Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
It may interest the reader to know how I lived during the time I
traveled as a tramp. Except on one occasion, when my funds gave out, I
paid my way regularly so far as food was concerned. A friend sent me a
postal order for a few dollars nearly every week, and I managed to live
rather comfortably at lodging-house restaurants. Occasionally I would
meet a pal of former years, and if he had money, or found that I had,
nothing would do but we should celebrate meeting each other again, and
at such times my friend in the East got word that my remittance must be
hurried up somewhat; but, as a general thing, I dined fairly well on two
dollars a week. For sleeping-quarters I had bunks in lodging-houses,
benches in police stations, and "newspaper beds" in railroad
sand-houses. I chose one of these places as circumstances suggested. If
there was nothing to be gained in the way of information by going to a
sand-house or a police station, I took in a lodging-house, if one was
handy. Once I slept in the tramp ward of a poorhouse, and never had I
spent a more disagreeable night. A crowd of tramps to which I had
attached myself had used up their welcome in a town where there were
three police stations, and it had been arranged that on the night in
question we should all meet at the tramp ward of the poorhouse. A negro
was the first one to get there, and a more frightened human being than
he was when the rest of us put in an appearance it would be hard to
imagine. We found him in a cold cellar, absolutely without light and
furnished with nothing but an immense bench, about four feet wide, four
feet high, and ten feet long. In Siberia itself I have never seen a
gloomier hole for men to pass a night in.
"I turned up here 'bout five o'clock," the negro said, "'n' they sent me
to the smokin'-room, where them luny blokes was smokin' their pipes. I
never knew before that they sent luny people to poorhouses, 'n' I
couldn't understan' it. I told one of 'em what I was there for, 'n' he
told me that this cellar down here has ghosts in it. Well, o' course, I
ain't 'feard o' ghosts in most places, but, by jiminy, when the keeper
came 'n' put me down here 'n' left me in the cold 'n' dark, somehow or
other I got to thinkin' o' that luny bloke's stories, 'n' I jus' had to
holler. W'y, I never felt so queer before in my life. Suppose I'd gone
crazy; w'y, I could 'a' sued the county for damages, couldn't I? Don't
you ever soogest any more poorhouses to me; I don't wonder people goes
crazy in 'em." When the crowd first saw the negro he was shouting at the
top of his voice: "Spirits! spirits! There's spooks down here!"
We all spent a most miserable night in the cellar, and I doubt whether
any one of us would willingly seek shelter there again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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