MY LIFE

From a photograph taken in 1894

MY LIFE

BY

JOSIAH FLYNT

Author of "Tramping with Tramps," "The World of Graft," Etc.

With an Introduction by Arthur Symons

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY

MCMVIII

Copyright, 1908, by

THE OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to all those human beings, who, like myself, have come under the spell of that will-o'-the-wisp, Die Ferne, the disappearing and fading Beyond, and who, like myself again, are doomed sooner or later to see the folly of their quest, Die Ferne receding meanwhile farther and farther away from their vision. "It is the way of the World," says the Philosopher. That my fellow dupes in the fruitless chase may all become sweet-natured philosophers in the end, is my earnest wish and prayer.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

[INTRODUCTION]

I

It seems a long time since the day when Josiah Flynt came to me in the Temple, with a letter of introduction from his sister, whom I had met at the house of friends in London. The contrast was startling. I saw a little, thin, white, shriveled creature, with determined eyes and tight lips, taciturn and self-composed, quietly restless; he was eying me critically, as I thought, out of a face prepared for disguises, yet with a strangely personal life looking out, ambiguously enough, from underneath. He spoke a hybrid speech; he was not interested apparently in anything that interested me. I had never met any one of the sort before, but I found myself almost instantly accepting him as one of the people who were to mean something to me. There are those people in life, and the others; the others do not matter.

The people who knew me wondered, I think, at my liking Flynt; his friends, I doubt not, wondered that he could get on with me. With all our superficial unlikeness, something within us insisted on our being comrades. We found out the points at which undercurrents in us flowed together. Where I had dipped, he had plunged, and that aim, which I was expressing about then, to "roam in the sun and air with vagabonds, to haunt the strange corners of cities, to know all the useless, and improper, and amusing people who are alone very much worth knowing," had been achieved by him. I was ready for just such a companion, hesitating on the edge of a road which he had traveled.

We went together, not only about London, but on little journeys to France and Belgium, and on a longer visit to Germany. All that was ceaselessly entertaining to me, and came as a sort of margin to the not more serious enterprises of "The Savoy," the days of Beardsley, Conder, and Dowson. Flynt never quite fitted into that group, but he watched it with curiosity, as part of the material for his study of life.

I have been reading over his kindly and playful sayings about me in this book, which are veracious enough in the main substance of them, and it hurts me to think that I shall never go round to the Crown with him any more, or sit with him again in a café in Berlin. It was there, at the Embergshalle, that I found a poem of mine which is called "Emmy," but it was not for the sake of "material," or for those "impressions and sensations" of which he speaks, that I went about with him, but for the sake of the things themselves; and I wondered if he realized it. So what pleases me most now is when he says that he never thought of my books, or of myself as a literary man, when we were together. It was because he was so much more, in his way, than a literary man, that I cared for him so much, and it was of things more intimate than books that I liked to talk with him.

His ideas were always his own, and seemed to most people to be eccentric. He had come to them by way of his own experience, or by deduction from the experience of others whom he had learned to know from inside. His mind was stubborn; you saw it in his dogged face, in which the thin lips were pressed tightly together and the eyes fixed level. He was rarely turned out of his ground by an argument, for he avoided debating about things that he did not know. I never saw him conscious of the beauty of anything; I do not think he read much, or cared for books. His talk was generally cynical, and he believed in few people and few opinions.

Flynt had no sense of style, and when he began to try to write down what he had seen and what he thought of it, the first result was at once tedious and formal, the life all gone out of what had so literally been lived. I was a fierce critic, and drove and worried him to be natural in his writing, to write as he would talk, in a dry, curt, often ironical way. His danger in writing was to be too literal for art and not quite literal enough for science. He was too completely absorbed in people and things to be able ever to get aloof from them; and to write well of what one has done and seen one must be able to get aloof from oneself and from others. If ever a man loved wandering for its own sake it was George Borrow; but George Borrow had a serious and whimsical brain always at work, twisting the things that he saw into shapes that pleased him more than the shapes of the things in themselves. I tried to get Flynt to read Borrow, but books were of little use to him. He did finally succeed in saying more or less straightforwardly what he wanted to say, but his work will remain a human document, of value in itself, behind which one can divine only a part of the whole man. There was far more in his mind, his sensations were far subtler, his curiosity was more odd and rare, than any one who did not know him will ever recognize from his writing. His life was a marvelous invention: he created it in action, and the words in which he put it down are only a kind of commentary, or footnote to it.

Human curiosity: that made up the main part of Flynt's nature; and with it went the desire to find out everything by trying it, not merely by observing. None of the great wanderers of letters, Borrow or Stevenson, was so really a born vagabond; none had so little in the way of second thoughts behind him on his way through the world. The spectacle, the material, all that was so much to these artists, was to him only so much negligible quantity, an outer covering which he had to get through. He went to see Tolstoy in Russia, and was taken into his house, and digged in his garden. He went to see Ibsen at Munich. To neither did he go for anything but that for which he went to the tramps and convicts: to find out what sort of human beings they were at close quarters.

Whatever he has written of value has been the record of personal experience, and after several books in which there is much serious instruction as well as external fact and adventure, he ended with this candid story of himself, of what he knew about himself, and of that larger part which he did not understand, except that it led him where he had to go. The narrative breaks off before he had time to end it, with what was really the comedy of his life: the vagabond, ending by becoming so fantastically useful a member of society; the law, which he had defied, clever enough to annex him; he himself, clever enough to take wages for doing over again what he had done once for nothing, at its expense. Was it a way of "ranging" himself a little, and would he, if things had gone well, have answered the question, which I was fond of asking: What would remain for him in the world when he had tramped over all the roads of it? As it happened, he got short benefit from the change of position. He made more money than was good for him, out of detective service, first for the railroads, then for the police, and what had been one of the temptations of his life was easier, indeed seemed to him now necessary, to be succumbed to. He had an inherited tendency to drink, which had been partly kept down; now this new contact, so perilous for him, reawakened and strengthened the tendency into permanence. Gradually things slipped through his hands; the demand for books, articles, lectures, increased, as his power of complying with that demand ebbed out of him. He had friends, who held by him as long as he would let them. One of them was the only woman whom he had ever seriously cared for, besides his mother and his sisters. For three years he was rarely sober, and drink killed him. At the end he shut himself away in his room at the hotel in Chicago, as Dowson shut himself away in his lodgings in Featherstone Buildings, and Lionel Johnson in his rooms in Gray's Inn; as a sick animal goes off into a lonely corner in the woods to die in.

II

Josiah Flynt was never quite at home under a roof or in the company of ordinary people, where he seemed always like one caught and detained unwillingly. An American, who had studied in a German university, brought up, during his early life, in Berlin, he always had a fixed distaste for the interests of those about him, and an instinctive passion for whatever exists outside the border-line which shuts us in upon respectability. There is a good deal of affectation in the literary revolt against respectability, together with a child's desire to shock its elders, and snatch a lurid reputation from those whom it professes to despise. My friend never had any of this affectation; life was not a masquerade to him, and his disguises were the most serious part of his life. The simple fact is, that respectability, the normal existence of normal people, did not interest him; he could not even tell you why, without searching consciously for reasons; he was born with the soul of a vagabond, into a family of gentle, exquisitely refined people: he was born so, that is all. Human curiosity, which in most of us is subordinate to some more definite purpose, existed in him for its own sake; it was his inner life, he had no other; his form of self-development, his form of culture. It seems to me that this man, who had seen so much of humanity, who had seen humanity so closely, where it has least temptation to be anything but itself, really achieved culture, almost perfect of its kind, though the kind were of his own invention. He was not an artist, who can create; he was not a thinker or a dreamer, or a man of action; he was a student of men and women, and of the outcasts among men and women, just those people who are least accessible, least cared for, least understood, and therefore, to one like my friend, most alluring. He was not conscious of it, but I think there was a great pity at the heart of this devouring curiosity. It was his love of the outcast which made him like to live with outcasts, not as a visitor in their midst, but as one of themselves.

For here is the difference between this man and the other adventurers who have gone about among tramps, and criminals, and other misunderstood or unfortunate people. Some have been philanthropists, and have gone with the Bible in their hands; others have been journalists, and have gone with note-books in their hands; all have gone as visitors, plunging into "the bath of multitude," as one might go holiday making to the seaside and plunge into the sea. But this man, wherever he has gone, has gone with a complete abandonment to his surroundings; no tramp has ever known that "Cigarette" was not really a tramp; he has begged, worked, ridden outside trains, slept in workhouses and gaols, not shirked one of the hardships of his way; and all the time he has been living his own life (whatever that enigma may be!) more perfectly, I am sure, than when he was dining every day at his mother's or his sister's table.

The desire of traveling on many roads, and the desire of seeing many foreign faces, are almost always found united in that half-unconscious instinct which makes a man a vagabond. But I have never met any one in whom the actual love of the road is so strong as it was in Flynt. I remember, some ten years ago, when we had given one another rendezvous at St. Petersburg, that I found, when I got there, that he was already half-way across Siberia, on the new railway which they were in the act of making. But for the most part he walked. Wherever he walked he made friends; when we used to walk about London together he would get into the confidence of every sailor whom we came upon in the pot-houses about the docks. He was not fastidious, and would turn his hand, as the phrase is, to anything. And he went through every sort of privation, endured dirt, accustomed himself to the society of every variety of his fellow-creatures, without a murmur or regret.

After all, comfort is a convention, and pleasure an individual thing to every individual. "To travel is to die continually," wrote a half-crazy poet who spent most of the years of a short fantastic life in London. Well, that is a line that I have often found myself repeating as I shivered in railway stations on the other side of Europe, or lay in a plunging berth as the foam chased the snow flakes off the deck. One finds, no doubt, a particular pleasure in looking back on past discomforts, and I am convinced that a good deal of the attraction of traveling comes from an unconscious throwing forward of the mind to the time when the uncomfortable present shall have become a stirring memory of the past. But I am speaking now for those in whom a certain luxuriousness of temperament finds itself in sharp conflict with the desire of movement. To my friend, I think, this was hardly a conceivable state of mind. He was a stoic, as the true adventurer should be. Rest, even as a change, did not appeal to him. He thought acutely, but only about facts, about the facts before him; and so he did not need to create an atmosphere about himself which change might disturb. He was fond of his family, his friends; but he could do without them, like a man with a mission. He had no mission, only a great thirst; and this thirst for the humanity of every nation and for the roads of every country drove him onward as resistlessly as the drunkard's thirst for drink, or the idealist's thirst for an ideal.

And it seems to me that few men have realized, as this man realized, that "not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end." He chose his life for himself, and he has lived it, regardless of anything else in the world. He has desired strange, almost inaccessible things, and he has attained whatever he has desired. Once, as he was walking with a friend in the streets of New York, he said suddenly: "Do you know, I wonder what it is like to chase a man? I know what it is like to be chased, but to chase a man would be a new sensation." The other man laughed, and thought no more about it. A week later Flynt came to him with an official document; he had been appointed a private detective. He was set on the track of a famous criminal (whom, as it happened, he had known as a tramp); he made his plans, worked them out successfully, and the criminal was caught. To have done it was enough: he had had the sensation; he had no need, at that moment, to do any more work as a detective. Is there not, in this curiosity in action, this game mastered and then cast aside, a wonderful promptness, sureness, a moral quality which is itself success in life?

To desire so much, and what is so human; to make one's life out of the very fact of living it as one chooses; to create a unique personal satisfaction out of discontent and curiosity; to be so much oneself in learning so much from other people: is not this, in its way, an ideal, and has not this man achieved it? He had the soul and the feet of a vagabond. He cared passionately for men and women, where they are most vividly themselves, because they are no longer a part of society. He wandered across much of the earth, but he did not care for the beauty or strangeness of what he saw, only for the people. Writing to me once from Samarcand, he said: "I have seen the tomb of the Prophet Daniel; I have seen the tomb of Tamerlane." But Tamerlane was nothing to him, the Prophet Daniel was nothing to him. He mentioned them only because they would interest me. He was trying to puzzle out and piece together the psychology of the Persian beggar whom he had left at the corner of the way.

Arthur Symons.

[FOREWORD]

This book explains itself in most ways, I hope, and a prefatory portico almost seems superfluous. In general, such addenda are distasteful to me; they look like an apology for what the author has to offer later on. No portico would be attached to the edifice I have now constructed were it not that there are two points I want to make clear and have failed to do so sufficiently to my satisfaction in the narrative proper.

First, it is fair to state at the outset that an autobiography coming from a man under forty is, to say the least, an unconventional performance which requires some explanation. I believe it was no less a genius than Goethe, however, who hazarded the remark that what a man is going to do that's worth while he does before thirty. Goethe's own life gives the lie to the statement, but there is a kernel of truth in its suggestiveness. In my case there happens to be much more than a mere kernel of truth in the remark. What I am going to do as a passionate explorer of Die Ferne—the ever-disappearing Beyond—has been done for all time, so far as the Under World is concerned. The game is over and the dealer retires. My dead Self I herewith put aside, and begin afresh with a new world. The old Self died hard. I can hear its bones rattling yet. But there came a time when it had to go, and now that I know that it is really and truly gone, that to-morrow morning, for instance, to find peace and contentment for the day it will not be necessary for me to take up my staff and go nervously through the same antics and searchings as of old, a sweet satisfaction steals over me and I am glad to be alive. This book puts a finish for the present, at any rate, on all that I have heretofore written about the Under World, and sums up what I won and lost during my wanderings.

The second point to be cleared up I will put interrogatively—Was it worth while, after living the life, finishing with it, and passing on to pastures new and green, to tell the story? Benvenuto Cellini, that cheerful romancer, declares that a man, on reaching forty, if he has done anything of value and importance, is justified in putting his exploits down in writing, that he is morally bound to do so indeed if he would hold up his head among his fellows. For nearly forty years I chased the Beyond—that misty and slippery sorceress, ever beckoning onward to the wanderer, yet never satisfying, never showing herself in her true deceitful colors, until after long years of acquaintance. The chase is made by many travelers of the Upper World, hypnotized as I was, but by me perforce in that strange Under World from which so many explorers never return. This, it seems to me, is worth telling about. I have made the story as simple and direct as possible. May he who reads it, if perchance the sorceress is tempting him, too, hold fast to a better ideal, although his life be narrow and his task to fulfill a tiresome routine.

MY LIFE

[CHAPTER I]

EARLIEST REMINISCENCES

My old nurse once told me that I came into this world with a "cowl," which had to be snatched off quickly, else I should have laid there to be a prophet. Why a state of blindness at one's birth should premise extraordinary vision, spiritual or otherwise, later on, is not clear. No such vision has ever been vouchsafed to me; on the contrary, as my story will reveal, that early blindness continued in one form or another all through my search for Die Ferne.

My very earliest remembrance is a runaway trip, culminating in the village lockup. Although my mother declares that I was at least five years old when this happened, I have always believed that I was nearer four; at any rate, I remember that I wore dresses. The circumstances of the truancy and imprisonment were as follows: My parents were in the neighboring city for the day, and I had been left at home with the nurse. She had punished me pretty severely for some slight offense, and had then gone to the lake for water, leaving me in a lane in front of the house, very much disquieted. A sudden impulse to run took hold of me—anywhere, it did not matter, so long as the nurse could not find me. So off I started with a rush for the main street of the village, my little white panties dangling along after me. That was my first conscious and determined effort to see the world in my own way and at my own discretion. It was the beginning of that long series of runaway excursions which have blessed or marred my life ever since. No child ever had a greater measure of unalloyed joy in his soul than I did when I dashed down that village lane, and no later escapade has ever brought me quite the same fine shade of satisfaction.

In the main street the village police officer stopped me, and on learning who I was, took me to the lockup for safe-keeping until my parents returned in the evening. I was not actually put in a cell—the lockup was fire station and village prison in one, and I was given the freedom of the so-called engine room. I remember that I spent most of the time sucking a stick of candy and marveling at the fire apparatus. Nevertheless it was imprisonment of a kind, and I knew it. It was the only punishment I received. My parents picked me up in the evening, apparently much amused. Could my father have realized what that initial truancy was to lead to I should probably have received one of his whippings, but fortunately he was in a mood to consider it humorously.

My father died at the early age of forty-two, when I was eight years old (1877). He was a tall, slender man, lithe, nervous and possessed of a long brown beard which always impressed me when looking at him. He was the editor-in-chief of a Chicago daily newspaper, which died six months after his demise. I have heard it said that he was the only man who could have made the paper a success, and trying to do this probably wore him out. He had experimented with various activities before taking the newspaper position, but he thought that he had at last found his life-work when he developed into an editor. The last year of his life he became very much interested in church matters. He came of good New England stock, his American progenitor helping to found the town of Concord, Mass.

I have often heard it said that my father was a brilliant man gifted with a remarkable sense of humor. He did not favor me with his humorous side very often, but I do recall a funny incident in which he revealed to all of us children a phase of his character which my mother probably knew much more about. Although my father had to leave the old brown house early in the morning in order to catch his customary train for the city, he insisted rigidly on holding family prayers before leaving. These prayers did not mean much to me whatever they may have stood for with him, but there was one morning when they did please me. My old cat had brought a litter of kittens into the world over night, and at prayer time had deposited them in father's chair. Not noticing them, he took the Bible and proceeded to sit down. There ensued a great deal of miyowing and spitting. "Damn the cats!" exclaimed my father, springing up, and then taking another chair he continued with the prayers. I laughed over this happening all day, and my father never again exposed himself to me in such human garb.

Perhaps my older sister was his favorite child, if he played any favorites. Whether she understood him better than the rest of us did I cannot say, but her whippings seemed to me to come very infrequently. Her ability to get him out of a punishing mood is well illustrated by the following incident.

Something that she had done had vexed him, as I remember the story, and she was in a fair way to be punished—"whaled," indeed, my father being unwilling to distinguish between the sexes in whippings as they applied to children. My sister had an inspiration as we considered it at the time—climbing into her father's lap, and gently stroking his almost straight hair, she said softly: "What lovely, curly locks you have, Papa!" The incongruity of her remark made him smile, and when he had once passed this Rubicon in his punishing moods he became friendly. I was never as clever as my sister in interviews of this character. What boy is as clever as his sister, when it comes to acting?

My father gone, the battle of life for us children shifted to my mother. My father left very few funds behind him, and it was necessary for my mother to be mother and bread-winner at the same time. I shall not enter into an account of her various activities to keep the family together, but she did this somehow in most honorable and useful ways for nearly ten years, departing then for Germany with the two girls to engage in educational work. No man ever made a braver struggle against fearful odds than did this mother of mine, and when I think of my almost unceasing cussedness throughout her struggle a remorse comes over me which is best not described. We stayed in the village during the ten years in question, and I grew to be a youth well on in my teens, but never looking my years, nor do I to-day in spite of the hard life I have led, and a great many days and nights spent in hospitals. This is not said to coddle my vanity. I merely mean that I got from my parents a wonderful constitution. I hardly think that the average man, had he risked his health as I have done, would have pulled through so well.

