"Why, after I was dropped from the service, and it came to selling my wife's jewels, I had rather beg than that, and I cannot get work," he said simply. "They say my clothes are too good. What the deuce is the matter with my clothes? But begging is not so bad; I make a good thing of it."
At the moment the point I wish to make is that Flynt knew his vagrant in the open. He had a profound contempt for the books written by frock-coated gentlemen who have academic positions, and say "sociology," and measure the skulls and take the confessions of the vagrant in captivity. Skull for skull he believed there was small difference between that of the first scamp and the first minister of the Gospel. I set that down for what it is worth as his opinion. The confessions of a vagrant in captivity are always, he said, false. This I fancy is almost true.
I had chose a passably dreary seminary course in Harvard in which all the literature of criminology had been got up and reported. I myself had looked into some of the books—too many—some is too many. Five minutes of Flynt's talk turned my books into a heap of rubbish. Five hours' stroll with him made me forget that the rubbish heap existed. At his best, and it was at his best that I knew him, he was what he wished to be—the foremost authority among those who knew him in the side streets.
He had paid for his knowledge—paid with his person. "Old Boston Mary" I believe to be in part fiction; I could never surprise the little man into a confession; but he has lain on the trucks of a Pullman and in the blinding cinders and dust seen his companion lose grip from sheer weariness, and go—to meet Boston Mary. He had tightened his own grip, and been sorry. He could do no more.
[JOSIAH FLYNT—AN IMPRESSION]
By Emily M. Burbank
In "My Life," Josiah Flynt says, "I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of 'original research.'... His (Symons') books and personal friendship, are both valuable to me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons the man, when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together."
Josiah Flynt not only greatly admired Arthur Symons, the distinguished Englishman, as poet, master of prose, and critic, but had an affectionate regard for him, one expression of which was his use of the nickname, "Symonsky." While Flynt's guest in Berlin, Symons had some difficulty in persuading a letter-carrier that a communication from London was for Arthur Symons, Esq., and not for some Herr Symonsky! The Slavic twist to the name amused Flynt, who seized upon it. His shy, affectionate nature found an outlet in renaming close friends.