Hobo

“ He was a fine figure of a man, tall and straight as an Apollo, and yet he was a hobo. Never before had Bunker Hill seen a better built man or one more open-faced and frank, but he came down the trail with the familiar hobo-limp and Bunker set his jaws and waited. It was such men as this, young and strong and full of blood, who had kept him poor for years. Hobo miners, the most expert of their craft, and begging their grub on the trail! ”

“ In Hobo Land the face of life is protean—an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment ”

“ But the worst of that is lots of people gets to thinking I am a hobo. Even one or two judges in police courts I got acquainted with had that there idea of me. I always explains that I am not one, and am jest travelling around to see things, and working when I feels like it, and ain't no bum. But frequent I am not believed. And two, three different times I gets to the place where I couldn't hardly of told myself from a hobo, if I hadn't of knowed I wasn't one.
I got right well acquainted with some of them hobos, too. As fur as I can see, they is as much difference in them as in other humans. ”

“ It is due, in part, to the fact that the hobo, in so far as he is a congenital type, finds in casual and seasonal labor a kind of occupation congenial to his temperament, for the hobo is the bohemian in the ranks of common labor. He has the artistic temperament. Aside from the indispensable labor of his hands, the only important contribution which he has made to the permanent common fund of our experience which we call our culture has been his poetry. ”

“ I ventured.
"The Hobo--" He fixed his eyes on my Spencer and ran along the titles while he cast his definition. "The Hobo, my dear fellow, is the name for that particular place of detention in city and county jails wherein are assembled tramps, drunks, beggars, and the riff-raff of petty offenders. The word itself is a pretty one, and it has a history. Hautbois--there's the French of it. Haut, meaning high, and bois, wood. In English it becomes hautboy, a wooden musical instrument of two-foot tone, I believe, played with a double reed, an oboe, in fact. ”

“ To the hobo who thinks, even though he does not think well, the lower North Side is a great source of comfort. On the North Side he finds people to whom he can talk and to whom he is willing to listen. Hobos do not generally go there to listen, however, but burning with a message of which they are bound to unburden themselves. They go to speak, perhaps to write. Many of them are there to get away from the sordidness of life in other areas of Hobohemia. ”

“ In America, for instance, they would be taken by tramps for "Hoosiers," but, in their way, they are just as clever and sharp as the hobo who would laugh at them. Indeed, I know of no hobo who can equal them in facial trickery and disguise, and wherever this is the necessary qualification for successful begging they are past masters. Their clothes are invariably rough and patched, and if by some chance they get a good suit it is pawned or sold immediately. The usual peasant shirt or blouse takes the place of a coat, and the trousers are tucked into the boots also in peasant fashion. ”

“ You will hardly ever find a foreigner in the first five or ten years of his American life among tramps and hobos. "He may be near tramp, he may be apparently 'down and out,' but he is not a genuine hobo," said one of the men. "You will find plenty of foreigners in the lodging houses, plenty of them who starve and suffer, but they are not hobos. They have had hard luck, and now in their old age they live by doing two or three and some even one day's work a week. But they work more or less. They have not the parasitic philosophy of one who is a full-fledged hobo. ”

“ Phil Harris singing about a thing that you couldn't get rid of, no matter what you did, a thing so repulsive it made you a social outcast. Never thought I'd see one, though. Dirty Pete found it.
Don't rush me. I'll tell you about it.
We're hobos, understand? Now a hobo is a different breed of cat than you think. Oh, people are getting educated to the idea that a hobo will work and move on, whereas a tramp will mooch and move on, and a bum will mooch and hang around, but you still find folks who are ignorant enough to call us bums. ”

“ This is the hobo's way of getting acquainted, of finding out if he can "pal" with a man. There are no letters of introduction explaining these things; each person must discover them for himself, and a man is accepted entirely on the impression that he makes. A few men have great names that serve as recommendations at "hang-outs," but they must make their friends entirely on their merits.
Merely as a hobo there was nothing very peculiar about "Whitey." He looked to be about forty years old, and knew American tramp life in all its phases. ”

“ In the Bowery his name is legion, and a hobo can scarcely visit a saloon there without meeting him. The wandering vagabond considers him the "bunco-man" of the beggars' world, and that is a good name. He will do anything to get money from a hobo, but I doubt very much whether he ever begs on his own hook. Exactly how he comes to exist no one knows, but I fancy that he is a discouraged tramp; he has found that he is not a born beggar, and has concluded that the next best thing is to live off men who are. ”

“ Coming off the road with a roll, the hobo is likely to invest in a whole outfit—shoes, suit, and overcoat—only to sell them again in a few days when he is broke. The second-hand dealer meets him both ways, coming and going. ”

“ And from that moment we will skip to the time of the opening paragraphs of this story, which was two weeks and one day later—to the time when we behold the camp fire made of railway ties, with the four hoboes grouped around it, having enjoyed their evening meal and now ready to smoke and rest; for if there is anything in the world which a hobo really enjoys, it is rest. ”

“ Any hobo may ride over the Sierra Nevada Mountains as far as Reno without being molested, for it is a rule of the Southern Pacific Railroad Company not to incur their [Pg 88] ill-will. Some hobos have been known to set fire to the snow sheds in revenge for being put off a train in the lonely mountains. Fires occur in the snow-sheds every year, but of course it is hard to tell who or what starts a fire. The sheds are of wood and have always had to be rebuilt, for without them the road would be blocked every winter and traffic stopped. There are miles of them and wonderful creations they are. ”