Our village, since developed into one of Chicago's most beautiful and fashionable suburbs—I sometimes think it is the most entrancing spot near a large city, so far as nature alone goes, that exists—was a strange locality for a wanderer of my caliber to grow up in. Settled originally by sturdy New Englanders and central New Yorkers, it early became a Western stronghold of Methodism. My people on both sides were early comers, my mother's father being a divinity professor in the local theological institute. My father's people inclined to Congregationalism I think, but they swung round, and when I knew my grandmother she was an ardent communicant among the Methodists. Such church instruction as I could stand was also found in this fold—or shall I say party? Some years ago an ex-governor of Colorado was saying nice things about my mother to the United States Minister in Berlin, and to clinch his argument why the Minister should look out for my mother, the ex-governor said: "And, Mr. Phelps, she belongs to the greatest political party in our country—the Methodist Church!" It never interested me very much to look into the church's machinery—I had what seemed much more important and seductive work in planning and carrying out my runaway trips—but in later years I must confess to having been impressed with similarities in Methodism as a religious policy and politics as a business. Methodism considered simply as a religious organization, ought to be described by some one who can study it impartially. The struggle for the high places in the church at conferences is woefully like that in political conventions. Men who want to be bishops pull wires and secure supporters in almost identically the same way that office seekers in conventions make their arrangements, and the fat jobs in the ministry are as earnestly coveted by aspiring preachers as are political offices in the nation at large. Perhaps this is all right; certainly, if figures, churches and converts count, the Methodists have done a great work; but Methodism as a religious cult had to pass me by.

The good villagers tried numberless times to have me "converted," and officially I have gone through this performance a number of times. Strangely enough, after nearly every one of my earlier runaway trips and my humble return to the village, bedraggled and torn, some revivalist had preceded me, and was holding forth at a great rate in the "Old First," where my people communed. My grandmother, my father's mother, invariably insisted on my attending the revival services in the hope that finally I would come to my senses and really "get religion." As much as anything else to show that I was sorry for the anxiety I had caused my mother during the latest escapade, I would take my grandmother's advice and join the mourners at the mercy seat. Two or three visits usually sufficed to effect a change in me, and I would hold up my hand with those who desired conversion. I was not insincere in this, far from it. It came from nervousness and a desire to go home and be able to say honestly that I meant to mend my ways. I shall never forget the last time I attempted to get Divine grace and healing at one of these meetings. The preceding escapade had been woefully bad, and it was very much up to me to atone for it in no unmistakable manner. The relatives were all looking at me askance, and the neighbors were cautioning their children more particularly than usual to keep out of my company. Indeed, I became at a jump the village "bad boy," and I never really got over this appellation. I have heard good Methodist mothers say, as I passed by in the street: "There goes that awful Flynt boy," and I came to look upon myself as the local boy outcast. In later years I have changed considerably in my attitude toward people who criticise and revile me, but at the time in question I was a timid, bashful lad in temperament, and the ruthless remarks made by the Methodist mothers—the Methodist fathers also discussed my "case" pretty mouthily—made scars in my soul that are there yet. The truth of the matter is, I was not so innately bad as my persistent running away and occasional pilfering seemed to imply. I was simply an ordinary boy possessed of an extraordinary bump for wandering, which, when the "go-fever" was in me, sent me off to strange parts and peculiar adventures before any one had time to realize that I was in one of my tantrums. The attack would come so suddenly that I was off and away before I had myself fully realized that I had been seized with one of the periodical fits.

But to return for a moment to that last revival, and my last "conversion." "Josiah," said my grandmother, "there is a good man holding forth in the church to-night, and do you go over and get good from him." I was prepared to do anything to stop the critical glances of the village, and that evening I made what was supposed to be a full surrender and declared myself "converted" forever more. Whether the "good man" hypnotized me into all this, whether I consciously made public declaration of conversion from selfish motives, or whether it was all sincere and upright I can't tell now. Probably all three agencies were at work at the time. A retired captain in the army, himself a convert of not many months, put my name down in his book among those who had experienced a change of heart. "Josiah, this time you mean it, don't you?" he asked, and I said "Yes." I walked out of the church in a warm glow, and felt purged from sin as never before. A few weeks later I was off on another Wanderlust trip of exploration.

It is a pity in such cases that the truant's wanderings cannot be directed, if wander he must. In my case there was plainly no doubt that I possessed the nomadic instinct in an abnormal degree. Whippings could not cure it, shutting me up in my room without any clothes only made the next seizure harder to resist, and moral suasion fell flat as a pancake. Revivals and conversions were serviceable merely in reinstating me temporarily in the good graces of my grandmother. The outlook ahead of me was dark indeed for my mother, and yet it was from her, as I have learned to believe from what she has told me in later years, that I probably got some of my wandering proclivities. There was a time in her life, I have heard her say, when the mere distant whistle of a railroad train would set her go-instincts tingling, and only a sense of duty and fine control of self held her back. This call of Die Ferne, as the Germans name it, this almost unexplainable sympathy with the slightest appeal or temptation to project myself into the Beyond—the world outside of my narrow village world—was my trouble from almost babyhood until comparatively a few years ago. The longing to go would come upon me without any warning in the dead of night sometimes, stealing into my consciousness under varying disguises as the years went by and the passion required fresh incentives to become active and alert. In the beginning a sudden turn of the imagination sufficed to send me worldwards, and I would be off without let or leave for a week at least, usually bringing up at the home of relatives in northern Wisconsin. They would entertain me for a time, and then I would be shipped back to the village to await another seizure. On one of these return trips I traveled on one of the most unconventional railroad passes I have ever known. The relative who generally superintended the return to the village was an editor well known in his locality and to railroad men on the road. On one of the last visits paid to his home he determined not to trust me with the necessary money for the ticket, but to give me a personal note to the conductor, which he did. It read: "This is a runaway boy. Please pass him to —— and collect fare from me on your return." It was as serviceable at the time as any bona fide pass, annual or otherwise, that I have had and used in later years.

As I got well on into my teens and was at work with my school books, it naturally required a different kind of appeal to start me off on a trip from the simple call of the railroad train which had sufficed in the earlier years. For periods of time, long or short, as my temperament dictated, I became definitely interested in my books and in trying to behave, for my mother's sake, if for no other reason. I knew only too well that my failing caused her much anxiety and worriment, and for weeks I would honestly struggle against all appeals to vamose. Then, without any warning, the mere reading of some biography of a self-made man, who had struggled independently in the world from about my age on to the Presidency perhaps, would fire me with a desire to do likewise in some far-off community where there was the conventional academy and attendant helps to fame and fortune. There was an academy in our own village and I attended it, but the appeal to go elsewhere carried with it a picture of independence, midnight oil and self-supporting work, which fascinated me, and at an age when most boys have got over their gusto for wandering, I would start off in secret, to return famous, some day, I hoped.

One of the last excursions undertaken with an idea of setting myself up in business or academic independence is worth describing. There had been considerable friction in the household on my account for several days, and I deliberately planned with a neighboring banker's son to light out for parts unknown. I was the proud owner of two cows at the time, furnishing milk to my mother and a few neighbors at an agreed upon price. I had been able to pay for the cows out of the milk money, and my mother frankly recognized that the cows were my property. The banker's boy was also imbued with the irritating friction in his family—he was considerably older and larger than I. We put our heads together and decided to go West—where, in the West, was immaterial, but toward the setting sun we were determined to travel. My companion in this strange venture had no such property to contribute toward financing the trip as I had, but he was the proud possessor of five greyhounds of some value, several guns and a saddle. We looked about the village for a horse and cart to carry us, and we at last dickered with a young man who owned a poor, half-starved, spavined beast and a rickety cart. I gave him my two cows in exchange for his outfit, a deal which netted him easily fifty per cent. profit. The cart loaded, our outfit was the weirdest looking expedition that ever started for the immortal West. The muzzles of guns protruded under the covering on the sides, the five dogs sniffed uneasily at the cart, and the dying steed threw his ears back in utter horror. In this fashion, one bright afternoon in spring, our hearts throbbing with excitement, we started forth on our Don Quixote trip, choosing Chicago as our first goal. We arrived in that city, twelve miles distant, after four days' travel and a series of accidents to both cart and horse. It was a Sunday morning, and we had found our way somehow to the fashionable boulevard, Michigan Avenue, about church time. Our outfit caused so much embarrassing amusement to the people in the street that we turned city-wards to find the station where the C. B. & Q. R. R. started its trains West. We knew of no other way to go West than to follow these tracks, I having already been over them as far as Iowa. We came to grief and complete pause in Madison Street. I was driving, and my companion was walking on the pavement. Suddenly, and without any warning, a stylishly dressed man hailed my companion, and asked him if his name was so-and-so, giving the young man's correct name. The latter "acknowledged the corn," as he afterwards put it to me, and I was told to draw up to the curb, where I learned that the dapper stranger was none other than a Pinkerton operative. Our trip West was nipped in the bud then and there. The cart was driven to a stable, and we boys were taken to the Pinkerton offices, where I spent the day pretty much alone, except when one of the Pinkertons, I think it was, lectured me about the horrors and intricacies of the West, and exhorted me to mend my ways and stay at home. Our horse succumbed to his wanderings soon after being returned to his original owner, and my cows were got back by process of law.

Later on, a good old major, a friend of my mother's, recommended that she send me West in regular fashion, and let me see for myself. "A good roughing-it may bring him to his senses," said the major, and I was shipped to a tiny community in western Nebraska, consisting of a country store about the size of a large wood-shed, and four sod cabins. An older brother had preceded me here, and had been advised by letter to watch out for my coming. I shall never forget the woe-begone look on his face when I slipped off the snow-covered stage and said "Hello." He had not yet received my mother's letter of advice. "You here?" he groaned, and he led me into one of the sod houses. I explained matters to him, and he resigned himself to my presence, but I was never made to feel very welcome and in six weeks was home again, chastened in spirit and disillusionized about the West.

I must confess to still other runaway trips after this Western failure, but I have always felt that that undertaking did as much to cure my wandering disease as anything else. Dime novels soon ceased to have a charm for me, and home became more of an attraction. In spite of all this, however, in spite of some manly struggles to do right, my longest and saddest disappearance from home and friends was still ahead of me. It belongs to another section of the book, but I may say here that it wound up the runaway trips forever. The travels that followed may have been prompted by the call of Die Ferne, but they were aboveboard and regular.

Now, whence came this strange passion, for such it was, found in milder form probably in all boys and in some girls, but uncommonly lodged in me? My pilferings and tendency to distort the truth when punishment was in sight I account for principally by those miserable whalings my father gave me. Punishment of some kind seemed to await me no matter how slight the offense, and I probably reasoned, as I have suggested above, that if "lickings" had to be endured it was worth while getting something that I needed or wanted in exchange for them. My mother very charitably accounts for my thefts and lies, on the ground that shortly before I was born the family's material circumstances were pretty cramped, and that this state of affairs may have reacted on me through her, producing my illicit acquisitiveness.

But that insatiable Wanderlust, that quick response to the lightest call of the seductive Beyond, that vagabond habit which caused my mother so much pain and worriment—where did that come from? It was a sorry home-coming for my mother at night when the runaway fever had sent me away again. She would come into the house, tired out, and ask the governess for news of the children. The latter would make her daily report, omitting reference to me. "And Josiah," my mother was wont to say, "where is he?" "Gone!" the poor governess would wail, and my mother would have to go about her duties the next day with a heavy heart. Now, why was I so perverse and pig-headed in this matter, when I, myself, the fever having subsided, suffered real remorse after each trip? Even at this late day, after years of pondering over the case, I can only make conjectures. I have hinted that probably I inherited from my mother a love of being on the move, but she could control her desire to travel. For years I was a helpless victim of the whims of the Wanderlust. All that I have been able to evolve as a solution of the problem is this: Granted the innate tendency to travel, living much solely with my own thoughts, bashful and timid to a painful degree at times, and possessed of an imagination which literally ran riot with itself every few months or so, I was a victim of my own personality. This is all I have to offer by way of explanation. I have never met a boy or man who had been plagued to the same degree that I was.

[CHAPTER II]

YOUTHFUL DAYS AT EVANSTON

That Western village in which I grew up and struggled with so many temptations and sins deserves a chapter to itself. Doubtless there are some very good descriptions extant of small Middle West communities of twenty-five and thirty years ago, but I do not happen to have run across any which quite hit off the atmosphere and general make-up which characterized my village on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Yet there were probably many other settlements very similar in structure and atmosphere all through Illinois and southern Wisconsin, peopled by sturdy New England folk and charged with New England sentiment.

As I have already said, my village was singularized from other near-by communities of the same size on account of the Methodists having selected it for one of their Western strongholds. The place stood for learning, culture and religion in sectarian form in very pronounced outlines, and even in my childhood it was called the Athens of the West, or at any rate one of them. They are so numerous by courtesy to-day that it is difficult to keep track of them.

The village of my childhood was bounded for me on the north by a lighthouse and waterworks, and on the south by the main street, or "store" section. To the east was the lake, and to the west the "Ridge," a sloping elevation where the particularly "rich" people lived. This was all the world to me until my sixth or seventh year, when perhaps I got a fleeting glimpse of Chicago, and realized that my world was pretty thin in settlement at least. But I did not see much of Chicago until I was well on into my teens, so I may practically say that the village was the one world I knew well for a number of years in spite of my runaway trips, which were too flighty to permit me to get acquainted, except superficially, with the communities visited.

Our house was a rambling old frame affair about midway between the main street and the lighthouse, built very near the lake. Here I grew up with my brother and sisters. The territory between the house and the lighthouse was "free;" we children could roam in the fields there without special permission, also on the shore and in the university campus immediately in front of the house across a lane. But beyond these limits special passports were required; the main street we were not to explore at all, innocent affair though it was.

The lake and the shore were our particular delight, and on pleasant days it is no exaggeration to say that my brother and I spent half our time roasting in the sand and then dashing into the cool water for a swim. Other boys from the village proper—real citified they seemed to me—joined us frequently, and at an early age I had learned to smoke cigarettes, and had a working vocabulary of "cuss" words, which I was careful, however, to exercise almost exclusively in the sand. Whether I took to these habits earlier than most boys do now, I cannot say, but by nine I was a good beginner in the cigarette business, and by ten could hold my own in a cussing contest. My mother once washed my mouth out with soap and water for merely saying "Gee!" What she would have done to me could she have heard some of my irreverences in the sand is pitiful to think of. Right here was one of the main snags we boys ran up against—in being boys, in giving vent to our vitality, we offended the prim notions of conduct which our cultured elders insisted upon; and to be ourselves at all, we had to sneak off to caves in the lake bank or to swimming and cigarette smoking exercises, where, of course, we overdid the thing, and then lied about it afterwards. I learned more about fibbing and falsely "explanationing" how I had disposed of my time at this period of my life than at any later period, and I boldly put the blame now on the unmercifully strict set of rules which the culture and religion in the place deemed essential. My mother, and later on, my father, were steeped in this narrow view of things just as badly as were my grandparents. The Sunday of those days I look back upon with horror. Compulsory church and Sunday school attendance, stiff "go-to-meeting" clothes, and a running order to be seen but not heard until Monday morning is what I recall of my childhood Sundays. Church-going, religion and Sunday school lessons became a miserable bore, and it is only in very recent years that I have been able to get any enjoyment out of a sermon, no matter how fine it may be.

The Boy—Josiah Flynt—at the Age of Thirteen

My parents were to blame for all this secondarily only, as I think of it now. They were unconsciously just as much victims of the prudery and selfish local interpretation of the Ten Commandments as we children were consciously their victims. They had conformed to the "system" in vogue as children in other similar communities, and they literally did not or would not, know anything else when they were in the village. My father very likely knew of many other things in Chicago, but he did not ventilate his knowledge of them in the village. Before my parents, my grandfathers and grandmothers had been among the main stalwarts in supporting the "system."

The intellectual life of the place centered, of course, around the university and the Biblical Institute. How broad and useful this intellectual striving may have been I did not know as a boy, and in later years absence from the place has made it impossible for me to judge of its present effectiveness. The village was saturated with religious sentiments of one kind or another, and I am inclined to believe that overdoing this kind of thinking dwarfed the villagers' mental horizon.

The university had a clause in its charter from the State authorities which forbade the sale of all intoxicating liquors within a four-mile radius of the university building. A small hamlet four miles to the north and a cemetery village four miles to the south were the nearest points where the village boys could get any liquor. The village fathers have always been very proud of the prohibitory clause, and in my day were much given to flattering themselves, that, thank God! they were not like other people. Now, what were the facts as I learned to know them as a boy? I have referred to the "Ridge," the slope on the west, where the richer people lived. I make no doubt whatsoever that the "Ridge" families that wanted wine and beer had it in their homes—the university charter could not stop that—but their boys, or many of them, for the fun and lark of the thing, made pilgrimages to the northern and southern drinking stations, and at times reeled home in a scandalous condition. Those old enough to go to Chicago would also stagger back from there late at night. Of the boys and young men, from the "Ridge" as well as from down in the village, who participated in such orgies, I can remember a dozen and more, belonging to the "nicest" families in the place, who went to the everlasting bow-wows. I say a dozen offhand, there were in reality more, because I have heard about them later, after leaving the village. Far be it from me to put the blame on the university charter, but I am compelled to say that in all such communities the existing drunkenness and lewdness at least seem worse than in communities where liquor is sold and drunk openly. Perhaps they seem so because a drunken person is theoretically an anomaly in prohibition towns and villages, but whatever the reason, our village, with all its goodness, learning and piety, turned out much more than its share of ne'er-do-wells. As I have tried to show, I gave every promise of becoming one of the failures on whom the refining village influences had worked in vain, and for years I am sure that the neighbors prophesied for me a very wicked career and ending, but I do not recall ever having made a trip to the drinking bouts, north or south.

The educational facilities, public school, high school, the academy (preparatory to the university), and the university itself, all in the village, made it easy for those boys who would and could, to complete their academic courses within call of their own homes. My public school attendance was short, and I was then taught at home by my mother or by tutors. I ran away from school as regularly as from home. Finally, to have a check on me, my mother and teacher hit upon this plan: The teacher, every day that I appeared in the classroom, was to give me a slip of paper with "All Right" written on it, which I was to show to my mother on returning home. One day, when I was about ten years old, the "hookey" fever captured me, and I paid a visit to my grandmother—my father's mother—whose doughnuts were an everlasting joy to me. When the noon hour arrived, and it was about time for me to show up at home, I said to my grandmother: "Grandma, you write something for me to copy, and see how well I write." "All right, my boy," said my grandmother, who took much interest in my school progress. "What shall I write?"

