There is, indeed, no road to equal the Dover Road for thieves, tramps, cadgers, and miscellaneous vagrants, either for number or depravity. Throughout the year they infest alike the highways and byways of Kent, but the most constant procession of them is to be seen on the great main road between London and the sea. A great deal of begging, some petty pilfering, and a modicum of work in the fruit season and during the hop-harvest suffice to keep them going for the greater part of the year, while the winter months are fleeted in progresses from one casual ward to another in the numerous unions along the road. Phenomenally ragged, bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles' stretch of road between Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them; but Gravesend, Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful mendicancy. "Lodgings for travellers" at fourpence a night, or two shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. Whole families on the tramp are to be met with between these places, and long vistas of them are gained along any particularly straight piece of road. They are everything that is dirty and horrible, but they are perfectly happy and quite irreclaimable, many of them being hereditary tramps. Philanthropic societies inquire into the tramp; classify him, endeavour to cleanse him and restore him to some place in society, but all to no purpose. He is quite satisfied with himself; he likes dirt, and dislikes nothing so much as either moral or physical cleansing. That is one reason why he seeks the shelter of the casual ward only as a last resource. He has to undergo a bath there, and feels as chilly when his top-dressing of grime is removed as you and I would be were we turned naked into the streets. To reform your tramp it would be essential to snare him at a very early age indeed, and, even then, I am not sure but that his natural traits would break out suddenly, like those of any other wild beast kept in captivity. [Sidenote: TRAMPS' SIGNS] The truth is, tramping is a very old profession, and hereditary in a degree very few good people imagine. Unlettered, but highly organised, trampdom has a _lingua franca_ of its own, and its signs are to be read, chalked on the fences and gateposts of the Dover Road, as surely as one could read a French novel.