To be a successful beggar in Canada, one must be able to speak French, for Quebec is one of the main tramp districts, and the local population uses this language principally. The "Galway" (Catholic priest) is perhaps the best friend of the Frenchies; at any rate, this has been my experience. He gives alms ten times where a peasant gives once, and when a vagabond can find a cloister or a convent, he is almost sure to be well taken care of. The peasants, it must be remembered, are about all the Frenchies have after the Galway. To show how wise they are in doling out their charity, it is only necessary to say that the usual Frenchy is content when he gets his three meals a day without working. And as for myself, I can say that I have gone hungry for over thirty hours at a stretch in Canada, and this, too, although I was careful to visit every house that I passed. But the Canadian tramp is evidently satisfied with small rewards, else he could not live long in his chosen district. As I know him, he is a slow-going fellow, fond of peace and quiet, and seldom desirous of those wild "slopping-ups" in American trampdom for which so much money is needed. If he can only have some outcast woman, or "sister," as he calls her, to accompany him on his travels, and to make homelike and comfortable the little tent which he often carries; and if he can have his daily _pâno_ and his usual supply of _dohun_ (tobacco), he is a comparatively happy fellow. He reminds me more of the European tramp in general character than any other human parasite I can think of; and I shall be exceedingly sorry if he ever gets a foothold in the United States, because he is a vagrant down to the core, and this can hardly be said as yet of most American tramps. It is almost impossible to touch his emotions, and he usually looks upon the world as his enemy. He can hardly be called a victim of liquor, but rather the victim of an ill-matched parentage. He is often on the mercy of the world before he knows how he came into it, and it is not wonderful that he should drift into a class where no questions are asked, and where even the murderer is received with some distinction. To reform such a man requires that the social polity itself be permeated by a higher order of ethics than governs it at present--a truth quite as applicable in certain districts of the United States as elsewhere. THE EAST The tramps of this part of the country represent the main intelligence as well as "respectability" of the brotherhood. They also comprise the most successful criminal element. But of course the vocation of the great majority is simply begging. To tell exactly where they thrive, and to particularize carefully, would take a book by itself, and the most I can do is to give a very general idea of the district.