraid. I'd give something to know how to go to work to find him." "If you please, sir, may I come in?" said a pleasant soft voice. "Yes, yes, Millett, of course. What is it?" "Dan'l has been to say, sir, that he caught sight of that boy, Bob Dimsted, crawling in the garden last night when it was dark, and chased him, but the boy climbed one of the trained pear-trees, got on the wall, and escaped." "Confound the young rascal!" cried the doctor. "And I'm sorry to say, sir, that two blankets have been stolen off Master Dexter's bed." There was a week of watching, but Bob Dimsted was not caught, and the doctor sternly said that he would not place the matter in the hands of the police. But all the same the little pilferings went on, and Mrs Millett came one morning, with tears in her eyes, to say that she couldn't bear it any longer, for only last night a whole quartern loaf had been taken through the larder bars, and, with it, one of the large white jars of black-currant jam. Mrs Millett was consoled with the promise that the culprit should soon be caught, and two nights later Peter came in to announce to the doctor that he had been so near catching Bob Dimsted that he had touched him as he chased him down the garden, and that he would have caught him, only that, without a moment's hesitation, the boy had jumped into the river and swum across, and so escaped to the other side. "Next time I mean to have him," said Peter confidently, and this he repeated to Mrs Millett and Maria, being rewarded with a basin of the tea which had just come down from the drawing-room. It was just two days later that, as Helen sat with her work under the old oak-tree in the garden--an old evergreen oak which gave a pleasant shade--she became aware of a faint rustling sound. She looked up, but could see nothing, though directly after there was a peculiar noise in the tree, which resembled the chopping of wood. Still she could see nothing, and she had just resumed her work, thinking the while that Dexter would some day write, and that her father's correspondence with the Reverend Septimus Mastrum had not been very satisfactory, when there was a slight scratching sound. She turned quickly and saw that a ragged-looking squirrel had run down the grey trunk of the tree, while, as soon as it saw her, it bounded off, and to her surprise passed through the gateway leading into the yard where the old stable stood. Helen Grayson hardly knew why she did so, but she rose and followed the squirrel, to find that she was not alone, for Peter the groom was in the yard going on tiptoe toward the open door of the old range of buildings. He touched his cap on seeing her. "Squir'l, Miss," he said. "Just run in here." "I saw it just now," said Helen. "Don't kill the poor thing." "Oh no, Miss; I won't kill it," said Peter, as Helen went back into the garden. "But I mean to catch it if I can." Peter went into the dark old building and looked round, but there was no sign of the squirrel. Still a little animal like that would be sure to go upwards, so Peter climbed the half-rotten ladder, and stood in the long dark range of lofts, peering among the rafters and ties in search of the bushy-tailed little creature. He walked to the end in one direction, then in the other, till he was stopped by an old boarded partition, in which there was a door which had been nailed up; but he remembered that this had a flight of steps, or rather a broad-stepped old wood ladder, on the other side, leading to a narrower loft right in the gable. "Wonder where it can be got," said Peter to himself; and then he turned round, ran along the loft, dropped down through the trap-door, and nearly slipped and fell, so hurried was his flight. Half-across the yard he came upon Dan'l wheeling a barrow full of mould for potting. "Hallo! what's the matter?" Peter gasped and panted, but said nothing. "Haven't seen a ghost, have you?" said Dan'l. "Ye-es. No," panted Peter. "Why, you white-faced, cowardly noodle!" cried Dan'l. "What d'yer mean?" "I--I. Come out of here into the garden," whispered Peter. Dan'l was going down the garden to the potting-shed, so he made no objection, and, arrived there, Peter, with solemn emphasis, told how he had gone in search of the squirrel, and that there was something up in the loft. "Yes," said old Dan'l contemptuously--"rats." "Yes; I know that," said Peter excitedly; and his eyes looked wild and dilated; "but there's something else." Dan'l put down the barrow, and sat upon the soft mould as he gave his rough stubbly chin a rub. "Lookye here, Peter," he said; "did yer ever hear tell about ghosts being in old buildings?" "Yes," said Peter, with an involuntary shiver, and a glance across the wall at a corroded weathercock on the top of the ancient place. "Well, my lad, ghosts never comes out in the day-time: only o' nights; and do you know what they are?" Peter shook his head. "Well, then, my