"Suppose you write the words 'All Right,'" I replied. "I have been practicing on them a good deal." The good old soul wrote for me the desired "copy" quite unsuspectingly, and to allay any suspicions that she might otherwise have had, I dutifully copied her writing as best I could. Then I thanked her, and on the way home, trimmed my grandmother's "All Right" to the size of the slips held by the teacher. I did not seem to realize that the teacher wrote any differently from my grandmother, or that my mother was well acquainted with my grandmother's handwriting. Indeed, for a lad who could be as "cute and slick as they make 'em," when it came to a real runaway trip, I was capable at other times of doing the most stupid things—to wit, the "All Right" adventure. My mother detected the trick of course, and I was reported to my father, but he seemed to see the humorous side of the affair, and let me off with a scowl.

Winter underclothing and overcoats assisted in making my public school attendance a trial. For some reason I abhorred these garments, and my mother very rightfully insisted on their being worn, particularly when I trudged to the schoolhouse in winter. The coat was shed as soon as I was out of my mother's sight, and the underclothing was hidden in an outhouse in the schoolyard until time to go home. At home also I discarded such things whenever possible, and, one day, I was caught in the act, as it were, by one of our family physicians, a woman. I was sitting on her lap, and she was tickling me near the knee. She noticed that my stockings seemed rather "thin," and began to feel for my underclothing. "Why, where is it, Josiah?" she finally exclaimed.

"Oh, it's rolled up," I replied nonchalantly. Again the good woman tried to locate it, but without success. "Rolled up where?" she asked. "Oh, 'way up," I answered, trying to look unconcerned. Pressed to tell exactly how "high up" the rolling had gone, I finally confessed that the garments were rolled up in my bureau drawer. Again the humor of the situation saved me from a whipping, and I gradually became reconciled to the clothing in question.

Village playmates, the cosmopolitans of the main street as I considered them, entered very little into my life under ten, and I associated principally with my brothers and sisters and a neighbor's boy—the nephew of a celebrated writer—who lived very near our great brown house. Whether other children quarreled and wrangled the way we did it is hard to say—I hope not—but without doubt we gave our mother a great deal of trouble. Strangely enough, for I was very prone at times to assert my rights and fight for them, too, I once outdid my older brother and sister in a competitive struggle to be good for one week. It was while my father was still alive. He had promised us a prize, and when anything like that was in sight, I was willing to make a try for it anyhow. So I shut off steam for a week, minded my p's and q's pretty carefully, and lo, and behold! when Saturday night came, and my mother was asked to give the decision, I was the lucky competitor. The prize was the New Testament—a typical gift—bound in soft red leather, with a little strap to hold it shut when not in use. On the fly-leaf my father wrote these words: "To Josiah, from his father, for having behaved for one week better than his older brother and sister." The victory over the older children was my main gratification, but I found the Testament useful also, committing to memory from it for twenty-five cents, at my grandmother's request, the fourteenth chapter of John.

I can only account for a very "soft" thing that I let myself into not long after winning the prize to the weakening process in being good for the week in question.

My father had a cane, a twisted and gnarled affair, which he seldom used, but preserved very carefully in a closet off the "spare room" of the house. I have always believed that my brother and sister broke it, but they got around me, and wheedled me into saying that I had done it. Indeed, they bribed me with marbles and a knife, and said that the voluntary confession would be so manly that my father could not possibly punish me. Consequently, I did not wait for the broken cane to be discovered, but went boldly to my father, one night, and told him that I was the culprit, and how sorry I was. He looked at me earnestly with his immense blue eyes for a moment, and then, putting his long, thin hand on my shoulder, said: "Noble lad! to have come and told me. Perhaps we can mend it somehow," and that was the last that was ever heard of the matter.

My playmate over the fence, the celebrated writer's nephew, was my most intimate companion during all this period; I was nearer to him in play and study than to either of my sisters or brother. Although a good boy in every way, as I now recall him, I fear that our companionship did us both harm for a while. He was stockier and taller than I was, and if he had realized and been willing to exercise his strength, he could have put me in my right place very soon, but he did not appreciate his power. The consequence was that he allowed me to bully him unmercifully, and his accounts of my prowess gained for me a fighter's reputation in the village, a fictitious notoriety which clung to me strangely enough for several years. Besides being called a "bad" boy I became known as a youngster who knew how to use his fists—a myth if there ever was one—and I was enough of an actor and sufficiently cautious in my encounters to be able to give some semblance of truth to this report. The evil effects of this posing on me were that I allowed myself to be put in a false light as a "scrapper," and I was continually on the watch not to risk my reputation in any fair struggle; my companion over the fence lost confidence in himself, and allowed me to bully and browbeat him, his manliness suffering accordingly.

Many and varied were our escapades in our part of the village, and for years we were seldom seen apart. The most reckless adventure that I can recall now occurred when my companion's house was being built, a three-story affair. The other boy and I were exercising our skill one day on the floor timbers of the third story, or garret, walking across the beams, a leg to a beam, the space between the beams running through to the cellar. Suddenly I made a misstep, and fell through the open space to the cellar, partially breaking the fall by my hands clutching madly at the cellar-floor beams. I escaped with a few scratches, but I now count the escape one of the narrowest of several that I have had.

As a playmate I was generally tractable and willing, but I never lost an opportunity to "boss," if I could do so without loss of prestige. Bird-nesting, baseball, riding bareback on an old farm horse, swimming and walking were the main summer pastimes; in winter, there was skating, sledding, snow-balling, and "shinny"—both sets of amusements being typical of a Middle West boy's life twenty to thirty years ago. There was also fishing and hunting, but I was too fidgety to fish successfully, and I was never presented with a gun. "Vealish" love affairs with girl companions were indulged in by some of the boys, but my uncertain reputation and a "faked" or natural indifference to girls, I know not which, kept me out of such entanglements; probably bashfulness had as much to do with the indifference as anything else. That I was so bashful and at the same time a bully and would-be leader sounds inconsistent, but at the time of my father's death, there was probably not a boy in the village who could be made to shrink up, as it were, from social timidity, as I could. Indeed, this characteristic impresses me now, on looking back over my childhood, as the predominant one in my nature at that time, and even to-day, it crops out inconveniently, on occasion. A friend, who knows me well, recently remarked to a common friend of both of us: "Why is it that Flynt draws into his shell when strangers join us at dinner. When we three are alone, he talks as much as any of us. Let an outsider or two drop in, and he shuts down instanter. Can you explain it?" I can. Those silent fits are an aftermath of the exaggerated bashfulness of my childhood—I simply cannot overcome them.

[CHAPTER III]

REST COTTAGE

Not long after my father died our family deserted the old brown house which remains in my memory still as the one independent home I have known in life. The old building has long since flown away on wings of fire and smoke, but I recall every nook and cranny in it from cellar to garret. There we children came to consciousness of ourselves, got acquainted with one another as a family, and played, quarreled, made up again until the old house must have known us very intimately. I prize very highly having had this early love for a house—it redeems somewhat those bad traits in my character which were so deplored.

An interim home was found for us in the village proper until an addition for our use could be built to my grandmother's house, not far from the main street.

One of my teachers, while we lived in the interim house, was a distant relative, who had a home a few doors removed from ours. I also went to the public school, at intervals, but of my teachers at that time I remember best Miss B——. She taught my older sister and myself such things as it interested her to teach, and in a way we got a smattering knowledge, at least, of History, Art, Mathematics (a plague on them!) and, I think, French. Nothing that the good dame taught us, however, ever made the impression on me that certain of her mannerisms did. She was a spinster, no longer young, and her mannerisms were doubtless the result of living much alone. An expression which she constantly used, in and out of season, was "For that." Putting a book down on the table, or straightening a disordered desk, called forth a "For that" after every move she made. It had no significance or meaning at any time that I heard her use it, but if she used it once in a day she did so a hundred times at least. I finally came to call her "Miss For That."

She was furthermore the cause of my coining a word which is still used in our immediate family. Some one asked me, one afternoon, how Miss B—— impressed me, and I am alleged to have replied: "She's so spunctuated." To the rest of the family it seemed a very good characterization of the lady, they understanding the word apparently quite as well as I thought that I did. Later I was often asked what I meant by the word, and it has never been easy to tell exactly; our family took it in and harbored it because they knew Miss B—— and seemed to grasp immediately my meaning. What the word conveyed to me was this: that Miss B—— was inordinately prim and orderly, and that as in a written sentence, with its commas, and semi-colons, her verbal sentences needed just so many "For Thats" to satisfy her sense of neatness. I even found her form of punishment for me, when I had been unruly, "spunctuated." I had to sit in the coal hod on such occasions, and the way Miss B—— ordered me into the bucket, with an inevitable "For that" or two, sandwiched in with the command, increased her "spunctuatedness" in my estimation very noticeably.

The good woman eventually married, and I think lost some of her painful primness; but the word she helped me to invent still survives. I have been told that friends who have visited our home and could appreciate the word's meaning, have also incorporated it in their vocabularies. In some ways human beings the world over could be divided up into the "spunctuated" and the "unspunctuated."

In the annex attached to my grandmother's home my village life and early boyhood found their completion. When we left this home the family became scattered, one going one way and the others some other way; we have never all been together since the break-up. My brother, for instance, I have not seen in nearly twenty years, and have no idea where he is to-day. He also was possessed of Wanderlust, indeed we might as well call ourselves a Wanderlust family, because every one of us has covered more territory at home and abroad than the average person can find time, or cares, to explore. While living in the interim house my mother tried an experiment with me. She sent me away to a boys' boarding school about fifty miles north of Chicago. There had been a general family council of grandparents, uncles and aunts, and it was hoped that a change of control and discipline would achieve changes for the better in me.

The school was in the hands of an old English pastor and his wife, and they had succeeded in giving a certain English look to the old white building and grounds. My mother and I arrived at this institution of learning, so-called, one evening about supper time. The other boys, twenty-odd in number, ranging in years from ten to eighteen, were in the dining room munching their bread and molasses. It seemed to me at the time that I should certainly die when my mother left, and I should be alone with that rabble. Compromises and taking a back seat were to be inevitable in all intercourse with the larger boys, and the lads of my own age looked able to hold their own with me in any struggle that might occur. It was plain that I could bully no longer, and there was a possibility that the tables would be turned, and that I should be the one bullied. These thoughts busied me very much that night, which I spent with the master in his room. By morning I had half-a-dozen escapes well planned, leading back to the home village, and they lightened the parting from my mother, who seemed quite pleased with the school.

Getting acquainted with the other scholars proved a less arduous task than I had anticipated, which may be partly explained by the fact that my room-mate had arrived on the same day that I did, and we were able to feel our way together, as it were. As a lad, and to-day as well, if there is any strange territory to be covered, or an investigation is on, I feel pretty much at a loss without some kind of a companion, either human or canine.

The experience at the school, however, fairly pleasant and instructive though it became as I got over a preliminary homesickness, made such a faint impression on my character, one way or the other, that there is but little of interest, beyond my abrupt French leave-taking, to report. There had been several abortive attempts to get away before the final departure, but we—I always had companions in these adventures—were invariably overhauled and brought back. A well-meant "lecture" followed our capture, that was all. Indeed the days spent in the school were the only days of my early boyhood free of whippings. They were sometimes promised, but the good old pastor relented at the last moment and let me off with a reprimand.

The runaway trip that finally succeeded was most carefully planned and executed. For days four of us discussed routes, places where we could get something to eat, and railway time-tables; and the boy who knew Chicago best arranged for our reception there, if we should get that far. This time we were not going to take to the railroad near the village; we had failed there too often. We knew of another railroad some eight miles inland, and this became our first objective. We left the school at night when the master and the scholars were asleep. Carrying our shoes in our hands, our pockets stuffed with surplus socks and handkerchiefs, we stole out of the old white building unobserved, and on into a cornfield, where we put on our shoes and made sure once again that we had not been followed. Then, light-hearted and happy in the thought that we were free, we tramped rapidly to the railroad. Reaching a good sized station about one o'clock, we awaited an express train due in an hour or so. It came thundering along on schedule time, and two boys "made" the "blind baggage," while the Chicago boy and I perched ourselves just behind the cow-catcher. After this dare-devil fashion we rode into Chicago, arriving there just as the milkman and baker-boy were going their rounds. The darkness, of course, had helped us immensely. We had no money for car-fare, and had to pick our way through a labyrinth of streets before we found our Chicago companion's barn, where we rolled ourselves up in some very dirty carpets on the floor and fell asleep to dream of freedom and its delights.

This escape, so thorough and cleancut, satisfied my mother that the school was not the place for me, and I was taken back to the village, the new home adjoining my grandmother's, and handed over to the tender mercies of tutors again. A new life began for me, a new life in a number of ways. Although the two houses were connected, and our family could pass over into grandmother's quarters and vice versa, we children were cautioned to keep on our own side of the fence most of the time. Nevertheless, our grandmother was almost always accessible, particularly when her daughter, our noted aunt, was away on a lecturing tour. This was a great boon in many respects, because our mother was in the city all day, and we certainly used to get tired of the governess.

This grandmother of mine stands out in my memory of childhood more distinctly than any other character, except, of course, my mother. She was one of the most remarkable women it has been my good fortune to know well. A famous English lady, who visited my aunt years after our particular family had scattered, insisted on calling my grandmother "Saint Courageous," and I have always thought that she well deserved this title. For years, while my aunt was traveling over the country, lecturing on temperance and woman's rights, my grandmother would live patiently alone with a Swedish servant, glorying in her daughter's fame and usefulness, and carefully pasting press notices of her work in a scrapbook.

My brother, "Rob," was grandmother's pet. He was her son's firstborn and her first grandchild, and what Rob did, good or bad, found praise and excuses in her eyes. We other children had to take a back seat, so to speak, when Rob was at home, but this was only intermittently, after he undertook to be a civil engineer. When I last saw him he had experimented with about as many activities as he had lived years, and he was still very undecided about any one of them. In a way this has been a family characteristic among us children, at any rate among us boys. Mother early noticed this tendency, and literally begged of us to let her see us through college, as did our grandmother, so that, whatever we undertook later on, we might have educational qualifications for any opportunity that presented itself. She was doomed to disappointment in this matter in the case of all four. Each one of us has experimented with college life, and I, as will be told later on in detail, smuggled myself into the Berlin University as a student of political economy, but there is not a diploma to-day among the four of us.

My grandmother's room on her side was in the front, and here she spent most of her time, reading, tending her scrapbook and flowers, keeping track of her famous daughter's travels, and nearly every day receiving visits from some of us children. I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life in that quaint room, telling grandmother about my school life, what I wanted to be, and reading to her such things, usually verses, as she or I liked. She thought that I read well, and if the "piece" was pathetic, I used to gauge my rendering of it by the flow of tears from grandmother's eyes. I watched them furtively on all pathetic occasions. Gradually the lids would redden, a tear or two would drop, her dear old lips would quiver—and I had succeeded. Grandmother seemed to enjoy the weeping as much as I enjoyed its implied praise. These "sittings" in her room have overcome many and many an impulse on my part to run away; and I can recall purposely going to her room and society to try and conquer the temptation that was besetting me, although I did not tell her what I had come to her for. What she meant to the other children I do not know, but, my mother being away so much, and the governess representing solely discipline and control, grandmother became almost as dear to me as my mother. Strange to relate, however, I was never demonstratively affectionate with her, nor she with me, whereas I was very distinctly so with my mother when I was trying to be good. They tell a story about me to-day of how, when after supper mother had settled herself in one of the large chairs near the stove, I would climb into her lap and say: "Hug me, mother, I need it." Probably no lad ever needed mothering more than I did, but out on the road, curiously enough, while still quite young, I could dig a hole in a hay-stack and fall asleep as easily as at home in my own bed, which goes to show what a bundle of contrasts and mixtures I was. One day, as tractable a scholar and playmate as the village contained; the next, very possibly, irritable, cross, moody and wavering, like a half-balanced stick, between a vamose or home.

Grandmother's visits to our side of the house were comparatively infrequent—she loved to be in her room—but when we children got to fighting, her tall, majestic form and earnest face were sure to appear. "Children, children!" she would cry, "'tis for dogs and cats to bark and bite. Josiah, leave Robert alone!" On one occasion the governess had been utterly powerless to control us, and my older sister and I were determined to "do up" Rob, grandmother's pet, once and for all. We thought that he had been teasing us unmercifully, and we went at him, sister unarmed and I with a stove poker. How I managed it at the time I cannot say now, for he was decidedly stronger and larger than I was; but I succeeded somehow, with sister's help, in getting him down on the floor, where I was whacking him manfully with the poker, sister looking on well satisfied, when grandmother appeared. "Josiah!" she shouted, stamping her foot, "let your brother up." Whack went the poker, and, of course, Rob yelled. Indeed, the noise made during this fisticuff exceeded that of any previous encounter, and the neighbors probably said: "Those Flynt children are at it again." "Josiah!" my grandmother roared this time, "I'll have the police, this can't go on. Release your brother instantly." I gave him a final whack, and judiciously retreated with the poker and my sister. Rob was for renewing the attack, but grandmother led him off to her room for repairs, and the physical victory at least was ours.

But all of our days were not accompanied by battles. Several days, perhaps, could go by, without even harsh words being spoken, and peace reigned on both sides of the house, which, before we children got into it, was gladly known as and called "Rest Cottage." In name, and except when our quarrels went echoing through the older side, grandmother's part was also in fact a haven of rest for herself and my much traveled aunt. But I have often thought that if some of the many pilgrims who have gone to the village merely to see the house could have surprised us children in one of our quarrels, they would have scouted the propriety of the cottage's name.

When my brother was away, which was the case more often than not, after he refused to continue his schooling, I was inclined to idealize him, and when he had been absent, say for several months and news came of his home-coming, I was very proud and happy. On one occasion he came back with his voice much changed, it had begun to take on a mannish tone, and I was prodigiously impressed with this metamorphosis, running secretly to grandmother, and whispering: "Rob's back! His voice has gone way down deep," and I put my hand on my stomach by way of illustration. My brother's elevation on a pedestal in my imagination, however, never lasted long, because we invariably crossed tempers within a few days, and that meant vulgar familiarity.

For years, nevertheless, I persisted in using him as a bluff in all threatening fisticuffs with playmates of my size, whether he was at home or not. "If I can't lick you," I was wont to say, "Bob can, and he'll do it, too." For a time this boast kept me out of all serious entanglements, but I had posed so long as a winner, and had bragged so much about what Bob could do, that a Waterloo was inevitable, and at last it came. Bob was unfortunately for me away from home at the time.

