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.