Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
This is his attitude toward the world at large. He puts on a bold front,
and, as he himself says, "nerves" the thing through. In the bosom of his
hang-out, however,--and this is where we ought to study his ethics,--he
is a very different man. His code of morals there will compare favorably
with that of any class of society; and there is no class in which fair
dealing is more seriously preached, and unfair dealing more severely
condemned. The average criminal will stand by a fellow-craftsman through
thick and thin; and the only human being he will not tolerate is the one
who turns traitor. The remorse of this traitor when brought to bay by
his former brethren I have never seen exceeded anywhere. It was my fate
some years ago, while living with tramps, to be lodged in a jail where
one of the prisoners was a "State's evidence" witness. He had been
released from prison by promising to tell tales on an old man,--who was
supposed to be the main culprit in the crime in question,--and was
lodging in the jail until the trial was over. Unfortunately for him,
some of the prisoners had known him prior to this episode in his career;
and they sent him to Coventry so completely that his life in the jail
became unbearable, and he almost died ere he could give his testimony.
At night we could hear him groaning in his sleep as if he were
undergoing the most fearful torture, and in the daytime he slunk around
the corridors like a whipped dog. He lived to give his evidence in the
trial, and was released from durance; but a few days later he was found
dead by his own hand. When the inmates of the jail heard of his fate
they relented a little in their hatred of him; but the final opinion was
that suicide was the best solution of the problem.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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