Vagabond

“ It is not likely that I shall have many such pleasant hours. I feel like a vagabond who, having been allowed to sit by a cheerful fireside for a while, is turned out into the wet and windy streets, and finds them colder than ever. ”

“ The vagabond, the stroller who enacted the illustrious personage, was a big, hectoring fellow, with a short-clipped, jet black moustache; an individual who looked more accustomed to the guardroom than a salon, to a spadroon clanking against his thigh--perhaps sticking out half a foot through its worn-out scabbard--than to a clouded cane which he now wielded, even though in a salon. ”

“ There is first the type with which we are most familiar—the nomad of the highway, who is always in motion yet never gets to his journey's end, the unmitigated vagabond, who lives by begging and blackmailing and pillaging. ”

“ If, disturbed at midnight by footsteps in your chamber, you start up from sound slumber to see a truculent-looking vagabond prowling about your room with a lighted candle, do you not at once spring to your feet, collar the intruder, and shout lustily for help, if he prove too strong for you? ”

“ Yet the vagabond himself is unobtrusive, ready to step back and be a chronicler the moment other figures enter into constellation. He moves among youth, himself no longer young, and among gentlefolk, as one making no claim to equal rank. ”

“ ROUND ABOUT THE PERUVIAN CAPITAL It is due, I suppose, to some error in my make-up that my interest in any given corner of the earth fades in proportion as it approaches modern civilization and easy accessibility. To your incurable vagabond may come a momentary thrill, if not of pleasure, at least of contentment, with the feel of city pavements once more under his feet after long hand to hand combat with the wilderness, and the knowledge that to go a journey he has only to signal an electric street-car on the nearest corner. ”

“ Occasionally, the children in the village gaze, with a mixture of fear and wonder, upon a wandering Oneida, as he loiters in the streets, idle and drunken—a vagabond where his fathers were lords and rulers. ”

“ I have always had the poetical feeling, that is to say, I have always been an idle fellow and prone to play the vagabond. I used to get away from my books and school whenever I could, and ramble about the fields. I was surrounded by seductions for such a temperament. The school-house was an old-fashioned, white-washed mansion of wood and plaister, standing on the skirts of a beautiful village. ”

“ They are very severe just now about vagabonds, the police are. If you take in a man without a passport you may get fined. Where do you come from, my boy?”
“From the convoy.”
“I thought so. I was right then. You are a vagabond.”
I answered with a supplicatory gesture, and I dare say I looked cold enough and wretched enough to move the compassion of a harder-hearted man than this good old peasant.
“You fellows generally sleep in the baths, don't you?” he said, after a pause. “Well, go into mine if you like; I can put you nowhere else. And I have heated it to-day; you will be warm.” ”

“ At every turn of the road, he says to himself, if he sees a rock that looks at all suspicious, or a mysterious cluster of trees: "There is some vagabond concealed behind there, who is the act of taking aim, and is on the point of making me the pretext for another cross destined to edify the travellers of future generations who may happen to pass by the spot." ”

“ Among my new companions, some two score of ragged, care-free fellows who had already gathered around the tables in the open air dining-room, the German vagabond predominated. The French, Italian, and Greek tongues were frequently heard, there were two or three castaways from the British Isles; but as long as I remained at the Asile I was the sole representative of the western hemisphere.
An Arab servant bawled out from the depths of the kitchen, and, as we filed by the door, handed each of us a bowl of steaming soup and an ample slab of bread. ”

“ The sound brought out from their lurking-places a crew of vagabond boys, and vagabond dogs, and the carroty-headed hostler, and that nondescript animal ycleped Boots, and all the other vagabond race that infest the purlieus of an inn; but the bustle was transient; the coach again whirled on its way; and boy and dog, and hostler and Boots, all slunk back again to their holes; the street again became silent, and the rain continued to rain on. ”

