The Trail of the Tramp: By A-No. 1, the Famous Tramp, Written by Himself from Actual Experiences of His Own LifeA-No. 1
General
The Trail of the Tramp: By A-No. 1, the Famous Tramp, Written by Himself from Actual Experiences of His Own Life
A-No. 1
Tramps
While the judge and the barristers were engaged in writing the
commitment papers, Joe asked the woman to tell him who was her mother,
and when she pointed at a wrinkled hag, he had the policeman stand the
latter beside her daughter, who now acted as interpreter. Now Joe had
Jim's daughter stand beside the younger woman, and when the old hag
noted the resemblance between the two she paled and commenced to weep.
Aided by the policeman, and the promise that if the Doukhobor woman told
the truth concerning the young woman's parentage she would not be
molested, and greatly influenced by the fact that her sect, like the
Quakers, consider telling an untruth a mortal sin, she told the
following story:
While she and her husband in company with many others of their sect were
crossing the Atlantic, during the stormy winter voyage, her only child,
a little girl, died and was buried at sea. They landed in America and
were loaded aboard an immigrant train, which several days later stopped
in a snow covered prairie. Looking out of the coach window, the bereaved
mother saw a little tot, just the size of their own "Maritzka", playing
in the snow below the window, and yearning for her departed baby she had
climbed from the train and petted the little child, who instead of being
frightened by the strange woman, permitted her to kiss its rosy cheeks,
and while she felt the tot's chubby hands and soft limbs, the mother
love which she used to lavish upon her own Maritzka got the upper hand
of her, and noting that no one was guarding this smiling baby girl, and
that no homes were near, she could not resist the temptation to have
this child replace the one God had taken from her. Realizing that the
child's clothing did not match her own, she quickly undressed the tot,
and after she had wrapped it in her shawl she climbed aboard the train,
which at this moment commenced to pull away. While she dressed the child
in the clothes which had belonged to her own child, she discovered that
she had overlooked a locket that hung around its neck, and that ever
since that day had kept this place. She now caused her kidnapped
daughter to take off and hand this locket to Joe, and when he opened it
he found his late father's and his mother's picture in it, and an
inscription that read, "Henry McDonald to Ethel, his wife."
Then Joe and Jim quickly proved to the young woman that they were truly
her brothers, and promised her that they would properly look after her
every need if she would part with the foreign woman, who, in her
ignorance, had not only spoiled her life, but had caused her father's
death. She consented to go with them and took a tearful farewell of the
Doukhobor woman, who had been a mother to her all these years, and
although poor herself, had provided her with a fair education.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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