William Staats

“ Now, my friend, tell me what a tramp is?"
"Why, a tramp's a tramp," replied the prodigal.
"Concise, if not lucid," remarked Wasson.
"Yes, but what are they, who are they, where are they, what do they do and where do they go?" persisted Hough.
The prodigal quietly picked a gravel stone out of the gaping toe of the boot, and answered, "They're tramps; that's what they are. Dead-brokes; bums; beats; codjers; hand-out solicitors; cross-tie sailors; free-lunch fiends; centennial rangers; square-meal crusaders! They're everywhere, they do every thing, and go all over. ”

“ Why should not men make money in doing good as well as in doing evil? Oh why should there be any attempt to disguise the matter? There is where the mistake is made, for it gives to good works a taint of deception. Do you for a moment suppose the world does not see under the cloak of a 'call' the greed of gain! Why not be open and above board and say, 'We do this good for money'? Is honesty a crime? Indeed I half believe it is. When I started as an Evangelist, I fixed a fair remuneration for my services, and demanded it the same as I would wages for any other work. ”

“ Ben's mental eye looked upon his new acquaintance through a fog. He could not understand him. At the same time the thought suggested itself to him: "What a purposeless, objectless life! What if my own should shape itself to such a result!" and then the more encouraging reflection came to him: "Better a tramp, with a New Orleans to be attained, than a Ben Cleveland dozing life away on Smythe's lawn." ”

“ Daubing blood on the face of humanity! Smearing crime on the garments of society! Barring the door to Heaven! Paving the way to Hell! Curse you! Curse you! Curse those that make you! Curse those in power that allow you to exist! Fragments of Hell hurled into Nineteenth Century! How I hate you!—How I love you!" and with trembling hand, and glittering eye, he drank deep of the bottle's contents.
The liquor was then passed around, but when it came to Ben he refused it. In that box car and from those homeless vagabonds he had learned a lesson that he promised himself should last him a lifetime. ”

“ It was Tommy!
To his dying day Ben will never forget the horror his eyes then saw. The church had the stillness of death. Not a muscle moved of those there gathered. Eyes starting from their sockets reached for the mass at the chancel rail, but motion there was none. All might have been chiselled out of stone. Pale as death the figure clad in male attire stood between the woman and man, a hand extended repelling the one, a hand upraised denouncing the other, two glittering brown eyes fastened on the man's face. ”

“ Hold on, friend Ben, don't speak disrespectfully of money. Money is the lever that moves the world, and love the fulcrum it rests upon. Had you a fortune would not the lady of your affections be within your reach? Is she not selling herself to Arthur Blackoat, and would she not much rather effect the sale with you? The sale is to be a sacrifice, Ben, a sacrifice—the highest bidder takes her. ”

“ Deep and thoughtful, they were, beaming in purity and confidence; alive with kind promptings, and singing an undying melody of love and faith. Just such eyes as we do sometimes see, and ever after remember.
And they lighted up a face worthy to bask in their sunshine. She was dressed richly, but tastefully, with every external evidence of wealth and refinement. Poor Ben's heart sank within him. When now brought face to face with the object of his adoration all his sanguine hopes went down below zero, and the airy castles of his daydreams crumbled to dust. ”

“ After years have changed the faces and scenes we love, we return to them expecting to find them the same as when we left, and feel a dull pain when we find that our memories of the past belong to the past, and are not heirs of the present. So Ben stood, gazing down the street in search of a white nubia, and was fairly startled into open-mouthed amazement when a voice nearly opposite to him said:
"Bertha, dear, I am so sorry that you can not remain with us until next week, if not longer. Must you positively go to-morrow?" ”

“ An ungovernable mass of curly black hair straggled from under a well worn slouch hat that had bronzed beneath sun and storm, and become limp and shapeless in its career of pillow and basket. When Tommy spoke his voice had a clear, silvery ring, quite pleasant to the ear; and when he laughed he showed a dazzling set of teeth. Such was Ben's new companion. He looked as though he might be a good boy who would do many a bad trick. ”

