WHOTRAVELE0^500100Q^^I-ES FOR$7fii 
 
Here and There 
 
 WITH 
 
 AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS TRAMP 
 
 WRITTEN BY HIMSELF 
 
 FIRST EDITION 
 
 PRICE, 25 CENTS 
 
 Copyright, 1921 
 
 BY 
 
 THE A-NO. 1 PUBEISHING COMPANY 
 
 All suTiject matter, as well as all illustrations, and especially the 
 title of this Tiook, are fhlly protected by copyright, and their 
 use in any form whatsoever will be vigorously prosecuted for 
 
 infringement. 
 
 THE 
 
 (tbadb mark) 
 
 PUBI-ISHIINO COym=*A,rNY 
 
 ERIE, PENNSYLVANIA 
 U. S. A. 
 
To The Public:-^ 
 
 You may purchase our books of any news 
 agent, aboard every passenger train in 
 in the United States, Canada, England and 
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 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 
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 To The Dealer:-— 
 
 The American News Company and all its 
 branches throughout the United States and 
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 of our books in stock. 
 
 Dealers should furnish a fair display to our 
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 the stories are based on actual experiences 
 of the author who wasted thirty years on 
 the Road. 
 
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 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 
 stones which cover every interesting phase 
 of tramp life. 
 
 Yours respectfully, 
 
 W c ^4 • ^ Publishing Company 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Lucky Landlord of Enterprise. 
 
 M agnificent orange groves and orchards of 
 other varieties of the delicious fruits of the 
 tropical citrus family thickly dotted the land¬ 
 scape spreading southward beyond the gates of Jack¬ 
 sonville—at the time antedating that national calam¬ 
 ity which even to this late date is still being referred 
 to with bated breath by the inhabitants of Florida as 
 the “Great Freeze/’ Low temperatures, previously 
 never experienced, overnight destroyed agricultural 
 values conservatively estimated as surpassing the fifty 
 million dollar mark. As a logical sequence of such 
 sudden and fearful destruction, a virtually complete 
 pauperization not only descended upon the citizens of 
 Florida but struck people who winterly sojourned in 
 the state and there had become financially interested 
 in investments in citrus property. 
 
 Among the transient citizens—that is, those who 
 annually returned to their northern homes at the con¬ 
 clusion of the inclement season—was a considerable 
 representation who hailed from countries oversea. 
 Again, among these foreigners a number were not¬ 
 ables, while others were members of the Old-World 
 aristocracy who in their homeland were rated as of the 
 ultra-select set of society. Oddly enough, these dis¬ 
 tinguished strangers seemed to prefer braving the 
 hazards and hardships entailed by a late fall or, still 
 rougher, a midwinter traverse of the storm-riven At¬ 
 lantic to the negotiating in comparative comfort the 
 voyage to near-Monaco, the charming resorts of the 
 French and Italian Rivieras, Rome and Turin, Palermo 
 

 ^ Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 of Sicily, Brindisi at the foot of continental Italy, the 
 enchanting* isles of the Aegean Sea, Cairo of Egypt, 
 the vale of the Nile and the other more or less conve¬ 
 nient tropical destinations catering to the entertain¬ 
 ment of travelers endeavoring to escape from the harsh 
 winter weather common to Central and Northern 
 Europe. 
 
 The exceedingly profitable pursuit of the citrus in¬ 
 dustry furnished the powerful magnet which, almost 
 irresistibly, drew Florida-ward the cream of the winter 
 tourist travel of the universe at large. For so very 
 generous proved the . annual revenue to be obtained by 
 the marketing of the fruit production of any orchard 
 of average acreage having attained no less than the 
 sixth year of growth under constant attention and care¬ 
 ful cultivation, that the returns usually more than suf¬ 
 ficed to reimburse the owner for the not inconsiderable 
 household expenditures incurred by himself and his 
 immediate family circle for the duration of their tran¬ 
 sient stay within the state. Of properties planted not 
 over ten years it was deemed a most commonplace per¬ 
 formance when, additionally, the income derived com¬ 
 pensated the resorters for the roundtrip transporta¬ 
 tion in Pullmans from Florida to their summertime 
 residence. Occasionally, an^ this more especially in 
 the instance of the older, and the more extensive of 
 the estates, after fully meeting the heavy outlays 
 enumerated, there generally remained a cash balance 
 which paid a right royal dividend on the monetary in¬ 
 vestment involved. 
 
 f herefore, no sooner had the new'comer in the state 
 aiTived at a definite decision in the selection of the 
 locality suiting his personal preference in the matter 
 of desirability of residence, than he set himself the 
 task of gaining possession of an orange grove or ^ 
 orchard either specializing on limes, lemons, grape S 
 
 NclJ 
 
Here and There With ’A-No. i 5 
 
 fruit, mandarins, tangerines or all these or still others 
 of the fruits belonging to the citrus classification. 
 Tourists having the command of ample resources to 
 engineer such a deal, invariably purchased estates of 
 this character already in bearing, while visitors finan¬ 
 cially less endowed began at the bottom rung of the 
 remunerative vocation by planting a grove and then 
 patiently nursing the trees to their fruiting maturity. 
 
 But as every bright ray of sunshine is cursed to 
 carry in its wake the uncanny shadow, thus, and form¬ 
 ing a most undesirable adjunct to the annual tourist 
 incursion that gladdened the heart of the Flori¬ 
 dians by accelerating commercial activities, with the 
 onset of the wintery weather there came drifting into 
 the state a vast horde of uncouth professional tramps. 
 
 In the piping days of plenty preceding the visitation 
 of the Great Freeze, the ragged nomads of the Road, 
 even more liberally than this is their standard wont 
 nowadays, patronized Florida with their unwelcome 
 presence. For then the state was fairly studded with 
 settlements which ranged from merest hamlets to the 
 more pretentious cities. These communities drew an 
 overflov/ing measure of acceptable prosperity from the 
 business created by the presence of the citrus estates 
 which, park-like, surrounded them in every direction 
 of the compass. A comprehensive example of the 
 golden opportunities then offered all comers might 
 readily be adduced from the mere statement that so 
 heavy was the volume of the freight and passenger 
 traffic given to the railroads crisscrossing the penin¬ 
 sular district of Florida that it was a common matter 
 to meet stations distributed at intervals of less than 
 half mile distances along the right of ways of the rail¬ 
 roads. 
 
g 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 I N the days just prior to the advent of the disaster 
 of the Great Freeze, the author was roaming in 
 mountainous Eastern Tennessee, when a decidedly 
 unpleasant coldish nip in the air at the dawn of day 
 announced the approach of the moment of betaking 
 myself to the natural shelter against the fierce blasts 
 of the Arctic-bred tempests afforded by mildly clim¬ 
 ated Florida. I heeded the call, as likewise did all 
 other enterprising hoboes roving in the territory east 
 of the waters of the Mississippi and the Missouri. 
 Vagabonds roaming in the domain located to the west 
 of this water division of Wanderland, fled for refuge 
 to the country stretching along the line drawn be¬ 
 tween the city of New Orleans and the coast of South¬ 
 ern California, whenever Jack Frost went into regular 
 action. 
 
 In Florida, and largely due to the immense revenues 
 all too easily acquired by natives and tourists, tramps 
 fared most famously in the matter of provender and, 
 quite frequently, generous gifts of money. The latter 
 donations were mostly handed out by the wealthier 
 element of the outlanders wintering in the state. But¬ 
 lers and other haughty household menials in their 
 employ, who ever were on the alert to forestall the 
 beggar at the gate gaining a personal interview with 
 the master of the house, had been left behind in the 
 Old Country to guard the interests of their absent em¬ 
 ployer. Quite unversed with the devious schemes 
 enacted by the American mendicants, the affluent 
 strangers in the land readily fell for the bait covered 
 by the artful tales of woe and exquisite misfortune 
 recited by the wily panhandlers. 
 
 To work the countryside more thoroughly, I quit 
 hoboing the railroad cars for tramping afoot on the 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 7. 
 
 public highways. To meet personal requirements 
 while on the way overland, I had taken charge of a cast¬ 
 away satchel in which I carried an assortment of nec¬ 
 essaries of every-day application. 
 
 I drifted about with easy stages, and when spring 
 opened and the days became rather too hot and sultry 
 for good comfort, my thoughts naturally turned to the 
 moment of my breaking away to a section favored 
 with a less oppressive climate. 
 
 It was on a Sunday that I came walking from Enter¬ 
 prise Junction, on the “Jacksonville, Tampa & Key 
 West Railroad,’’ which nowadays forms an important 
 component of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, to the 
 town of Enterprise. Quitting the’ junction point long 
 before the hour of breakfast, and though the distance 
 to Enterprise was but a scant mile, still it was past 
 high noon when I finally arrived at my destination. 
 
 While en route on the highway, perchance, I walked 
 by a limpid pond. Fish disported in the water. As I 
 happened to be an angler so consistent that I habitual¬ 
 ly carried fishing tackle tucked away in some nook in 
 my apparel, I promptly fell a victim to the lure so 
 tempting to a fisherman. The hours fleeted so un¬ 
 awares that midday was at hand when I tore myself 
 from the most excellent fishing. 
 
 In the meanwhile my appetite had become most 
 keenly wetted not only by reason of having missed 
 that morning connections with my breakfast but even 
 more so on account of the bracing air that was heavily 
 charged v/ith fragrant scent exhaled by the myriads 
 of citrus blossoms profusely blooming in the orchards 
 near at hand. 
 
 When I reached the limits of Enterprise, I went 
 among the residences to seek employment in payment 
 for my dinner. Although I diligently applied this and 
 other schemes available to the vagrant in quest of 
 
8 Here and There With A-No.i 
 
 victuals, everywhere I knocked I was sent empty- 
 handed on my way, though the folks I approached 
 treated me quite civilly. I soon arrived at the con¬ 
 clusion, that there was nothing the matter with the 
 inhabitants of Enterprise but that the fault solely lay 
 with the circumstance that the day happened to be 
 Sunday. 
 
 In all the households of America a most astonishing 
 regularity was observed in the time of the serving of 
 the three meals of the six ordinary days of the week. 
 Tramps calling at the kitchen entrances during the 
 hour intervening between seven and eight of the morn¬ 
 ing were likely assured to obtain a fair share of the 
 family breakfast. Dinner in the States and luncheon, 
 its Canadian equivalent, was punctually tabled between 
 noon and the half hour following. The repast of the 
 evening commonly fell around six o’clock. 
 
 But with the serving of the meals on the Sunday it 
 was quite a different story. Each and every household 
 seemed to have installed a strictly private schedule 
 that was almost certain to vary from every 
 other meal plan of the neighborhood. So displaced 
 were the meal hours, that on a Sunday it amounted to 
 the veriest windfall of sheer good fortune should d 
 Weary Willie arrive at the gate of a residence at the 
 opportune moment to be in personal evidence while a 
 repast was being partaken of by the occupants of the 
 home. Enterprise furnished another glaring proof of 
 what a hobo had to contend with on every Lord’s Day 
 of his wayfaring career. 
 
 Said the mistress of the first residence I approached: 
 “So exceedingly sorry that I cannot accommodate you 
 with even an indifferent lunch, my good man. We 
 breakfasted at eleven and now are making ready to 
 attend the Sunday school, and, therefore, I am quit^ 
 
- Here and There With A-No. i 9 
 
 sure you won’t expect me to prepare another meal 
 especially for you.” 
 
 I saw the light and went to visit a neighbor, where 
 I was met by the master of the house who revealed a 
 pointed bit of domestic imposition as he ruefully com¬ 
 plained: “On Sunday my wife does not care to rise 
 until quite late in the afternoon and I am forced to 
 look after my own i meals, and as Towser cleans the 
 plates, there isn’t anything left.” 
 
 Another lady exposed the secret of her meal time¬ 
 table, when she replied: “There isn’t anything edible 
 in the house, as we breakfasted at seven, shall dine at 
 one and then serve a light lunch an hour or so only 
 before we retire for the night.” 
 
 Still another housewife groaned: “Here it’s eight 
 o’clock for the morning meal, at three we have our 
 luncheon and at seven a course dinner.” 
 
 She kindly invited me to put in appearance at the 
 house at any convenient meal hour, but I was famished 
 and , went on and on with my search until I was pre¬ 
 sented with a dollar by a resident whose accent of 
 speech, appearance and general deportment betokened 
 him to be a citizen hailing from a foreign shore. 
 
 Deciding to invest the donation on the purchase of 
 a substantial meal, I learned that no restaurant had 
 located at Enterprise where business flourished dur¬ 
 ing the term of the winter tourist season only, while 
 commercial stagnation ruled the remainder of the 
 year. But there were hotels galore, and they were of 
 a grade showing their exclusive catering to the patron¬ 
 age of the wealthier tourists. 
 
 Harrassed by hunger, I threw aside the fine distinc¬ 
 tions of caste when I hiked into the hotel nearest at 
 hand, the “Victoria Inn.” Depositing my satchel with 
 the hotel clerk, the latter invited the registering of my 
 name and address in the guest book of the inn. 
 
10 Here and There With A~No. i 
 
 On casually glancing over the list of the addresses 
 previously inscribed on the register, with surprise I 
 noted that almost every stranger stopping at the hotel 
 was the bearer of a title of nobility. Because I hap¬ 
 pened to be straightway American-born and made 
 light sport of the frills, foibles and follies connected 
 with the observation of the various birth rights sa¬ 
 credly adhered to by Europeans, my republican belief 
 in the equality of all mankind was ruffled so sorely by 
 the odd-sounding prefixes I perused, that actuated by 
 the spirit of practical joking I blithely registered as 
 “Lord Warework, London, England.” 
 
 Then I bravely strutted into the gorgeously ap¬ 
 pointed dining room of the “Victoria Inn.” My rough 
 attire of the Road stood out in a rather ugly contrast 
 against the elegant apparel of the ladies and their 
 faultlessly dressed gentlemen escorts. Coolly ignoring 
 the shafts of resentment cast in my direction by both, 
 guests and hotel hirelings, I executed such amazing 
 inroads on the food that the waiters, though other¬ 
 wise masterly they might have been trained in the 
 control of their personal emotions, gasped with aston¬ 
 ishment. 
 
 After luncheon, I checked out the satchel and then 
 began the return trip afoot to the railroad junction. 
 The playful antics of the fish in the pond, where I had 
 angled in the forenoon, called for another term of the 
 sport I doted on. Dusk had begun to shroud the land¬ 
 scape when the rumbling of a northbound train was 
 heard in the distance. This went to remind me of 
 my intention to retreat to a more temperate climate. 
 I acted on the impulse of the moment. Discarding the 
 satchel at the shore of the pond, I hurried away to 
 take hobo passage aboard the approaching train. The 
 latter was a local freight that made all the interme¬ 
 diate stops en route. 
 
Here and There With "A-No.% IT 
 
 At that, I had quite failed to pay a due considera¬ 
 tion to the abrupt changes in the weather, such as 
 were ordinary occurrences throughout the territory 
 of the Southland. In the course of the night, and 
 while I was dodging hither and thither to avoid hail¬ 
 ing contact with members of the train crew who were 
 searching the cars for hobo helpers to handle the 
 freight for their passage, the tail end of a blizzard 
 came sweeping down on fair Florida, where the tem¬ 
 pest sent the mercury of the thermometer hugging 
 the freezing point so closely that at Green Cove 
 Springs I deserted the train and then by gradual stages 
 began drifting returnward to the warm lake region of 
 Florida. 
 
 While at Tavares I was chopping kindlings for pro- 
 vender, the owner of the residence came to visit with 
 me. He eyed mp strangely askance. 
 
 “Aren’t you ‘Lord Warework’? he exploded, finally. 
 
 “ ‘Lord Warework’?” I echoed surprised, having quite 
 forgotten the registering of the fictitious address over 
 at Enterprise. 
 
 “You’re the same fellow I saw stopping at the ‘Vic¬ 
 toria Inn’,” he said positively, refreshing my memory 
 to where I recalled the odd incident. 
 
 Entertaining no hope to escape a frank confession 
 of the laughable deception, I regaled the man to a de¬ 
 tailed review of the affair. 
 
 “A dandy practical joke, wasn’t it, though?’’ I 
 beamed on finishing with the report. 
 
 “You dare call such miserable trick ‘a practical 
 joke’?” soberly retorted the citizen of Tavares. “On 
 the morning of the Monday, people who had previous¬ 
 ly seen you fishing at the pond, while passing on the 
 highway espied the satchel you had abandoned. Hor¬ 
 ror-stricken they raced to town and there spread the 
 alarm that in all probability a titled European had met 
 
12 Here and There With A-No. 'i 
 
 with accidental drowning. Fearing the worst, Land¬ 
 lord Ericson engaged darkies to seine the lake. When 
 this effort effected no solution of the disappearance of 
 the stranger, the hotel keeper invited the residents of 
 Enterprise to form searching parties to scour the coun¬ 
 tryside for a trace of the missing traveler. Even in¬ 
 cluding the. distinguished guests of the hotels, all 
 Enterprise willingly obeyed the urgent summons. 
 When we came straggling back into town with empty 
 hands, someone suggested an inspection of the con¬ 
 tents of the satchel for information that might have 
 led to a revelation of the identity of the owner. 
 
 “Amid the breathless interest of the tired folks who 
 had participated in the futile search, the lock of the 
 satchel was forced. A howl of deepest derision was 
 raised when ragged raiment, frayed railroad time 
 tables and other worthless junk proclaimed the prop¬ 
 erty to be that of a professional hobo. Ericson took 
 the disappointment so keenly to heart, that he had 
 to take to his bed and even to this day cannot bear a 
 mention of anything reminding him of the straying 
 of Xord Beware-of-Work’, as we quickly and correctly 
 translated the title you had assumed. If I were in 
 your place, by all means would I avoid running afoul 
 of Ericson, for he not only is an innkeeper but also the 
 justice of the peace for the Enterprise town district.” 
 
 Having aired his personal opinion, the fellow dis- 
 gruntedly went into his residence. In fear that the 
 citizen might communicate over the telephone with 
 the authorities, I precipitately quit the wood chopping 
 without waiting to claim my lunch. When I had trav¬ 
 eled a safe distance beyond Tavares, I hugely enjoyed 
 a contemplation of the immense discomfiture which 
 had rewarded Landlord Ericson as a result of my jolly 
 scribbling in the guest journal of the “yictoria Inn,” 
 
Frencliy recognized by the Floridian, 
 
14 Here and There With 'A~No.% 
 
 T he second winter, succeeding the one made his-* 
 torically memorable by the Great Freeze, 
 brought me back to Florida. Long before I 
 crossed the state line, I was practically to learn of the 
 wide range of the indescribable havoc enacted by the 
 tragedy of Nature. In the years gone by train on 
 train—virtually forming an uninterrupted procession 
 racing on limited schedule hauling their immense car¬ 
 goes of oranges, other citrous fruits and early veg¬ 
 etables to the northern markets—were passing north¬ 
 bound, while returning trains of “empties’^ afforded no 
 end of opportunities for safe hiding places to floaters 
 pilgrimating to the warmer section. This great traffic 
 had petered away to a lone “bobtailed” local freight 
 which, at that, on alternating days only ran back or 
 forth, respectively, over each railroad division. The 
 passenger carrying business was in an even worse 
 shape. The many trains-de-luxe of former years had 
 been discontinued. A few accommodation trains of¬ 
 fered to trespassers the only available other transpor¬ 
 tation over the numerous railroad systems centering 
 at Jacksonville, the gate and getaway city of Florida. 
 
 Arriving within the state, I witnessed the effects 
 of the cold which, though continuing but comparative¬ 
 ly few hours, had ruthlessly destroyed every vestige of 
 such ' vegetation as Nature had not intended to exist 
 in the lands to the north of the Tropic of Cancer. The 
 brief spell of extreme weather had frozen to solid ice 
 the life-sustaining sap circulating through the plants 
 and trees affected by cold, even that pulsating in the 
 farthest reaches of their roots. 
 
 At Jacksonville, where I had so often visited during 
 the height of the tourist rush of the winter, all the 
 palatial hotels—in other days the justifiable pride of 
 the citizens—were closed to business. The wharves 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 15 
 
 of the water front, the gage of commerce of a seaboard 
 city, were barricaded against public access. The thor¬ 
 oughfares of both the business and residence districts 
 offered a most forlorn sight by stores and homes be¬ 
 ing placarded with weather-worn ‘Tor Kent” and 
 ‘Tor Sale” posters. In whatever direction one chanced 
 to turn were encountered the telltales that the resi¬ 
 dents of the state had been brutally disillusioned in 
 their implicit trust in an eternal continuance of the 
 mild winter weather which without a noteworthy 
 breach had favored Florida for so many, many years. 
 
 South of the metropolis, the country at large dis¬ 
 played even more conspicuously the ravages of the cold 
 snap. The territory was converted into a howling des¬ 
 olation from which a teeming population had fled as 
 before a mortal plague. Nowhere, so it seemed, was 
 there any sensible satisfaction to be gained from a 
 further investing of hum.an endeavor or financial re¬ 
 sources on a revival of the utterly ruined citrus indus¬ 
 try which by the proof of the Great Freeze had been 
 placed in the status of a mere gamble from which Jack 
 Frost was bound, sooner or later, to emerge again as 
 the winner of the board. Grove on grove, erstwhile 
 containing row after row of evergreen foliaged trees 
 groaning under their load of attractive tropical fruit 
 and beautiful blossoms were transformed into veri¬ 
 table graveyards of ghastly stripped tree skeletons. 
 Everywhere magnificent homes could be seen aban¬ 
 doned to the fury of the elements as not even the 
 astute gatherer of taxes could dispose of the proper¬ 
 ties at any price. There were ever so many villages 
 entirely deserted by their inhabitants, while in others 
 there remained but a handful of people, mostly darkies, 
 while towns and cities had lost a major portion of 
 their permanent and all but an insignificant number 
 of their transient population. 
 
16 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 rjATE so willed it, that late on an afternoon while 
 I was hoboing northbound, coming from Tampa¬ 
 way, I was fired off a train at Enterprise Junc¬ 
 tion. Vividly recollecting the tard warning I had re¬ 
 ceived at Tavares in the matter of exercising 
 an extreme caution against my meeting with the Land¬ 
 lord Ericson of the “Victoria Inn,” I vainly staged 
 every desperate means resorted to by trespassers defy¬ 
 ing the orders of a train crew. 
 
 I slipped off my outfit of railroad overalls which I 
 habitually donned to protect my street attire against 
 damage whenever I took to the cars. Tucking the 
 overalls conveniently under my arm, I looked about 
 for an opportunity to connect with a meal as all 
 through the day, while waiting for a train to stop at a 
 lone water tank, I had tasted no morsel of food. Of 
 the residences looming in view from the station plat¬ 
 form, all had their doors and the windows at the street 
 level boarded up—an infallible indication that the 
 houses were standing unoccupied. Enterprise offered 
 the only haven of relief for my pressing need for pro- 
 vender. My ruffled conscience, though, sorely rebelled 
 against my running the great risk of encountering 
 Ericson, who, being of Scandinavian descent by rule of 
 his name, likely might prove as implacably unforgiv¬ 
 ing as had been the other people of his race I happened 
 to offend. But hunger gnawed ever more annoying. 
 Then I espied a gang of colored track repairers toiling 
 nearby, and went to meet them to question them on 
 matters in which, for cause quite obvious, I personally 
 was vitally interested. 
 
 “All dem yere hotels over in Enterprise done shut 
 Clown tight and dere owners lit out de very fust thing 
 after de Big Freeze, sah,” reported the foreman of the 
 
'' Here and There With 'A-No.i^ 17 
 
 section gang. ^‘De 'Victoria Inn,’ yuh is inquiring 
 about, is done, too, went out of business and de boss 
 has done disjappeahed as done all de odder white foaks 
 dat used to come to winter in dese yere parts^’ 
 
 On strength of this information, I decided to brave 
 a call in town, where, so as to observe a still further 
 precaution against untoward surprises, I intended to 
 purchase food with a bit of loose change I carried for 
 need in emergencies. For another reliable protection, 
 I awaited the arrival of nightfall before venturing into 
 Enterprise. 
 
