Tramps.
We meet these everywhere, but more especially on the great highway between Scotland and the South.
While cruising on the coast of Africa, in open boats, wherever we found cocoa-nut trees growing, there we found inhabitants; and so on the roads of England, wherever you find telegraph poles, you will find tramps.
They are of both sexes, and of all sorts and sizes; and, remember, I am not alluding to itinerant gipsies, or even to tinkers, but to the vast army of homeless nomads, who wander from place to place during all the sweet summer weather, and seem to like it.
Sometimes they sell trinkets, such as paper and pins, combs, or trashy jewellery, sometimes they get a day’s work here and there, but mostly they “cadge,” and their characters can be summed up in two words—“liars and vagabonds.” There are honest men on the march among them, however, tradesmen out of work, and flitting south or north in the hopes of bettering their condition. But these latter seldom beg, and if they do, they talk intelligible English.
If a man comes to the back door of your caravan and addresses you thus: “Chuck us a dollop o’ stale tommy, guv’nor, will yer?” you may put him down as a professional tramp. But if you really are an honest tramp, reader—that is, a ragged pedestrian, a pedestrian minus purple and fine linen—then I readily admit that there is something to be said in favour of your peculiar kind of life after all.
To loll about on sunshiny days, to recline upon green mossy banks and dreamily chew the stalks of tender grasses, to saunter on and on and never know nor care what or where you are coming to, to gaze upon and enjoy the beautiful scenery, to listen to song of wild bird and drowsy hum of bee,—all this is pleasant enough, it must be confessed.
Then you can drink of the running stream, unless, as often happens, fortune throws the price of a pint of cold fourpenny in your way. And you have plenty of fresh air. “Too much,” do you say? Yes, because it makes you hungry; but then, there are plenty of turnip fields. Besides, if you call at a cottage, and put on a pitiful face, you will nearly always find some one to “chuck you a dollop o’ stale tommy.”
Do you long for society? There is plenty on the road, plenty of people in the same boat.
And you are your own master; you are as free as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, unless indeed a policeman attempts to check your liberty. But he may not be able to prefer a charge against you; and if he ever goes so far as to lock you up on suspicion, it is only a temporary change in your modus vivendi; you are well-housed and fed for a week or two, then—out and away again.