“ First they intruded upon him in the shape of great, glorious, grey eyes and a nubia, and several moments of ecstasy were passed in the company thereof. Indeed many men can make love better asleep than they can awake, and who of the sterner sex, when young and lusty in the full vigor of brand new manhood, has not had those luscious dreams, a counterpart of which it would be impossible for reality to produce! If there be him who has not had them—he has our sympathy. Nature has withheld from him one of the choicest bon-bons in her basket.
So Ben dreamed. ”

“ The ace lost, and with a whoop, the damsel sent the box spinning toward the boiler-deck by a kick, scattering dice, candles, nickels and small change in all directions. In the crowd of tatterdemalions toasting potatoes, and parching corn at the stove, were men of action—men who seize opportunities. The single lantern went out in a twinkle, and in black darkness, Ben felt a writhing, struggling, kicking mass of humanity on the floor. Blows, yells, laughter, curses and groans filled the confined limits of the "deck." ”

“ Every paper you pick up is full of them. Tramp, tramp, TRAMP, from one end of the paper to the other. There is not a chicken purloined off a roost; a man killed; a house fired; a train ditched; virtue outraged, vice embellished, or deviltry of any kind perpetrated, but this omnipresent scape-goat of the nineteenth century appears to be at the bottom of it all. Now I want to know what a tramp is."
"I am sorry that I cannot enlighten you, Hough, but—"
"But," exclaimed Wasson, interrupting Smythe, "if I am not very much mistaken, here comes a gentleman who can!" ”

“ It appeared to him as though all of his joints were soldered together.
"Oh you will soon get used to that," consolingly reflected Tommy. "Bump your back against a tree and that will shake you limber. Hi! Here she comes! Now for it! Hurry up!" And in the distance was seen the great Cyclopean eye of a locomotive, and the rumble of the approaching train filled the air.
"Hold on Tom! I can't get on my boots," exclaimed Ben, striving to force his swollen feet into them.
"We can't wait, Ben. Come on in your stockings. Carry your boots in your hand. Hurry up! Here she is!" ”

“ Sick men, whose hold upon life was waxing faint. Scorbutic men, bearing on their face and persons the indelible marks that outraged nature had branded them with, for life. Sad men, who felt the degradation of their position. Bold, callous men, for whom this world held no shame; and men whose deportment denoted that they had seen better days, and could not forget them, were all gathered there in a heterogenous mass of rags, hunger, dirt, and profanity.
No notice was taken of Ben's advent among them. ”

“ You're a fast walker," said Hough.
"Walk! Who said anything about walking? Not much. I walked when I felt like it, and I rode when I felt like it."
"You had money, then?" asked Wasson.
"Money!" exclaimed he of the maroon pants, disdainfully. "Money! Nary red. What did I want of money. Any fool can travel with money. I beat my way!" and a look of conscious pride illumined his face.
"Came from New Orleans here in three weeks, without any money!" And the magnitude of the undertaking so overwhelmed Mr. Smythe that he viewed the tramp as a second Humboldt. ”

“ No wonder then when his daydreams were about to be brought face to face with reality the practical common-sense of his nature had a hard struggle with the fascinations of imagination. Tommy observed him closely and probably understood what was transpiring in his mind.
"Ben," he said, "I have heard that all men are fools when in love, and I think you must be in love. That's no concern of mine however, only mind you, young man, after you have been well scorched, come to me and I'll tell you something about love!" ”

“ But the smile quickly turned to a look of terror, at the words quietly but earnestly uttered:
"Bertha, we must die. There is no help for us now. The river is rising. It has covered the island. Our raft is gone. Death will be upon us soon."
With a wild cry the girl bounded to her feet and rushed from the hut. The turbid flood stretched all around her, and she stood in water over her feet. She turned and looked at Ben, so pityingly, as if for relief. ”

“ The tramp is finished.
But Ben discovered before he reached New Orleans that the bumpers were not the most dangerous place about a train on which men attempted to steal rides. When no other opportunity offers, as in the case of a passenger train sometimes, the trucks beneath the cars are improved, where with a constant roar in their ears, a storm of dust and gravel in their faces, and a cramped position—like a contortionist in his box among the bottles—these knights of vagabondage cling on like squirrels. ”

“ Cleveland hastened down the track in the bright star light, and arrived at the tank referred to by the two tramps, just in time. For scarce had he retreated into a clump of weeds, when the freight train made its appearance and stopped for water. Ben had now some experience in boarding trains, and in a quiet, stealthy manner crept along the sides of the cars, with a watchful eye and ear for train men. At last he found one with an end window open. It proved to be a box car loaded with lumber, with just the nicest little place in the world for a man to stow himself away in. ”

