The tramp may be said to belong to the middle class of the outcast world, and, like other middle class people, he often finds life a little nicer in a class socially above him. He enjoys associating with criminals, being able to quote them on matters of interest to the "hang-out," and giving the impression that he is _au courant_ with their business. If he can do all this well it makes him so much the more important among his fellows. His own particular class, however, also has advantages and attractions, and there are men who seek his company nearly as much as he seeks the criminals. There is an upper middle class as well as a lower, and the line of separation is sharply drawn. The "old stagers," the men who have been years "on the road," and know it "down to the ground," as they say, constitute the upper middle class. They can dictate somewhat to the tramps not so experienced as they are, and their opinions are always listened to first. If they say, for instance, that a certain town is "hostile," unfriendly to beggars, the statement is accepted on its face, unless some one has absolute evidence to the contrary, and even then the under class man makes his demurrer very modestly. I have never succeeded in getting as far as this during my tramp experiences, and had to remain content in the lower division, but even there I had a significance denied to men less experienced than I was. A newcomer, for instance, a "tenderfoot," was expected to show me deference, and if I happened in at a "hang-out," where only newcomers were present, I was cock of the walk. Even these "tenderfeet" have a class pride, too, for at the bottom of all this social arrangement there are men and women who have been turned out of every class, the outcast of the outcasts. They are called "tomato-can-stiffs" and "barrel dossers" by the people above them, terms which indicate that they have reached the last pitch of degradation. They realise their disgrace nearly as much as their counterparts who have been turned out of respectable society, and often look with longing upon the positions they once enjoyed, but their lot is not entirely without its consolations, as I learned one day in talking with one of them. "Well, at any rate," he said, "I ain't got to keep thinkin' all the while 't I'm goin' to fall and lose my posish the way you have to. There's no place for me to fall to, I've come to the end o' my rope. You've got to keep lookin' out fer yerself ev'ry step you take--keep worryin' about gettin' on, 'n' I don't have them worries any more, 'n' it's a big relief, I tell you. You feel the way you do when you get out o' prison." This thought is a little fanciful, and not entirely sincere, but I can nevertheless appreciate the man's point of view, for, with all the independence and liberty of this world, there is, just as he said, considerable worry about holding one's place, and I can imagine a time when it would be pleasant to be relieved of it all.