The fight was a fixed-up affair among three brothers, the second oldest being desirous of giving me a good hiding as a preliminary advertisement of his prowess. The four of us met by agreement in the alley behind "Rest Cottage," and my antagonist and I were soon at it. He was easily a half-head taller than I was, and a good deal stockier, but I think that I had said that I could whip him, and I honestly tried to make good. He remained cool and collected, delivering well directed and telling blows on my physiognomy. The gore ran from my nose, and tears of rage from my eyes, as never before or since. But I fought on blindly, hitting my adversary only occasionally, and even then with very little force. At last, utterly beaten and exposed, I ran from the field-of-battle, shouting back over my shoulder, "Bob'll do you all up, you spalpeens." My grandmother mopped my battered face, and tried to console me, but it was a hard task. I knew what she didn't know, that my bluff had been called, and that I was no longer an uncertain quantity in the village fighting world; I had been "shown up." For days I shunned my regular playmates, and I can say that after that defeat I never fought another mill, and I never expect to fight one again. In five minutes I was completely converted to the peace movement, and have earnestly advocated its principles from the day of the fight to this very moment.

When my aunt was at home "Rest Cottage," or rather her side of it, was a regular beehive of industry. Secretaries and typewriters were at work from morning till night, while my aunt caught up with her voluminous correspondence in her famous "Den." Although we did not always get on well together, almost invariably through my waywardness, I desire to say now, once and forever, that she was one of the most liberal minded women I ever knew; and as a speaker and organizer, I doubt whether in her time there was any woman who excelled her. Had she devoted her life to more popular subjects than temperance and woman's rights, literature, for instance, she would take very high rank to-day in the lists of great orators and writers. She preferred by conviction to devote herself unreservedly to the unpopular agitations, and her following was therefore found principally among women who agreed with her at the start, or who were won over to her opinions by her persuasive gift of language. In England, she was not infrequently likened unto Gladstone, and in Edinburgh, where she spoke during one of her visits to Great Britain, the students, after the meeting, unhooked the horses and themselves pulled her carriage to her hotel. Her statue in Statuary Hall in the capitol at Washington is the only statue of a woman found there; it was presented by the State of Illinois.

To live in a celebrity's home of this character was a privilege which, I fear, we children did not appreciate. It was a Mecca for reformers of all shades and grades from all over the world, and we children grew up in an atmosphere of strong personalities. The names of many of the men and women who visited our house have escaped me, but I recall very distinctly John B. Gough. On this occasion he was entertained by my mother, my aunt being absent from home. He was an old man with white hair and beard, and was in charge of a niece, if I remember correctly, who tended him like a baby. A local organization had hired him to speak for them in the "Old First." His speech was as successful as usual, and the church was crowded, but the old gentleman was tired out when he got back to the house, and was rather querulous. My mother had prepared a light supper for him of milk, bread and butter and the like, but it was not to his taste. "I need tea," he declared in no uncertain tones, and tea had to be made, the delay increasing the old agitator's impatience. On getting it, he found it too weak, or too strong, or too hot, and the upshot of the affair was that he left us rather out of sorts, but not before receiving $200, his fee for the lectures. He tucked the roll carelessly into a small overcoat pocket, and then took his leave. Old age had begun to tell on him very plainly, and not many years after he died.

Francis Murphy, John P. St. John, nearly all the later candidates for the Presidency on the Prohibition ticket, and of course the prominent women agitators of the time, found their way to "Rest Cottage," sooner or later. The place itself, although comfortable and cozy, was very modest in appearance, but it probably sheltered at one time or another during the last fifteen years of my aunt's life, more well-known persons than any other private home of the Middle West. My aunt also kept in touch with a great many people through her correspondence. She believed in answering every letter received even if the reply were shipped back with deficient postage, and she knew by letter or personal acquaintance all the great men and women of her day, that I have ever heard of. If an author's book pleased her, she wrote him to that effect, and often vice versa. On the appearance of Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward" she was distressed that he had not eliminated alcoholic beverages from the programme of his Utopia, and wrote him to this effect. He replied, very simply, that the thought had not occurred to him, which must be his excuse, if excuse were necessary, for overlooking the matter.

In the village my aunt was easily the main citizen of the place so far as fame went. There were many who did not agree with her notions of reform, but the village, as a whole, was proud to have such a distinguished daughter.

When criticising my escapades and backslidings, my aunt, I have been told, was wont to say that, "Josiah has character and will power, but he wills to do the wrong things." No doubt I did. If companions joined me in a runaway bout, it was I, as a rule, who planned the "get-away"; only on one or two occasions was I persuaded by others. More or less the same motives actuated me in running away from "Rest Cottage" as had formerly prevailed when living in the old brown house, but I am inclined to think now that, consciously or unconsciously, I would get tired of living entirely with women, and that this also may have had something to do in starting me off. Except when my brother was at home, which was at this time only infrequently, I was the only male human being living at "Rest Cottage"; from grandmother down to my younger sister all the other inmates were females, and there was a feminine atmosphere about things which used to get on my nerves more than my mother realized. My dogs—I generally had two—were males, and many is the consolatory stroll we have taken if for no other reason than to consolidate our forces.

My love of dogs goes back as far as I can remember, and I have always tried to have some representative of this species around me. The dog who stood by me at "Rest Cottage" and helped me to increase the masculine forces, was called "Major." Not only because he was my constant companion, but also because he was the source of one or two "spats" between my aunt and myself, determines me to tell his story, or at least what I know of it.

One evening, my mother returned late from the city accompanied by a burly, black dog. I afterwards decided that he was a cross between a Shepherd and a Newfoundland. "I've brought you a dog," said mother, and I jumped up with glee, being quite dogless at the time. The dog snarled, and drew close to my mother. In fact, he sat at her feet throughout the evening meal, refusing to have anything to do with me, although he accepted in very friendly fashion the advances of my sisters. I concluded with disappointment that he had been a woman's dog. My mother told us how she had come by him. "On leaving the depot in town," she said, "and starting for my office, this dog jumped suddenly before me, barked, and evidently, from his actions, took me for his mistress. I patted him, and went along to the office—the dog followed. He went up to my office, and when I took my seat at my desk, he made a place for himself near-by. At noon time I shared my lunch with him. He spent the afternoon very decorously either under or near the desk.

"When it came train time I thought that surely the dog would scent his way home, but no; he followed me to the station, as if I was the only one in the world that he knew, or cared to know. It seemed too bad to cast such a dog adrift, and I asked the baggageman of the train what he thought I ought to do. 'Take him home, Missus,' he said, 'he's worth while and'll make you a good beast.' We got him into the car, and he lay quiet until we got here. The minute he was turned loose, however, he scooted around in front of the engine and up toward the Ridge as hard as he could go. I said to the baggageman: 'There goes both dog and the quarter for his fare.' 'The ungrateful beast,' the baggageman replied, 'but perhaps he'll come back,' and sure enough he did, after the train had pulled out again. He followed me here to the house all right, and, Josiah, I am going to give him to you."

It was the biggest dog I had ever owned, but possession, despite my mother's statement, looked doubtful—the dog had decided that he belonged to mother. That same evening my mother and I went out to call, taking the dog with us. It was very dark, and before we had gone a block, we missed the dog. "There," I exclaimed, when we moved on after fruitless whistles and calls, "there, I told you to leave him at home, and now you see I was wise. He's lit out." "Oh, I guess not," my mother consoled me, and she was right, for, on returning to our home, there was that big, black dog on the rug waiting to be let in.

He stayed with us without a break for seven years, learned to accept me as his master, and whip him though I would at times, he won my respect and love as no other dog ever had at that time. He was not young when we got him, probably six years old at least, so he lived to a respectable old age. In saying that he was companionable, honest, more or less discreet, and fond of us all, I have told about all that is necessary about his personality. Tricks he had none, and he was too dignified and rheumatic to learn any from me. He merely wanted to be sociable, keep guard at night, and, if it suited our convenience, his "three squares" a day, but he very seldom asked for them, nor did he need to. He had his likes and dislikes of course, like all dogs, but if left alone, except when unusually rheumatic and irritable, he bothered nobody.

He came to cause trouble between me and my aunt in this way: She was at home a good deal, one winter, when I was vainly trying to teach "Major" to haul me on my sled. He disliked this occupation very much, and the only way I could get him to pull me at all, was to take him to the far end of the village, near our old brown house, hitch him to the sled, and then let him scoot for home. It's a wonder that he didn't dash my brains out against trees and passing vehicles, but we always got home without a mishap.

One morning, I was bent on a ride, and "Major" was on the back porch, nursing, or rather pretending to, as I thought, his rheumatic legs. I treated him rather severely, convinced that he was shamming, and he set up a most uncanny howling. My aunt came rushing down the stairs, saw what I was trying to do, and gave me one of her very few scoldings—a chillier one I have seldom received. Unless I could be more merciful to dumb animals, she warned me in her clearcut way, "Major" would be sent away; at any rate I was to desist immediately from all further sledding with him, and I did.

"Major's" end came after I had left the village. He took a violent dislike to the groceryman, and when the latter appeared in the backyard, was wont to snap at the man's heels. Complaint was lodged against him with the police, and one morning the chief came up, and ended "Major's" rheumatism and further earthly struggle with a bullet.

If I loved anything or anybody sincerely, and I think that I did, I loved that dog. He was the first to greet me when I would return home from my travels, and he was usually the last to say good-bye. I hope his spiritual being, if he had one, is enjoying itself, rheumatic-less and surrounded by many friends.

My liking for children, particularly young boys, between three and five, if we can get on together, has developed as my wandering tendencies have died out. In early youth I cannot be said to have been very fond of them. Indeed, I recall a most cruel thing I did to a little baby girl, living near our old brown house. As I look back over the disgraceful affair now, it seems to me one of the insanest things I ever did; but I have heard another member of my family complain of being similarly tempted at least, when young. The girl was perhaps two or three years old, a chubby little creature with fat, red cheeks, and large blue eyes like saucers. She used to sit every morning in a high chair alone in her mother's bedroom. I was at liberty to roam over this house quite as freely as over our own, and was accustomed to make early morning calls to find out what my friend "Charley's" plans for the day were, and if the coast was clear, to visit the little girl upstairs. Only infrequently was I tempted to make the child cry, but when this temptation came, I would pinch the girl's red cheeks quite hard. At first she would look at me in astonishment, a captivating look of wonder entering her eyes. Another pinch, and still harder. The child's little lips would begin to tremble, and the look of wonder gave way to one of distress. I watched the different facial changes with the same interest that a physician observes a change for the better or worse in his patient. Sometimes it seemed as if I were literally glued to the spot, so fascinating did the child's countenance become. A final pinch of both cheeks severer than either of the other two, and my purpose was achieved, the aggrieved girl giving vent to her pain and sorrow in lusty screams and big, hot round tears. Then I would try to pacify her, usually succeeding, and take my departure, nobody the wiser about it all in spite of the crying. I can only compare this cruel performance on my part, in purpose and intention at least, to the alleged cannibal feasts which certain African explorers have been accused of ordering and paying for. They obviously wanted to see a human being cooked, served and eaten out of curiosity. A similar motive impelled me to make those early morning calls and pinch that innocent child's cheeks—her velvety skin seemed to me to be made for pinching, and it was interesting to watch her preliminary antics previous to yielding completely to her emotions. I am glad to report that this cruelty was not long practiced by me, and that to-day actual physical suffering in man or beast distresses me very much.

By the time our family had moved into the annex to "Rest Cottage" my younger sister had grown in years and stature so that she made a very acceptable playmate. I recall very distinctly memories of her childhood which show that the spirit of independence was pretty strong in all of us children.

On the first occasion my sister was perhaps six years old. My mother had sentenced her to confine her play to the front and back yards for the day; under no circumstances was she to be seen in the street. I had received a similar punishment.

What was my horror, or what I pretended to be such, to discover "Mame" in the afternoon, well outside the prescribed bounds, hobnobbing unconcernedly with her girl friends as if punishment was something utterly foreign to her life. Pointing my finger scornfully at her, I shouted: "You unexemplified hyena, come back within bounds. You'll get licked to-night."

"Mame" barely deigned to look at me, remarking proudly:

"You don't suppose that I am one of those girls that always mind, do you?"

On the second occasion my mother was at home and able to correct my sister's disobedience instanter. The day before, without a word of counsel with my mother, "Mame" had gone to her particular girl friends, perhaps twenty in number, and invited them to a party at our house, a party which existed solely in her imagination. At the appointed hour, on the day following, the children began to appear in their best clothes, asking naturally for their young hostess. It did not take my mother long to find out the truth, but she bided her time until all the guests had arrived. Then, my sister being forced to be present, the young ladies were told that "Mame" had invited them to something which did not exist, and, although she was very sorry, she would have to send them away with that explanation. A severer rebuke to "Mame" could not have been administered, and the party escapade was one of the very few disobediences I remember her being connected with. She was without doubt the most tractable and well-behaved member of our quartette.

I shall never forget her conduct at my grandfather's—my mother's father—deathbed. An uncle had come to "Rest Cottage," warning us that grandfather was dying, and telling us to go over to the sickroom where grandmother and many of the other relatives were gathered. "Mame" and I took rear seats, on a doorstep, if I recall correctly. My grandfather was unconscious, and his sweet wife, my mother's mother, an invalid, sat in her rolling chair, watching her mate and father of her children, dying, the most lovely embodiment of resignation and desire "that God's will be done," that I can recall having seen. Of course, the women and children were sobbing, and "Mame" and I joined them. Pretty soon, I noticed that there was a lull in the sobbing—my grandfather had breathed his last and his suffering was over—but "Mame" had not noticed it, and continued to cry pretty noisily. "Let up, Mame," she claims that I whispered to her. "The others have stopped." I don't remember making this observation and advising "Mame" about it, but no doubt I did, for "Mame" was nothing if not honest.

[CHAPTER IV]

EARLY COLLEGE DAYS

In the foregoing chapters I have tried to give some idea of the kind of boy I was, say by the time I had reached my fifteenth year, or the calendar year 1884. There is no use denying that such wickedness as I displayed was due more to willful waywardness than to hereditary influences. Consequently, I have always felt justified in replying to a distant cousin as I did when she took me to task for making so much trouble and causing my family such anxiety.

"Can you imagine yourself doing such dreadful things when you get your senses back and are able to think clearly?" was the way her question was worded. My reply was: "In my senses or out of them, I certainly can't imagine any one else as having done them." And I can truthfully say that, as a boy, I was very little given to trying to shift the blame for my sins on other boys. I was not a "squealer," although I was an expert fibster when necessity seemed to call for a lie in place of the plain, unvarnished truth.

In the spring or early autumn of 1884 my mother and sisters went to Europe, and I was sent to a small Illinois college. The village home was broken up and for better or for worse, the five of us, in the years that were to follow, were to be either voluntary exiles abroad, or travelers at home or in foreign parts. Since that final break-up our complete family has never again been gathered together under one and the same roof.

In spite of a manly effort to overcome them, two traits dogged my steps to college as persistently as they had troubled me at home—the love of the tempting Beyond, and an alarming uncertainty in my mind about the meaning of the Law of Mine and Thine. It was going to take several wearisome and painful years yet before I was to become master of these miserable qualities. They were the worst pieces of baggage I took away with me. My better traits, as I recall them, were willingness and eagerness to learn when I was not under the spell of Die Ferne, a fair amount of receptivity in acquiring useful facts and information, and for most of the time a tractable well-weaning, amenable boy disposition. All of these good qualities were scattered to the four winds, however, when the call became irresistible. I stood to win as a student, if love for distant fields could be kept under control. Otherwise there was no telling what I might become or do. Under these circumstances I began my collegiate career in a denominational college in the western part of Illinois. My mother, of course, hoped for the best; and at the time of her departure it looked as if I had definitely struck the right road at last.

I remained for a little over two years at college advancing with conditions to my sophomore year. I paid for my board and lodging by "chore" work in a lawyer's home in the town, so that the expenses my mother had to meet were comparatively light. The studies that seemed to suit me best were history, historical geography and modern languages. Mathematics and Greek and Latin were tiresome subjects in which I made barely average progress. Mathematics were a snare and a delusion to me throughout my school and college life in America. I mean sometime to pick up my old arithmetic again and see whether maturer years may have given me a clearer insight into the examples and problems that formerly gave me so much trouble.

History, Geography and German, interested me from the start, and I usually stood well in these classes. History took hold of me just as biography did, and I used to read long and late such works as Motley's "Dutch Republic," Bancroft's "History of the United States," Prescott's books on Mexico and South America, and an interesting autobiography or biography was often more appealing to me than a novel or story. Indeed, I read very little fiction during the time I was at college, preferring to pore over an old geography and map out routes of travel to be enjoyed when I had made enough money to undertake them as legitimate enterprises, or, perhaps, as a hired explorer, whose services commanded remunerative prices. For a while the ambition to be a lawyer struggled with my traveling intentions, and I seriously considered taking a course in law in my benefactor's library and office when my academic course should be finished; but this resolve never came to anything because my academic studies were never finished.

For two years, and more, I had struggled as hard as any of my fellow students to support myself, keep up with my class, and probably harder than most of them to be "on the level," and above all things not to let Die Ferne entice me away from my new home and pleasant surroundings. Many and many a time Die Ferne would whistle one of her seductive signals, and it was all I could do to conquer the desire to go and answer it in person; but my studies, the work at home, and pleasant companions helped me to resist the temptation, and, as I have said, for about two years I attended strictly to business, hearing Die Ferne calling, from time to time, but closing my ears to the enticing invitation.

My undoing at college had a most innocent beginning, as was the case with so many of my truancies. Often as not the impulse which drove me to the Open Road was, taken by itself, as laudable and worth while as many of those other impulses which inhibited runaway trips. My ambition, for instance, to go to some distant town, make my own way as a bread-winner and student, and eventually become well-to-do and respected, was in essentials a praiseworthy desire; but the trouble was that I insisted that no one should hear from me or know about my progress until I had really "arrived," as it were. I always demanded that the thing be done secretly, and only as secrecy was an assured factor did such a runaway project really appeal to me.