 Arriving in town, I found fully substantiated every 
 assertion made by the darky track master. I verified 
 the abandonment of the “Victoria Inn.” As this was 
 the case with all hotels I had passed in the weed-car¬ 
 peted streets, the entrance of the inn was boarded up, 
 the windows were festooned with ancient cobwebs and 
 there were other indications that the discouraged 
 owner had posthaste decamped from Florida, 
 
 There was no eating place left but a third-rate hotel, 
 the “St. John’s House,” named after the river flowing 
 nearby. Even this stopping place displayed so nu¬ 
 merous signs of poverty in the matter of need of a 
 painting of the structure and extensive repairs, as to 
 provide evidence that even its limited guest capacity 
 more than sufficed to care for occasional transients 
 who strayed to forsaken Enterprise, 
 
 At the “St. John’s House” I was received in person 
 by the landlord, who inquired as to whether I was a 
 railroader, on having taken due notice of my railroad 
 overalls and the touch of train grime I carried inbed- 
 ded in my features. I surmised by his question that 
 the hotel man maintained two distinct standards of 
 charges for his patrons. Eailroad workers and sim¬ 
 ilar poor fry were asked to pay but one half of the 
 schedule enforced against the general public and, more 
 
18 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No. % 
 
 especially, the commercial travelers. By personal ex¬ 
 perience without end, I had learned that this practice 
 was in common use at hotels and restaurants every¬ 
 where. Truly, each and every suit of railroad overalls 
 I wore to their discard in the course of years, paid a 
 simply stupendous dividend on their original purchase 
 price, not only in the matter of virtually halving inn 
 and lunchroom charges but also, and even more appre¬ 
 ciated, as a dependable disguise and standby whenever 
 I incurred the suspicion of inquisitive strangers, in¬ 
 cluding those connected with the police. 
 
 ^ Tempted by the opportunity opened at the direct in¬ 
 vitation of the questioning hotel owner, I permitted 
 deception to prevail by acting the part of a railroad 
 employee. The imposition netted a substantial saving 
 in that forthwith I was proffered supper, the lodging 
 of the night and the morning meal on a payment of 
 seventy-five cents. Aware that no further northbound 
 train was due to stop at the junction before noon of 
 the coming day, I accepted the favorable terms. 
 
 After supper was served, I lounged in the lobby of 
 the hotel where I felt quite secure against the liability 
 of prying eyes penetrating the secret of my identity. 
 No other guest stopping at the hotel, the landlord, pro¬ 
 bably divining that his lone patron might desire some 
 sort of entertainment, joined me in a conversation 
 covering general topics. In the course of the discus¬ 
 sion I casually remarked that I had visited in Florida 
 in the days preceding the Great Freeze. Obtaining his 
 cue from this comment the hotel proprietor launched 
 
 away on discussing events connected with the calam¬ 
 ity. 
 
 Judging from the gist of the stories my host began 
 to relate, without brooking interruption, most evident¬ 
 ly he had made it a point of personal effort to mem¬ 
 orize incidents detailing queer experiences v/hich had 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 19 
 
 occurred in those dark days of general demoralization. 
 He kept me hugely amused with such odd reminis¬ 
 cences. Finally, exhausting his stock of tales, he asked 
 whether I was in position to report some laughable 
 happening he might properly add to his fund of funny 
 occurrences. 
 
 Since the day of the enactment of the “Wild-Goose 
 Chase,” staged at the instance of the zealous proprie¬ 
 tor of the “Victoria Inn,” times without number I had 
 repeated for the entertainment of others the narrative 
 of my adventure at Enterprise. All my auditors had 
 hugely enjoyed the tale but nary a one had behaved 
 more favorably impressed than this seemed to be the 
 case with the owner of the “St. John’s House ” 
 
 The landlord fairly went beside himself and threat¬ 
 ened to come to serious harm by his continued salvoes 
 of boisterous laughter which sent him helplessly roll¬ 
 ing about in his chair and brought copious tears flo w¬ 
 ing down his cheeks. And just because my story-tell¬ 
 ing brought such great satisfaction to my latest listen¬ 
 er, I carefully elaborated on that portion of the tale 
 where the citizen of Tavares had referred to the im¬ 
 measurable disappointment of Ericson on being made 
 the butt of ridicule by those of his fellow-citizens who 
 were present to view the ragged contents of the dilap¬ 
 idated satchel I had discarded at the shore of the pond 
 when I did not care to be encumbered with its weight 
 while I hopped trains. 
 
 Most obviously, the hoary maxim, “Early to bed and 
 early to rise,” was conscientiously observed at the 
 hotel. Although the night was still young, the hotel 
 man suggested that bed time had arrived. He per¬ 
 sonally took the trouble to awaken me in the morning. 
 On having breakfasted, I tendered my host the price 
 he had stipulated should be paid for the accommoda¬ 
 tions I had received. To my utter amazement, he 
 
20 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No. i 
 
 roughly brushed aside the money, and then thrust into 
 my hand a statement of contents as faithfully repro¬ 
 duced herewith: 
 
 5,000-5 98 
 
 THE ONLY HOTEL 
 
 Enterprise, Fla., 1 - 3 - 19 0 0 
 Mr. Lord Warework 
 
 So QIIj? iloljn 0 ®r. 
 
 Carl Ericson, Proprietor, 
 formerly of the “Victoria Inn.” 
 
 Room No. 13 
 
 1896 
 
 March 
 
 22 
 
 To 2 dark ie s , 
 
 @ ■ 
 
 $ 
 
 
 
 
 to seining 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 0 f 1ake 
 
 1.00 
 
 2 
 
 00 
 
 
 U 
 
 " BalmtoMis- 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 car riage o f 
 Good Inten- 
 
 
 
 
 1900 
 
 
 t i ons 
 
 
 1 0 
 
 00 
 
 J an. 
 
 3 
 
 Supper, Bed 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 & Breakfast 
 
 1.00 
 
 3 
 
 00 
 
 
 
 
 
 $15 
 
 00 
 
The hotel keeper called the score. 
 
22 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No.% 
 
 The instant I had discerned from the printed inscrip¬ 
 tion on the invoice that the landlord of the “St. John’s 
 House” and the erstwhile owner of the now defunct 
 “Victoria Inn” were the self-same character, I threat¬ 
 ened to collapse in my tracks as I fully realized how 
 neatly I had trapped myself when on the preceding 
 evening I had regaled the hotel keeper with a ridiculous 
 account of the error that had made him the laugh¬ 
 ing stock of Enterprise. Obviously, disdaining to fol¬ 
 low the example of the other hotel men who had pre¬ 
 cipitately fled from Florida, Ericson had taken charge 
 of the third-class house, when the patronage of the 
 “Victoria Inn” went dwindling to a point where the 
 revenue obtained proved insufficient to properly finance 
 the larger and, therefore, more expensive venture. 
 
 Because of my most unexpected denouement, I was 
 completely struck dumb by the revelation. When, fin¬ 
 ally, I dared to raise my eyes in the direction of the 
 hotel man, he, glaring malevolently, unflinchingly met 
 my guilty gaze. As a paltry three dollars and divers 
 cents was the total of my available cash, I was in no 
 fettle to meet the amount the innkeeper had decided 
 to assess. But, discerning myself as cornered, I at¬ 
 tempted by sheer bluffing to recover that which I had 
 lost by talking too much. 
 
 “What of this ?” I cooly snarled, pointing at the con¬ 
 tents of the bill. 
 
 “What of which?” Ericson hurled back in quick fury. 
 “Either pay in full or stand accused of obtaining accom¬ 
 modations on false pretense when you averred you 
 were a bonafide railroader and as such entitled to a re¬ 
 duced rate at this hotel. Your conviction will mean 
 the serving of a long term at hard labor on our county 
 farm over at Deland, where prisoners are handled with¬ 
 out gloves.” 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 23 
 
 “Who’s going to prescribe such merciless punish¬ 
 ment against a harmless wanderer on the flimsy charge 
 brought by you to cater to personal vengeance, sir?” 
 I retorted, while I grinned in defiance at the raging 
 Floridian. 
 
 “I happen to be the local magistrate and for this 
 obvious reason placed in position to make better even 
 than merely good on my promise to square in full the 
 practical joke you played at my expense,” he thun¬ 
 dered with shrieking voice. 
 
 “But, sir, I’m lacking all of twelve dollars to satisfy 
 the debt you imposed,” I immediately whined in reply, 
 dejectedly, and thoroughly cowed at what I had been 
 told. 
 
 “I had to produce the wherewithal to compensate the 
 darkies I hired to drag the pond for your consarned 
 carcass,” bellowed he. “Besides, I had to bear up in 
 sore silence when the citizen came over from Tavares 
 and contrived to irritate the old trouble anew by telling 
 how you had crowed and otherwise made light of my 
 charity to assist a stranger I had every reason to be¬ 
 lieve that he had come to serious grief.” 
 
 Quick action appeared in order if I desired to save 
 myself from the penalty so closely hanging over my 
 head. Fearing the worst, I humiliately cast myself on 
 the mercy of my persecutor who, being a squire, car¬ 
 ried at his command almost dictatorial powers over 
 such as I. Perceiving no more convenient avenue of 
 escape, I humbly pleaded with the landlord to suggest 
 some means whereby I might obtain the money to 
 liquidate my indebtedness to him. 
 
 “As every dollar you raise now will count a reduction 
 in your term by one month, perhaps my colored help 
 might be induced to purchase your suit of railroad over¬ 
 alls which has brought you to your fall,” he proposed 
 rather condescendingly. 
 
24 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 For the sake of currying favor with my creditor, I 
 unreservedly consented to the sale he suggested, which, 
 as it progressed, was to include several other items of 
 my wearing apparel. 
 
 The porter of the hotel acquired possession of the 
 suit of overalls on the payment of two dollars. ^ Not to 
 he foiled in the hunt after bargains the chef insisted 
 on purchasing my coat and vest. Aware that such 
 fancy garments would not be required when attired in 
 the zebra-striped convict outfit I would be diligently 
 tilling the acres of the county farm, I parted with the 
 clothes for six dollars. My pocket knife fetched fifty 
 cents and the cap brought a similar sum. For three 
 dollars to boot, I exchanged my fairly good shoes for a 
 most dilapidated pair of heavy plowman^s brogans. 
 With the cash on hand, I settled my account. 
 
 Word of what was taking place at the hotel spread 
 like wildfire among the inhabitants of Enterprise. Of 
 the latter, many had been participants in the queer 
 nobleman-hunt. When I emerged from the “St. John’s 
 House” I was greeted with such derisive hoots and 
 howls by the mob that had assembled in the street be¬ 
 fore the hotel entrance that frightened I hurried on 
 my way and continued beyond Enterprise Junction 
 until I had reached a water tank stop. There I re¬ 
 mained under cautious cover until after nightfall. Then 
 I hoboed to Jacksonville, where I quit the cars at the 
 city limits. Attired in shirt, badly grimed by the 
 latest hobo trip, trousers and battered boots only, I 
 felt in no proper appearance to be hailed by the police 
 for a questioning to account for my lack of suificient 
 covering. 
 
 But, certainly, my adventure had taught me a hard 
 and fast lesson. Never since have I essayed to play 
 the role of an aristocrat at hotels or, for that matter, 
 anywhere else, Acting the plain, everyday American 
 
25 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 citizen, I steered, wide of the liability of encounters on 
 the order of that which proved a two-edged boomeran'^- 
 at Enterprise, where, and of this I have no least doubt, 
 to this day Landlord Ericson of the “St. John’s House/’ 
 continues to entertain his patrons with the most laugh¬ 
 able one of his vast fund of queer remintscences of the 
 days of the “Great Freeze,”--a narrative, and I might 
 as well admit candidly this terse fact, I had not found 
 
 the heart to relate again since I was obliged to “pay 
 the piper.” 
 
26 
 
 Here and There With A-No. r 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The ‘‘C-C & C-C’’ of Colorado. 
 
 O ccasionally we hear of railroads being over¬ 
 taken by a fate so tragic and brimming with 
 plots, counter-plots and the various accessories 
 of the standard drama as to prove worthy of further 
 development by a talented playwright. Ordinarily, only 
 when applying for rates and routings at a railroad sta¬ 
 tion, the uninitiated citizen and, especially, the one 
 who resided beyond the regular sphere of service of 
 the rail property affected, became acquainted with the 
 circumstance that some sort of misfortune probably 
 had camped on the trail of a railway. For then, unless 
 absolutely certain of his ground, the depot agent re¬ 
 ferred for dependable instruction to the contents of 
 the “Official Guide of the Railways.” This was a volume 
 of some sixteen hundred closely printed pages and was 
 kept on file in every railroad office in the land. Be¬ 
 cause of its unusual heft and bulky appearance, the 
 book had been dubbed the “Railroad Bible.” The lat- I 
 ter not only contained the passenger train schedule 
 of every railroad traversing North and Central Amer- | 
 ica, the sailings of steamboat and steamship lines but ] 
 also, and this in abbreviated form, the time tables of , 
 the more prominent of the electric traction companies. 
 Therefore, the disappearance of the name of any cor- j 
 poration engaged in rail transportation from the index : 
 of the “Railroad Bible” might be deemed an almost in- 
 fallible omen presaging that the particular system ■ 
 either was bodily absorbed by another railroad, had 
 its official title changed by court action or at the re¬ 
 quest of stockholders, had been disposed of by public 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 27 
 
 outcry on the auction block or, worst fate, was aban¬ 
 doned as a commercial failure by discouraged owners. 
 
 The calamity last to be enumerated, befell the 
 “Canon City & Cripple Creek Railway,’^ which in the 
 heyday of its existence controlled something like forty 
 miles of main-line trackage in the State of Colorado 
 where the line connected the two points from which 
 it had derived its title. The railway . afforded the 
 goldfield of the Cripple Creek District, blanketing erst¬ 
 while almost inaccessible fastnesses of the foothills of 
 heaven-piercing Pike’s Peak, a rail outlet to the world- 
 at-large at Canon City, located at that picturesque 
 spot in the vale of the Arkansas, where the waters of 
 this river tumultuously tumbled from the Rocky 
 Mountains through the towering granite cleft of the 
 Royal Gorge—one of the foremost of the grandest of 
 the scenic wonders of the universe. But instead of 
 the road-bed of the defunct railroad, after having been 
 thoroughly stripped of every valuable item, being 
 calmly relegated to quick destruction by the unkind 
 elements, the right of way of the “C-C & C-C” was 
 converted into a most excellent automobile road that 
 nowadays is flourishing under the name of “The Phan¬ 
 tom Canon Highway.” 
 
 It was while casually scanning the contents of a 
 castaway “Railroad Bible” that I first missed the 
 name of the “C-C & C-C” from the roster of the trans¬ 
 portation corporations alphabetically posted in the 
 index. Vaguely surmising that possibly a fate beyond 
 the range of the common had overtaken the mountain 
 railroad, I interested myself to learn further of the 
 finish of the system, for I vividly recalled the incidents 
 of a droll adventure I had there encountered some 
 twenty-five years previously. And I brought to atten¬ 
 tion the historical items* recorded in the preceding 
 paragraph. 
 
28 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 Pursuing the inquiry still deeper, I learned that the 
 railroaders who had participated in the action either 
 had been assembled with their forebears or had en¬ 
 tered the prosecution of a less strenuous vocation than 
 was railroading. I found occasion to visit with the 
 survivors. On discussing the adventure, I obtained 
 an unabridged consent to publish its details for the 
 amusement of my readers. 
 
 Forsooth, every rail line listed in the “Railroad 
 Bible” seemed to maintain a claim to some sort of 
 especial achievement. “No Dust!” advertised the 
 Union Pacific and associated systems with tracks bal- 
 asted with “Sherman Gravel” of disintegrated granite. 
 “No Cinders!” proclaimed the “Lackawanna.” The 
 “New York Central Lines” boosted their perfectly 
 functioning freight despatch. On the other hand, the 
 “Erie” praised the punctuality of its passenger train 
 service. The “Nickel Plate” boasted of its peerlessly 
 appointed passenger coach equipment, while the 
 “Southern Pacific” claimed the palm for its long¬ 
 distance trains. And so forth and on right through 
 the pages of the index—every railroad nursed its 
 peculiar renown. 
 
 The “Canon City & Cripple Creek” proved no excep¬ 
 tion to the general rule. Although but a rank rail- 
 roadlet, the circumstance that no Brother of the Road 
 ever had hoboed a complete trip from terminal to ter¬ 
 minal, provided a distinction that at every possible op¬ 
 portunity was flounted by the employees of the “C-C & 
 C-C” to the attention of railroaders manning sister- 
 systems. 
 
 I was deposited by the “Denver & Rio Grande” at 
 Canon City, whence I desired to travel to Victor, to 
 visit the other gold camps of the Cripple Creek sec¬ 
 tion. Hoboes, and outsiders as well, had cautioned me 
 in the matter of the serious obstacles a trespasser 
 
29 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 ^^uld have to surmount to gain passage over the 
 
 C-C & C-C.’^ I had made light of these warnings 
 But on landing in the Canon City railroad yard of the 
 system, my heart leaped in the throat, figuratively 
 speaking, when I caught a first glimpse of the sort of 
 rolling stock in commission on the mountain line. The 
 latter turned out to be a narrow gauge railroad with 
 tracks measuring three feet only between the rails. 
 Where the standard gauge railroads had car and coach 
 equipment of proportions so ample that it proved an 
 easy feat for a Wandering Willie to swing to a berth, 
 more or less comfortable, on trucks, brakebeams and 
 along the gunnels, such rolling stock on a narrow 
 gauge road was of a size so abbreviated that, in fair 
 comparison, they actually looked more like play toys 
 of tots instead of bonafide railroad equipment. The 
 wheels were so small that the bodies of the cars and 
 coaches trailed so close to the ground that not even a 
 dwarf-sized hobo might have crawled to the nether 
 side of the track. The engines Were of measurement 
 so scant that neither the cowcatcher nor even the top 
 of the water tender afforded a safe retreat beyond 
 the observation of the crew as this was the case on 
 locomotives plying on all standard gauge lines. 
 
 While I was still contemplating on ways to overcome 
 the handicaps I would have to contend against on the 
 "‘C-C & C-C,” a citizen happened along through the 
 yard. I accosted the stranger for information cover¬ 
 ing the lay of the mountain line. He explained that 
 with the exception of a few widely scattered section 
 houses, homing gangs of track workers, and now and 
 then a station residence, occupied by depot telegraph¬ 
 ers, no other human habitation was to be encountered 
 on the right of way until the gold mining country was 
 reached. There was a good reason for the absence of 
 homes and the like. A larger portion of the passage 
 
30 Here and There With "A-No.X 
 
 of the railroad had been bodily blasted from the rock- 
 bound palisades of picturesque Phantom Canon by the 
 daring engineers who had conceived and then con¬ 
 structed this most wonderful bit of railroad building. 
 
 But instead the disheartening report of the native 
 proving a sharp deterrent to my projected journey to 
 Cripple Creek, the revelations had quite a different 
 effect. By all means, I decided to tackle hoboing over 
 the “C-C & C-C” so as to avert walking through the 
 canon country where a penniless drifter might feast 
 on truly sublime scenery but where food of whatever 
 character was practically unobtainable. 
 
 When in the course of the afternoon a passenger 
 train hauling two miniature coaches and an express- 
 baggage combination car gayly steamed from the 
 Canon City Terminal, I contrived to reach unobserved 
 a seat on the “Blind Baggage.” When I had traveled 
 seven miles and while I was fairly jubilating at my 
 good success and began to gain visions of being offered 
 thanks by my fellow-wanderlusters for having smash¬ 
 ed the record of the “C-C & C-C,” and as the train 
 was approaching Ora Junction, where the Florence 
 branch joined the main line, the conductor of the train 
 stepped to the front platform of the combination car, 
 probably preparatory to registering the time of arrival 
 and departure at the junction stop. 
 
 As the railroader espied my presence, his anger in¬ 
 stantly mounted to a veritable fury. Without an op¬ 
 portunity to explain matters, I was unceremoniously 
 booted from the coach platform of the moving train. 
 Still, I did not come to harm on the rock ballasted right 
 of way. Actually, I landed upright upon my feet and 
 without even a least of tumbling. For so prodigious¬ 
 ly Steep was the grade mounted by the railroad that 
 the train proceeded at snail’s pace from Canon City, 
 at 5,000 feet above sea level, to Alta Vista, where the 
 
31 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No. i 
 
 apex of the line was reached at an elevation of, approx¬ 
 imately, 10,000 feet. 
 
 The passenger train had departed when I walked 
 into Ora Junction. Fair fortune was to favor me, for 
 soon afterward, a freight came snorting uphill from 
 Florence-way. When the train hove into full view, I 
 was to be treated to a surprise in that I counted three 
 heaviest class of mountain climbing engines boosting 
 seven freight cars and the caboose of the train up¬ 
 wards on the unusual grade. Two of the locomotives 
 were coupled on ahead of the cars while the third was 
 pushing with might and main at the stern of the 
 train. 
 
 A swift survey of the situation brought a decision 
 on my part to take advantage of the slow progress of 
 the approaching train that would allow an easy hop¬ 
 ping aboard of the moving cars anywhere on the grade. 
 
 I hurried ahead along the track in the direction of 
 Cripple Creek. Even before the freight had reached 
 Ora Junction, I had come to a sharp curve, one of the 
 many that fairly studded the right of way which 
 twisted hither and thither through the granite defile. 
 A large boulder, weighing well into the tons, lying 
 near the outside of the curve, offered an excellent hid¬ 
 ing place from the obr'^rvation of the train crew and 
 the personnel of the three locomotives—a total of 
 eighteen alert eyes I would have to avoid if I hoped to 
 hobo the train successfully. 
 
 dAs the freight drew abreast of where I was waiting 
 under cover, when the front engines had passed my 
 retreat, I made a headlong dash to the side of the cars. 
 Undiscovered, I swung to the bumpers between two 
 box cars coupled adjoining. Balancing myself on the 
 car couplings, I inspected the end doors of the cars and 
 found one of them improperly locked. Pushing the 
 door ajar, I discerned that the cargo consisted of short 
 
32 
 
 Here and There With A-No. ’i 
 
 lengths of timber, such as I had seen used as props in 
 mines. Further investigation disclosed sufficient room 
 atop the lumber for a hobo to squeeze within doors. 
 Therefore, I climbed into the car and then carefully- 
 barricaded the end door from within with the props 
 so as to avert a ready examination of the interior of 
 the car by some prying member of the train crew. But 
 only too soon I became aware I had failed to reckon 
 with the numerous tunnels driven through the living 
 rock to afford passage to the ‘'C-C & C-C.” The two 
 engines pulling on ahead belched forth a most tre¬ 
 mendous volume of pitchy smoke. Whenever the train 
 negotiated one of the mountain bores, the noxious 
 gases, entering my throat, brought on volleys of cough¬ 
 ing. 
 
 That which I feared, was exactly what happened be¬ 
 yond the very next of the tunnels. While I was in the 
 midst of the usual attack of boisterous coughing, a 
 brakeman came walking on an errand over the roof of 
 the cars. His quick attention v/as immediately drawn 
 by the noise emanating from the car interior under¬ 
 foot. Trailing the suspicious racket to its source, the 
 railroader encountered the prop-harred end door. 
 
 “Come out of this, you fellow!” yelled the train man, 
 infuriated to have met with the unexpected obstruc¬ 
 tion. 
 
 There was no answer, for I reasoned that silence 
 might bring the brakeman to depart in peace without 
 troubling himself further, But I sadly miscalculated 
 the issue, for maddened to the utmost by my defiance, 
 he thundered a repetition of his command, to which, 
 in this instance, he added the threat that should he be 
 compelled to dig me from my retreat, he would regale 
 me to a royal thrashing. Although quaking with fright, 
 I stubbornly refused obedience. Then I heard the 
 railroad employee withdraw one of the mining props 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 33 
 
 Escaping a sound drubbing. 
 
