We held a roaring party, and had several fights. ("Slopping up" is what the tramps call a drinking jamboree.) This was the first time I got drunk in my life. It took very little to set me off ... I burned a big hole in my coat. I woke lying in the mud near the willows ... and with a black eye ... a fellow tramp affectionately showed me his finger that I had bitten severely ... for a day we had bad nerves, and lay about grumbling.... We kept quite clean. The tramp is as clean as his life permits him to be ... usually ... the myth about his dirtiness is another of the myths of the newspaper and magazine world ... though I have seen ones who were extraordinarily filthy.... We "boiled up" regularly ... and hung our shirts and other articles of apparel on the near-by willows to dry.... After about ten days of scientific exploitation of them, the "natives" of the town on the verge of which we were encamping, began to evidence signs of restlessness. So we moved on to another town by means of a local freight. Settled there in "the jungles," we hilariously voted to crown the cook our king. We held the ceremony, presenting him with a crown made out of an old tin pan, which one of the more expert among us hammered into a circlet and scoured bright with sand.... * * * * * But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone. "You'd better beat it on out of the South as quick as you can," an old tramp had warned me, "they're hell on a bum down here, and harder yet on a Yankee ... no, they haven't forgot _that_ yet--not by a damn sight!" I was soon to wish that I had listened to the old tramp's wisdom. * * * * * In the chill grey dip of an early spring dawn I dropped off a freight in the yards of the town of Granton. I drew my threadbare coat closer as I made my way up the track, on the look-out for some place to go into and warm myself. Usually, in chilly weather, each railroad station throughout the country has a stove a-glow in the waiting room ... I found the railroad station, and the stove, red-hot, was there ... it was good to be near a fire. In the South it can be at times heavily cold. There is a moisture and a rawness in the weather, there, that hurts. I was not alone. Two negro tramps followed me; like myself, seeking warmth and shelter. Then came a white tramp. We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip about the country we were in. The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot. "And _I_ tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car."