lad, I'll tell you. I've sin several in my time. Them as you hears and don't see's rats; and them as you sees and don't hear's howls. What d'yer think o' that?" "It wasn't a rat, nor it wasn't a howl, as I see," said Peter solemnly; "but something gashly horrid, as looked down at me from up in the rafters of that there dark place, and it made me feel that bad that I didn't seem to have no legs to stand on." "Tchah!" cried the gardener. "What yer talking about?" "Anything the matter?" said the doctor, who had come up unheard over the velvety lawn. "Hush!" whispered Peter imploringly. "Shan't hush. Sarves you right," growled Dan'l. "Here's Peter, sir, just seen a ghost." "Ah! has he?" said the doctor. "Where did you see it, Peter?" "I didn't say it were a ghost, sir, I only said as I see something horrid up at end of the old loft when I went up there just now after a squir'l." "Squirrel!" said the doctor angrily. "What are you talking about, man? Squirrels live in trees, not in old lofts. You mean a rat." "I know a squir'l when I see one, sir," said Peter; "and I see one go 'crost the yard and into that old stable." "Nonsense!" said the doctor. "Did you find it, Peter!" said Helen from under the tree. "Find what?" said the doctor. "A squirrel that ran from here across the yard." Peter looked from one to the other triumphantly, as he said-- "No, Miss, I didn't." "Humph!" grunted the doctor. "Then there was a squirrel!" "Yes, sir." "And you saw something strange!" "Yes, sir, something awful gashly, in the dark end, sir." "Bah!" cried the doctor. "There, go and get your stable lanthorn and we'll see. Helen, my dear, we've got a ghost in the old stable loft: like to come and see it!" "Very much, papa," said Helen, smiling in a way that put Peter on his mettle, for the moment before he had been ready to beg off. He went pretty quickly to get his stable lanthorn, and came back with it alight, and looking very pale and sickly, while he bore a stout broomstick in the other hand. "For shame, man! Put away that absurd thing," said the doctor, as he led the way through the gate in the wall, followed by Helen, Peter and Dan'l coming behind. "Go first with the lanthorn," said the doctor to the old gardener, but Peter was stirred to action now. "Mayn't I go first, sir!" he said. "Oh yes, if you have enough courage," said the doctor; and Peter, looking very white, led the way to the foot of the ladder, went up, and the others followed him to the loft, and stood together on the old worm-eaten boards. The lanthorn cast a yellow glow through its horn sides, and this, mingling with the faint pencils of daylight which came between the tiles, gave a very peculiar look to the place, festooned as the blackened beams were with cobwebs, which formed loops and pockets here and there. "There's an old door at the extreme end there, or ought to be," said the doctor. "Go and open it." Peter went on in advance. "Mind the holes, my dear," said the doctor. "What's that?" A curious rustling noise was heard, and, active as a young man, Dan'l ran back to the top of the ladder and descended quickly. "Well 'tain't me as is skeart now," said Peter triumphantly. Just then there was a sharp clap from somewhere in front, as if a small trap-door had been suddenly closed, and Dan'l's voice came up through the boards. "Look out!" he shouted, and his voice sounded distant. "There's some one up in the far loft there. He tried to get down into one of the hay-racks, but I frightened him back." "Stop there!" said the doctor. "We'll soon see who it is. Go on, Peter, and open that door. That young larder thief for a guinea, my dear," he continued to Helen, as Peter went on in advance. "Door's nailed up, sir," said the latter worthy, as he reached the old door, and held the lanthorn up and down. "How came it nailed up?" said the doctor, as he examined the place. "It has no business to be. Go and get an iron chisel or a crowbar. Are you there, Daniel?" "Yes, sir," came from below. "I'm on the look-out. It's that there young poacher chap, Bob Dimsted." Peter set the lanthorn on the floor and hurried off, leaving the little party watching and listening till he returned, but not a sound broke the silence, and there was nothing to see but the old worm-eaten wood and blackened tiles. "I've brought both, sir," said Peter breathlessly, and all eagerness now, for he was ashamed of his fright. "Wrench it open, then," said the doctor; and after a few sharp cracks the rotten old door gave way, and swung upon its rusty hinges, when a strange sight met the eyes of those who pressed forward into the further loft. CHAPTER FORTY FIVE. A STARTLING DISCOVERY. The rough loft had been turned into a kind of dwelling-place, for there was a bed close under the tiles, composed of hay, upon which, neatly spread, were a couple of blankets. On the other side were a plate, a knife, a piece of bread, and