34 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 from the timber bulwark I had erected at the end door. 
 A moment later—and the heavy timber came smash¬ 
 ing to the roof of my car, thrown there by the rail¬ 
 roader. In rapid succession others of the timbers 
 came crashing down overhead. Before long, I knew 
 myself to be due for the promised sound licking, if not 
 worse. 
 
 The impending punishment sent me hustling to ob¬ 
 tain protection. Eeplacing the props withdrawn from 
 the barricade with others from the cargo, I worked 
 like a beaver until I had returned the barrier to its 
 former strength. The faster the railroader toiled, 
 even so I contrived to keep a bit ahead of his task. 
 For quite a term this queer game merrily went on. 
 Then, having ascertained that he was making no gain, 
 the train employee shouted over the car tops, calling 
 his fellow workers to his aid. 
 
 Footfalls on the way, and the tenor of several voices 
 soon announced that not only had the train conductor 
 hastened forward to assist his subordinate, and that 
 the other brakeman had arrived at the scene of action, 
 but also that the three firemen of the engines had left 
 their posts of duty to help with the task of dislodging 
 the pesky hobo from his car fort. 
 
 Before many minutes I might have been forced to 
 surrender myself to the doubtful mercy of my perse¬ 
 cutors if it had not been for the fortunate circum¬ 
 stance that the aperture of end doors in narrow gauge 
 box cars was of such a limited size, that one man at a 
 time only could work with the props. When the con¬ 
 tents of the car had dwindled to where one of the side 
 entrances became unobstructed, I tried the side door, 
 to find it so securely fastened from without, that it 
 would not be budged—not even when, actuated by 
 sheer desperation, I.threw my weight full against it. 
 J decided to attack the door from another tack. Se- 
 
35 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 lecting a prop of rather slender diameter, I wedged the 
 timber into the crack between the door and the side of 
 the car. Then using the fastened prop as a lever, I 
 managed to demolish the cast-iron stays that held the 
 lower section of the door in rigid position. Swinging 
 the door outward from the hangers, I safely dropped 
 to the right of way—at the moment when I saw the 
 brakeman working at the barricade peering across a 
 depression he had made in the piled props. 
 
 I had not only gained my freedom but, luckily, had 
 quit the box car while the train was bending a curve 
 and then had landed to the outside of the latter. 
 There the cars, as they passed, shielded me from a 
 direct observation by the train men whom I discerned 
 toiling faster than ever at the props, for, obviously, 
 the railroaders believed their victory to be at hand. 
 
 Withal the fortune, I had drifted into still another 
 predicament. I happened to have landed on the same 
 side of the track where the engineer of. the pusher en¬ 
 gine was seated in the cab of his locomotive. There 
 was no time to spare to search for a hiding place, as 
 but three of the seven freight cars had to pass my 
 station by the track until I would appear in the full 
 view of the engineer of the pusher. Doubtlessly, on 
 discovering my unscathed escape, this fellow might 
 blow the whisle to announce my getaway or, and this 
 most probably, he would stop the train dead on the 
 grade to permit the maddened railroaders to take 
 after me. 
 
 A swift decision was in place. To gather my wits, 
 
 I swung to the front platform of the caboose, where 
 I saw a glass panel let in the door leading into the car. 
 Gazing indoors, I discerned nobody left in charge. 
 Stepping into the car to inspect its lay, I discovered a 
 likely haven of refuge in an empty box seat, such as 
 
36 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 did service in the night as pallet for the members of 
 the crew. 
 
 Just then, and by purest luck, I chanced to glance 
 from a window. I was horror stricken when I saw how 
 the train men who had been hunting me, were stand¬ 
 ing strung out alongside the train, preparatory to their 
 swinging aboard the caboose. In an instant I had 
 solved the puzzle—they had discovered my escape 
 from the car. 
 
 Pellmell, I squeezed myself into the empty box seat, 
 and scarcely had I slammed its cover shut, than the 
 train men came trooping into the caboose, where they 
 took seats, several of them occupying the cover of the 
 box seat that hid me from view. Assuredly, they were 
 angered to the utmost, as I judged this from the con¬ 
 versation they entered in forthwith and which solely 
 concerned the means I might have employed to disap¬ 
 pear so mysteriously from under their hands. As each 
 man held a different opinion in the matter of my es¬ 
 cape, soon a heated argument was under way which 
 resulted in the pusher engineer being interviewed to 
 ascertain whether he had seen me left behind. V/hen 
 an unsatisfactory reply was obtained, the conductor 
 ordered the brakemen over the train where they w^ere 
 to drop to the track from the point of the pilot of the 
 first engine. They then were to station themselves 
 one at each side of the passing train to inspect every 
 nook and cranny to see if the onery trespasser had 
 gained another retreat. Soon the train men returned 
 empty-handed from their quest, and when they re¬ 
 ported the particulars of their futile search, I could 
 not restrain myself and enjoyed a hearty, though silent 
 l^ugh at their expense. 
 
 For a while everything went well with me, though 
 the box seat afforded but painfully narrow quarters. 
 Then the train passed another tunnel that proved of 
 
Here and There, With 'A-No. % 37j 
 
 greater length than any of the preceding bores. The 
 caboose soon became filled with suffocating coal gases. 
 Then the inevitable was to come, for though I bit 
 my fingers to avert the racket, I broke loose into a 
 furious fit of coughing. Frightened sheer out of their 
 wits, the railroaders hopped high from their seats, as 
 I discerned this by the way of cracks between the poor¬ 
 ly fitting boards of the box seat. When the men in¬ 
 vestigated the source of the wheezing noise emanating 
 from below, they finally discovered my whereabouts. 
 
 Although I was roughly handled and dragged from 
 my refuge, the expected penalty failed to materialize 
 on the spot. I found myself favored with a reprieve, 
 because the train employees were anxious to question 
 me so as to satisfy their curiosity as to the means I 
 had employed to quit unobserved the box car. So it 
 seemed, they wished to compare their theories with 
 the actual fact covering my escape, and to learn who 
 of them had come nearest to correctly solving the 
 riddle. 
 
 Improving the offered opportunity, I greatly ex¬ 
 tended my reply by weaving a heart-rending story of 
 woe into my explanation. As a result of this shrewd 
 strategy, the train men overcame every desire to wreak 
 vengeance on my person. My punishment was reduced 
 to an order to vacate the train on the grade. From 
 where I was left behind, it was a brief walk of three 
 miles to Alta Vista, the apex of the grade, whence I 
 followed a short-cut mountain trail to Victor. There 
 I boarded an electric traction car for Cripple Creek 
 and the other points of interest in the gold mining 
 district. Even long before sunset, I had become sa¬ 
 tiated with the sight-seeing in the section. 
 
 As I stopped at a Cripple Creek store to inquire con¬ 
 cerning the train time, the shopkeeper on informing 
 me that the “C-C & C-C” despatched an ev_ening train 
 
38 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 to Canon City, whispering his further words, contin¬ 
 ued: “Would you care to earn a handsome reduction 
 on the regular passenger fare, stranger ? Four dollars 
 for a trip, at a rate of ten cents the mile, is the straight 
 train charge to Canon City. But IVe got a friend who 
 will see you safely through on two-fifty.’^ 
 
 Although I had not even a red penny to my name, 
 when I cheerily nodded consent for the sake of hear¬ 
 ing the details of the scheme, the store owner explain¬ 
 ed: “Do not purchase your ticket. Simply enter the 
 last coach in the train and there take a seat, if pos¬ 
 sible by yourself, near the back end of the car. When 
 the conductor approaches you for your ticket or cash 
 fare, hand him the sum mentioned with a note I shall 
 supply.” 
 
 As no prepayment or other untoward preliminaries 
 were demanded, I readily consented to abide by the 
 instructions provided for my guidance and, deciding 
 to risk being dumped en route where after nightfall 
 the walking of the remainder of the distance to Canon 
 City would prove more pleasant than during the day¬ 
 light hours when hunger might become harrassing, 
 I went from the store, taking along the written identi¬ 
 fication that was to set me at rights with the train 
 conductor. 
 
 Even while I marveled how the store proprietor and 
 the crooked railroad employee had arrived at a mu¬ 
 tual understanding in the matter of peddling cut-rate 
 transportation on a railway that even then for the 
 dire want of funds was fiercely struggling to keep out 
 of the hands of a receiver, appointed by the courts, a 
 pedestrian caught up with me in the street, whose 
 uniform betrayed him to be a passenger train brake- 
 man on the “C-C & C-C.” Because of this, I main¬ 
 tained pace with him to ask if the evening train was 
 due to depart on time, 
 
I 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 39 
 
 “That’s always the case with every train aboard of 
 which I work as a “rear” brakeman, sir,” said the 
 surly fellow, introducing himself as being a “flagman” 
 in the passenger train service. 
 
 This casual exchange led to further conversation, 
 in the course of which the railroader heard of my in¬ 
 tention to travel to Canon City. Also, that I harbored 
 no scruples to journey at a reduced rate of fare. Would 
 I consider a chance to reach rny destination on an out¬ 
 lay of a dollar and fifty cents, though I might be asked 
 to take passage on an exposed coach platform? I in¬ 
 formed him that I would be willing to do anything, 
 provided, I w^ould not be brought into collision with 
 the police. Further, and this to forestall aU risk of a 
 prepayment being requested, I insisted that there 
 must be no request for a fare settlement until quite a 
 portion of the journey was traveled. He consented to 
 my reservations, and then ordered that I immediately 
 take an electric car for Victor, the first halt made by 
 the evening train. There, I was to climb aboard the 
 “Blind Baggage,” he, the flagman, guaranteeing non¬ 
 interference by the other members of the train crew 
 and the police. Only w^hen the half-way w^ater tank 
 station wms reached, v/as the stipulated fare to be col¬ 
 lected by the train porter, the “head” brakeman, who, 
 in the meanwhile, was to be taken in confidence on our 
 deal. 
 
 As the brakeman had offered to further reduce by 
 a dollar the low rate posted by his conductor with the 
 tradesman and, still more favorably playing plumb 
 into my hands, was to permit my hoboing in perfect 
 security to the midway stop, I did not have the heart 
 to refuse patronizing the most accommodating chap. 
 A charitable passer-by in the street, advanced my fare 
 by trolley car to Victor. There, as I ran to board the 
 “Blind Baggage” of the departing evening train, I had 
 
40 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 the immense satisfaction to see the head brakeman 
 curiously peering from the nether platfrom of the 
 combination car, while from the last coach the flagman 
 was watching to be assured that I took proper passage 
 on the car platform to the rear of the water tender of 
 the engine. 
 
 All went well—until the engineer whistled for the 
 halfway water station. Then a vagrant gust of wind 
 blew open the coach door leading from the “Blind Bag¬ 
 gage” into the combination car. When a train man 
 went forward in the car to shut the door, espying 
 somebody crouching in the darkness outdoors, I was 
 ordered to enter the baggage compartment, which oc¬ 
 cupied the forward portion of the car. The fellow— 
 he was the baggage master of the train—roughly de¬ 
 manded that I pay him the exact fare from Cripple 
 Creek to the water stop. When I claimed to be with¬ 
 out funds, he offered to compromise for a dollar. When 
 I held out, he volunteered to carry me all the way 
 through to Canon City for the same amount. Be¬ 
 cause I could not meet his cut-throat fare, he chased 
 me from the car and then I was bounced off the plat¬ 
 form, while the engineer was jockeying the train for 
 position in front of the spout of the water tank. 
 
 As I struck solid soil, I intentionally fell prone to 
 the ground. When the train came to a standstill, I 
 rolled into the shadow of the combination car. While 
 awaiting further developments, I overheard a squab¬ 
 ble raging overhead in the baggage compartment. The 
 two brakemen were having it out in great form with 
 the baggage master whose statement that I had de¬ 
 clared myself in financial straits, they challenged as 
 an untruth. 
 
 Remaining lying close by the side of the outgoing 
 train, I allowed the coaches to roll on the way until the 
 rear platform of the last coach drew along. Boarding 
 
The Baggage Master meant business. 
 
42 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 this, I thoroughly enjoyed the rare night scenery un¬ 
 folding while the train cautiously snaked downhill 
 through the titanic rift of Phantom Canon. Ora 
 Junction was reached and, after the usual registering 
 in and out, was left behind in safety. The arc lights 
 of Canon City had begun to twinkle above the horizon, 
 when something went amiss with the lights glowing 
 in the red lamps glimmering their warning against 
 collision from either end of the rear coach, and then 
 the flagman stepped onto the platform to adjust the 
 trouble. He was almost tripped off the train because 
 of my reclining against the coach side. Instantly he 
 raised the cry of “Hobo,” from which, though, he 
 calmed as abruptly on ascertaining the identity of the 
 “dead head” passenger his train had hauled. 
 
 “Where’s the ‘One-Fifty’ we came to terms on back 
 in Cripple Creek?” he exploded, and when I under¬ 
 took to explain my financial disability to complete our 
 contract, he commenced to pare his “private” fare un¬ 
 til the amount he named had dwindled to a quarter 
 dollar. When even this pittance was not to be ob¬ 
 tained, he wanted to be satisfied with some sort of 
 gift, such as a pocket knife. 
 
 In view of the short distance remaining to be tra¬ 
 versed to Canon City, I refused to entertain any trib¬ 
 ute. This termination of our deal brought the flagman 
 to fly into a veritable fury, and savagely grabbing hold 
 of me by the collar of my overall jacket, he bodily 
 dragged me into the coach, where the conductor of the 
 train happened to be present and to whom the rear 
 brakeman now reported my trespassing. 
 
 “Ticket or cash fare, please!” functionally droned 
 the conductor, and as I failed to make good on either 
 part of his ofiicial request, he instructed the flagman 
 to hold me in custody for the Canon City police. 
 
Here and There With A~No. i 43 
 
 Fearing that I was up against a serious session with 
 the authorities, I informed the conductor that I carried 
 for him a note by the storekeeper of Cripple Creek. 
 When the railroader looked at me askance, as if not 
 believing my claim, I drew foi'th the bit of paper of 
 which I allowed the conductor to have a glimpse of the 
 signature only. But this mere glance proved sufflcient, 
 for his heretofore almost haughty demeanor fell, al¬ 
 most magically, to treatment approaching* craven civil¬ 
 ity. Ordering my prompt release from the care of the 
 flagman, the conductor quite cordially invited me to 
 a coach seat somewhat apart from the others occupied 
 b 3 ^ the bonaflde passengers traveling in the coach. 
 Forthwith he seated himself at my side and then 
 humbly besought the surrender of the incriminating 
 slip of paper. Visions of what might happen should 
 my method of coming to the town be tipped off to the 
 police officers, always in evidence in railroad terminals 
 at train time, cautioned a careful detention of the mes¬ 
 sage. When, and this despite all his persuasive ef¬ 
 forts, he failed to change the plan of action I had laid 
 out for my guidance, the disappointed railroader slunk 
 to where the flagman had stationed himself to await 
 developments. The involved train men presently en¬ 
 tered in a conference to discover means wherewith 
 they might disentangle themselves from their dilem¬ 
 ma. But their meeting had not continued in the ways 
 of peace for very long, before they went at each other 
 with harsh words, either accusing the other of having 
 effectively queered their most profitable source of left- 
 handed revenue. 
 
 Their unreasonable squabbling so irresistibly touched 
 my vein of humor, that, forthwith, I gave vent to my 
 feelings in a volley of laughter. This seeimngly un¬ 
 warranted mapifestation brought the terrified con¬ 
 ductor leaping to the side of my seat, There he stood as 
 
44 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 if transfixed until he had collected his shattered wits 
 to solicitously inquire whether I had determined to call 
 the attention of his superiors to his criminal shortcom¬ 
 ings. 
 
 Although I completely ignored this query, I desired 
 the grafter to become acquainted with the cause of my 
 merriment. Raising a hand, I began to count on my 
 fingers, so as to keep an exact tab on what I was about 
 to enumerate. 
 
 *‘Back over in Cripple Creek I worsted your friend, 
 the storekeeper, in the matter of his coming in on the 
 ‘spliC of the cash he believed I would be coming across 
 with in settlement of your cut-rate passenger tariff. 
 Again, neither of your brakemen connected with any 
 share in their crooked enterprise. Once more, your 
 baggage master, too, was left in the lurch in his line of 
 business. You, personally, will quit this deal not only 
 with empty hands but also with a badly seared char¬ 
 acter. Finally, I smashed to smithereens the vaunted 
 record of the ‘C-C & C-C' on the score of being rated 
 hobo-proof,’^ I smiled, speaking so well subdued that 
 my words were audible exclusively to the conductor, 
 who was trembling like an aspen, and then I capped 
 my triumph with a pertinent question: “Now, sir, don’t 
 you think this a mighty clever bit of work for a brief 
 hour of hoboing?” 
 
 The conductor, visibly writhing in the agonies of 
 his guilt-stricken conscience, did not seem to appre¬ 
 ciate the capital joke I had played at his expense, and 
 until the train entered the depot limits of Canon City, 
 he uttered nary a further word. Then he deserted his 
 station by my coach seat, to assist passengers to alight 
 from the car. Following in the wake of the crowd, 
 and while I was in the act of descending from the 
 coach to the station platform, I pressed the evidence 
 of his dishonesty in the palm of the hand the con¬ 
 ductor had extended to steady jny step. Neither of us 
 
Here and There With A-No. i, 45 
 
 said a blessed word, though the beaming expression 
 that instantly lit up his countenance announced the 
 vast relief he experienced from the immense mental 
 strain under which he had labored all during the soul- 
 racking uncertainty as to whether or not there would 
 come the expected exposure of his graceless offense. 
 
 For the sake of gaining some important information 
 in the matter of the westbound train service of the 
 “Denver & Rio Grande,’' I lingered in the waiting 
 room of the terminal station, where, in another sec¬ 
 tion of the structure, in the meanwhile the conductor, 
 too, was detained by the posting of his train report. 
 It so happened that because of these delays in our de¬ 
 parture, we were to meet again within the portal of 
 the depot. Thence we went into the street in com¬ 
 pany. Considering our recent encounter a closed af¬ 
 fair every mention of which was to be tabooed by 
 mutual, though silent, consent, we began to discuss 
 commonplace topics. But soon our speaking com¬ 
 menced to lag through the conductor failing to evince 
 the proper spirit to uphold his end of the conversa¬ 
 tion. He broke the ban only when we arrived in the 
 street where he had to turn a corner to reach his 
 home, for then the railroader stammered this odd fare¬ 
 well : “Stranger, although I have every reason to sus¬ 
 picion from your demeanor that I am dealing with a 
 professional hobo, in grateful remembrance of the fact 
 that you knew how to keep your counsel on my serious 
 transgression, my wife, our little ones and I shall join 
 in offering up a daily prayer for your welfare. But 
 from this night onward, there will be no further graft¬ 
 ing connected with any of my railroading, as you came 
 within a narrowest margin of breaking another rec¬ 
 ord on the ‘C-C & C-C’— the reputation for honesty 
 which through all my years of service I had enjoyed 
 in the esteem of my employers, and this deservedly, 
 
46 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 * 
 
 until I went down before the temptation that comes 
 to every mortal soul once in a life-time.” 
 
 And then without another word, but sobbing aloud 
 as if his heart was breaking beneath its burden of re¬ 
 morse, the conductor wended towards his home— 
 where, doubtlessly, a faithful wife and his kiddies were 
 anxiously awaiting his safe return. 
 
 S TRADDLING the frame of a coach truck beneath 
 a Pullman sleeper coupled in an express train of 
 the “Denver & Rio Grande,” I hoboed from Canon 
 City to Salida and over the Tennessee Pass into the 
 land of the Mormons and on and on without breach or 
 letup through my years and years of aimless roving. 
 Continually, and without least thought of the enorm¬ 
 ous peril, I roughed it unscathed where my fellow 
 roamers paid the penalty of the Road either in a hor¬ 
 rible death or, and by far worse, with a life-term of 
 crippled damnation. Innumerable penal institutions, 
 everywhere, with gates ever-yawning to receive their 
 heavy toll of men of the Wanderpath, seemingly were 
 locked against my admission. Truly, and most won¬ 
 derfully, best of luck and simply miraculous good for¬ 
 tune were my steady lot—ever since the conductor of 
 the “C-C & C-C” passenger train volunteered to re¬ 
 deem in earnest prayer the most peculiar debt of grat¬ 
 itude he had so strangely incurred. 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 47 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Samaritan of Mattoon. 
 
 I T happened that the author strayed into the kitchen 
 of our Erie residence while there Mrs. A-No. 1, who 
 proved quite incapable of refusing anyone in need, 
 was provisioning another one of those half-starved 
 hobo kids who accasionally knocked'at our gate for 
 provender. Correctly surmising that this youth, who 
 looked as if he still was within his ’teens, was a run¬ 
 away from home, I undertook to interrogate the way¬ 
 ward on his having strayed onto the Road, a path that 
 inevitably led on to perdition. 
 
 In the course of the cross-examination, I wormed 
 from the lad the admission that in the central portion 
 of the state of Illinois he hailed from the small city of 
 Mattoon. Then I took due note how Mrs. A-No. 1 
 looked askance, while she heard me questioning the 
 boy as to whether or not he was acquainted with a 
 Mrs. Louis Katz, a resident of his home town. ^ On the 
 youngster stating that his parents were on neighborly 
 terms with the lady I had mentioned, I went to the 
 trout ’3 to explain that absolutely nothing but bottom¬ 
 less shame and, more than likely, dishonorable death 
 was to be gained by him should he continue his vaga¬ 
 bonding over the land. In this strain of insistent 
 warning I persisted until the thoughtless chap be¬ 
 came so homesick-stricken that he willingly accepted 
 my offer to see him provided with a ticket to Mattoon. 
 
 On returning from the railroad station, where I had 
 seen the juvenile delinquent aboard his homebound 
 train, I was met by wifey, who sharply reproved: 
 "‘This is the third young hobo you have sent back to 
 Mattoon at your personal outlay within the course of a 
 
48 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 year. More rationally, and serving the same purpose 
 better, you might have wired the relatives of the way- 
 wards to meet the expense of the fare, asking this as 
 a least favor. Further, I wish you did tell me who 
 is this woman, the Mrs. Louis Katz, you always refer 
 to whenever you are dealing with runaways from her 
 locality of residence?’’ 
 
 “There is a glorious tale of practical charity to¬ 
 wards another wayward, who now is your husband, 
 connected with my returning these youths to Mattoon, 
 my dear,” I assured Mrs. A-No. 1, who immediately 
 pleaded that I state the particulars of the adventure. 
 
 iMi 
 
 main-line arteries of two important trunk 
 railways crossed at Mattoon. Running east and 
 
 west was the “Big Four Route,” while the “Illi¬ 
 nois Central Railroad” connected northern points with 
 southern destinations. All trains of either transporta¬ 
 tion system scored a lengthy halt at Mattoon be¬ 
 cause there the railroad mentioned first maintained a 
 division point, while the Illinois Central had to trans¬ 
 fer freight and passenger traffic here for points on a 
 
 tap line leading tov/ards Southern Indiana. 
 
 Both main lines were double-tracked to care for an 
 enormous volume of traffic. The latter not only com¬ 
 prised the regular freight and passenger offerings but 
 also, and forsooth. Wandering Willies in veritable 
 hordes. With the probable exception of the armies of 
 hoboes traveling over the “Lake Shore” division of the 
 New York Central, and the Chicago-St. Louis route of 
 Chicago & Alton and the Chicago-Kansas City line of 
 the Santa Fe, no two other railroads were plagued with 
 tramps like the two systems crossing at Mattoon. 
 