What broke up my college career, and eventually impelled me to vamose was a simple trial contest of essayists in the literary society of which I was a member. The winner in the contest stood a fair chance of being chosen by his society to compete with the essayist of the rival society in a general literary contest in the opera house; this was really the event of its kind of the year. I was selected, along with two others, to try my skill as an essayist in the preliminary family bout. Our society was divided into two closely allied cliques, I belonging to the "Wash B" coterie, and the most formidable contestant that I had to meet, being connected with the "Camelites," as we used to call them. These two really hostile camps made the society at election time and on occasions when contestants for the preliminary and opera house contests were to be chosen, literally a wrangling, backbiting and jealous collection of schemers and wire-pullers. The "Wash B" set had all they could do to secure for me the place in the preliminaries, which would doubtless determine the selection for the real contest later on between the two distant societies. But chosen I was, and for six weeks every spare hour that I had was religiously devoted to that wonderful essay. I forget the title of it now, but the matter dealt tritely enough, I make no doubt, with the time-worn subject—"The Western March of Empire." The writing finished, "Wash B" himself took me in hand, and for another month drilled me in delivery, enunciation and gesture. My room-mate, when the drilling was over, said that I was a perfect understudy of "Wash B," who was considered at the time the finest reader our society, and the entire college in fact, contained. This criticism naturally set me up a good deal and I began seriously to entertain thoughts of winning the prize, a small financial consideration. At last the fatal night arrived, and we three contestants marched to our seats on the platform. In front of us were the three judges, formidable looking men they seemed at the time, although I knew them all as mild-mannered citizens of the town with whom I had often had a pleasant chat. A neutral—one who was neither a "Wash B" nor a "Camelite"—was the first to stand up and read his essay. As I recall the reading and subject matter of this first effort I remember that I thought that I had it beaten to a standstill if I could only retain all the fine inflections and mild gentle gestures which "Wash B" had been at such pains to drill into me. I was second, and stood up, bowed, and, as friends afterwards told me, so far as delivery was concerned I was "Wash B" from start to finish. The third man, an uncouth fellow, but endowed with a wonderfully modulated voice—he was really an orator—then got up and read almost faultlessly so far as intonation and correct and timely emphasis were concerned, a dull paper on Trade Unionism. This student was the one I particularly feared, but when he was through and the three of us took our places in the audience so many "Wash B's" told me that I had won hands down, as they put it, that I gradually came to believe that I had acquitted myself remarkably well. The judges, however, were the men to give the real decision, and they thought so little of my effort that I was placed last on the list—even the neutral with practically no delivery had beaten me. Later he came to me and said that he never expected to take second place. The uncouth "Camelite" with the banal paper, but wonderful voice, carried the day, and was declared winner of the prize. My chagrin and disappointment seemed tremendous for the moment, and the fact that a number of "Camelites" came to me and said that I ought to have been given the prize did not tend to lessen the poignancy of the grief I felt, but managed to conceal until I was well within the four walls of my room. There I vowed that never, never again would I submit an essay of mine to the whims of three men, who, in my judgment, were such numbskulls that they let themselves be carried away by a mere voice. "They never stopped to consider the subject matter of our essays at all," I stormed, and for days I was a very moody young man about the house. The "Wash B's" tried to console me by promising to elect me essayist for the grand contest in the opera house in the autumn, but although I deigned reconciliation with my defeat, the truth was that I was brooding very seriously over this momentous failure as it seemed to me. I shunned my former boon companions, and was seen very little on the campus. The defeat had eaten into my soul much more deeply than even I at first imagined possible, and as the days went by, a deep laid plot for a runaway trip began to take form and substance. As soon as I realized what was going on I struggled hard to drive the plan out of my head, but while I had been mourning over my failure as an essayist and particularly as a "Wash B" essayist, the subtle, sneaking scheme had wormed its way into my very sub-consciousness, and before I knew it I was entertaining the tempter in no inhospitable manner. After all, it was a consolation to know that at a pinch I could throw over the whole college curriculum, if necessary, and quietly vamose and, perhaps, begin again in some other institution where my crude, but by me highly prized, literary productions would receive fairer treatment. I had a feeling that a runaway trip would be the end of my college career, and there were influences that struggled hard to hold me back; I have often wondered what my later life would have been had they prevailed. Never before had I been so near a complete victory over Die Ferne, and never before had I felt myself the responsible citizen in the community that my college life and self-supporting abilities helped to make me. Then, too, my good friend and counselor, the lawyer, was a man who had made a very great impression on me—an achievement by no means easy in those days of rebellion and willful independence. I knew about the hard fight that he had made in life before I went to his home. He had often visited in our home, and I had been much impressed with his set, cleancut countenance. Some would have called it hard unless they knew the man and what he had been through. I studied it with particular interest, because I knew that every now and then I also struggled hard to do right, and I wondered whether my face after complete mastery of myself, if this should ever come to pass, would some day take on the terrible look of determination and victory which was so often present in that of the lawyer.

All of his victories I cannot report upon, because there must have been many, very many, of a minor character, that he had to work for every day of his life. But the one that took him out of the gutter, and gave him strength to quit, at one and the same time, over-indulgence in liquor and the tobacco habit, was the one that took hold of me, although I hardly knew what whisky tasted like myself and was only intermittently a user of tobacco. The fact that the man had overcome these habits by sheer will-power, "without getting religion," as had often been told me, was what took hold of my sense of wonder. Both in my home, and in the lawyer's, so far as his good wife was concerned, I had been taught to believe, or, at any rate, had come partially to believe, that all such moral victories, indeed, that all conquests over one's rebellious self, had to come through prayer and Divine assistance, or not at all. I had never wholly accepted this doctrine, although it probably had a stronger hold on me than I knew. But the lawyer—ah, ha! here was at last a living, breathing witness to the fact that prayer and Divine help were not indispensable in gathering oneself together, putting evil habits aside, and amounting to something in the world. I did not say anything about the discovery I had made; but I studied my hero closely, and treasured highly all facts and fancies which rather intimate contact with him called forth, and which substantiated the original and primal fact—i.e., that will-power and not "conversion" had made him one of the noted citizens of his community and one of the prominent lawyers of his State.

I do not know whether he knew in what great respect I held him or not. This much is certain, however; he almost never looked at or spoke to me severely, and he was constantly doing something kind or useful. I wish now that I had been old enough to have had a square talk with him about will-power and Divine help. He was not a very communicative man, and it is possible that he would not have consented to enter into such an interview, thinking perhaps that I was too young to discuss such matters from his point of view. So I lived on, looking up invariably to him as an example when it was necessary to grit my teeth and overcome some slight temptation. His wife, who was really a second mother to me, saw to it that I attended church and studied my Bible—the college authorities demanded attendance at church, and on Mondays called the roll of all those who had or had not been present at church the day before—but somehow she never had the influence over me that her white-haired, clean-shaven stalwart husband did. It was her constant prayer and hope that "Gill," as she called him, would eventually get religion and be assured of heavenly peace. He frequently attended church with her, and certainly his efforts were as exemplary as the college president's, but I have heard it said that, if he believed in any theology at all, it was in that miserable, foolish doctrine—silly creation of weak minds—that a certain number of souls are predestined to damnation anyhow, and that his was one of them on account of the wild life he had led in his younger manhood. This "story" about my hero also took hold of me very perceptibly, and I often used to look at the man's fine face surreptitiously, and wonder what could be going on in a mind that had become resigned to eternal punishment. I could not follow him this far in his philosophy, but I have long since come to the conclusion that the man was too sensible to entertain any such theory, and that the "story" was the mere patchwork of a number of wild guesses and injudicious surmises on the part of relatives, and his lovable, but not always careful, wife.

One day, a relative of mine, known as "The Deacon," came to the town at my hostess's request, and held some revival meetings, or, perhaps, they were called consecration meetings. "The Deacon," although an ardent Methodist, I believe, and a determined striver for the salvation of men's souls, was not one of the conventional boisterous revivalists whom we all have seen and heard. He was quiet and retiring in his manner, and seemed to rely on the sweet reasonableness of the Bible and his interpretation of it to convince men of the need of salvation, rather than on loud exhortation and still louder singing. He was very deaf, and when I called him for breakfast, mornings, I had to go into his room and shake him, when he would put his trumpet to his ear and ask "what was up." I would tell him that it was time for him to be up, and he would thank me in that strange metallic voice which so many deaf people have, or acquire.

He spent much of his time talking with his hostess, and, one morning, rather injudiciously, I think, he told her of a friend of his, "just your own husband's size, weight and years," who had suddenly dropped dead in Chicago. This incident took hold of the good woman in an unfortunate way, and when I saw her, she had been crying, and was bewailing the fact that her "Gill" might also drop off suddenly before getting religion. There was nothing that I could say beyond the fact that he seemed to me good enough to drop off at any time; but with this his wife was not to be consoled. "Gill must give himself up to God," she persisted, and I retreated, feeling rather guilty on these lines myself, as I was not at all sure that I had given myself up to God, or would ever be able to. He was such a myth to me, that I found it far more practicable to study the character and ways of the lawyer whom I knew as a visible, tangible living being.

It may be that my adoration for my benefactor—I really think it amounted to that—was not the best influence that might have been exercised over my mind; it has been suggested to me in later years, for instance, that it was probably at this time that I laid the foundation for that firm belief in will-power, which, for better or for worse, has been about all that I have believed in seriously as a moral dynamic for a number of years. Be this as it may, for years after leaving college and the lawyer's home, my recollection of him, of his brave fight to do right, and of the friendly interest he took in me, contributed more than once to help tide me over a spell when Die Ferne was doing her utmost to persuade me to throw over everything and chase foolishly after her.

Now, that the good man is gone, I regret more than ever that I allowed that miserable essay contest to stampede me as it did. The first departure from college and the lawyer's home was a failure. I halted foolishly an entire day at a town not far from the college, and the lawyer, suspecting that I might do this, sent on two of my college friends—older than I was—to scout about and try and locate me. They succeeded in their mission—one of them was the noted "Wash B," who had tried so hard to teach me how to read an essay. They did their utmost to persuade me to return, but I was obdurate, and they went back without me. In an hour or two the lawyer himself appeared on the scene, and then I had to go back and knew it. He said very little to me, beyond asking me to give to him such funds as I possessed. In the afternoon he called on a brother lawyer who, as I could judge from the conversation, was in some serious legal difficulty. When we were in the street again my captor said: "Josiah, there is a man who is going to the penitentiary." He spoke very slowly and impressively, but did not offer to tell me why the man was going to be shut up or when, and I was sensible enough not to ask.

Returned to our home the lawyer made no reference to my unconventional leave-taking, and apparently considered the matter closed. It was decided, for the sake of my feelings, that I should not return immediately to college, and I hugged my room as much as possible, anxious to keep out of sight of my classmates, who, I felt sure, knew all about my escapade. There I brooded again over my poor success as an essayist, my lack of will-power to bear up under defeat, and I also tried to plan out another escape from what seemed to me a terrible disgrace. One afternoon, when I was particularly gloomy, the fat, cheerful president of the college knocked at my door. He had come to have a heart-to-heart talk with me, I learned, and I was soon on the defensive. He laughed at my bashfulness about going back into college, pooh-poohed my assertion that I was "no good anyhow and might better be let go," and in general did his utmost to cheer me up and make the "slipping back" into my classes, as he put it, as simple and easy as could be. But, good man, he labored with me in vain. The next day, some funds coming to hand, I was off again, for good and all. The well-meaning president has long since gone to his final rest. The following morning I was in Chicago, and very soon after in my grandmother's home. Die Ferne was only indirectly to blame for this trip because I made for the only home I had as soon as I decamped from college, refusing to be lured away into by-paths. Die Ferne was only in so far to blame that she originally suggested the desertion of my studies, offering no suggestions that I paid any attention to, about an objective. I—poor, weak mortal—was terribly to blame in throwing away, after two years' straight living, the chance that was offered me to complete my college course, and later to go and become a lawyer. And yet—balancing what was considered a golden opportunity at the time, against the hard school of experience it has since been my lot to go through, and what the teaching that I have had means to me now, I confess to a leaning in favor of the hard knocks and trials and tribulations of the road as the more thorough curriculum for me at the time of life they were endured, than would have been the college course and a lawyer's shingle. It is difficult, of course, to decide in such matters, but somehow I think that the world means more to me in every way to-day, in spite of what I have pulled out of, than it ever could have meant on set academic and professional lines.

The stay in the home village was not a prolonged one, long enough, however, to ponder over the change in my life which I had so domineeringly brought about—to go back to college was out of the question, and the lawyer did not want me back. My capriciousness had exhausted his patience, and he frankly said that he washed his hands of the "case." To remain in the home village was also out of the question, according to my aunt. It was there that I had first shown my dare-devil proclivities, and in her opinion it was best to get me as far away from former village associations as possible. Besides, it was not thought wise to have me in the care of my aging grandmother, who could only incidentally keep track of me.

I wondered myself what was best to do, not caring for another runaway trip right away, and temporarily regretting very much that I had been so silly over that picayune essay. There was nothing I could think of that seemed feasible, and it was just as well that I did not lose my head over some personally cherished plan, because my resourceful aunt had already found an asylum for me. It was a farm in western Pennsylvania, owned by some distant relatives. Here I was to help care for crops and stock, and see what living in the open would do for my over-imaginative head. I was to receive my board and twenty-five dollars for the season's work, a huge sum it seemed to me when first mentioned, for I never before had possessed such wealth in actual cash. I went to work with zeal, and determination to learn all I could about farming. For a number of weeks all went well, in fact, until I made an excursion with an older friend and his fiancée, and a girl, who was the first, I believe, that I thought I really liked. I never told her name to my family, beyond calling her "Jeminy Jowles," which was as much a real name as mine was. For some reason, for years after this temporary attachment, which on my part, at least, was genuine and spontaneous, I never wanted my family to know that I was interested in any particular young lady, and as I told above, I feigned indifference to nearly all girls rather than be thought "teched" with admiration for any one or two. After our return from our outing, "Jeminy" returned to the lake to help take care of one of the villas there, as a number of girls did at that time, and are doing now, I have no doubt. "Jeminy's" departure made the village very dull for me, and the farm absolutely distasteful. So, one day, I asked my cousin to give me what he thought was my due, out of the promised twenty-five dollars. I told him that I was going to New York State to see if I could earn more money. He knew about "Jeminy" being there, and as he thought that something profitable might develop out of our friendship, I was given my money and then hied away to the New York resorts, and "Jeminy." The latter had to work so hard all day and well on into the evening that I saw very little of her, but I remember dreaming and thinking about her, when I had to wander about alone. I spent very little time in looking for a job on account of my moving, and before long I determined to look elsewhere for work. What was my chagrin, when returning on the day that the faithless "Jeminy" was about to depart for her home, to see her coming down the wharf from the boat with a former admirer, clothed in fine raiment, whom I had ousted in "Jeminy's" affections in the little farming village in Pennsylvania. I surmised him to be possessed of a fat bank-roll, judging by his independence and "only board in this sidewalk" manner of appropriating "Jeminy" for his very own, and of his giving me a very distant and critical look, which my somewhat worn clothes no doubt deserved. That was the end of my first and last real love affair. Jilted, funds very low, and no employment in sight—here was a situation worthy of any boy's best mettle. Perhaps the jilting hurt worse for the time being, but the necessity of replenishing my funds helped me to forget it somewhat. By rights I should have returned to Pennsylvania and gone to work again on my relative's farm. But there I should have seen the faithless "Jeminy," perhaps her old admirer as well, and I was in no mood for such encounters. No! I was not going to allow the village to make fun of me, even if I starved elsewhere. Besides, what chance would my old clothes have in a competitive contest with those of my rival? Obviously a very slim one. Fate was temporarily against me in that direction, I was sure, and I cast my eyes toward the north—probably because "Jeminy" and the farm meant south. The west did not attract me just then, and the east—New York constituted the greater part of the east to me in those days—seemed too complicated and full of people.

One night I "hopped" a freight train bound for Buffalo, and secluded myself among some Standard Oil Company's barrels in a box-car. In a wreck I should probably have come to grief in the midst of all that oil, but no wreck had been scheduled for that ride. My possessions consisted of what I had on my back and a few nickels in my pocket. In this fashion I hoped to impress the mighty north. That old dream about disappearing from the view of friends, making my way alone in the world, and then returning independent, successful and well-to-do, buoyed me up, even when "Jeminy's" desertion of me was most tantalizing.

I finally fell asleep on top of the mighty Trust's property, to dream of honest efforts to succeed, if not of wonderful triumphs. At heart I desired that the realization of my dream of future prosperity and fame should come through honorable toil and struggle. Indeed, during this period of youth, and even earlier, I cannot recall any disappearance or runaway trip on my part which did not presuppose a "square deal" in my account with the world; theoretically, at any rate, honesty was as dear an asset to me as to the boys who staid at home and were regular. That sitting on the mighty Trust's barrels and "hooking" a ride in a car which had been chartered and paid for by others was not a "square deal" did not occur to me. And to deliver myself of a confession on this score once and for all, I can say that I have never had any serious pricks of conscience on this account. There is no defense to offer for such obtuseness, any more than there was for my using half-fare tickets, when I had the wherewithal to buy them, until I was over seventeen. I merely report the fact as symptomatic of all passengers, good, bad and indifferent, who "beat" their way on our railroads. I have read of a "freak" who notified a railroad company that he had stolen a certain number of rides on its trains, estimating the probable cost of tickets for the computed mileage, and enclosing a post-office order for a small amount of the entire sum, as his preliminary payment in making good. Perhaps this man actually existed, but it is more likely than not that he was either a reporter's invention or, if real, that he merely tantalized the railroad company with a statement of his indebtedness, omitting to enclose the post-office order. No "hang-out" gathering of hoboes would ever believe such a yarn—not even about a "gay-cat."

My freight train stopped very early in the morning in the railroad yards at East Buffalo, and there I got out. Stumbling over tracks and dodging switch engines, I made my way to what turned out to be the yardmaster's headquarters; his office was upstairs in the dingy wooden building, while below was a warm room where switchmen could rest. It was a cold September morning, the sun not yet up, and that warm room looked very inviting. I finally screwed up enough courage to enter, and I found myself all alone. Switchmen came in later, but they barely noticed me until I excused my bold entrance, and frankly confessed that I was looking for work. My clothes—they were not good enough to court "Jeminy" in, but never mind! They saved the day or the situation in that shanty. It was plain to the switchmen that I was not a tramp, and my subdued manners evidently made a good impression also. Later the night yardmaster, a jovial German, came in and learned of my plight. He looked me over carefully, quizzed me rather minutely about my last job and my travels, and finally told me to make myself comfortable near the fire until quitting time, when he promised to have another talk with me. That second talk was the beginning of a series of mishaps, which, could the good yardmaster have foreseen them, would certainly have made him hesitate before securing for me the position which his influence enabled him to do. The mishaps will be described later on, but I must refer to them here on account of that second interview with the German. Whatever else we may or may not wonder about in life, it has always seemed to me interesting to speculate about what might have happened to us of a momentous nature had certain very trivial and insignificant circumstances in earlier life only been different. How many men and women, for instance, on looking back over their lives, discover just such slight events in their early careers, and realize, long years after, how important these events were, after all. Only the other day I made the acquaintance of a man, now a resident of Hawaii, who explains his present success and permanent home there by a much-advertised eruption of a local volcano. He was a poorly paid telegraph operator in Oregon at the time of the eruption, which occurred just as he was thinking about what to do with his vacation. He finally decided to see the volcano, even if it cost him all his savings, and off to Hawaii he sailed—and there he stayed. Opportunity after opportunity came to him, and he had succeeded. Why? The man says, "On account of that derned old spouter." Qui lo sa?

