William II of Germany is the ruler of about fifty millions of people. A small fraction comprises the nobility, while the great majority are commoners, and the rest, about one hundred thousand, are roving beggars. His Imperial Majesty is probably well acquainted with his nobles, and he thinks that he understands the commoners, but the tramp who passes his castle now and then is a foreigner at home. Yet he is found in every city, town, and village, and there is hardly a home in the empire which he has not visited. He tramps the public highways as freely and fearlessly as the laborer, and rides on the royal railways as boldly as a king. His business in life is to prey upon the credulity of the charitable, and to steal when the eye of the law is not on watch. In spite, however, of all this publicity, comparatively little is known of his real life and character. Various books and pamphlets have been written about him, but they have usually been grounded on second-hand information, as I have looked in vain for any account of a personal study of tramp life. Being desirous of knowing the real facts in the case, I at first supplemented my reading by various conversations with beggars as they lounged around near my home in Berlin, and occasionally invited some of the more intelligent into my study, and plied them as cleverly as possible with all sorts of questions. But they invariably fooled me, and told the most romantic of tales, believing, probably, that they were what I wanted. Time after time I have said to them, "Oh, come now, give over this story-telling, and let me have something that is really true." But they seemed unable to comprehend my purposes, and, true to their national traits, it was not in them to take part in any scheme which they could not understand. How to get at what I desired was the question. I called at the Bureau of Statistics, hoping surely to find here carefully tabulated statistics of vagrancy; but I was disappointed. Dr. Berthold,[7] who kindly told me all he knew, said that Pastor von Bodelschwingh was the man who had made the best census of trampdom, and he had claimed that there were 200,000 arrests in Germany each year for begging; that 100,000 of them represented irreclaimable vagabonds, 80,000 bona-fide seekers of work, and the remaining 20,000 the maximum number of reclaimable beggars. Dr. Berthold continued: "The only way to know the entire truth about the tramp is to live with him. I had the intention to do this myself, but I delayed it too long, and now I am too old." He was very kind and gave me some valuable hints, but admitted that nothing very definite was known about the wandering beggar.