 There was a shrewd calculation of opportunities un¬ 
 derlying this highly undesirable tramp patronage. In 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 49 
 
 the days of the beginning of this adventure, the chance 
 of a hobo being arrested for trespassing on the “Big 
 Four Route” stood something like one hundred and 
 seven times in the favor of the ride thief escaping 
 punishment for his dangerous practice. This ratio 
 was reached by multiplying 535, the mileage between 
 Cleveland and St. Louis, by 2, the count of the tracks 
 of the double tracked main-line, and again by 20, the 
 average run of daily trains, and then dividing 21,400, 
 the product obtained, by 200, a numeral representing 
 the actual track mileage patrolled by each officer in 
 the employ of the railway’s police department, each 
 man being assigned to guard one hundred miles of the 
 main line. On the Illinois Central the show of avoid¬ 
 ing legal complications proved no less propitious for 
 the train rider. There 363, the distance of the Chica- 
 go-Cairo line, was multiplied by 2, the double track¬ 
 age, and again by 35, the average despatch of trains 
 each day, and then by dividing 25,410 by 100, as each 
 special agent had charge of fifty miles of the main line, 
 giving a ratio of two hundred and fifLy-foui times in 
 the interest of the lav/-defying tramp avoiding deserv¬ 
 ed penalty at the hand of man. 
 
 (In this day. May, 1921, the hazard of the Lain bum¬ 
 mer being brought to justice had become reversed by 
 reason of the far greater number of railroad officers 
 nowadays engaged in the relentless persecution of this 
 
 particular class of transgressors.) 
 
 While both corporations manfully battled against 
 the ever-growing pest—-in the main consisting of va- 
 granting criminals capable of enacting offences rang¬ 
 ing from the annoying misdeeds of the petty pilferers 
 to the gory acts committed by actual and potential 
 murderers, the citizens of Mattoon went not without 
 reminders of the two-legged plague. This trouble 
 could not well have been avoided, when every tram 
 
50 Here and There With A-No. j 
 
 brought to town a flock of more or less starved beggars 
 who like a cloud descended on the residence districts. 
 
 With years on years of this ceaseless “battering” 
 of the private homes going on day in and day out, Sun¬ 
 days included, from long before break of dawn until, 
 not infrequently, after midnight, the Mattooners had 
 arrived at that point of human endurance where in the 
 matter of dispensing charity their patience had come 
 to that frazzled edge where there was no response 
 given to any knocking at the gate or the other more or 
 less devious devices of panhandling resorted to by the 
 resourceful bummers of the Road. 
 
 So it came to pass, that in the time of my wander- 
 lusting, trampdom rather freely conceded that of all 
 the “bum-sick” communities, with every certainty, 
 Mattoon was one of the “hungriest” in the lot. The 
 campfire tales told in this regard fully substantiated 
 this contention. It was a most commonplace occur¬ 
 rence to hear of bets being freely placed and invariably 
 lost by mendicants of long experience who had proven 
 themselves incapable of herding even a skimpiest 
 handout in all the burg. Furthermore, the outcome of 
 numerous encounters between vagabonds and mem¬ 
 bers of the Mattoon police force quite sufficiently ver¬ 
 ified the assertion of local citizens that only officers 
 were taken on who were qualified to swiftly maze into 
 meek submission the surly among the generally phys¬ 
 ically perfect, though indescribably degenerate tran¬ 
 sients whose sole occupation consisted of sponging an 
 existence that, most likely, would have proven un¬ 
 acceptable to creatures as low in the station of life 
 as the mangy cur dog. 
 
 And into this fiercely hobo-hostile Mattoon I, then 
 but a youth, drifted by train. On tackling the resi¬ 
 dences, to my vast sorrow I was all too quickly to learn 
 that the tales of the hoboes were not exaggerated by 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 51 
 
 Mattoon of Illinois was liobo-proof. 
 
52 
 
 Here and There With A-No. 'i 
 
 an iota. After my all-day trip on the cars of a fast 
 freight, there was not to be had any response what¬ 
 ever to my humble knocking for provender. For¬ 
 sooth, I duly observed that in no other panhandle- 
 proof community I had met with so many garden gates 
 and fence posts so thoroughly overscribbled with the 
 chalked sign of the circle quartered with a cross—the 
 ominous mark of trampdom which heralded reliable in¬ 
 telligence where marble-hearted folks resided. 
 
 In the end, sheer stubborn perseverance went re¬ 
 warded. The mistress of a stately manor allowed her¬ 
 self to linger through my explanations, how I—as usu¬ 
 ally passing himself as a trade apprentice engaged in a 
 bonafide search of employment—had unawares reach¬ 
 ed the strait where I was compelled to rely for aid on 
 the charity of the community. 
 
 ‘TVe raised four sons, and as there’s no telling but 
 that some day one or the other of my lads might be 
 caught in your present predicament,” the lady an¬ 
 nounced sweetly, “and, though, it’s quite contrary to 
 a mutual understanding among our local housewives 
 never to further vagrancy by the provisioning of tran¬ 
 sients calling at the back doors of our residences, I 
 shall dare stretch a point in your favor as my mother’s 
 heart goes out to you, a mere boy.” 
 
 Then the good lady retired into her house, whence, 
 before long, I took my leave rejoicing as I carried on 
 my journey a large paper pouch filled with such edi¬ 
 bles as might be best appreciated by a famished way¬ 
 ward. As for obvious cause I disliked to remain in 
 town to court another heartbreaking handout foraging 
 expedition I departed from Mattoon aboard the first 
 train leaving in the direction of my destination of the 
 moment. In the run of the life of’the Road, I soon 
 had forgotten the* kind soul v\^ho had lent a helping 
 hand where her co-residents had become sensible to 
 
Here and There With A-No/i 
 
 53 
 
 the terse fact that relief, indiscriminately extended to 
 the stranger at the gate merely, nay, fearfully, encour¬ 
 aged the curse of professional mendicancy. 
 
 Some years went by—then I came railroading an¬ 
 other time into Mattoon. Tighter fisted than ever be¬ 
 fore, affairs stood worse for the panhandlers. Even 
 my persistent efforts sorrily failed to boost the in¬ 
 terest of the housewives to where they might come 
 across with food. It was then that in my sheer ex¬ 
 tremity I chanced to recall the incidents of my preced¬ 
 ing trip in quest of grub in Mattoon. This remem¬ 
 brance brought on an idea that in all probability the 
 woman who fed me on that day might not likely recog¬ 
 nize in me her former caller. I had not only arrived 
 at man’s estate but with the coming of age, I nad per¬ 
 mitted a mustache to adorn my upper lip after a fash¬ 
 
 ion. Banking on this and other differences in my per¬ 
 sonal and general appearance, I bravely went to the 
 house of the good lady who had acted so mercifully 
 
 before. 
 
 Fortune seemed to favor my errand as the lady quite 
 failed to recognize in my person the fellow^ by whom 
 she had been fooled previously. Then I recited a tale 
 of sad tribulations which perfectly fitted with her 
 mental estate, that I knew to be forever occupied with 
 the devolving of plans conceived in a boundless mother 
 love to see unlimited success in life come to her sons. 
 The plausible yarn, hatched on the spur of the mo¬ 
 ment, struck home as thoroughly as I had expected 
 it should The woman entirely forgot the anti-hobo 
 Ob "b to her fellow housewives, a covenant still 
 strictly being adhered to by all the town, as I had 
 learned to my sorrow. When I concluded my story of 
 woe, she requested that I step into her kitchen, so she 
 might prepare a substantial meal. ^ 
 
 Obeying her instructions, I was then given a chair 
 
54 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No/i, 
 
 while my hostess busied herself with the assembling 
 of my repast. But soon I had ample cause to rue the 
 colossal audacity which had impelled my return to this 
 particular residence, for the lady of the house forth¬ 
 with began to send at my person searching glances 
 from out the comers of her eyes. Obviously, there 
 had come to her mind a vague suspicion that all was 
 not well with her tramp guest. I tried coolly to dis¬ 
 miss her untoward attention as a demeanor of inno¬ 
 cent curiosity. When she continued her tactics, I de¬ 
 cided to rebuke her by acting the role of a total strang¬ 
 er. But soon this defensive measure was proven to be 
 of no worth, for my guilt-burdened conscience brought 
 me to the pass where I would not lift my gaze from 
 the floor of the kitchen. This damaging auto-confes¬ 
 sion had the quick effect to conclusively confirm the 
 belief of my hostess that she was dealing with a rank 
 impostor on her charity. When she had arrived at 
 the point of righteous indignation where she could no 
 longer contain her anger, she blurted: “Aren’t you the 
 same chap who stopped at my house some years ago 
 and then bound on the identical kind of errand as this 
 is yours on the present evening?” 
 
 “You’re positively mistaken, marm,” I bravely coun¬ 
 tered, though my reply was thoroughly vitiated by the 
 crimson blush of the deliberate lie that instantly came 
 sweeping into my countenance. 
 
 “I happen to be one of the favored mortals endowed 
 with the faculty of remembering for the longest the 
 features of persons previously met,” she announced for 
 my information. “I must insist to have your truthful 
 version of what has brought you here to-night with a 
 different story to excuse your practice of professional 
 beggary.” 
 
 This order was enunciated with such an explicit tone 
 of command, that I was given no loophole for a fur- 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 55 
 
 ther subterfuge to prevail. Although virtually driven 
 to bay, I resorted to hemming and hawing and pouting 
 and blustering to avoid the trying ordeal she had de¬ 
 manded, Failing to move me to an immediate admis¬ 
 sion of my guilt the lady diplomatically changed her 
 tart measure of obtaining my self-denunciation to 
 where she actually pleaded for permission to enter in 
 my complete confidence. Soon her repeated, unselfish 
 appeals carried me where I could no longer muster the 
 extreme courage that was required to further refuse 
 a complete airing of the supreme fault that had driven 
 me roving v/ithout lien and letup up and down the wide 
 world. 
 
 ‘‘I know, and my heart tells me this, that some¬ 
 where there is a to-be-pitied mother praying for the 
 safe return of you, her wayward son,” she rasped half- 
 choked with genuine compassion at the amazing re¬ 
 view of my sordid career I had furnished her. 
 
 Then she elected to treat me to a merciless lecture 
 on my wrong-doing and though outwardly I received 
 the scathing arraignment in apparently callous indif¬ 
 ference, inwardly it seemed as if for this momentous 
 purpose common terrestrial distances had been instan¬ 
 taneously abrogated to where the souls of the two 
 mothers—she, who v/as bending over me where I was 
 sitting cowering in the kitchen chair, and the other, the 
 suifering mother of mine—had become miraculously 
 cemented into one inseparable unit which now gave 
 vent to pangs of infinite woe in the scorching repri¬ 
 mand welling from the lips of the Samaritan of Mat- 
 toon. 
 
 When finally the lady had exhausted^ her power oi 
 admonition, I meekly told how times innumerable 1 
 had manfully striven, though unsuccessfully, to di¬ 
 vorce myself from the Road. Leaving matters rest¬ 
 ing on merits, in the goodness of her heart, the woman 
 
56 Here and There With A-No. i, 
 
 exacted a pledge that whenever my route of hoboing 
 lay by Mattoon, I would call at her residence. Only 
 when I had agreed in full faith to comply with this 
 unheard-of invitation to a human derelict, was I pro¬ 
 vided with the -meal which, almost providentially, had 
 brought me to her mansion. On taking my leave, I 
 was presented with an acceptable assortment of wear 
 selected from the wardrobe of the four sons of the 
 mistress of the house, and a dollar on my way, while 
 she feelingly remarked: ^‘That which I have done for 
 you this day, my boy, most assuredly in spirit was do¬ 
 nated by your unfortunate mother.” 
 
 _ On arriving in the street, I ascertained of passing 
 citizens that the name of my benefactress was Mrs. 
 Louis Katz. ' * 
 
 While engaged on another journey through Mattoon 
 I fulfilled the promise of the preceding trip. When I 
 vms admitted to her residence, good Mrs. Katz fur¬ 
 nished a most bounteous meal, some garments dis¬ 
 carded by her sons, another small sum of money and, 
 at the minute of my departure, a letter. I was as¬ 
 tonished to the limit, to see that the address of the 
 letter bore my correct name—which latter I had ever 
 endeavored to shield as a sacred secret from the world- 
 at-large, which custom was about the only, redeeming 
 feature practiced by the hoboes. To still further net¬ 
 tle my surprise, the post office cancellation mark show¬ 
 ed the missive to have been mailed at San Francisco, 
 the city of my birth. ^ 
 
 ^Vhen I searcned the countenance of my hostess for 
 iHiormation explaining the presence of the strange let¬ 
 ter, she cheerily confessed that she had taken a fair 
 aavantage of a casual remark I had dropped on my 
 preceding visit to Mattoon. Engaging the service of a 
 renowned detective agency with office in San Francis¬ 
 co, this concern had ordered its astute operatives to 
 
Here and There With 'A-No. 'i S7j 
 
 apply the lead I had inadvertently furnished to stage a 
 thorough canvass of the residence districts of that 
 city. The sleuths had soon annotated all homes where 
 sons were reported as missing the approximate term of 
 years I had mentioned to Mrs. Katz as having been 
 fettered to the Koad. By the usual process of elimina¬ 
 tion of unproductive leads, finally, my benefactress in 
 faraway Illinois was placed in communication with my 
 people. As an outcome of the ensuing correspondence, 
 the letter I now beheld was forwarded in the care of 
 Mrs. Katz. It was the first word, in writing or other¬ 
 wise, I had received from home, as with a truly boyish 
 thoughtlessness I had resigned myself to the belief 
 that by conscientiously abstaining from communicat¬ 
 ing with my folks, the latter would be saved from a 
 still further aggravation of their great sorrow. 
 
 The contents of the letter proved to be a most soul- 
 rending plea of a thoroughly broken-hearted mother 
 that her boy, her only child, at that, might reform from 
 his dreadful error and disgrace. When I had finished 
 with the reading of the missive, Mrs. Katz, by employ¬ 
 ing an infinite tact to obtain her laudable object, gained 
 her wish in the matter of having me pen, then and 
 there in her presence, a letter in reply to the lines from 
 home, as she insisted that she desired to personally 
 attend to its proper posting in the mails. 
 
 In the course of the years which followed, I ofttimes 
 called at the house of Mrs. Louis Katz. This journey¬ 
 ing to Mattoon soon mounted to an obligation I deemed 
 on par with the sacred pilgrimage executed by ortho¬ 
 dox Mohammedans to their holy Mecca and Medina. 
 There always was a letter or two awaiting my arrival. 
 Then came the sad day when mother wrote that father 
 had gone to his eternal reward. Soon after this be¬ 
 reavement, there were to be no further pitiful en¬ 
 treaties by mother dear, for I received a brief notifica- 
 
I 
 
 ! 
 
 58 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 tion by the attorney of our family announcing her de¬ 
 mise. Thus forever terminated was the exquisite mar- I 
 tyrdom she had suffered all her living days—as this j 
 was the undeserved penalty which befell so many other i 
 good parents whose sons were allowed to hobo by the ; 
 police everywhere, until they were hopelessly ensnared 
 in the toils of the Koad, the veritable abyss of the 
 Social Pit. 
 
 In accordance with a consent I had previously re¬ 
 corded over my signature, my parental estate was dis¬ 
 tributed among public charities worthy of support. 
 The funds concerned in this division amounted to but j 
 a merest fraction of the original fortune, as vast sums 
 were expended on a ceaseless search instituted by my 
 parents in their anxiety to gain even a least trace of ' 
 the wayward who so heartlessly had blasted their en¬ 
 joyment of life. AND LET THIS, MY SELF-AE- ,| 
 RAIGNMENT BECOME AN EVERLASTING WARN- '1 
 ING TO OTHER THOUGHTLESS YOUTHS BEFORE 
 THEY, TOO, HAVE SPOILED THEIR FUTURE AND 
 THAT OF THEIR TO-BE-PITIED PARENTS THEY 
 HAD COME TO HONOR AND OBEY AND NOT TO 
 DISGRACE. 
 
 I retained the steadfast friendship of Mrs. Louis Katz, 
 v/ho, as ever, offered an asylum whenever my route of 
 roughing led through hobo-hostile Mattoon. Then ap¬ 
 proached the hour when the best girl on earth, almost 
 divinely heroic in her self-sacrifice, released me, her 
 husband—from the yoke of the Wanderpath. But 
 even to this day, when to me, personally, my check¬ 
 ered past seemed to have assumed the station of an 
 ugly nightmare, I occasionally have a letter by Mrs. , 
 Louis Katz, whom I shall always hold in gratitude so 
 profound as to be entirely beyond the scope of ex- 
 pressing its unbounded dimensions in mere words. 
 
 V 
 
 '.'1 
 
 t’ 
 
1 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No.'i 59 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 'As the Voice from the Tomb. 
 
 H OW would you, dear reader, act affected on the 
 uncanny receipt of a letter penned by a person 
 you had believed dead and buried all of thirty 
 long years ? Again, might even the most virile of tal¬ 
 ented imaginations construe and then understandingly 
 describe the state of your personal emotions when, 
 additionally, the writer of such an unusual missive was 
 largely responsible that for more than a quarter cen¬ 
 tury you were condemned to lead the cursed existence 
 which is that of the devotee of the Road ? 
 
 It was just such an ultra-strange occurrence which 
 recently befell your author, who in his initial literary 
 production, '‘Life and Adventures of A-No. 1,” ex¬ 
 plained how he, then a youngster in knee breeches, 
 was induced by yarns of “Rock Candy Mountains’^ 
 and other threadbare fables exciting youthful irre¬ 
 sponsibility, to become the “Road Kid” of “New Or¬ 
 leans Frenchy.” This character professionally was 
 both tramp and criminal. In the latter classification 
 he was affiliated with that most dangerous viper in 
 human guise prowling in the dead of the night—the 
 burglar. 
 
 Faithfully recording my experiences with this genius 
 of evil, I concluded with our leave-taking at Pensa¬ 
 cola. This was in the eighteen-eighties. Since then I 
 had neither a word by Frenchy nor had ever again en¬ 
 countered his moniker. Therefore, I had every occa¬ 
 sion to place complete credence in the plausible report 
 
60 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No.% 
 
 circulating among the wandering fraternity to the 
 effect that my erstwhile tutor in the ways of wrong¬ 
 doing had finally met with a natural death while under¬ 
 going life imprisonment in the state penitentiary of 
 Michigan. 
 
 Considering the mentions foregoing, the reader 
 should all the better appreciate the immensity of my 
 amazement when there arrived a memorandum of in¬ 
 quiry in the writing and over the signature of my hobo¬ 
 ing mate of long-ago, whose very existence I had quite 
 forgotten. In answer to my reply, there soon ensued 
 a lively interchange of correspondence pregnant with 
 personal confidences. In due time our letter-writing 
 had progressed to the point where my former mentor 
 wrote so exceedingly interesting on his career subse¬ 
 quent to our parting of ways in Florida, that I ob¬ 
 tained his permission to accord publicity to the more 
 entertaining passages in his letters. 
 
 Forsooth, the reader should considerately abstain 
 from forming a hasty judgment in the matter of the 
 propriety of publishing the unvarnished revelations 
 rendered by Frenchy while telling of his personal ex¬ 
 ploits, for the sender of the correspondence not only 
 reformed from his crooked ways many years ago, but 
 also is rated a highly respectable citizen in his present 
 place of residence. 
 
 Father, an unbiased study of the almost incredible 
 iniquities exposed by Frenchy might prove of serious 
 and absorbing concern to every reputable citizen. For 
 thus the latter will be placed on proper guard and self¬ 
 protection against being likewise mulcted in simply 
 prodigious sums which, more or less submerged in 
 the schemes of indirect taxation, after ail, must be met 
 by innocent folks. 
 
, Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 6V 
 
 THE FIRST LETTER 
 
 Scouting by Mail 
 
 San Diego, Cal., December 7, 1919. 
 
 The A-No. 1 Publishing Company, 
 
 Erie, Pa. 
 
 Sirs:— 
 
 Kindly inform the undersigned of a means to open 
 communication with the author of the ^‘A-No. 1 
 Tramplife Series,” as I have important matters to call 
 to his personal attention. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 RAOUL VOLEUR. 
 
 No. 335 Spencer Avenue. 
 
62 
 
 Here and There With A-No. X 
 
 THE SECOND LETTER 
 
 From the Past to the Present 
 
 San Diego, Cal., Dec. 16, 1919.; 
 Dear Pal of Thirty Years ago:— 
 
 To-day received your answer to my recent letter of 
 ■inquiry, introducing you as the sole owner of the firm 
 publishing your literary productions. In response to 
 your request for particulars, I shall explain what it 
 was that had moved me to obtain your address. 
 
 I am married and, at that, most happily. One child, 
 a daughter, came to bless our home. The girl is ap¬ 
 proaching her seventeenth birthday and will graduate 
 from high school during the ensuing year. It was 
 three weeks ago that Doris was reading a book which, 
 as this was her wont, she had loaned at the library 
 maintained in her school. While I was scanning over 
 the contents of the local evening daily, I heard her 
 casually remark: “Oh, Papa! This certainly is some 
 interesting story which seems to have been written 
 by a person who traveled quite as extensively as you 
 have.” 
 
 When my daughter left the room, she allowed the 
 book to remain on the table, inviting an inspection of 
 its text. By the titlq, I ascertained that its author was 
 “A-No. 1,” whose books had attained national popu¬ 
 larity by the sheer oddity of their contents. Beach¬ 
 ing for the volume, I allowed myself to finger through 
 its pages, when my attention was attracted by the 
 headline of the chapter, “In Partnership with a Bur¬ 
 glar.” The description of your initial ride astride a 
 v/obbly brakebeam, caused me to become thoroughly 
 interested. When I read about that laughable episode 
 
Here and There With A-No. 'i ^3 
 
 at Rosenbiirg Junction in Texas, where you and your 
 comrade lugged off a trunk heavy with farm seed 
 brought in by immigrants, I truly began to marvel. 
 But when I hurried through your tale of the Christ¬ 
 mas adventure at Pensacola, it required no further 
 enlightenment to have me comprehend that I was read¬ 
 ing an experience which I vividly recalled to have 
 lived through in the course of my own existence, 
 though the affair was faithfully chronicled by some 
 one else. Putting two and two together, and remem¬ 
 bering the fact that once upon a time I had the com¬ 
 pany of a “Road Kid” whom I had nicknamed “A-No. 1 
 Kid,” because acceptable predicates singled him out 
 from the common run of vagranting lads, I surmised, 
 as this was to prove to be a correct guess, that this 
 youth and the author of the book were one and the 
 same party. This induced me to write for your address 
 and to-daj''—^bringing a most surprising climax—^by 
 way of the federal mail service, I am holding a joyous 
 reunion with my former apprentice of the Road, to 
 whom throughout all these years, I had not even paid 
 a fleeting thought. 
 
 As you might demand a more conclusive evidence 
 carrying every assurance that indeed you are dealing 
 with the proper person, I desire to refer you to that 
 dark night at the railroad bridge spanning the black 
 chasm of a deep arroyo on the Southern Pacific a short 
 distance only west of the city of San Antonio. There 
 the sills of the track crossing the bridge had been 
 placed so far apart that, tot that you were, you be¬ 
 came quite panic-stricken at the thought of the risk 
 of slipping through the widely spaced railroad ties to 
 a watery grave in the creek below. Do you recollect 
 how I solved the trouble by carrying you riding astride 
 
 my back over the bridge? 
 
 I, too, have been moving since Pensacola. There I 
 
64 
 
 Here and There With A-No. x 
 
 managed to stage a clean getaway with the treasure 
 chest of the sailing vessel aboard of which Sailor Boss 
 Davis, the mulatto, had bound me out as ship’s cook. 
 I trailed your moniker along the “Florida Central & 
 Peninsular Railroad” to Orlando. I saw it last at Kis¬ 
 simmee, although I went searching all the way south¬ 
 ward as far as Tampa and then doubled back on the 
 road to Jacksonville. Abandoning my futile search, I 
 took stowaway passage to New York City, hence I 
 went a-roaming. 
 