a jam-pot, while in the centre were some rough boxes and an old cage, on the top of which sat the ragged squirrel. "There," said Peter triumphantly, as he pointed to the squirrel. The doctor was looking eagerly round in search of the dweller in this dismal loft, but there was no one visible. "Found him, sir?" came from below. "No, not yet," replied the doctor. "Here, Peter, go up that other place." There was no hesitation on the groom's part now. He sprang up the second ladder and went along under the roof, but only to come back shaking his head. "No one up there, sir." "Are you sure he did not come down!" cried the doctor, as Peter lifted a rough trap at the side, through which, in bygone days, the horses' hay had been thrust down. "Quite sure, sir," shouted back Dan'l. "I just see his legs coming down, and he snatched 'em up again, and slammed the trap." "The young rascal!" said the doctor; "he's here somewhere. There must be some loose boards under which he is hidden." But there was not a loose board big enough to hide Bob Dimsted; and after another search the doctor rubbed his head in a perplexed manner. "Shall I come up, sir, and have a look?" said Dan'l. "No, no. Stay where you are, and keep a sharp look-out," cried the doctor. "Why, look here," he continued to Helen; "the young scoundrel has been leading a nice life here, like a Robinson Crusoe in an uninhabited island. Ah! at last!" shouted the doctor, staring straight before him; "there he is. Here, Peter, hand me the gun!" Peter stared at his master, whose eyes twinkled with satisfaction, for his feint had had the desired effect--that of startling the hiding intruder. As the doctor's words rang out there was a strange rustling sound overhead; and, as they all looked up, there came a loud crack, then another and another, and right up, nearly to the ridge of the roof, a leg came through, and then its fellow, in company with a shower of broken tiles, which rattled upon the rough floor of the loft. The owner of the legs began to make a desperate effort to withdraw them, and they kicked about in a variety of peculiar evolutions; but before they could be extricated, Peter had climbed up to an oaken beam, which formed one of the roof ties, and from there reached out and seized one of the legs by the ankle. "I've got him," he cried gleefully. "Which shall we do, sir--pull him through, or get the ladder up to the roof and drag him out?" "Here, Daniel! Come up," said the doctor. The old gardener came up eagerly; and one of his cast-iron grins expanded his face as he grasped the situation. "Brayvo, Peter!" he cried. "That's the way to ketch a ghost. Hold him tight, lad!" The doctor smiled. "Don't let them hurt him, papa," whispered Helen. "Oh no; they shall not hurt him," said the doctor quietly. Then, raising his voice--"Now, sir, will you come down quietly, or shall I send for the police to drag you out on to the roof?" An indistinct murmur came down, after a vigorous struggle to get free. "Woho! Woho, kicker!" cried Peter, speaking as if to a horse. "What does he say!" said the doctor. "Says he'll come down if I'll let go." "Don't you trust him, sir," cried Dan'l excitedly. "I do not mean to," said the doctor. "Will you come down quietly?" he shouted. There was another murmur. "Says `_yes_,' sir," cried Peter. "Then, look here," said the doctor, "you hold him tight, and you," he continued to the gardener, "climb up on that beam and push off a few tiles. Then you can draw him down through there." "All right, sir," cried Dan'l; and as Peter held on to the leg, the old gardener, after a good deal of grunting and grumbling, climbed to his side, and began to let in daylight by thrusting off tile after tile, which slid rattling down the side of the roof into the leaden guttering. The opening let in so much daylight that the appearance of the old loft was quite transformed, but the group on the worm-eaten beam was the principal object of attention till just as Dan'l thrust off the fourth tile, when there was a loud crack, a crash, and gardener, groom, and their prisoner lay in a heap on the floor of the loft, while pieces of lath and tile rattled about their heads. The old tie had given way, and they came down with a rush, to the intense astonishment of all; but the distance to fall was only about five feet, and the wonder connected with the fall was as nothing to that felt by Helen and her father, as the smallest figure of the trio struggled to his feet, and revealed the dusty, soot-smeared face of Dexter, with his eyes staring wildly from the Doctor to Helen and back again. "Dexter!" cried Helen. "You, sir!" cried the doctor. "Well, I _ham_!" ejaculated Peter, getting up and giving his thigh a slap. Dan'l sat on the floor rubbing his back, and he uttered a grunt as his face expanded till he displayed all his front teeth--a dismal array of four, and not worth a bite. "Are you