It was here I met my first genuine hobo (tramp) in a social way, though I have met a few of the same breed since. He was a young man about twenty-three years of age, the only son of a wealthy widow, who loved the road for the road’s sake, though he would periodically come home for a breath of civilisation; and it was because of this I happened to meet him. His mother idolised him, and would have supplied him with all the money he needed to travel as a gentleman and see the world. But, as he used to tell me, it was such a relief to take off a white collar and dress like a tramp, besides the excitement and danger of the life. The only intimation his mother would get would be a note left on his pillow. He would walk down to the railroad water-tank some night dressed in his old clothes, and ride the truss-rods, or coupler, of the first freight which stopped for water, out of town to wherever it might happen to take him. For he told me he never planned his route beforehand. So he travelled, seeing many towns, where he stopped as fancy took him, and kept moving till his money gave out; then he went to work till he had a few dollars saved up, and then on the move again. He would write to his mother from different places, and when finally tired would head home. He had been coal-passer on the “whale-back” at the Chicago Fair, had herded sheep in the west, been barkeeper, and a hundred other things. He would talk hobo-talk, so that I could hardly understand a word he said; but, withal, he was as well-dressed, well-mannered, well-educated a young fellow as you will meet anywhere in the West. I met him again five years later, when he had gone broke on a tramp, and had got a job as chainman on a railroad survey in Mexico. This hobo business is not all cream, as my hobo friends have all told me. There is little fun in getting turned out of an empty box-car by an irate conductor at some water-tank twenty miles from the nearest town where you can get food; still less fun when, hanging on the ladder on the side of a box-car at night, trying to argue with a brakeman, he cuts short the argument by the simple expedient of stamping on your fingers, and you perforce have to take a wild jump off the moving train, hoping and praying that the landing may be soft. But in all this lies the fascination and excitement. Even when all goes well, and you are carefully laid out on a plank across the truss-rods under a car, the flying gravel and sand make travelling, when rapid, uncomfortable. There is also always the danger (when you travel without knowing your destination) of running into some large terminal and being arrested by the police. Still, there must be a huge fascination in the life to attract young fellows of this man’s position in life. It is not the loafing, as hoboes of this description are ready to work when they are out of funds, and do not steal for a living as some tramps will do.