"You just wait," I boasted imaginatively, "and I'll show you!" "Maybe, Joe," I concluded, for I knew what I said would tease him, "maybe, when I reach the East, I shall break loose." Then I added--and to this day I cannot imagine what put it into my head to say it--what fantastic curl of thought, unless perhaps a premonition of what was soon to come to pass-- "Penton Baxter has invited me to pay him a visit at Eden, a Single Tax Colony just outside of Philadelphia, before I go on to Europe via cattleboat ... maybe I'll take him up, go down there, and run away with his wife ... she's a mighty pretty woman, Joe!" Joe was scandalised at my remark--the effect I had wished for. * * * * * But after the uproar broke, Joe stoutly maintained that our elopement had all been a frame-up, alleging his conversation with me as proof ... as who would have not? * * * * * Reduced again to my barest equipment, and having left as my forwarding address the office of the _National Magazine_, in New York, I hopped a freight shortly after dawn. It was a fast, through freight. Because of lack of practice I boarded it clumsily, and almost went to my death under its grinding, roaring wheels, there in the Laurel freight-yards. I sat, trembling with the shock to my nerves, on the bumpers. I hopped off at Argentine, just outside of Kansas City. I found a camp of tramps and joined with them. We drank coffee together.... But, somehow, the scales had fallen from my eyes. My old idealisation of the life of the tramp, somehow or other, was entirely gone--an idealisation that had, anyhow, been mainly literary, induced by the writings of Jack London, Josiah Flynt and Maxim Gorky. Now, as I listened to their filthy talk ... their continual "Jesus-Christ'-ing" over everything they said, I grew sick of them. I got up and walked away stiffly--never again to be a tramp. The reporter of the _Star_, who covered the stockyards, took me to a little sturdy cattle merchant, who agreed to ship me to New York, in care of five carloads of calves ... for a fee of ten dollars. I persuaded him that I would mail him that ten on arrival at my point of destination ... I have never done so ... when I had it, I needed it more for myself ... and, anyhow, I earned that ten. * * * * * My duties with the calves were not many ... merely to walk along the sides of the five cars in my keeping, and see that the calves kept on their legs and did not sprawl over each other ... sometimes one of them would get crushed against the side of the car, and his leg would protrude through the slats. And I would push his leg back, to keep it from being broken ... I made my rounds every time the freight came to a halt. There were other cars, filled with steers, sheep, and pigs.