hurt?" cried Helen. Dexter shook his head. "Are either of you hurt?" said the doctor frowning. "Screwed my off fetlock a bit, sir," said Peter, stooping to feel his right ankle. "Hurt?" growled Dan'l. "Well, sir, them's 'bout the hardest boards as ever I felt." "Go and ask Mrs Millett to give you both some ale," said the doctor; and the two men smiled as they heard their master's prescription. "Then go on and tell the builder to come and patch up this old roof. Here, Dexter, come in." Dexter gave Peter a reproachful look, and limped after the doctor. "Well, let's go and have that glass o' beer Peter," said Dan'l. "Talk about pickles!" "My!" said Peter, slapping his leg again. "Why, it were him we see every night, and as swum across the river. Why, he must ha' swum back when I'd gone. I say, Dan'l, what a game!" "Hah!" ejaculated the old gardener, wiping his mouth in anticipation. "It's my b'lief, Peter, as that there boy'll turn out either a reg'lar good un, or 'bout the wust as ever stepped." "Now, sir!" said the doctor, as he closed the door of the library, and then with a stern look at the grimy object before him took a seat opposite Helen. "What have you to say for yourself!" Dexter glanced at Helen, who would not meet his gaze. "Nothing, sir." "Oh, you have nothing to say! Let me see, now. You were sent to a good school to be taught by a gentleman, and treated as a special pupil. You behaved badly. You ran away. You came here and made yourself a den; you have been living by plunder ever since, and you have nothing to say!" Dexter was silent, but his face was working, his lips quivering, and his throat seemed to swell as his breath came thick and fast. At last his words came in a passionate appeal, but in a broken, disjointed way; and it seemed as if the memory of all he had suffered roused his nature into a passionate fit of indignation against the author of all the trouble. "I--I couldn't bear it," he cried; "I tried so hard--so cruel--said he was to break my spirit--that I was bad--he beat me--seven times--I did try--you wanted me to--Miss Grayson wanted me to--I was always trying-- punished me because--so stupid--but I tried--I took a bit of candle--I was trying to learn the piece--the other boys were asleep--he came up-- he caned me till I--till I couldn't bear it--break my spirit--he said he'd break it--I dropped from the window--fell down and sprained my ankle--but I walked--back here--then I was--afraid to tell you, and I hid up there." There were no tears save in the boy's voice; but there was a ring of passionate agony and suffering in every tone and utterance; and, as Helen read in the gaunt figure, hollow eyes, and pallor of the cheeks what the boy must have gone through, she turned in her chair, laid her arm on the back, her face went down upon it, and the tears came fast. The doctor was silent as the boy went on; his lips were compressed and his brow rugged; but he did not speak, till, with wondering eyes, he saw Dexter turn, go painfully toward where Helen sat with averted face, look at her as if he wanted to speak, but the words would not come, and, with a sigh, he limped toward the door. "Where are you going, sir!" said the doctor roughly. "Up there, sir," said Dexter, in a low-toned weary voice, which sounded as if all the spirit had gone. "Up there!" cried the doctor. "Yes," said Dexter feebly; and without turning round--"to Mr Hippetts, and to Mr Sibery, sir. To take me back. It's no good. I did try so-- hard--so hard--but I never had--no mother--no father--not like--other boys--and--and--" He looked wildly round, clutching at vacancy, and then reeled and fell heavily upon the carpet. For Mr Mastrum had done his work well. His system for breaking the spirit of unruly boys, and making them perfectly tame, seemed to have reached perfection. With a cry of horror Helen Grayson sprang from her seat, and sank upon her knees by Dexter's side, to catch his head to her breast, while the doctor tore at the bell. "Bring brandy--water, quick!" he said; "the boy has fainted." It was quite true, and an hour elapsed before he looked wildly round at those about him. He tried to rise, and struggled feebly. Then as they held him back he began to talk in a rapid disconnected way. "'Bliged to take it--so hungry--yes, sir--please, sir--I've come back, sir--come back, Mr Sibery, sir--if Mr Hippetts will let me stay-- where's Mother Curdley--where's nurse!" "O father!" whispered Helen excitedly! "Poor, poor boy! what does this mean?" "Fever," said the doctor gently, as he laid his hand upon the boy's burning forehead and looked down in his wild eyes. "Yes," he said softly, "fever. He must have suffered terribly to have been brought to this." CHAPTER FORTY SIX. FEVER WORKS WONDERS. Doctor Grayson's book stood still. For many years past he had given up the practice of medicine, beyond writing out a prescription for his daughter or