The poets who have written best about the tramp are those who have recorded their reflections on their own life and his. Robert W. Service sees in “The Men That Don’t Fit In” a great group of wanderers who move here and there in response to an imperious wanderlust. There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain crest, Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don’t know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they’re always tired of the things that are And they want the strange and new. They say, “Could I find my proper groove What a deep mark I would make!” So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day with a hope that’s dead, In the glare of the truth at last.[62] There are men in the tramp class who are always chasing rainbows, always expecting to “strike it rich” sometime and somewhere. Bill Quirke, for many years contributor to the _Hobo News_, gives expression to this sentiment in the poem, “One Day; Some Way, I’ll Make a Stake.” This poem was written a few months before Bill was killed by an automobile in California. From the heart of it we quote: For years I’ve drilled the rough pathway, And weathered many a wintry blast, I’ll make another stake some day For luck must turn my way at last. I’m far too old for working, too They say my work is almost through; My ore assesses never a flake But still I hope to make a stake. In the _Hobo News_ of August, 1921, Charles Thornburn records his reflections while he contemplates the empty, beaten faces of the men of the “stem”: With ever restless tread, they come and go, Or lean intent against the grimy wall, These men whom fate has battered to and fro, In the grim game of life, from which they all Have found so much of that which is unkind, Still hoping on, that fortune yet may mend, With sullen stare, and features hard and lined, They wander off to nowhere, and the end.