Next morning, as he was a clergyman, I asked him to take family worship, and in the course of the prayer he made most tender supplication for the sick relative of “one who serves in this household,” and we learned that he had been conversing with the housemaid who attended to his room, having traced some expression of sorrow on her face, and found out that her mother was ill; while we, the heads of the household, had known nothing about the matter, and while we imagined that a scholar would be only distantly aware that a housemaid had a mother. It was plainer than ever that we knew nothing whatever about great scholars. The public function for which he came was an overwhelming success, and after the lapse of now many years people still remember that man of amazing erudition and grandeur of speech. But we, being simple people, and especially a certain lad, who is rapidly coming now to manhood, remember with keen delight how this absurd scholar had hardly finished afternoon tea before he demanded to see the mice, who were good enough to turn out of their nest, a mother and four children, and having rotated, the mother by herself, and the children by themselves, and each one having rotated by itself, all whirled round together in one delirium of delight, partly the delight of the mice and partly of the scholar.
Having moved us all to the tears of the heart by his prayer next morning, for it was as the supplication of a little child, so simple, so confiding, so reverent and affectionate, he bade the whole household farewell, from the oldest to the youngest with a suitable word for each, and he shook hands with the servants, making special inquiry for the housemaid's mother, and—there is no use concealing a scholar's disgrace any more than another man's—he made his last call upon the Japanese mice, and departed bowing at the door, and bowing at the gate of the garden, and bowing before he entered the cab, and bowing his last farewell from the window, while he loaded us all with expressions of gratitude for our “gracious and unbounded hospitality, which had refreshed him alike both in body and mind.” And he declared that he would have both that hospitality and ourselves in “continual remembrance.”
Before we retired to rest I had approached the question of his expenses, although I had an instinct that our scholar would be difficult to handle, and he had waived the whole matter as unworthy of attention. On the way to the station I insisted upon a settlement with the result that he refused to charge any fee, being thankful if his “remarks,” for he refused to give them the name of lecture, had been of any use for the furtherance of knowledge, and as regards expenses they were limited to a third-class return fare. He also explained that there were no other charges, as he travelled in cars and not in cabs, and any gifts he bestowed (by which I understood the most generous tips to every human being that served him in any fashion) were simply a private pleasure of his own. When I established him in the corner seat of a third-class compartment, with his humble luggage above his head, and an Arabic book in his hand, and some slight luncheon for the way in his pocket, he declared that he was going to travel as a prince. Before the train left an old lady opposite him in the carriage—I should say a tradesman's widow—was already explaining the reason of her journey, and he was listening with benignant interest. Three days later he returned the fee which was sent him, having deducted the third-class return fare, thanking us for our undeserved generosity, but explaining that he would count it a shame to grow rich through his services to knowledge. Some years afterwards I saw him in the distance, at a great public meeting, and when he mounted the platform the huge audience burst into prolonged applause, and were all the more delighted when he, who never had the remotest idea that people were honouring him, looked round, and discovering a pompous nonentity who followed him, clapped enthusiastically. And the only other time and the last that I saw him was on the street of a famous city, when he caught sight of a country woman dazed amid the people and the traffic, and afraid to cross to the other side. Whereupon our scholar gave the old woman his arm and led her carefully over, then he bowed to her, and shook hands with her, and I watched his tall form and white hair till he was lost in the distance. I never saw him again, for shortly after he had also passed over to the other side.
IV.—MY FRIEND THE TRAMP
ONE of the memorable and pitiable sights of the West, as the traveller journeys across the prairies, is the little group of Indians hanging round the lonely railway station. They are not dangerous now, nor are they dignified; they are harmless, poor, abject, shiftless, ready to beg or ready to steal, or to do anything else except work, and the one possession of the past which they still retain is the inventive and instinctive cunning of the savage, who can read the faintest sign like a written language, and knows the surest way of capturing his prey. One never forgets the squalid figure with some remains of former grandeur in his dress, and the gulf between us and this being of another race, unchanged amid the modern civilization. And then one comes home and suddenly recognizes our savages at our own doors.