“ There are about one hundred pages missing from this book—pages that should have told of the inevitable details of stern existence: those things that all men who are vagabonds experience, such as the stomach-rumbles of hunger, monstrous hopes and misgivings, hospitals and illnesses, and cold nights sleeping out under the coco-palms and gum-trees when the wind suddenly shifts to a shivering quarter. ”

“ The truth is, that it is natural as well as necessary for every man to be a vagabond occasionally, to throw off the restraints imposed upon him by the necessities and conventionalities of civilization, and turn savage for a season,—and what place is left for such transformation, save these northern forests? ”

“ I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to roam All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home: The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day Will wander only until he finds another place to stay. A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead ”

“ Many a vagabond makes an easy living by wandering from one station to another, pretending that he wants employment but carefully avoiding it. The sundowner is as insolent as the American tramp; by Australian custom he is welcome to supper, lodging, and breakfast, the food consisting of tea, sugar, bread, and beef or mutton, and the lodging being in his own blankets on the floor of the men's hut or the wool-shed. ”

“ About the heart of that dear land.
111 THE VAGABONDS "Such as wake on the night and sleep on the day, and haunt customable taverns and alehouses and routs about, and no man wot from whence they came, nor whither they go."—Old English Statute.
We are the vagabonds of time,
And rove the yellow autumn days,
When all the roads are gray with rime
And all the valleys blue with haze. ”

“ The lawless vagabonds that haunted the recesses of these mountains have all been shot, hanged, or banished, and in place of diggers armed to the teeth, or the timid travellers that once passed in fear and trembling through these evil-reputed solitudes, we see the plodding ploughman, the gentle shepherd, or the brisk commercial traveller, with his natty buggy and smart turn-out, passing on his peaceful mission unconscious of peril, and untroubled by thoughts of evil-doers. ”

“ I asked one of them once, a pretty, smiling young woman who always came out when the carriage passed, with three or four children hanging to her skirts, if she was never afraid, being alone with small children and no possibility of help, if any drunkards or evilly disposed men came along. She said no—that tramps and vagabonds never came into the heart of the forest, and always kept clear of the keeper's house, as they never knew where he and his gun might be. ”

“ Yet Noah Webster, a most disinterested old gentleman, makes it clear that a vagabond is a vicious scamp who deserves no better than the lockup.
Doubtless Webster, if at home, would loose his dog did such a one appear. A wayfarer, also, in former times was but a goer of ways, a man afoot, whether on pilgrimage or itinerant with his wares and cart and bell. Does the word not recall the poetry of the older road, the jogging horse, the bush of the tavern, the crowd about the peddler’s pack, the musician 12piping to the open window, or the shrine in the hollow? ”

“ We have had occasion to show that these vagabond tribes overran the country like a flood, "vagabonds, rogues, and sturdy beggars "carrying terror and crime everywhere. Henry VIII., Harrison tells us, in the course of his reign, hanged of robbers, thieves, and vagabonds, no fewer than 72,000, and Elizabeth, toward the latter part of her reign, sent 300 or 400 of them annually to the gallows. ”

“ And if, through untoward circumstances or through your own carelessness and weakness, you have fallen so low that the Stationen and the Heimath cannot take you in because your identification-papers are irregular, and you appear more of a vagabond than an unfortunate laborer, we then invite you into the labor colonies, founded also by our philanthropists, where you can remain until you have earned good clothes and proved yourself worthy. But if we catch you begging, we will punish you as a vagrant ”

“ Such good fortune is the ambition of every energetic city tramp. He wants something definite every day, week, and month, and as he gets it or fails to get it, rates himself successful or unsuccessful.
The aristocrat of city vagabondage is represented by what I call the room-beggar. He cannot be classified with the lodging-house men, because he has little to do with them, except socially, as at the saloon or music-hall, for instance. His home is entirely separated from theirs, it being a room, and sometimes even an apartment, which he rents for himself and family. ”

