description is usually necessary before the fellow can be distinguished. Over in New Jersey, I think, there are more tramps to the square mile than in any other State, excepting Pennsylvania. The neighborhood around Newark is simply infested with beggars, who meet there on their way into and out of New York city. They often have a hang-out on the outskirts of the town, where they camp quite unmolested, unless they get drunk and draw their razors, which is more than common with Eastern tramps. It is surprising, too, how well they are fed, when one remembers that they have "battered" in this community for years. It is in Pennsylvania, however, that the tramp is best fed, while I still maintain that he gets more money in New York city. I do not know of a town or village in the Keystone State where a decently clad roadster cannot get all that he cares to eat without doing a stroke of work in payment. The jails are also a great boon to the fraternity. In the majority of them there is no work to do, while some furnish tobacco and the daily papers. Consequently, in winter, one can see tramps sitting comfortably on benches drawn close to the fire, and reading their morning paper, and smoking their after-breakfast pipe, as complacently and calmly as the merchant in his counting-room. Here they find refuge from the storms of winter, and make themselves entirely at home. [Illustration: A "TIMBER LESSON."] Ohio and Indiana, although fairly friendly to tramps, are noted for certain "horstile" features. The main one of these is the well-known "timber-lesson"--clubbing at the hands of the inhabitants of certain towns. I experienced this muscular instruction at one unfortunate time in my life, and I must say that it is one of the best remedies for vagabondage that exist. But it is very crude and often cruel. In company with two other tramps, I was made to run a gantlet extending from one end of the town of Oxford, Indiana, to the other. The boys and men who were "timbering" us threw rocks and clubbed us most diligently. I came out of the scrape with a rather sore back, and should probably have suffered more had I not been able to run with rather more than the usual speed. One of my fellow-sufferers, I heard, was in a hospital for some time. My other companion had his eye gouged terribly, and I fancy that he will never visit that town again. Apart from the "timber" custom, which, I understand, is now practised in other communities also these two States are good begging districts. There are plenty of tramps within their boundaries, and when "the eagles are gathered together," the carcass to be preyed upon is not far away.