Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/268

254 with the tramps, like their life, and travel with them. Some of them seem to be actuated by a genuine desire to see the country, others by a simple love of adventure and change. This latter class are liable to degenerate into real tramps, but the former are pretty sure to get tired of the hard life and settle down again. They never regard themselves as tramps, and if they beg do so feeling that they lower themselves by it. As a rule they much prefer to work in payment of their meals, or even take two or three days' work and then pay for what they eat until their money is exhausted. They are uniformly recruited from the working population of cities, men under thirty years of age, who though without education have a desire to see the world and have been employed in a situation where they have come in contact with ex-roadsters. Under favorable conditions they would develop into such a type as the average "prominent citizen" of our small towns. They possess energy, skill, and intelligence, but lack woefully in opportunity.

The tramp temporarily on the road from a love of adventure can scarcely be distinguished from the dyed-in-the-wool hoboe. He is in most cases recruited from the same city population, yet all classes of society are represented. One night we were coming home from Cadillac to Grand Rapids in a freight car with thirty-three others, and the question of what to do when we arrived at the Rapids was being discussed.

The day before several of the "lads" had been "pulled" at the Rapids for "bumming the freights," and the news was by this time known to all knights of the road for several hundred miles. Plans for evading the "cops" were discussed, and the question of the legal aspect of the case came up. To my surprise, one of the toughest of the lot dropped his tramp dialect and gave a very good discussion of the case. We began to question him, and when he found that we too had seen college days he began to cite cases, quote State laws from several different States, and, in short, gave a regular lawyer's brief. He afterward told us that he had graduated from a law school in New York city.

Tramps as a class are young men. I do not know what becomes of them when they are old or whether they ever get old, and, as far as I could discover, they do not know either. Their happy-go-lucky method of living leads them to give very little thought to the future, but the fact still remains that an old man can not live as they do. They uniformly travel by night and sleep by day. It is no uncommon sight to see fifteen or twenty of these lusty fellows asleep in the shade of some watering tank, and if you would take the pains to climb up the ladder and into the tank you would probably find a little room over the water occupied by four or five more. They are not so universally drunken