“ The ease and apparent willingness with which some men revert to an aimless life can best be accounted for by the savage or barbarian instincts of our natures. The West has produced many types of the vagabond,—it might be excusable to say, won them from every condition of society. ”

“ A prushun, as a rule, wants something livelier than loafing around saloons and corners, and consequently is rarely found in these two classes.
The other types of city vagabondage can be classified as the "lodgin'-house-gang," with the exception of the room-beggar. I must therefore consider them in relation to their different styles of begging rather than living; for when once a beggar can live in any sort of lodging-house, he has a right to belong to the general crowd, no matter what he pays for his bed. ”

“ The gate was guarded by a 316lodge, beyond which the Home itself, a low, rambling bungalow, peeped through the trees. A score of vagabonds, burned brown in face and garb, loitered in the shade along the curb. Half were Eurasians. There is no more irreclaimable vagrant under the sun’s rays than the tropical half-breed when once he joins the fraternity of the Great Unwashed. Reputation or personal appearance are to him matters of utter indifference. A threadbare jacket and trousers—sad commentaries of the willfulness of the dhoby—mark his social superiority to the coolie ”

“ But the proper way to enforce that order on those below you, as well as on yourselves, is not to leave vagabonds and honest people to starve together, but very distinctly to discern and seize your vagabond ”

“ Occasionally the only bedding is straw, there being no blanket of any kind. The class of men found in places of this type is hard to describe; the town tramp is there, and so is almost every other kind of vagabond. It is a sort of cesspool into which are drained all sorts of outcasts, and the only way to distinguish them is to know them personally. Young and old, the intelligent and the ignorant, the criminal and the newsboy, all are found in the ten-center. ”

“ When the vagabond comes upon a home of simple lay piety, he allows it to be understood that he has led a life of fearful wickedness but is now a genuine penitent, asking only for the means of gaining an honest livelihood. ”

“ Three days later Garron passed through the modest village of Hirondelette, an unknown vagabond. He looked so poor that a priest in passing gave him ten sous.
"Courage, my son," counselled the good man—"you will get work soon. ”

“ Sleek rascals, without much inclination towards honesty, fatten, or rather fasten, like the insects in the famous epigram, upon other rascals, who would be equally sleek and fat but for their vagabond dependents. Luckily for respectable persons, however, vagabonds, both at home [2] and abroad, generally show certain outward peculiarities which distinguish them from the great mass of law-abiding people on whom they subsist. ”

“ When such sturdy vagabonds come, and first cringe and beg in a piteous tone, till, having spied out the real nakedness of the place, as to physical strength, they rise in their demands, hint strange things; instead of going away when desired, walk into the house, grow insolent, and at length downright thievish and outrageous,—these are circumstances of peculiar terror not to be exceeded in human experience, and which yet have been often experienced by the dwellers in solitary houses. ”

“ They came at night, when the flickering camp fires of the blue hosts shone like vast unsteady stars along the black horizon: old men, and thin, with gray and tufted hair; women with frightened eyes, dragging whimpering, hungry children; men and girls, stalwart and gaunt, – a horde of starving vagabonds, homeless, helpless, and pitiable in their dark distress. ”

“ Crouching and lurking about, too, for anything they can beg, or anything they can borrow, or, I am afraid, for anything they can steal, are some homeless, shirtless vagabonds, who have slept all night under baskets or tarpaulins in the market, and now prowl in and out of the coffee-shops and taverns, with red eyes and unshaven chins. ”

“ The bales and stacks of hay and straw piled upon some of the wharves, deserve a passing glance, since they form the sleeping apartments of dozens of penniless vagabonds who are always wandering about the city in idleness and misery, and have no other place to rest, no bed to sleep upon, except these out-door packages of provender, into which they creep for shelter and slumber during the long hours of the night. ”

“ The great difficulty, in our intercourse with the Indians, has been that the wilderness has been filled with miserable vagabonds, who were ever perpetrating innumerable outrages, robbing them, and treating them in all respects, in the most shameless manner. ”