Tramp

“ On the bed reclined a figure, which, at sight of the light, sprang up with the cry of a hare in a trap—a man, unkempt, ragged, and dirty, bearing the impress of tramp written plainly upon his haggard, unshaven countenance. ”

“ A tramp, with his wallet or poke at his side, his tattered trousers corded at the knees, and his head bound with a handkerchief under his shapeless hat, has shambled, in his furtive, sidelong fashion, through the open gates of a park, only to find himself confronted by a watchful and resolute mastiff. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ A tramp is one who has fallen a victim of arrested development and never emerged from the nomadic stage; an artistic dilettante is one who has jumped the round where boys dig in the dirt and has evolved into a missnancy.
Young Carl Linnæus skipped no round in his evolution. He began as a savage, robbing birds' nests, chasing butterflies, capturing bees, bugs and beetles. ”

“ All faces begin to look alike. All shouts merge into one uniform and solid roar. The tramp of the feet resembles the patter of raindrops upon the roof, a sporific, will-subduing sound which dominates consciousness. A gigantic roof, gigantic raindrops.
Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! One hour passes, then two, then three, and still they are filing past. The torches burn with a crimson glare and emit smoke. Both openings, the one through which the people enter and the one through which they file out are like yawning jaws ”

“ True History of a Tramp He awoke in the Dark Ages and smelt dawn in the dark, and knew he was not wholly a slave. It was as if, in some tale of Hans Andersen, a stick or a stool had been left in the garden all night and had grown alive and struck root like a tree. ”

“ Whenever a tramp sits down to rest by the wayside, he sits with his legs in a dry ditch; and whenever he goes to sleep (which is very often indeed) , he goes to sleep on his back. Yonder, by the high road, glaring white in the bright sunshine, lies, on the dusty bit of turf under the bramble-bush that fences the coppice from the highway, the tramp of the order savage, fast asleep. ”

“ The wind on the heath, the field and meadow glistening with dew or sparkling with flowers, the singing of the bird, the joy of life, and no rent day coming round, who would not be a tramp! Perhaps our professional tramps think nothing of these things, for to eat, to sleep, to be free of work, to be uncontrolled, to have no anxieties, save the gratification of animal demands and animal passions, is the perfection of life for thousands of our fellow men and women. ”

“ The night has come on rainy and dark, and a weary tramp with his dog has been thankful to crawl into its poor shelter and rest his limbs. The wind has risen and howls dismally round the shed, breaking every now and then through the loose planks, and stirring up the straw which carpets the place. But the traveller is too weary to heed it or the rain which intrudes along with it, and crouching with his dog in the darkest corner, curls himself up in true tramp fashion, and settles down to sleep. ”

“ Tramp, tramp! At least we might have lain down, grovelled on the earth, hoping thus to escape notice. But the girl stood proudly erect, her sensitive nostrils dilating with scorn as she watched the invaders. ”

“ To calculate even roughly the final total of counsels' fees was no easy sum to be done on the fingers. After wrestling with it a little, the tramp leant back and puffed hard at his pipe—so hard that the sparks flew and the smoke became thick around him—so thick that "Bless my soul," said the tramp, rising hurriedly, "there's another stack I've been and gone and set afire!"
A tramp, a mere tramp going about the country and setting fire to stacks, is not even he to be reckoned with in the order of things? ”

“ It seems strange to say, but the dirtiest looking tramp is often the most honest and respectable, for he has not the courage to beg either food or clothes, nor will he enter the doors of a workhouse. I have seen this so often the case that I would much prefer to believe a dirty ragged tramp who might tell me that he had a good home six months previous, than to believe his cleaner namesake, who seems so eager to impart this information unsolicited. ”

“ The tramp smiled.
"I am a wanderer and a seeker," he replied. "In one sense the whole world is my home, in that I know all its roads and am nowhere a stranger. In another sense I have no home, for I know not where I began or where I come from. I do not belong to this world."
"What!" said I, starting up suddenly and consequently disturbing my companion. "You are then an apparition, a dream-face, a shadow. ”

“ Now, hurry!” and the gentleman seated himself easily beside the tramp on the bench, where they formed a queer contrast—the tramp old and done, the gentleman in the full flush of youth and strength, and evidently with everything at his command that could make man happy.
“A warm day this,” he added pleasantly to the white-haired tramp. “You look tired and thirsty too. Will you have a drink with me? John, another glass of lemonade and some biscuits,” he imperatively called out, as the tramp refused the proffered gift, with an instinctive touch at his fore-lock. ”

“ Of course every tramp has a history, even as every leaf that the winds blow over the fields has its history, and my old tramp doubtless had his, and God knows it must have been sad enough, judging by his looks, for he had the saddest face I ever looked at, and I've seen a good many sad faces in my day. ”

“ They argued from the tramp nature to inevitable results, and declared it would be a mercy if she were not murdered in her bed. According to the popular mind, a tramp is a distinct species, with latent tendencies toward crime. ”

“ Once, as a slip of a girl out blackberrying, she had come upon a tipsy tramp in a ditch; a beast of a man who had met her innocent benevolence by stumbling to his feet, pursuing her as far as his feet would carry him. ”

“ Year after year they trudge on and on, and always on, seeking a goal which they never seem to find. Occasionally they halt for a while at some half-way house, where they have heard that there is a resting-place of their desire; but it invariably proves disappointing, and the tramp, tramp, tramp begins afresh. Young and old, man and woman, boy and girl, all go on together ”

