THE HOBO’S OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS ON LIFE
The poets who have written best about the tramp are those who have recorded their reflections on their own life and his. Robert W. Service sees in “The Men That Don’t Fit In” a great group of wanderers who move here and there in response to an imperious wanderlust.
There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain crest,
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.
If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are
And they want the strange and new.
They say, “Could I find my proper groove
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.
And each forgets as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.[62]
There are men in the tramp class who are always chasing rainbows, always expecting to “strike it rich” sometime and somewhere. Bill Quirke, for many years contributor to the Hobo News, gives expression to this sentiment in the poem, “One Day; Some Way, I’ll Make a Stake.” This poem was written a few months before Bill was killed by an automobile in California. From the heart of it we quote:
For years I’ve drilled the rough pathway,
And weathered many a wintry blast,
I’ll make another stake some day
For luck must turn my way at last.
I’m far too old for working, too
They say my work is almost through;
My ore assesses never a flake
But still I hope to make a stake.
In the Hobo News of August, 1921, Charles Thornburn records his reflections while he contemplates the empty, beaten faces of the men of the “stem”:
With ever restless tread, they come and go,
Or lean intent against the grimy wall,
These men whom fate has battered to and fro,
In the grim game of life, from which they all
Have found so much of that which is unkind,
Still hoping on, that fortune yet may mend,
With sullen stare, and features hard and lined,
They wander off to nowhere, and the end.
Their thoughts we may not fathom, in their eyes
One seems to sense a vision, as though fate
Had let one little glimpse of fairer skies
Brighten their souls before she closed the gate.
Yet have they hopes and dreams which bring them peace,
Adding to life’s flat liquor just the blend
Called courage, that their efforts may not cease
To seek the gold, hid at the rainbow’s end.
“The Wanderer” is from the pen of Charles Ashleigh. It is said to have been written in jail. It is a justification, not complete, of the hobo principle of living for the day and by the day, of enjoying the sweets of life, if they can be secured, and of avoiding its problems.
Is there no voice to speak for these, our kin;
The strange, wild sorrows for the wanderer’s soul;
The shining comradeship we sometimes win
When on our wilful way to visioned goals?
We are the ones to whom the forests speak,
For whom the little by-streets run awry;
Ships are our mistresses, and vaulted peaks
Draw us unconquered to the tyrant sky.
And what if we in sordid corners sink,
Or perish in the crash of lawless fight;
Our souls have had the wine of life to drink,
We’ve had our blazing day. Let come the night.
The hobo characterizes the district where the employment agencies are located as the “slave market.” Louis Melis, prominent in Hobohemia as a soap-boxer, has written a poem entitled “The Slave Market” from which the following verses have been taken:
The Slave Market
This is the city of lost dreams and defeated hopes;
Always you are the mecca of the Jobless,
The seekers after life and the sweet illusions of happiness.
Within your walls there are the consuming
Fires of pain, sorrow and eternal regrets.
Roses never bloom here; silken petals
Cannot be defiled.
Streets in ragged attire, sang-froid in their violence;
Years come and go; still your hideousness goes on
And mute outcasts garnish
Your every rendezvous.
Blind pigs, reeking with a nauseous smell everywhere;
The so-called “flops,” the lousy beds
Where slaves of mill and mine and rail and shop
Curl up and drop away unconscious,
In fair pretense of sleep.
Employment sharks entrapping men,
Human vultures in benign disguise,
Auctioning labor at a pittance per day.
And it’s always “What will you give?”
“What will you take?”
The pocketing of fat commissions;
Old men, young men, tramps, bums, hobos,
Laborers seeking jobs or charity
Each visioning happiness from afar.
They swarm the city streets, these slaves,
For all must live and strive,
And always the elusive job sign
Greets their contemplative glance.
A job—food, clothing, shelter;
Wage slaves selling their power;
Oh, you Slave Market, I know you!
From timbered lands, North, East, South and West
From distant golden grain belts,
From endless miles of rail,
These workers float to the city.
Timber beasts, harvesters, gandy dancers—
Adventurers all. From every clime and zone,
Each comes with hope of work or
Else to blow his pile.