servants, but he called in the services of no other medical man for poor Dexter. "No, my dear," he said. "It is my fault entirely that the boy is in this state, and if such knowledge as I possess can save him, he shall come down hale and strong once more." So Dexter had the constant attention of a clever physician and two nurses, who watched by him night and day, the doctor often taking his turn to relieve Helen or Mrs Millett, so that a little rest might be theirs. And all through that weary time, while the fever was culminating, those who watched learned more of the poor fellow's sufferings at the scholastic establishment, during his flight, when he toiled homeward with an injured foot, and afterwards when he had taken possession of his old den, and often nearly starved there, in company with his squirrel-- his old friend whom he found established in the loft, whence it sallied forth in search of food, as its master was obliged to do in turn. One night Helen went up to relieve Mrs Millett, and found Maria leaning against the door outside, crying silently, and this impressed her the more, from the fact that Peter and Dan'l had each been to the house three times that day to ask how Master Dexter was. Maria hurried away, and Helen entered, to find old Mrs Millett standing by the bedside, holding one of the patient's thin white hands, and watching him earnestly. "Don't say he's worse," whispered Helen. "Hush, my dear," whispered the old woman. "Ring, please, Miss; master said I was to if I saw any change." Helen glided to the bell, and then ran back to the bed, to stand trembling with her hands clasped, and her eyes tearless now. The doctor's step was heard upon the stairs, and he entered breathlessly, and without a word crossed to the bed, to bend down over the sufferer as he held his wrist. The silence in that room was terrible to two of the inmates, and the suspense seemed to be drawn out until it was almost more than could be borne. At last the doctor turned away, and sank exhausted in a chair; and as Helen caught his hand in hers, and questioned him with her eyes, he said in a low and reverent voice-- "Yes, Helen, our prayers have been heard. Poor fellow! he will live." CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN. CONVALESCENCE. "Get out," said Dan'l, some weeks later. "Tired? Why, I could pull this here inv'lid-chair about the garden all day, my lad, and not know it." "But why not rest under one of the trees for a bit?" said Dexter. "'Cause I don't want to rest; and if I did, it might give you a chill. Why, you're light as light, and this is nothing to the big roller." "I'm afraid I'm a great deal of trouble to you all," said Dexter, as he sat back, supported by a pillow, and looking very white, while from time to time he raised a bunch of Dan'l's choicest flowers to his nose. "Trouble? Tchah! And, look here! master said you was to have as much fruit as you liked. When'll you have another bunch o' grapes!" "Oh, not yet," said Dexter smiling, and he looked at the grim face of the old gardener, who walked slowly backwards as he drew the chair. "Well, look here," said Dan'l, after a pause. "You can do as you like, but you take my advice. Peter's gone 'most off his head since master said as you might go out for a drive in a day or two; but don't you be in no hurry. I can draw you about here, where it's all nice and warm and sheltered, and what I say is this: if you can find a better place for a inv'lid to get strong in than my garden, I should like to see it. Humph! There's Missus Millett working her arms about like a mad windmill. Got some more jelly or blammondge for you, I s'pose. Lookye here, Master Dexter, just you pitch that sorter thing over, and take to beef underdone with the gravy in it. That'll set you up better than jelleries and slops." Dan'l was right. Mrs Millett was waiting with a cup of calves'-feet jelly; and Maria had brought out a rug, because it seemed to be turning cold. Two days later Dan'l was called away to visit a sick relative, and Peter's face was red with pleasure as he brought the invalid chair up to the door after lunch, and helped deposit the convalescent in his place, Helen and the doctor superintending, and Mrs Millett giving additional orders, as Maria formed herself into a flesh and blood crutch. "There, Dexter," said the doctor; "we shall be back before it's time for you to come in." He nodded, and Helen bent down and kissed the boy. Then there was the crushing of the wheels on the firm gravel, and Dexter lay back breathing in health. "Thought I was never going to have a pull at the chair, Mas' Dexter," said Peter. "Old Dan'l gets too bad to live with. Thinks nobody can't take care of you but him. Let's see, though; he said I was to cut you a bunch of them white grapes in Number 1 house, and there was two green figs quite ripe if you liked to have them." Peter pulled the carriage up