Vagabondage

“ Success in vagabondage depends largely on distinct and indispensable traits of character—diligence, patience, nerve, and politeness. If a tramp lacks any one of these qualities he is handicapped, and his chosen life will go hard with him. ”

“ One never forgets those few hours in life when one has been really happy, and so I have never forgotten that bush township.
Whakarewarewa, Rotorua, N.Z.
To the thousands of literary and commercial vagabonds living under the guise of respectability I give a recipe—how to be happy in vagabondage. First, you must have a firm belief in God and be able to keep the belief to yourself. This belief will help you when each great scheme unexpectedly fails; for if you be a true vagabond your schemes will only benefit others. Ere you go to sleep on the grass look upon the forest about you as your bedroom ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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 have called these wanderers “Gallant Vagabonds” to separate them from both the professional travellers and the vagabond ne’er-do-wells. The gallant vagabond is not the man with the sun helmet and the file of native bearers; nor is he the wastrel who drifts down-stream and sees the world as he goes; the real prince of vagabonds is the wayfarer with scarce a penny in his pocket who fights his way upstream to see where the river rises, and crosses the dark mountains to find the fabled town. His curiosity is never purely geographical, it lies in the whole fantastic mystery of life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I--the homeless, the vagabond? Offer a wild dove the handsomest cage under a roof, the Host for food and holy water to drink--it will sooner creep into a hollow tree in the hardest winter, and starve rather than be captive. ”

“ Scorning to attack a defenceless foreigner, he no sooner found himself at liberty than, brandishing his tusks at the natives, he rushed at them indiscriminately, and then, to complete the consternation, took shelter under the very couch upon which the tyrant was sitting. This bold proceeding of the unclean beast dissolved the assembly, and the traveller was led away to the tent of a slave, in front of which, not being permitted to enter, he received a little food. Here he likewise passed the night lying upon the sand, surrounded by the curious multitude. ”

“ I generally passed the night in the bath-room of some peasant after the manner of vagabonds, for nobody in Siberia, however poor, is without a vapor bath, the vapor being produced by pouring water on red-hot stones.
One afternoon, just as night was closing in, I reached a village and sought a lodging. I had heard from the experienced vagabonds of the gang that it was always better to ask charity or help from the poor than from the well-to-do. Never, they said, when you are on the tramp, knock at the door of a rich man's house. Go rather to the most wretched cabin you can find. ”

“ Many a poor wandering fugitive, who, like myself, had sought among wild beasts the mercy denied by our fellow men, saw, in helpless consternation, his dwelling-place and city of refuge reduced to ashes forever. ”

“ A progress of a yet more ravening suggestion was intimated in great hoofmarks leading to the door of a little log cabin all a-crouch in the grim grip of winter and loneliness and poverty on the slope of the mountain, among heavy, outcropping ledges of rock and beetling, overhanging crags. With icy ranges all around as far as the eye could reach, with the vast, instarred, dark sky above, it might seem as if sorrow, the world, the law could hardly take account of so slight a thing, so remote. ”

“ Yet when victims make their escape from this wild beast of Slavery, northerners consent to act the part of blood-hounds, and hunt the poor fugitive back into his den, "full of dead men's bones, and all uncleanness." ”

“ With these mingled the towns-people in holiday dress, the well-to-do farmers and their wives, and a throng of nondescript idlers, ranging from the servants of the nobility pushing their way insolently through the crowd, to those sinister vagabonds who lurk, as it were, in the interstices of every concourse of people. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ They look wild and smiling, crafty rather than ferocious; and they greet you with loud cries in an unknown tongue, and with gestures expressive of the perpetual desire to receive which seems inherent in all true vagabonds. They pitch their tents usually on the outskirts of the villages, staying for days or weeks, as the luck serves them. And, so far as I could judge, people receive them with good nature, perhaps grateful for the excitement they bring into lives that know little variation as season follows season and year glides into year. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 pictures she had seen had been mostly of fat old men sitting cross-legged in the entrance of their tents, waited on by hordes of retainers, and looking languidly, with an air of utter boredom, at some miserable slave being beaten to death. ”

“ There would then exist survivals of the past savagery, nomads living a wild life like gipsies; or the marks of the new era, pilgrims bound to shrines making use of the roads, roving soldiers, travelling merchants, here and there a vagrant, made so probably by crime, slipping out of his place in society, but with all the wide stretches of country between villages to choose from if he would. ”

“ From every camp fire now, from the shelter of puny huts and caves dug out of the earth, from wagons and tents, there appeared a stream of men and women, too, camp followers who mingled with the soldiery and cursed or entreated as the mood dictated. ”

“ I will not return to my lodgings, galley-slave, and if I do not throw myself into the river, it is because I am dressed like a gentleman, and do not choose to spoil my clothes, for fear I should look like you and your gaol-birds here.”
“You dare not remain out. Else I would row you over to my lodgings, and we would make a night of it. ”

“ For nearly two years my six motherless children, between the tender ages of six and fifteen, have been inhumanly forced into the solitary wilderness—nine months of the time dwelling in a tent, and the remainder in a floorless log-cabin—often without flour, meal, or meat, and surrounded by savages of the fiercest tribes. From easy competence reduced to want, banishment, and the severest inclemencies of a northern climate! ”

“ The men made camp in the slippery darkness, while we sat in the wagon, warm and dry, and thanked our stars there were still a few things left that men could do without our aid or competition. Presently a lantern flashed out, and spots of light shifted over them as they slaved—pounding tent-pegs, and scraping stones away from places where our blankets were to be spread, hacking and hewing among the wet willows, and grappling with stovepipes and tent-poles ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They placed their foreheads on their muskets, and blew out their brains in the middle of the high-road. But many became hardened; one excess led them to another, as people often grow angry with the blows which they inflict. Among the latter, some vagabonds took vengeance of their distresses upon persons; in the midst of so inauspicious an aspect of nature, they became denaturalized; abandoned to themselves at so great a distance from home, they imagined that every thing was allowed them, and that their own sufferings authorized them in making others suffer. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”