Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond LifeFlynt, Josiah
History
Tramping with Tramps: Studies and Sketches of Vagabond Life
Flynt, Josiah
Tramps
There is one more indispensable article of a tramp's toilet, and it is
called the "shaver." This is a razor incased in a little sack, generally
leather, which he hangs around his neck with a string. It is used for
fighting and shaving, and is very good as a "guy" for getting him into
jail. I saw how this was done one day in western Pennsylvania. The time
was late October, and three tramps who came into town decided that the
local jail would be a good place in which to spend the winter. They
wanted a ninety-day sentence, and knew they could not get it for simple
drunkenness; so they decided to pretend drunk and make a row in order to
be sentenced on two charges. They began their brawl in the main street,
and flourished their razors in good style. The officers arrested them
after a little fight made for appearance' sake, and the judge gave them
four months--thirty days more than they expected. Their razors were
confiscated, too, but they got others the minute they were released. It
sometimes happens, however, that the shavers are not discovered, because
the men are not properly searched, and, owing to this lack of careful
inspection by officials, rows in jails have often ended seriously.
VIII
A friend at my elbow, to whom vagabondage is a _terra incognita_,
remarks just at this juncture: "You ought to tell just how the tramp
gets his three set-down meals a day."
I can scarcely believe that in our own country there is any ignorance in
regard to this matter. The house in the settled districts that has not
been visited by the tramp in search of one of his three meals seems to
me not to exist. But if anybody needs enlightenment on this point, the
following incident will be of interest.
One June day, some years ago, I strolled into the hang-out in a little
town in Michigan just as the bells were ringing for dinner. I was a
stranger in the place, and as I wanted to find my dinner as quickly as
possible, in order to make a "freight" that was due about two o'clock, I
asked one of the tramps at the camp whether he knew of any "mark" (a
house where something is always given to beggars) in the town.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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