and down the garden half a dozen times, listening the while till he heard the dull bang of the front door. "They're gone," he said gleefully. "Come on!" He went down the garden at a trot, and then carefully drew the wheeled-chair on to the grass at the bottom. "Peter, did you feed the squirrel!" said Dexter suddenly. Peter looked round very seriously, and shook his head. "Oh!" ejaculated Dexter. "Why didn't you feed the poor thing?" "Wait a minute and you'll see," said the groom; and, drawing the chair a little further, until it was close to the brink of the bright river, he turned round-- "Thought you'd like to feed him yourself, so I brought him down." There, on a willow branch, hung the old cage, with the squirrel inside, and Peter thrust his hand into his pocket to withdraw it full of nuts. But Peter had not finished his surprise, for he left the chair for a few moments and returned with Dexter's rod and line, and a bag of worms. "Going to fish?" said Dexter eagerly. "No, but I thought you'd like to now you was better," said Peter. "There, you can fish as you sit there, and I'll put on your bait, and take 'em off the hook." Dexter fished for half an hour, but he did not enjoy it, for he could not throw in his line without expecting to see Bob Dimsted on the other side. So he soon pleaded fatigue, and was wheeled out into the sunshine, and to the door of the vinery, up which he had scrambled when he first came to the doctor's house. A week later he was down at Chale, in the Isle of Wight, where the doctor had taken a house; and here, upon the warm sands, Dexter sat and lay day after day, drinking in the soft sea air, and gaining strength, while the doctor sat under an umbrella to think out fresh chapters for his book, and Helen either read to her invalid or worked. CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT. THE PROOF OF THE DOCTOR'S THEORY. Three years, as every one knows, look like what they are--twenty-six thousand two hundred and eighty long hours from one side, and they look like nothing from the other. They had passed pleasantly and well, for the doctor had been so much pleased with his Isle of Wight house that he had taken it for three years, and transported there the whole of his household, excepting Dan'l, who was left in charge at Coleby. "You see, my dear," the doctor had said; "it's a mistake for Dexter to be at Coleby until he has gone through what we may call his caterpillar stage. We'll take him back a perfect--" "Insect, papa?" said Helen, smiling. "No, no. You understand what I mean." So Dexter did not see Coleby during those three years, in which he stayed his terms at a school where the principal did not break the spirit of backward and unruly boys. On the contrary, he managed to combine excellent teaching with the possession of plenty of animal spirits, and his new pupil gained credit, both at home and at the school. "Now," said the doctor, on the day of their return to the old home, as he ran his eye proudly over the sturdy manly-looking boy he was taking back; "I think I can show Sir James I'm right, eh, my dear?" Old Dan'l smiled a wonderful smile as Dexter went down the garden directly he got home. "Shake hands with you, my lad?" he said, in answer to an invitation; "why, I'm proud. What a fine un you have growed! But come and have a look round. I never had such a year for fruit before." Chuckling with satisfaction, the doctor was not content until he had brought Sir James and Lady Danby to the house to dinner, in company with their son, who had grown up into an exceedingly tall, thin, pale boy with a very supercilious smile. No allusion was made to the doctor's plan, but the dinner-party did not turn out a success, for the boys did not seem to get on together; and Sir James said in confidence to Lady Danby that night, precisely what Dr Grayson said to Helen-- "They never shall be companions if I can help it. I don't like that boy." Over the dessert, too, Sir James managed to upset Dexter's equanimity by an unlucky speech, which brought the colour to the boy's cheeks. "By the way, young fellow," he said, "I had that old friend of yours up before me, about a month ago, for the second time." Dexter looked at him with a troubled look, and Sir James went on, as he sipped his claret. "You know--Bob Dimsted. Terrible young blackguard. Always poaching. Good thing if they had a press-gang for the army, and such fellows as he were forced to serve." It was at breakfast the next morning that the doctor waited till Dexter had left the table, and then turned to Helen-- "I shall not forgive Danby that unkind remark," he said. "I could honestly do it now, and say, `There, sir, I told you I could make a gentleman out of any material that I liked to select; and I've done it.' But no: I'll wait till Dexter has passed all his examinations at Sandhurst, and won his commission, and then--Yes, Maria--what is