The farmer seemed to waver, and I turned to the son, asking him to intercede for me, telling him a little, very little, about myself. He smiled. "Pop ain't goin' to take you back, don't worry," he consoled me, and it seemed as if a great stone had been lifted off my back. Very few times in my life have I experienced the same peace and thankfulness that were mine after the son had spoken. Soon he brought me some old boots, a coat and a different cap, for which I gladly exchanged that of the school. When my pockets had been filled with sandwiches and doughnuts, and the farmer had at last finished cautioning me about being careful, I bade these good people good-bye. If they should ever see these lines, I want them once again to receive my heartfelt thanks for their hospitality, and to know that their kindness was not altogether misplaced.
All during that Sunday I remained hidden in some woods, resuming my journey toward the West Virginia state line at night. After five days' travel I crossed the imaginary boundary—it was a living thing to me—and was at last out of the jurisdiction of the superintendent and his officers. Then began that long eight months' tramp trip, during which I finally came to my senses and said Adios to Die Ferne forever—Adios in the sense that never again was she able to entangle me in a mesh of difficulties nor to entice me away from the task set before me. She thought many and many a time afterward, when the call of the Road was strong and tempting, that she again had me in her toils. But respectable vacation trips or bona fide investigations in the tramp world sufficed to satisfy my Wanderlust. Without doubt these excursions and investigations were a compromise with the Road in a certain sense; the wanderer's temperament lingered with me for years. But Die Ferne was beaten for all time.
To the school life and the ensuing eight months' sojourn In Hoboland credit is also due for the disappearance of my pilfering inclination. When, how, why, or where it went, are questions I can answer but imperfectly to-day. It slipped out of my life as silently and secretly as it had squirmed into it, and all that I can definitely remember now in the shape of a "good-bye" to it, on my part, is a sudden awakening, one morning on the Road, and then and there resolving to leave other people's property alone. There was no long consideration of the matter, I merely quit on the spot; and when I knew that I had quit, that I was determined to live on what was mine or on nothing, the rest of the Road experience was a comparatively easy task.
I have said that I told the farmer who abetted me in my escape from the school, that I should only go to the devil if taken back to it. It is impossible to say now whether this would have happened or not. But it is unfair, as I think the matter over to-day, not to admit that, with all its failings and drawbacks, the school life helped to bring me to my senses. It set me to thinking, as never before, about the miserable cussedness of my ways, and it showed me in no unmistakable manner where Die Ferne would eventually lead me, unless I broke with her. The long, wearisome tramp trip that followed did what else was necessary to show me that kicking against the good, as I had been doing for so long, was unprofitable and unmanly.
At one time in my life I seriously contemplated taking an officer's position in a reform school, in the hope that I might be of use in that way. Politics—they are plastered over everything in our country, it seems—and doubts about my fitness for such work, eventually decided me against attempting it. But I desire to say here, that for young men interested in institutional work, and willing to make a number of sacrifices, I know of no better field for doing good than in a reform school. The more a candidate for such a position has studied, traveled and observed the better. In Germany there is a school or seminary where applicants for positions in corrective and, I think, penal institutions as well, go through a set course of training and study before they are accepted. Something similar, minus the rigid German notions of the infallibility of their "systems" and "cure-alls," might be tried to advantage in this country. The work to be done is deserving of the most sympathetic interest on the part of college and university trained men who feel drawn to such activities.
[CHAPTER VII]
EARLY TRAMPING EXPERIENCES
Hoboland—Gay-Cat Country—The Road—what memories these names bring to mind! Years ago they stood for more than they do now. There were not so many bona fide out-of-works or tramps as at present, and the terms described distinct territories and boundaries. Now, the hang-outs are overcrowded with wandering "stake men," and the real hobo, the "blowed-in-the-glass-stiff," more often than not has deserted the old haunts and built for himself new ones, hidden away in bushes or concealed in woods. I think, too, that the real article, as he existed in my day, is giving way, more and more, to the army of casual workers and itinerant day laborers. Whether he has "squared it" and lives respectably, or whether he has broken again into criminal ranks and is trying once more for the final grand "stake" that is to make him independent and comfortable, I cannot say. It is several years now since I have been on the real Road, in the United States, and I only infrequently look up old acquaintances in cities, where many of them are stationary the year round. The Road of twenty years ago, however, I learned to know during those eight months of travel, as probably few boys of my years and bringing-up ever did know—or will know it. The word Road was used as a generic term for the railroads, turnpikes, lanes and trails which all wanderers, professional and semi-amateur, followed for purposes of travel, "graft" and general amusement. Hoboland was that part of the Road which the "blowed-in-the-glass-stiffs" were supposed to wander over—the highways and byways where the men who would not work and lived by begging alone were found. Gay-Cat Country, as undefined in the geographical sense as was Hoboland, for it stretched all over the United States, was the home and refuge of those tramps who would work on occasions—when winter came on, for instance, and box-cars grew too cold and cheerless. In spring, like the modern "stake" men, they gave up their jobs, and went merrily on their way again, the Road having become hospitable once more. Both Hoboland and Gay-Cat Country dovetailed into each other after a fashion—one "hang out," for example, often had to serve both sets of vagabonds—but the intersecting was almost entirely physical. The same railroads and highways were as open to the Gay-Cats, provided they were strong enough to assert their rights, as to the hoboes—the "hang-outs" also at times; but here the association stopped. The hobo considered himself, and really was, more of a person than the Gay-Cat, and he let the latter know it. Consequently, although both men in a year's time often covered pretty much the same territory, each one called this territory by a different name, and held himself pretty well aloof from the other—the hobo, on account of pride and caste, the Gay-Cat because he knew that he was unwelcome in the "blowed-in-the-glass" circle. To-day, I make no doubt that the Road is tramped over by a hundred different species of vagrants, each having its own particular name, and, perhaps, even territory. The world has its shifts and changes among the outcast's as well as in the aristocrat's domain, and I hear now of strange clans of rovers that had not yet been organized when I began tramping. So it is with everything, and I should probably have difficulty now in finding the old sign posts and "hang-outs" that I once knew so well.