 In 1889, I shipped from Seattle to Skagway in Alas¬ 
 ka, where the Klondyke gold rush was at its height. 
 From the coast, I “mushed” inland to Lake Lebarge, 
 where I constructed a flat-bottomed boat, which I 
 navigated down the turbulent Yukon to Dawson. Lin¬ 
 gering here a while to catch my bearings in the strange 
 Northland, I joined in a stark-mad midwinter stam¬ 
 pede to gold discoveries in the Porcupine District. To 
 reach this destination proved a feat worthy of the 
 mettle of any red-blooded man. I tramped some two 
 hundred miles through j;he deep snows and eternal 
 night common to the winter of the desolated country 
 within the Arctic Circle where at that particular sea¬ 
 son of the year the mercury in the thermometer con¬ 
 tinually hovered about fifty degrees below freezing. 
 
 Now mind you—I had quit Skagway with something 
 like one hundred pounds of provisions strapped to my 
 back. An even year later on I came returning to this 
 port leading to the icebound domain of the savage 
 North King, with exactly an even hundred pounds in 
 dead weight of virgin gold in my money belt. Every 
 pennyweight of this considerable fortune in precious 
 metal was earned by honest endeavor on my part. Dur¬ 
 ing that most memorable winter in the Arctic section, 
 all the argonauts marooned there were compelled to 
 battle with death from starvation because of a short- 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 65 
 
 Boating tlie turbulent Yukon 
 
66 
 
 Here and There With 'A-No/i 
 
 age of provender. Strong men died like poisoned flies 
 —until with the re-opening of river navigation fresh 
 provisions could be sent in for the relief of those who 
 had lived through the terrible ordeal, where coarse 
 grub had become so valuable a substance that for the 
 time being the gold that had drawn the fortune hunt¬ 
 ers to the silent North Country lost every value. 
 
 Prior to my second trip into Skagway, I had always 
 considered the paying for transportation in the esti¬ 
 mate of an unpardonable sin. By the dangerous 
 “Brakebeam Koute” I had crisscrossed the Americas 
 by every rail line available, even including the vaunted 
 Panama Eailroad. Common occurrences for me were 
 stowaway passages on steamers plying the Seven Seas. 
 On all these journeys I was amply supplied with finan¬ 
 cial funds. It was pure cussedness that had me refuse 
 to purchase the tickets required, for it was an ordinary 
 happening for me to carry as high as five hundred dol¬ 
 lars “planted’’ in my apparel. 
 
 But with the cashing in of the many thousands of 
 dollars’ worth of gold I had brought out of Alaska, 
 there came to me a most decided change in the point 
 of view I had heretofore taken of my manner of trav¬ 
 eling. Honestly and sincerely, I candidly believe that 
 since Alaska I have paid out more for actual cash fares 
 by rail and water and otherwise, that this easily totals 
 up the sum of which I had previously trimmed the pub¬ 
 lic carriers. * 
 
 Departing from Skagway by first-cabin passage to 
 Seattle, thence I traveled by Pullman to New York. 
 Really, I rode planked down in a softly plushed seat 
 and did my level best to behave like a genuine multi¬ 
 millionaire. Truly, it did me a world of good to see 
 how the colored Pullman porters hopped about to grab 
 the tips I had to bestow for any service rendered. 
 From New York City I crossed the Atlantic on the 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 67 
 
 “St. Louis” bent on a tour of Europe. Once across, I 
 had a change of mind, when I decided that San Fran¬ 
 cisco would prove an acceptable locality for my perma¬ 
 nent residence. Therefore, I re-crossed aboard the 
 “Savoie” of the French Line. Reaching shore, I con¬ 
 tinued by rail via Montreal and the “Imperial Lim¬ 
 ited” of the Canadian Pacific Railway, to transfer at 
 Vancouver by coastwise steamship for San Francisco. 
 The next journey oversea was made on the “Kroon- 
 land” of the Red Star Service and on the return trip 
 I boarded a palatial boat of the Holland-American 
 company. 
 
 All these trips and ever so many others were scored 
 in the first cabin—by me who but some twenty years 
 before had come to America in the steerage of a French 
 freighter. 
 
 Landing from my first Alaska-France voyage at 
 Cherbourg, I took unto myself as wife a winsome lass 
 of but sixteen summers. Being a stranger in France, 
 and, probably, of a somewhat bashful disposition, I had 
 recourse to a matrimonial bureau that published a 
 pamphlet for the express purpose of placing marriage 
 within the ready reach of parties interested. On the 
 very first day of its publication, my advertisement 
 netted fifty-six replies. The girl I choose was em¬ 
 ployed at overcasting button holes at a dressmakers, 
 where she earned not above ten cents daily working 
 fourteen long hours. She wore wooden clogs and cared 
 not for hat covering. She promised to be faithful to 
 her vow of marriage she conferred on a total stranger 
 offering her an American home and fireside and, con¬ 
 nectedly, a release from the miserable station of a 
 European slave of industry. I togged her out in great 
 style and then went sightseeing through Euiope. n 
 the end, we drifted across to California, where we set¬ 
 tled to raise our daughter, who I mentioned as being the 
 
68 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 original cause of our meeting again, though by cor¬ 
 respondence, after all these years and years. 
 
 While I am in the mood of confessing, let me say, 
 that I am exceedingly sorry to admit that since Pen¬ 
 sacola, I was compelled to serve another brief “jolt” in 
 San Quentin, which is the official location of the state 
 penitentiary of California. 
 
 The first time I came away from this penal institu¬ 
 tion, I was a “cadet” of crime and on the following in¬ 
 stance, an event that happened some twenty years ago, 
 I had gained such a thorough acquaintance with the 
 workings of the ways of the underworld, that I blos¬ 
 somed forth immediately after my release—please, try 
 to guess the vocation I am about to mention—^as a 
 bonafide member of the police department of the city 
 of San Francisco. Can you beat this for a most con¬ 
 trary transfer which sent me from the cell of the felon 
 right smack to the task of the legal upholder of the 
 mandates of Law and Order? 
 
 Some fifteen years preceding the penning of this 
 letter of to-day, having gained a nice nest egg against 
 the proverbial rainy day, on wearying of lounging 
 about our home, I repaired to the office of Chief Spec¬ 
 ial Agent C. C. Crowley, at that period the head of the 
 police force maintained by the Southern Pacific Rail¬ 
 road. I weighed two hundred pounds and was in ship¬ 
 shape to tackle anything going. Crowley, as his name 
 proclaimed, was an Irishman. As were so many police 
 officials of that particular descent, he preferred his 
 countrymen for subordinates in the police service he 
 commanded. The first item on the way, Crowley com¬ 
 menced a quiz to ascertain the country of my nativity. 
 Certainly, I was in dandy position to meet his every 
 expectation. Although being a thoroughbred French¬ 
 man, the fact that I happened to be of pure Norman 
 blood, gave me the appearance of a person of Celtic 
 
69 
 
 Here and There With "A-No. X 
 
 origin far more than that commonly accepted for the 
 man of the general ^French type. Besides, I had had 
 several months of hoboing in the Emerald Isle. There, 
 and this of necessity in the matter of getting a fill of 
 food, I had gained the peculiar twang connected by 
 the Irish people with their version of the Eng¬ 
 lish tongue. My thorough ability to use the rich 
 brogue of the English dialect adopted by the 
 Sons of Erin, came in good stead on this occa¬ 
 sion in San Francisco. Evidently, Chief Crowley, 
 though probably privately, had placed the circum¬ 
 stance of men applying for positions under him being 
 of his own nativity above every other regular qualifi¬ 
 cation, for only when well satisfied on this score, he 
 asked to hear what, if anything, I knew of railroading 
 and the pursuit of criminals. I acted most innocent of 
 such education and expressed willingness to be taught 
 by him, personally. But while I averred ignorance 
 on both particulars, I had the time of my life, even 
 biting my lips so these bled profusely, to restrain my 
 emotions which urged me on to shout full in Crowley’s 
 face, that what I did not know of the two knowledges 
 he' had referred to was not worth while studying by 
 any sleuth. 
 
 The interview concluded with my being awarded the 
 position of a patrolman with the Southern Pacific. The 
 ceremony of being sworn in as a depuy sheriff of Cali¬ 
 fornia followed. Then I was handed a revolver with 
 almost cannon-like calibre of bore, the star of my of¬ 
 fice, a hefty mace and, finally, a railroad pass that per¬ 
 mitted my scotfree traveling aboard any train of the 
 railroad, which, forsooth, heretofore I had hoboed 
 more freely and frequently than I had dared any other 
 route in the land. 
 
 My initial assignment was to patrol the police divi¬ 
 sion reaching from Tracy to Bakersfield. The order 
 
70 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 called for my “mixing” with the hoboes for the sake 
 of gathering information covering their “touching” 
 the contents of freight cars and the perpetration of 
 other depredations. I was told to obtain plenty of 
 pistol practice by perforating all stew tins and pans I 
 encountered on hand at temporarily abandoned hobo 
 camping grounds. 
 
 Even before his having actually inducted me into my 
 new position, Chief Crowley had warned that there 
 must be no grafting whatever in the service under the 
 penalty of an instant and dishonorable dismissal from 
 the police force over which he lorded it with a high 
 hand and, most likely, a subsequent prosecution in the 
 courts to the limit permissible under the law. This 
 tart injunction was strictly lived up to until the day I 
 “pinched” a gent I had discovered bumming his way on 
 the “Owl,” the fast San Francisco-Los Angeles night 
 express. On the way to the city calaboose at Modesto, 
 the fellow offered one hundred dollars cash for his 
 release from custody. Then I was monthly earning 
 seventy-five dollars only, and even while I was still 
 engaged in considering an acceptance or a rejection of 
 the handsome bribe for what virtually amounted to a 
 comparatively insignificant favor, my man further 
 raised his ante to a cool five hundred simoleons. With¬ 
 out the least hesitation I called for the coin, and gen¬ 
 erously purchased for the stranger a ticket to his des¬ 
 tination, which was nearby Sacramento, the capital 
 city of California. After that notable experience, with 
 me there were no bounds observed to my grafting, as 
 I aimed to have my pickings before the harvest might 
 be cut short by a recall order to headquarters to “go 
 on the carpet” in private audience with Chief Crowley. 
 
 Speaking of graft and grafting in general, eh!— 
 this reminds me of the memorable year of 1906, and 
 immediately after the virtually total destruction of 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 71 
 
 San Francisco by earthquake and the subsequent con¬ 
 flagration. I had been employed as a “Special Officer’’ 
 by one of the fairly innumerable dens of iniquity lo¬ 
 cated on the “Barbary Coast,the infamous “Red 
 Light” district of the metropolis, where during every 
 hour of the twenty-four of the day was enacted, open¬ 
 ly and, assuredly, with the complete connivance of the 
 municipal authorities, a high-carnival of almost in¬ 
 credibly beastly immoralities, such as in their day 
 sent historical Sodom and Gomorrha down in quake and 
 fire before the wrath of the Almighty—as this terri¬ 
 ble and unmistakably divine atonement was inflicted, 
 and this too justly only, on San Francisco in our day. 
 
 Civic grafters had demanded and then collected of 
 me two thousand dollars on a lease for the term of a 
 year of a certain concession which under the guaran¬ 
 tee of non-interference by the police authorities per¬ 
 mitted the financial “trimming” of patrons of the Bar¬ 
 bary Coast. Callously unmindful of their obligation, 
 the arch-crooks had promptly peddled the self-same 
 privilege to another offerer of a worthwhile bribe and 
 then, again, to still other parties. In the meanwhiie, 
 orders were issued to the police officers to prevent all 
 but the most recent one of the duped concessionaires 
 from engaging in the “sure-thing” business covered 
 by the nefarious transaction. The bluecoats were still 
 further enjoined to allow no public outcry to prevail, 
 as such an exposure of the graft might place^ on their 
 personal guard prospective victims of the infamous 
 municipal ring. To immensely aggravate the fury and 
 indignation of their prey, the double-dealers refused 
 not only to accede to a restitution of the moneys in¬ 
 volved but also to enter into some sort of more or less 
 equitable arrangement whereby a partial refund might 
 be distributed to the bribe givers. 
 
 Pretty soon, there arrived an excellent opportuni y 
 
/ 
 
 72 ' Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 to avenge my wrongs of the corrupt municipal ser¬ 
 vants. I became affiliated with the Burns Detective 
 Agency as an operative. This concern had been called 
 in at the expense of public spirited citizens to under¬ 
 take a thorough investigation of the almost incredibly 
 bold municipal grafting carried on by Kough, the city 
 attorney, and all the other city officials, who had come 
 in office on a “Labor Ticket,” that in due time was to 
 become the original pattern for the men who brought 
 to ruin the mighty empire of Russia later on. 
 
 Under the direction of the Burns people, I was called 
 into court to be a vital witness against the civic of¬ 
 fenders whose dishonorable tactics had all but made 
 impossible the carrying on of legitimate business in 
 San Francisco. I did my share to send the crooked 
 outfit to cells in San Quentin. 
 
 Rough, the worst actor, drew down a term of four¬ 
 teen years at hard labor. Mayor Schmidt caught a 
 sentence of a like term but contrived to beat his case 
 on an appeal before a friendly judge and lenient 
 jury. The chief of police v/as summarily dismissed 
 from office. Lesser grafters came away with jail 
 terms or heavy monetary penalties for having prosti¬ 
 tuted their public oath. All in all—for the first in¬ 
 stance since the foundation of the city, San Francisco 
 received a thorough-going municipal house-cleaning. 
 
 Although the grafters had trimmed me to the tune 
 of two thousand dollars, I obtained an inning of rich 
 revenge and gained the satisfaction of the proverbial 
 “Last Laugh.” Providentially, almost, so it seemed, 
 I had been released from San Quentin in good time to 
 materially aid in dragging the civic criminals from 
 their soft public berths in city hall and police head¬ 
 quarters to a sojourn in penal institutions. 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 73 
 
 They say in France: 
 
 “II n’y a pas de sotes metieres; 
 
 II n’y a que sotes gens!” 
 
 meaning, translated into English, that “Everybody 
 gains his peculiar reward.” 
 
 At this writing, I am resting on easy street—an 
 honorable, retired hobo who, withal, confesses himself 
 as taught by practical experience that straightforward 
 honesty is, absolutely, the sole pursuit to win out in 
 the long race leading to complete contentment in life. 
 
 Am rather sorry that you reside so remote from San 
 Diego, otherwise would have liked to look you up for a 
 personal interview, where within a few minutes* con¬ 
 versation one might intelligently and accurately ex¬ 
 plain more, by far, than in the hours I have devoted 
 now on the construction on this unwieldy letter. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
74 
 
 Here and There With A-No.X 
 
 THE THIRD LETTER 
 Straying Beyond the Narrow Path 
 
 _ T’l • j San Diego, Cal., Jan. 1, 1920. 
 
 Dear Friend:— 
 
 Received your letter penned on Christmas Day, and 
 I hasten to make amends in the matter of having quite 
 overlooked to bid you and yours the compliments of 
 the holiday season. Herewith, I express the hope that 
 you folks may have had turkey bird in quantity as 
 plentiful as you and I had this treat at Pensacola. 
 
 Please excuse the uncouth length of my recent com¬ 
 munication. Then I happened to be just in the right 
 mood to mail such a long epistle, as I became aware 
 that in your person I had found, at last, somebody who 
 possibly might appreciate revelations concerning my 
 strange adventuring. This is something my dear wife 
 and daughter have quite failed to comprehend all these 
 years, as to them the scant bits of insight into my 
 queer career I casually exposed, have had the unpleas¬ 
 ant effect to only vastly more increase their rising sus¬ 
 picion that everything is not exactly as it should be 
 with my antecedents. 
 
 As I had previously mentioned, I am now a solid 
 and highly respected citizen of San Diego. But there 
 was another day when I was ruminating at the very 
 bottom of the social pit. And, truly, I have learned 
 some of the roughest of lessons to be studied in the 
 “University of Hard Knocks.” When but a mere lad, I 
 served six ye^rs in the apprenticeship of seafaring. For 
 a long stretch I v/as a cabin boy—the dog of the ship. 
 Maltreatment of a most revolting character was my 
 daily fare. The “Cat-o’Nine-Tails” was ever hung 
 handy for brutal action on my bare back, already sore¬ 
 ly bruised by bootings and cuffings administered by the 
 
75 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 crew, From ship master to mates and on down the 
 tally to the riffraff in the galley of the cook, all delight¬ 
 ed to take whacks at poor me whenever a least oppor¬ 
 tunity was offered to indulge in this entertainment that 
 broke the monotony of existence common aboard sail¬ 
 ing vessels engaged in extended sea voyages. 
 
 Wherever I was paid off or deserted the ship for the 
 shore, the bosses of the sailor boarding houses who 
 had in their control the hiring of the help for the ship¬ 
 ping riding at anchor in the harbor, sequestered the 
 larger portion of my withal pitifully small wage long 
 in advance of my having rightfully earned the stipend, 
 to richly compensate themselves for the indifferent 
 care I had received at the boarding house and the 
 ‘‘trouble” it had brought them to see me “signed up” 
 with another captain. Finally, forsaking the thankless 
 calling of the sea, I turned to farming. There, too, I 
 ran into unusual quarters. Quite often we agricul¬ 
 tural laborers were meted out treatment worse than 
 that accorded to dumb beasts of burden. I do recall 
 an excellent example—over in the rich Napa Valley of 
 California. I toiled for a,rancher so miserly that on 
 every Saturday afternoon he paid off and then dis¬ 
 charged his help. This saved him the expense of their 
 keep over Sunday. Bright and early Monday morning 
 he re-hired the same crew. 
 
 As I was a guideless and guileless youth cast adrift 
 on a foreign shore, all the fierce knocks administered 
 by the honest life of the masses struck home with 
 simply appalling result. I became an associate of 
 people who considered the commission of sin in the 
 light of a pardonable sequence of the fearful abuse of 
 confidence they had suffered while abiding by law and 
 order. Again extending to you and your loved ones the 
 good wishes of the Christmas tide, I remain, 
 
 Yours faithfully, FBENCHY. 
 
76 
 
 Here and There With A-No. X 
 
 THE FOURTH LETTER 
 
 The Reign of Demon Rum 
 
 San Die^o, Cal., Jan. 14, 1920. 
 
 Dear A-No. 1:— 
 
 Your reply to my letter of the first of the New Year 
 contained an urgent summons for a more detailed ex¬ 
 planation of the vicious irregularities practiced by the 
 municipal government of San Francisco. 
 
 Reaching back into my personal annals, you might 
 recall that I confessed to having been confined behind 
 the walls of San Quentin, doing a term of two years. 
 I had drawn this penalty for having inspected the con¬ 
 tents of the pockets of a foreman and five Chinese la¬ 
 borers of a crew employed on railroad track repair and 
 whom I had encountered traveling aboard a hand car 
 on a tour of inspection over the track section placed in 
 their charge. 
 
 As I was apprehended without funds, when the case 
 was called to trial, the court ordered a lawyer to care 
 for my defense. Then it was the time when through¬ 
 out the country of the Far-West the citizens began to 
 agitate against the unrestricted importation of Asiatic 
 labor. Addressing the jury, my attorney referred to 
 the fact that had it not been for the Orientals, I and 
 other toilers might be earning an honorable livelihood. 
 He followed this line of appeal with a plea for extreme 
 leniency. He did his job so thoroughly, that I was 
 sent away to San Quentin under the minimum pun¬ 
 ishment assessed by law against highway agents. 
 
 While I underwent detention in the state peniten¬ 
 tiary, several matters there struck me as being far 
 out of sorts. The most dangerous ones of an aggre- 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 77 
 
 The more dangerous a criminal, the easier his task in the 
 
 penitentiary. 
 
78 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 gation of thousands of criminals collected behind the 
 bars of the penal institution enjoyed the privilege 
 of the softest berths at the distribution of the warden. 
 There was “Black Bart.” This fellow had gained a 
 large measure of notoriety by the custom that while 
 he professionally robbed stage coaches, he distin¬ 
 guished himself by courteous treatment of his victims. 
 For the longest time he evaded all traps and snares 
 laid for his capture, and the latter was only accom¬ 
 plished by a merest windfall on the side of his pur¬ 
 suers who were spurned on in their eiforts by a heavy 
 reward. Bart was let off easy by the courts, being 
 given but six years at “hard labor” in San Quentin. 
 There, forsooth, his task turned out to be a soft clerk¬ 
 ship in the prison pharmacy. Improving a rich oppor¬ 
 tunity, he went in for trafficking whiskey and narcotics 
 to other convicts at prices by the sip and pinch that no 
 outside profiteer would have dared to charge by the 
 quart and pound. During his leisure time, and the 
 latter comprised almost every minute of his waking 
 hours, the highway robber peacocked back and forth 
 in front of the penitentiary hospital—he attired in 
 fancy vesting and frock coat of fashionable tailoring. 
 The only concession he allowed to prevail to indicate 
 his status of a prisoner of the state were the regula¬ 
 tion trousers he wore. But even this garment had 
 been altered by re-dying with a tint so neutral that the 
 original zebra striping was scarcely to be noted. 
 
 Jimmy Hope had charge of steam laundry at San 
 Quentin. There he gathered a lucrative income by 
 compelling the laundry force to do “extras” not only 
 for the families of the guards but likewise for resi¬ 
 dents beyond the walls. And what was the worthy 
 pedigree that had carried Jimmy Hope to having the 
 right of way over his fellow felons in the matter of 
 becoming a favorite with the powers? Jimmy Hope, 
 
79 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 a professional cracksman, was caught in San Francisco 
 in the act of tunneling beneath Montgomery Street to¬ 
 wards the money vault of one of the richest of the nu¬ 
 merous banking houses located in this, the Wall Street 
 of the Pacific slope. 
 
 The more detestable the crime of the lawbreaker, the 
 less his penalty in the courts and the greater his stran¬ 
 glehold on the privileges on landing in the peniten¬ 
 tary. 
 
 On finishing with my latest jolt, I arrived by steam¬ 
 boat in San Francisco where I chanced to drift into 
 nearby Pacific Street at the location of the “Barbary 
 Coast,” the most notorious “Red Light” district of the 
 American continent. I patronized a lunch room, where 
 I enjoyed my first civilized meal after feasting on fare 
 furnished by the authorities during the two years, less 
 the “good time allowance” for exemplary behavior, I 
 served punishment. 
 
 Returning to the sidewalk, I crossed the street to 
 the “Olympia,” a waterfront resort, having a saloon 
 placed in the forepart of a large hall, the rear section 
 of which was occupied by a dance floor. In the latter 
 at small tables patrons of the dive were provided with 
 liquid refreshments by buxom barmaids who received 
 a percentage on the business they created by dancing 
 with the visitors who were induced to squander their 
 wherewithal. Besides this percentage, the painted 
 harlots of the dance hall had the privilege to retain all 
 cash and valuables they pilfered from the pockets of 
 their prey. 
 
 Stepping before the counter of the bar room of the 
 ^‘Olympia,” I ordered a glass of beer. This I drank at 
 ease, while I endeavored to gain my bearings beyond 
 the gates of the penal quarters whence I had departed 
 that morning only. There was a motley crowd in the 
 
80 Here and There With 'A~No. 'i 
 
 place. Marines on their journey to and from the Phil¬ 
 ippines and other trans-Pacific destinations. Soldiers 
 from the forts bristling the hills surrounding the 
 Golden Gate, the entrance to the Bay of San Francis¬ 
 co. Sailors from warships and other shipping, repre¬ 
 senting almost every seafaring nation of the universe. 
 Longshoremen and other grades of skilled and un¬ 
 skilled labor employed in the harbor. Something like 
 fifty men were crowding at the bar counter, behind 
 which three barkeepers were kept on the jump dis¬ 
 pensing alcoholic concoctions, round on round. 
 
