A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in the penitentiary. * * * * * I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."... * * * * * Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough "hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ... keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car, on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my "hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment. I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town, in the "jungles." These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was invited to join them in it: the plan was, to go, _en masse_, from town to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man would go to the butcher shops, the next, another man would take them, and the first would, let's say, beg at the baker's ... and each day a different man would take a different section among the houses. Then all the food so procured would be put together and shared in common. As usual, there was among them an individual who held them together--the originator of the idea. He was a fat, ruddy-faced alcoholic ex-cook, who had never held a job for long because he loved whiskey so much. Besides being the presiding genius of the gang, he also did all the cooking. He loved to cook. Each day he jumbled all the mixable portions of the food together, and, in a big tin wash-boiler which he had rescued from "the dump" outside of town, he stewed up quite a palatable mess which we called "slum" or "slumgullion," or, more profanely, "son-of-a-b----." For plates we used old tomato cans hammered out flat ... for knives and forks, our fingers, pocket-knives, and chips of wood. It was a happy life. One afternoon mysteriously our leader and cook disappeared--with a broad grin on his face. Soon he returned, rolling a whole barrel of beer which he had stolen during the night from the back of a saloon ... and had hidden it nearby in the bushes till it was time to bring it forth....