“ The face beneath the hat was round and plump, very dirty, quite keen, frescoed with tobacco-juice and embossed with a short, stumpy beard. As the figure drew nigh the group on the lawn, boot, shoe, pants, coat and face seemed to blend into an animated object, while the bran new hat kept calling out, like a side-show man on a fair ground, "Here we are! Now you have us! An epitome of Hard Times! A parody on financial acumen! A caricature on the fat of the land! What aint rags is dirt, and what aint dirt is bugs! We're the remnant of other days! We're the breaking-up-of-a-hard-winter! ”

“ Ben reclined on a hand and elbow, wide awake, listening to the various noises proceeding from the sleepers. Snores, grunts, exclamations, curses, prayer, laughter and writhing proceeded from the bodies laboring under Dame Nature's mild anæsthetic. While so listening, a tall, thin figure approached him. It was a pale, long-faced young man, who had an air of dilapidated gentility about him, that was in unison with his intelligent, but care-worn, face. Noticing Ben's wakefulness, he said:
"I see that you, like myself, cannot sleep. What a pen of human swine it is!" ”

“ Before the recital was over she was weeping bitterly.
"Don't, don't, please don't, Miss Bertha," said Ben, piteously. "You quite unman me. It may not be so bad after all. Some boat might come this way, or we may be able to make our presence known to those who can rescue us. While there is life there is hope. The Hand that drew us hither, will not leave us here to perish, be assured." ”

“ Clothes do not make the man, but a man is unmade without them. They introduce him to society and keep him in it afterward. We like to rebel against their tyranny, and say contemptuous things about them, but we fear, honor, and obey them all the same. It is a pity he could not have clothed that restless, unsatisfied eye. For it but too plainly indicated that our hero's thoughts were not pleasant or satisfactory ones. Which indeed they were not, for at that identical moment Ben was wishing himself at the Hotel de Log, in the old livery of poverty and trampdom, and the old liberty of vagabondage. ”

“ Bertha certainly was gifted with good looks far more generously than her sisters. To be sure she no longer wore a billowy mass of white worsted about her head, that Ben's picture was familiar with, but in its place was a saucy little hat that turned up behind, and an ostrich feather that turned up in front; and at the back of the head and under the cocked-up rim of the hat was a great roll of chestnut hair, with each particular hair leading from the snowy neck thereto drawn as tight and as smooth as the top-hamper of a man-of-war. ”

“ A judge, who when banished in loathing from the old world, brought his dread court to the new, and treads the civilization, the Christianity and the progress of the nineteenth century beneath his heel in this fair land. A judge who daily calls upon us by his acts, cited in the public press, to rise and hurl him from his bench, and declare ourselves at last on a level with the enlightened nations of the earth. ”

“ On to the north—to the great grain fields of Minnesota—go the herd. And then they come back again; but no longer the solid army that marched north. Fleeing from the cold they come down in fragments. By boat, raft, and skiff down the great river. By tramping, and jumping the trains. By every conceivable method of travelling they make their way south. Where was this herd twenty-five years ago? We do not know. Like the Texas cattle trade, it is a growth of the present decade.
It was this Harvest Range that Ben now found himself crossing. ”

“ When night overtook their labors, quite a pile of the cottonwoods had been accumulated on the strand to reward their industry. Ben's hands were blistered and Bertha's arms were tired and sore, but both felt the elasticity of hope. During the early part of the afternoon's labors much laughter was occasioned at the young lady's appearance. To see a very pretty young woman with white jewelled hands and diamond-draped ears packing brushwood through the sand, the long heavy trail of a rich dress sweeping behind her, was ludicrous. ”

“ Ben was horrified! He had attended the Hippodrome meetings and been greatly impressed with the work of the revivalists, and had never connected a mercenary thought with them. This new development of using revivals for money-making purposes grated harshly on his feelings, and so he expressed himself.
"And why not?" asked the Evangelist. "People are willing to pay well for being led to the devil, why should they not pay to be started on the road to Heaven? It is singular that men should honor money-making by all methods except the saving of their souls." ”