 Of a sudden, a soldier and a marine came to blows 
 on the spur of an argument. Within another moment 
 the bar room appeared converted into a battlefield, for 
 all the drinkers promptly took sides. The quarrel soon 
 had passed to the stage of a general melee, and in their 
 mounting passions, the combatants soon forgot to dis¬ 
 criminate between friend and foe. When bare fists 
 proved too ineffectual to administer serious harm, the 
 maudlin semi-savages resorted to chairs, bottles and 
 other dangerous weapons to attack anybody within 
 reach. Even the wenches employed in the dance hall 
 deserted their posts to share in the scrimmage. 
 
 Although I was a disinterested stranger to the 
 brawl, soon my neutrality was challenged by an intox¬ 
 icated sailor who directed a knockout punch at the 
 point of my jaw. I countered the blow, and this had 
 the effect to have my assailant signal for assistance to 
 his fellow mates. Assaulted on all sides, I stood off 
 the mob and managed to pitch one of the infuriated 
 rascals through the swing doors at the entrance of the 
 bar room and then beyond upon the sidewalk of the 
 thoi oughfare. This performance brought a telephoned 
 hurry call to police headquarters, but by the time a 
 patrol wagon loaded with bluecoats dashed to the 
 rescue, I had deposited no less than five of my oppo- 
 
Here and There With A-No. i . '81 
 
 nents either in the street or on the floor of the bar 
 room. 
 
 Instead of placing the unruly fellows under arrest, 
 the police officers simply endeavored to restore the 
 peace. Before long, the erstwhile mortal enemies 
 stood lined up before the bar counter, there regaling 
 each other and everybody, ii^cluding the policemen, to 
 drinks and cigars. A police surgeon who had accom¬ 
 panied the run of the riot patrol, looked after the needs 
 of the lesser wounded, and. Anally, an ambulance carted 
 off the more seriously injured to a hospital. 
 
 During the progress of the altercation, the owner of 
 the “Olympia” had remained in the rear of the bar 
 counter to stand guard over the contents of the cash 
 registers. When concord had returned, he beckoned 
 me to have a smoke at his expense, friendly remarking 
 he liked the way I had handled the “skuffs,’' and aver¬ 
 ring that he stood in holy terror of having murder 
 committed on liis property. This led on to a conver¬ 
 sation, in the course of which I mentioned to be in 
 search of employment. He immediately offered the 
 position of special officer and watchman on the prem¬ 
 ises. This job chanced to be standing vacant, the 
 latest incumbent having received such a sound trounc¬ 
 ing at the hands of rough visitors to the “Olympia,” 
 that over in the hospital he was lying at the point 
 where his chance of recovery was hanging in the bal¬ 
 ance. 
 
 As the official bouncer of the “Olympia” I was to 
 receive a weekly salary of twenty dollars, bed and 
 board. Besides this regular stipend, there was to be 
 earned a bonus of fifty cents on every rowdy I threw 
 from the premises or hammered into submission. 1 
 was advised that it was considered nothing out of thp 
 ordinary when on Saturdays, also on Sundays and holi¬ 
 days, the extras mounted above fifteen dollars, the 
 
82 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 resort being kept running full blaze every hour of each 
 day throughout the year. 
 
 The proposition appeared to be such an attractive 
 one, that I accepted the job on the spot. Still, there 
 Avere several preliminaries to be observed, so I might 
 enact proper police authority. My new employer fur¬ 
 nished a penned note that I was told to deliver to Chief 
 of Police Whitman of San Francisco, This police of¬ 
 ficial, in his turn, handed me his calling card, and then 
 ordered that I see the “boss” of the city. 
 
 When I reached the address, the entrance to an of¬ 
 fice bore the legend, “Abraham Rough, City Attorney.” 
 On opening the door, I landed in a large ante-room 
 where two people, a man and a woman, were awaiting 
 an audience with the lawyer, whom I had heard de¬ 
 nounced by the inmates of San Quentin as the arch 
 grafter of the century. 
 
 Opening a conversation with the waiting mafl. He 
 frankly admitted to wanting to obtain a concession 
 permitting his opening a grog shop in a district the 
 respectable residents whereof had fought, tooth and 
 nail, against an introduction in their midst of a rum 
 dispensary with all the evils attending. Nevertheless, 
 the scoundrel presumed that it would require a bribe 
 of around fifteen hundred dollars to “turn the trick.” 
 
 When the saloon man was called to hear his fate, I 
 quizzed the woman. Rather talkatively inclined, she 
 explained having drifted southward from the cities of 
 the Puget Sound country, where another periodical 
 reform wave had closed every house of ill-fame and 
 other civic cancers. She had traveled to San Francisco 
 to open a bawdy house and was now in the waiting 
 room to seek by means of outright bribery an official 
 sanction for her revolting enterprise. She confessed 
 that she had been to see Rough on the preceding day. 
 He had demanded a cash-down payment of twenty-five 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 83 
 
 Frenchy gave a good account of himself. 
 
84 Here and There With A-No.i 
 
 hundred dollars, to be followed by a liberal weekly 
 “sprinkling of the flowers.” The latter expression sig¬ 
 nified that she was to donate to accredited ward heel¬ 
 ers a weekly tribute representing the major portion of 
 the income derived by her house of assignation. The 
 immoral wench, though, being of somewhat thrifty 
 turn, had offered the attorney a compromise of fifteen 
 hundred dollars cash and no further financial leeching. 
 This handsome contribution was churly rejected by the 
 boss grafter who, angered by her haggling tactics, 
 used unbridled language to have her comprehend how 
 small he took her offer, when the total of “lefthanded” 
 revenue collected ran^nto the millions of dollars an¬ 
 nually. 
 
 When the scarlet v/oman was asked to step into the 
 inner room of the office, for the moment I felt like 
 vaulting from the waiting room. This odd sensation 
 was derived not only by the deep loathing I experienced 
 from the awful arraignments I had heard pronounced 
 against the man at the helm of government of one of 
 the continent’s largest and most prosperous cities but, 
 rather, I had arrived in a flash at the realization how 
 woefully I lacked the means to properly “cross” the 
 itching palm of the villain. Only a couple of dollars 
 remained with me of-the five dollars donated by the 
 state of California to every prisoner on his release from 
 San Quentin. 
 
 Even before I had come to a definite decision as to 
 whether or not I would have the courage to see the mat¬ 
 ter chrough, I was ushered into the presence of the 
 prince of grafters. Rough commanded me to occupy 
 a chair standing near his desk. I briefly outlined the 
 scope of my errand. The lawyer replied by stating 
 that to be recommended to the “star” of a special of¬ 
 ficer required an advance settlement in the sum of two 
 hundred and fifty dollars. Quite thunderstruck by the 
 
Here and There With A-No.i 85 
 
 magnitude of the bribe extorted for a service so tri¬ 
 fling, I enacted the motions executed by a person dis¬ 
 covering the absence of his pocketbook. Then I re¬ 
 quested a leave of absence until the following day. 
 
 Returning to the “Olympia,” I related the particu¬ 
 lars of my odd encounter. On mentioning that I was 
 without the means to meet the bribe, the owner of the 
 resort advanced the amount required. 
 
 In the morning I reported at the office of the city 
 attorney. Assuming a matter-of-fact demeanor, that 
 would have done credit to an honest business man, 
 Rough pocketed the blood money I had brought. When 
 I requested a written receipt acknowledging the pay¬ 
 ment, the rascal tastily retorted that in all San Fran¬ 
 cisco his verbal attest counted for vastly more than any 
 bescribbled scrap of paper. He made this grandstand 
 play of injured innocence in the face of the widespread 
 public report that he recognized no honor among 
 thieves. 
 
 The city attorney led the way to police headquarters. 
 There the police commission happened to be sitting in 
 an executive session. The clerk of the meeting was 
 ordered to give my application an immediate reading 
 before all other public business. Then Rough entered 
 the arena in my behalf, stating that he personally 
 knew me to be a most exemplary citizen, one who spent 
 all his days in the locality. At the conclusion of his 
 speech and immediately after he had mentioned that 
 there was no official objection to my being granted the 
 appointment, he brought his fist banging to the top o 
 the table by which he stood. Probably, this was the 
 pre-arranged signal of the conspirators, for without 
 deigning to even send a glance in my direction, the 
 puppets of police commissioners forthwith, and unan¬ 
 imously, passed the ordinance that conferred police 
 authority on a stranger who had come straight from 
 
86 Here and There With 'A-No/r 
 
 the cell house of San Quentin. When I was sworn in, 
 there were two other fellows to the job, who had pur¬ 
 chased promotion in the regular police force. Every¬ 
 thing was on sale for a bribe! Again—^nothing was to 
 be gained without villainous bribery! 
 
 On entering on my task as special officer, I received 
 an initial and only instruction to govern my activities. 
 Irrespectively as to whether I considered myself as 
 acting with or against justice, the interest of the 
 “Olympia” was to be protected under all circumstances, 
 always. 
 
 Scarcely had I been on the job an hour, than I was 
 buttonholed by a gent who introduced himself as a 
 lawyer. He promised to pay a handsome retainer, 
 scaled in accordance with prospective earnings, if I 
 would agree to keep him carefully posted on all arrests 
 I scored of people of means. Soon after his departure, 
 I was called to the telephone to converse with a party 
 v/ho was desirous of obtaining a “strictly private” inter¬ 
 view with the “new” watchman. He was the doctor 
 usually called to the resort whenever there was a case 
 on hand of somebody having been wounded in one of 
 the frequent fracasses or—other common occurrences 
 —such suffering by an attack of delirium tremens 
 (snakes). The medico offered a knockdown of twenty 
 per cent, and an additional fifteen per cent was to be 
 given on “rowdies” I had finished off in such shape 
 that the ambulance of this particular physician had to 
 be phoned for to convey the stricken troublemaker to 
 the hospital, if not worse. The mistress of a disorder¬ 
 ly house located nearby put in appearance to make ar¬ 
 rangements whereby I was to receive a division on a 
 fifty-fifty basis on all income she gathered off custom¬ 
 ers I had directed to her brothel. A dealer in castoff 
 clothing engaged himself to pay a worthwhile com¬ 
 mission on all business he derived from people who on 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 87 
 
 finding themselves short of cash were willing to meet 
 this particular secondhand merchant to exchange their 
 wear for disreputable rags and be paid a cash settle¬ 
 ment in the bargain. Besides, the shopkeeper volun¬ 
 teered to purchase at highest market price everything 
 I brought to his store left behind by careless visitors 
 to the “Olympia” or patrons of the latter who were too 
 intoxicated to properly care for their belongings. 
 
 There were so many other callers offering attractive 
 remunerations for all sorts of more or less shady fa¬ 
 vors that I promptly concluded to have landed in a po¬ 
 sition exceedingly bright with opportunities for quick 
 
 wealth. 
 
 This being the day of my official tryout, I acted with 
 circumspection in the matter of how badly I mauled 
 or mangled any patron I was commanded to subdue. 
 Still, as this happened to be the afternoon of a Satur¬ 
 day, before nightfall my earnings in “extras” had 
 mounted to twenty dollars, when I was called to convey 
 an especially boisterous guest of the “Olympia to a 
 cell at police headquarters, where he was to be held 
 until morning to be prosecuted in the city court on a 
 
 charge of breach of the peace. 
 
 When I carried the man before the desk sergeant at 
 the police station, even previous to this officer register¬ 
 ing his name and offense, I was directea to examine 
 the contents of the apparel of my prisoner. This 
 search brought to light a dilapidated corncob pipe? 
 some messy matches, several free lunch tickets an 
 other such v/orthless articles. On having assembled 
 everything taken from the pockets in front of the ser¬ 
 geant, I reported the task completed. 
 
 It was then that I received a reprimand so scathing, 
 
 that in all my after-life I have quite 
 
 ly overcome the effect. For while I faithfully fulfilled 
 
 the instructions of my employer, at the same time in 
 
88 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 my innocence I had grievously transgressed against 
 the business ethics observed by the police of San Fran¬ 
 cisco. 
 
 For the moment, the officer-of-the-day stared at me 
 in dumb silence, as if incapable to select the proper ex¬ 
 pressions to state his case. His ugly countenance 
 assumed an ever more florid color until, finally, he 
 bawled out savagely: “I’m going to hand you some val¬ 
 uable free advice, young fellow! Don’t you ever dare 
 to bring another bum to headquarters! Otherwise, 
 you. will be, out of a job mighty quick! We have no 
 time to bother with the like of him! You should have 
 taken him to some quiet nook in a park or on a wharf 
 and lambasted him soundly! Now, you and liim make • 
 haste to decamp from this office!” 
 
 Crestfallen, I obeyed the invitation extended by the 
 police officer. When I had liberated the offender, I 
 hurriedly returned to the “Olympia” where I scarcely 
 dared to look into one of the many large plate glass 
 mirrors let in the walls of the resort, in fear that I 
 might find myself decorated with a set of donkey ears, 
 such was the outrageous chagrin I felt by the reproof 
 which had arrived at the exact minute when I had 
 fondly believed myself capable of lording it over every¬ 
 body within reach. 
 
 This was my fourth day at the “Olympia.” I was 
 engaged in the dance hall, where I was amicably set¬ 
 tling a difference that had arisen between a sailor and 
 a barmaid, whom the former was accusing of having 
 lifted his purse. Amid copious sobbing, the young 
 harlot declared that she was a “real lady” and, there¬ 
 fore, quite beyond suspicion of committing such a 
 crinie. As it was my duty to iron out all troubles, 
 
 I pointed the mariner to a poster that cautioned visit¬ 
 ors of the fact that the management of the resort 
 would not be held responsible for the loss of valuables. 
 
Here and There With A-No. 'i 89 
 
 When still the seafarer refused to be comforted, in all 
 faith I suggested that he accompany me to the nearest 
 magistrate to swear to information warranting the 
 arrest of the woman he had charged with the theft. 
 The bluff worked to perfection, for when I casually- 
 like mentioned to the blue jacket that if his accusation 
 failed to hold water, most likely the girl would turn 
 about and have him held for the courts, charged with 
 criminal libel, the fellow sobered in a jiffy, and soon the 
 principals in the affair had made their peace. 
 
 Then it was that I heard two short blasts by whistle. 
 This was the pre-arranged signal that my presence 
 was wanted in the bar room. Rushing there, a sight 
 met my eyes. One of the barkeepers had been laid 
 out on the floor, unconscious. Another was stowing 
 a current of blood squirting from his smaslied nose. 
 The third was in a huddled heap, nursing a badly bat¬ 
 tered jaw, A burly chap stood his field in the center 
 of the rum shop, where he viciously swung a hedvy 
 chair about his head, while he yelled, that unless he 
 was handed the correct change, he would still further 
 “clean up” the “Olympia.” Evidently, the stranger ob¬ 
 jected to b^ng “short changed,” a common practice on 
 the Barbary Coast, where in breaking a large coin or 
 greenback a goodly sum was palmed by the thieving 
 gentry who considered everybody their legitimate prey. 
 
 Under my contract, I was expected to down the en¬ 
 raged husky, who in his intoxication might turn out 
 to be a most dangerous adversary. Tightly clutching 
 my police mace, I cautiously approached the rov/dy 
 and executed a feint in line with his ribs. On lower¬ 
 ing his arms to protect vitals, I allowed the heavy 
 night stick to drive straight to the point of his chin. 
 As if struck by lightning, the fellow sank to the floor. 
 Before he had regained the command of his senses, I 
 had him securely handcuffed. When a search of his 
 
90 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 poclcets revealed a sufficiency of wherewithal to permit 
 the trip to police headquarters, I telephoned for the 
 patrol wagon. 
 
 Arriving at the police station, I examined the be¬ 
 longings of the prisoner even before the haughty desk 
 sergeant had invited this inspection. From an inside 
 coat pocket I drew a bank deposit book which showed 
 that the bearer carried a handsome sum in a local 
 banking institution. A solid gold watch and chain was 
 taken off his vest. I removed a large diamond from 
 his necktie. But the biggest surprise was a thick and 
 heavy wallet of buckskin that must have contained a 
 most likely amount of money. Even before I had an 
 opportunity to ascertain the total of cash in the wallet, 
 the latter was snatched from my hands by the ser¬ 
 geant, who snarled that the examination of purses 
 was an exclusive privilege of members of the regular 
 police force. While he attended to the counting—and, 
 doubtlessly, heavy discounting—of the wealth con¬ 
 tained in the wallet, I was directed to. lock the stranger 
 in a noisome cell. On returning the cage key to the 
 keeping of the officer of the day, he most cordially 
 patted me on the shoulder, while he averred that I 
 learned enough of the police business to properly un¬ 
 derstand how this was transacted only on a ‘‘strictly 
 commercial” basis in San Francisco. 
 
 Even while the police officer was recording his re¬ 
 mark, I felt faint at heart as I recalled the fate of so 
 many of the inmates of San Quentin who were lan¬ 
 guishing there for terms up to a complete life time, 
 because they had enacted the selfsame performance 
 which I had just fulfilled on the express orders of a rep¬ 
 resentative of the same police authority that had le¬ 
 gally apprehended, convicted and, finally, condemned 
 so many of the other lawbreakers to their living tomb. 
 
 When I returned to my station at the “Olympia,” I 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 91 
 
 ■^m it- 
 
 Now Frenchy was a good fellow. 
 
92 Here and There With A-No. ’i 
 
 soon discovered that everybody tipped his hat to me, 
 figuratively speaking, for'it seemed that I had become 
 a popular hero in a jiffy, and this all the more marked¬ 
 ly in the esteem of the barmaids employed in the dance 
 hall, who behaved on edge with sheer chagrin when 
 they heard of the riches carried by my prisoner. The 
 “girls” lamented their misfortune of having missed go¬ 
 ing through a “good thing” and promised to pay an 
 even larger percentage on their pickings off persons I 
 played into their hands, than was subsequently handed 
 me by the desk sergeant over at police headquarters. 
 
 Releasing myself from the circle of my admirers, I 
 hurried to the telephone to-post “my” attorney on the 
 plight of the fellow I had caged at the police depot. 
 Sure enough! Several days later the lawyer slipped 
 me twenty dollars. He cautioned me that on future noti¬ 
 fications of like character, I could not act too prompt¬ 
 ly, as the first moments spent in solitary confinement 
 by a man of means were the most productive ones to 
 scare the imprisoned person as then the mental anguish 
 occasioned by the thought of the unpleasant conse¬ 
 quences of his arrest, such as newspaper notoriety, etc., 
 readily placed him where he would prove exceedingly 
 tractable in the matter of separating himself from a 
 big wad of money on the plausible assurance that the 
 law shark “might” obtain his prompt release from the 
 custody of the police. 
 
 I have never been able to ascertain the exact amount 
 of cash left in the hands of the hounds of the police 
 and those of the crooked attorney by their victim, 
 though judging the sum by the hot inconsiderable fee 
 I received of the sergeant of police for my initiation 
 of the unsavory affair, I am quite satisfied that never 
 again will the sufferer in this travesty on justice dare 
 to raise an outcry on being “short changed” in graft- 
 ridden San Francisco. 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 93 
 
 When I had accumulated a sufficiency of working 
 capital to see me further on the way, I resigned from 
 the dangerous job, well forewarned by the fate that 
 overtook my predecessor who finally succumbed to his 
 injuries—mourned only by his widow and seven minor 
 children whose daily bread to gain he had valiently 
 fought the thankless battles of the “Olympia.” 
 
 Hoping soon to have another interesting letter to 
 mail you, I am. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
94 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 THE FIFTH LETTER 
 
 Glimpses of the Abyss 
 
 San Diego, CaL, Jan. 25^ 1920. 
 
 Dear Friend:— 
 
 Here I am with the letter I promised. But before 
 proceeding with my revelations, I desire to call your 
 attention to the circumstance, that while apparently 
 the general trend of my correspondence might be 
 translated by biased persons as opposed to the exist¬ 
 ing order, in actuality quite the contrary is the case. 
 And this despite the confession that throughout all 
 my days I have had to hear anti-government isms ex¬ 
 pounded from soap boxes and other stations of ready 
 vantage wherefrom the minds of the lower strata of 
 society were gradually, though nevertheless surely 
 contaminated by the virulent poison which converted 
 so many formerly rationally thinking toilers into rabid 
 demonstrators against the present ways of society. 
 
 Reverting to chronicling of personal experiences— 
 my first tramp-railroading was done on the Gulf, Col¬ 
 orado & Santa Fe beyond the port of Galveston, where 
 I had deserted my ship because of maltreatment. On 
 roaming northward, at Brenham, Texas, I accepted a 
 position with the kitchen department of a railroad con¬ 
 struction outfit. In this capacity I quickly mastered 
 the vocation of the chef. In the year of 1880, when 
 the Sunset Route was being built Pacific-ward beyond 
 San Antonio, I occupied a variety of jobs with this 
 system. I was a flunkey, at times a teamster, and 
 when my funds ran low, I was not above tackling 
 the rough rut of the digger of right-of-way ditches. 
 
f 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 95 
 
 Frenchy as waiter. 
 
96 Here and There With A-Nd. i 
 
 V 
 
 Again, I worked in the eating houses then scattered 
 only as far as El Paso. At another period, I acted as 
 a newsboy aboard passenger trains. I deemed myself 
 immensely benefited by this employment. I learned 
 the importance of pennies, which heretofore I had 
 never valued properly. I received a practical training 
 in the fundamental and elemental principles of busi¬ 
 ness in a way that this science might never be ac¬ 
 quired more interestingly in any of the other honor¬ 
 able pursuits available to the average lad. 
 
 During this term of gaining a clean livelihood, I, who 
 v/as soon to turn professional deher of law and order, 
 gained no end of opportunities to watch other folks 
 stray beyond the narrow path. I am quite willing to 
 profess, that during my career of hobo, I took many 
 an advantage to examine the contents of unguarded 
 grips, trunks and other containers of the traveling 
 public. Occasionally only, I appropriated some neces¬ 
 saries for which I had an immediate use. Otherwise 
 I never touched anything, so great was the risk I ran 
 to be caught in possession of such property by minions 
 of the law who were everlastingly subjecting to search 
 and cross-examination strangers vagabonding on high¬ 
 ways and railroads. Just the same, the mere announce¬ 
 ment by the affected, brought the daily papers to carry 
 a long list of articles reported as missing by the own¬ 
 ers of the satchels and the like. Women proved the 
 worst offenders. When I had made off with some 
 shoddy woolen garment, they callously reported the 
 theft of a sealskin sacque worth into the hundreds of 
 dollars for which they demanded restitution by the 
 transportation corporations. 
 
 Here I have another illustration of a sharp practice 
 now placed in discard by the efficient work of the rail¬ 
 road police departments. Returning from abroad with 
 wife and daughter, I stopped at a Jersey City terminal 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 97 . 
 
 to check our luggage to San Francisco. The baggage 
 master, obviously supposing that I was provided with 
 an individual ticket only, proposed to clear “on the 
 quiet” mjr baggage through to destination without 
 -complying with the formality of paying the straight 
 rate for the excess weight the station scale registered. 
 For this accommodation he requested a settlement of 
 ten dollars. He assured me that his left-handed charge 
 was most attractive in viev/ of the fact that the regu¬ 
 lar expense would amount to that given sum on each 
 hundred of the four hundred pounds he believed I car¬ 
 ried ill excess weight. Would I be willing to enter into 
 this scheme that would phove so profitable to the con¬ 
 tents of my purse? The fellow almost toppled in his 
 tracks with sheer amazement when I produced the 
 other two tickets, the completernent of which combined 
 with the baggage allowance on the transportation I 
 held, entitled us to the free carriage of an even greater 
 weight of baggage than w^e journeyed with on this trip. 
 
 Eeferring to an inquiry inserted in one of your let¬ 
 ters, to explain what it was that had driven me to make 
 common cause with the'Road, where nothing but un¬ 
 limited misery was to be gained, will say that the bru¬ 
 talities I encountered during my seafaring life head¬ 
 long drove me into the arms of voluntary vagrancy. 
 In the days antedating the advent of the World War, 
 no other class of toilers was being exploited, and with 
 a more barbarous inhumanity, than they who went in 
 ships to sea. Among all other experiences, there is 
 this telling example—by actual accounting I received 
 in cash in hand less than a tenth of the wage promised 
 me by my captains. 
 
