Call the Guards hacks, penny-a-liners or what you will; as a friend of mine once said about them, they know how to spell the word gentleman, anyhow, and that is more than many do who poke fun at them. They helped to make my first visit to London incomparably amusing at times, and for this I cannot help feeling grateful. I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of "Inquiral research," who are to blame for all tramp trips made by me in Europe. Of course, the inevitable _Wanderlust_ was probably behind them to some extent, but all of them were undertaken with articles, and probably a book, as the ultimate object in view. This can hardly be said of the earlier wanderings at home, and yet when eventually writing about them, they have interested me more than the tramps abroad. My vagabond days in foreign parts have received pretty much their just due in other books of mine and my wish here is more to explain what effect they had upon me as a student, and in leading on to other work here at home, than to _tell_ what befell me on the highways. There are a few episodes and anecdotes, however, that were overlooked when making my reports from the field which may not be out of place now. The most entertaining experience I had in Great Britain during the three weeks or so that I tramped there in 1893, concerns a well meaning professor in Edinburgh. My companion in this venture is now also a professor at one of our universities; at the time he was a fellow-student of mine in Berlin. One of our "stops" in the itinerary planned by me was Edinburgh. We were to land at Leith from New Castle, anyhow, so why not see Edinburgh, whether we were real tramps or not? A local professor, a friend of my family, a guest in my Berlin home at one time, was a man who believed greatly in religious things, and I guess tried to act according to his beliefs. He was noted also for his interest in the students. My friend and I thought it might be interesting to see how far the old gentleman's benevolence stretched when it came to giving charity to an American student in distress. A boyish curiosity, no doubt, but I have found in later life that such curiosity is worth while in a number of ways--when it comes to quizzing "public-spirited men," for instance, as to how far they will go into their pockets to finance investigations and prosecutions in municipal affairs. With my friend the question was, "What story shall I tell?" I could not undertake the adventure because the professor would have recognized me. We rummaged over my basket of "ghost stories," and finally determined that the best thing was the truth with a slight change in names.