“ Summary: A young hobo becomes involved in a quarrel between a girl rancher and a group of swindlers who have made trouble for her in a horse trade. When one of the horses, Black Eagle, kills a ringleader of the gang, and another outlaw dies under the hoofs of stampeding horses, the hobo is free to return to the open road.
Credits: Producer, Robert Cohn; director, Robert Gordon; screenplay, Edward Huebsch, Hal Smith; adaptation, Edward Huebsch; music director, Mischa Bakaleinikoff; film editor, James Sweeney.
Cast: William Bishop, Virginia Patton, Gordon Jones, James Bell, Trevor Bardette. ”

“ The hobo dived out through the door. I followed to see him disappear. But he was not in flight; he was squatting down over the foot prints. And a moment later he rocked back on his haunches with a little exultant yelp.
"'Dope's wrong, Governor,' he said; 'he was sure comin' this way.' Then he explained: 'If a man's walkin' forward in sand or mud or snow the toe of his shoe flirts out a little of it, an' if he's walkin' backward his heel flirts it out.'
"At this point I began to have some respect for the creature's ability. He got up and came back into the shed. ”

“ Why, with so wide an acquaintance with regions, with men, and with cities, with life in the open road and in the slums, has he been able to contribute so little to our actual knowledge of life?
We need not even pause for a reply. The trouble with the hobo mind is not lack of experience, but lack of a vocation. The hobo is, to be sure, always on the move, but he has no destination, and naturally he never arrives. ”

“ And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some of the good things of life.
But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's watch-dogs make a living out of him. Some hoboes like to be caught by the watch-dogs—especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes select communities where the jails are "good," wherein no work is performed and the food is substantial. ”

“ As a matter of fact, nothing could be more slothful or slow, more given up to a life of ease and degeneracy, than the “reef-building polypifer”—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of the animal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for a living. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm ”

“ Hand-Out: a bundle of food handed out to a beggar at the back door.
Hang-Out: the hobo's home.
Hit the Road: to go tramping.
Hobo: a tramp. Derivation obscure. Farmer's "Americanisms" gives: "Ho-Boy, or Haut-Boy: a New York night-scavenger."
Hoister, or Hyster: a shoplifter.
Hoosier: a "farmer." Everybody who does not know the world as the hobo knows it is to him a "farmer," "hoosier," or outsider.
Horn, The: a triangular extension of the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, running from Red Oak, Iowa, southwest some twenty miles, and then northwest to Pacific Junction on the main line. ”

“ Of course this was an invitation for Bluff to 145 unload, and tell what he had accomplished besides getting his gun just before starting back.
“Sheriff out hunting the hobo thieves, just as you feared. No one could say as to when he would return. Might be in an hour, and again, perhaps, it would not be for the balance of the day,” he began.
“You waited until you got tired and then left a note for him?” asked Frank.
“Just what I did, fellows. The whole community is aroused. Seems like these two hoboes must be yeggmen for keeps. ”

“ But, for all practical purposes, I should expect to find the ancient Egyptian hobo, for instance, if he could come to life and would be natural, pretty much the same kind of roadster that we know in our present American type. Laziness, loafing, Wanderlust and begging are to-day what they ever have been—qualities and habits that are passed on from generation to generation, practically intact. ”

“ I’ve been feeding men like you for fifteen years, right here in this old town, and I’ve never turned one away yet; but you can tell any bo that you meet on the trail that the road-sign for this burg is changed. I used to be easy, but so help me Gawd, I’ll never feed a hobo again. Here my wife has been slaving over a red-hot stove cooking grub for you hoboes for years and the first bum that forgets and leaves his purse has eight hundred dollars–cash! ”

“ Rattail is only two miles up by the road. A hobo thinks nothing of tramping ten or twenty in a day. What's he want down here to-night? Well, if he's like the rest of the breed I reckon its liquor that draws him. Bill—Bill what? There he was, right before me again, and I ain't an inch closer to solving that terrible puzzle than before. Bill—Billy Smith, Brown, Jones; say, this is just awful how it gets away from a fellow."
So shaking his head Lanky walked on. ”

“ SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HOBO ORGANIZATION The hobo is an individualistic person. Not even the actors and artists can boast a higher proportion of egocentrics. They are the modern Ishmaels who refuse to fit into the routine of conventional social life. ”

“ When in a hurry and a meal is in sight, even nations can clash and fall without influencing a hobo's itinerary one iota. Even had my hand been crushed under the wheels, it is doubtful whether "Slim" would have gotten off the train. Erie once reached, and a good breakfast added to his assets, he would doubtless have bestirred himself in my behalf. One learns not to complain in Hoboland about such trifles. ”

“ Workers of that sort pick our berries, fruit, hops, and help to harvest the crops on the western farms. They follow the seasons around giving their time to farms in spring, summer, and autumn, and ending up in the ice fields in winter. We could not get in our crops without them for the hobo is the boy who does the work. The name originated from the words “hoe-boy” plainly derived from work on the farm. A tramp is one who travels but does not work, and a bum is a man who stays in one place and does not work. ”

“ It is surprising, the money that is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or "slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular community. ”

“ Every man on the road takes sides, one way or the other, in regard to these two systems of feeding, and his standing in the brotherhood is regulated by his choice. If he joins the set-downers he is considered at least a true hobo, and although he may have enemies, they will not dare to speak ill of his gift for begging. If, on the other hand, he contents himself with hand-outs, he not only loses all prestige among the genuine hoboes, but is continually in danger of tumbling down into the very lowest grades of tramp life. ”