 Have I ever mentioned how I landed behind prison 
 bars for a first time ? I was oversea in the eity of Ant¬ 
 werp, Belgium. There I had “signed articles - with 
 the commander of a f ull-rigged sailing ship for a round- 
 
98 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 trip covering North and South American ports. Even 
 before my signature had dried, the captain ordered 
 my detention by the police to insure my presence when 
 his vessel set sail. I was kept caged with the riffraff 
 of Europe. Three weeks went by, then, manacled like 
 a dangerous criminal or maniac, the police delivered 
 me at the shipside at the exact moment of the heav¬ 
 ing of the anchors preparatory to an immediate de¬ 
 parture from the port. When we arrived off Monte¬ 
 video, Uruguay, we of the ship’s company were fur¬ 
 nished with spending money for a brief holiday ashore, 
 and when casually informed that I had earned but a 
 fraction of the wage I had contracted for, I was sur¬ 
 prised, and very much at this, to hear that the cap¬ 
 tain had deducted from my meagre compensation the 
 fees paid by him to the Belgian authorities for my im¬ 
 prisonment in their “royal” calaboose. As the stern 
 Law of the Sea compelled strict obedience to the man¬ 
 dates of the master of the ship, who had as his con¬ 
 cession the judgment over the life and death of his 
 subordinates, I meekly maintained the peace without 
 voicing an open protest, though on reaching the port 
 of Galveston, I deserted the ship. 
 
 Other items culled from my personal • experience— 
 it was in the day of Hiram Johnson as governor of the 
 state of California. Hard times prevailed on the Pa¬ 
 cific slope. As jobs were exceedingly scarce, several 
 hundred of the unemployed citizens undertook to camp 
 on some vacant lots in the capital city. The poor fel-' 
 lows humbly requested that the state authorities sup¬ 
 ply tasks so they might earn their daily bread lawful¬ 
 ly. It is alleged that it was Governor Johnson who or¬ 
 dered the fire department to play streams on the camp¬ 
 ers as a means to induce them to leave Sacramento. 
 
 Some ten years antedating this sousing episode 
 against the jobless. Banker Brown deliberately wrecked 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 99 
 
 the ‘‘California Deposit Company,” defalcating on six 
 millions of dollars which largely represented life-time 
 savings of four thousand members of the poorer class¬ 
 es. Hiram Johnson, then a lawyer, so ably “defended” 
 the prince of high finance, that the rascal was sen¬ 
 tenced to the ridiculous term of sixteen months in San 
 Quentin. This penalty was by two months less than 
 that usually drawn by a John Tramp for being caught 
 by the police on three separate occasions while in the 
 act of panhandling provender. Although in all proba¬ 
 bility this arch-thief had made away with more cold 
 cash than had been stolen by several generations of 
 criminals caged in the California state penitentiary. 
 Brown was received like an honored guest at the penal 
 institution and forthwith v\^as installed as a clerk of 
 the prison library, where he was largely saved from 
 too personal contact with the common run of crooks 
 undergoing confinement. 
 
 For reasons most evident, I should not complain 
 against the doings of fellow law-breakers, still I wish to 
 say, that I was among the thousands of sufferers by 
 the dishonesty of Banker Brown, who appropriated 
 some twenty-five hundred dollars which I had careless¬ 
 ly given in his keeping with nothing but the nnere 
 bank book to show for my misplaced trust. In the 
 year of the earthquake and conflagration, 1906,1 drop¬ 
 ped another five thousand dollars in a most peculiar 
 sort by committing the blunder of carrying a policy 
 for the fire protection of my home with an insurance 
 **^company that pointblank refused to meet its just ob¬ 
 ligations by going in the courts and pleading bank¬ 
 ruptcy. Even before the whirlwind of public indigna¬ 
 tion had died away, the same insurance concern had 
 itself declared solvent once more by means of a shady 
 re-organization scheme. Even to this day the concern 
 is writing fire insurance on tha homes of other dupes 
 
100 Hers md There With A-No. i 
 
 ■—Barnum was right, fevery minute produces its easy- 
 mark. 
 
 Another telltale yam—down in Georgia, C. D. But¬ 
 ton, a renegade Northerner, had himself appointed as 
 the lessee of state convicts, paying one dollar per diem 
 for their use. For the guidance of the convicts he 
 coined this fateful motto, ‘'Work like a dog or die like 
 a dog.” Should any person have dared to maltreat his 
 dog or other dumb brutes with a fraction only of the 
 incredible viciousness that this “Yankee” applied on 
 “his niggers,” be they either black or white skinned, 
 the offender would have quickly received deserved pun¬ 
 ishment. Among the thousands of victims of this 
 fiend incarnate in human guise fell a young English¬ 
 man of aristocratic lineage. This Briton had the mis¬ 
 fortune of being shipwrecked off the coast of Georgia. 
 Almost stripped of apparel, the mariner set out to 
 reach the nearest consul or other representatives of the 
 English government, and while on this errand was 
 picked up by a fee-hungry deputy sheriiT, who saw the 
 unfortunate chap sentenced to a term of a half year 
 with Button. The food provided by the latter was so 
 revoltingly insufficient and coarse, that the outlander 
 caught the “Pellagra,” an incurable skin disease. On 
 serving seven months—the surplus month was in pay¬ 
 ment for a pair of rough boots furnished him by the 
 convict contractor—the foreigner was released from 
 his savage slavery. In course of time, the self-same 
 ex-prisoner rose to a position of high eminence in the 
 councils of the British empire. In the meanwhile, and 
 throughout his days of exquisite suffering by the pesti¬ 
 lence he had contracted in the Georgian prison camp, 
 the stricken man spent a fortune consulting with spec¬ 
 ialists and others who in vain attempted to relieve him 
 of the dread afflictiom Yours truly, 
 
 . FRENCHY. 
 
Here and There With A-N@. i 
 
 101 
 
 THE SIXTH LETTER 
 
 Sideliglits of Life 
 
 San Diego, Cal., Feb. 15, 1920. 
 
 Dear A-No. 1:— 
 
 This time I shall relate for your entertainment the 
 details of odd encou.n.ters, the last tv/o of which again 
 conclusively prove the truth that lav/lessness of what¬ 
 ever character is a poor investment, invariably. 
 
 It v/as some eighteen years ago, that I,- then on 
 railroad police patrol duty, was sent to Porta Costa, 
 California, v/here tramps had thrown a train man off 
 the cars, inflicting mortal injuries. My orders v/ere 
 to make it unpleasant for the box car tourists and to 
 keep them moving. 
 
 As all trains had come to a lengthy halt at Porta 
 Costa to await their turn to be ferried across the 
 Strait of Carquinez, connecting Pablo Bay with the 
 Bay of Suisim, even before the first night on my 
 guard assignment had grown old, I had picked up so 
 many trespassers off the cars and the right of way 
 of the Southern Pacific, that the town calaboose held 
 its capacity of prisoners. Among the latter was a 
 burly Irish lad v/hom I had registered under the name 
 of “Casey.’’ Another of the “boys” was an intoxi¬ 
 cated pegleg v/hom I had arrested on the pressing 
 complaint of the conductor of a passenger train, that 
 v/hile the cripple was panha.ndling alms in the coaches, 
 he had insulted every passenger who dared to refuse 
 his demand for money. My troubles began in all 
 earnest when I went to take charge of the pegleg, for 
 the onery cuss straightaway flbpped himself full 
 length into the aisle of a eoach, and it required the 
 
102 Here and There With ’A-No. 'i 
 
 assistance of passengers to bodily carry the rascal to 
 the town calaboose, located but a step beyond the 
 tracks. I promised the vagrant to see that he was 
 given a sentence of six months, at the least. But in 
 the morning I was to discover that I had made this 
 pledge without taking into consideration the manner 
 of magistrate holding office at Porta Costa. 
 
 Judge Casey, owner of a combination saloon-hotel, 
 was the magistrate of the village. His court room was 
 located in a room beside his place of business. At the 
 time, the squire had it in hot and heavy for the South¬ 
 ern Pacific, and it is necessary to explain matters for 
 the better comprehension of the events that followed. 
 But recently the privilege of free transportation had 
 been nationally withdrawn from the favorites of the 
 railroads. This was a rough dose for those ■who, like 
 Squire Casey, had enjoyed for themselves and their 
 families the rights of the “complimentary pass.” Now 
 forced to pay for transportation as all unfavored citi¬ 
 zens, after all these years of scotfree traveling, there 
 Vv^as ample cause for the deep grudge Casey was said 
 to harbor against the Southern Pacific. 
 
 Bright and early on the following morning I lined up 
 before Judge Casey the vagabonds I had “jugged.” 
 The first one of the lot he ordered arraigned happened 
 to be the scrapper of a pegleg. Savagely, almost, turn¬ 
 ing’ on me, the squire asked how I dared to arrest a 
 poor, “helpless” cripple? Even before I had recited 
 the particulars of the battle it had taken to cage the 
 troublesome fellow, the magistrate not only ordered 
 his discharge from custody but to add rancor to my 
 disappointment, he slipped his hand in his trousers’ 
 pocket and handed a silver dollar to the man I had 
 promised six months of hard labor. At the same time 
 Casey sent a searing glance of utmost disapproval in 
 mj^ direction, as if to indicate the contempt he held for 
 
103 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 a man in the uniform of the railroad police. The next 
 prisoner to be called before the bar of justice was the 
 burly Irish train hopper. When the magistrate had 
 taken a due recognizance that the accused happened to 
 be his namesake, the squire fiercely bawled, ‘"And you, a 
 ‘Casey’, allowed yourself brought here 'without having 
 given a good account?” Then, and with not so much 
 as a reprimand, this prisoner, too, v/as allowed to go 
 unpunished. The other hoboes, though, did not fare 
 quite so well, as each was handed a term of three days 
 to be served in the county jail located at Martinez. 
 
 On reaching the county seat of Contra Costa county 
 with the batch of uncouth prisoners, I was met by 
 the sheriff, who rudely inquired if the Southern Pa- 
 sific thought that the county prison was kept in com¬ 
 mission as a special boarding house for bums rounded 
 up by the private police of the railroad. In other 
 ways, he tersely indicated that neither he nor other 
 local citizens harbored any friendliness for my em¬ 
 ployers. Here, as back in Porta Costa civic differ¬ 
 ences underlay my tart reception. The community 
 of Martinez and the Southern Pacific were at sharp 
 outs, because the railroad refused to halt its De Luxe 
 trains at the sleepy and unimportant inland burg. In 
 prompt retaliation, the elders of the village had rushed 
 through council an ordinance that made it unlawful 
 to run trains within the town limits at a greater rate 
 of speed than three miles per hour—mere turtle racing. 
 Many of the train engineers either forgot or contemp¬ 
 tuously ignored the annoying regulation and being 
 timed by spotters in the employ of the village authori¬ 
 ties, were hailed into court and heavily fined. As¬ 
 suredly, the transportation companies had other ene¬ 
 mies besides the train-trespassing tramp*, I should 
 reckon! 
 
 Delivering my convoy of hoboes into the care of the 
 
 I 
 
104 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 sheriff, I returned to Porta Costa, where a message 
 awaited me that I was urgently wanted at the saloon 
 owned by Squire Casey. V/itli tears welling in hi» 
 eyes, I was met by the magistrate at the entrance of 
 his groggery, who humbly pleaded that for another 
 time I should take a personal charge of the same pesky 
 pegleg v/horn Casey not only released from custody 
 but regaled to boot with the gift of a dollar. During 
 my absence and that of the local deputy sheriff, who 
 had assisted with the delivering of the convicted tres¬ 
 passers to the Martinez lockup, the crippled mendicant 
 somehow had contrived to hatch the crack-brained 
 notion that he was 'properly endov/ed to have the run 
 of Porta Costa to suit his sweet will. Investing in strong 
 dram not only the dollar donated by the squire but all 
 the alms he had gathered in the coaches prior 
 to his own arrest, the abbreviated slab of humanity 
 had defied Casey to bounce him from the saloon. 
 When, fairly howling with rage, the irate squire had 
 undertaken the task, he not only was given a sound 
 thrashing at the hands of the ingrate he had be¬ 
 friended, but in the bargain lost tv/o costly platb glass 
 windows from the front of his rum dispensary. 
 
 That Judge Casey should prove capable of having 
 the unexampled nerve to request that I restrain the 
 intoxicated cripple within bounds where he might not 
 further harm his erstwhile benefactor, aroused my 
 resentment to the highest pitch. Employing rather 
 unminced language, I told the booze seller that should 
 the frenzied pegleg finish up with a complete wreck¬ 
 ing of Porta Costa, I would not lift a finger to stop the 
 rampage, as I was solely in the service of the South¬ 
 ern Pacific. This sharp rebuke caused Casej/" post¬ 
 haste to telephone to Martinez for an immediate aid 
 by the county authorities. While all Porta Costa 
 breathlessly awaited developments, I cautioned the 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 105 
 
 warlike cripple of liis peril of arrest. Then I helped 
 him crawl aboard a box car in a train traveling to the 
 , Mole of Oakland, where he might obtain a better show 
 to disappear from view than at Porta Costa which 
 was completely surrounded by high, but barren hills. 
 
 With the pegleg removed beyond the reach of all 
 concerned, I almost collapsed by la^ughing, when I 
 overheard how thoroughly the sheriff of Contra Costa 
 
 4 
 
 county, who with his cohorts of deputies, all armed to 
 the teeth, had raced by motor car to tovm to subdue 
 the ^‘murderous” cripple, read a stinging riot act to 
 Casey for having led the officers on a veritable “wild 
 goose chase.’^ After due consideration of my position 
 at Porta Costa, now sure to be made even more un¬ 
 comfortable, I wired Chief Kindelon requesting an¬ 
 other assignment, and suggested that he forward for 
 my relief one of his genuine “O’Brien’s,” so as to be 
 able to deal with Judge Casey who in all probability 
 might prefer an officer really hailing from the Emer¬ 
 ald Isle. 
 
 O VER in Ogden, in the state of Utah, I was ar¬ 
 rested on suspicion and was sent for a term to 
 the local chaiagang. On the very first day of 
 toiling solely for my board, I staged my escape from 
 the piulslic worlis, and walked to the nearest water 
 beypnd the city lipnts, where in due time I eaught 
 a ride ©a a coach truck beneath a fast, westbound ex¬ 
 press. While this train was I^eing held twenty minutts 
 for lunch to the passengers at Winnemucca, I strolled 
 about the station platform to stretch my cramped 
 limbs a bit. There I came across a steamer trunk 
 standing quite unguarded. Temporarily assuming the. 
 voc&tioxi of a busy depot porter, I imconc^rnedly shoul- 
 
106 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 dered the piece of baggage and marched to the nether 
 side of the train. When the latter departed from 
 Winnemucca, I had straddled a brakebeam and had 
 drawn the trunk to my side on the wobbly seat. When 
 Reno, another Nevadan town, was reached, as I had 
 completely wearied of the roughshod hoboing, I de¬ 
 cided to quit the cars to take a rest. But when I at¬ 
 tempted' to drag my loot from its berth, the steamer 
 trunk had become tightly wedged within the frame of 
 the coach truck by the action of the air-braking ma¬ 
 chinery which had drawn taut the brakebeam. Then, 
 quite timely, a car inspector happened along, and 
 kindly lent a helping hand dislodging the steamer 
 trunk from its peculiar pinch. When I had carried the 
 luggage to a hobo jungle to investigate its contents, 
 the latter proved to be a complete hunting outfit be¬ 
 longing to some Nimrod of unlimited means, judging 
 by my general improvement in appearance on having 
 discarded my rags of the Road for the swell toggery 
 of the sportsman. There was no train that night, and 
 when in the morning I chanced to scan over the news 
 printed by the local daily, immense was my satisfac¬ 
 tion to read how the car inspector had duly reported 
 my advent in Reno and had made it a point to mention 
 that of the thousands of hobo tourists he had seen 
 riding and hiking into the city, I was the initial case 
 where one of the men of Hoboland had arrived in town 
 with his baggage properly checked in on a brakebeam 
 ticket. 
 
 Still another good story of the Wanderlife: At Ma¬ 
 rysville, Yuba county, California, a store owner had 
 innocently permitted a case of merchandise to stand 
 unattended in the night in front of his mercantile 
 establishment. I came along, just having vacated an 
 empty box car in a freight train even now being held 
 in the railroad yard nearby. Temptation to examine 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 107 
 
 at leisure the contents of the packing case carelessly 
 left in the public street proved so overpowering, that 
 I brought the box to the empty freight car and while the 
 train was on the way, I ascertained that the shipment 
 consisted of a couple dozens of corduroy trousers of 
 an unusual light-blue hue. At Wheatland the train 
 registered a first halt beyond Marysville, and here was 
 the center of a hop-growing section, where the harvest 
 was at its height in the hop gardens. As hoboes fur¬ 
 nished the transient labor required, and then v/orked 
 sporadically only for the sake of remaining in a state 
 of semi-intoxication, I calculated correctly, for in the 
 morning when I reached the camping ground of the 
 vagabonds, there quite a number were on hand. Al¬ 
 though a majority of the campers carried spending 
 money, I was unable to open a trade with my loot until 
 I offered a gratis pair of corduroys to one of the 
 tramps, to have him display their natty appearance 
 to his fellows. The scheme worked to perfection—I 
 soon had disposed of the trousers at a dollar the pair. 
 Returning to the railroad, I went on my journey to 
 San Francisco, where I rented lodging quarters at a 
 hobo dump. Here I came in possession of the laugh¬ 
 able incidents which came to pass subsequent to my 
 departure from Wheatland. 
 
 The same tramp I had supplied with the gratis pair 
 of the corduroy strides for use as live bait wherewith 
 to rid myself of the other trousers, proud of his likely 
 possession, had lost no time going into the town to 
 see what dandy figure he might cut with the lassies of 
 the hop burg. In the meanwhile, the police authori¬ 
 ties of Marysville had wired the particulars of the 
 theft to all surrounding communities and had taken 
 an especial care to report their outlandish coloring. 
 As a matter of course, the constable stationed at 
 Wheatland had received his message of instructions, 
 
lOS Here and There With A-No. j 
 
 and as a likely reward was offered for the apprehen¬ 
 sion of the perpetrators of the crime, he decided to b» 
 on a sharp lookout# Sure enough! Before very long 
 he had come across the scamp sunning himself in front 
 of the town saloon. Holding the stranger to account, 
 th ,0 man willingly explained how he had acquired the 
 trousers and where the others might be located. 
 Promptly a posse was formed, and guided by the hobo", 
 quickly every camper rigged up in a pair of the stolen 
 strides was rounded up. Although the men under 
 arrest proved they had no connection whatever with 
 the actual commission of the theft, they were not al¬ 
 lowed to remain unscathed, because employing a 
 method generally observed by hoboes, the tram.ps had 
 consigned the trousers they had doffed to destruction 
 in the campfire of their hangout. As some punish¬ 
 ment v/as thought to be in proper order, the Wheat- 
 land magistrate sentenced each to serve a term of 
 ten aays in the county jail at Marysville. 
 
 At the county seat was played’the final act of the 
 affair, when the insurance company, with which the 
 merchant had carried his policy protecting him 
 against financial loss by burglary, Entered with the 
 sheriiT a legal claim for the recovery of the trousers 
 adorning the persons of the Wandering Willies. Al¬ 
 though the hoboes most strenuously objected to the 
 queer process of law that wanted to deprive them of 
 the vital item of their clothing, all their wailing and 
 teeth gnashing turned out to be in vain. The insurance 
 adjuster gained possession of the stolen property. As 
 an aftermath, for days those of the sufferers who were 
 unable to promptly panhandle proper covering, for ob¬ 
 vious cause were compelled to remain hidden in the 
 
 dark recesses of the basement of the Yuba county 
 calaboose. 
 
109 
 
 The John Laws claimed the trousers. 
 
110 
 
 Hers and There With A-N&. i 
 
 So-Ioiig for to-day, A-No. 1, and please note the les¬ 
 son to be learned by the contents of this letter, “that 
 everything in any way connected with dishonesty 
 seems to be thoroughly permeated with misfortune.” 
 
 Yours truly, ' 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
Here and There With A~No. i 
 
 111 
 
 THE SEVENTH LETTER 
 
 The Chink Runners of the Border 
 
 San Diego, Cal., March 10, 1920. 
 
 Dear A-No. 1:— 
 
 Your letter, of Feb. 27, reached my address at this 
 belated date, and at a moment when I happened to be 
 in the correct receptive mood to continue our pen- 
 chatting. 
 
 i^.mong the companions of the Road Vv^ith whom I 
 associated after our leave-taking in Western Florida 
 was the “Johnny Kid.’' This youth had deserted his 
 slavery of cabin boy aboard a Nova Scotian clipper. 
 Copying the ways of the hoboes, he had drifted inland 
 until he accosted me in the thoroughfares of Denver 
 for the loan of the price of a lunch. Taking the 
 youngster to a restaurant to have him provided with 
 his needs, the lad made such a favorable impiession, 
 that I proposed we travel as hoboing mates. 
 
 On our route to Seattle, we fell in with a fellow who 
 told us of the simply astonishing earnings to be gath¬ 
 ered by men acquainted with seafaring who might 
 be willing to risk their neck and liberty while engag¬ 
 ing in the smuggling of proscribed Chinamen and 
 other Orientals from British Columbia, in the Domin¬ 
 ion of Canada, by way of the waters of the Puget Sound 
 across the American border into the state pf Wash¬ 
 ington. .. -u. 
 
 As both of us had served a part-apprenticeship 
 
 aboard ship, we decided to change_ from lawbreakmg 
 by land to that by water. But stripped of money,^ as 
 we were, we felt it impossible to obtain a ship suiting 
 our purposes. Then we chanced to remember the 
 
112 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 worth of advertising in the press. Following suit, we 
 inserted a catchily worded announcement in the dailies 
 of Seattle asking for a small, but fast ship. When 
 answers were received, we set out to inspect the offer¬ 
 ings. We visited a sloop which though its hull leaked 
 like a bullet-riddled tub, carried a fine marine engine. 
 At another point of the waterfront, we were taken to 
 examine a boat with a hull in fair repair but supplied 
 with machinery that was little better than junk. 
 
 After nightfall the Johnny Kid and I unlashed a 
 dory moored to a buoy, and then rowing alongside the 
 leaky sloop, we quickly took down the engine and on 
 heaving the machinery into the dory, we hurried to 
 the craft with the seaworthy hull. Working with 
 might and main, we soon had dumped its delapidated 
 engine overboard and then installed the motor we had 
 brought along, so that long before break of day we 
 had sailed away to British Columbian waters where we 
 w^ere safely beyond the jurisdiction of the American 
 authorities. 
 
 While Johnny Kid repainted and otherwise thor¬ 
 oughly disguised the identity of the ship, I visited the 
 Chinatov/n of Vancouver, where I entered into nego¬ 
 tiations with the headmen of the various Chinese 
 tongs who promised an advance payment of fifty dol¬ 
 lars for iJie delivery of any of their countrymen to a 
 weli-cQEiceaied point on the far-flung shore of the Ba¬ 
 sket ^onnd b^yonai the American boundary* 
 
 ^ W® prospered e;xc;eeding]y, but we jieve^ dared t* 
 more than four Chinks across on a trip, though 
 our sloop had ample room to carry six of the treach¬ 
 erous Orientals. I should mention, that v/e encoun¬ 
 tered many perilous brushes with federal agents pa- 
 troling the American border to guard against smug¬ 
 gling of debarred aliens. 
 
 Wh^ Johnny Kid had saved sixteen hundred dollars 
 
113 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 as his portion of the fifty-fifty division of earnings, he 
 came across an ancient map of Old England, the coun¬ 
 try of his nativity. His close study of the dilapidated 
 geography brought on a case of intense homesickness 
 for his folks. Determined to visit with loved ones, 
 when all my entreaties to have him change this project 
 proved futile, I bought with my personal savings his 
 transportation by first-class passage to Europe, and 
 saw him off on his trip. Before long I disposed of the 
 sloop for a tidy sum and then turned my attention to 
 search for a less dangerous occupation. 
 