“ I have seldom gone on a tramp, or a long vagabondage, without seeing things that made the heart ache with their beauty or pathos, and other things that set the mind a-tingle with intellectual curiosity. ”

“ Bulls If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States, widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and bring them up God-fearing and industrious. ”

“ It is also the perfect child's prayer, and the tramp being much of a child, it is his.
Many people have their private interpretations of the prayer, and I have heard preachers examine it clause by clause. It can mean many things. It must mean different things to people of different lives. It is something very precious to the tramp.
The tramp is the lonely one: walking along all by himself all day by the side of the sounding waves he is desolated by loneliness, and when he lies down at dusk all alone he feels the need of loving human friends. ”

“ Ah, she thought to herself, only a tramp is safe! As soon as you have a settled habitation, and are known to neighbours, and can be identified by people about, all security leaves you: only on the tramp is a woman who wishes to hide herself safe. ”

“ The man you tramp with is not a foreigner, albeit foreign enough in himself, as you may discover before you discover he is kindred. You are thrown into intimate contact with him. Even if the two of you are a couple of egoists strongly self-centered, something is bound to get across in a long tramp. That is one reason why tramping is such a healthful spiritual experience. The too-too-solid flesh does melt a little, the too-too-solid heart does warm somewhat toward an outsider. ”

“ He wonders at the moon, and the moon wonders. She is hunting on a dark mountain side.
The next sleep is a long one, a deep one, and ghosts may pass over the sleeper, imps dance on his head, rats nibble at his provisions; he wakes not. He is under a charm—nought of evil can affect him, for he has prayed. Encompassed with dangers, the tramp always prays "Our Father," and that he may be kept for the one who loves him. Prayers are strong out of doors at night, for they are made at heaven's gate in the presence of the stars. ”

“ Home county farmers, led by that unerring instinct which is the unconscious result of long experience, know the tramp at once, and can immediately distinguish him from the bonâ-fide ‘harvester,’ in quest of honest employment. The tramp, indeed, is the sturdy idler of the roads—a cousin-german of the ‘beach-comber,’ who is the plague of consuls and aversion of merchant skippers. In almost every port of any size the harbour is beset by a gang of idle fellows, whose pretence is that they are anxious to sign articles for a voyage, but who are, in reality, living from hand to mouth. ”

“ The interior of the car sounded like a Scotch bagpipe a-drone ... what with snoring, breaking of wind in various ways, groaning, and muttering thickly in dreams ... the air was sickeningly thick and fetid. But to open a side door meant to let in the cold.
Softly my buddy and I drew off our shoes, putting them under our heads to serve as pillows, and also to keep them from being stolen. (Often a tramp comes along with a deft enough touch to untie a man's shoes from his feet without waking him. I've heard of its being done.) ”

“ As you come along the road at any time of day everything about you says, “Here I am, the tramp; take me as I am or not at all.” The Church covers the friar so that he is immune from pride and taunt, fashion and convention. He cannot be reproached; for his garments are a token that he is bearing the reproach of Christ. And Nature covers the tramp in a similar way. He has the chance to feel and be at home in any place in the world, under any circumstances and with any people. You are never ill-dressed in the King’s uniform; you are never ill-dressed in the tramp’s. ”

“ Tramps—that is, the bad ones among them—are very often insolent when they find no one but women in the house. Once a man I knew was working in Indiana, but having a bad headache he remained in one morning. By-and-by a truculent-looking tramp came along. ”

“ CHAPTER XII. THE GREAT TRAMP RENDEZVOUS.
A large bare room, steam heated and furnished with several long tables and benches, was already filled by nearly three hundred tramps. They formed a motley crowd. Old and young, of numerous nationalities and every degree of raggedness and trampdom were there. Young novices, just entering upon this degraded life. Occasionals—working men to-day, tramps to-morrow, and drunkards at all times. Professionals, who preferred mendicancy to honest labor. Honest men, reduced by dire misfortunes to this sore distress. ”

“ They are not pilgrims but outlaws, and many would be highway robbers had they the vitality and the pluck necessary to hold up wayfarers. Most of them are but poor walkers, so that the word tramp is often misapplied to them.
The tramp is a friend of society; he is a seeker, he pays his way if he can. One includes in the category “tramp” all true Bohemians, pilgrims, explorers afoot, walking tourists, and the like. Tramping is a way of approach, to Nature, to your fellowman, to a nation, to a foreign nation, to beauty, to life itself. ”

“ So with all our hilarity, our joyous meetings, our madcap doings, with all the fun of the tramping expedition there is the deeper interest underlying all. Most people will make the tramp without one conscious deeper thought. It does not matter. Their nature is getting something intuitively, although the mind has no knowledge of it. The gay undergraduate, all vim and no soul, shies at religion and has no thought except about climbs, leaps, jumps, food, sporting chances, pedestrian [Pg 215] achievement! He may not see this glorious jaunt in a poetic light until years afterwards. ”

“ He is like a dog who growls when he has suddenly got something very good in his mouth: he fears any familiarity on the part of other dogs."
As a tramp I have often felt how little I had to give materially for all the kindness I have received. But even such as myself have their opportunities of reciprocity, though they are of a humble kind. I call to mind a cold, wet day near Batoum, how I had a big bonfire by a stream under a bridge and I warmed myself, cooked food, and took shelter from the rain. A Caucasian man and woman, both tramps, came and sat by my fire a long while. ”