it!" "Letter, sir, from the Union," said Maria. "Humph! Dear me! What's this? Want me to turn guardian again, and I shall not. Eh, bless my heart! Well, well, I suppose we must." He passed the letter to Helen, and she read Mr Hippetts formal piece of diction, to the effect that one of the old inmates, a Mrs Curdley, was in a dying state, and she had several times asked to see the boy she had nursed--Obed Coleby. During the doctor's absence from the town the master had not felt that he could apply; but as Dr Grayson had returned, if he would not mind his adopted son visiting the poor old woman, who had been very kind to him as a child, it would be a Christian-like deed. "Yes; yes, of course, of course," said the doctor; and he called Dexter in. "Oh yes!" cried the lad, as he heard the request. "I remember all she did for me so well, and--and--I have never been to see her since." "My fault--my fault, my boy," said the doctor hastily. "There, we shall go and see her now." There were only two familiar faces for Dexter to encounter, first, namely, those of Mr Hippetts and the schoolmaster, both of whom expressed themselves as being proud to shake their old pupil's hand. Then they ascended to the infirmary, where the old nurse lay very comfortable and well cared for, and looking as if she might last for months. Her eyes lit up as she saw Dexter; and, when he approached, she held out her hand, and made him sit down beside her. "And growed such a fine chap!" she said, again and again. She had little more to say, beyond exacting a promise that he would come and see her once again, and when he was about to leave she put a small, dirty-looking, brown-paper packet in his hand. "There," she said. "I'd no business to, and he'd ha' took it away if he'd ha' known; but he didn't; and it's yours, for it was in your father's pocket when he come here and died." The "he" the poor old woman meant was the workhouse master, and the packet was opened in his presence, and found to contain a child's linen under-garment plainly marked--"Max Vanburgh, 12," and a child's highly-coloured toy picture-book, frayed and torn, and further disfigured by having been doubled in half and then doubled again, so that it would easily go in a man's pocket. It was the familiar old story of Little Red Riding-Hood, but the particular feature was an inscription upon the cover written in a delicate feminine hand-- "For my darling Max on his birthday, June 30th, 18--. Alice Vanburgh, The Beeches, Daneton." "But you told me the boy's father was a rough, drunken tramp, who died in the infirmary." "Yes, sir, I did," said Mr Hippetts, when he had a private interview with the doctor next day. "But it seems strange." "Very," said the doctor. Helen also agreed that it was very strange, and investigations followed, the result of which proved, beyond doubt, that Dexter Grayson, otherwise Obed Coleby, was really Maximilian Vanburgh, the son of Captain Vanburgh and Alice, his wife, both of whom died within two years of the day when, through the carelessness of a servant, the little fellow strayed away out through the gate and on to the high-road, where he was found far from home, crying, by the rough, tipsy scoundrel who passed that way. The little fellow's trouble appealed to what heart there was left in the man's breast, and he carried him on, miles away, careless as to whom he belonged to, and, day by day, further from the spot where the search was going on. The child amused him; and in his way he was kind to it, while the little fellow was of an age to take to any one who played with and petted him. Rewards and advertisements were vain, for they never reached the man's eyes, and his journeyings were on and on through a little-frequented part of the country, where it was nobody's business to ask a rough tramp how he came by the neglected-looking, ragged child, who clung to him affectionately enough. The little fellow was happy with him for quite three months, as comparison of dates proved, and what seemed strange became mere matter of fact--to wit, that Dexter was a gentleman by birth. All this took time to work out, but it was proved incontestably, the old nurse having saved all that the rough fellow had left of his little companion's belongings; and when everything was made plain, there was the fact that Dexter was an orphan, and that he had found a home that was all a boy could desire. "There, papa! what have you to say now?" said Helen to the doctor one day. "Say?" he said testily. "Danby will laugh at me when he knows, and declare my theory is absurd. I shall never finish that book." "But you will not try such an experiment again?" said Helen laughingly. Just then Dexter came in sight, bright, frank, and manly, and merrily whistling one of Helen's favourite airs. "No," said the doctor sharply; and then--"God bless him! Yes: if it was to be the making of such a boy as that!" THE END.