What would have happened later if that yardmaster had not looked me up again and put me through another series of questions I, of course, cannot say. But it is easily possible that something very different from what I have to report upon in Part Second might have happened. The immediate result of that second interview with the yardmaster was that he promised me a position as "yard car reporter," and took me into his own home at the very cheap rate of $15.00 a month for board and lodging, there remaining for me to save or spend, as I saw fit, $20.00 out of the $35.00 which was my monthly stipend—a princely sum I thought, at the time, not exceeded in its wonderful effect as a salary, until years after, when $300.00 a week, for two months or so, once again gave me more or less the same inflated sense of joy which the $35.00 a month had formerly also been able to achieve.

The car reporting proved more difficult for me than the yardmaster had anticipated. First of all I had to learn the names and location of all the different tracks in the yards at East Buffalo. I studied them mainly at night, because this was when I was on duty. It ought to be stated immediately that I never mastered their geography or nomenclature satisfactorily, and that my reports about the numbers and ownership of the cars were very faulty. As I recall these reports to-day I fear that officially I sent many a car out of the yards that remained at home, and that I unintentionally reported as safe in port an equal number of cars that, for aught I know, may to this day be wandering about aimlessly over the prairies. However, I was not to hold this position long, so no great damage was done, I hope.

Writing about my early years and bidding good-bye to them here in print has been a harder task than I expected. Bidding good-bye to them formally and physically years ago was not difficult. To reach twenty-one, then thirty, then—I always looked on thirty as a satisfying goal, the years seemed to come and go so slowly. Then, too, I realized, after a fashion, that my youth was considered pretty much of a fiasco, and I wanted to get just as far away from failure and disaster as possible. Now—well, perhaps it is better that I keep my thoughts to myself. I will say, however, that retrospection can bring with it some of the most mournful hours the mind has to wallow in.

[CHAPTER V]

MY FIRST IMPRISONMENT

A friend, on receiving word that this book was being written, and that it was intended as a wind-up, for the time being at least, of my Under World reportings, wrote to me as follows:

"Whatever else you do or don't do, don't forget to get some romance into the story. I mean that you should try to get some poetry—oh, yes, I mean poetry—into your account of yourself. Merely a string of dates and facts will not go."

Perhaps the reader may be able to find some scattered bits of intended "poetry" in this Second Part, but on looking it over myself the "bits," if they exist at all, are so widely scattered that I cannot locate them. Yet I had to write this section of the book to make it coherent and connected, "poetry" or no "poetry."

My car reporting in East Buffalo lasted just a week. Then my benefactor, the night yardmaster, and I went to Buffalo proper one day. The yardmaster soon found other friends and, telling me to amuse myself, left me to my own devices. Perhaps, if we had remained together this second part of my book would tell a very different story than it does, perhaps— But something in me says: "What is the use of 'perhapsing' at this late hour? Go ahead and blurt out the truth." I am not sure that there is much use in "perhapsing," but somehow it seems impossible for me to throw off the habit. At times it is so strong that I have caught myself going back to my lodging three times to make certain that no coals had fallen out of the grate—when there was no more probability of such a thing happening on the third inspection than on the first. "And yet," I have reasoned, "perhaps a live coal might have fallen out and burned up the whole place had I not taken a last look and made sure."

So it is in looking back to that day alone in Buffalo—the inevitable perhaps comes to my mind, and I wonder what would have happened if I had simply staid with the yardmaster, which I was very welcome to do had I been so minded.

What I did during the morning and early afternoon I do not recall now; probably I merely wandered about the streets and took in such sights as attracted me. Of this much, however, I feel certain: there was no great Wanderlust in my intentions. My work on the railroad interested me not a little, and I had already begun to calculate the amount of savings I should have at the end of the year. As the day wore on I remember measuring how much time I should need to get back to supper and work, and up to the middle of the afternoon it was my firm determination to report for work early. Then—ah yes, then! I saw a horse and buggy standing idle in one of the main thoroughfares. What it was that prompted me to get into the buggy and drive blindly onward I cannot say, even now. As I have remarked, my job was satisfactory, I was my own "boss" in the daytime, the horse and buggy no more represented personal wealth to me at the time than did one of the stores, and there was no reasonable excuse for a wandering trip. But something, strict church people might say the devil, prompted me to throw over the job, run the risk of being sent to prison as a horse thief, and to ride away with buggy and horse for parts unknown. There is no wish on my part to palliate this crime in the least; I merely want to know why I committed it. At the moment of driving away it no more occurred to me to turn the outfit into gold than it did to turn back. On I went for a good hour, regardless of direction and the police. Then the seriousness of my offense gradually began to dawn on me. What should I do? At first I contemplated leaving the horse with some farmer, thinking that its owner would eventually locate it. But I threw over this plan. It was too late to report for work, and the growing darkness brought on a mild attack of Wanderlust. "Why not proceed as far as possible under the cover of night," I reasoned, "and then leave the rig somewhere in good hands?" I had at last found a road going in the direction I desired at that time to follow, if the car-reporting job was to be given up, and my mind was pretty definitely settled on that score, although a week's wages were due me.

Midnight found me on still another road, and going in a new direction, my mind having changed during the ride. I put the horse into a barn, fed him, and then we both fell asleep. Early morning found us en route again, and no police in sight. By this time the desire to elude capture was very strong, and the wonder is that I succeeded with detectives by the half dozen beating the bushes in various directions. The third day out I reached my destination in Pennsylvania, the home of an acquaintance who dealt in horses and knew me well. My possession of such a valuable horse and fashionable phæton carriage was satisfactorily explained; they were bought at auction, I boldly declared, and represented the result of my savings during the summer. To make a miserable story short, I will merely say that the horse and buggy were turned over to my friend for a money consideration, quite satisfactory to me, but far below what the outfit was worth. It might still be where I parted with it, so far as the astute "detectives" were concerned. It was voluntarily returned to the owner before long. Several weeks later another horse and buggy in my custody arrived at my friend's house, and again the flimsy tale of a "bargain" and inability to resist it was told. It was the silliest "bargain" I ever went in for. Having attended a fair in a neighboring town, not over ten miles away, and having lost my train home, I boldly appropriated a "rig" and drove home in the most unconcerned fashion possible. My credulous friend complimented me on my luck in buying horses, and would no doubt have bought this second outfit from me had something not happened.

About midnight an ominous knock was heard on my friend's outer door. As I felt must be the case, it heralded the arrival of the constables—the horse had been seen and located! There was a bare chance of escape, but as I look back on the situation now the probability is that I should not have got far away before being captured. Some of the villagers, who had also been aroused, were much incensed at my arrest and forced departure, declaring that "no boy in his senses would intentionally steal a horse so near home. There must be some mistake. Probably the boy had mistaken the rig for one that he had been told to get, etc., etc." But their arguments availed nothing, and I was taken away. The committing magistrate made quick work with my story in the lockup, and soon I was lodged in the county jail—my second imprisonment in about eighteen years. (I looked, perhaps, fifteen.)

Die Ferne, everything in fact that I had ever really cared for, seemed irretrievably lost. Yet no tears came to my eyes, and I walked into the miserable "hall" of the jail, said "Hello!" to the other prisoners, as if such a place and companions were what I had always been accustomed to. This ability, if I may call it such, to get along with almost everybody, and for a reasonable amount of time to put up with practically any kind of accommodations has been of great service to me. I notice, however, that in later years "home comforts" are becoming more and more a necessity. My constitution seems to demand a quid pro quo—and wants fair treatment after patiently enduring so many hard knocks.

This first real imprisonment and the jail deserve a minute description.

A number of years ago I contributed to The Forum an article, entitled "The Criminal in the Open." The main thesis supported in this paper was that criminologists had previously been studying the criminal within too narrow bounds—the prison cell; and that to know their man well they must make his acquaintance when free and natural. In general, I still hold to this belief; but on looking back to that first jail experience of mine I am more than ever convinced that as a people, a practical people, too, we are woefully neglecting our duty in continuing the present county jail system with all its accompanying evils; and that it is most distinctly "up to" both criminologist and penalogist to work for radical changes in the present system.

My own experience in that old jail to which I was committed, to wait for trial, is typical of what happens to the average prisoner in most of our jails. The jail building was uncommonly old, but the rules applying therein were about the same that one finds in all country jails; in cities the rules are more severe and exacting.

Soon after entering the jail corridor, or hall, as I have called it, one prisoner after another—they were free to roam at will in the corridor until bedtime—accosted me and, directly or indirectly, tried to find out what I had been "sent up for." I told them quite freely about the charge against me, and in turn learned on what charges they had been shut up. There did not happen to be any murderers or violent offenders in the jail just then, but when found in jails such inmates circulate quite as freely among the possibly innocent as the older prisoners in my jail associated with the young boys. A few of the prisoners were serving jail sentences for minor offences, but the majority, like myself, were waiting for trial. There were burglars, pickpockets, sneak thieves, swindlers, runaway boys, and half-demented men who were awaiting transportation to suitable institutions. In the daytime, from seven in the morning until eight or nine at night, we were all thrown together, for better or for worse, each one to take his chances, in the corridor on the main floor. Here I passed many a dismal hour during the six weeks I had to wait for sentence. At night we were locked in our cells on the tiers above the corridor, two and three men being lodged in one cell. It is only fair to state, however, that the cells were so unusually large and commodious that even four men could have been comfortably lodged in one cell. We were all supposed to keep quiet after the sheriff had locked us in for the night, but in the daytime we were free to play games, laugh and generally amuse ourselves. We cooked our own food. Once a week an election was held, and a new cook was installed; those who knew nothing about cooking were expected to help wash the dishes and keep the corridor clean. There was no work to do beyond these simple duties. It was consequently necessary for us to get exercise in walking, "broomstick calisthenics," as we called our antics with this instrument, and in climbing up and down the stairway. A liberal supply of tobacco was furnished us every morning, and we also got one or two daily newspapers. Our food was simple, but more or less satisfying: Bread, molasses and coffee for breakfast; meat, potatoes and bread at noon; bread, molasses and tea for supper. Those who had money were permitted to send out and buy such luxuries as butter, sugar and milk. All in all, it was probably one of the "easiest" jails, if the prisoner behaved himself, in the whole United States, and I have nothing to criticise in the humanitarian treatment shown us by the sheriff; the jail itself, however, was an eyesore—unsanitary to the last degree, and pathetically insecure had there been expert jail-breakers in our company.

It was the total absence of classification of prisoners, and the resulting mixing together of hardened criminals and young boys, to which attention is mainly called here. From morning till night the "old hands" in crime were exchanging stories of their exploits, while the younger prisoners sat about them with open mouths and eyes of wonder, greedily taking in every syllable. I listened just as intently as anybody, and was hugely impressed with what I heard and saw. The seriousness of my offense advanced me somewhat in the scale of the youthful prisoners, and at times I was allowed to join a "private" confab, supposed to be only for the long initiated and thoroughly tried offenders. This privilege, and the general tone of "toughness" which was all over the prison, had its effect on me, I am sorry to say, and I began to bluster and bluff with the rest. Indeed, so determined was I to be the "real thing" or nothing at all—almost entirely the result of association with the older men—that I was at first unwilling that my lawyer should try to secure a reform-school sentence for me. "If I'm to be sentenced at all," I ordered, "let it be to prison proper. I don't want to associate with a lot of kids." Fortunately, my lawyer did not follow my suggestion.

Meanwhile, Sentence Day, that momentous time, which all prisoners await with painful uncertainty, was drawing nigh. Trials, of course, were to come first, but practically every court prisoner knew that he had been caught "with the goods on," and that Sentence Day would claim him for her prey. My trial was soon over. My lawyer had "worked" very adroitly, and I received sentence immediately—the reform school until I had improved. I remember feeling very sheepish when I was taken back to the jail; such a sentence was meant for a baby, I thought, and what would the "old hands" think? They came to the door in a body when I was brought back, demanding in a chorus: "How much, Kid?"

"A year," I romanced, meaning, of course, in the penitentiary, and faking an old-timer's smile and nonchalance. Later they were told the truth, and then began a course of instruction about "beating the Ref," escaping, to which I paid very close attention.

A few days later the other trials were finished, and Sentence Day was definitely announced. The men to be sentenced put on their "best" for the occasion, those having a surplus of neckties and shirts kindly sharing them with those who were short of these decorations. A hard fate stared them all in the face, and each wanted, somehow, to help his neighbor. They were as nervous a collection of men while waiting for the sheriff as one will find in a moon's travel. They all expected something, but the extent of this something, the severity which the "old man," the judge, would show them, was what made them fidgety. It was an entirely new scene to me, and I watched intently the countenance of each prisoner. My medicine had been received; I knew exactly what was ahead of me, and did not suffer the feeling of uncertainty troubling the others. Finally the sheriff came. "All ready, boys," he said, and the convicted men were handcuffed together in pairs and marched over to the courthouse. In a half-hour they had returned, a remarkable look of relief in all of their faces. Some of them had been given stiff sentences, but, as one man put it, "Thank God, I know what my task is anyhow"; the terrible suspense and waiting were over.

The next day we were to be taken to our different destinations, insane asylum and workhouse for some, the "Ref" and "Pen" for others. Breakfast was our last meal together, and the sheriff's wife sent in little delicacies to make us happier. The meal over, our scanty belongings were packed up, each man and boy put on his best, once more, final good-byes were said to those who remained behind, and the march to our new homes began. Some are possibly still trudging to new places of seclusion at the State's request and demand, others have very likely "squared it" and are now stationary and good citizens, while still others have perhaps "cashed in" here below, and have moved on in spirit to worlds where the days of temptation and punishment are no more. Since the day we left the old, musty jail I have never run across any of my jail companions.

[CHAPTER VI]

IN A REFORM SCHOOL

If some one could only tell us exactly what should, and should not, be done in a reform school a great advance would be achieved in penalogy, which at present is about as much of a science as is sociology. Both—and criminology can be thrown in, too—always reminded me of a cat after a good sousing—they are quite as much in earnest in shaking off what does not agree with them, or what they think does not agree with them, as is the cat in drying itself; but again, like the cat, the shaking often seems to make them look more ragged than ever.

The most that I can attempt to do here is to describe the Reform School I learned to know in Pennsylvania, and tell what it accomplished and failed to accomplish in my case.

The superintendent was the brother of one of the most astute politicians and officeholders this country has produced. He held his position largely through his brother's influence, and might just as well have been given any other "job," so far as his particular fitness for public office was concerned. In spite of all this, however, he was a fairly kind and just man, and probably did right according to his light and leading.

The institution sheltered some three hundred boys and girls, the latter being officially separated from the boys; the "safeties," however, the boys who had the run of the farm, saw not a little of them. The place was arranged on the cottage plan—the boys of a certain size being toed off to a certain cottage. For instance, I was placed with lads much younger and far more inexperienced than I was simply because I was their height. It struck me at the time—and I am even more impressed to-day—that this was a very peculiar way of classifying prisoners, particularly boys. Far more important, it seems to me, is a classification based on age, training, experience, disposition and temperament. But the great State which had taken me in charge practically overlooked all of these matters in locating us boys in the different homes. Who was to blame for this I cannot tell, but one would think that the superintendent would have thought out something better than the system we had to live under. Right here is the trouble in so many penal and reformatory institutions—what other superintendents and wardens have found "good enough," their latest successor also finds "good enough"; the wheels and cogs have been kept going on the old basis, and the new-comer is afraid to "monkey" with them during his term of office. Many a prison in this country merits a good overhauling, and while exposure of misuse of public funds is the order of the day, and new blood is being called for in so many quarters, it might not be a bad plan to examine carefully into the management of our penitentiaries, workhouses, reform schools and jails.

There was no wall around the school to which I had been committed, a fact which I noted immediately on my arrival. In place of a wall, and as supposed safeguards against escapes, the superintendent had a shrieking whistle for both day and night, and a huge, flaming natural gas-light, more particularly for night, although the miserable thing, as I considered it, burned the entire twenty-four hours. There were five divisions, or cottages, for the boys, including the main building, which could hardly be called a cottage. Unless my memory plays me false, I was in Division G, next to that of the "biggest" boys, yet I was considerably older and certainly more traveled and "schooled" than many of the latter. Theoretically each inmate was to remain in the school until twenty-one, unless relatives or friends took him away after he had earned the requisite number of good-conduct marks. Ten was the maximum daily number, and five thousand were required before good conduct was considered established and a release permissible. The day was about equally divided between study and work, but being outclassed for study in Division G, I was allowed to work all day in the brush factory. Punishment was measured according to the offense, sometimes also according to the number of marks a boy had and the proximity of his release. But in general these rules prevailed: For minor offenses, "standing in line"—a sentence involving loss of the privilege of play and the necessity of toeing a mark with other victims during recesses; for serious offenses, a prescribed number of lashes with a leather strap, a reduction in the boy's marks, and imprisonment in a cell on bread and water. Some boys had long since earned their five thousand marks, and were theoretically—there is so much that is theoretical in State institutions—entitled to their freedom. But no relatives, friends or employers coming forward to vouch for their safe-keeping "outside," they were compelled to stay on until somebody came to their rescue.

The word "outside" characterized a great deal of the life in the school. Used originally exclusively in penitentiaries, the boys had appropriated the word for their own use as well, although there was no wall, and the "outside" was as plainly visible as the "inside." Under restraint and kept within bounds we certainly were, but it was considered smart and "wise" to use the prison expression. Consequently every boy with any gumption in him was continually thinking about what he would do when free again, when the great "outside" would be open territory once more.

We also had an institutional lingo, or slang, patterned as much as possible after the dialect used by "the real thing," the crooks in the "Pen." Guards became "screws," bread and water "wind pudding," detectives "elbows," and so on. When among ourselves, in shop, schoolroom or at play, aping "the real thing," the crooks, and their mannerisms, or what we took to be such—and nearly all the boys had had preliminary jail experiences and had associated with crooks—was a constant amusement for all, and with many a serious study. This posing was one of the worst things taught and learned in the school. Originally intended to be very humanitarian and modern in purpose and organization, to be a disciplinary home rather than a mere place of incarceration—witness the absence of a wall and the cottage system of housing—the boys themselves were defeating these ends with their prison conversations, things they had learned at the taxpayers' expense in various county jails.