Our savage tramps along our country roads, and loafs along our busy streets, he stops us with his whine when no policeman is near, and presents himself upon our doorstep, and when he is a master of his business he will make his way into our house. He has his own dress, combining many styles and various periods, though reduced to a harmony by his vagabond personality. He has his own language, which is unintelligible to strangers, and a complete system of communication by pictures. He marries and lives and dies outside civilization, sharing neither our habits nor our ideas, nor our labours, nor our religion, and the one infallible and universal badge of his tribe is that our savage will not work. He will hunger and thirst, he will sweat and suffer, he will go without shelter and without comfort, he will starve and die, but one thing he will not do, not even to get bread, and that is work; not even for tobacco, his dearest treasure and kindliest support, will he do fifteen minutes' honest labour. The first and last article in his creed, for which he is prepared to be a martyr and which makes him part of a community, is “I believe in idleness.” He has in him the blood of generations of nomads, and if taken off the roads, and compelled to earn his living would likely die. A general law of compulsory industry would bring the race to an end.
Besides his idleness he has many faults, for he is a liar to the bone, he is a drunkard whenever he can get the chance, he steals in small ways when it is safe, he bullies women if they are alone in a country house, he has not a speaking acquaintance with soap and water, and if he has any virtue it is not of a domestic character. He is ungrateful, treacherous, uncleanly, and vicious, to whom it is really wrong to give food, far more money, and to whom it is barely safe to give the shelter of an outhouse, far less one's roof. And yet he is an adroit, shrewd, clever, entertaining rascal. He carries the geography of counties in his head down to the minutest details which you can find on no map, knowing every mountain track, and forgotten footpath, every spring where he can get water, and the warmest corner in a wood where he can sleep. He has also another map in his memory of the houses with the people that dwell therein; which he ought to pass by, which it were a sin to neglect, which are worth trying, and which have changed hands. And he is ever carrying on his ordnance survey, and bringing information up to date; and as he and his fellows make a note of their experiences for those who follow after, it may be safely said that no one knows better either a country-side or its inhabitants from his own point of view than our friend the vagrant.
Perhaps the struggle for existence has quickened his wits beyond those of his race, but at any rate our vagabond is not fettered by that solid and conventional English intellect which persists in doing things as our fathers used to do them, and will not accommodate itself to changing conditions. Our vagabond has certain old lines which he has long practised and which he is always willing to use, in suitable circumstances, such as the workman out of employment and tramping to another city to get a job because he has not money enough to pay his railway fare, or a convalescent just discharged from hospital and making his way home to his wife and children, or a high-spirited man too proud to beg, and only anxious for a day's work (in some employment which cannot be found within twenty miles). And when he plays any of these rôles he is able to assume an air of interesting weariness as if he could not drag one leg after the other, and on occasion will cough with such skill as to suggest galloping consumption. And poor (but proud) he only allows the truth to be dragged from him after much hesitation. But when those lines fail and new inventions are needed for new times he rises to the occasion. If there be a great miner's strike he goes from town to town begging money for his wife and children at home, and explaining the hardships of a miner's life, which he has diligently, although superficially, learned; and after a war he is a reservist who threw up a profitable job at his country's call, and is now penniless and starving, but still unwaveringly patriotic; and if there be any interest in the sea through recent storm and shipwrecks, he also, this man of many trials and many journeys, has been saved with difficulty from the waves and lost his little all. If he calls upon a priest, he is careful to call him “Father,” and to pose as a faithful Catholic; and if he be an Irishman, his brogue then becomes a fortune, but if he drops in upon a Minister of the Kirk he recalls the good which he got when sitting in the West Kirk of Paisley; and if he be so fortunate as to be really Scots in blood, and therefore acquainted with theology, he will not only deceive that minister, but even the elect themselves, I mean the Caledonian Society. 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. He is fertile in devices and brilliant in execution, without any prejudices against the past or present, but ever bringing forth from his treasury of unabashed falsehood and ingenious impudence things new and old.