 On taking a review of my smuggling operations, I 
 congratulated myself on having fared so well with 
 the venture and I firmly thought that nobody of the 
 calling could have bettered on my financial returns— 
 until I was to become thoroughly disillusioned on this 
 score while I was in the employment of the police de¬ 
 partment of the Southern Pacific. There I v^as to 
 frequently hear of smuggling undertakings which 
 brought from me the self-confession that in all reality 
 1 had been a rank amateur at the game. For instance, 
 a gang of liighest officials of the customs service were 
 convicted in the federal courts for having manufactur¬ 
 ed spurious passports by the wholesale. These forged 
 instruments were shipped across the Pacific to be bar¬ 
 tered in the mkrket places of Hongkopg, Shanghai aud 
 even Manilla where one hundred and fifty dollars was 
 paid by Asiatics desiring to enter the United States 
 without encountering interfesecoe on part of officials 
 hnplicated in the fraud. 
 
 While telling of the activities of the *"Chink Eun- 
 ners,” I recalled an adventure of kindred portent. In 
 1878, while I was stranded in a sailor dump of Livex*- 
 pool, a friend of mine offered to pay ray passage back 
 to the United States as a steerage passenger on the 
 “England” of the National Line. The ship had loaded 
 
114 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 soma 1200 steerage passengers, mostly low-grade 
 Scandinavians, Hungarians and Pollacks. Our travel¬ 
 ing between decks was like that of sardines packed 
 into a tin container. The “burgoo” served five times 
 daily, smelled so that one could scarcely gulp the grub. 
 To cap all the tribulations, the tub of a steamer con¬ 
 sumed a solid month of exceedingly stormy weather 
 to accomplish the traverse of the Atlantic. 
 
 Again, it was in 1900 that I had. another occasion to 
 travel oversea from Europe, and in this instance I 
 went as a first cabin passenger on the “Kroonland” of 
 the Red Star Line. There was classy company in the 
 cabins, waited on by gaudily liveried flunkeys w^ho 
 jumped at beck and call. In the course of the journey, 
 I became an appreciated associate of people of or con¬ 
 nected with the leading families of both the American 
 and European continents. I truly envied these “gentle- 
 bred” persons, as I innocently supposed they had never 
 seared the purity of their souls with the indelible crim¬ 
 son stain of crime. I carried this laudable opinion all 
 the way across the Atlantic—until the good ship stood 
 off the port of New York. Then my eyes were opened 
 to the actual state of affairs. My “strictly pure and 
 stainless” friends began to scurry about like hawk- 
 frightened hares hunting for cover. They were search¬ 
 ing to find hiding places for valuables they desired to 
 slip undeclared through the customs service of the 
 United States. Having gained their complete confi¬ 
 dence during the trip across, not a few of the criminal 
 smugglers came to me for advice how to most effect¬ 
 ively foil a possible search of their persons apd be¬ 
 longings by the federal customs employees. 
 
 Verily, personally to me, the ex-lawbreaker, there 
 stood revealed one telling difference between the “chil¬ 
 dren of the steerage” of the “England” and the pam¬ 
 pered members of the “exclusive” set with whom I 
 
Mere and There With A-No. i 115 
 
 had associated in all the glitter and pomp of voyaging 
 in the first cabin of the Red Star Liner, in that the 
 former were merely ragged without, while the latter 
 were thoroughly ragged within. 
 
 Again, I would enjoyed to have beheld the “holy ter¬ 
 ror’^ affected by .fellow travelers of the “Kroonland,” 
 had I revealed for their edification, that the man whom 
 they were according their unabridged confidence had 
 in his day boosted slant-eyed Mongolians over the Ca- 
 nadian-American border of the coast country of the 
 Pacific-Northwest. Certainly, in such an instance the 
 social-aristocrats would have employed better discre¬ 
 tion than they assuredly displayed when they made me 
 their confidant in the matter of smuggling inland dia¬ 
 monds, laces and other valuables worth into the thou¬ 
 sands of dollars in each individual case. 
 
 I see our mail carrier at the street corner nearby, 
 and now hurry to close this letter to have it on its 
 way with sincere personal regards for you and your 
 family by 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
116 
 
 Here and There With A-Na. i 
 
 THB EIGHTH LETTER 
 
 Interesting Mentions 
 
 San Diego, Cal., March 24, 1920. 
 
 Dear A-No. 1:— 
 
 To-day I am in receipt of the group-photograph of 
 your family circle. Even this late, I am noting a strong 
 resemblance between you of over thirty years ago and 
 your features of this date. I took an abounding in¬ 
 terest in the neat appearance of your children—a credit 
 to the good mother of the boy and the girl. But do 
 not take offense when I friendly and yet in all serious¬ 
 ness suggest—let this be enough offspring. Children 
 are a most expensive luxury nowadays. To raise, pro¬ 
 vide for and educate them properly so they may obtain 
 a fair chance in life, means not only a vast expenditure 
 of money but even more of patience connected with no 
 end of v/orry. There are so many, many youngsters 
 growing up that will prove themselves walking disap¬ 
 pointments to their loved ones—just you remember 
 our own instances as you and I failed by a long shot 
 to approach the hopes of our parents. 
 
 Personally, I am quite contented to bring up one 
 child, my daughter. She shall enjoy the best of 
 schooling and, if so inclined, we will see her graduated 
 from a college and, probably, from a university. Be¬ 
 sides, we have given her seven years of piano lessons. 
 
 The gods did not thus pamper her parents—not by 
 any means! And just you listen to have the whole truth 
 of our beginning of existence. I, her doting father, at 
 twelve was a cabin boy aboard a sailing ship. Her 
 mother was slaving at thirteen In a French sweat shop, 
 earning not over ten cents daily at fifteen hours per 
 
Nere md There With A-No. i 117 
 
 diem regularly, and with Sundays and holidays includ¬ 
 ed for good measure, v/hile largely subsisting on the 
 famed French national dish, “bouillon,'' a broth con¬ 
 cocted of some three quarts of water flavored with a 
 couple of onions, as meat could not be afforded at the 
 starvation wage she earned. I might properly men¬ 
 tion, that whatever charity I am able to dispense, is 
 mailed across the sea to France, where so many of our 
 relatives were recently only delivered from the yoke of 
 Germans who on a fair average crippled or murdered 
 about three of every four adult males of the French 
 republic. 
 
 Regarding the untimely taking-off of the late Chief 
 of Police Kindelon of the railroad police of the South¬ 
 ern Pacific, whose corpse was discovered still in death 
 in a park of San Francisco. I was strangely affected 
 by the announcement of the demise of my erstwhile 
 superior officer, and I immediately recalled the fate 
 that overtook another police official—that of Chief 
 Biggy of the San Francisco police force. This efficient 
 officer strived to reform the metropolitan police de¬ 
 partment, then thoroughly demoralized by graft so 
 vicious that it transgressed beyond the bounds of or¬ 
 dinary decency. One fine morning, he was fished stark 
 dead from the waters of the Bay of San Francisco. 
 How he had come to such a finish still remains one of 
 the unsolved riddles of the city. There were two 
 theories advanced, though. Either the police chief, 
 who in the prime of life and at the zenith of his chosen 
 career, had deliberately jumped to his death or an 
 enemy had inveigled him to the edge of a wharf and 
 then had treacherously pushed him overboard. Any¬ 
 how, it is worth observing, that none of the police de¬ 
 tectives assigned to fathom the mysterious demise of 
 their late chief, wasted time to get at the bottom of 
 the tragedy, that by official inactivity was allowed to 
 
118 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 promptly become forgotten. Truly, the road of the 
 reformer of any police department is a dangerous one 
 to travel, and was this most especially the case, when 
 the man desired to benefit the general public. 
 
 Among highly cherished mementoes of my days in 
 the employ of the police bureau of the Southern Pa¬ 
 cific, I hold a final recommendation countersigned by 
 Chief Kindelon, and which document was furnished at 
 the. time of my “honorable” discharge from the ser¬ 
 vice of the railroad. In this letter Kindelon frankly 
 stated that among other assignments, fulfilled to 
 the entire satisfaction of my superiors, I had been sta¬ 
 tioned for two years at railroad police headquarters in 
 San Francisco. 
 
 Actually, I believe I bested Kindelon at his own po¬ 
 lice game! I virtually “broke” into his private office 
 to learn by direct observation and, largely, under his 
 personal tutelage, everything worth while of the meth¬ 
 ods he enacted to put an end to depredations against 
 the property of his employers. I claim the distinction 
 as an offset against the practice by Kindelon to visit, 
 disguised as a tramp, the hobo camps to glean news 
 covering thefts and other crimes already committed 
 or merely contemplated against the Southern Pacific. 
 
 While speaking of corrupt police schemes—it was in 
 1882 that I, then working as a deputy sheriff of Co¬ 
 chise county, Arizona, with ofiice at Tombstone, car¬ 
 ried standing instructions whenever an election was 
 held, to herd in all Mexicans I might lay my hands on. 
 The illiterate foreigners were plied with rum pur¬ 
 chased at the expense of the candidates in favor with 
 the high sheriff of Cochise county. When the Mexi¬ 
 cans had arriyed at the proper stage of befuddledness, 
 where they declared themselves to be “American” cit¬ 
 izens properly enfranchised, then only we permitted 
 them to cast their vote—in favor of our candidate. 
 
Tlie Mexicans always voted for our man, 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 120 
 
 Tliose were the days when millionaire mine owners 
 and Others commanding ample funds, commonly pur¬ 
 chased for spot cash any office within the gift of 
 “TIIE” people. 
 
 Aga:»n thanking you for the photo received to-day, 
 I am 
 
 Your good friend, 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 121 
 
 TME LATEST LETTER 
 
 From Oversea 
 
 Paris, France, June 24, 1920. 
 
 Dear Friend:— 
 
 I win thoroughly realize the state of your astonish¬ 
 ment on beholding the French postage stamps alRxed 
 to the iront of tiiis letter, announcing my presence in 
 France. On the spur of the moment, and also in re¬ 
 sponse to the pitiful appeals for prompt succor by my 
 v/ar-stricken relatives, I decided to personally attend 
 to their relief and, at the same time, view the almost 
 indescribable ravages which the war had wrought in 
 the northern, the industrial section of the h'rench re¬ 
 public by the repeated sweep, back and forth, of the 
 armies of both friend and foe. 
 
 On my overland trip I passed through your city of 
 Erie. I would have liked to have paid my respects to 
 you and yours, had not the sailing date of my steamer 
 been so near at hand that a stopover was impracticable 
 just at this time. Unless an unkind fate intervenes, 
 I promise, though, to break my rail journey op my 
 return voyage from Europe. 
 
 Here then, I am in France, the land of my birth. 
 Forsooth, though I am of French nativity, still I am 
 a true American citizen, having seen to my naturali¬ 
 zation on the day I arrived at man’s estate. I am plac¬ 
 ing a heavy emphasis on the proud fact of my Amer¬ 
 ican citizenship for the better understanding of any¬ 
 thing I might mention in connection with the ways of 
 the French. 
 
 My first errand on stepping ashore, was to carry aid 
 
122 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 to members of my family, who were thoroughly pau¬ 
 perized through no fault of their own. In this task 
 I was immensely favored by the adverse exchange 
 rated against the French franc, no less than twenty- 
 eight of which were required to release a single dol¬ 
 lar of our American coinage, where in pre-war days 
 the standard charge stood at the ratio of five francs 
 only to the dollar. 
 
 On having satisfied the pressing needs of my peo¬ 
 ple, I went traveling to vievi^ the recent battle front ex¬ 
 tending from Belgium to below Belfort, a French fort¬ 
 ress adjacent to the Swiss border line. I inspected the 
 prodigious trench works where the German invaders 
 were held in check by the war-wearied allies until our 
 American boys helped to win victory on victory and 
 the armistice was signed which forever blasted the 
 ambition of” the Hohenzollerns to rule the universe 
 from Berlin. 
 
 While sightseeing in Europe, I noted how the popu¬ 
 lace woefully lacked even the more ordinary home com¬ 
 forts deemed indispensible by American and Canadian 
 housewives. The bath room, as we enjoy this neces¬ 
 sity, was little favored, as even in the residences of the 
 well-to-do the common wooden laundry tub was re¬ 
 sorted to to furnish the wherewithal for the week-end 
 ablution of the membership of the European family. 
 Laundry chutes and stationary trays, our standard 
 kitchen range, the electric sweeper, motor-driven 
 washing, and ironing appliances, the warming of the 
 house from a centrally located heating plant, and a 
 thousand and one other transatlantic household facil¬ 
 ities were conspicuous by their absence. Among the 
 other oddities I encountered while visiting on the bat¬ 
 tle line—at Nancy, France, we stopped overnight at 
 an ancient castle which had been converted into a 
 hotel. In this structure there were no less than an 
 
. Here and There With A-No, i 123 
 
 even hundred fire places—one for each guest room— 
 but nary a sign of a common bath tub. 
 
 On the other hand, we self-complacent Americans 
 might learn a valuable lesson from our French cous¬ 
 ins residing in Alsace-Lorraine, the “lost provinces’" 
 but recently restored to France. When the Germans 
 had vanquished the French in the war of conquest of 
 1870-71, on finding the surrendered country inhabited 
 by an utmost French-patriotic population that would 
 never voluntarily permit a change in their nationality 
 enforced by the hated conquerors, the latter attempted 
 a peaceful assimilation of the natives by resorting 
 to a colonization of the countries with settlers of Teu¬ 
 tonic origin. We Americans, to judge this from recent 
 events with obnoxious foreigners, would likely have 
 taken to the proverbial fire and sword to rid ourselves 
 of the undesirables whose home governments, so it 
 certainly seemed, were only waiting to take exception 
 to our rash tactics, which might have involved us in 
 war or other costly vengeances. 
 
 The weapon of effective defense used by the French 
 was the “silent boycott.” As a preliminary step of 
 staging this enterprise, every adult Frenchman was 
 induced to affiliate with an anti-Germanic association, 
 the members of which were pledged not to carry on 
 menial, social, commercial or any other intercourse 
 v/hatever with either the colonists or any of the offic¬ 
 ials in the pay of the German empire. Any French¬ 
 man, however wealthy or influential, caught trans¬ 
 gressing against this secret covenant, was called to 
 strict account before a tribunal of his fellow conspir¬ 
 ators and punished so severely that he was not likely 
 ever to forget the lesson of applied patriotism. 
 
 By this means the alien settlers and merchants 
 foisted on Alsace-Lorraine were quickly, and yet safe- 
 
12^ Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 ly, carried to the conviction that naught but starvation 
 threatened them and theirs and, proving even more 
 annoying, felt themselves subjected to a relentless 
 ostracism which, and this in no time, brought the in¬ 
 truders to whine to their government for return-trans¬ 
 portation to the fatherland. 
 
 While traveling in France, I became painfully aware 
 that the French bankers, with whom I came in con¬ 
 tact, behaved most outrageously suspicious towards 
 all American tourists. Before long, I heard of the 
 cause underlying this radical unfriendliness. A low¬ 
 lived son of America but recently had landed at Bor¬ 
 deaux with several thousand notes of the currency is¬ 
 sued by the erstwhile Confederate States that so very 
 closely resembled the standard greenbacks of similar 
 denominations distributed by the United States. The 
 slippery swindler shrewdly took every advantage of 
 the fact that his was the day of wildest French enthu¬ 
 siasm at the victorious termination of the war, when 
 in their hurricane of heartfelt thankfulness the bank¬ 
 ers of the French republic had cast aside their every¬ 
 day prudence and so fell an easy prey to the enterpris¬ 
 ing criminal. The rascal contrived to convert his 
 worthless notes into some millions of good, though 
 temporarily depreciated French francs. Just prior to 
 his hornet-mad dupes unearthing his villainy, he de¬ 
 parted for parts unknown. Quite naturally, though, 
 from this source sprang the chary and most uncordial 
 reception accorded American travelers. 
 
 While touring in that district of the kingdom of 
 Belgium located in the environs of war-scarred Ypres, 
 I improved the occasion by visiting at nearby Merx- 
 plas. Here the Royal Belgian Commission for the 
 Suppression of Vagabondage had established a penal 
 colony for the punishment and reform of tramps. Th® 
 sentence imposed by the courts against such characters 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 125 
 
 invariably called for an indefinite term of detention at 
 hard labor, the discharge from custody altogether de¬ 
 pending on the willingness of the imprisoned to prove 
 their effective cure. 
 
 Quite unsuspecting that he was volunteering to act 
 as a guide for an American who had been a professed 
 hobo in his day, the superintendent of the “royal” 
 hobo colony afforded every opportunity to inspect the 
 reformatory and study the inmates at first-hand. The 
 Belgian brand of mendicant in no respect had attained 
 the standard developed by his counterpart beyond the 
 sea. The Belgians were of shambling gait and dis¬ 
 played in their brutish countenance every indication 
 of a degenerate intelligence not far above par of that 
 of a dumb brute. The convicts, though, seemed to be 
 well treated and acted as though thoroughly satisfied 
 to undergo a penalty that deprived them of their lib¬ 
 erty. 
 
 As I traveled on the highway beyond Merxplas, I in¬ 
 terviewed agriculturists I encountered while they 
 tended the acres adjacent to the road. Alike, the farm¬ 
 ers quaintly expressed their innermost contempt for 
 the penal institution placed in their midst, when they 
 passed an identical judgment, as follows: “Je ne puis 
 pas comprendre pourquoi ces vagabondes vivant du 
 gras de la terre et nous et families ne pouvons pas rien 
 de seur de notre travail.” (Translated: *T fail to un¬ 
 derstand why these tramps should be fed on the fat 
 of the land while we and our families are scarcely able 
 to gain a living by the sweat of our brow.”) 
 
 Traveling along the trench line towards the French- 
 Swiss frontier, on arriving off Switzerland, I journeyed 
 to Witzwyl, where the Helvetian republic had opened 
 % tramp colon37’ which was closely patterned on the 
 Belgian example I had studied at Mej^xplas. As in 
 Belgium, so here at Witzwyl the imprisoned bummers 
 
126 
 
 Here and There With A-No. i 
 
 not only were employed under the guidance of experts 
 on growing of vegetables and other green stuffs for 
 sale on the public markets in ruinous competition with 
 the native farming population but here, too, the ho¬ 
 boes were rented out at a most ridiculously small daily 
 compensation to agriculturists in need of “cheap’’ 
 labor. 
 
 As a matter of record, the well fed and paid officials 
 placed in charge of either the Swiss or the Belgian 
 project, loudly proclaimed the immense success of the 
 penal venture. In this the officers acted quite un¬ 
 mindful of the circumstance that the hobo colonies 
 were bringing utmost demoralization to the country¬ 
 side. The citizens most harmed by the short-sighted 
 policy of their governments were everlastingly pray¬ 
 ing for relief and the quick return of the day when it 
 could be better afforded to feed an occasional beggar 
 at the gate from the fullness of the family board, where 
 now the identical unwholesome outcast was converted, 
 and this with a vengeance, into a national pet and ward 
 who virtually and virulently competed with the com¬ 
 mon people for the dally bread. 
 
 Another observation: Coming a close second in the 
 matter of direct destructiveness of human life through 
 the havoc wrought by the continual warfaring that 
 seems to have become a veritable obsession of the ever- 
 quarreling nations of that continent. Demon Rum still 
 holds his stranglehold on Europe. Men, women and 
 even minor children are daily guzzling strong dram 
 by the liter measure in public places, as v/ell as in the 
 privacy of their home. Everybody seems to be af¬ 
 flicted with this national curse — ^from the kings down 
 to the lowest of the low-all are squandering every 
 available penny on alcoholic poisons. 
 
 Truly, Europe offers a fertile field for the activi¬ 
 ties of persons endowed with the courageous cast re- 
 
Here and There With A-No. i 127 
 
 quired to combat King Alcohol in his almost impreg¬ 
 nable outhold where, at that, he is wreaking his great¬ 
 est wrong on suffering humanity. Hard drinkers are 
 afflicted with overheated blood, overwrought nerves 
 and twisted mentality, and especially when com¬ 
 plete nations are involved, as this is the case with 
 the French and the German, they make exceedingly 
 irritable, if not entirely irrational neighbors. I firmly 
 believe that with the total eradication of the booze evil, 
 the Europeans will bid farewell forever to their favor¬ 
 ite pastime, which since time immemorial they rated 
 as the most honored of all honorable pursuits—that of 
 murdering human beings by the wholesale under the 
 plausible pretext of righteously waging war, when in 
 sheer reality they were merely attempting to satisfy 
 an insane and almost insatiable lust for killing and 
 maiming brought on by a criminal overindulgence of 
 intoxicants continued through ages on ages. Verily, 
 there is a just logic to my assertion, that with the 
 withholding of grog in every form from the alcohol- 
 parched throats of the Europeans, these will observe 
 the peace, and, consequently, universal goodwill will 
 be born to bless the world forever and ever. 
 
 A.s the French republic, here, offers a most limited 
 field only for extended sightseeing, measuring Europe¬ 
 an distances by prodigious American dimensions, when 
 these lines reach your hands, I shall have taken 
 steamer at the Mediterranean port of Marseilles • for 
 New York, where I shall select an overland railroad 
 route that will permit my stopping over at Erie. 
 
 Until the day of our impending reunion, I remain, 
 
 Your good friend. 
 
 FRENCHY. 
 
128 
 
 Here and There V/ith A~No. i 
 
 Instead of the expected visitor in person, there ar¬ 
 rived a train message the contents of which are given 
 herewith: 
 
 Western Union Telegram 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y., July 9, 1920-5:41 a. m. 
 
 Aboard of Pacific Limited, 
 
 N. Y. C. R, R. , 
 
 Impossible to break trip because of close steamship 
 sailing at Seattle for Fairbanks, Alaska, to look after 
 important mining concession. Will meet you another 
 date. 
 
 Signed: Raoul Voleur. 
 
 Only a few days after the receipt of the train tele¬ 
 gram, the mail brought a picture postal card cairying 
 a brief annotation announcing the embarkation of 
 Frenchy on his Alaskan errand. 
 
 At this date—May 24, 1921—no further written line 
 or any other sign of life has reached my address. 
 Therefore, and in all probability, an unkind fate had 
 placed a final “FINIS” to the strange career of the 
 venturesome French-American w^ho broke faith with 
 the Fioad and Crime when he had learned to a suf¬ 
 ficiency what sort of thankless existence was his who 
 disobeyed the mandates of Lav/ and Order. 
 
WRITTEN 
 
 BY 
 
 THE PI 
 
 LIFE AND ADVE 
 
 THE SE( 
 HOBO-CAW 
 
 RARE BOOK 
 COLLECTION 
 
 THE LIBRARY OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY OF 
 NORTH CAROLINA 
 AT 
 
 THE TI 
 THE CURSE 
 
 THE POT 
 
 THE TRAIL 
 
 CHAPEL HILL 
 
 Green 
 
 211 
 
 THE i 
 
 THE ADVENTURES 
 
 THE £ 
 THE WAYS 
 
 THE seventh, book - 
 
 THE SNARE OF THE ROAD 
 
 THE EIGHTH BOOK 
 
 FROM COAST TO COAST WITH JACK LONDON 
 
 THE NINTH BOOK 
 
 THE MOTHER OF THE HOBOES 
 
 THE TENTH BOOK 
 
 THE WIFE I WON 
 
 THE ELEVENTH BOOK 
 
 traveling WITH TRAMPS 
 
 THE TWELFTH BOOK 
 
 HERE AND THERE WITH A-No. 1 
 
 The Author has carefully avoided the least mention of any¬ 
 thing that would be unfit reading for ladies or children. 
 
 A complete set of these moral and entertaining books 
 should be in every home.