Speaking generally, the boys were divided into two sets or rings—the "stand-patters" and the "softies." The former were the boys of spirit and adventure, the principal winners in their classes as well as on the playground; the latter were the tale-bearers, the mouthy ones—"lungers" was also a good name for them—who split on the "stand-patters" when "lunging it" promised to gain favors for them. Whatever else I did or did not do while in the school, I fought very shy of all officers who tried to get me to "peach" on my companions. This may not have been a virtue, but it secured good standing for me among the boys of spirit and enterprise, and I think that any boy wanting agreeable companionship in such a place would naturally turn to the "stand-patters." Of course, my selection of cronies was watched by the officers and made a mental note of to be used later on, either for or against my record, as it suited the purposes of the observing overseer, as were many other things that I did or failed to do. In general the officers were fair-minded and reasonable, but thinking them over now, with the exception of one or two, they were not particularly adapted for reform-school work; they were mainly men who had drifted into the life accidentally, and had clung to it for want of something better to do. They were judged by the boys according to their varying abilities in wielding the strap. Some were strong and heavy, and were called "sockdologers"; others, not so effective physically, were dubbed "lightweights." At night we slept in dormitories, leaving all our clothes except our shirts in the basement, an arrangement which made night escapes difficult. In the main the dormitory life was clean and correct, indeed very much cleaner than cell life in many of our prisons and jails. The daily programme, as I recall it now, began at five-thirty in the morning in summer and at six in the winter. The great whistle started the day, and we all had to jump out of our beds, make them, and then in single file march to the basement, where we washed and dressed. Soon after came the molasses-and-tea breakfast, after which we had a half-hour or so on the playground. Recreation over, we were toed off into two squads, one for the schoolroom and the other for the factory. There were also "detail" boys, inmates of long standing who could be trusted as messengers, in the bakery, plumbing shop, and at different occupations in the cottages and on the farm. I made a bold and early bid for a "detail" job, but with no success. The superintendent told me that only those boys of whom he was sure received such positions, and I retired with the knowledge that he was not sure of me, and the determination to make him keep on guessing about me indefinitely. At noon sharp, came dinner, followed by another half-hour of recreation, when school and factory started again. Six o'clock saw us all at supper, and nine in bed, the intervening time being spent in the playground and in the schoolroom.

One day there was a revolution in the factory. One of the older boys had thrown a wrench at a brow-beating guard, and had been well beaten for his disobedience—beaten and hit with the man's fist, the boy claimed. At recess there was a hurried consultation among the "stand-patters."

"Let's hike it to the Super's office and complain," some one suggested, and before we had half seriously considered what we were doing, away we scampered to the superintendent's office in the main building, the officer to be complained about following leisurely after us. It was as clear a case of mob insanity as I have ever seen; the battered and bloody face of our companion so incensed us that rules and regulations were thrown to the winds. Indeed, if all of us had kept on going, so fleet were our feet, probably half could have gotten away for keeps then and there. But escape was not in our minds. We wanted, and were going to demand, if possible, the dismissal of the overbearing guard. At first, as is the case with nearly all mobs, the various boys wanted to talk at once, and the superintendent had considerable difficulty in getting our side of the story. We were then ordered to the schoolroom of our division, the superintendent desiring to interview the guard alone. The upshot of the affair was that the guard resigned and each boy received fifteen lashes with the strap. The superintendent personally attended the thrashing. Our first officer, a mild-mannered, much bewhiskered man, who had always treated me very considerately, was the first to wield the strap. We boys sat in our seats with folded arms, awaiting our turns. Finally mine came. The officer looked at me disappointedly; he did not seem to want to punish me. He had to obey orders, however, just as we boys did, and I received my fifteen lashes. During each "whaling" the other victims looked on intently, like children about to sit down at a Thanksgiving dinner; they wanted to see if the "whaled" one would "squeal." Excepting a more or less half-witted lad, who had run with the rest of us for no other reason than that he "saw us going and thought we were playing follow the leader," none of us whimpered. The first officer gave out completely after ten boys had been punished, and a substitute—the school carpenter—took his place. I remember how glad I was that my turn came under the first officer's régime, and when he had begun to wobble.

Although the much-disliked factory guard had disappeared, the revolt and "whaling" set the escape thoughts going in the minds of four boys at a very much accelerated speed. Such thoughts are always on top, as it were, wherever human beings are shut up—even in hospitals; but the four lads—I was one of them—put their heads together and plotted as never before. A fight, and a subsequent order to stand "in line," sent my desire for freedom soaring uncommonly high. One of the "softies" and I had clashed for some reason or other, and a "whaling" at night, besides "standing in line," stared us in the face. Throughout the afternoon I pondered over ways and means to reach the great "outside," taking four trusted "stand-patters" into my confidence; they also wanted to go. For different reasons punishment of some kind awaited all of us, and as I was almost sure of a thrashing for fighting, I concluded that, if caught, I might as well make it do duty for trying to escape as well. All the boys calculated on such lines very nicely.

It was finally decided that the most practicable plan was to jump from the schoolroom window, when we were marching in line to the basement, to undress for the night. The distance to the ground was perhaps twenty feet, but during the afternoon we studied very carefully the probable spot we should land on, and all felt equal to the adventure. We should have to make the escape in bare feet, and without coats, but we decided that we didn't want the tell-tale jackets anyhow, and we thought we could smuggle our socks and caps into the schoolroom without detection.

That last evening in the schoolroom was a very nervous one, for four boys at least. From time to time, when the officer was not looking, we exchanged significant glances to make sure that there had been no defection in our ranks. Our caps and socks were hidden in our clothing. At last the whistle blew, books were put away, and the order to form line was given. My mind was firmly made up. Even if the other boys weakened I was going through the open window and on to the "outside." For some reason I felt as if success awaited me, and barring the drop from the window and a possible immediate capture, I feared very little. I was the first to take the drop. Suddenly I fell out of line, scrambled over the sill, and—dropped into the darkness. Whether the other three followed my example or not I do not know; probably not, because my disappearance made the officer reach threateningly for his revolver, as I was able to see while going over the sill. Once on the ground I waited for nobody, but went tearing over the lawn, barefooted and bareheaded, in the direction of the railroad track at the foot of the slope. There I concealed myself under a fence, and in a moment the great whistle told the surrounding country, with long blasts, that a "Ref" boy had escaped, while the flaring light lit up the lawn and assisted the officers in their search. Pretty soon I heard their voices and hurrying footsteps all about me, but they never came quite close enough to uncover my hiding place. I must have remained under the fence two good hours before I dared to proceed. This was about the conventional time given to a search, and I remained silent as the grave until all was quiet. Then, crawling rather than walking, I made my way to the railroad bridge, crossed it cat-like, and proceeded boldly toward the wooded hills opposite the school—the hills that I had so often looked at longingly, and wondered whether I should ever be able to cross without being captured. The underbrush and fallen twigs and branches must have hurt my feet, but the scratches and bruises were hardly noticed in the excitement of getting away. And although the night had become fairly cool, and I had nothing but shirt and trousers to cover me, I was literally in a violent perspiration when I reached the top of the first hill, and looked back on the school and the flaming light.

"Good-bye, brush factory and strap," I murmured. "May we never meet again."

Early morning found me lying exhausted, with torn feet and hands, near a roadway leading, as I saw, to open fields where there were houses and barns. It seemed as if during the night I must have traveled easily twenty miles, but as a matter of fact I had covered but four. The sun was not yet up, and I lay quiet for some time, considering how the day would best be spent and nursing my sore feet. Gradually an unconquerable appetite and thirst came over me, which were accentuated by the smoke issuing from the farmhouse chimneys. This was a sure token that the breakfast fires had been started, and I recalled with relish the scant meal that the boys at the school would soon be eating. However, I was free! No guard was there to boss me about, and I could linger or proceed, as I wished. But that appetite! Finally, in desperation, I determined to risk my liberty and ask for something to eat at the nearest farmhouse. It was impossible to proceed without food, and I very much needed a new outfit of clothing, both for safety and looks.

My reception at the farmhouse was puzzling at first. The good farmer and his wife gave me a bountiful meal, but the former looked at me suspiciously, and remarked that he had heard the school-whistle the night before. His good wife, however, was very compassionate and sympathetic. There was a grown-up son, who also seemed to be on my side. Would the mother and son win, I wondered. When the meal was over the farmer frankly told me that he knew from my clothes that I was a schoolboy, and that he did not believe at all the story I had given him by way of explanation. It was a case of run for dear life or ask for mercy. I determined to trust to my powers of persuasion, and for one solid hour I pleaded with that farmer not to take me back. He knew, and I knew, that he would receive fifteen dollars reward for my return, and as it was Sunday, and he was bound for church, the side trip to the school would take him very little out of his way.

"But it is against the law for me to help you to get away," the farmer contended. "I can be fined for doing it."

"Just give me some old clothes and shoes," I replied, "and no one will ever know that you saw me. Besides, I'll only go to the devil in that school. It did me no good."

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.

My first appearance on the Road proper, after so unceremoniously leaving brush factory and schoolroom, took place, one night, at some coke ovens near the State line toward which I was traveling. My boots had been exchanged for shoes, the old cap had given way to a better one, and the ragged coat had been patched. In this fashion I climbed to the top of the ovens and said "Hello!" to some men who were cooking their coffee in a tomato-can over one of the oven openings. I do not recall now whether they were Gay-Cats or hoboes, but they were at any rate very hospitable, which must be said of both classes of men when separated. Thrown together they are likely to be on their dignity—particularly the hoboes.

Coffee was given me, also bread and meat, and I was shown how to fix some planks across the edge of the oven for sleeping purposes. My inexperience became only too apparent when I told the men that I had "just beat the Ref." The look they gave one another after this confession was a revelation to me at the time, and remains in my memory still as one of the earliest typical hobo traits I remarked. What it meant to me at the moment is not clear any longer; I probably simply made a note of it, and resolved to know more about it later on. Thinking it over, it seems to me that it epitomized in a glance all the secret clannishness and "ear-wigging" tendencies which the travelers of the Road possess in such large and abundant measure. The "ear-wigging"—listening—was plain to see when the men stopped talking themselves, and gave heed to me, practically a kid; the secrecy, when one of them kindly advised me not to spread the news of my escape too promiscuously; and the clannishness in giving a fellow roadster such practical counsel.

That night on the coke ovens was uneventful, except that all of us had to be careful not to roll off our perches into the hot fires beneath us, which fact calls to mind an experience I had later on in a railway sand-house in Ohio. The sand was just comfortably hot when I lay down to sleep, but I forgot that the fire might brighten up during the night, and I lay close to the stove. What was my dismay in the morning, on brushing off the sand, to find that the seat of my best trousers had been burned through over night. Fortunately I had two pair on, otherwise my predicament would have been no laughing matter.

Once over the State line, I made for Wheeling. There was no particular reason in heading for that town, but in tramp life there is no special reason for going anywhere. Time and again I have started north or south with a well mapped out itinerary, and plans fixed and set. Along came some roadster with a more interesting route to follow, or what seemed to be such, and my route, or his, was discarded in a moment. Thus it ever was during the eight months; one day Chicago might be my objective, and I fancied that I knew exactly what was necessary to be done there. In a hundred miles, as likely as not, something far more important, as I thought, required my attention in New Orleans. Die Ferne has seldom had her wild calls more carefully listened to by me than they were at this time. There was no home that I dared go to, the world was literally my oyster, and all I had to do, or knew how to do, for the time being, was wander. Roadsters, who railroaded as persistently as I did, seldom stopping for more than a day or so, at the most a week end in any one place, are called victims of the "railroad fever."

In West Virginia I heard of a country district between the State line and Wheeling where it was easy to "feed," where, in fact, travelers on the highway, when meal-time came, were beckoned into the cabins by the mountaineers to have a bite. Such localities are called by tramps "fattenin'-up places." What with the nervousness, incident to the escape, and the following severe travels, I had become pretty thin and worn-out, and the country district in the hills took hold of my fancy. There is nothing of particular interest about the locality or my stay there to call for especial comment here, except that the mountaineers were so friendly and hospitable that I was able to build up my strength very considerably for the struggle of existence in inhospitable places further on. It was also a capital hiding-place until the excitement over my departure from the school, if there had been any, should subside.

In my other writings I have told pretty minutely what I learned about tramp life during the eight months' trip as well as on later excursions. There is consequently not much left to tell on these lines except of a pretty personal nature and as it affects the general progress of this autobiography. I shall therefore have to skip hurriedly from district to district relating such incidents as illustrate my position and experience in Hoboland, and estimating what this strange country accomplished for me and with me.

During the first month of my wanderings I was bedless, and frequently roofless. Indeed, when I finally did rest or try to, in a bed, the experience was so strange that I slept very little. A box-car, a hay-stack, a railway tie drawn close to a fire—these were my principal lodging places during the entire eight months. It may have been a hard outing, but it toughened and inured me to unpleasantness which would certainly seem very undesirable now. In a way, they were undesirable then. I always laugh when a tramp tells me that he is happier in a box-car than in a bed. He merely fancies that he is, and I certainly should not like to risk offering him my bed in exchange for his box-car. Yet at the time in question I was able to sleep uncommonly well in box-car or hay-stack, and except when traveling at night, eight hours' good rest constituted my regular portion. In general, I kept track of the names of the different States and large cities I visited, but, when asked to-day whether I have been in a certain town, I am often at a loss for an answer; I simply do not know whether I have been there or not. On the other hand, certain "stops" at comparatively insignificant places have clung in my memory when much larger places that I must have seen are dim and hazy. All told, I traveled in the great majority of the full-fledged States of that period, and visited many of the large cities.

At one of these minor "stops" in Michigan, I probably had a chance to experiment with that tantalizing dream of earlier years—the notion that to amount to anything I must go secretly to some place, work my way into a profession, and then on up the ladder until I should be able to return to my people, and say: "Well, with all my cussedness, I managed to get on."

The town had the conventional academy and other educational institutions which my dream had always included in the career I had in mind, and there was a hospitality about the people which promised all kinds of things. I got my dinner at the home of a well-to-do widow who very sensibly made me work for it, chopping wood, a task that I was careful to perform behind the house so that my companions, real hoboes, every one of them, should not see me breaking one of their cardinal rules. The work over, I was invited into the dining room for my meal, during which the good hostess asked me rather minutely about my life. For some reason, I was in the "self-made man" mood at the time, and told the woman about my desire for an education, and later, a professional career. She came over to my seat, examined my cranium, and then, turning to her daughter—a sightly miss—said: "The head is not at all badly shaped. He may be bright."

"Let us hope so, for his sake anyhow," was the daughter's rather doubtful comment. Before leaving, the mother was rather insistent on my calling at the office of a local lawyer who was reported to be "much interested in young men, and their welfare." I promised to look him up, but somehow his time and mine did not agree—he was not at his office—and perhaps I lost another chance to be a legal light. As the weeks and months went by, the dream of "self-madeness," as I once heard a tramp describe it, became less and less oppressive; at any rate, I noticed that merely because a town or village harbored an academy and college, and possibly a philanthropic lawyer, did not suffice to tempt me out of the box-car rolling through the locality. Nothing else in particular had come to take its place, that I recall. But certain it is that the box-car, on a bright, sunny day, rolling along, clinkety-clink, chunkety-chunk, possessed temporary attractions which dreamy self-madeness could not offer. This particular time in my wanderings probably saw the height of the railroad fever in me. It burned and sizzled it almost seemed on occasions, and the distant whistle of a "freight" going my way, or any way, for that matter, became as sweet a sound as was ever the dinner call or the recess bell. To-day I can laugh at all this, but it was a very serious matter in those days; unless I covered a certain number of miles each day or week, and saw so many different States, cities, rivers and kinds of people, I was disappointed—Hoboland was not giving me my share of her bounteous supply of fun and change. Of course, I was called "railroad crazy" by the quieter roadsters in whom the fever, as such, had long since subsided, but I did not mind. Farther, farther, farther! This was what I insisted on and got. In the end I had seen a great deal, of course, but altogether too much of it only superficially. Later tramp trips, undertaken with a serious purpose and confined to narrower limits, have netted me much more lasting information and amusement.

Of accidents during my whirl-wind travels I am thankful to say that there is very little to report. While other men and boys were breaking legs, getting crushed under wheels and falling between cars, I went serenely on my way unharmed. There is a world of significance to me now in the words: "Unknown man among the dead," printed so often in connection with freight-train wrecks. They usually mean that one more hobo or Gay-Cat has "cashed in" and is "bound out." Perhaps I came as near to a serious mishap in western Pennsylvania as anywhere else. I was traveling with a tall, lanky roadster, called Slim, on the "Lake Shore" Railroad. We had been on the train the greater part of the night in the hopes of reaching Erie before daylight. The "freight," however, had met with a number of delays, and dawn found us still twelve miles out of Erie. We were riding "outside," on the bumpers, and on the tops of the cars. When the train stopped to take water we cautiously hid in the long grass near the track, so that the trainmen would not discover us. Pretty soon the whistle blew and the train moved on again. "Slim," my companion, was the first to climb up the ladder, and I soon followed him. By this time the car we were on had reached the watering-plug, where the fireman had carelessly left the swing arm pointing toward the train. There was plenty of room for the train to pass without touching it, but while climbing the ladder I let my body swing backward some distance to see whether the crew in the caboose were watching us. "Slim" was already on top. Suddenly the arm of the watering apparatus caught me on the hip, and I was swung completely over it, falling luckily on my back, hands and feet on the ground below, but with my left hand within about three inches of the rail and wheels. I was so frightened that at least two cars went by me before I ventured to move. Then I slunk over to the grass to see how badly I had been hurt. There was not a bruise or a scratch on me. In a moment I was back on the train again, looking for "Slim."

"You're a nice fellow!" I said to him in no uncertain tones of disgust. "Couldn't even look back to see where I'd fallen, huh?"

"I did look back," he returned in an aggrieved manner. "I saw the whole business. What was the use o' gettin' off when I saw 't you was all to the good? Besides, I want to make Erie for breakfast."

Such are the "blowed-in-the-glass-stiffs." When in a hurry and a meal is in sight, even nations can clash and fall without influencing a hobo's itinerary one iota. Even had my hand been crushed under the wheels, it is doubtful whether "Slim" would have gotten off the train. Erie once reached, and a good breakfast added to his assets, he would doubtless have bestirred himself in my behalf. One learns not to complain in Hoboland about such trifles. I have also been guilty of seeing companions in danger, with a calm eye and a steady lip.

My first "baptism of fire," when the "Song of The Bullet" was heard in all its completeness, took place in Iowa, or western Illinois, I forget which, this forgetfulness being another testimony to the cold-blooded indifference of the Road and its travelers as to time, place and weather. Five of us were very anxious to "make" Chicago ("Chi") by early morning of the next day. Ordinarily, we had plenty of time, but we failed to consider the railroad we were on—the C. B. and Q., or the "Q," as it is more familiarly known. Some years previous the great "Q" strike had taken place, affording so-called "scabs" from the East, who were very liberally introduced into the "Q's" territory, an opportunity to manage things for a time. Their lot was not an easy one, and to be called "scabs" incensed them not a little.

