In an article which appeared in the "Contemporary Review" for August, 1891, I made a first attempt to relate some of my experiences in tramp life in the United States, and endeavored to describe a true knight of the road. It was a short paper, and there was a great deal left unsaid that might have been said, but it was a truthful report as far as it went. To one intimately acquainted with the hoboes I doubt whether the article would have seemed inaccurate, but it was so judged by some critics, and a number of my statements were challenged. Among other criticisms made, it was said that I had mistaken the character of the "American tramp" in three particulars: first, his nationality; second, his numbers; third, his unwillingness to work. It was also assumed that an Englishman was responsible for the supposed false statements. I was in New York at the time, and having ten days at my disposal before leaving for Europe, I decided to retrace some of my old routes and have another view of the situation. This chapter is a report of my experiences on the journey, and I have confined myself to the rehearsal of bare facts without further comment, believing that the reader will moralize and philosophize whenever necessary. It was about five o'clock on the afternoon of a cool September day that I left my friend's home clad as a tramp, and started for the night boat for Albany. I wore an old suit of clothes, a flannel shirt, a good pair of shoes, and a respectable hat. I had paid special attention to the shoes and hat, for it is a piece of tramp philosophy that the two extremities of a beggar are first looked at by the person of whom he is begging. While riding from Harlem down to the landing-place of the steamer, I laughed to myself while thinking how the tramps would envy me my nice head- and foot-gear. I wondered, too, whether I should be allowed to return with these coverings. At the ticket-office I paid one of my three dollars for a ticket on the boat to Albany. I made this heavy draft upon my slight exchequer because I was afraid to beat my way on the railroad between the two cities. I knew of old how roadsters are hated by the residents of both banks of the Hudson River, and not being at all sure that I should be successful in making the journey from New York to Albany in one night as a "dead-beat" on a freight-train, I felt safer in buying a second-class ticket on the steamboat, and beginning my journey in the morning at Albany.