We determined to ride on an afternoon "freight" at least far enough to land somewhere nicely about time for supper. I certainly remember catching the train in Iowa, but whether the "Song of the Bullet" was sung there or on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, I am at a loss to say. On one side or the other the crew discovered us, and insisted on our "hitting the gravel," getting off the train. We demurred.

"Get off, you dirty tramps," the conductor ordered.

We were not particularly dirty, and although we might be called tramps and live up to the "calling," we believed that even as such, we were higher in the social scale than were "scabs." The crew numbered four. As I have said, we were five strong. Finally, losing our tempers and judgment, we told the conductor that we would not only ride in his train, but his caboose as well, and we scrambled for places on the platform. He tried to kick at us first, but fright at our numbers soon overcame him, and, with an oath, he ran into the caboose, shouting back, "I'll soon see who is running this train." We knew only too well what his actions meant, and dropped off. In a minute he appeared on the back platform with a revolver and opened up on us. Fortunately, his train was moving ahead at a fair pace and he was a poor shot. As I recall the incident none of us was particularly frightened, and there was no such "Pingh-h" in the "Song of the Bullet" as I have so often heard described. The "Pingh-h" indeed I have never heard anywhere. The bullets that the conductor sent our way went over our heads and around us, with a whizzing whine. As Bret Harte suggests in his bullet verses, it was as if the disappointment at not reaching us was overwhelmingly acute. Since that experience other bullets have whizzed and whined about me—not many, thanks!—and it seemed to me sometimes that they went purring on their flight, and then again whining. Perhaps the purring bullets found soft lodgment after passing me, but I hope not if the mark was a human being.

An experience that I had in a railroad sand-house in Wisconsin illustrates the definiteness with which the hobo must frequently assert his rights. A man, called "Scotchy" by some, "Rhuderick" by others, was my companion at the time. We were the first-comers at the sand-house, and wholly ignorant of a Wisconsin collection of rovers, nick-named "The Kickers." These Kickers, it appears, had been in the habit of running all available tramp "stops" (sleeping places) to suit their own nonsense, and if their so-called "spots" at any "stop" were found appropriated by others on their arrival, no matter how late, they proceeded to drive the alleged interlopers out, if they felt strong enough. They were hoboes of a kind, but they were careful to travel incognito when alone. "Scotchy" and I quite unwittingly took three of the Kickers' places in the sand-house in question, and were comfortably asleep when the Kickers appeared.

"You got yer nerve on," said one of the burly brutes to "Scotchy," tickling him none too gently in the ribs with his toe-tip. "Get out o' there, an' give yer betters their rights." The rasping voice and the striking of matches wakened me also. Somehow, it may have been tramp instinct, for certainly the Road develops such things, I felt impelled on the instant to grab and capture the poker, and "Scotchy" secured the sand-bucket.

"Me betters, huh?" cried "Scotchy," ominously swinging his bucket. "This for you," and he brought the bucket perilously near one of the Kickers' heads. Matches were being struck on all sides, and it was not difficult to see. The Kickers framed closely together for their attack. They forgot, or did not know, about my poker. Pretty soon another match was struck. The Kickers had coupling pins, and looked formidable. I was in a shadow. They consolidated their forces against "Scotchy." His bucket, however, stretched one Kicker flat before he had time to defend himself. Total darkness and silence followed. Then a Kicker ventured another match. This was my chance. The long poker shot out, and the point must have hit hard in the temple; at any rate, the wounded Kicker sat down. The remaining Kicker risked still one more light, but on seeing his disabled pals, he made for the door. Too late! Other hoboes, not Kickers, had arrived, "dope" lights were secured, and the story was told. The poor Kickers were "kicked" out of that sand-house as never before or since, I am sure.

Such aggregations of tramps are met with throughout Hoboland, and there are constant clashes between them and itinerant roadsters traversing the gangs' districts. The only thing to do is to fight shy of them when alone, and if in force, to fight them; otherwise they become so arrogant and despotic that no one, not even the mere short distance trespasser, is left unmolested.

In spite of all the chances to get hurt, in feelings as well as physically, that Hoboland offers to all comers, I must repeat that I was able to explore its highways and byways with very few scratches to my credit or discredit. A small scar or two and some tattoo figures constitute all the bodily marks of the experience that I carry to-day. There were opportunities without number for fisticuffs, but, as I have declared, I had long since joined the peace movement, and regularly fought shy of them.

A thirty days' sentence to jail, toward the close of the eight months' trip, hurt and tantalized me more than any of the wrecks on railroads or disputes with bullies. It came unfortunately, in June, the hoboes' favorite month. Sleeping in a box-car at night was my crime. I have described the arrest and general experience in one of my tramp books, but I cannot forbear saying a few words about the judge who sentenced me. At the time, 1889 I think was the year, he was police judge in Utica, N. Y., where in company with a friend, I was caught. The night's batch of prisoners were brought before him at one and the same time—drunks, thieves, runaway boys, train-jumpers, bona fide hoboes and Gay-Cats. The court-room was a dingy little place with benches for the prisoners and officers, and a raised platform with a desk for the judge. I shall never forget how the latter looked—"spick and span" to the last degree in outward appearance, but there was an overnight look in his face that boded us ill, I feared. "Just ez if he'd come out of a Turkish bath," whispered an unfortunate who had been found asleep in the streets. The judge certainly paid little enough attention to our cases to have come from anywhere, but a Turkish bath ought to have left him more merciful. We were all punished according to the judge's whims and the law's limitations, the overnight look on the face of our persecutor, as we considered him, deepening, it seemed, with each sentence. My "thirty-day" fate rolled as easily from his lips as did the five and ten-day pronouncements for the "alcoholics"; he did not seem to know any difference between them. Perhaps, in the years that have intervened, he has been enlightened on this point. I hope so for his sake, at least.

Oliver Atherton Willard. Josiah Flynt's Father.

The sentencing over, we prisoners were taken to our different destinations, mine being the jail at Rome, the Utica prison being crowded. There is little to add here to what I have long since told in print about my stay there; but perhaps I have never emphasized sufficiently the tramp's disgust at having "to do time" in June. From May till November is his natural roving time, his box-car vacation; in winter, jail, even the workhouse is often more of a boon than otherwise. The Rome jail consequently harbored very unwilling guests in the persons of the few tramps lodged there. However, even thirty summer days, precious as they are on the "outside," pass away sooner than one at first expects them to, and then comes that glorious moment—thunder, lightning, not even a pouring rain can mar it—when the freed one is his own master again. There may be other experiences in life more ecstatic than this one, but I would willingly trade them all temporarily for that first gasp in the open air, and that unfettered tread on the ground, which the discharged prisoner enjoys.

Of my status as a tramp in the general social fabric in Hoboland, perhaps enough is said when I report that before quitting the Road, I could have at any time claimed and secured the respect due to the "blowed-in-the-glass" wanderer. Yet I could make myself quite as much at home at a "hang-out" of the Gay-Cats as among the hoboes. Begging for money was something that I indulged in as little as possible; at the start, it was impossible for me to ask for "coin." My meals, however, lodging and clothes were found by me in the same abundance as the old-timer's. I had to have such things, and as asking for them was the conventional way of getting them, I asked persistently, regularly and fairly successfully.

There is nothing to be said in defense of this practice. It is just as much a "graft" as stealing is; indeed, stealing is looked upon in the Under World as by all odds the more aristocratic undertaking. But stealing in Hoboland is not a favorite business or pastime. Hoboland is the home of the discouraged criminal who has no other refuge. His criminal wit, if he had any, has not panned out well, and he resorts to beggary and clandestine railroading as the next best time-killer. Punishment has tired him out, frightened him, and the Road looms up before him spacious and friendly.

I have often been asked seriously, whether the Road can be looked upon as a necessary school of discipline for certain natures; whether, for instance, as an anxious mother of a wayward boy, once put the query to me, "is there enough that is worth while in it, if looked for, to overbalance that which is not worth while?" It depends both on the boy and the treatment he gives to and gets from his pals. In general, the Road is not to be recommended—not for morals, comfort, cleanliness, or "respectability." It is a backwater section of our civilization; it is full of malaria and other swampy things. Yet, with all its miasma, this backwater district has sent many a good man back to the main Road, which we all try to travel. In my own case, I can certainly say that many desirable truths were revealed to me while in Hoboland which it seemed impossible for me to grasp until having had the Hoboland experience.

But to speak seriously of the Road as a recuperating place for deteriorated morals, or as an invigorator for weak natures, I can only say—in general, don't try it. There are too many "building-up" farms and "nerve strengthening" sanatoriums to make it necessary to-day for any one to have to resort to Hoboland to be put right again. Yet the Road will probably be with us, for better or for worse, after the soothing farms and disciplinary sanatoriums have dwindled away; I mean such as may be patronized, say, in the next thousand years or so. There were tramps thousands of years ago, and I fear that they will be on the earth, if there be an earth then, thousands of years hence. They change a little in dress, customs and diet as the years roll by, just as other people change. But, for all practical purposes, I should expect to find the ancient Egyptian hobo, for instance, if he could come to life and would be natural, pretty much the same kind of roadster that we know in our present American type. Laziness, loafing, Wanderlust and begging are to-day what they ever have been—qualities and habits that are passed on from generation to generation, practically intact.

My longest Wanderlust trip came to an end in the much maligned city of Hoboken, N. J. Some work done for a farmer, near Castleton on the Hudson River netted me a few dollars, and, one night in September, in company of an aged Irishman, I drifted down the river to the great city on a canal boat. The Irishman got separated from me in the crowded thoroughfares in New York, and I drifted alone over to Hoboken, bent on an important errand, but doubtful about its outcome. Little did I realize then what a hard task there was ahead of me, and how great the change in my life was to be, the task once finished.

[CHAPTER VIII]

MY VOYAGE TO EUROPE

Twenty years ago, and probably at an earlier date still, the traveler bound for Europe on any of the ships, sailing from Hoboken, might have seen, had he been curious enough to look about him, a strange collection of men of all ages, sizes and make-ups, huddled together nights in a musty cellar only a few steps from the North German Lloyd's docks. And, had he talked with this uncouth company, he would have learned much about the ways and means necessary to make big ships go and come on their ocean voyages.

Somewhat less than twenty years ago, say eighteen, a greasy paper sign was tacked to the door of the cellar for the benefit of those who might be looking for the dingy hole. It read: "Internashnul Bankrupp Klubb—Wellcome!" The words and lettering were the work of an Italian lad, who had a faculty for seeing the humor in things which made others cry and sigh. In years that have passed the sign has been blown away, and a barber to-day holds forth where the "Bankrupps" formerly lodged. The store above, a general furnishing establishment for emigrants and immigrants, has also given way to a saloon, I think, and the outfitting business of former days has developed, in the hands of the old proprietor's sons, into a general banking and exchange affair near-by around the corner. The old proprietor has long since been gathered unto his fathers, I have been told; but the boys possess much of his business acumen and money-getting propensities and are doing well, preferring, however, to handle the currencies of the various nations to selling tin pots, pans, mattresses and shoddy clothing, as did the old man.

Their father was a Hebrew, who may or may not have had a very interesting history before I met him, but at the time of our acquaintance he looked so fat and comfortable and money was so plainly his friend and benefactor that he was a pretty prosaic representative of his race. I had heard about him in New York, after making unsuccessful attempts there and in Brooklyn to secure a berth as caretaker on a Europe-bound cattle-ship.

Eight months of roughing it on the Road had worked many changes in my temperament, ways of calculating, and general appearance. I was no longer the youth who had jumped out of that second-story window and made for parts unknown. Had it been necessary, so tough and hardened had my physique become, that on arriving in Hoboken, I could have done myself credit, I think, in getting out of a third-story window. I was thin and scrawny, to be sure, but such characteristics are most deceiving to the observer unacquainted with tramp life. They may mean disease, of course, but more frequently good health, and in my case it was decidedly the latter. Whatever else hoboing had done or failed to do for me, it had steeled my muscles, tightened up my nerve, and jostled my self-reliance into a thoroughly working condition. Many a vacation in recent years, so far as mere health is concerned, might have been spent with profit on the Road. But eighteen years ago it was a different matter. Die Ferne as such was at least temporarily under control; I had become tired of simply drifting, and whether I should find a home abroad or not, the outlook could hardly be much darker over seas than in my own country. I had some knowledge of foreign languages, and knew that, at a pinch, I could retreat to England, or to one of her colonies, if Germany should prove inhospitable. How to get across was the main problem. The cattle-ships were over-manned, it seemed, and the prospects of succeeding as a stowaway were pronounced bad.

I finally heard of the corpulent Hebrew and the "Bankrupps" Club in Hoboken. A German sailor told me about the place, describing the cellar as a refuge for "gebusted" Europeans, who were prepared to work their way back to their old country homes as coal-passers. The sailor said that any one, European or not, was welcome at the club, provided he looked able to stand the trip. The Hebrew received two dollars from the steamship companies for every man he succeeded in shipping.

My first interview with this man, how he lorded it over me and how I answered him back—these things are as vivid to me to-day as they were years ago. "Du bist zu schwach" (you are too weak), he told me on hearing of my desire for a coal trimmer's berth. "Pig mens are necessary for dat vork," and his large Oriental eyes ran disdainfully over my shabby appearance.

"Never you mind how schwach I am," I assured him; "that's my look-out. See here! I'll give you two dollars besides what the company gives you, if you'll get me a berth."

Again the Oriental's eyes rolled, and closed. "Vell," the man returned at last, "you can sleep downstairs, but I t'ink you are zu schwach."

The week spent "downstairs" is perhaps as memorable a week as any in my existence. Day after day went by, "Pig mens" by the dozen left the cellar to take their positions, great ships whistled and drew out into the mighty stream outward bound, my little store of dimes and nickels grew smaller and smaller—and I was still "downstairs," awaiting my chance (a hopeless one it seemed) with the other incapables that the ships' doctors had refused to pass. The Italian lad, with his sweet tenor voice and sunny temperament, helped to brighten the life in the daytime and early evening, but the dark hours of the night, full of the groans and sighs of the old men, trying for berths, were dismal enough. Nearly every nationality was represented in the cellar during the week I spent there, but Germans predominated. What tales of woe and distress these men had to tell! They were all "gebusted," every one of them. A pawnbroker would probably not have given five dollars for the possessions of the entire crew.

"Amerika" was the delinquent in each reported case of failure—the men themselves were cock-sure that they were in no particular to blame for their defeat and bankruptcy. "I should never have come to this accursed land," was the claim of practically all of the inmates of the cellar, except the little Italian. He liked Neuvo Yorko, malto una citt bellissima—but he wanted to see his mother and Itallia once more. Then he was coming back to Neuvo Yorko to be mayor, perhaps, some day. The hope that is in Americans was also in him. He believed in it, in himself and in his mother; why should he not become a good American? Why not, indeed?

But those poor old men from Norway! Theirs was the saddest plight. "The boogs" (bugs), one said to me, an ancient creature with sunken eyes and temples, "they eat down all my farm—all. They come in a day. My mortgage money due. They take my crops—all I had. No! America no good for me. I go back see my daughter. Norway better." I wonder where the poor old soul is, if he be still on earth. Ship after ship went out, but there was no berth for his withered up body, and after each defeat, he fell back, sighing, in his corner of the cellar, a picture of disappointment and chagrin such as I never have seen elsewhere, nor care to gaze upon again.

Our beds were nothing but newspapers, some yellow, some half so, and others sedate enough, I make no doubt. We slept, however, quite oblivious of newspaper policies and editorials. Looking for our meals and wondering when our berths on the steamers would be ready constituted our day's work, and left us at night, too tired out to know or care much whether we were lying on feathers or iron. I have since had many a restful night in Hoboken, and to induce sleep, even with mosquitoes as bed-fellows, nothing more has been necessary than to recall those newspaper nights in the Hebrew's underground refuge. I trust that he is resting well somewhere.

"Get up, presto! We're all going, presto!" It was five o'clock on a cool October morning, and my friend, the little Italian, was tugging away at my jacket. "Get up, fratello," he persisted. "Mucha good news." The light was struggling in through the cobwebbed windows and doorway, and the Norwegian was wakefully sighing again. I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and stared wonderingly at the Italian.

"Where's your good news?" I yawned, and pulled on my jacket.

"Mucha—mucha," he went on. "Policeman, he dead. Eighteen firemen and passers put hatchet in his head right front here. Blood on the sidewalk. Firemen and passers are pinched. Ship—she call the Elbe—she sail nine o'clock. The old Jew, he got to ship us. No time to look 'roun'. Mucha good news, what?"

I was the first to tell the Hebrew of what had happened over night, emphasizing the necessity of finding coal-passers immediately and the fact that we were the handiest materials. What a change came over the man's face! Sleepy wrinkles, indolent eyes, jeweled hands, projecting paunch were started into wondrous animation.

"You sure?" he asked eagerly.

"Absolutely. The men are all arrested."

"Ah, ha!" and the jeweled hands rubbed each other appreciatively. "Very goot! Now comes your Gelegenhei—that is goot. I see about things quick," and he waddled over to the North German Lloyd docks to assure himself that the news was correct—that the Italian had not made a mistake on account of using some dime novels for a pillow the night before. Thirty-six dollars were his if he could find the requisite number of men—a good wage for his time and labor.

"Ya, ya," he chuckled, a half-hour later, when I saw him again. "This time you go, ganz sicher. You a very lucky boy. Tell the others to stick in the cellar; I must not lose them."

At eight o'clock he appeared among us to select the most serviceable looking men. Again the poor old Norwegian was counted out—"zu schwach," the Hebrew thundered in reply to the man's entreaties to be taken, and once more he slunk away to his corner, weeping. There were still others who failed to come up to the Hebrew's standard of fitness, but no case was so pitiful as that of the Norwegian.

Eighteen men, some expert firemen found elsewhere, and the rest green coal-passers like myself, were finally chosen, lined up in the street, counted for the twentieth time, it seemed, by the Hebrew's mathematical sons, and then marched in single file across the street and down the dock to the Elbe's gang-plank, where the ship's doctor awaited us. The stoke-room was so short-handed that the man was forced to accept all of us, something that he certainly would not have done had there been a larger collection of men to choose from. He smiled significantly when he let me pass, and I was reminded of what a saloonkeeper had said to me earlier in the morning. I had gone to his place for breakfast, and he asked me whether I was looking for a job. I said that I was, explaining how long we all had waited for opportunities to ship.